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OnWords

An exploration and celebration of language and all of it's many quirks, with KMUW commentator Lael Ewy.

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  • Virtue signaling is a term describing people publicly declaring their positions on various issues of the day, using print, speech, or social media to…
  • As we move into the holiday season, it seems like a good time to consider the ways we use the word holiday and its implications.Originally meaning “holy…
  • Social media have spawned many new words, and now they bring us “influencer.”Social media influencers are distinguished by their use of YouTube,…
  • As a new school year gets under way, both students and teachers are likely to report some anxiety.“Anxiety” is a word with both clinical and common…
  • For a one-syllable word of little sparkle or fire, “dope” has an interesting variety of meanings.Prominent over the last century or so is the use of…
  • The term “confirmation bias” has come to the fore recently, describing everything from the publication of scientific papers to polls of public opinion.…
  • Conspiracy theories have been around a long time—from speculations about what happened to the children of the Russian royal family after the revolution to…
  • A few terms we have to protect from the unstable landscape of language, and I nominate “slippery slope” as one of them.Pundits, news analysts, and…
  • As language users, we reserve the right to make up words.There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as those with whom we are communicating understand what…
  • Among the many things Millennials are supposed to have killed is the word “adult.”For evidence of this, their critics look no further than the word…