Download audio file (090709-AWWW-trespasses-vs-debts.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (3.7 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Download audio file (090708-AWWW-postal-abbreviations.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (3.0 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

This episode first aired March 14, 2009. Listen here:

Download audio file (090713-AWWW-a-walk-spoiled-but-our-lie-is-good.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Here’s the The New Yorker article about Crazy English that Grant mentions.

Why do aviators say “roger” to indicate they’ve received a message? A pilot phones the show about that, “wilco,” and similar language.

For some golfers, the phrase “go golfing” is as maddening as a missed two-foot putt. The proper expression, they insist, is play golf. A longtime golfer wonders whether that’s true.

He’s sharp as the corner of a round table. She’s so sad she’s pulling a face as long as a fiddle. If startling similes leaving you grinning like a basket full of possum heads, you’ll love the book Intensifying Similes in English, published in 1918. It’s available at no cost on the Internet Archive.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game called “Odd One Out,” the object of which is to guess which of four words doesn’t belong with the rest. Try this one: dove, job, polish, some.

“Yo!” Why did people ever start using the word yo! to get someone’s attention? Grant explains that in English there’s mo’ than one yo.

It’s one of the biggest grammatical bugaboos of all, the one that bedevils even the most earnest English students: “Is it lie or lay?” Martha shares a trick for remembering the difference. See below for her clip-and-save chart of these verbs. Print it out and tape it to your computer. Better yet, laminate it and carry it in your wallet at all times. And if you choose to tattoo it onto some handy part of your body, by all means send us a photo so we can post it on the site.

How are things in your “neck of the woods“? And why heck do we say neck?

Grant reads a few lines from a favorite poem: “A New Song of New Similes” by John Gay. It also appears in the front of the book Intensifying Similes in English linked above.

In this week’s installment of Slang This!, the president of the
National Puzzlers’ League tries to pick out the slang terms from a list that includes poguey, pushover, noodles, and naff.

In a 1936 episode of Jack Benny’s radio show, a woman says that her father sprained his ankle the night before while “truckin’.” This has an A Way with Words listener confused; she thought trucking was a term from the 1970s. Grant clears up the mystery, and along the way inspires Martha to bust some moves.

Grant explains the connection between “sauce” and “don’t sass me.”

Why do some people pronounce the word “wash” as warsh? Martha and Grant discuss the so-called “intrusive R” and why it makes people say “warsh” instead of “wash” and “Warshington” instead of “Washington.”

…

Martha’s Handy-Dandy, Clip-and-Save Chart for “Lie” and “Lay”

Lie — to “repose or recline”

• Present Tense — Today I lie on the couch.
• Past Tense — Yesterday I lay on the couch for two hours.
• Part Participle — Every day this week, I have lain on the couch for two hours.

Lay — to “put or place”

• Present Tense — Today I lay my checkbook on the table.
• Past Tense — Yesterday I laid my checkbook on the table.
• Part Participle — Every day this week, I have laid my checkbook on the table.

…

A Way with Words is sponsored by Mozy:

Mozy online backup protects your valuable computer files from data loss as a result of virus, theft, and other forms of disaster.

This episode originally aired February 28 , 2009. Listen here:

Download audio file (090706-AWWW-tweet-tweet-polly-wanna-cracker.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

For a closer look at the language of the twitterati, check out Erin McKean’s recent piece in the Boston Globe. Glossaries of Twitter-related terms can be found at Twittonary, Twittionary, and Twictionary. We didn’t say all the coinages were clever!

By the way, you can now follow A Way with Words on Twitter.

A man who owns a parrot says that when people see his bird, they invariably ask the question “Polly wanna cracker?” He wonders about the origin of that psittacine phrase. Psittacine? It means parrot-like.

