I'm John McWater and before we begin, we have something in addition to the regular show

and that is our Slate Plus segment.

This week's Slate Plus segment is going to be about the breaks.

We're going to talk about the word break.

This is an extra segment that you get when you become a member, which frankly helps me

and the podcasters and the writers do the work that we try to do, and where you don't

have to listen to ads.

And if this is your thing, there's a Facebook group.

You cannot listen to this piece online.

You can't sneak into it.

The only way to hear these nuggets of wisdom is to subscribe to it.

And the way you do that is to go to Slate.com slash lexicon plus.

From New York City, this is lexicon valley, a podcast about language.

I'm John McWater and you know this is my 75th show.

No, I don't believe either that I've done it that many times, but this is the 75th.

We're getting towards 100.

And you know, if it's my 75th, then I want it to be one of those shows that's all about me, sort of.

Although what that means is it'll be a bit about how linguistics or at least some linguistics works

and you're going to get a sense of it from just visiting the recesses of my unfortunate mind.

Now you want to know what I mean by that?

Well, let's just jump right into it.

Bobby Short is going to tell us how we're going to do it by singing us a cold-porter song from 1930 called Let's Fly Away.

...