HistoryChiQ & Words Gone Wild - Jun 07,2013

Maybe the Tom Tom Club said, er, sang it best in Wordy Rappinghood, BUT logophile Howard Richler, author of the new How Happy Became Homosexual: and Other Mysterious Semantic Shifts, is going to explain to us how words got so slippery. For instance, is Bully today the same Bully of yesteryear? No way (just ask Teddy Roosevelt). The difference between naughty & nice? Not so much... He is also the author of Global Mother Tongue: The Eight Flavours of English & A Bawdy Language: How a Second-Rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top, so suffice to say, we have a lot to talk about. (Did I mention the Campaign to Bring Back the Multisyllabic Word?) Join us for some bloody etymological dissection. Producer: Robert Gonyo

Howard Richler | How Happy Became Homosexual | Mysterious Semantics | Word journeys | etymology