One of the earliest uses of the phrase so far found is this fake advertisement from the mock newspaper the Bunkum Flag-Staff and Independent Echo published in 1849 in The Knickerbocker magazine. It starts, “For sale, a Poll Parrot, cheap. He says a remarkable variety of words and phrases, cries, ‘Fire! fire!; and ‘You rascal!’ and ‘Polly want a cracker,’ and would not be parted with, but having been brought up with a sea-captain he is profane and swears too much.”

Below, a cartoon from The John-Donkey, July 29, 1848, p. 47, via Proquest American Periodical Series. The John-Donkey was a short-lived humorous and satirical magazine edited by Thomas Dunn English.

Is it ever okay to end a sentence with a preposition? Oh, is it ever! Martha and Grant do their best to bury this tired old proscription. It’s a baseless rule concocted by 17-century grammarians, and it’s errant nonsense up with which your hosts will not put.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a puzzle in which participants try to guess a word that could logically go before or after each of a trio of words. For example, if the three words are “nest,” “calories,” and “suit,” the answer is “empty,” as in “empty nest,” “empty calories,” and “empty suit.” So, can you guess why Greg calls this puzzle “Crown Play Time“?

Toward vs. towards: is it more correct to say “toward an object” or “towards an object”? Well, which side of the Atlantic are you on?

Martha tries out a couple of old-fashioned riddles on Grant. Here’s one: “What goes around the world, but stays in a corner?”

An F-18 fighter pilot worries that a term he and his colleagues often use isn’t a legitimate word. It’s deconflict, which means to ensure that aircraft aren’t in the same airspace. Grant reassures him that deconflict is a perfectly respectable term.

Is there a word for @#$%!^*)!&!, those typographical symbols standing in for profanity? There is indeed. It’s grawlix—not to be confused with jarns, quimps, nittles, lucaflects, or plewds. For more on such terms, check out cartoonist Mort Walker’s Private Scrapbook. There’s also an amazing list of grawlixes used in cartoons and comics from 1911 to 2008.

Grant answers a letter from a listener who wonders if it’s ever correct to use the word “fishes” instead of “fish.”

In this week’s round of Slang This!, a member of the National Puzzlers League tries to separate the real slang terms from the fake ones. For example, which of following expressions is British rhyming slang for “wife”: boiler house or the stitches? And which of these is prison slang for “cake” or “candy”: cho-cho or grimpen mire?

What do you call the nasty black mixture of snow and ice that builds up in your car’s wheel wells in wintry weather? Is there a word for this frigid gunk? Various names have been floating around, including hunkers, snard, snowlactites, knobacles, slud, snowtice, grice, carsicles, and snirt. A caller shares another her own family uses, braxis.

If people are on warmly congenial terms, they’re said to “get on like a house on fire.” Yet an Irishwoman says when she uses this expression in the U.S., she often gets puzzled looks. Is the expression that unusual?

When something’s crooked, some people describe it as catawampus, or cattywampus, or kittywampus. A caller wonders about the historical roots of all these words. Anything to do with felines?

This episode first aired February 23, 2009. Listen here:

Download audio file (090629-AWWW-chicken-scratches-and-creaky-voice.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

There’s a new book out about the history of penmanship. It’s called Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, by Kitty Burns Florey.

If you want to claim something—say, the front seat of a car or the last piece of cake—what do you say? Dibs? Boney? How about “I hosey that!”? The hosts talk about this New England expression, its possible origins, and its equivalent in other parts of the country.

A caller has a hard time remembering which is correct: “Give the book to my husband and me,” or “Give the book to my husband and I.” Martha offers a sure-fire, quick-and-easy way to know if “husband and I” or “husband me” are right every time.

According to a listener in San Diego, when a DJ plays a great set, he’s said to rinse it.

In honor of the 44th U.S. president, Quiz Guy Greg Pliska offers a word game “Glom-a Obama.” The object: Figure out a series of rhyming two-word phrases by guessing the word to be added to the name “Obama.” For example, if Mr. Obama had been born in one of Japan’s second-largest city, he would be “_____________ Obama.”

“He’s been sick three days hand-running.” Huh? In some parts of the country, “hand running” means “in succession, consecutively.” The hosts muse about the possible origins of this phrase.

