A Way with Words

By Jingo - 23 January 2012

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:57:00 +0000

SHOW SUMMARY

If your friend says she's coming to town "Sunday week," exactly when should you expect to see her? And what do you call those typographical symbols that cartoonists use in place of profanity? Martha and Grant have the answer. Plus grass widows, the linguistic phenomenon called creaky voice, the difference between insure and ensure, the roots of the term jingoism and what it means if someone warns You don't believe fat meat is greasy. Also, is it okay to make a noun out of a verb?

FULL DETAILS

Researchers have found that stress is a leading cause of plewds--you know, those drops of sweat popping off the foreheads of nervous cartoon characters. That's one of several cartooning terms coined by Mort Walker, creator of the Beetle Bailey comic strip. Martha and Grant discuss this and other coinages from The Lexicon of Comicana.

http://www.mortwalker.com/books7.html

If someone's coming to town Sunday week, when exactly should you expect them? This Scots-Irish term means "a week after the coming day mentioned."

What are those symbols cartoonists use in place of profanity? They're called grawlixes--good to know for the next time you play "Comic Strip Trope or Pokemon?"

Is it okay to make a verb out of a noun? Yes! It's estimated that twenty percent of English verbs started as nouns. Just think of the head-to-toe mnemonic: you can head off a problem, face a situation, nose around, shoulder responsibility, elbow your way into something, stomach a problem, foot the bill, or toe the line.

http://madshakespeare.com/2010/08/sunday-funnies-verbing-weirds-language/

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/anthony-gardner/youve-been-verbed

Squeans are the little starbursts or circles surrounding a cartoon character's head to signify intoxication or dizziness.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle called Categories. The challenge is to find the common thread that unites seemingly unrelated things. For example, Mary-Kate and Ashley, Jack Sparrow's crew, and Cherubim all fall into which category? The answer: Twins, Pirates, and Angels are all baseball teams!

What's a grass widow? In the 1500s,this term applied to a woman with loose sexual morals. Over time, it came to mean a woman who's been separated from her husband, or a divorcee.

If someone's jingoistic, they're extremely patriotic, often belligerently so. The term comes from a British song written in 1870 that uses the phrase By jingo! to conjure up enthusiasm for a British naval action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnCNJD3-e7g

The curved lines that follow the moving limbs of cartoon characters? Those are called blurgits or swalloops.

The admonition You don't believe fat meat is greasy means "Just go ahead and try me" or "Don't push your luck." This idiom is found almost exclusively among African-Americans. The idea is apparently that if you don't believe fat meat is greasy, you're someone who misses the obvious.

What's the difference between the words insure and ensure? To ensure means to make certain. Insure means to protect someone or something from risk, and should be used exclusively in a financial sense.

For some time now, linguists have been studying a style of speaking known as creaky voice. In the United States, it's heard particularly heard among young, white women in urban areas. New research about this phenomenon, also known as vocal fry, has been making the rounds on the internet.

http://www.waywordradio.org/chicken-scratches-and-creaky-voice/

http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/15/get-your-creak-on-is-vocal-fry-a-female-fad/

Voila (not spelled wallah or vwala) is a good example of a borrowed word. Though French for "there it is," Americans often use it as a simple utterance, akin to presto or ta-da.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005052.html

Lock the bad guys up in the hoosegow! This slang term for a jail comes from the Spanish juzgado, meaning "tribunal." It's an etymological relative of the English words judge and judicial.

Did you know roly-polies, or pill bugs, aren't even bugs? They're isopods, meaning they have equal feet, and they're technically crustaceans.

Autocorrect mistakes abound, but have you ever made the errors yourself, such as typing the word buy when you meant by? Studies in Computer Mediated Communications have linked this phenomenon to the way we process words phonetically before typing them out.

Solrads are those lines radiating from the sun or a lightbulb in a comic strip, while dites are the diagonal lines on a smooth mirror.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Like a Boss - 16 January 2012

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:47:00 +0000

SHOW SUMMARY

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's . . . "witches' knickers"? Well, what do YOU call those stray plastic bags littering the landscape? Also, what it means to do something "like a boss," how to hyphenate correctly, and why we say we have a "crush" on someone. What do you call when you meet someone for the first time, and they ask if you know so-and-so, just because you share an area code? Also, similes from the 1800s, a rule on hyphens, and the truth about what happens when you turn a bull loose in a china shop.

FULL DETAILS

What do you call those plastic shopping bags that litter the street? Some know them as witches' britches or witches' knickers. Others prefer urban tumbleweeds. In American Beauty, Ricky Fitts famously called one the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Either way, despite the effort to introduce reusable bags, the plastic variety continues to build up. Lori Robinson of Santa Barbara has even gone so far as to collect them from Tanzanian villages and distribute the more sustainable variety.

http://animprobablelife.com/2011/11/26/lori-robinson-bag-project-africa/

http://africainside.org/favorite-charities/one-wordplastics/

A clumsy person may be known as a bull in a china shop or a bull in a china closet. The former came into use first, in the early 1800s, but a bull in china closet is all the more evocative. Plus, according to the MythBusters, a bull in a china shop is surprisingly nimble.

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/animals/bull-china-shop-cause-dish-carnage.html

When did the expression to have a crush on someone come into use? The television series Downton Abbey has dropped this and other fun bits of language, but no need to worry about its historical accuracy- crush has been around since the early 1880s. To mash on someone or crash on someone are idioms in the same vein, and may derive from the idea of an emotional collision between two prospective flames.

As they say in Wasika, Minnesota, "If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture."

Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a new game entitled The Secrets of Nym. In AA, d.e.n.i.a.l. is said to stand for don't even notice I am lying, which is a backronym. An acoustic guitar could be considered a retronym. And an editor named Daily is an example of an aptronym.

When someone finds out where you're from, do they ask if you know so-and-so? The cynics out there may refer to this as the six degrees of stupid, but even urban dwellers can admit that the answer is yes more often than the odds would suggest. How do you respond in those cases, and is there a term for those questions?

The Spanish equivalent of our bull in a china shop analogy translates to "like an elephant in a pottery store."

Where does the meme like a boss come from? The original boss may be the rapper Slim Thug, whose 2005 track "Like A Boss", from the album Already Platinum (which never went platinum), lists the myriad tasks he performs like a boss (e.g. "When I floss/ like a boss"). In 2009, Andy Samberg of SNL and The Lonely Island made a video entitled "Like A Boss" featuring Seth Rogen, which describes further boss-like activities (e.g. "promote synergy/ like a boss").

A book of similes from the 1800s contains such gems as it's easy as peeling a hardboiled egg and it's as hard to shave as an egg.

Does evidence-based have a hyphen? Why, yes it does, because evidence-based often functions as an adjective. While style guides indicate that we're continuing to drop hyphens, evidence-based is an important one to keep intact, even when used after the verb (e.g. the research is evidence-based).

Here's another great simile: large as life and twice as natural. As in, did you really see Elvis? Yep, he was large as life and twice as natural.

It's been a puzzler tracking the origin of the saying good night, sleep tight, see you on the big drum. Perhaps it's an innocent mixup that takes from the Robert Burns poem "Tam o' Shanter", which reads, good night, sleep tight, I'll see you on the Brigadoon.

http://www.waywordradio.org/kit-caboodle/

http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/tamoshanter.htm

You'd better behave, or I'll knock you from an amazing grace to a floating opportunity! This African-American saying, used as a motherly warning, first popped up in the 1930 play Mule Bone by Langston Hughes.

Infra dig, short for the Latin phrase infra dignitatum, means beneath one's dignity, or uncouth. Abbreviated Latin phrases like infra dig have become standard after old English schoolboys used to shorten them while studying classical texts.

Here are some easy similes: easy as winking, or easy as breathing. If you prefer a tough one, try as difficult to grasp as a shadow.

We all know the idiom slow as molasses, but slow as Moses does just as well. After all, he spent 40 years trekking to the Promised Land, and even described himself as slow of speech and of tongue.

The 19th Century French writer Adolphe de Lamartine said that written language is like a mirror, which it is necessary to have in order that man know himself and be sure that he exists.

In their song "The Old Apartment," The Barenaked Ladies sang, "crooked landing/ crooked landlord/ narrow laneway filled with crooks. This is an example of a polyseme, or one word that has multiple meanings. Similar to this is the syllepsis, wherein one word is applied to other words in different senses (e.g. Alanis Morissette: "you held your breath and the door for me").

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ggJS0p-QQc

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/S/syllepsis.htm

Here's one that's sure to lull a restless child into sleep: night night chicken butt ham head yoo hoo!

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Pickles and Ice Cream (rebroadcast) - 9 January 2012

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:08:00 +0000

SUMMARY

How about some wind pudding with a dollop of air sauce? What's in a tavern sandwich? Do pregnant women really crave pickles and ice cream? Grant and Martha dig in to colorful language from the world of food. Plus, ever think of publishing a novel? Be warned: The snarky literary agent from SlushPile Hell shows no mercy when it comes to rejections. Also, piggy banks, children vs. kids, hand vs. foot dexterity, and a bi-coastal quiz. Plus, those flipped sentences known as antimetabole, such as "It's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men."

FULL DETAILS

Ever thought about getting that novel published? Apparently, others have too, and some of their queries are less than persuasive for the admittedly grumpy literary agent who writes the blog SlushPile Hell. He posts some of the more colorful queries from his inbox, along with his own pithy responses. Take this one: "Have you ever wondered what it's like to be pulled up a waterfall or to be flushed down a toilet?" To which the agent responds, "Hey! Have you been reading my mind?" Ouch.

http://bit.ly/9z3rBp

Is it wrong to refer to children as kids? One discerning mother, when asked about her kids, always replied, "I don't raise goats, but my children are fine." Grant explains that as early as the 1600s, the word kids had popped up to refer to bratty or unruly children. But by the 1800s, it was normal even among upper-class households to call their young ones kids without any negative connotations.

A vegetarian from Vermillion, South Dakota, wonders about the origin of a popular loose meat sandwich called a tavern. It's like a sloppy joe, and also goes by the monikers Maid-Rite and Tastee. Martha notes a diner in Sioux City, Iowa, called Ye Olde Tavern, that claims to have created the sandwich. Still, with food origins, plenty of people lay claim to the inventions of everything, from hamburgers to breakfast cereal.

http://bit.ly/fik8P2

http://bit.ly/jtCwOA

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a bi-coastal quiz about two-word phrases connecting the letters NY and CA. For example, the man in black is JohnNY CAsh. Keep your eyes wide open for the clues!

A Canadian listener's boyfriend has a special talent. He can remove his socks, roll them up, and throw them across the room into the laundry basket--all with his toes. She says he has toe dexterity, but wonders if the word dexterous can apply to feet as well as hands? Martha notes that great soccer players like Argentina's Lionel Messi are simply called dexterous, although nimble and agile are also appropriate adjectives.

Noctivagant people are those who wander the night, and vespertilian folks have bat-like qualities. Add these to "shirtless" as poignant ways to describe a vampire.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. This and other phrases of wisdom are known as antimetabole, from the Greek for "turning about in the opposite direction." Certain forms of these statements also go by the name chiasmus, from the Greek letter chi, meaning "X." They're often effective for making a point in a speech, like John F. Kennedy's famous "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." No matter the context, these flipped-sentence proverbs are great for making a point clear. Mardy Grothe has a whole book about chiasmus called Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You.

http://bit.ly/lJz5qp

The grumpy agent who writes the blog SlushPile Hell received a submission stating, "I have attached a copy of a letter I recently sent to Oprah about my book. She ends her show in September 2011, which leaves little time to select an agent." The agent responds, "Finally! An author who understands the importance of Oprah and has a no-fail plan for getting on her show." As if.

What's for dinner? How about wind pudding, air sauce, and a side of balloon trimmings? This colorful euphemism for "nothing" dates as far back as the American Civil War, when troops would come into the mess tent, see a wild squirrel boiling in a pot, and opt for wind pudding and air sauce instead.

The calls and e-mails keep coming in about Scotts being called Todds and Todds being called Scotts. One listener left a voicemail about a christening where the priest called the baby by its oddly common misnomer. Another listener by the name of Stefanie complains that she keeps getting called Jennifer. Perhaps it has to do with rhythm, and the patterns we develop out of sounds and syllables.

There's been a lot of talk about the place of handwriting in the digital age. Grant has some great books to recommend on the subject: Reading Early American Handwriting by Kip Sperry, and Handwriting in America: A Cultural History by Tamara Thornton. A long time ago, part of the reason for teaching longhand cursive was to have students practice transcribing documents with indoctrinating political messages. The character of handwriting, from the flourishes to the way a letter sits on the line, brought with it an array of cultural implications.

http://bit.ly/mwKGPn

http://bit.ly/lDrvCS

Why do we have piggy banks instead of any other kind of farm animal banks? In Scotland and Northern England, a kind of earthen material called pigg was used in the Middle Ages for making pots. The name stuck, and today we fill our piggs, or piggy banks, with coins.

Why do pregnant women enjoy pickles and ice cream? Or do they? Linguists from the American Dialect Society have been discussing this recently. They found that the expression pickles and ice cream once referred simply to the conjoining of two unrelated things, sort of the opposite of peas and carrots. Not until the middle of the 20th century did it pertain to cravings, simply because pregnant women go through different nutritional patterns than they would when eating for one.

Can the word training be pluralized, as in "How many trainings did you have last week"? Martha and Grant disagree about whether training can be a count noun.

A Minnesotan who relocated to Wisconsin gets called a Mud Duck, and wants to know why. Much in the way Wisconsinites get referred to as Cheese Heads, it's really a harmless bit of nomenclature from a cross-state rivalry. In hunting, the term duck has also been known to mean a mixed kind of species. Unfortunately, Mud Duck has popped up in odd corners with negative racial connotations. Still, the vast majority of people using Mud Duck mean it simply as a friendly jest.

Martha shares another barb from the SlushPile Hell agent.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Who You Calling a Jabroney? (rebroadcast) - 2 January 2012

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:40:00 +0000

SHOW SUMMARY

Yo! Who you callin' a jabronie? And what exactly is a jabronie, anyway? Also, what do vintage school buses and hack writers have in common? Grant and Martha trace the origins of famous quotes, and a listener offers a clever new way to say "not my problem." All that, plus winklehawks, motherwit, oxymorons, word mash-ups, and a quiz about palindromes.

FULL DETAILS

Is that a winklehawk in your pants? A listener shares this word for those L-shaped rips in your trousers, from an old Dutch term for "a carpenter's L-shaped tool." And Grant has a new favorite term, motherwit, meaning "the natural ability to cope with everyday life." You could say a mark of wisdom is showing some motherwit in the face of life's winklehawks.

Ever heard a school bus called a school hack? Grant and Martha explain the etymology of hack, beginning with hackney horses in England, then referring to the drivers of the horse-drawn carriages, then the carriages themselves, and finally the automobiles that replaced them. A museum in Richmond, Indiana, has a vintage yellow school hack, once used in the 19th and early 20th centuries to bring rural children to their schoolhouse. Incidentally, the contemporary term hack, meaning a tired old journalist, comes directly from the original term for the tired old horse.

http://bit.ly/mfS08T

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! A listener senses something awfully good about oxymorons, from the Greek for "pointedly foolish". Grant shares this favorite example from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, while Martha picks a modern classic: airline food. What are your favorites?

In the U.K., they don't count their seconds as one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, because, well, they have no Mississippi. Instead, they say one-elephant, two-elephant. Lynne Murphy, author of the blog Separated by a Common Language, points out this difference between English speakers on opposite sides of the pond.

http://bit.ly/pZxYG

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game called Welded Palindromes, with two-word phrases spelled the same forwards and backwards. What do you call your first appearance on TV? A tube debut. What kind of beer does a king drink? Why, a regal lager, of course.

A listener wonders about the origin of the phrase your father's mustache, akin to the phrase go jump in a lake, or your mamma wears combat boots. Grant explains that it may sound more familiar as your fadda's mustache, circa 1930s, Brooklyn. The borough's own jazz musician Woody Herman had a hit song in 1945 called Your Father's Mustache, but those in the know pronounced it "FAH-dah."

http://bit.ly/lCbNwL

A listener named Meagan from Wisconsin uses the term flustrated, combining flustered and frustrated--one of many mashed together words she deems Meaganisms. Though Grant applauds her innovation and creativity, Martha points out that flustrate actually does pop up in English texts as far back as the 18th Century. Though dictionaries with entries for flustrate note that it's usually a jocular term, a conversation could always use more Meaganisms.

Grant gives Martha a little Greek test with the word leucomelanous. Leuco, meaning "white," and melano, meaning "black," together refer to someone with a fair complexion and dark hair, like Snow White or Veronica from the Archie comics.

How do you say "not my problem"? A listener shares his go-to: Not my pig, not my farm. It means the same thing as I don't have a horse in that race, or I don't have a dog in that fight. Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, created the SEP Field, or the Somebody Else's Problem field. Though examples are boundless, there doesn't seem to be a standard or definite origin.

http://douglasadams.com/

A cowboy loves a ranch that's pecorous, meaning abundant with cattle. Just something worth knowing.

There's an old joke running around that goes as follows, "Lost: Bald, one-eyed ginger Tom, crippled in both back legs, recently castrated, answers to the name of 'Lucky.'" Nigel Rees of The Quote Unquote Newsletter has been tracking down this oft-quoted joke, and so far he's found it as far back as 1969. On another front, Fred Shapiro of the Yale Book of Quotations has made progress in tracing the origins of famous quotes, often to people other than those who made them famous. And the folks at quoteinvestigator.com are doing their share in researching the history of those quips and aphorisms that do so much to frame our essays and speeches.

http://bit.ly/dgveSD

http://bit.ly/lz1qRp

http://bit.ly/8nWlvi

A violin maker wonders about the origin of a practice in his trade known as purfling, where a black and white line is inlaid into a tiny channel along the edge of the instrument. Martha traces the word back to the Latin filum, meaning "line" or "thread." Purfling is also a practice in guitar-making, furniture-making, and embroidery, and it shares an etymological root with profile. A fun fact: purfling is also just "profiling" said with a mouth full of marshmallows.

