AA: I'm Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER: we check in with Grant Barrett at the American Dialect Society for the results of its 19th annual vote for words of the year, in this case for 2008. GRANT BARRETT: The Word of the Year was bailout --...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Slangman revisited. RS: A listener from Libya, Radwan Al-karash, sent us an e-mail earlier this month: I enjoy listening to your interviews with different people from different co...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: our friend English teacher Lida Baker joins us from Los Angeles to talk about expressions of sympathy. LIDA BAKER: The reason that this came up for me is that a friend of mine los...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER: choosing the right language for advertising. The December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research contains a paper by Rohini Ahluwalia at the University of Minnesota and Aradhna Krishna at the Unive...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: If mixing with people at parties leaves you at a loss for words, writer Jeanne Martinet offers some help in an updated edition of her popular book The Art of Mingling. RS: Give us...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: a big week for talkers and listeners. RS: This Thursday, millions of Americans will gather with family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving -- or Turkey Day, as many call it. Tha...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti. Rosanne Skirble is away. This week on WORDMASTER, on the phone from Southern California, is English teacher Nina Weinstein. She teaches business English, among other things, and I was curious how she and her students are addressi...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: more from our interview with Arthur Schulman. He's compiled a book of words and definitions set forth by Noah Webster in his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. RS:...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: The election of 2008, in the words of 1828, the year Noah Webster published his epic American Dictionary of the English Language. We wanted to know how the man known as the foundi...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: with Major League Baseball's championship series delayed by rain -- no World Series game has ever been suspended before -- we thought we'd step up to the plate and reprise a segme...