One of the Olsen twins does it, some public radio hosts do it, and at least one former U.S. president does it. Grant describes the curious speech trait linguists call “creaky voice.”

A “red letter-day” is a special occasion. Martha explains how this term came to be.

A listener says she and her husband called their unborn child “wohube.” What other noms de fetus are there?

In this week’s installment of Slang This!, a member of the National Puzzlers League tries to separate the real slang terms from the fake ones. Try this one: Which of the following expressions really is a British synonym for the willies, the heebie jeebies or a similar kind of “nervous freakout”? Would that be the belching withers or the screaming abdabs? And which of the following terms is Australian slang for “people from the United States”? Is it septics or songbirds? (The Aussies are all rolling their eyes at this obvious answer.)

If you’re having a conversation with someone, are you speaking with them, speaking to them, talking to them, or talking with them? A caller wonders what differences, if any, exist among all those expressions.

You might have heard Brits say “I’m going to spend a penny” when they have to visit the loo. The hosts discuss the reason for this phrase, and other euphemisms for making a trip to the toilet, such as “I’m going to visit Miss White” and “I’m going to go drop off some friends at the lake.”

A caller observes that after moving to Indianapolis, he noticed that many of the locals say the names of commercial enterprises as if they’re plural or possessive, even when they’re not, such as calling Walmart “Walmart’s.” Grant explains the inclination to add the S sound to the names of businesses in casual speech and writing.

Download audio file (090624-AWWW-a-snarl-of-serial-commas.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (4.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Download audio file (090618-AWWW-thats-what-friend-is-for.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (2.1 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Here’s the Snickers commercial that includes the phrase.

This episode first aired February 14, 2009. Listen here:

Download audio file (090216-AWWW-l-u-r-v-e-love.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Martha and Grant share a couple of favorite online sources for reading about language: Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words newsletter and Arnold Zwicky’s blog. Be sure to check out Zwicky’s post, “Dialect dangerous to cats” for a look at The Lion Cut.

If you’re a Texan, you may be familiar with the phrases raise the window down and help your plate. If not, you’ll find translations here.

What’s lurve got to do with it? A caller is puzzled by a greeting card with the phrase crazy cosmic lurve god. Linguistics fans will fan themselves as Grant explains the roots of this expression with linguistic terms like the intrusive R and epenthesis.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a puzzle called Weight Loss Program. The object is to guess a pair of words from his clues. Remove a unit of weight from the first word in the pair, and you’ll get the second word. Example: “A Palm Beach County resort town whose name is Spanish for “mouth of the rat,” and “A timely benefit or blessing.” The answer weighs in at 2,000 pounds.

If the subjunctive mood were to disappear from English, would our language be the poorer for it? The hosts have strongly different opinions about it.

Ever notice when people start to answer to a question with the words, “Yeah, no…”? Linguists have been studying this seemingly contradictory phrase for years. It may look like oxymoron, but it’s not.

Ennead, anyone? If you need a word for “a group of nine things,” that one will do the trick.

In this week’s installment of Slang This!, a member of the National Puzzlers League tries to separate the real slang terms from the fake ones. Try this one: If you have chutzpah, might you also be said to have the stitches to get things done, or have the brass to get things done? Here’s another: Which of the following is a slang term for “daybreak”? Rancid butter’s melt? Or sparrow’s fart?

The cleverly named “Buy n Large” corporation in the movie Wall-E has a caller wondering why we say use the phrase by and large to mean “generally speaking.” It has its origins on the high seas.

Does the word swarthy mean “hairy”? A man has a running dispute with his wife the English teacher, who insists it does. Is she right?

Cleave, dust, and screen are all words that can mean the opposite of themselves. You can cleave to a belief, meaning to “adhere closely,” but you can also separate things by cleaving them. Words that mean the opposite of themselves go by many different names, including contranyms, contronyms, auto-antonyms, and Janus words. Lists here, here, and here.