When someone admiringly called a woman "outspoken," Dorothy Parker is said to have cynically replied, "Outspoken by whom?" Well, according to quoteinvestigator.com, the line pre-dates Parker's quip.

Why do we call our biceps guns? The slang lexicographer Jonathon Green suggests that the metaphor first pops up in baseball around the 1920s, when players referred to their throwing arms as guns. Believe it or not, the early baseball pitchers actually threw the ball intending for the batter to hit it. It wasn't until later that a strong arm, or gun, was needed to throw a pitch too fast to hit.

A listener shares a Russian saying that translates I am going there where the Tsar goes on foot, meaning "I am going to the bathroom." It's the equivalent of we all put our pants on one leg at a time, or we're all just human.

Who you calling a jabronie? And what exactly is a jabronie? Grant traces this playful insult, meaning a "rube" or "loser," to the 1920s, when Italian immigrants brought over a similar-sounding Milanese term for "ham." Jabronie is also commonly used in professional wrestling, referring to those guys set up to lose to the superstars.

A decade is ten years. A century is a hundred. But what do you call a period of five years? It's a lustrum, borrowed whole from Latin. So you might say a decade is two lustra.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

You Bet Your Sweet Bippy (Rebroadcast) - 26 December 2011

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:07:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Why do some puns strike us as clever, while others are plain old groaners? Martha and Grant puzzle over this question. Also, the difference between baggage and luggage, a royal word quiz, the "egg" in egg on, what to call someone who doesn't eat fish or seafood, Hawaiian riddles, and why we say "You bet your sweet bippy!"

FULL DETAILS

When President Barack Obama had the Oval Office redecorated in soft browns and beige, The New York Times headline read: “The Audacity of Taupe.” The hosts discuss how puns work, and what makes them clever. Martha recommends John Pollack's new book, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics.

http://www.thepunalsorises.com/

What do you call someone who doesn’t eat fish? A caller wants to know, but not because of dietary requirements. He's a string bass player who plays in an ensemble that’s tired of being asked to perform Schubert’s famous composition, the Trout Quintet.

http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics/trout.html

Martha and Grant tells him he has several options. Among them: non-pescatarian, anti-marinovore, anichthyophagist--and, of course, non-seafood eater.

What’s the difference between baggage and luggage? After all, it’s not as if anyone confesses to having emotional luggage. The hosts conclude that usually the word “luggage” specifies the container, while “baggage” is more likely to refer to that which is lugged inside the container.

Martha shares a quotation from Joseph Addison, no fan of puns: “If we must lash one another, let it be with the manly strokes of wit and satire: for I am of the old philosopher’s opinion, that, if I must suffer from one or the other, I would rather it should be from the paw of a lion than from the hoof of an ass.”

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a royal quiz in honor of the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William. He celebrates the wedding of the King and Queen with clues to answers that contain the letters "K" and "Q" next to each other. The answer to "The band that recorded 'Take Five,'" for example, is the "Dave BrubecK Quartet."

Where'd we get a word like skyscraper? Martha explains the image literally refers to scraping the sky, but first applied to the topmost sail on a ship, and later to tall horses, and high fly balls in baseball. There are similar ideas in other languages, as in the Spanish word "rascacielos" and French "gratte-ciel." In German, the word is picturesque as well. It's “Wolkenkratzer,” which literally means "cloud-scratcher."

Grant shares some fill-in-the-blank puzzles from a listener. For example, "There's one w______ on a u________" and "There are 5 d________ in a z_________ c__________."

A listener remembers her mother used to say, "Your Monday is longer than your Tuesday." This phrase offered a subtle way to notify someone that her slip was showing. Other expressions convey that warning as well, including "Monday comes before Sunday" and "Saturday is longer than Sunday." Also, if someone whispers "Mrs. White is out of jail," it's time to check to see if your slip is showing. Ditto if you're told you have "a Ph.D.," but you've never earned that degree. In this case "Ph.D" stands for "Petticoat Hanging Down."

Martha's been reading the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English again, and stumbled across a synonym for "fried chicken." It's preacher meat.

http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/

"The Die is Cast" is the title of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A listener and his wife disagree about what kind of "die" is meant here. It's not a reference to metallurgy -- it's a quotation attributed to Julius Caesar. When he crossed the Rubicon to lead a campaign against his enemies, he supposedly declared, "Alea jacta est." The word "alea," which refers to one piece of a set of dice, is an ancestor of the modern English word "aleatory," which means "by chance."

What happens when a clock gets hungry? It goes back four seconds. Martha talks about how puns weren't always considered "bad." Cicero praised them as the wittiest kind of saying, and Shakespeare made plenty of them, for both serious and comic effect. In the early 18th century, though, things changed. Pamphlets with titles like "God's Revenge Against Punning" began appearing, and the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson denounced them as "the last refuge of the witless."

Martha and Grant discuss why some puns work and others don't. Martha recommends John Pollack's observation in The Pun Also Rises describing how "for a split second, puns manage to hold open the elevator doors of language and meaning as the brain toggles furiously between competing semantic destinations, before finally deciding which is the best answer, or deciding to live with both."

Where'd we get the expression You bet your sweet bippy!? It's from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, a zany television show from the late 1960s. The word "bippy," by the way, means "butt." The phrase "You bet your sweet bippy" is a linguistic descendant of earlier versions that go back to at least the 1880s, when phrases like "You bet your sweet life" were commonly used.

http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=rowanandmar

The show also popularized such phrases as "Sock it to me!" and "Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iGvzmOoh3Y

Why is Cairo, Ill., pronounced "KAY-roh"? Why do Midwesterners pronounce Versailles as "Ver-SALES" and the New Madrid Fault as "New MAD-rid"? Grant explains that these names are far removed from their earlier incarnations and function as a sort of shibboleth among the locals.

Martha springs another pun on Grant: Knock-knock. Who's there? Tarzan. Tarzan who? “Tarzan Stripes Forever.”

Why do we speak of trying to egg on a person, meaning to urge them to do something? Martha explains that the "egg" in this case has nothing to do with chickens. This kind of "egg" is derives from an old root that means to "urge on with a sharp object." It's a linguistic relative of the word "edge."

Grant wraps up with some Hawaiian riddles from the book Riddling Tales From Around the World, by Marjorie Dundas, including this one:

My twin was with me from the day I crawled
With me till the day I die
i cannot escape him
yet when storms come, he deserts me

http://books.google.com/books?id=qnWz6zrE8RUC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=%22My+twin+with+me+from+the+day+I+crawled%22&source=bl&ots=dTLR_OAxIm&sig=vvHKYEeCGLgl2SqLqqqpcOn8d_A&hl=en&ei=drrZTcbZEoeusAP9wtWFDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22My%20twin%20with%20me%20from%20the%20day%20I%20crawled%22&f=false

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Bah Humblebrag - 19 December 2011

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:17:00 +0000

SHOW SUMMARY

What's YOUR choice for the Word of the Year for 2011? What word or phrase best sums up the ideas, events, and themes that speakers of English have been talking about? Grant shares some of his picks. And speaking of picks, why do football commentators seem to love the term pick-six? Also, great quotations from writers, the meaning of such Britishisms as cheeky and naff, the intentionally misspelled and mispronounced word defulgaty and a discussion of whether the term ladies is offensive. And does the insect called an earwig really crawl into people's ears at night?

FULL DETAILS

Writers always seem to come up with brilliant quotes about writing, and why shouldn't they? Douglas Adams has noted, "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." And Gloria Steinem once quipped: "I do not like to write. I like to have written."

What's the difference between hand grenades and pomegranates? Not much when you think about their shape and the fact that they're both packed tightly with small things, which is why both share a linguistic root with the word granular.

http://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/2009/07/13/pomegranates-and-hand-grenades/

Grant offers examples from his latest Words of the Year list, including Crankshaft (the code name for the Osama Bin Laden), and basketbrawl, referring to the fight that broke out between the Georgetown Hoyas and the Chinese National Team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ClAM3zXx-I

Football, like most sports, brings its own set of idioms and jargon that ride the line between cleverness and cliche. The adjective multiple describes a player, an offense or defense, or even a whole team that has multiple threats or talents. And a pick six, one of the more exciting plays in football, is when a player makes an interception and scores a touchdown. For a more erudite take on the language of sports, David Foster Wallace's "Roger Federer as Religious Experience" never fails.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/10/writing-the-beautiful-game.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?pagewanted=all

Writers will appreciate this quotation from Burton Roscoe: "What no wife of a writer can understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of a window."

Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski offers a quiz called Take-Offs. For each clue, remove the first letter of a word to get the second (or third) word in the puzzle. For example, in the first chapter of Moby Dick, Ishmael had to screw up his courage and join the crew. Or, I've been in the barber chair for an hour, my hair looks great, but it's time to come up for air. Be sure to check out John's new NPR show, Ask Me Another.

http://twitter.com/#!/NPRAskMeAnother
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NPRs-Ask-Me-Another/263283727044159

What is an earwig? Those skinny brown insects with pinchers coming out their backsides have a reputation in folklore for crawling through people's ears and laying eggs in their skull. But really, earwigs are just simple insects that take their name from the Old English term wicga, meaning "insect." The males do have one interesting anatomical feature, though.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17223183.200-lucky-earwigs-are-doubly-endowed.html

A professional auctioneer shares some techniques for creating his mesmerizing, melodious patter. He explains that auctioneers are known as colonels, because colonels in the civil war were assigned with auctioning off captured property. And he warns to beware of so-called chandelier bidding. His final tip: Remember, at an auction, it's cheaper to kiss somebody than to wave at them!

The 2011 Words of the Year list wouldn't be complete without occupy, as in the Occupy protests that sprang up in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park and elsewhere. And Zuccotti Lung? It's an illness that made its rounds among the camped-out protesters.

Have you ever been faced with a defugalty? This ironic misspelling and mispronunciation of difficulty popped up in a Dashiell Hammett novel, The Glass Key, in 1931. It's often said with a tongue in the cheek, but, as in the case of the Hammett novel, it refers to the mispronunciations of the uncouth or uneducated.

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000630.php

Is the term ladies an offensive way to refer to a group of women? As a recent discussion on Ask Metafilter revealed, many interpret it as outdated, condescending, or patronizing. The hosts conclude it all depends on context.

http://ask.metafilter.com/200453/Why-are-some-women-offended-by-the-term-ladies

What does cheeky mean? How about the words twee and naff? A British ex-pat says she finds it hard to convey the nuances of these adjectives to her American friends.

What's Lady Macbeth talking about when she urges Macbeth to "screw your courage to the sticking point"? This image of mustering up bravery most likely has to do with tightening the strings of a crossbow.

If your iPhone's Siri thinks that two meetings in one day is not bad, does that make her an optimist? And by the way, since when did cellphones start making value judgments?

Nobody likes a humblebrag. That's when someone complains about, say, having to choose among their dozen college acceptance letters. Harris Wittles, a writer on television's Parks and Recreation, runs the Twitter handle @Humblebrag, where he retweets those ironic complaints akin to Arianna Huffington's tweet: "About to take off from Milan to Istanbul and none of my three blackberries are working."

https://twitter.com/#!/Humblebrag

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Special Request! -- Help Support A Way with Words

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:06:00 +0000

Give Now for the $25,000 Fundraising Challenge

Dear friends and listeners,

As we near the end of our biggest year yet, we must raise $25,000 to cover the remainder of this season. We need your help to reach that amount before December 30th.

Reaching that goal will mean covering fixed costs: Broadcast studio rental. A sound engineer and board operator. Website hosting. Podcast hosting. The toll-free phone line. Episode distribution through the Public Radio Satellite System — an expense that will increase 50% in 2012.

What you may not know is that when you donate to your local station — as you should — none of that money goes to A Way with Words. We’re independent of any radio station and independent of NPR. We receive no funds from them at all.

This means, in part, that A Way with Words can carry out its educational mission without excessive bureaucracy and overhead costs. It also means we can make it available to everyone, completely free of charge.

But it also means that to do well, we require support from our listeners. We need your donations, whether you listen online or on the air.

Show us that we can count on you. Make a tax-deductible donation of $100 or more today. If that’s too much, please donate what you can.

If you’ve given to A Way with Words before, thank you! But can we ask you to double your donation this time? Will you go the extra mile to support quality radio that respects your intelligence?

You can also send your donations by postal mail to this address:

Wayword, Inc.
P.O. Box 632721
San Diego, CA 92163

Thank you for the affection and support you’ve shown in your phone calls in emails over the past year. We wish you and your family all the love in the world.

Best wishes, and happy holidays,

Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette
co-hosts of A Way with Words

PS: A Way with Words is now heard on the air in more than 173 cities across North America and we’re happy to report that the program will also be heard on Vermont Public Radio starting in January!

Wayword, Inc., is a small non-profit 501(c)3 corporation. It receives no funding from NPR, PRI, PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or any public radio station or broadcast network. Support amazing radio today!

All donations to Wayword, Inc., the nonprofit that produces A Way with Words, are tax-deductible. Our Federal tax ID number is #27-0277377.

A Murmuration of Starlings - 12 December 2011

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:23:00 +0000

SHOW SUMMARY

If you've ever eaten Flavor-Crisp Chicken, it was probably served with JoJo potatoes. And speaking of fried chicken, ever wonder why colonel isn't pronounced "KOH-loh-nell"? Grant and Martha have the answers to those nagging little questions, like the difference between a turnpike and a highway, and the rules on me versus I. Who's behind those eponyms in anatomy, and why are doctors phasing them out? Plus, a newsy limerick challenge, dog breed mashups, pallets, a little Spanglish, and a list of -ologies to fill a whole course catalog!

FULL DETAILS

What's your favorite -ology? Perhaps alethiology, the study of truth, from the Greek alethia? Theologians might concern themselves with naology, the study of holy buildings.

http://phrontistery.info/sciences.html

What are JoJo potatoes? Starting in the 1960s, fried potato wedges came to be known as JoJos, especially in the Northern states. JoJos were often served in restaurants that also made Flavor-Crisp Chicken, which requires a special type of deep fat fryer. JoJos are simply unpeeled potato wedges thrown in the fryer, but the name may derive from the idea of "junk," because the potato scraps were considered worthless until restaurateurs realized they could be marketed and sold.

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/jo_jo_potatoes_jojo_potatoes/

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=563558

We'll keep this short: Perissology is the superfluity of words.

Why is colonel pronounced like "kernel"? The original form comes from Italy, where a colonello was in charge of a column of soldiers. As it moved from Italian to French, it took on an r sound, but the English translators reverted to the more etymologically correct Italian spelling. That's why it looks one way but sounds another.

What do you get when you mix a Shelty and a Cocker? A Shocker! Or how about a Dachshund and a Border Collie? That'd make it a Dashboard. We don't want to know what you'd call a cross between a Pit Bull and Shih Tzu.

Hope you've been checking the headlines, because our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a new set of current event limericks. What's been "occupied?" How long did the Kardashian marriage last? And who made ambiguous the definition of the word "winning"?

A thick blanket or stack of blankets is also called a pallet. The Dictionary of American Regional English says this term is most common in the South Midlands--such states as Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. In the New American Standard Translation of the Bible (John 5:8) Jesus says to a man who's been incapacitated for nearly 40 years, "pick up your pallet and walk." The term actually comes from French, where a pallet was a thick, woven mat of hay to lie on.

The usage of the word me vs. I will always be a point of debate. Grant and Martha contend that language works in the service of culture, and thus, there will always be informal settings where the words me and I are slung around interchangeably. Then again, there will also be classrooms, job interviews and the like, where my colleague and I completed the project is the better choice than me and my colleague completed the project.

Aesthetes might go for kalology, or "the study of beauty."

What's the difference between a turnpike and a highway? In the 1700s, privately funded roads were constructed in the Northeast to connect commercial centers, but tolls were charged in order to pay for the wood planks that covered the road; this was well before gravel or pavement came about. A turnpike itself is the bar on a turnstile, much like you'd see in a subway station or an amusement park; one pays the toll, then moves through the turnpike. On the other hand, freeways were the dirt roads that didn't require a toll.

Anatomy is full of eponyms--that is, names inspired by the name of a person. In this case, there are the fallopian tubes, the Achilles heel, and the eustachian tubes. But there's a movement in anatomy to replace eponyms with more scientific, descriptive names. Thus, fallopian tubes are now uterine tubes, and eustachian tubes are auditory tubes.

The Spanglish term frajo, meaning "cigarette," evolved over a couple of generations of Mexican-American language. Primarily thanks to Pachucos, sometimes known as Zoot Suiters, the term developed from the verb fajar, meaning "to wrap up or roll."

A flock of starlings is called a murmuration, and a beautiful video of a murmuration of starlings flying about has been described by Martha as "nature's ornithological lava lamp."

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/starling-flock/

If you're looking for a clever way to straddle the glass-half-empty line, try using litotes, or understated slights turned positive. For example, the guy you met for a blind date was really not unattractive.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term/Litotes

If you're into fungus among us, you might enjoy uredinology, the study of rust molds.

Why do we refer to people of questionable sanity as nuts, nutty, or nut-cases? In the early 1600s, a nut was considered something "pleasing" or "delightful." Its meaning then transferred to someone who liked something pleasing, and then someone obsessed with that thing to the point of eccentricity or weirdness.

