Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Going To Hell In A Hen Basket: Modern Malapropisms

Robert Rubin is a professor of English at Meredith College and the author of 'Going to Hell in a Hen Basket.'
Robert Rubin
Robert Rubin is a professor of English at Meredith College and the author of 'Going to Hell in a Hen Basket.'

Misusing words and phrases drives the language purists among us crazy, but for English professor Robert Rubin, malapropisms are not only amusing but examples of how language evolves.

His new book, "Going to Hell in a Hen Basket: An Illustrated Dictionary of Modern Malapropisms" (Flatiron Books/2015), is an exploration of the newest ways that we say what we do not mean.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Rubin, an English professor at Meredith College, about modern malapropisms.

Stay Connected
Will Michaels is WUNC's Weekend Host and Reporter.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.