Martha talks about enantiodromia, which is “the process by which something becomes its opposite,” particularly when an individual or community adopts beliefs antithetical to beliefs they held earlier.

Download audio file (090617-AWWW-great-googly-moogly-minicast.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (3.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Here’s the Snickers commercial that includes the phrase.

This episode first aired February 7, 2009. Listen here:

Download audio file (090613-AWWW-once-upon-a-time.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

How did serialized melodramas come to be called soap operas? The answer has to do with the suds-selling sponsors of old-time radio shows.

When a theater company gives out free tickets to a performance, it’s called papering the house. But what kind of “paper” are we talking about, anyway?

Our show’s pun-loving Quiz Guy, Greg Pliska, whips up a word game called “Country Kitschin‘.” The challenge is to fill in the blank in a sentence with the name of a country so that the spoken sentence makes sense. Try this one: “We’ll take our time today, because you’d hate to _____________ quiz as good as this one.”

“Don’t tump over the canoe!” The verb to tump is familiar to folks in many parts of the United States. Use it elsewhere, though, and you might get some quizzical looks. What does it mean and who uses it? The hosts tump over their reference works and answers spill out.

Why do some people add a final “th” sound to the word “height”? Heighth? At one time, that pronunciation was perfectly proper.

If you work in the software industry, you may already know the term dogfooding, which means “to use one’s own product.” Grant explains how dogfood became a verb.

In this week’s installment of “Slang This!,” a member of the National Puzzlers League tries to separate the real slang terms from the impostors from a list that includes: backne, button cotton, snake check, and filter filter.

A caller suspects that the word butterfly derives from a reversal of the expression “flutter by.” But is it? Her question leads to a discussion of butterfly behavior and a handy five-letter word that means “caterpillar poop.”

That groove between your nose and upper lip? It’s your philtrum, from the Greek word for “love potion.” Martha explains.

Which is correct: “I’m reticent to do that” or “I’m reluctant to do that?”

Listen here:

Download audio file (090608-AWWW-Bogarting-Bangers.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (1.7 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Writing in the Guardian, Stuart Jeffries contends that our email boxes are being infested with exclamation marks, known as bangs or bangers (without mash) to some people. Jacob Rubin also wrote on the subject a couple of years ago in Slate.

If you tell a buddy, “Don’t bogart that joint,” you’re telling him not to hog the marijuana cigarette. Ahem. We know phrase was popularized in the film Easy Rider (performed by The Fraternity of Man) but does it have anything to do with Humphrey Bogart?

You know that odd feeling when you’ve listened to a radio personality for years, but when you finally meet them, they look nothing like you’d imagined? Is there a word for that weird disconnect? Radiofreude, maybe?

Martha shares what F. Scott Fitzgerald and Elmore Leonard had to say about exclamation marks. Short version: Neither is a fan.

Quiz Guys John Chaneski and Greg Pliska lead a couple of rounds of Chain Reaction, a word game that’s great for parties and long car rides. Two players try to make a third one guess the word that the other two are thinking of. The trick is that they have to give alternating one-word clues to build a sentence. Hilarity ensues. Hillary sues.

Why do some people refer to a couch or a sofa as a davenport?

How should you pronounce the word gala?

Grant reports some etymological news: A recent article in the journal American Speech suggests a new source for the term that means “drunk,” blotto.

If you’re in New Zealand and are told to “rattle your dags,” you’d better get a move on. Literally, though, the expression has to do with sheep butts.

Martha reviews the new book, Dreaming in Hindi, by Katherine Russell Rich, a memoir about setting out to learn a second language in mid-life. Rich spent a year in India to learn Hindi, and became so fascinated with the process that she went on to interview experts about the mechanics of second-language acquisition and how it affects the brain. Publisher’s Weekly has an interview with Rich.

Grant discusses an article about what happens to the mother tongue voice when first-language speakers of indigenous languages in India learn English and then spend years focused on speaking and writing in their adopted tongue.