Zymology? That's the study of joining or fastening.

Support for "A Way with Words" comes from the Fifth Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 10 Years in the Making with 10,000 New Words and Senses.

http://ahdictionary.com.

Support for "A Way with Words" also comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today.

http://www.nu.edu/

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Not the Thongs You're Thinking Of - 5 December 2011

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:19:00 +0000

SHOW SUMMARY

Is it cool for parents to use their children's slang? What's wrong with the term "illegal alien"? Grant and Martha discuss possible alternatives. The catchphrase Who's Yehudi refers to the mysterious character who holds up strapless dresses, turns the light on in the fridge, and does lots of other things we can't see. But why Yehudi? Also, terms from the dictionary of anatomy, an idiom puzzle, putzing around, out of pocket, long in the tooth, and the ancient roots of the folksy expression even a blind pig can find an acorn. And what do you call the slobber marks a dog leaves on the windshield?

FULL DETAILS

Does your vocabulary mark you as old or outdated? Certain words really indicate generational gaps, like chronological shibboleths. For example, are thongs "sandals" or "panties"? And what do women carry around--a pocketbook, a purse, or a bag? Your answer likely depends on when you were born.

At what point is it inappropriate for parents to use the slang of their offspring? Can you call your son dude, or give your kids a beatdown in Scrabble? Living with children makes for a slang-filled home, so it becomes part of your regular speech. So long as your children aren't mortified, the hosts say, go for it.

Who is Yehudi, and what exactly does he do? In the 1930s on Bob Hope's radio show, there was a musical guest named Yehudi Menuhin. His name proved so catchy, along with sidekick Jerry Colonna's joking phrase, "Who's Yehudi?" that it entered the common vernacular, coming to refer to anyone, or anything, mysterious. Yehudi is, for example, the little man that turns on the light inside the refrigerator. He holds up strapless dresses. The Navy even had a secret project named Project Yehudi.

Charles Hodgson's Carnal Knowledge: A Naval Gazer's Dictionary of Anatomy is chock-full of great terms. It's best to keep the lipstick within the vermillion border, or that line where the lips meet the skin. And be careful when applying around the wick, or the corner of the mouth.

http://www.amazon.com/Carnal-Knowledge-Dictionary-Anatomy-Etymology/dp/B004E3XEJ8

Our Quizmaster John Chaneski has a puzzle based on clues with everything but the but. For example, when likening someone to a house, we say the lights are on, but nobody's home. Or regarding a noisy political contest, it's all over but the shouting.

If someone's being a bit lazy, or just moseying aimlessly, we say they're putzing around. But the word put derives from the Yiddish for "penis." Plenty of Yiddish words have made their way into the common vernacular, especially in the Northeast. But before you open your mouth, it's important to be mindful of context and whom you're speaking to.

A physician wants to know: Is it politically correct to use the phrase illegal alien? The Society of Professional Journalists have decided, collectively, to use illegal immigrant. But even words like illegal or undocumented can often be inaccurate. If, for example, doctors are talking about a patient, they want to recognize the patient as an individual person, not a statistic.

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/society-of-professional-journalists-votes-to-end-use-of-term-illegal-alien_b40464

Speaking of those generational divides, did you know that Post-It notes haven't always been around? Martha shares a listener's funny email about that.

If you're having a tough time finding something, remember that even a blind pig can find an acorn once in a while. This encouraging idiom actually comes from Ancient Rome, where the concept of a blind animal turning something up lent itself to the Latin saying that a blind dove sometimes finds a pea. An 18th-century Friedrich Schiller play employed the blind-pig-and-acorn version, and the play's translation into English and French brought it into modern speech.

What event in life introduced you to a whole new vocabulary? Going away to college, having a child, renovating a home, or even getting diagnosed with a medical condition often exposes us to huge bundles of new words. If you're renovating a house for example, suddenly a whole slew of new words muscles its way into your vocabulary, such as backsplash, shoe moulding, quarter-sawn oak, sconce, grout, and bullnose.

What does out of pocket mean? The answer actually splits down racial lines. Among many African-Americans, if someone's out of pocket, they're out of line or unruly. For most Caucasian speakers, out of pocket is primarily used in business settings, meaning that someone is either unavailable or out of the office, or they're paying for something with personal money, rather than charging it to a company.

What do you call those slobber marks that dogs leave on the inside of car windows? Some of our favorites are woofmarks, dog schmear, and snot kisses.

Is your name a conversation piece? A listener by the name of H. Christian Blood shares his story growing up with a colorful name. And for those of you with a comment to make, Christian Blood would remind you that he's heard plenty of it over the years, so unless it's really something sharp and original, it's best not to waste your breath. And yes, his name is for real.

http://www.scu.edu/cas/classics/faculty/blood.cfm?p=4834

What crawled over your liver? This Pennsylvania Dutch idiom means "What's the matter with you?"

If someone's getting long in the tooth, it means they're getting old, or too old for their behavior. The metaphor of long teeth comes from horses. If you look at a horse's teeth and the extent to which their gums have receded, you can tell pretty accurately how old they are. It's the same source as that old advice Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, which means "if someone gives you a gift, don't inspect it too closely."

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Cathead Biscuits (Rebroadcast) - 28 November 2011

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:26:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Ever eaten golden catheads for breakfast? Yum! A listener shares this Southern term for big, fluffy biscuits. Also, how did people greet each other before "hello" became a standard greeting of choice? What does it mean if someone's fair to middling? How do you pronounce the word bury? Is the phrase whether or not redundant? Should we use try to or try and? And if Sam and them are coming, who exactly is "them"? Plus, Grant and Martha share some classic riddles, and Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game of animal name mash-ups.

FULL DETAILS

What happens when you throw a yellow rock into a purple stream? It splashes. (Ba-dump-bum.) Grant and Martha share this and other favorite riddles, some with deceptively obvious answers.

Why do we pronounce bury like berry and not jury? The word originates in the Old English term byrgan, and the pronunciation apparently evolved differently in different parts of England. Grant explains why many terms go mispronounced if we read things without hearing them out loud.

What do you say when you answer the telephone? On the NPR science blog, "Krulwich Wonders," Robert Krulwich notes that hello did not become a standard greeting until the mid-19th Century, when the Edison Company recommended the word as a proper phone greeting. Before that, English speakers used a variety of phrases depending on the circumstance, from hail to how are you? One thing's certain: If we'd followed Alexander Graham Bell's recommendation, we'd all be greeting each other with "Ahoy!"

http://n.pr/gscLCA

A riddle, a riddle, I suppose, a thousand eyes and never a nose. Nothing shakes up the dinner table conversation like a good potato riddle!

Greg Pliska, musical director for the Broadway show War Horse and our very own Quiz Guy, has a puzzle about Animal Hybrid Phrases combining two common expressions involving animals. For example, what do you get when stuffed animal stocks go down? A Teddy Bear Market.

Here's a link to Greg's musical bio on the Lincoln Center website:

http://bit.ly/gt9h84

Ever had golden catheads for breakfast? A native of Tennessee wonders about the origin of this term meaning "biscuit"--specifically, ones that are light, fluffy, and about the size of, well, a cat's head. Martha explains how the names of many foods derive from their resemblance to other things--a head of cabbage, for example.

A listener has spent the last 30 years looking for the origin of the playful phrase "you're the berries." This affectionate expression first appears in literature in the 1908 book Sorrows of a Showgirl, then made its way into popular slang by the 1920s. However, it seems to disappear during the next decade, and it remains only as a relic heard in the vernacular of those who lived during the era.

http://bit.ly/gyF9TV

Should we use try and or try to? Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says it's grammatically permissible to try and go to the store, or to ask someone to try and speak up. However, a fan of formality ought to stick with try to. Still, Grant warns against trying to force logic on the English language by creating rules that don't exist.

http://bit.ly/cQrxPx

http://bit.ly/eydxnN

Whoever makes it tells it not. Whoever takes it knows it not. Whoever knows it wants it not. What is it? Martha shares this old riddle.

The question of how children acquire language has long intrigued parents and scholars. MIT cognitive scientist Deb Roy recently found a novel way to study what he calls "word birth." He wired his home with cameras and microphones, and recorded his infant son's every utterance as he grew into toddlerhood. He then combined the 90,000 hours of video and 140,000 hours of audio into some astonishing montages. Dr. Roy shared his findings at a TED conference.

http://bit.ly/eaKVBS

More visuals and audio from the study in this article from Fast Company:

http://bit.ly/hOOf3Z

If you're fair to middling, you're doing just fine. A native of the Tennessee mountains wonders about the origin of this phrase her good-humored grandfather used. As it turns out, fair to middling was one of the many gradations a farmer would hear in the 19th Century when they'd bring in their crop--usually cotton-- to be priced and purchased.

Is the phrase whether or not redundant? Well, take this sentence: "Whether or not you like it, Martha is dressing as a ballerina." Would that sound right without the or not? Now, the or not is technically redundant, but depending on the case, it's best to pick the wording that won’t distract the reader or listener.

http://bit.ly/91hA3J

Only the grass dies when elephants fight. This Liberian proverb is a reminder that it's the powerless who suffer when governments or factions fight.

If Sam and them are going to be here after while, can the "and them" mean just one additional person? In some parts of the country, it could be Sam's wife, or Sam's entire softball team. A listener from Texas shares this charming colloquialism.

What goes 99, clump? If you woke up at night and scratched your head, what time would it be? Grant has the answers to those riddles.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Heads Up! It's a Meteor! (rebroadcast) - 21 November 2011

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:24:00 +0000

SUMMARY

"Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit!" Martha and Grant talk about great catch phrases from old-time radio comedies. Also, why do we speak of a meteoric rise? Don't meteors plummet? What do you keep in a Fibber McGee drawer? Plus, myriad vs. myriad of, enamored of vs. enamored with, autocorrected text messages. And Martha shares a trick for eliminating those annoying verbal fillers like "um" and you know" from one's speech.

FULL DETAILS

They say it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an autocorrected text message to be, well, correct. Listeners like Arnold share their funny Autocorrected text messages. And by Arnold, we of course mean Brooke.

http://n.pr/fz6qI4

Well, shut my mouth and call me Shirley! Butter my buns and call me a biscuit! A listener shares several of these humorous imperatives. Grant explains that the roots of these phrases probably go back to the 1940s. Phil Harris, the bandleader on Jack Benny's radio comedy, was known for using such colorful catchphrases. An early version was Cut off my legs and call me Shorty!

http://bit.ly/exqCLY

Martha shares a childhood misunderstanding sent in by a listener. Seems her three-year-old daughter confused the phrase "exposed to the elements" with "exposed to the elephants."

What do you call an expert speller? A "Words With Friends" enthusiast wants to know. Martha tells her that a great speller is called an orthographer or orthographist, from the Latin roots ortho- meaning "straight" or "correct", and -graph meaning "to write". A bad speller, on the other hand, is a cacographer, or as it's known among them, a kakagrifar.

What is the term for that big inflatable play area you see at the park, or in your neighbor's yard? Is it a bouncy house? A jump? Grant asks listeners what they call this modern pumped-up playpen.

Our multi-talented Quiz Guy Greg Pliska, served as musical composer for the television documentary Flying Monsters 3-D.

http://www.flyingmonsters3dmovie.com/

That experience inspired him to create a puzzle using phrases that have the same letter appearing three times in a row. For example, where will you find trumpets and trombones? In the braSS Section.

What do you keep in your Fibber McGee drawer? That's what some people call a catchall container for household items. Grant traces the term for the drawer back to the old Fibber McGee and Molly radio comedy. Whenever Fibber had to fetch something from the closet, that meant a green light for the sound effects guy to let anything and everything come tumbling out. Classic Fibber!

http://bit.ly/igh3Hs

Why do we say someone whose career on the ascent is enjoying a meteoric rise? Don't meteors plummet? For that matter, a caller asks, why do we call "Heads up!" when a ball is coming towards us? Shouldn't it be "Heads down"? The hosts explain that "meteoric" in "meteoric rise" refers to the speedy, brightly streaking nature of a meteor. As for "Heads up," well, no language is perfect.

Grant shares a word he's been encountering at conferences: discussant. A discussant is someone who, after a series of papers are presented, takes the microphone to summarize the information given and offer opinions on the matter.

Should you use enamored of or enamored with? Grant explains that while North Americans use both, enamored of is the more common of the two. In Great Britain, it's enamored of, a construction similar to those in several Romance languages. Enamored by, on the other hand, should never be used. But then, love is always worth expressing, no matter the preposition.

A listener reports that when her cat starts whining, she tells it to shut its kibble-hole. If only cats understood wordplay--or English.

Ben Schott's language blog Schott's Vocab on the New York Times website held a contest for modern age greeting cards called Get Web Soon. Among the favorites: "Heartfelt condolences on the loss of your data" and "Congratulations on your relationship update".

http://nyti.ms/e0YbYe

A listener from Tennessee has a saying that doesn't quite land with his friends: "Is it any count?" Martha confirms that the phrase is most definitely Southern. It originates in the word "account," and the question of whether something "adds up."

What does hoot mean? You might describe someone as a real hoot. But is the hoot in the phrase not give a hoot a different kind of hoot? Grant explains that in the positive case, hoot is a shortening of hootenanny, a informal party with folksy music. In the negative sense, however, to hoot at somebody means to disapprove of something.

Is it really possible to change your style of speaking so that you stop using the verbal fillers "um" and "you know"? Yes, you can. Martha relates her experience with dialect-coach-to-the-stars Sam Chwat. He was adamant that by catching ourselves every time we use that conversational crutch, we can consciously train ourselves to avoid it.

http://n.pr/eoFauX

Should you use myriad or myriad of? Actually, either is fine. Here's what David Foster Wallace had to say about the question in his commentary for the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus: "[A]ny reader who's bugged by a myriad of is both persnickety and wrong--and you can usually rebut sniffy teachers, copyeditors, et. al. by directing them to Coleridge's 'Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth.'"

http://bit.ly/bSX35G

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

The Whole Kit and Caboodle - 14 November 2011

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:09:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Nothing brightens up an email like an emoticon. But is it appropriate to include a smiley face in an email to your boss? Also, what do time management experts mean when they say you should start each day by "eating the frog"? Plus, the story behind the phrase "the whole kit and caboodle," and some book recommendations for language lovers. If you see the trash can as half-full, are you an optimist or a pessimist? A puzzle involving breakfast cereals, the difference between adept and deft, and the origin of the political term solon. And what in the world is a hoorah's nest?

FULL DETAILS

Is it appropriate to use emoticons in business emails? After all, you wouldn't write a smiley face in a printed letter, right? Martha and Grant discuss the point at which you start using those little symbols in correspondence. Call it "The Rubicon on the Emoticon." Judith Newman has more observations about emoticons in business correspondence in this New York Times piece.

http://nyti.ms/pKguDN

Why are non-commissioned Naval officers called petty officers? After all, there's nothing petty about them. The term comes from the French petit, meaning "under, less than, or ranking below in a hierarchy." Petty comes up in myriad instances of formal language, such as petty theft, which is a lesser charge than grand larceny.

To summarize something, we often use the phrase all told. But should it be all tolled? The correct phrase, all told, comes from an old use of the word tell meaning "to count," as in a bank teller. All told is an example of an absolute construction--a phrase that, in other words, can't be broken down and must be treated as a single entity.

What do parents say when they tuck their children in at night? How about good night, sleep tight, and see you on the big drum? Have you heard that one, which may have to do with an old regiment in the British Army?

How do you manage your time? Perhaps by eating the frog, which means "to do the most distasteful task first." This is also known as carrying guts to a bear.

http://bit.ly/stoi5n

From Puzzle Guy John Chaneski comes a great game for the breakfast table in the tradition of such cereal names as Cheerios and Wheaties. What kind of cereal does a hedge fund manager eat? Portfolios! And what do Liberal Arts majors pour in their bowls? Humanities!

What is the difference between adept and deft? It's similar to that between mastery and artistry. Adept often describes a person, as in, "Messi is adept at dribbling a soccer ball." Deft, on the other hand, is usually applied to the product of an act, such as "deft brush strokes."

There are some words we just love to mispronounce, like spatula as spatular, which rhymes with "bachelor."

If someone plans to make hay of something, they're going to take advantage of it. It comes from the idiom make hay while the sun shines, based on the fact that moving hay can be a real pain when it's dark and damp.

Martha has a follow-up to an earlier call about why hairstylists advise clients to use product on their hair. At least in the food business, product often refers to the item before it's ready for consumption. For example, coffee grounds might be called product, but once it has been brewed, it becomes coffee.

If you see the trash can as half full, does that make you an optimist or a pessimist? Since it's half full of garbage, as opposed to daisies or puppies, it's questionable. On the other hand, in the tweeted words of Jill Morris: "Some people look at the glass as half empty. I look at the glass as a weapon. You can never be too safe around pessimists."

http://twitter.com/#!/JillMorris/statuses/128573375114256385

If we're talking about the whole lot of something, we call it the whole kit and kaboodle. But what's a kaboodle? In Dutch, a "kit en boedel" refer to a house and everything in it. For the sake of the English idiom, we just slapped the "k" in front.

The holiday gift season is coming up, and Grant and Martha have some book recommendations. For the family, Grant has two great children's books: The Three Pigs by David Wiesner, a meta-narrative based on the classic title characters, and Elephant Wish, a touching cross-generational story by Lou Berger, the head writer of Sesame Street. Martha recommends The Word Project: Odd and Obscure Words beautifully illustrated by Polly M. Law. Stop by your local bookseller and pick up a copy for your sweetheart, a.k.a. your pigsney!

http://amzn.to/w4TN3f
http://amzn.to/rxTZYw
http://amzn.to/ty9q6F

If something's messy, it looks like a hoorah's nest. But what's a hoorah? It beats us. All we know is, it leaves its nest in a real state of confusion, and does it well enough to inspire a popular idiom.

