Grammar Girl here, I'm in Yonfogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today I have four short segments and if you're a really long time listener, you'll remember

when my show would be just one of these segments and I'm really grateful to be able to get

to do so much more today.

We'll talk about why you call a small number of people a skeleton crew.

We'll talk about why we say we hunker down.

We'll talk about the difference between uncharted and uncharted and we'll talk about the

word existential.

I was supposed to have an interview this week with Roy Peter Clark of the Pointer Institute

about his new book called Murder Your Darlings that has all sorts of inspirational writing

advice.

But we couldn't make it work because his company is operating on a skeleton crew and he

couldn't get help with the recording.

And then he said, you should do a segment about the phrase skeleton crew.

So this one is for you Roy.

We'll do that interview in the future.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, people started using the word skeleton to

describe the bare bones level of staffing needed to operate in the late 1700s.

And it looks like it started in a military context.

The earliest examples are about skeleton battillions, skeleton regiments, skeleton squads,

...