How did the word pigeonhole come to mean “classify” or “categorize”?

An employee who gets a great termination package is said to leave the company with a golden parachute. Where’d that term come from?

A caller is adamant honorifics should be used to address the President of the United States, as in “President Obama,” never “Mr. Obama.” He thinks it’s disrespectful and divisive when news organizations use “Mr.”

…

A Way with Words is sponsored by Mozy:

Mozy online backup protects your valuable computer files from data loss as a result of virus, theft, and other forms of disaster.

Listen here:

Download audio file (090603-AWWW-falling-off-the-wagon.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (1.7 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

This episode first aired January 24, 2009.

Listen here:

Download audio file (090601-AWWW-days-of-wine-flights-and-mullets.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program or sign up to receive the weekly newsletter.

President Barack Obama hopes to boost the economy by pouring federal dollars into efforts to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, much like the old Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. But how about reviving that other jobs program from the New Deal era: the Federal Writers Project. Martha and Grant discuss the pros and cons of subsidizing writers with taxpayer money.

A caller from Juneau, Alaska, says she was tickled when her friend from the South told her he loves “vye-EEN-ers.” It took a while before she realized he was saying Viennas, as in that finger food so often found a can, the Vienna sausage. So, just how common is the pronunciation “vye-EEN-er”?

It’s been called the ape drape, the Kentucky waterfall, the Tennessee top hat, hockey hair, and the 90-10. We’re talking about that haircut called the mullet, otherwise known as “business in the front, and party in the back.” But why mullet?

The word borborygmic means “pertaining to rumblings in one’s tummy or intestines.” Martha explains that it comes from the Greek word borborygmus (”bor-buh-RIG-muss”), a fine example of onomatopoeia if ever there was one.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a word game in which the object is to guess the color-related terms suggested by his clues. Try this one: What color-coded term is suggested by the phrase “information gained without serious effort”?

What do you call the strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk? Depending on where you live, you may call it a tree lawn, a berm, a city strip, the parking, or one of a host of other regional terms for it. In a small part of the country, this narrow piece of land called a devil strip. In fact, this expression figures in a great story about forensic linguistics: When a linguist analyzed a ransom note and saw the term devil strip, he realized this was a telltale clue—one that would lead authorities right to the kidnapper.

Does the English expression falling in love derive from the biblical story of Rebekah and Isaac? A caller thinks so. The hosts don’t think so.

You may have used the expression, Nobody here but us chickens! Would you still use it if you knew its origins lie in a racist joke from the turn of the 20th century?

In an earlier episode, the hosts heard from a woman who, as a teenager, was scolded by her grandmother for wearing a skirt that Granny said was almost up to possible. The woman wondered about that phrase’s meaning and origin. Grant shares listener email about this question, plus information he’s found linking the term to James Joyce’s Ulysses.

This week’s “Slang This!” contestant from the National Puzzlers’ League
tries to pick out the real slang terms from a puzzle that includes the expressions board butter, cap room, mad pancakes, and mad gangster.

Is the proper expression in regards to or in regard to? In regard to this question, the hosts say, the answer is clear and unambiguous.

A sampling of several kinds of wine is called a flight. But why?

And while we’re on the subject of sampling lots of different savory things, what’s the difference between a smorgasbord and a buffet? Or is there one?

…

A Way with Words is sponsored by Mozy:

Mozy online backup protects your valuable computer files from data loss as a result of virus, theft, and other forms of disaster.

Listen here:

Download audio file (090525-AWWW-poets-laureate-and-poetry-brothels.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Martha reads Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, “Glad,” which can be found here along with several others.

You look like the wreck of the Hesperus! It means you look “disheveled, ragged, dirty, hung over, or otherwise less than your best.” It may sound like an odd phrase, but it made perfect sense to generations of schoolchildren familiar with this Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about a ship in a storm-tossed sea. Here’s an early edition of the poem, along with some splendid old-fashioned illustrations.

