You're Saying It Wrong
Saturdays
From KMUW Studios and part of the NPR Podcast Network, You're Saying It Wrong is a podcast that looks at what we get wrong—and what we sometimes get right—when it comes to this English language. Hosted by KMUW's Fletcher Powell, each episode features a conversation with the sister and brother who wrote the book on it. Literally. You're Saying It Wrong: A Pronunciation Guide to the 150 Most Commonly Mispronounced Words and Their Tangled Histories of Misuse is by Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras.
On June 24, 2022, You’re Saying It Wrong received first place in Division B for Interview Podcasts from the Public Media Journalists Association. The awards recognize the best work in public media journalism from across the country.
Latest Episodes
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A listener question prompts us to think about words like rehabilitate, revamp, and nonplussed, and whether we can be plussed about habilitating and vamping, or if we're just talking nonsense. -
This week, we're talking ambiguous words and ambiguous phrases– sometimes we think we know what we're saying and sometimes we're really wrong. -
Latin may be dead, but we still use it every day. This week we look at some common Latin phrases and what they actually mean. -
We know what a berry is, we know what a cranberry is, but what the heck is a "cran?" We enter the sometimes murky world of the cranberry morpheme... -
As we head into summer, we'll take a look back to see if we can remember what we've learned over the past year.
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After this year's thrilling spell-off in the National Spelling Bee, we try to tease out the definitions of some of the words that won the contest.
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This week, we're talking about some of the very oldest words in the English language, and how little some of them have changed over thousands of years. -
We're looking at words that were made by smooshing together other words, but it all happened so long ago that we completely forgot about it.
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We're dipping back into common rhetorical devices today, and talking about how they can be used to win people to your side... or at least make them laugh a little bit.
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We look at some very old words that used to mean something, but that we now only see in very specific instances.
