In a word: ‘Murder,’ ‘enormity’ and other words in the news

In a word: Using slang makes you part of the gang

By the '80s everything was totally tubular. I had a great place with a bodacious view where I could hang loose.

In a word: The phonetic alphabet and the silent treatment

In a word: Consider the longsuffering, fastvanishing hyphen

It's been praised, vilified and most recently banished. The little hyphen's future seems illfated despite having made a lot of connections over the years.

In a word: Idioms! They’re all a bunch of idioms!

Lewiston wordmeister Jim Witherell explores our language's many word phrases that make no sense unless you know what they mean, catch my drift?

In a word: Joan Didion: ‘The arrangement of words matter’

'To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed,' the well-known writer once said.

In a word: Getting possessive about US place names

In a word: Jim and Claus take on the Queen’s English

In a word: Are you pickin’ up what I’m lying down?

In a word: Popular word game had hardscrabble start