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Ever find yourself distracted from what someone is saying by wondering about how they say it?
Lingthusiasm is a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics as a way of understanding the world around us. From languages around the world to our favourite linguistics memes, Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne bring you into a lively half hour conversation on the third Thursday of every month about the hidden linguistic patterns that you didn't realize you were already making. One of Spotify's top 50 Science podcasts 2022.
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Lingthusiasm Episode 114: Begonia, average coral, and sea pink - Defining colour terms with Kory Stamper
begonia: a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see ‘coral’ 3B), bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet William, called also ‘gaiety’.
In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about trying to pin down definitions for colour terms with Kory Stamper, author of the new book TRUE COLOR! Kory is a lexicographer and was Associate Editor at Merriam-Webster for almost two decades. Her first book was Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, which we also loved, and now Kory is back with the fruits of her dive into the mid-20th century quest to standardize colour terms, taking us from dying fabrics to painting cars to assessing grades of maple syrup.
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about childlore! We talk about our favourite bits of childlore from our own childhoods, such as skipping/clapping rhymes, counting-off rhymes, and fortune-telling. We also talk about tracking down the sources for “All Right, Vegemite!”, a compilation of Australian children’s chants and rhymes from Lauren’s childhood, selectively choosing to pass on less racist and sexist versions of the rhymes, the relationship between childlore and memes, as well as research from folklorists and anthropologists on childlore around the world.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).
Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among some morphemes
From ‘Micro to macro - The levels of language’, where we took advantage of the aptly numbered 101th episode to get enthusiastic about linguistics from the micro to macro perspctive often found in Linguistics 101 classes
Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.
Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about colour and how we describe it with Kory Stamper. But first, our most recent bonus episode was all about idioms. We “go the extra mile” to “get to the bottom” of why we should “cut idioms some slack.”
Lauren: “It’s easier said than done.” Go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to get this and many other bonus episodes.
[Music]
Gretchen: Kory Stamper is a lexicographer and was Associate Editor at Merriam-Webster for almost two decades. Her first book was Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. Her second book is out 31st of March 2026 and is titled, “True Color – The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color – From Azure to Zinc Pink.” Welcome, Kory!
Kory: Thank you. It’s good to be here with both of you.
Lauren: It’s so lovely to have you here. We’re already off to a start where I’m like, “You don’t say /azjuə/?” [Laughter] We’re doing so great. Kory, how did you get into lexicography?
Kory: It was pretty much an accident. Back in my undergraduate, I was a Medieval Studies major, so I studied languages and literature primarily. After I got out of college, I thought, “Well, now what am I gonna do?” I answered – this is how long ago it was – I answered a want ad in the newspaper (in a print newspaper) to be an editorial assistant at Merriam-Webster. I got the job and within a few months of being there just realised “This is what I wanna do. This is what I love doing.” And that’s how I got into lexicography. I’ve been a lexicographer now since 1998.
Gretchen: Whoa. And you also wrote a previous book about lexicography, Word By Word, which we also loved and reviewed in one of the very early episodes of Lingthusiasm. We will link to that from the archives. How did you get into writing about lexicography?
Kory: You know, it was an occupational hazard of working at a dictionary company. Merriam-Webster, way back in the dark ages, used to respond to every single piece of consumer mail or email that came in. Most of them were asking – yeah, I don’t think they do that anymore. Please, folks, don’t email Merriam-Webster to ask them questions. I was one of the people that was in charge of answering a lot of that email. There was that coupled with the fact that whenever I would go out or meet new people, they would say, “What do you do?” I’d say, “I write dictionaries.” People would say, “What? How? Why? Who? When?”
Gretchen: “You mean there are people behind those dictionaries? I thought it just appeared from the sea foam like Aphrodite.”
Kory: Exactly. Or “Why do we need to write dictionaries? They’ve already been written.” After a little bit of having these conversations with people over and over, I started a blog where I started talking a little bit about what it’s like to write dictionaries. Why do people write them? What are some of the weird parts of writing dictionaries? The blog took off. People loved it. That’s what led to my first book. That’s led to this book, too.
Lauren: If you can cast your mind all the way back, Kory, how did you get into the research topic for this book?
Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among some morphemes
From ‘Micro to macro - The levels of language’, where we took advantage of the aptly numbered 101th episode to get enthusiastic about linguistics from the micro to macro perspctive often found in Linguistics 101 classes
Bonus 109: Skipping rhymes, counting chants, and fortune-telling games - Children’s oral culture
Children have a shared culture that’s transmitted face-to-face in schoolyards, summer camps, and all sorts of places where kids do unstructured play with each other. These chants, rhymes, and games are known as childlore, and they’re one of the last vestiges of oral culture in our highly literate society.
In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about childlore! We talk about our favourite bits of childlore from our own childhoods, such as skipping/clapping rhymes, counting-off rhymes, and fortune-telling (Gretchen runs the MASH fortuneteller game on Lauren with a linguistics twist). We also talk about tracking down the sources for “All Right, Vegemite!”, a compilation of Australian children’s chants and rhymes from Lauren’s childhood, selectively choosing to pass on less racist and sexist versions of the rhymes, the relationship between childlore and memes, as well as research from folklorists and anthropologists on childlore around the world.
Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.
Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about when there are two different social roles for two languages or varieties in a society (a.k.a. “diglossia”). But first, the LingComm grants are coming back for 2026. If you’re working on sharing linguistics concepts with broader audiences or you know someone who is (whether in person, online, with kids, through art, video, audio, writing, in-person events, in other languages, or some other idea we haven’t thought of) we have 300 US dollar small grants to support your cool project, which also come with a mentorship meeting with us or a LingCommer who we know who has experience working on something similar that we can connect you with.
Lauren: LingComm grant applications close on the 30th of April 2026. That’s the end of April anywhere on Earth. Thanks to the generosity of several people, we have more grants to give out than we expected. Now, we need people to apply for them. Tell people to apply for a LingComm grant. For more information about applying, go to LingComm.org/grants.
Gretchen: Our most recent bonus episode was an update on what we’re up to in 2026 and a discussion of some great linguistics books, including Talking Hands by Margalit Fox and Hellspark by Janet Kagan.
Lauren: I loved Hellspark so much. We also took our own patented questionnaire for “What Character of the IPA are You?” and assigned each other characters from the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is an activity available to patrons at the Ling-phabet tier.
Gretchen: Go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to get access to bonus episodes, to sponsor your very own character of the International Phonetic Alphabet, and for more ways of supporting us.
[Music]
Gretchen: I sent you a text from a party that I was at recently, saying, “Lauren, we have to do an episode about diglossia.” People keep asking about linguistics things at parties, which to be clear, I love. Several times recently, the answer has been “diglossia,” but because people don’t know what diglossia is – and at a party, they wanna hear a 3-minute explanation of something (they don’t quite wanna sit there for my full 30-minute explanation of something) – saying, “Oh, that’s a great question. The answer is diglossia,” does not help as much as I want it to help.
Lauren: Look, to be honest, it’s not the first time you’ve sent me the text message, “I was at a party, and the answer was diglossia.” I thought we’d have a chat about this question in a bit more detail because I’ve refilled my drink. I’ve got my canapés. I have nowhere else to be for the next 30 minutes.
Gretchen: You’re gonna be my party-guest-slash-victim. I’m gonna put the question into your mouth because you’re my party guest. Part of the reason why this question keeps coming up for me at parties is partially because I live in Montreal. This is a question that is particularly relevant to French.
Lauren: I feel like it’s also a question that is also particularly relevant to French learners, which is “I keep being told that the way I’m doing something is wrong, but everybody does it. If everybody does it, how is it wrong?” This is the French-learning paradox.
Gretchen: Diglossia itself explains a whole lot of things. One of the questions that you, my party victim, can keep in your mind towards the end of this is “Is everything secretly a diglossia? Are there way more hidden diglossias than we thought there were now that we have this diglossic lens to look on the world with?” We’re talking about French, but you can keep this in mind for any other language or linguistics situation how many of these are diglossias.
Lauren: The answer is diglossia. What is a “diglossia,” Gretchen? My dinner party conversationalist.
