Have you ever wondered who Jimi Hendrix was talking about when he sang, "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy"? We don't know! Because that's not what he said. Today we look at mondegreens, those times we mishear lyrics or phrases in ways that completely change their meaning.
Horrors! As a result of some unforeseen circumstances, we're without a new episode this week. We're disappointed, too! But this does give us a chance to listen back to one of our favorite episodes (actually two of them, combined), from early 2020, which also contains some information that's very relevant to current global events. We really do apologize, and we'll be back in two weeks with a shiny new episode for your ears to enjoy.
First we take a look at a survey of words that people think make other people sound smart, and then we tackle the most difficult word quiz we've ever had on the show. No, really, this is sorta nuts. Plus, some investing advice you should definitely NOT take.
If I were you, I'd hold on to my hat, because in this week's episode we're going to try to tackle the subjunctive mood! We're doing a lot of this under protest.
Some listener emails prompted Kathy and Ross to take a look at the idea that women are the real drivers of innovation in language.
It's our annual airing of grievances, as we vent about the words we'd like to leave in the rear view mirror as we head into a new year. And fair warning: we get pretty petty!
We wrap up 2021 with a look at the most mispronounced words of the year-- we don't even know what some of these things are, let alone how to say them!
Prompted by some listener emails, we're returning to our bread and butter: words we accidentally use when we mean to use other words. It's confusable time!
Medial cluster what now?? Come on, you know you want to hear this. It's something you're doing basically all the time...
We won't turn a blind eye if you get caught red-handed trying to steal our thunder, because today we're digging into the sometimes surprising, usually murky origins of phrases we use every day (and we want all the credit, darn it!).
After our discussion of plurals in the last episode, we got to thinking about all the trouble apostrophes cause us, and Ross proposes a rather extreme solution.
All sorts of fun with plurals today: what we get wrong when we try to use Latin plurals, the rules of English plurals, pluralizing compound words... Look out, our opinions on plurals are like a charging herd of rhinocerotes!
We continue with our look at the most commonly misspelled words in the English language, as we dig into why it is we tend to spell them incorrectly, and the rules about why we spell them the way we do. And since this is English, we know rules are made to be broken!
Kathy and Ross challenge Fletcher to a spelling bee, as they tackle some of the English language's most commonly misspelled words and Fletcher immediately regrets bragging about how good he is at spelling.
Kathy, Ross & Fletcher dip back into their bag of commonly confused words with some particularly pretentious examples.
We continue with our discussion of contronyms by jumping into some seemingly simple words that turn out to have some complicated meanings. And the summer heat has made us a little loopy, which means we devolve into just a bit of toilet humor (PG-rated, of course), so... be warned!
Do you trim the tree before you trim the tree? Do you have to dust after you dust a cake? Today we're looking at contronyms (or antagonyms, or enantiosemy, or Janus words, or...), those cases where a single word can have two completely opposite meanings.
Kathy, Ross & Fletcher explore a few more redundant words and phrases!
This week, Kathy and Ross bring us a list of what they call "flapdoodle words," words that are redundant and just kind of junk things up. Or do they? Some of them might be kind of useful!
No more limits! All You're Saying It Wrong episodes will be available in one fell swoop!
Today, Kathy and Ross teach Fletcher about "flat adverbs," which look just like their adjective counterparts, but are still... adverbs. Think fast! Drive safe! Who needs that pesky -ly ending? Not these words.
Today we take a big step back and answer a common listener question about exactly why we don't talk that much about "The Rules" of English. Spoiler: THERE AREN'T ANY! (Ok, we're kidding, there are some.)
We dip into some listener questions, including one about our recent "reflexive pronouns" discussion and one that has us revisit a topic from an earlier episode and that whole lie/lay/laid/lain confusion. Spoiler: Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton are both wrong!
We're returning to one of our favorite topics: words we sometimes use without really knowing what they mean, or words we see that we just kind of skim past because we aren't totally sure what they mean — "Blipover words," as Ross calls them. You know, words you see and just sort of "blip" over. And boy oh boy, some of these even we have a hard time getting a handle on. Plus: guest appearances by Bob Dylan, Alanis Morissette and Yoda.
Cue up De La Soul, today we're talking "Me, Myself, and I!" Fletcher tries to wrap his head around reflexive pronouns and gets a remedial grammar lesson, and we all try not to have an identity crisis. Who am I, anyway?
After Fletcher vents his rage about a word he's starting to hear being misused more and more often, and then Kathy and Ross answer a listener question about the phrase "out of sorts" (what the heck are sorts?), we jump back into our trip through the commonly confused alphabet with the letters L and M. Things get pretty dark.
We return to our trip through the alphabet of commonly confused words, picking up with the letter "F", maybe skipping a few that are boring, and heading on through the letter "J". We'd say we avoid tangents this time, but we all know that's not true. Also, Kathy and Ross take on a listener question that Fletcher just can't wrap his head around.
Grab your two favorite words, smoosh 'em up together, and you got yourself a portmanteau! After Fletcher gets over some initial confusion, Kathy and Ross challenge him to figure out which words make up their favorite portmanteaus. Humpty Dumpty would be so proud...
We continue our trip through the alphabet of commonly confused words as we tackle the letters D, E, and F... or that's the plan anyway, sometimes we get a little sidetracked...
This episode we'll dig into some words (and one punctuation mark!) that we toss around willy-nilly that maybe we don't totally, completely understand, and that we sometimes count on other people not understanding, either. Plus, a listener email makes Fletcher want to revisit "begs the question" to learn where such a strange phrase came from in the first place.