If a Scotsman says he takes a scunner to something, he means it gives him a feeling of loathing or revulsion. Grant and Martha discuss this term’s possible origins. For more about the word scunner, check out the Dictionary of the Scots Language.

Grant reads another poem by Carol Ann Duffy, “Valentine.”

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a quiz called “States of MIND,” in which the answers are words formed by combining the postal abbreviations of states. Try this clue: “A word that refers to your knowledge or intellectual ability. The seat of your faculty of reason.” The answer? Michigan and North Dakota, the abbreviations for which spell out the word MIND.

A recent PBS special about Appalachia has a caller wondering how to pronounce that region’s name.

Why do we say that someone is inexperienced is wet behind the ears? The hosts tackle that question, and discuss whether Barack Obama misspoke during the 2008 presidential campaign when he used a similar expression, green behind the ears.

To go on the lam means “to flee” or “attempt to elude capture.” But why lam?

In an earlier episode, Martha explained the origin of the expression to boot, meaning “in addition” or “besides.” That prompted an email from a listener wanting to know why we speak of booting a computer. Grant has the answer.

Martha shares listeners’ responses to an earlier minicast about the Italian-American expression macaroni and gravy.

Many people are irritated by using the word troops to refer to a small number of soldiers, as in “Two troops were wounded.” Is it ever correct to use the word troop to mean an individual person? The hosts explain that in the military, it’s actually quite common to use the word troop to refer to just one person.

Does the expression call a spade a spade have racist roots? Martha explains that it derives from an ancient Greek phrase, but cautions against its use nevertheless.

When you hear the F-word in a modern Hollywood movie about life in an earlier century, you may wonder if this expletive is an anachronism. Is the F-word of recent vintage, or did Hollywood actually get right this time?

“I literally exploded with rage!” Using the word literally in this way grates on many a stickler’s ear. Moreover, if it’s okay to use the word “literally” figuratively, then what do you say when you actually do mean “literally”? The hosts discuss a related article in Slate called “The Word We Love to Hate.”

…

A Way with Words is sponsored by Mozy:

Mozy online backup protects your valuable computer files from data loss as a result of virus, theft, and other forms of disaster.

Listen here:

Download audio file (090518-AWWW-words-with-k-in-them-are-funny.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Do you know this diabolical riddle? “There are three words in the English language that end in -gry. Angry and hungry are two of them. What’s the third?” The hosts explain that the answer’s not as simple as you might think.

Does the expression to boot, as in “I’ll sell you this Hummer and throw in a free tank of gas to boot,” have anything to do with booting up a computer?

In an earlier episode, the hosts discussed the phrase all over it like a duck on a junebug, which refers to doing something with great eagerness. Martha shares an email from a Wisconsin listener who’s watched plenty of ducks interact with junebugs and offers a vivid description of what that looks like.

In this week’s puzzle, Quiz Guy John Chaneski is looking for phrases in which the only vowel is the letter A. Try this clue: “This person said, ‘I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant, sometimes it is fearful, but nevertheless, it is inevitable.” Hint: The speaker’s first name is the same as one of this show’s hosts.

What do you call the wheeled contraption that you push around the grocery store? Shopping cart? Shopping carriage? Shopping wagon? Buggy? A former Kentuckian wonders if anyone besides her calls them bascarts. Check out this dialect map featuring these and other names for this device.

One definition of a shivaree is “a compliment extended to every married couple made up of beating tin pans, blowing horns, ringing cowbells, playing horse fiddles, caterwauling, and in fine, the use of every disagreeable sound to make the night hideous.” Also spelled charivari, this old-fashioned form of hazing newlyweds often involved interrupting them in the middle of the night with a raucous party. A former Hoosier calls to discuss boyhood memories of a shivaree and wonders about the source of this term.

How do you pronounce February? Is it FEB-roo-air-ee or FEB-yew-air-ee?

A husband and wife have a long-running dispute over whether the word scissors is singular or plural. Is it a scissors or a pair of scissors?

