Books With a Letter Missing (Rebroadcast) - 14 May 2012

<p>Remember those children's classics, the Velveteen Rabbi and The Little Price? The Twitterverse is abound with these books with a letter missing. And it turns out there's some pimping going on in our hospitals, but it's not what you'd think. Grant and Martha clear up the plead vs pleaded debate, touch on the use of product, and trace the history of shambles. Plus, a word puzzle with nursery rhymes, a map of regional grammar, and plenty of crazy vocab, from popinjays to the tee na na!<br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />There's a Twitter meme going around for books with a letter missing from the title. You can find them through the hashtag #bookswithalettermissing. Can't wait to read that romp about the sand-covered South, A Confederacy of Dunes. <br /><br />http://huff.to/q9I0Ra<br /> <br />We usually brandish a weapon, or some object we can wave about. But the definition of brandish can be stretched to include more figurative types of weapons or objects (e.g. seductive body parts).<br /><br />What does shambles mean? If your house is in shambles, it's a mess, but before the 1920s, the word shambles referred to a butcher's bloody bench.<br /><br />What is a popinjay? Literally a parrot, this term is often used in a military context to refer to a vain or conceited officer with a Napoleon complex. And a bandbox boy? That once commonly referred to an officer who gave excessive attention to his grooming and dress. It's a reference to "the box used to transport uniforms."<br /><br />Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game of Name That Nursery Rhyme. The catch is, the text has been run through the translation site Babelfish. What happens when Little Bo Peep and Humpty Dumpty go from English to Spanish to Chinese and back again?<br /><br />What's the past tense of plead? Is it pleaded or pled? Within the legal profession, pleaded is preferred. But in our common vernacular, we tend to use the less traditional pled. <br /><br />If something's right on the tee na na, it's just perfect. This phrase from New Orleans has popped