This is kind of a self-indulgent podcast for me.

I've been house-hunting lightly and I swear if one more real estate agent tells me about

a property's wonderful zero escape, I'm going to rant for the rest of my life.

The word is zero escape, X-E-R-I-S-C-A-P-E.

It comes from a combination of the word zeroic, which means having scant moisture and the

word escape, which in this case refers to a type of land.

So a zero escape is a type of landscape where the plants don't require a lot of water,

and it usually doesn't require much other maintenance either.

That makes it a wonderful thing in my book, and I can see why people get confused and

think the word is zero escape because it requires zero maintenance.

But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was coined by the Denver Water

Department in 1981, and the word is zero escape.

The root zeroic in zero escape comes from the Greek prefix zero X-E-R, which means

dry.

There aren't many English words that use the zero prefix, zero germa is dry skin, zero

ography is a type of dry printing, zero phagee is eating dry food, and besides zero escape

there are just a few others.

It's a short episode this week, so I'd like you to take a second to vote on something.

We're just starting to plan the Grammar Girl summer tour to promote my print book that's

coming out in July, and I'd like to hear from you what cities you want me to visit.

The coordinators have given me a list of 25 cities to choose from that I'll list on the

website, and I've set up a special email address for the voting.

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