Why does English have so many irregular verbs? Why does is it have so many synonyms? Why don’t tough, through, and dough rhyme? In this conversation, linguist Arika Okrent answers these questions and many more.

Until the 19th century, English had another form of lowercase “s” that looked remarkably like an f: ſ. Also until the 19th century, the ampersand symbol, &, was often counted as the 27th letter of the alphabet.

While the ligatures æ (ash) and œ (ethel) are rarely used in English writing today, in prior centuries, they were an important part of the language’s orthography.

In this episode, preeminent linguist John McWhorter discusses topics from his new book, Nine Nasty Words, including the all-important question: What’s the correct past tense of sh*t?

Before the letter W was invented, English used the rune wynn to represent the /w/ sound. Many Modern English words containing the GH digraph were once spelled with the now extinct letter yogh.

In Modern English, we use the TH digraph to represent the voiced and voiceless dental fricative sounds. However, English previously had two unique letters that did this same job: eth ( Ð,ð) and thorn (Þ, þ).

You can't have the English language without the ABC's, right? Wrong.

This episode looks at how an Ancient Greek word associated with barley likely gave us the word today used for Italian durum wheat products. We also uncover the hidden connections among pasta, paste, pastel, pastry, and other related words.

This episode looks at the etymologies of our meal words (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) in addition to the etymology of the word meal itself. The meanings of our meal words have shifted over time in relation to the time of day at which the meals are eaten.

In this interview episode, I speak with Tim Brookes, founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project.

The Ancient Greek word kaktos passed into Modern English as ‘cactus,’ yet the plant originally designated by kaktos was actually more like an artichoke. This episode explores the unlikely connection between the words for ‘artichoke’ and ‘cactus.’

The word apple once referred to fruits in general. This archaic usage hides in plain sight in a handful of other fruit names.

If cheese is one of the oldest Latin-derived words in English, then where do the etymologically unrelated Italian and French words formaggio and fromage come from?

The word ‘egg’ comes from the language of the Vikings. During the Middle English period, different regions of England used different words for eggs.

In this conversation with Kevin Stroud of the History of English Podcast, we discuss the history of Proto Indo-European scholarship.

Does the idiom ‘dead ringer’ come from burying people alive? This episode refutes common folk etymologies associated with the idiom and gets to the bottom of its true origins.

A ‘red herring’ is literally a smoked fish. In its idiomatic sense, a red herring is a logical fallacy or misleading clue. So what’s the connection?

Of all places, why do we put the proof in the pudding? Like many idioms whose origins date back several centuries, the connection between the phrase’s literal and figurative meanings is no longer clear.

Why do we say ‘break a leg’ before a performance? There are many popular theories, some far-flung, some viable. This episode looks at the phrase’s most likely etymological candidates while debunking a few others.

Our idiomatic sense of ‘apple of the eye’ comes from an Early Modern English translation of a Hebrew expression from the Old Testament.