The Twitter hashtag #Bookswithalettermissing has proved to be a popular one. We discussed some great examples in an earlier episode.

http://www.waywordradio.org/missing-letter/

But why not take a letter off the author as well? As in, Animal Far by George Owell, the story about an animal that ran away, prompting a nonchalant farmer to say, "Oh, well." (The joke's doubly funny if you know that the name "George" comes from the Greek for "farmer.")

There's some confusion about the uses of at and by, particularly among those for whom English is a second language. Prepositions often cause trouble, because they don't translate perfectly. Nonetheless, it's important to know that in standard English, if someone is staying home, they're staying at home, not by home.

Here's a testy T-shirt slogan: "Polyamory is wrong! It's either multiamory or polyphilia. But mixing Greek and Latin roots? Wrong!"

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2010/03/polyamory-is-wrong/

Solon often pops up in headlines as a label for legislators. It is actually an eponym, referring to Solon, an esteemed lawgiver from ancient Athens who lay much of the groundwork for the original democracy. Nowadays, however, the term solon is commonly used ironically, since our legislators don't display the noble disinterest that Solon did a few millennia ago.

The great Leonard Bernstein once said, "a writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." What are your favorite quotes on writing?

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Why Do Auctioneers Talk So Fast? - 7 November 2011

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:27:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Why do auctioneers talk so fast? Martha and Grant discuss the rapid-fire speech of auctioneers, and how it gets you to bid higher. Also, why so many books have ridiculously long titles, where you'd have sonker for dessert, and an appreciation of that children's classic, "The Phantom Tollbooth." Plus, different from vs. different than, the origin of suss out, words that apparently entered English in 1937, and the many names for those little gray bugs that roll up into a ball.

FULL DETAILS

What do you call those little gray bugs that roll up into a ball? They go by lots of names: roly poly bugs, potato bugs, sow bugs, chiggypigs, dillo seeds, basketball bugs, bowling-ball bugs, and wood lice, to name a few.

If you're wondering why we capitalize the letter "I" when we don't capitalize the first letters of other pronouns, the answer's simple. It's easier to read. Martha recommends a book offering a detailed history of every letter of the alphabet. It's Language Visible: Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z, by David Sacks.

http://www.alphabet-history.com/work1.htm

Why do auctioneers talk so fast? The hosts say it's partly to put you into a trance, partly to increase the sense of urgency, and partly to sell off lots of items in a short amount of time. More details in an article in Slate magazine. You can learn some of the basics of auctioneering from videos on YouTube.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/11/why_do_auctioneers_talk_like_that.html

http://www.aristocratservices.com/The_Auctioneers_Chant.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCr96VtvS80

Over on wordorigins.org, etymologist Dave Wilton is going through the Oxford English Dictionary year by year to find the earliest citations for various words, which offer an unusual linguistic glimpse into that particular year. The year 1937, for example, is the first in which we see the terms four-by-four, cliffhanger, and iffy.

http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/more/1739/

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle called "Double Dog Dare."

Why are book titles so incredibly long these days? A caller complains about book title inflation, usually consisting of a shorter title, followed by a colon and a longer subtitle that seems to sound important and ends with the words "and What To Do About It." Grant explains that such extra-long book titles are one form of search optimization by publishers and marketing departments. The more searchable keywords in the title, the more copies sold.

Which is correct: different from or different than. Martha explains that the grammatically correct choice is almost always different from.

Martha plays another round of the Books With A Letter Missing game.

http://www.waywordradio.org/missing-letter/

A caller in Hamburg, Germany wants to know where we got the term laundry list. Grant explains that it derives from a time when people of a certain class sent their laundry out to be cleaned. It's usually associated with a collection of things that are routine or involve drudgery or something negative. Funny how no one ever offers a laundry list of compliments.

More words that entered the language around 1937: spam, telecast, and oops.

http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/more/1739/

The Phantom Tollbooth, the beloved children's book by Norman Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer, turns 50 this year. There are two new 50th anniversary editions of the book. As Adam Gopnik notes in a New Yorker magazine article, the book is the closest thing American literature has to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/17/111017fa_fact_gopnik#ixzz1bCiS90OL

Martha shares her favorite passage from the book, a description of various kinds of silence.

http://books.google.com/books?id=T_0EtTjFHRIC&pg=PA152&dq=phantom+tollbooth+silence++or,+most+beautiful+of+all.+the+moment+utter+the+door+closes+and+you're+all+alone+in+the+whole+house?&hl=en&ei=NeCuTsa_GumYiQKliPGLCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=phantom%20tollbooth%20silence%20%20or%2C%20most%20beautiful%20of%20all.%20&f=false

Care for another helping of sonker? That's another name for deep-dish cobbler.

http://homepage.mac.com/ezzellk/Recipes/Pies/North_Carolina_Sonker-1550.html

There's a Sonker Festival each year in Surry County, North Carolina, one of the few places where you'll hear this regional term.

http://www.verysurry.com/blog/sonker-festival-2011/

More words that entered the lexicon around 1937: Yiddish bupkes, meaning "nothing," and "zaftig" meaning "plump," "soft," or "juicy."

What does the term suss out mean? It's often heard in police and journalistic jargon, and means to "take a forensic approach to finding out an answer." It probably derives from the verb "suspect."

Quisquillious describes something that's trashy or worthless. It derives from the Latin for "rubbish."

In the movie Avatar, the characters battle over a rare and valuable mineral called unobtanium. A mechanical engineer says he had a hard time getting into the movie because in his world, the word unobtanium means something different.

Martha quotes Steve Martin's aphorism about language: "Some people have a way with words. Some people not have way."

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

You Sound Old - 31 October 2011

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:23:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Ever drop a reference that just makes you sound, well, of a certain age? Grant and Martha discuss language that's often lost on a younger or older generation. Why is the entree the main course? Shouldn't it come first? And why is the letter k silent in knot and knight? Plus, the right way to say the, a remedy for the superstition of splitting the pole, names for the toes straight from Mother Goose, the difference between finished and done, and a special word quiz for all you zombie fans!

FULL DETAILS

Ever drop a reference that just makes you sound old? Are you using outdated slang? Changes in pop culture and lax speech are always marking the generational gap, from the sitcom characters we love to the way we say something's cool.

The "Doogie Howser" scene in the movie 50/50 is a perfect example.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/mv-dtg3j/doogie_howser/

What's the difference between done and finished? If you've completed something, are you done? Or are you finished? Grant and Martha contend that there's no historical evidence to suggest a difference between the two, although finished is slightly more formal.

Why are main courses called entrees in the US? Why isn't the entree the first course of a meal? In 19th Century Britain, the entree came after a course of soup or fish, but before the main portion of the meal, such as a boar's head. Over time, the main course converged into one course, but the name entree stuck.

If it's ten of five, what time is it? Is it the same as ten till five? Why, yes it is! Ten of five, or ten till five, are both appropriate ways to say 4:50.

Grant and Martha share some more terms that make a person sound old-fashioned these days. Ever get a blank stare when you mention the icebox?

Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a zombiefied puzzle called Dead Reckoning. What's the problem with putting zombies in the legislature? A deadlocked government!

How do you pronounce garage? Does it rhyme with "barrage," or do you say it like the British so it rhymes with "carriage"? The variations abound, and they all work, so long as we know what you're talking about.

There's a rule for the pronunciation of the word the. If it's followed by a word whose first letter is a vowel, sticklers say it should be pronounced like "thee," as in, thee end. If followed by a consonant, it rhymes with "duh," as in the dog. That's thuh long and thuh short of it.

Some outdated words wind up coming back in cheeky and ironic ways. For example, kids these days likely know groovy from Austin Powers, not from the flower children.

It's a common superstition: do not split a pole. That is, if two people are walking down the street, they shouldn't each walk around a different side of a lamppost, telephone pole, or mailbox. But if they do, there's a remedy: just say bread and butter! There's an old Merrie Melodies cartoon of panthers doing that (at minute 5:42).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uow_6qbssCc

And of course, there's a Facebook page devoted to keeping poles whole.

http://on.fb.me/pkMcmy

There's a story going around about a 19th Century priest named Giuseppe Mezzofanti who claimed to speak forty to fifty languages. Hyperpolyglots, or those who speak six or more languages fluently, offer some key insights into learnings language. Michael Erard chronicles all this in his linguistic cliffhanger, Babel No More: The Search for Extraordinary Language Learners.

http://bit.ly/lz1FOk

Is there a term for the way words feel when they're spoken that has nothing to do with their meaning? The word suitcase feels nice to say, unlike rural. Cellar door certainly has a different quality than moist ointment. Mouthfeel is an oft-noted concept. But in his book Alphabet Juice, Roy Blount Jr. says of his favorite term to enunciate: polyurethane foam. His reason? "It's just so sayable."

http://www.waywordradio.org/a-conversation-with-roy-blount-jr/

Depending on what generation you're from, "Get your rubbers!" could mean put on your galoshes. Or it could mean something else!

Did we ever pronounce the "k" sound in the words knot or know? The now-silent k underwent apheresis, from Greek meaning "to take off." In olden days, the word knight also had an initial-k sound, and a "kin-not" was the thing you tie. But nowadays, as Blount would say, the k in knot is silent, "like the p in swimming."

At one time, a boner was a mistake. And now, it's--you know. Beware of that outdated usage, grownups!

Do our toes have names? Mother Goose and Scandinavian nursery rhymes gave us variants of Tom Pumpkin, Long Larkin, Betty Pringle, Johnny Jingle, and Little Dick. Sounds cooler than big toe, no?

http://bit.ly/o3JieG

What dessert would you serve a baseball player? Why, a bundt cake, of course!

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Why Do Girls Wear Pink? - 24 October 2011

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 22:53:00 +0000

SUMMARY

We all know that the color pink is for boys and the color blue is for girls--at least, that's how it was 100 years ago. Grant and Martha share the surprising history behind the colors we associate with gender. Plus, we go rollin' in our hooptie, play a game of guess-that-Google-search, and get some tips on how to avoid getting swindled by our real estate agent! Also, new terms for failed software upgrades, some sugar-coated snark from across the pond, and a new way to show sarcasm in a text message. Yeah. Sure.

FULL DETAILS

Hate it when a software upgrade is worse than the previous version? We call that a flupgrade, or a new-coke. As in, Skype really new-coked it with version 5.3.0. Come on, Skype!

What is a hooptie? Though it started in the 1960s as a term for a sweet new car, it became the common moniker for a beater, or a jalopy. Maybe Sir Mix-A-Lot said it best: "My hooptie rollin', tailpipe draggin'/ heat don't work, and my girl keeps nagging.'"

http://bit.ly/1WCYn

If a lady is no better than she ought to be, her sexual morals may be in question. The saying, recently popularized by the BBC program Downton Abbey, is what's known as a charientism, or a bit of sugar-coated snark. By the way, if you'd like to hear more about such thinly veiled insults, check out this episode.

http://www.waywordradio.org/bless-your-heart/

If someone's in a swivet, they're flustered or in distress. You might be in a swivel, for example, if you're late for a meeting or you've shown up to the SAT without a No. 2 pencil.

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game based on Google searches, or at least what Google thinks you're searching. For example, what do Elmo, pink, and plant all have in common? Google suggests them, in that order, after you've entered the words "tickle me."

Did the movie Avatar make you imagine creating an entirely new language, like Na'vi? Conlang.org and the Language Creation Society have plenty of information on how to go about it and what others, including J.R.R. Tolkein have tried. Mark Rosenfelder's book, The Language Construction Kit, is a great resource for getting started.

http://tinyurl.com/yabd9br

http://bit.ly/7qxTuV

http://amzn.to/qES5lw

What does it mean to call for tender? This British phrase for soliciting a job is rarely seen in the United States, though tender, from the Latin for "to stretch or hold forth," is used in North America in two different senses: to tender, as in to offer, as well as the noun tender for something that's been issued, such as a dollar bill, hence legal tender.

What do you call an upgrade gone wrong? Perhaps the 'Puter Principle could be the software equivalent of the Peter Principle, which in business means that every employee in a hierarchy tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence.

If something's right on, it suits you to a tee. But why a tee? Tee, or the letter T, is short for tittle, or something really tiny. So if something's exactly perfect, it's right on point, with no room to spare. Or, simply, it suits you to a tee.

Why is pink a girl color and blue a boy color? Actually, in the 19th Century, pink used to be associated with boys, since it was a stronger, more decided color. Blue, on the other hand, was regarded as a girls' color, because it was considered dainty. It wasn't until the 1940s that marketers started to switch it around. Jeanne Maglaty has a great article about this in Smithsonian Magazine, called "When did Girls Start Wearing Pink?"

http://bit.ly/eDOeYg

To slake your thirst is to quench your thirst. But some people have been switching it to slate your thirst or other variants. It's a classic case of an eggcorn, or one of those words that people mishear, and then start pronouncing incorrectly; for example, when misheard, acorn can become eggcorn.

http://bit.ly/HG4m

What does it mean to gazump someone? This phrase, specifically meaning "to swindle a customer in a real estate deal," came about in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s before disappearing and then popping up again in England in the 1970s. Whether or not the term is in vogue, the practice seems to be a mainstay.

How do you indicate sarcasm in a text message or an email? If winky emoticons aren't your thing, try left-leaning italics, as recommended by sartalics.com.

http://bit.ly/reQ86l

The Arabic idiom in the apricot season translates to "in your dreams," presumably because the growing season for this fruit is so brief. Incidentally, the etymological root of "apricot," which means "to ripen early," is shared with the word precocious.

The Egyptian Arabic saying, ate the camel and all it carried, is the equivalent of "to eat someone out of house and home."

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Books With a Letter Missing - 17 October 2011

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:21:00 +0000

SUMMARY

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!

FULL DETAILS

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.

http://huff.to/q9I0Ra

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).

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.

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."

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?

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.

If something's right on the tee na na, it's just perfect. This phrase from New Orleans has popped up in myriad songs from the region. One interview with the musician Dr. John suggests that tee na na refers to the rear end, or tuchis. Martha speculates that tee na na may have to do with the phrase to a tee.

http://n.pr/cUbhzz

Lots of people have tweeted their own examples with the #bookswithalettermissing hashtag. Take, for example, that famous guide to Jewish sensuality, The Oy of Sex.

http://bit.ly/nqdFWk
http://bit.ly/qneRsF

What's the origin of the phrase God willing and the creek don't rise? It has to do with travel; back when wagons rode on low gravel roads, you couldn't pass if the creek level was high.

Regional grammar can be just as rich and diverse as regional vocabulary. The Yale Grammatical Diversity Project has picked up on all the variations in American English usage and plotted them on a Google Map. Turns out that double modals and the positive anymore are popping up all over the country.

http://bit.ly/ocY6dk

Did your hairstylist recommend you use product? Is your company moving product this quarter? The term product is in vogue, mainly for the purpose of simplification.

Why do department stores label their infants' section Baby instead of Babies,' a la Men's or Women's? For one, the Baby department includes more than just clothes; they've got strollers and cribs and pacifiers. Also, the baby of the family has a unique singular identity, unlike the rest of the kids.

Where do we get the expression more than you can shake a stick at? It probably just derives from counting. Imagine herdsmen bringing in their cattle or sheep at the end of the day, pointing with a stick in order to do a headcount.

Another #bookswithalettermissing joke: Have you read the book about how 99 cent stores are changing the way we shop in America? It's called The Little Price.

Pimping med students is a common practice in hospitals. But not that kind of pimping; the term pimp, likely from the German pumpfrage, meaning "pump question," refers to the method of tough quizzing that doctors put their young residents through. It generally straddles the border between rigorous initiation and plain bullying.

http://bit.ly/orBACV
http://bit.ly/rdyrMs
http://nyti.ms/7evgWi

You know that book missing a letter about the young Southern woman finding peace in a storm? It's called One With the Wind.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Going All City - 10 October 2011

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:05:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Have you been dining on a budget lately? Martha recommends the necessity mess, potato bargain, and other tasty regional foods that won't break the bank. Plus, what's a doomaflatchie? And what do you have to do before you rest on your laurels? Grant and Martha share idioms, proverbs, and paraprosdokians, those sayings that take a sudden, unexpected turn. Plus cryptic crosswords, graffiti slang, and new ways to read your favorite magazines.

FULL DETAILS

Dining on a budget? Just whip up some necessity mess or a potato bargain. That's a pork, onion, and potato stew popular in Eastern Massachusetts. Or how about some Georgia ice cream? It's a North Florida term for grits. Martha shares a generous serving of fun food names from the Dictionary of American Regional English.

http://dare.wisc.edu/

http://bit.ly/oDZcJQ

If you've accomplished something, go ahead and rest on your laurels. Martha traces this idiom back to Ancient Greece, where victors were crowned with a wreath of bay leaves from the bay laurel tree. In the 16th Century, to retire on one's laurels referred to "resting after an accomplishment." Like many inherited idioms, it's often said today with a tongue in one's cheek.

The old Brooklyn Dodger Roy Campanella really knew how to set the soup outside! A baseball fan recalls this overheard phrase from a game in the 60s between the Cardinals and the Dodgers, when Campy smacked one over the fence. Grant estimates that this usage of soup comes from the old slang term for nitrous oxide, a component in souping up cars. Over time, soup came to refer to any enhanced display of muscle or strength.