Gretchen: Your audition for Jeopardy guest is going great.
Lingthusiasm Episode 113: Why “it’s a diglossia!” explains so many social dynamics
In some communities, everyone regularly uses two languages or varieties according to the social situation, with one of them being more prestigious (and more likely to be written down) than the other. This particular kind of multilingualism is known as a diglossia.
In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about diglossia! We talk about why diglossia is the answer to so many questions Gretchen gets asked at parties, what “high” and “low” versions of a language have to do with mountains, where the four “classic” cases of diglossia come from (Arabic, Greek, Haitian, and Swiss), and how at least some of them might not be diglossias anymore. We also talk about whether there are new diglossias emerging (French? English???) and how to tell if you might be in a diglossia.
The LingComm grants are running in 2026! If you’re working on sharing linguistics concepts with broader audiences or know someone who is, whether in person, online, with kids, through art, video, audio, writing, in person events (or some other idea we haven’t thought of!), we have $300USD grants to support your cool project. The grants also include a mentoring meeting with Gretchen, Lauren, and/or an experienced lingcommer who we have personally selected to be relevant to your project.
Applications close on 30th of April 2026, that’s the end of April anywhere on earth. Thanks to the generosity of several people we have more grants to give out than we expected, so please apply! Application form and further details can be found here.
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about what we’ve been up to in 2025 and what’s coming up in 2026! Plus, we go behind the scenes on the Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame: we finally take our Which IPA character are you? personality quiz ourselves and use the results to give you a look into our artisanal process of assigning phonetic symbols to patrons at the Ling-phabet tier.
Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes (and get a symbol for yourself). You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).
Bonus 108: Collaborations, your latest pop ling reading list, and assigning ourselves IPA symbols - 2026 updates!
In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about what we’ve been up to in 2025 and what’s coming up in 2026! Plus, we go behind the scenes on the Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame: we finally take our Which IPA character are you? personality quiz ourselves and use the results to give you a look into our artisanal process of assigning phonetic symbols to patrons at the Ling-phabet tier.
In 2025, Lauren published her academic-ish book Gesture: A Slim Guide, coauthored an article about crowdfunding Lingthusiasm, and coedited a special issue of the Australian Journal of Linguistics in memory of her mentor and friend Barb Kelly, which is a traditional way of honouring people you love in academia. In 2026, she’s celebrating her promotion to Associate Professor as of January 1st (finally, a job title that’s more legible internationally!) with uh, more meetings. Lauren is grateful that Lingthusiasm patrons let us pay other people to do the editing, transcripts, and other behind-the-scenes podcast admin work so she can stay involved in the episodes themselves around her increasingly busy schedule.
Gretchen went to ASL camp in Ontario for a week last year, did a talk called 101 ways to communicate linguistics with a broader audience (slides), and enjoyed several interviews and books, including Talking Hands by Margalit Fox (nonfiction about Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language) and Hellspark by Janet Kagan (science fiction, recommended by a Lingthusiasm listener!). Plus: a special not-yet-public announcement only in the episode itself! Gretchen is grateful that the Lingthusiasm patrons let her stay afloat while working on projects that one day you’re going to love…but which aren’t bringing in their own money yet.
We both enjoyed celebrating World Linguistics Day in November (greetings from 70 cities in over 30 countries!) and attending the International Conference on Linguistics Communication in April, where we talked about lingcomm collaboration with academia. Plus: we hit our 100th Lingthusiasm episode and celebrated by compiling a list of 101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics.
I used the phrase “waiting on tenterhooks” and then thought “what the hell is a tenterhook”.
It’s these things! So when you’re waiting on tenterhooks, you’re stretched tight like a piece of cloth. Very evocative, now that I know what it means.
like 40% of english idioms are just Textiles Again
official linguistics post
When useful folk categories, like “trees” and “fish”, don’t line up with evolutionary taxonomies…
From ‘Lo! An undetached collection of meaning parts’, the episode where we get enthusiastic about how we manage to understand each other when we’re learning new words.
A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne.
Weird and deep conversations about the hidden language patterns that you didn't realize you were already making.
New episodes (free!) the third Thursday of the month.
