Wired Magazine: Tech Support

Language Expert Answers Word Origin Questions (2025x43)

Air date: Oct 21, 2025

University of Cambridge Research Fellow Dr. Stephen Turton joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about the logic (and many quirks) of the English language. Why are so many English words not pronounced the way they're spelled? Why is the plural of 'child' not 'childs' but 'children?' 'Foot' becomes 'feet' but 'boot' does't pluralize to 'beet?' How do we know what Old English sounded like? Why is the letter R pronounced so different across languages? What does a pineapple have to do with either pines OR apples? Answers to these questions and many more await on Etymology Support.