What would you bring to a pitch-in? An Indiana transplant shares this newly acquired term for a potluck dinner. Martha points out that the Dictionary of American Regional English has a map showing the distribution of the term, and it's limited almost exclusively to Indiana.

If something's a peach out of reach, it's something lovely that you want but just can't have. A listener shares this and other idioms from the American South.

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game of cryptic crossword clues called Double Definition. For example, if the clue is "trim a tree," the answer is "spruce." Or try this one: "crazy flying mammals." Did you come up with "bats"?

What does it mean to grok the data? A listener from the medical device business wonders about the techie word grok, which first popped up in Robert Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

http://bit.ly/qSPABU

To grok data means to understand all the information you're looking at. Grant also mentions Jeff Prucher's Brave New Words, a dictionary of science fiction terms that have made their way into the English language.

http://wywd.us/ng2QdG

New York seems to have a doguero on every street corner. Grant shares this Spanglish term for "a hot dog vendor."

What's it called when saying becomes sayin'? It's not a trick question; it's simply called an abbreviation. Grant and Martha settle an English major's confusion about the possibility of a trickier term. With words like o'er, a shortening of over, the apostrophe can also be called an apologetic apostrophe, but it's still just an abbreviation.

The old Yiddish word bupkis, referring to something of little or no value, has of late been split up for dramatic effect. As in, that's worth all of a bup and a kis!

What's a doomaflatchie? A listener shares this alternate for doohickie, thingamajig, doodad, or any other one of those whatchamacalits.

You can listen to the Tim McGraw song about his doomaflatchie here.

http://tinyurl.com/3aq4hp6

If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong. Listeners share some of their favorite paraprosdokians. It's not the first time Martha and Grant discussed paraprosdokians.

http://www.waywordradio.org/sugar-for-a-dime/

As ubiquitous as social media and blogs have become, people are still reading long form journalism! Grant shares some great ways Twitter has enabled the spread of long essays from sources like The Atlantic and Wired. In addition, services like Readability and Instapaper have streamlined the distribution of articles to our myriad devices.

http://bit.ly/aeqNxp

http://bit.ly/aAVXT4

http://bit.ly/dADCNG

It takes some work for a writer to go all city--a graffiti writer, that is. An art supplies dealer from Dallas shares some vocabulary from the world of street art. For example, the old act of photographing trains from benches gave birth to the term benching, and the act of tagging or doing graffiti is also known as bombing. Grant discusses the related term going all city.

http://bit.ly/cutX0r

http://abcn.ws/qIRs0R

http://tinyurl.com/3wfeq6r

Everyone knows about Tang as that orange kick in a glass, but could it also be an entree? A listener from Plano, Texas, found an elderly relative's plan for family meals from 1947, which lists tang with molasses as a main course. If you've heard of tang the food, shoot us a message.

If a meeting gets pushed back, does it get postponed to a later time or rescheduled for a sooner one? Grant explains that push back is generally understood to mean "reschedule for a later date," but Martha recounts a scenario where the opposite definition caused a debacle with deadlines. As always, when in doubt, seek clarification.

Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. Thank you to our listeners for this and other modern proverbs.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

The College Slang Party - 3 October 2011

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:55:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Ever been to an ABC party? How about a darty? The hosts discuss these and other slang terms heard around campus. They also talk about mulligrubs and collywobbles, a puzzle for celebrity couples, potions that make childbirth a pleasure, and a check-up on old spelling bee champs. And to set the record straight, a preposition as a sentence-ender is something up with which we shall most definitely put!

FULL DETAILS

What would you wear to an ABC party? Hint: the letters stand for "Anything But Clothes." Any guesses what you'd wear to a tight-and-bright party? Martha gives a taste of the college party terminology from a slang collection compiled by Penn State student Emily Grier.

http://bit.ly/qpxAB0

Are you left hanging by the invitation Do you want to come with? A Milwaukee native is proud of this regionalism, which means "Do you want to come along?" Grant explains that it may derive from the German verb mitkommen, a single word that literally means to "come with."

If what you're going to say isn't more beautiful than silence, don't say it. Martha shares this proverb, translated from the original Arabic.

If you suffer from restless nights of tossing and turning, you may have a case of the mollycobwobbles. A listener shares this hand-me-down term from her grandmother. Grant explains she may well have combined two English terms dating about 150 years back: mulligrubs and collywobbles. The aptly named affliction usually consisted of the jitters, the shakes, or even the yips.

http://bit.ly/p4RNrX

That little basket that your strawberries and blueberries come in? It's called a punnet. Just so you know.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska addles our brains with a puzzle called Odd Couples. See if you can figure out these strange celebrity pairings who share last names. "Anyone? Bueller, Bueller, Bueller" and "Bueller is Bueller is Bueller," for example, forms the odd couple of Ben and Gertrude Stein. And who else could hit home runs in the bedroom like Babe and Dr. Ruth?

Looking for something that curls your hair, cleans your teeth, and makes childbirth a pleasure? A listener's mother used that saying in reference to every miracle potion from WD-40 to vinegar. Grant explains that the first known version of this in print dates back to 1919 in Mrs. Lucretia Graves' Exits from the Pearly Gates, where the advertisements for opium-type substances had less cheek and more sincerity. Grant notes that Google Books has a wealth of examples of old ads that took the saying and used even more elaborate versions to promote everything from tequila to hypnosis.

http://bit.ly/p41EsZ

Is boughten a past tense form of to buy? Grant gives his blessing to its use in informal conversation, but when it comes to formal writing, the word you want is bought.

What are the college kids up to these days? Apparently, they're busy at darties, or "day parties." Martha shares this collegiate portmanteau from Emily Grier's list.

Can sentences end with a preposition? Yes! Grant assures a listener that all experts, including the most conservative of linguists and lexicographers, agree that a preposition as the last word in a sentence is something up with which we shall put.

http://bit.ly/dWii20

Tell your Mom the sterling silver stud above your lip isn't "that dumb thing." It's called a Monroe piercing, in honor of Marilyn's famed beauty mark.

Though the Spanish language, among others, has its quirks and foreignisms, the English language really can't be touched when it comes to complicated and irregular spelling. Thus, spelling bees are primarily an English-language phenomenon. Grant mentions a few "where are they now?" stories about past Scripps Bee winners. The common thread? If these kids had the discipline to compete in such a high-pressure event, they tend to carry those traits beyond the spelling arena and into their successes later in life.

http://abcn.ws/mlEtro

http://ti.me/oz9OjK

If something is mathematical, is it cool? According to a mother of two middle-schoolers, that's exactly what it's come to mean among the younger set. Then again, irony is also pretty hip. But could her kids be using a piece of ironic slang with confused sincerity? Ahh! Meta-irony! So cool!

http://bit.ly/n1V8Ff

If someone's balloon has lost its string, it means "they've come unmoored". Something unusual or odd has come about in their character. Patrice Evans used the illustration in his description of Tracy Morgan in an article for Grantland (no relation to our show's co-host).

http://es.pn/jyvuej

He thinks he's a wit, and he's half right. Though some might attribute the quote to Shakespeare, it's nowhere to be found in the concordances. Grant explains how many of these witticisms have been tumbled about by old newspaper columnists, humorists, and vaudeville performers. Though their origins are muddled, they're still a joy to hear and say.

So, can a sentence begin with the word so? Which ones? So is oftentimes used in place of therefore to conclude an explanation, but more people are using it as a general sentence-starter, in the same vein as well. Grant notes that while seemingly misused language may be grating to the ear, it's more productive not to peeve about it, but instead to record it and add it to the rest of the data we collect about our language. Ultimately, we learn about each other by doing so.

http://bit.ly/o2rtSQ

Martha shares a British article that begins, "Boffins have discovered a strange new type of spongy mushroom." But what, you may ask, is a boffin? The word boffin denotes an intellectual with a specific expertise and general lack of social aptitude. Grant adds anorak to the list of terms for nerds with minimal aptitude for cocktail-party conversations. Here's to you, boffins and anoraks!

http://bit.ly/iyly1W

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Him and I or Him and Me - 26 September 2011

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:09:00 +0000

SUMMARY

If someone offered you a croaker with an old man's face, would you accept? You should! Croaker is a slang term for "hundred dollar bill." And did you ever wonder why we turn UP the A.C. to bring the temperature down? Grant and Martha ponder that question. Plus, the tricky debate over me vs. I, the byzantine story behind the word byzantine, whether paper toweling is a real noun, and a couple of name games. Also, Grant recommends some dictionaries and teaching guides for the new school year.

FULL DETAILS

Ever know somebody whose name makes you do a double-take, like a family physician named Dr. Hurt? An Albany, N.Y. listener shares a game of more positive aptronyms. For example, what do you name your daughter if you want her to be a lawyer? How about "Sue"?

Do you use paper towels or paper towelling? While a listener insists her husband's wrong for his use of paper towelling, Grant explains how certain nouns take a gerund ending. For example, clothes derive from clothing, and the side of a house adorns siding. In the same way, why not tear a paper towel off a roll of paper towelling?

A veteran broadcaster recalls a brilliant example of sesquipedalian language. Fifty years ago, he stubbed his foot on the beach and a group of college boys told him to go to his parents and get an anatomical juxtaposition of the orbicular ors muscles in the state of contraction on the unilateral calcification of the carbuncular metatarsal. Go get, in other words, "a kiss on the foot."

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a Grant and Martha version of The Odd Man Out Game, wherein one term doesn't belong in the list of four. Take Martha, Irving, Denzel, and Booker. Which one doesn't fit? It's Irving, because "Washington" is his first name, not his last.

Does turning up the A.C. make a room cooler or warmer? A listener grapples with multiple meanings of the word "up." Martha suggests saying, "Turn up the air conditioning," not "turn up the air conditioner," just as you say "turn up the heat," not "turn up" the heater. Grant observes that the English language is imperfect, and we often have to clarify our statements to make sure people understand us.

When it comes to proper grammar, "Where you at?" ain't where it's at. A mother is concerned that her child will pick up such malapropisms as "Where you at?" and "My mother and me went to the store." Grant argues that the redundant "at" has become such a part of our colloquial speech that it isn't to be chided in informal usage. However, for those formative years of language learning, Grant recommends the book Learner English by Michael Swan.

http://wywd.us/learningles

What do you name your baby if you want her to become a bank teller? "Penny." And if it's a boy? Try "Bill."

If someone offered you a croaker with an old man's face, would you take it? Here's a hint: the face belongs to Benjamin Franklin. A Louisiana native shares this rare term for " a hundred dollar bill." Grant suspects that it may derive from the French verb croquer, meaning, "to be crisp." It's mostly used in informal settings, such as horse tracks and neighbor-to-neighbor transactions. What terms do you use for the Benjamins? Here's a whole stash.

http://wywd.us/croakersnmore

If you're looking for dictionary recommendations, you've tuned to the right program! For comprehensive, desk-dwelling dictionaries, Grant likes the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th Edition, a two-volume set, and the brand-new American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, which contains original etymologies, illustrations, and plenty of guides and charts. The latter publication took nearly ten years to complete, and its authority is worth the investment.

http://tinyurl.com/3c9dkfb

http://tinyurl.com/yvs5cb

When a minister asked, "Who gives this woman to be married?" the father regrettably answered, "Her mother and me." Well, he regretted it after his daughters ribbed him about his improper grammar--specifically, his disregard for the implied verb. As in, "My wife and I do give this young woman to be married." Grant and Martha confirm that the implied verb is indeed what seals the deal. Alas, the "me vs. I" squabbles continue!

http://bit.ly/9IC2uZ

A physician heard a broadcaster use the term byzantine to describe the current health care system, and wonders about the origin of this adjective. Martha notes that the Byzantine Empire, which began in the 4th Century A.D., was notable for its convoluted system of government officials and titled nobility. Additionally, Byzantine art is known for its intricacies and elaborate details. Thus, the word has come to refer to anything exceptionally complicated or intricate.

What do you name your future ophthalmologist? "Iris"!

If a married couple moves because one spouse is relocated for work, is it correct to say the other spouse following them? A listener wonders about the implications of the term "follow," and how that dynamic works in today's day and age. Married couples often view themselves as a team of two equals, and sometimes words like "follow" can connote unintended ideas of subservience. Grant and Martha point out that, as relationship dynamics change, so does our language.

If you'd like your son to become a statistician, Martha suggests naming him . . . wait for it . . . "Norm"!

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (rebroadcast) - 19 September 2011

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:58:00 +0000

SUMMARY

If you say to someone the Spanish equivalent of you're giving me green hairs (me sacas canas verdes), it means that person is making you angry. In Japan, the phrase that literally translates as "one red dot" refers metaphorically to "the lone woman in a group of men." Martha and Grant discuss colorful idioms around the world, plus: making money hand over fist, taking wooden nickels, names for the end of a loaf of bread, and where a sneeze may evoke the response, Scat, Tom! Get your tail out of the gravy!

FULL DETAILS

If you say to someone the Spanish equivalent of you're giving me green hairs (me sacas canas verdes), it means that person is making you angry. In Japan, the phrase that literally translates as "one red dot" refers metaphorically to "the lone woman in a group of men." Martha and Grant discuss these and other idioms collected online in Alan Kennedy's Color/Language Project.

http://www.starchamber.com/colors/color-idioms.html

Is it proper to speak of servicing a customer, or does that sound too suggestive? Is it okay to use the word utilize instead of use? Is it pretentious to use the term formulate instead of simply form?

What do you call the end piece of a loaf of bread? Names for that last slice include heel, bread butt, kissing crust, bunce, skirk, krunka, truna, tumpee, canust, the nose, and in Spanish, codo, which means "elbow."

In Spanish and French, if you have the equivalent of "a white night," it means you didn't get much sleep. In Sweden, if you have a "white week," it means you didn't drink a drop of alcohol.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski offers a puzzle about portmanteau words called "Say Can You See."

Why do we say someone is making money hand over fist? Does it have to do with two competitors putting one hand over the other on a baseball bat to determine who's up first? Or does it have to do with pulling a rope?

More great color idioms, this time from Serbo-Croatian: In that language, a phrase that translates as I can't see a white cat means "I'm very tired," and to stare like a calf at a colorful door means to "look upon something with surprise and wonder."

A Dallas man says his father, who served in Vietnam, signed letters back home to the family with the phrase Don't take any wooden nickels. The hosts explain that this expression means "don't let anyone swindle you."

In Mandarin Chinese, if you're big red and big purple, it means you're "famous and popular."

Scat, Tom! Get your tail out of the gravy! In some parts of the country, especially the South, people say this after someone sneezes. But what does a cat warming its tail in the gravy boat have to do with sneezing?

Some foreign idioms involving color have been adopted whole into English. A case in point: French bete noire. Literally, it means "black beast," and it's used figuratively now in English to mean anything particularly disliked or avoided.

Grant recommends two blogs about writing well and copyediting: Merrill Perlman writes The Language Corner blog for the Columbia Journalism Review.

http://www.cjr.org/language_corner/

And Philip B. Corbett of the New York Times reports on actual grammatical and usage mistakes in that newspaper in his blog, After Deadline.

http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/after-deadline/

An Indianapolis listener has a copy of a wedding poem that refers to the thrice-happy pair. Is a thrice-happy pair three times as happy as anyone else? Martha explains that the idea goes all the way back to Roman poetry. Here's an example from a translation of Horace's Ode 1.13.

http://bit.ly/g4QwP0

Does the expression petered out have to do with the Apostle Peter denying he knew Jesus? Au contraire. Petered out may derive from the French peter, meaning to "pass gas." Another theory is that the expression originated in mining and the use of saltpeter in explosives.

A fan of the TV series "West Wing" was puzzled by a character's use of the term pulchritude. It's a pretty ugly term for a word that means "beauty." Check out what some other commenters are saying about the word.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/homeschooling/2010/10/pulchritude/

Is it grammatically correct for a high school football team to call itself the Vanguards? A Wisconsin listener argues that Vanguard is already a plural noun.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Burrito Baby (rebroadcast) - 12 September 2011

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:32:00 +0000

SUMMARY

More and more college students are getting pregnant--with burrito babies. Grant talks about new terms for "a full stomach" and other examples of campus slang. Also, is it safe to play on the macadam? Also, overegging the pudding, what it means to be gobsmacked, the difference between who and whom, apostrophe placement, how to pronounce coup de grace, and the embarrassing results when a smartphone mistakenly autocorrects text messages.

FULL DETAILS

Remember the classic children's story "Where the Wild Thongs Are"? (We didn't think so.) That's just one of the autocorrect horror stories that can happen when smartphones mistakenly correct a text message. Martha and Grant discuss several more.

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/

If someone is gobsmacked, they're totally surprised. The term may come from the same Gaelic root that gave us the Everlasting Gobstopper.

http://taoism.about.com/b/2008/12/29/everlasting-gobstopper.htm

Should the sign on the boys' bathroom at a school read Boy's Room or Boys' Room? The hosts clarify where to put the apostrophe.

"A fifth-year senior"? That term is so 2007. These days, college students just refer to that extra year of school as taking a victory lap. Grant shares this and other examples of campus slang collected by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill professor Connie Eble.

Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game of demonyms. What do you call someone from a certain place? If you're from Cambridge, for example, you're a Cantabrigian.

If someone has overegged the pudding, they've overstated the case. This may explain why a lawyer from Lawrence, Kansas, found the phrase in a judicial opinion.

A motivational Chinese idiom translates as "ride the cow, look for the horse."

Are the names Aaron and Erin pronounced the same? A bicoastal listener insists they should sound different. A longer discussion about Erin vs. Aaron is on the Straight Dope message board.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-133780.html

The word sic, meaning "thus" in Latin, is placed in the text when an author knowingly quotes a misspelled word or otherwise incorrect statement.

