That's What They Say
Sunday at 9:35 AM
That's What They Say is a weekly segment on Michigan Public that explores our changing language. Each week University of Michigan English Professor Anne Curzan will discuss why we say what we say with Michigan Public Weekend Edition host Rebecca Kruth.
Latest Episodes
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There's competitive forensics, but there's also forensic medicine, forensic accounting, and forensic linguistics too. -
The word "deadpan" is on the rise, as multiple parts of speech. That "pan" is related to the historical expression “shut your pan."
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Not all of us use the word 'whenever' in exactly the same way, and people are noticing.
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It’s 100% true that people online are asking about sentences like, “I got an a hundred on the test.”
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The way some people use "resonate" doesn't resonate with all of our listeners.
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We can sweep the floor, sweep the board, sweep the stakes, sweep the series – and maybe it will even be called a "clean sweep."
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While you may not find “comfortability” in many standard dictionaries yet, it is out there in circulation with “comfortableness.”
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Sometimes we’re left in the lurch. It’s probably fair to say that most of us don’t know where that lurch is.
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It appears that some of those bad or uneasy feelings we may feel in the pit of our stomach have become a pit in our stomach.
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It's that time again. With 2024 behind us, we can vote on the word of the year.