Grant recommends a couple of favorite children’s books by Kate Banks and Georg Hallensleben: Baboon and The Night Worker.

Martha explains the story behind the expression “richer than Bim Gump.” Find out more about the long-running comic strip that inspired it here.

The names Australia and Austria are awfully similar. Is it a coincidence?

The H1N1 virus has a lot of people wondering about pandemics vs. epidemics. Grant explains the difference.

Martha explains the origin of the word coin, as in “to coin a phrase.”

…

A Way with Words is sponsored by Mozy:

Mozy online backup protects your valuable computer files from data loss as a result of virus, theft, and other forms of disaster.

Listen here:

Download audio file (090513-AWWW-hip-hop-book-of-rhymes.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (2.1 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Hip-hop is high art. Yeah. That’s right. And if you don’t understand that, then you’re missing out on some of the best poetry. Literary scholar Adam Bradley examines the style and poetry of hip-hop lyrics in his new book titled Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop.

“When a rapper’s flow is fully realized,” he writes, “it forges a distinctive rhythmic identity that is governed by both poetic and musical laws.”

A hip-hop MC—the one who sings or chants—is a rhyme-maker and “flow” is what an MC has when the rhymes lie easily on top of the rhythm. Rhyme in hip-hop means more than words that sound alike; spitting rhymes is waxing poetic is writing lyrics is storytelling.

There’s a structure there, things that are permitted and forbidden in the art form. Rules about accent, pitch, intonation, force. The conventions of poetry are all there.

So, these hip-hop lyrics are complex. They are connected to each other across samples, across songs, across albums, across artists, across the decades. They could be mapped like a family tree because a good MC knows the hip-hop canon.

And there is a canon, just as there is in literature.

Bradley writes, “Hip hop is haunted by this sense of tradition. It is a music whose death was announced soon after its birth, and the continuing reports of its demise seemingly return with each passing year.”

The old school, the new school, everything that you see in the worlds of prose and in the worlds of poetry—the complex relationships between creator and consumer, between colleagues and competitors, between art and business—those exist in hip-hop.

Hip-hop may be the only place in America where poetry still rules, where it is savored and appreciated by a vast, educated audience. It’s where great poetic skill is rewarded with respect, fame, and money, more often than is the case with the precious poetry you might find in tiny pamphlets near the bookstore register.

I, for one, believe in the pleasure derived from poetically sophisticated rhymes. And I think they’re here to stay.

Adam Bradley’s Book of Rhymes is just published by Basic Civitas Books. You can find out more about him at AdamFBradley.com.

This episode first aired in a different form on January 17, 2009. Listen here:

Download audio file (090511-AWWW-souped-up-and-sizzling.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Like mushrooms in fallen leaves, new words keep popping up overnight. Consider the recent coinages frugalista, AFPAK, and fang-bang. Recently, Forbes magazine asked Grant to handicap the chances of these and other neologisms sticking around longer than old-fashioned newspapers. He and Martha discuss these words and whether they have staying power.

You’d be forgiven for wondering if eavesdropping derives from the idea of would-be spies slipping and falling from the eaves of a house. But it doesn’t.

Time for a sports question! If an NFL team has a week without having to play a game during the season, it’s called a bye week. But a caller says he’s also heard bye week refer to a week in which a team draws no opponent. Which is correct? Hint: Tie goes to the adjective.

In our recent episode, Dust Bunnies and Ghost Turds, Grant mentioned simping, a slang term for “the act of pursuing a woman online in a fawning fashion.” What’s the etymological source of simping? “Cyberpimping”? “Acting like a simpleton”? “Simpering”?

Quiz Guy and proud papa Greg Pliska stops by with a word puzzle in honor of his infant daughter. The quiz is called—what else?—”Baby Talk.”

What do you call the parents of your son’s or daughter’s spouse? They’re your child’s in-laws, but what are they in relation to you and your spouse? A caller who spent years in Latin America says Spanish has a specific term for this: consuegro. She’s frustrated by the apparent lack of such a term in English.