A native of Southern Pennsylvania has always used the term macadam in place of asphalt. Martha traces the word from an old gravel road to the modern day tarmac.

A Japanese idiom, referring to someone who takes credit for another's work, translates as "doing sumo in someone else's underwear."

If you say, "The worm has turned," it means you've lost patience. Grant and Martha explain that this expression goes back to the old proverb "Tread on a worm and it will turn."

More and more college students are getting pregnant with burrito babies. Grant explains that that this slang term simply means that someone's stomach is full from a hefty meal.

What is the proper use of the French term coup de grace? Grant and Martha explain how the term has been twisted, both in pronunciation and meaning.

How can you tell the difference between who and whom? A listener shares a chant learned in grade school to remember the proper usage.

Grant shares a bit of military humor related to cumshaw, the art of procuring what you need in ingenious ways: "There is only one thief in the army. Everyone else is just trying to get their stuff back."

You know the feeling when something hurts so good? A massage therapist looks for a term that describes this mix of pleasure and anguish. Sensanguish? Hedonalgia, maybe?

Grant shares Tom Swifties sent in by listeners: "Aw, shucks, I dropped the toothpaste," Tom said crestfallenly, and "I've located the experts," Tom said profoundly.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

One Space or Two (rebroadcast) - 5 September 2011

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:01:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Is typing two spaces after a period "totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong?" Martha and Grant disagree. Also, is the language of the movie "True Grit" historically accurate? Also, shut your pie-hole, Southern grammar, Oh my Lady Gaga, and a little town called Podunk.

FULL DETAILS

How many spaces go after a period? Your schoolteacher may have taught you to use two, but others strongly disagree.

http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/

Shut your piehole! means "Shut your mouth!" Need more slang terms for the mouth? For starters, there's potato trap, tater trap, tatty trap, bun trap, gingerbread trap, kissing trap, fly trap, rattle trap, baconhole, and cakehole.

Where is Podunk? Grant explains that a columnist in the 1800s used the name for his series called "Life in the Small Town of Podunk," referring to a generic backwoods American town.

A listener shares a phrase he learned in Peru that translates as "more lost than a hard-boiled egg in ceviche." It describes someone who's lost or clueless.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game worthy of the Saturday puzzle called "Cryptic Crosswords".

Is the formal language in "True Grit" (2010) historically accurate? The hosts discuss why the Coen brothers would do away with contractions to set a tone for the movie.

A transplant from Zimbabwe finds the word irregardless annoying and ungrammatical. Grant explains that regardless of its status, "irregardless" is needlessly redundant.

The phrase oh, my goodness may be a dated way to express surprise or disbelief. A listener asks for a contemporary replacement.

Multiple modals, as in the phrase "I thought y'all may would have some more of them," have their own logic and are well understood by many in the American South.

The Database of Multiple Modals compiled by Paul Reed and Michael Montgomery is here.

http://casdemo.cas.sc.edu/modals_d/

If you call someone a card, it means they're funny or quick-witted. Grant and Martha discuss the metaphors inspired by the language of playing cards.

What do you serve to a lawyer coming to dinner? A listener shares her riddle for the "What Would You Serve" game?

Have you been asked to trip the light fantastic? This phrase, meaning "dance the night away", dates back to a poem by John Milton from 1640.

Martha shares the German slang term niveaulimbo, meaning "a limbo of standards".

Why is the word pound abbreviated lb.? A listener from Tijuana, Mex., learns that the answer relates to his native Spanish as well as the Latin term for "weighing."

Martha reads a love sonnet by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Here's the text of the original Spanish, with an English translation by Mark Eisner.

http://www.redpoppy.net/poem37.php

And here's a lovely audio rendering of the poem in Spanish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhxNhy3BVA

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Seeing The Elephant (rebroadcast) - 29 August 2011

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:32:00 +0000

SUMMARY

This week on "A Way with Words": If you've "seen the elephant," it means you've been in combat. But why an elephant? Also, Martha and Grant discuss some funny idioms in Spanish, including one that translates as "your bowtie is whistling." And what names do you call YOUR grandparents?

FULL DETAILS

If you're in Bangladesh, the expression that translates as "oiling your mustache in anticipation of the jackfruit tree bearing fruit" makes perfect sense. In English, it means "don't count your chickens."

A discussion thread on Reddit with this and many other examples has Martha and Grant talking about odd idioms in other languages.

http://bit.ly/ifBbAQ

A Marine stationed in California says that growing up in North Carolina, he understood the expression fixin' to mean "to be about to."

Some office workers say their word processor's spellchecker always flags the words overnighted and overnighting. Are those words acceptable in a business environment?

"You really love peeled potatoes." That's a translation of a Venezuelan idiom describing someone who's lazy. Grant and Martha share other idioms from South America.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle called "Blank My Blank."

A woman in Burlington, Vt., says her mother used to use the expression Land o' Goshen! to express surprise or amazement. Where is Goshen?

A Yankee transplant to the South says that restaurant servers are confused when he tells them, "I'm all set." Is he all set to continue his meal, or all set to leave?

A woman in Eau Claire, Wis., remembers a ditty she learned from her mother about "thirty purple birds," but with a distinctive pronunciation that sounds more like "Toidy poipel blackbirds / Sittin' on a coibstone / Choipin' and boipin' / And eatin' doity oithworms."

Here's the Red Hot Chili Peppers version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fw8YywYatA

Martha offers excellent writing advice from the former editor of People magazine, Landon Y. Jones. His whole article is here:

http://bit.ly/gVRekI

A former Texan wonders if only Texans use the terms Mamaw and Papaw instead of Grandma and Grandpa.

Martha shares some Argentine idioms, including one that translates as "What a handrail!" for "What a bad smell!"

A West Point graduate says he and fellow members of the military use the expression He has seen the elephant to mean "He's seen combat." Grant explains that this expression originated outside the military.

Do you flesh out a plan or flush out a plan?

Another Argentine idiom goes arrugaste como frenada de gusano. It means "You were scared," but literally, it's "You wrinkled like a stopping worm."

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Eastern Seaboard West Coast (rebroadcast) - 22 August 2011

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:21:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Shadowdabbled. Moon-blanched. Augusttremulous. William Faulkner often used odd adjectives like these. But why? Grant and Martha discuss the poetic effects of compressed language. Also, African-American proverbs, classic children's books, pore vs. pour, and the double meaning of the word sanction.

FULL DETAILS

Amid the stacks of new titles at the library, Grant picks out The Wind in the Willows to read with his son. The hosts discuss the appeal of classic children's books.

A bi-coastal listener wonders about the terms West Coast and Eastern Seaboard. Why don't we say Californians live on the Western Seaboard?

Does an avid reader pore or pour over a book?

There is always a person greater or lesser than yourself. Grant shares this and other African-American proverbs.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski borrows a classic game from Joseph Shipley called Twin Ends.

The expression that smarts, meaning "that hurts," dates back over a thousand years.

Does sanction mean "a penalty" or "an approval"? Well, both. Martha explains the nature of contranyms, also known as Janus words. Here's an article about them in the periodical Verbatim.

www.verbatimmag.com/27_2.pdf

Listeners share their suggestions for the game What Would You Serve? Hosting a golfer for dinner? Tea and greens should be lovely!

William Faulkner used adjectives like shadowdabbled, Augusttremulous, and others that can only be described as, well, Faulknerian. Grant and Martha trade theories about why the great writer chose them.

The University of Virginia has an online audio archive of Faulkner's during his tenure as that school's Writer-in-Residence.

http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/

Here's a 1956 interview with Faulkner about the art of writing. It ran in The Paris Review.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/the-art-of-fiction-no-12-william-faulkner

In a previous episode, we wondered how U-turn might translate in different languages. One listener explains that in Hebrew, drivers make a horseshoe or a hoof-turn.

The Century Dictionary contains a list of amended spellings from the late 1800s that only creates more of the confusion it set out to alleviate.

Which is correct: We appreciate your asking or We appreciate you're asking?

A new transplant to Dallas wants to assimilate into the Texan way of speaking without offending the locals or forcing any new vocabulary.

Ever hear a broadcast where the announcer enunciates a little too precisely? Grant and Martha discuss the effect of softening syllables, such as "prolly" for "probably," and "wanna" for "want to."

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Red Light, Green Light (minicast) - 17 Aug. 2011

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Hot traffic talk! A caller is looking for a word for the point at which you have to reach in order to make it through a stoplight before it turns red.

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:

United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673

London +44 20 7193 2113

Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Site: http://waywordradio.org/

Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/

Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/

Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/

Skype: skype://waywordradio

Nerd vs Geek (rebroadcast) - 15 August 2011

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:26:00 +0000

SUMMARY

What do the words marathon, paisley, and bikini have in common? They're all words that derive from the names of places. Martha and Grant talk toponyms. Also, what's the difference between a nerd and a geek? Why do some Marines greet each other with the word "Yambo"? And what do you call the crust that forms at the corners of your eyes after a night's sleep?

FULL DETAILS

What do the words marathon, paisley, and bikini have in common? They're all words that derive from the names of places. Martha and Grant talk about these and other toponyms.

What's the difference between a nerd and a geek? An Ohio professor of popular culture wants to talk about it. Here's the Metafilter thread mentioned in that discussion.

http://bit.ly/Nl38h

Here's a Venn Diagram about nerds, geeks, dorks, and dweebs.

http://bit.ly/aJxb9E

In the Pacific Northwest, the term spendy means "expensive."

Grant has an update on the jocular pronunciation of "skedooly" for the word schedule. The original discussion about it is here:

http://waywordradio.org/chester-drawers/

Puzzle Guy John Chaneski presents a quiz called "Repeat after Me." It's a quiz that's neither so-so nor too-too.

A Marine at Camp Pendleton says that while in Iraq, he and his buddies heard the greeting "Yambo!" from Ugandan troops there. Now they use it with each other, and he wonders about its literal meaning. Martha explains that it's a common Kiswahili term.

In the novel Jane Eyre, characters sometimes speak whole sentences in French. A high school English teacher says her students wonder if there's a term for inserting whole sentences from another language into fiction. Grant talks about the use of foreignisms and loanwords.

Martha has a crazy crossword clue sent by a listener: "Camel's Nemesis." Twelve letters. Got it?

Residents of Maine are called "Mainers," people in Texas are "Texans," those in Wisconsin are "Wisconsinites," and people in Phoenix are . . . Phoenicians"? Grant and Martha explain that there are consistent rules for the naming the locals. The book they reference is Paul Dickson's Labels for Locals.

http://bit.ly/eXeAWx

Martha and Grant offer gift recommendations for language lovers:

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, by Guy Deutscher

http://bit.ly/bSjZON

OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word, by Allan Metcalf

http://bit.ly/igLJn8

Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers

http://www.lostinlexicon.com/

Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language

http://www.deborahfallows.com/

What do you call the crust that forms in the corners of your eyes when you sleep? Sleepydust, sleepysand, eyejam, slam, eye boogers, eye potatoes, sleep sugar, eye crusties, sleepyjacks. An Indiana man wonders if anyone else uses his family's term for it, cat butter.

Is the proper phrase toe the line or tow the line?

Grant talks about how that great American export, the word OK, was part of the first conversation on the surface of the moon.

You upgrade your software, and instead of working better, it's worse. Is there a word for that phenomenon? Downgrade? Oopsgrade? How about Newcoked?

Poutrage is a new term for "acting outraged when you're really not.  It's sort of like accismus, "the pretended refusal of something actually very much desired."

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.very much desired."

Of Pupae and Pupils (minicast) - 10 Aug. 2011

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:52:12 +0000

A question from a listener on the “A Way with Words” Facebook page has Martha musing about the entomological and etymological connections between the word pupil and the pupal stage of an insect’s life.

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:

United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673

London +44 20 7193 2113

Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Site: http://waywordradio.org/

Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/

Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/

Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/

Skype: skype://waywordradio

A Roberta of Flax (rebroadcast) - 8 August 2011

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:10:00 +0000

SUMMARY

We have collective nouns for animals, like "a gaggle of geese," "a pride of lions," and "an exaltation of larks." So why not collective nouns for plants? How about a "greasing of palms," or a "pursing of tulips"? Also, the difference between further and farther, the proper use of crescendo, how Shakespeare sounded in his day, and why a child's runny nose is sometimes referred to as lamb's legs.

FULL DETAILS

We have collective nouns for animals, like "a gaggle of geese," "a pride of lions," and "an exaltation of larks." So why not collective nouns for plants? How about a "greasing of palms," or a "pursing of tulips"? Martha shares some others collected on the site of food writer Gary Allen.

http://bit.ly/bKG1yC

Reverend William Archibald Spooner was known for transposing sounds, like raising a glass "to our queer old dean" instead of "to our dear old queen." A caller shares some favorite Spoonerisms.

Boil up some pigs' neck bones, add some liver sausage and buckwheat, mold it in a loaf, then slice, fry, and serve with syrup. Some folks call that scrapple, but a Milwaukee woman's family calls it pannas.

A listener asks: "Does the phrase "snap, crackle, and pop" need a cereal comma?"

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle about anagrams.

What did Shakespeare's plays sound like in his day? An acting teacher with an interest in dialects wants to know how researchers reconstruct Elizabethan speech.

A Pennsylvania college student remembers playing a game called "Whisper Down the Lane." She's surprised to learn that her fellow students call the same game "Telephone."

What's the difference between further and farther?

Martha shares more funny collective plant names, including a "mommy of poppies."

Pity the poor typeface designer, always seeing anachronisms in movies and TV. Imagine how painful it must be watching a World War II movie, only to see a document printed in Snell Roundhand Bold, a font invented in 1972.

Here's typeface expert Mark Simonson's analysis of the lettering on "Mad Men."

http://bit.ly/3L4a99

More about the life of font designers in the new book, Just My Type, by Simon Garfield:

http://bit.ly/as5o5a

Some speakers of American English use the word whenever to refer to a single event, as in "whenever Abraham Lincoln" died. This locution is a vestige of Scots-Irish speech.

A professional musician maintains that many people use the word crescendo incorrectly.

A father of two small children says his Indiana family referred to a child's runny nose as a "lamb's legs," as in "We need to wipe the lamb's legs off."

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Infix is Just Another Word for Fanfreakintastic (minicast) - 3 Aug. 2011

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:10:03 +0000

What's the one word that comes to mind when you hear the name J. D. Salinger? "Masterpiece"? "Recluse"? How about the "F-word"?

An Indianapolis listener came across an article about Salinger's use of that word, and that got him wondering about the linguistic terms for inserting at least one extra syllable into a word to make it more emphatic.

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:

United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673

London +44 20 7193 2113

Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Site: http://waywordradio.org/

Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/

Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/

Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/

Skype: skype://waywordradio

Cannibal Sandwich Anyone (rebroadcast) - 1 August 2011

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:54:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Ready for some crazy crossword clues? The hosts discuss some clever ones, like "Hula hoop?" (3 letters). Also, is the correct term jury-rigged or jerry-rigged? Why are Marines called Gyrenes? When someone points out the obvious, do you say "Duh!" or do you say "No DUH!"? And what, pray tell, is in a cannibal sandwich?

FULL DETAILS

Grant shares some diabolically clever crossword clues. Have at 'em: Hula hoop? (3 letters). A city in Czechoslovakia? (Four letters). Want to try more? Check out these clues here and here.

http://www.crosswordese.com/ccotm.html

http://barelybad.com/xwdcuteclues2002.htm

Hankering for a cannibal sandwich? An Appleton, Wis., woman has fond memories of raw ground round steak on top of rye bread, topped with salt, pepper, and onion. She wonders if it's a regional dish.

When someone points out the blindingly obvious, a listener might respond with Duh! There are other options, too, including No duh!, Doy!, and Der! Grant creates an online survey to find out which terms people tend to use.

If you're not yet old enough to understand homophones, you can wind up with some funny misunderstandings. Martha shares a listener's story about avoiding cotton candy as a child, fearing that it was literally made of cotton.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a quiz based on descriptions of characters in novels.

Something that's repaired in a makeshift, haphazard fashion, is said to be jury-rigged. Martha discusses the expression's likely nautical origin and Grant tells how a different term, jerry-built, led to the variation jerry-rigged.

Crazy crossword clues, Round 2: "Letters from your parents"? (3 letters) and "Sound elicited by an electric can opener" (5 letters).

An officer from Camp Pendleton is curious about Gyrene, a slang term for "Marine." Grant says it may derive from the Greek word for "tadpole."

Martha relates a story from a listener in Valdosta, Ga., about her four-year-old's misunderstanding of a homophone.

Need to type something in Linear B or Mayan? Want to make Japanese emoticons? Now you can. Grant explains why the release of Unicode 6 has many word lovers doing the happy dance.

When speakers of foreign languages try to adapt their own idioms into English, the results can be poetic, if not downright puzzling. A Dallas listener shares some favorite examples from his Italian-born wife, including "I can put my hand to the fire," and "The watermelon isn't always red on the inside."

Crazy crossword clues, Round 3: Cover of the Bible? (2 words). Source of relief? (7 letters).

When did the word slick become a positive word meaning "cool" or "excellent"?

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Guess What (rebroadcast) - 25 July 2011

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:26:00 +0000

SUMMARY

English is full of unusual terms, both old (eleemosynary, favonian) and new (flyway, catio). Also, the Swahili term that means "sleep like a log," the multiple meanings of the word joint, what it means to play gooseberry, cowpies and horse biscuits, and how to punctuate the expression "Guess what."

FULL DETAILS

Thinking about a flyaway, or will you spend the weekend gazing out at the catio? Grant explains these new terms.

Is subscribing just for magazines and podcasts, or can you subscribe to an idea? A husband and wife disagree over whether the latter is grammatically correct.

