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From Washington, D.C., this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm Mike Wolo in today, episode number 30, titled Eject at High Altitude, wherein we discuss

whether certain sounds are more or less common depending on where a language evolved.

Hey, everyone.

Bob's traveling this week, so it's just me here.

I want to first of all thank those of you who emailed in appreciation of our episode about swearing.

I was admittedly a little bit nervous about that show, especially after Bob, of all people,

became uncomfortable during the conversation.

I want to especially thank my in-laws for not disowning me.

I can't promise that's the last time you'll ever hear me say some of those words,

but I will promise that it won't be frequent.

Also, many of you took up the challenge and correctly identified the word I used incorrectly

in that episode.

I think Bradley Bonnet or Bonnet was the first to write in pointing out that I said incalcitrant

when I meant recalcitrant.

A couple of years ago, Robert Hartwell Fisk, he's the editor of

the Vocabular Review, wrote a book called The Dictionary of Unendurable English, a compendium of

mistakes in grammar, usage, and spelling. In it, he writes, recalcitrant means resistant to authority, difficult to manage.

Incalcitrant is meaningless.

However, I did some database searching, and it turns out that you can find incalcitrant being used for recalcitrant as far back as the late 1800s.

...