From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm John McWhorter, and you know what?
Ever since this world began,
there is nothing sadder than a person at a party who likes to read clippings of their own stuff.
I actually knew people like that back when newspapers were still a thing.
They'd open up their bag or their purse and they'd read their own things.
That didn't only happen in the old movie Stage Door.
Or, for example, these days, there'll be somebody who's always quoting themselves in their books.
Nobody likes that.
And yet I have to do something like that here.
This is me.
on Colbert on TV some years ago and listen to something I said.
Is there an oldest word in English?
Is there a word that has changed the least in English?
So a single word that has changed the least?
There's not any one word that I would think of,
but it tends to be the most heavily used and therefore dullest words.
And so, for example, and I have nothing.
Remotely interesting I could say about and or you know I well it goes back and it sounds different But it's the same thing or family members,
but even with them sometimes funny things happen think about what brother well You know what?