A couple of weeks ago, we got an email from Mary in Upstate New York.

She's a piano teacher and she wanted to know about a word that she uses in her work.

We're going to address that question in a future episode.

But I mentioned her because she also said,

I love your show. It's so lovely to hear other people enjoy and observe language with wonder

and excitement. Your sense of curiosity and appreciation is contagious.

Well, comments like that warm our hearts. It's what we're all about here at Way With Words.

For years, we've worked hard to connect listeners who share our sense of wonder and curiosity

about the world. And we love learning from you. We have so much more great stuff to share with

you this year and we can't wait to bring it to you. But we can't do that alone. We need your

support. Please go to waywardradio.org slash donate right now and give what you can.

Help us keep bringing you many more hours of thoughtful conversation about language.

That's waywardradio.org slash donate. Thanks a lot.

You're listening to Way With Words. The show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. We heard from Amanda Fair

in Evansville, Indiana and she writes, I saw my parents over the weekend and my dad used a phrase

that I hadn't heard in a while. And when he said it, I actually had to take a step back and think

about what he was talking about. My entire childhood, they called our garbage disposal George.

I also referred to our garbage disposal as such for most of my life. But when I moved out,

I fell away from it. As far as I know, they didn't have a disposal with a brand that was

similarly named, but they used it as a proper noun and a verb like just put it down George.

I'm done. You can George it or we need to run George. It has a smell. Make sure you run cold

...