Episodes with real show notes
Every episode ships with a timestamped rundown, the words we covered, and the sources we leaned on so you can go read them yourself.
Episode 5 out now
There's a reason for everything we say
Wording Out is a podcast about etymology. Twice a month we take a handful of ordinary words, follow them back through harbours, courtrooms and bad translations, and tell you which origin stories actually hold up.
- Episodes published
- 5
- Words indexed
- 16
- Between episodes
- 14 days
What lives here
A podcast, an index, and a queue you get to vote on
A dictionary of every word
We cover a few words per episode, and each one lands in a permanent index with its root language, first attestation and the episode it came from.
Indexed A to Z
Jump straight to a letter, or filter by episode number when you half-remember which show a word turned up in.
Suggest the next word
Send us the word that has been bothering you, plus your guess at where it came from.
Upvote what you want covered
Signed-in listeners get one vote per word. The leaderboard decides which suggestions make the recording schedule.
Search by root or origin
Look for everything we have traced back to Latin, Nahuatl or Old English in one query.
Running threads
Five threads we keep pulling on
Latin roots
The words Rome never stopped lending us
Freshly indexed
The most recent entries
The index opens with the first episode. Check back after launch week.
Word of
the fortnight
One email every other Tuesday: the new episode, the words it covers, and the sources we used to trace them.