“Well, that was odder than Dick’s hatband!” A caller says his mother always used that term. Now he wants to know: Who was Dick? And what was so odd about his headwear?

Ever sat down to a turkey dinner where someone offered you a bite of the Pope’s nose? That’s a name sometimes applied to the bird’s fatty rump, which many consider a delicacy. Martha and Grant discuss this and other terms for the so-called “part that goes over the fence last.” Is this part of a turkey any more appetizing if you call it the parson’s nose, the uropygium, or le sot-l’y-laisse? The last of these is a French term for that part of a turkey; roughly translated, it means “only a silly person won’t eat it.”

When it comes to books, some people are pack rats; others make a point of periodically culling from the word herd. In a recent New York Times essay, Laura Miller describes her own mixed feelings about getting rid of unwanted books. A full shelf of unread books, she writes, can feel like “a kind of charm against mortality.” Martha and Grant discuss Miller’s essay, “The Well-Tended Bookshelf.”

This week’s “Slang This!” contestant from the National Puzzlers’ League tries to pick out the real slang terms from a puzzle that includes the expressions beagle-chased, green-shifted, kiln-fired, and shovel-ready.

A caller who grew up with 10 brothers and sisters recalls that whenever sibling squabbles erupted, her parents would intervene with a cheery, “Do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?” The children were expected to respond with: “Not if it’s in cans!” Such silliness, she says, would get everyone laughing, and the dispute would be defused. Grant and Martha discuss this and other handy non sequiturs.

You’ve modified that car to make it go faster and look sharper. But is your car correctly described as suped up (as in “supercharged”) or souped up?

Is there any connection between term Indian summer and the term Indian giver? A caller worries that might be the case, but the hosts assure her it’s not. By the way, that marvelous cultural history of Indian summer that Martha recommends is Beneath the Second Sun, by Adam Sweeting.

…

A Way with Words is sponsored by Mozy:

Mozy online backup protects your valuable computer files from data loss as a result of virus, theft, and other forms of disaster.

Listen here:

Download audio file (090506-AWWW-one-swell-foop-minicast.mp3)

Download the MP3 here (1.7 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Did you know that a falcon’s eyeballs are so huge that they take up most of its head—and that those two eyes are separated only by a thin membrane?

That’s just one of the fun facts I learned from a new book called Falconer on the Edge: A Man, His Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West.

The author, Rachel Dickinson, is married to a falconer. Her book is a glimpse into the world of this centuries-old blood sport.

Now, I’ll admit it: The blood part makes me queasy. but the book gave me a whole new appreciation for the vocabulary of falconry.

Take the word haggard. It describes a worn, tired, gaunt appearance.
But did you know that originally haggard applied to birds? Specifically, haggard described an adult female hawk caught in the wild, not raised in captivity.

By the 16th century, the word had came to denote anyone similarly “wild or intractable.” Later haggard was applied more generally.

In Shakespeare’s day, falconry was an aristocratic sport. You see lots of images from it in his plays. There’s jealous Othello, fretting that Desdemona may prove to be “haggard”—that is, wild and out of his control.

Or in Macbeth, the character MacDuff is aghast when he learns that his family’s been murdered in “one fell swoop.” The image of is the way a falcon swoops down from the sky, and strikes with swift ferocity. The “fell” in “one fell swoop” is an adjective. It means “inhumanly cruel.” This fell is a linguistic relative of “felon.”

Then there’s the term “pride of place.” Today it means “the highest or most important location”: as in “High-definition TVs enjoy pride of place in many living rooms.”

Originally, “pride of place” meant the airy height from which that falcon swoops. You see this phrase in Macbeth, when Shakespeare uses it to suggest that unnatural, ominous things are happening: “A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.”

Anyway, if you want a closer look at the odd and bloody subculture of falconry, check out Dickinson’s book. It’ll give you a whole new sense of birds and words.