The Swahili phrase nililala fofofo means "to sleep really well." Literally, though, it translates as "to sleep like a log." Are the English and Swahili idioms related?

In French, tenir la chandelle means "to act as a chaperone," though literally it's "to hold the candle." Another expression that means "to chaperone" is the antiquated English phrase "to play gooseberry."

License-plate bingo, anyone? Quiz Guy John Chaneski offers a radio version.

"Who is 'she'? The cat's mother?" A Davis, Ca., man remembers his mother's indignant use of this expression, and he's curious about the origin.

Should you pronounce the word coyote with two syllables or three?

A Northern California caller that discovers that in Britain, an invitation to share a joint doesn't mean what it does back home.

Eleemosynary is the title of a play by Lee Blessing. The play celebrates this and other unusual words, including sortilege, charivari, ungulate, favonian, and logodaedaly. Martha saw a production at San Diego's Moxie Theater, and takes the opportunity to discuss those words, plus the fizzy roots of moxie.

Guess what! Or would that be Guess what? A Honolulu listener asks about the right way to punctuate this interjection. Should you use an exclamation mark or a question mark? How about an interrobang or a pronequark?

A Texas listener says his family often describes a great meal as larrupin'. What does that mean, exactly?

Grant talks about FOIA ("pronounced FOY-uh"), a bit of journalists' jargon.

Cowpies, horse biscuits, buffalo chips, horse dumplings -- why do so many names for animal droppings have to do with food? A caller wonders this, and whether the term cowpie would be an anachronism in a Civil War novel.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Beanplating the Lunatic Fringe (rebroadcast) - 18 July 2011

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:01:00 +0000

SUMMARY

In this week's episode, "It was bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen." Martha and Grant discuss their favorite first lines from novels. Also this week, Palmer Housing, beanplating, meeting cute, bad billboard grammar, and what it means when someone says you look like a tree full of owls. And which is correct: another thing coming or another think coming?

FULL DETAILS

Some novels grab you from the get-go. "I am an invisible man." "Call me Ishmael." "The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting." Martha and Grant discuss some of their favorite first lines.

You're falling asleep, then suddenly snap awake. There's a term for that: hypnagogic startle or hypnic jerk.

A North Carolina listener reports seeing a billboard that read, "Be Stronger Connected to Your Son." Bad grammar or good advertising?

When is your golden birthday? It's when your age and the date match, such as turning 23 years old on the 23rd day of the month.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a puzzle involving inverted M's and W's called "Turn the Worm."

Among many African-Americans, the term Palmer Housing means, "walking with an unusual gait." A screenwriter connects some dots in his own family's history when he asks about the origin.

In the film industry, the expression meet cute refers to "an overly precious first encounter between the romantic leads."

A man named Kris wants to name his son Qhristopher. Have a problem with that?

Grant shares some favorite bad first lines from novels.

The hosts tackle a longstanding mystery about the word shoshabong.

A favorite quotation from George Eliot: "Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."

Is the correct phrase another think coming or another thing coming?

Grant reveals the surprising origin of the term lunatic fringe.

The term like a tree full of owls describes someone's appearance. What does it mean, exactly? And why owls?

Need a great synonym for "overthinking"? Try beanplating.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Who is Chester Drawers - 11 July 2011

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:37:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Some of the world's most famous writers had to support themselves with day jobs. Martha and Grant discuss well-known authors who toiled away at other trades. Also this week, Eskimo kisses, the frozen Puerto Rican treat called a limber, how the word fail ended up as a noun, the phrase I'm efforting that, and where you would throw a houlihan. And what's a chester drawers?

FULL DETAILS

Some of the world's greatest writers had to do their work while holding down a day job. William Faulkner and Anthony Trollope toiled as postal clerks. Zora Neal Hurston trained as an anthropologist. Vladimir Nabokov was a lepidopterist who curated a butterfly exhibit at Harvard. Literary historian Jack Lynch tells the stories of these and others in his new book, Don't Quit Your Day Job: What the Famous Did That Wasn't.

http://bit.ly/aT4oXe

An Indianapolis newspaperman complains about his colleagues' use of the phrase I'm efforting that.

A woman in Racine, Wis., says her father and his fellow bus drivers always pronounced the word schedule as "skeh-DOO-lee." Is that an accepted pronunciation?

Todd Purdum's recent Vanity Fair article on the presidency contains intriguing beltway slang, including gaggle and full lid.

http://bit.ly/cXgmIj

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game called "Word Search."

A woman of Puerto Rican descent wonders about limber, the name of the savory frozen treat popular in her homeland. Was it really named in honor of aviator Charles Lindbergh?

A man in Huntington Beach, Ca., ponders his teenager's frequent use of the words fail and epic fail. Grant explains what this has to do with linguistic bleaching, and discusses some funny fails on failblog.org.

http://failblog.org/

Martha has an example of a linguistic false friend: In Latvian, the word vista means "chicken."

On a recent episode of "Mad Men," a character said "keep me in the loop." Was that phrase really around in the 1960s?

Everyone knows old proverbs, but what about modern ones? Here's an aphorism attributed to William Gibson: "The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." The hosts discuss some others.

After a San Diego man used the term Eskimo kiss with his preschooler, they both wondered about its origin.

An Indiana woman is puzzled about a phrase in the old western song, "I Ride An Old Paint": "I'm goin' to Montana to throw the houlihan." What's a houlihan? You'll find one version of the lyrics here.

http://to.pbs.org/bmHyw2

Here are different interpretations of this cowboy classic by Johnny Cash and Woody Guthrie.

http://bit.ly/9h03hD

http://bit.ly/9cEqws

On an earlier show, Martha mentioned the popular detergent in the Middle East called Barf. Martha shares email from listeners who say that although the word spelled the same as English "barf," the Farsi pronunciation is somewhat different.

http://www.waywordradio.org/a-gazelle-on-the-lawn/

Ever hear anyone refer to a wooden dresser as a chester drawers? A woman who grew up in St. Louis only recently learned that not everyone uses this term.

Martha reports that, during her recent attempt at learning to surf, she picked up lots of surfing lingo in between wipeouts. Here's a handy glossary of such terms, including tombstoning and pearling, both of which she did quite a bit.

http://bit.ly/da7hqe

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

A Yankee Dime - 4 July 2011

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:32:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Remember misunderstanding certain words as a child? Maybe you figured "cat burglars" only stole cats, or assumed guerrilla fighters must be angry apes. Martha and Grant discuss childhood misunderstandings about language. Also this week, Yankee dimes, culch piles, hanging crepe, educational rubrics, and whether the language you speak influences the way you think.

FULL DETAILS

There's a point when children understand just enough of their native language to be confused by homophones and metaphors. What misunderstandings do you remember? Maybe you thought cat burglars stole only cats, or that you might be swept out to sea by the undertoad? The hosts discuss childhood misunderstandings about language.

Some business owners give their establishments names like "Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe." What most people don't realize is that the letter Y in this case is a vestige of a letter we no longer use, and has a "th" sound. More about this letter here.

http://bbc.in/9Vy8Ba

A woman from upstate New York says her stepfather used to keep small dishes in various rooms to collect small odds and ends like paper clips and rubber bands. He called them culch piles. Martha has the story on this term.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle based on the candy called "Mentos." It's called Mento Stimulation. Example: What kind of minty candy would be appropriate for musicians?

A North Carolina man says he was surprised as a child when he did a chore for his grandmother, and the Yankee dime she promised him turned out to be a peck on the cheek.

A Texas caller says her child's middle-school teacher insists that students should never begin a sentence with a preposition. The hosts are shocked, shocked.

Martha describes a funny linguistic misunderstanding she had while trying to read Harry Potter in Spanish.

Predictive text on cellphones can result in some amusing accidental substitutions. The word for that: textonym.

Does the language you speak shape how you think? The hosts discuss an essay on that topic adapted from the new book "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages," by Guy Deutscher.

http://nyti.ms/chDUjO

Reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, an Indiana listener is stopped short by the sentence "She carried a tray of charlotte." Who or what is charlotte?

Someone who paints a negative or pessimistic picture is said to be hanging crepe. Martha has the origin.

The word rubric derives from a Latin word for "red." Originally, it referred to red letters used as section headings in religious texts and the like. Rubric has since become a term used in modern educational jargon, as in grading rubric.

What's the connection?

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

The Bee's Knees - 27 June 2011

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:44:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Let's put the moose on the table: You have questions, and Grant and Martha have answers. For example, why would someone have an albatross around his neck? And what's so cool about bees' knees, anyway? Plus, jockey boxes, bailiwicks, and cute names for loved ones, from snookums to bubula. If a bartender ever serves you a mat shot, don't try to beast it. You'll regret it in the morning.

FULL DETAILS

What pet names do you have for your loved ones? In The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten shares the name his Mother used to call him--Bubala, a term of endearment grandmothers might use in addressing children. We have all kinds of substitutes for the names of those we care about: sweetie, honey buns, snookums, etc. Martha opts for the Portuguese fofinha, meaning "fat, cuddly baby."

http://wywd.us/yiddishjoy

What's so cool about bees' knees, anyway? The bee's knees, a phrase meaning "cool" or "great," dates back to the flapper era of the 1920s. It relates to an old definition of the word "cute," referring to something "small and nicely formed." The knees of a bee are just that, after all.

http://wywd.us/bees-knees

A bartender wonders about the origin of the term jockey box. In his world, a jockey box is a "metal container for ice." However, in some parts of the western U.S., jockey box means "the glove compartment of a car," and much earlier, the term referred to boxes attached to the side of chuck wagon for holding feed or water.

The caller also shares another bit of bartending slang, the so-called mat shot or Matt Dillon. It's a glass of whatever liquor collects on the rubber mat behind the bar, which some enterprising patrons order as a prank or a test of a strong stomach.

The hosts discuss an email from a listener in Romania. His problem is that he learned English in the Southern U.S., but after going back home to where a British English is taught, people are having a hard time understanding his accent. Where we learn a language plays a big role in how we speak it.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game called Centricity, emphasis on the "city." For example, "Mickey ate all the fruit, leaving Minneapolis." And as George H.W. Bush said to George W. Bush, "You can be president Tucson."

Has your boss ever used the expression Let's put the moose on the table? This management buzzphrase, meaning "let's address the problem everyone's been avoiding," is relatively new, showing up in print around the early 1990s. The phrase pops up in books by former Eli Lilly CEO Randall Tobias and management guru Jim Clemmer. In Clemmer's book Moose on the Table, he tells a possible origin tale about a baby moose that crawled under a buffet table, only to be avoided by the patrons as it stank up the banquet hall.

http://wywd.us/moosetable

What does it mean to have an albatross around your neck? A political pundit, referring to a current candidate, mentioned "an alcatraz around his neck." The proper version, with an albatross, originates from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, wherein a sailor shoots an albatross, bringing down a curse on the boat, and his shipmates force him to wear an albatross around his neck as a symbol of shame. Grant notes that the name albatross likely derives from the Portuguese or Spanish alcatraz, meaning "pelican" or "sea bird." So perhaps an alcatraz around the neck isn't so far off after all.

http://wywd.us/albatrossneck

http://wywd.us/ancientrime

If something's "the bee's knees," you can bet that it's also beast. A sixth grade teacher wonders about the term beast being thrown around by her students. This synonym for "cool" or "good" is also used as a verb, as in I beasted that exam, or "I did extremely well." The slang term "beast" is common slang in sports, as in, "That player is a beast on the field." Former Cal running back Marshawn Lynch is notably famous for his signature playing style, beast mode.

http://wywd.us/beasted

A few weeks ago, a listener was looking for a term to describe the copy of The Emperor's New Clothes that he'd read many times as a child. In this picture book, the naughty bits were always cleverly covered up. Thinking he wanted a synonym for "fig leaf," Martha had offered the word antipudic, from the Latin pudor meaning "shame." Many listeners responded, suggesting that the word he really wanted was bowdlerize, meaning "to remove improper or offensive material." This eponym comes from Thomas Bowdler, whose sister ghost-edited The Family Shakespeare in 1818 containing censored versions of Shakespeare's plays.

http://wywd.us/antipudic

http://wywd.us/bowdlerandsis

If you go to a department store, you'll see the Men's department, the Women's department, and the Children's department. So why do so many stores have a department that's called simply Baby? Grant attributes the non-possessive nomenclature of stores like Baby Gap to tradition in the retail industry.

A listener from San Diego, California, named Lois has been called Louise, Lori, Lauren, Louisa, and Rosa, to name a few. And of course, the Scott/Todd mix-up phenomenon continues. Do people ever mess up your name?

http://wywd.us/scotttodd

What does it mean to vet a political candidate? The word vet comes from veterinarian, specifically the ones who would examine a horse before a race to make sure it was healthy and eligible. Similarly, one might vet a candidate to make sure they're up to snuff. The novelist John le Carre popularized the term in his political stories.

http://wywd.us/lecarre

A listener from Wisconsin adds to the discussion on wind pudding and air sauce, explaining that where he's from, wind pudding is old loggerspeak for baked beans.

http://wywd.us/windpudding

How do you pronounce biopic? The proper way to mention the genre of biographical motion picture has always been "BUY-oh-pick," as opposed to the mirror of myopic. It's not unusual to mispronounce a word if the spelling does not clearly indicate how to say it. For example, Grant notes a common error people make in pronouncing misled to rhyme with "chiseled."

If something's not in your bailiwick, it's not in your jurisdiction or area of control. But what exactly is a "bailiwick"? Martha explains that the two words which make up the term--bailiff and wick-- have specific meanings in Middle English. A bailiff, in the time of kings, was "a public minister of a district," and a wick was simply a "town" or "village." For example, Gatwick literally referred to a "goat village." And Greenwich literally meant "green village" or "village on the green."

Is that funny hehe, or funny haha? The way we laugh indicates whether we're laughing at someone or if we're simply enjoying the humor they've brought.

Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It - 20 June 2011

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:57:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Which came first, orange the color or orange the fruit? And what's a busman's holiday? Martha and Grant talk about bumbershoots, brollies, nursery rhymes, and alternatives to the word "unicycle." Plus, an app-inspired quiz, favorite oxymorons, and the origin of "put that in your pipe and smoke it"! If the Google Books Corpus doesn't sound like fun, think again. And by the way, shouldn't more than one company be allowed to sell Monopoly?

FULL DETAILS

You know those words whose meanings never seem to stick in your mind, no matter how many times you flip back to the dictionary? Martha wrestles with the term atavistic, meaning "the tendency to revert to ancestral characteristics." She now remembers it by the Latin root it shares with the Spanish word for "grandfather," abuelo. Grant, in turn, shares his revelation that upwards of actually means "more than," not "up to."

A unicycle enthusiast wonders if his unicycle can be properly called a bike. To avoid the four-syllable mouthful, the unicycle community (yes, there is one) sometimes calls it a uni, but for the general public, the term "bike" works. Martha reveals that she once spent a summer teaching herself to ride a unicycle, and doesn't mind calling it a bike. Grant notes the general rule that once a word has left its etymological root, it can be used for whatever we need it for.

http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88860

Rihanna's hit "Umbrella" may not have had the same ring if she'd referred to being "under my bumbershoot." Nonetheless, bumbershoot, bumberell, brolly and bumbersol, among others, are all playful alternatives to umbrella that even Mary Poppins would appreciate. Grant explains that bumbershoot, itself an American slang term, derives from the Latin umbra, meaning "shadow," and chute, as in "parachute."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjXKk3AbgH8&feature=related

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bum2.htm

Twitter's 140-character format has made way for a whole new brand of comedy writing. See Judah Friedlander: "More than one company should be allowed to sell Monopoly," or Stephen Colbert: "It doesn't always pay to get up early. If you're a worm, you just get eaten by that early bird. So sleep in, worms."

http://twitter.com/#!/JUDAHWORLDCHAMP

http://twitter.com/#!/stephenathome

In the mood for a word puzzle? Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has an app for that. This week's quiz features solutions starting with the letters app. Someone afraid to take care of the bug problem in their apartment doesn't want to "app-roach" them!

Is it worth using proper pronunciation if it makes you sound ignorant or misinformed? Contrary to the common understanding, the word forte is actually pronounced "fort." Grant describes forte as a skunked word; it's a losing situation no matter how you use it. For the sake of clarity and conversational flow, it's best instead to say that something is a "strength," a "strong suit," or is "in one's wheelhouse."

Do you ever spend your off-time doing something work related? This is known as a busman's holiday or a postman's holiday, as in the British understanding of holiday as a vacation or time off work. Research for a dictionary entry on postman's holiday led Grant to an old French ragtime song called "Le Facteur en Balade," or "The Postman on a Walk". In the proper sense, a postman's holiday might consist of a leisurely walk along the same route whereon he delivers the mail. Let's just hope it doesn't involve getting chased by dogs.

http://bit.ly/jruSKk

Some listeners are madly in love with oxymorons, and they continue to share their favorites. One listener has a great T-shirt that reads "An oxymoron a day keeps reality away." Another says his favorite oxymoron is "Dodge Ram."

A listener from Richmond, Virginia, remembers an old game called buckeye that consists of metaphorically pulling someone's leg, then calling Buckeye! and tugging one's own lower eyelid. Martha suggests that it may be related to a 19th-century use of buckeye that refers to "something or someone inferior," like a country bumpkin or a rube. Thus, calling "Buckeye!" may be equivalent to calling someone a sucker for getting tricked, or punk'd. Still, any explanation for the eyelid exposure is still pending.

Grant is pleased as punch about BYU Professor Mark Davies' new Google Books Corpus, which contains entries for every word ever in the entire Google Books database. In addition to parts of speech and definitions, the site provides contextual examples for each word. For example, the database has revealed that the word suitcase is often preceded by the adjective battered. Writers, teachers, English learners and language enthusiasts will love prospecting in this lexical goldmine.

http://googlebooks.byu.edu/

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig! A listener wonders about the origin of this phrase her Mother often used. Grant and Martha trace it back to another mother: Mother Goose. The full line goes, "To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, jiggity-jig." It does not, contrary to a highly visited Google result, originate from the movie Blade Runner (though it's a cute scene nonetheless).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpK6GcViC88

Listeners have been sharing some of their personal Scrabble rules, including new uses for the blank tile. For example, one variation allows for the tile to be removed and reused, so if Grant were to play the blank tile as an "E" and Martha has an "E" in her tray, she can swap the tiles and then use the blank for her own play. Just be sure to use it, because nobody likes someone who bogarts the blank tile!

Downton Abbey, a program featured on Masterpiece Theater, provided a handful of colorful expressions that date surprisingly far back. Like it or lump it, meaning "deal with it," is found at least as early as 1830 and takes from the old verb lump meaning "to look sulky or disagreeable." Put that in your pipe and smoke it, a contemporary favorite meaning "Take that!" actually shows up around 1820. As for the phrase you're sailing perilously close to the wind, meaning "be careful not to overstep"--well, we haven't caught wind of the origin of that one.

Databases like the Google Books Corpus can also be used to follow text over time. For example, as the women's suffrage movement grew around 1910, words relating to women's rights grew in popularity and frequency of usage.

What came first, the color orange or the fruit? The original term is Sanskrit and refers to the fruit. As the fruit traveled west, the word came with it. Grant notes that, like the terms for parts of the body, the names of colors travel very well in language because we're constantly speaking and writing about them. The term "orange" became what it is in English after the fruit made it to the French town Orange.

Martha shares a quip that's all too true: "I don't find it hard to meet expenses. They're everywhere!"

Tweet Nothings - 13 June 2011

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:07:00 +0000

SUMMARY

How much humor and personality can you pack into a 140-character update? A lot, it turns out. Martha and Grant talk about funny Twitter feeds. Also this week, the origins of skosh and can't hold a candle, why dragonflies are sometimes called snake doctors, whether the word pre-plan is redundant, and how technology is affecting the experience of reading.

FULL DETAILS

Martha and Grant share some of their latest guilty-pleasure reading from Twitter feeds that show just how much meaning can be compressed into 140 characters. Cases in point: @veryshortstory and @GRAMMARHULK.

http://twitter.com/veryshortstory

http://twitter.com/GRAMMARHULK

He can't hold a candle to someone means that he can't possibly compare to the other person. The hosts explain where this phrase comes from.

A zoo tour guide wants a specific word to describe how elephants procure hydration.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a puzzle called "This, That, and the Other."

A Facebook newbie asks if it's okay to misspell words on purpose when communicating via social media.

The mother of eight-year-old twins wonders why one of her girls habitually adds Dun-dun-DUN! to sentences in everyday conversation. The hosts suspect it's related to the audio element known as a "sting" in television and movie parlance, like this one in the famous "Dramatic Prairie Dog" video clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHjFxJVeCQs&NR=1

The term skosh means "a small amount," and derives from a Japanese word that means the same thing.

Remember when the expression "reading a book" meant, well, actually reading a book? Martha and Grant discuss a Los Angeles Times series about how electronic devices are changing the way we read.

http://lat.ms/auLP0c

The distinctive shape of the dragonfly has inspired lots of different nicknames for this insect, including snake doctor, devil's darning needle, skeeter hawk, spindle, snake eyes, and ear sewer, the last of which rhymes with "mower."

What's the correct term for the male lover of a married woman? The hosts share suggestions from listeners, including paramour and Sancho.

A firefighter is annoyed by his boss's use of the term pre-plan.

Martha shares the term hit and giggle, a bit of sports slang term she picked up while working as an announcer at this year's Mercury Insurance Open tennis tournament.

Tend to the Rat-Killin' - 6 June 2011

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:02:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Anagrams, rebuses, cryptograms, Jumble -- Martha and Grant swap stories about the games that first made them realize that playing with words and letters can be fun. Also this week, what's a jitney supper and where do you eat graveyard stew? The hosts explain the origin of the term “hang fire” and why Alaskans sound like they're from the Midwest, and take on a debate about whether an egregious falsehood is a bald-faced lie or a bold-faced lie.

FULL DETAILS

What games first made you realize that words and letters make great playthings? Martha describes puzzling, as a child, over the odd combination of letters, F-U-N-E-X, until she finally figured out the joke. Grant talks about discovering anagrams as a youngster, and how word puzzles in the newspaper became a daily ritual.

An office worker in Indianapolis is mystified when a British colleague sends an email telling her to "hang fire." The hosts explain the expression has to do with faulty firearms.

"Call up to 24 hours in advance to make a reservation." Do those instructions mean you can call until 24 hours before the deadline, or that you should call within 24 hours of it. When a San Diego listener assumed it was the former, she had an unpleasant surprise.

Did you know the POTUS (President of the United States) has a BOTUS? Grant explains what a BOTUS is.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska's game this week is "Name Dropping." The answer for each set of clues will be a word that has a common first name hidden somewhere in it; when that name's removed, the remaining letters spell a new word. For example, the first clue is "one of the seven deadly sins," the second is "the grain consumed by one-fifth of the world's inhabitants." Subtract the latter from the former, and you get a woman's name.

A Charlottesville, Virginia, caller says that when she was a child and recovering from an illness, her mother fed her a kind of milk toast she called graveyard stew. Is that strange name unique to her family?

During the health care debate in Congress, there was lots of talk about an up-or-down vote. A Montana listener finds this expression annoying. What's wrong with plain old "vote"?

In youth slang, "totes" is short for "totally." Grant talks about new, lengthened version of this slang shortening.

A Carlsbad, California, couple has a running debate over whether an egregious whopper is correctly called a bold-faced lie or a bald-faced lie.

The Library of Congress is archiving the entire content of Twitter. Grant explains why that's a gold mine for language researchers like David Bamman at Tufts University. You can see some of the results Bamman's compiled at Lexicalist.com.

http://www.lexicalist.com/

What do you eat at a jitney supper? Jitney?

Why do people from Alaska sound like they're from the Midwest?

A caller who grew up in Arkansas says his mother used a colorful expression instead of "mind your own business," which was “tend to your own rat-killing.” Grant talks about that and a similar phrase, go on with your rat-killing, meaning "Finish what you were saying."

You Bet Your Sweet Bippy - 29 May 2011

Mon, 30 May 2011 05:45:00 +0000

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/

Pickles and Ice Cream - 23 May 2011

Mon, 23 May 2011 19:34:00 +0000

Who You Callin' a Jabronie? - 16 May 2011

Mon, 16 May 2011 19:49:00 +0000

SUMMARY

Yo! Who you callin' a jabronie? And what exactly is a jabronie, anyway? Also, what do vintage school buses and hack writers have in common? Grant and Martha trace the origins of famous quotes, and a listener offers a clever new way to say "not my problem." All that, plus winklehawks, motherwit, oxymorons, word mash-ups, and a quiz about palindromes.

FULL DETAILS

Is that a winklehawk in your pants? A listener shares this word for those L-shaped rips in your trousers, from an old Dutch term for "a carpenter's L-shaped tool." And Grant has a new favorite term, motherwit, meaning "the natural ability to cope with everyday life." You could say a mark of wisdom is showing some motherwit in the face of life's winklehawks.

Ever heard a school bus called a school hack? Grant and Martha explain the etymology of hack, beginning with hackney horses in England, then referring to the drivers of the horse-drawn carriages, then the carriages themselves, and finally the automobiles that replaced them. A museum in Richmond, Indiana, has a vintage yellow school hack, once used in the 19th and early 20th centuries to bring rural children to their schoolhouse. Incidentally, the contemporary term hack, meaning a tired old journalist, comes directly from the original term for the tired old horse.

http://bit.ly/mfS08T

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! A listener senses something awfully good about oxymorons, from the Greek for "pointedly foolish". Grant shares this favorite example from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, while Martha picks a modern classic: airline food. What are your favorites?

In the U.K., they don't count their seconds as one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, because, well, they have no Mississippi. Instead, they say one-elephant, two-elephant. Lynne Murphy, author of the blog Separated by a Common Language, points out this difference between English speakers on opposite sides of the pond.

http://bit.ly/pZxYG

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game called Welded Palindromes, with two-word phrases spelled the same forwards and backwards. What do you call your first appearance on TV? A tube debut. What kind of beer does a king drink? Why, a regal lager, of course.

A listener wonders about the origin of the phrase your father's mustache, akin to the phrase go jump in a lake, or your mamma wears combat boots. Grant explains that it may sound more familiar as your fadda's mustache, circa 1930s, Brooklyn. The borough's own jazz musician Woody Herman had a hit song in 1945 called Your Father's Mustache, but those in the know pronounced it "FAH-dah."

http://bit.ly/lCbNwL

A listener named Meagan from Wisconsin uses the term flustrated, combining flustered and frustrated--one of many mashed together words she deems Meaganisms. Though Grant applauds her innovation and creativity, Martha points out that flustrate actually does pop up in English texts as far back as the 18th Century. Though dictionaries with entries for flustrate note that it's usually a jocular term, a conversation could always use more Meaganisms.

Grant gives Martha a little Greek test with the word leucomelanous. Leuco, meaning "white," and melano, meaning "black," together refer to someone with a fair complexion and dark hair, like Snow White or Veronica from the Archie comics.

How do you say "not my problem"? A listener shares his go-to: Not my pig, not my farm. It means the same thing as I don't have a horse in that race, or I don't have a dog in that fight. Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, created the SEP Field, or the Somebody Else's Problem field. Though examples are boundless, there doesn't seem to be a standard or definite origin.

http://douglasadams.com/

A cowboy loves a ranch that's pecorous, meaning abundant with cattle. Just something worth knowing.

There's an old joke running around that goes as follows, "Lost: Bald, one-eyed ginger Tom, crippled in both back legs, recently castrated, answers to the name of 'Lucky.'" Nigel Rees of The Quote Unquote Newsletter has been tracking down this oft-quoted joke, and so far he's found it as far back as 1969. On another front, Fred Shapiro of the Yale Book of Quotations has made progress in tracing the origins of famous quotes, often to people other than those who made them famous. And the folks at quoteinvestigator.com are doing their share in researching the history of those quips and aphorisms that do so much to frame our essays and speeches.

http://bit.ly/dgveSD

http://bit.ly/lz1qRp

http://bit.ly/8nWlvi

A violin maker wonders about the origin of a practice in his trade known as purfling, where a black and white line is inlaid into a tiny channel along the edge of the instrument. Martha traces the word back to the Latin filum, meaning "line" or "thread." Purfling is also a practice in guitar-making, furniture-making, and embroidery, and it shares an etymological root with profile. A fun fact: purfling is also just "profiling" said with a mouth full of marshmallows.

When someone admiringly called a woman "outspoken," Dorothy Parker is said to have cynically replied, "Outspoken by whom?" Well, according to quoteinvestigator.com, the line pre-dates Parker's quip.

Why do we call our biceps guns? The slang lexicographer Jonathon Green suggests that the metaphor first pops up in baseball around the 1920s, when players referred to their throwing arms as guns. Believe it or not, the early baseball pitchers actually threw the ball intending for the batter to hit it. It wasn't until later that a strong arm, or gun, was needed to throw a pitch too fast to hit.

A listener shares a Russian saying that translates I am going there where the Tsar goes on foot, meaning "I am going to the bathroom." It's the equivalent of we all put our pants on one leg at a time, or we're all just human.

Who you calling a jabronie? And what exactly is a jabronie? Grant traces this playful insult, meaning a "rube" or "loser," to the 1920s, when Italian immigrants brought over a similar-sounding Milanese term for "ham." Jabronie is also commonly used in professional wrestling, referring to those guys set up to lose to the superstars.

A decade is ten years. A century is a hundred. But what do you call a period of five years? It's a lustrum, borrowed whole from Latin. So you might say a decade is two lustra.

Everything is Tickety-Boo - 9 May 2011

Mon, 09 May 2011 17:56:00 +0000

SUMMARY

News reports that the makers of Scrabble were changing the rules to allow proper names left some purists fuming. The rumors were false, but they got Grant thinking about idiosyncratic adaptations of the game's rules. Also this week, the origins of the terms picket lines and hooch, why actors go up on their lines, terms for diarrhea of the mouth, and what we mean when we say there's an 800-lb. gorilla in the room.

FULL DETAILS

Some families have their own idiosyncratic rules for Scrabble. Grant talks about the rules in his house.

What do we mean when we say there's an 800-lb. gorilla in the room?

An Indianapolis listener says her family often refers to strong liquor as hooch, and wonders where that term comes from. The hosts trace the term's path from an Indian village in Alaska.

Grant follows up on his chickpea vs. garbanzo poll, and shares an email on the subject from the U.S. Dry Bean Council.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska reprises his game called Initiarithmetic. The object is to guess a set of items associated with certain numbers, as in "There are 12 m__________ in the y___________." Here's another: "76 t___________ in the b__________ p____________." If you missed the first Initiarithmetic game, it's here:

http://www.waywordradio.org/like-a-duck-on-a-june-bug/

An SAT prep teacher in Santa Cruz, California, hears lots of teen slang in his work, and is struck by a new use of the term legit.

What's a synonym for diarrhea of the mouth? A caller swears she heard the word on an earlier episode, but can't recall it. The hosts try to help. Tumidity? Multiloquence? Logorrhea?

Several decades ago, the expression tickety-boo was commonly used to mean "all in order," "correct," or "just dandy." Although it's rarely heard, a caller who once lived in Florida says her boss there often used it. Does it derive from Hindi? By the way, if you just can't get enough of this expression, check out Danny Kaye singing "Everything is Tickety-boo."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzVCahrtaWI

Grant quizzes Martha about some odd terms: three sisters garden, weak-hand draw, and strimmer.

In the theater, actors who forget their lines are said to go up or to go up on their lines. But why go up?

A listener from Bethel, Maine, calls with a riddle she heard at summer camp: The maker doesn't want it, the buyer doesn't use it, and the user never sees it. What is it? She proceeds to stump the hosts with a puzzle: What adjective requires five letters to form the superlative?

A Fort Worth listener wonders about a claim she saw in a 1930s magazine. The article said that traditionally, a picket line was an area between the front lines of two opposing armies where soldiers might safely venture out to pick berries without fear of being attacked. Might that be connected to the modern sense of picket line meaning a group of striking workers or protesters?

The Ultimate Slang Dictionary - 2 May 2011

Mon, 02 May 2011 21:37:00 +0000

SUMMARY

When it comes to language, who's the decider? Grant explains how grammar rules develop. Also, what's tarantula juice, and what's the difference between a muffin top and a smiley? The hosts discuss these and other terms from Jonathon Green's new Dictionary of Slang. Why do we call a waste of taxpayer money a boondoggle? What does it mean to be cotton to someone? And what's happening if we have a touch of the seconds? Plus, funny movie mistakes, a quiz in limerick form, regional terms for lanyards, and a new spin on the musical joke brown chicken, brown cow.

FULL DETAILS

Can you guess what a smiley is? Or how about tarantula juice? You could, of course, happen upon someone with a muffin top drinking inferior whisky, or you could look these terms up in Jonathon Green's new Historical Dictionary of Slang. Green spent decades assembling this three-volume collection of slang from the United States, Great Britain, and every other nook and cranny of the English-speaking world. Grant explains what has linguists so excited about its publication.

http://bit.ly/ienVE3

If you preface a statement with "I'm not trying to be racist, but," does that then make it okay? And is there a term for such disclaimer?

It's always fun to catch moviemakers' blunders. Say you're watching an epic about ancient Rome and spot a toga-clad extra who forgot to remove his wristwatch. That's an anachronism. But what do you call something that's geographically incorrect. Take, for example, an exterior shot of what's supposed to be Dunder Mifflin's Scranton office, but includes a fleeting glimpse of a palm tree? That's called an anatopism (accent on the second syllable), from the Greek topos, meaning "place."

For an excellent timewaster along these lines, Grant recommends moviemistakes.com. (Yo, "The Nativity Story"! Everyone knows maize wasn't grown in Nazareth during the time of Christ. Anatopic FAIL!)

http://bit.ly/39Ji

Understandings aren't just for epistemologists and marriage counselors. In the 18th Century, the slang term understandings was a jocular name for "boots" or "shoes." Later, the word also came to be a joking term for "legs."

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a set of Topical Limericks from the world of media and entertainment.

A listener from Dallas wonders about the origin of I'm not cotton to, meaning "I'm not in favor of" or "I don't get along with." Though it sounds like a classic Southern phrase, Martha traces it all the way back to England, where the verb to cotton had to do with textile work. Saying I'm not cotton with or I don't cotton to means that you don't get along with something.

What do you call those convenient props in illustrations and movies that cover up the proverbial naughty bits? A listener remembers an old illustrated copy of The Emperor's New Clothes that made clever use of twigs and berries for covering, well, the twigs and berries. Martha opens the kimono on the rare term antipudic, from the Latin pudor meaning "shame." It's the source also of the English words impudent and pudenda.

Alfred Hitchcock specifically referred to his own use of antipudic devices regarding the shower scene in Psycho. And of course, nobody makes better use of antipudic devices than Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery.

http://bit.ly/Zikak

Listeners emailed us in response to a call on the sonorous bow-chicka-wow-wow cliche, and we're glad they did. We learned that country star Trace Adkins has a song called "brown chicken, brown cow" that uses puppets to demonstrate just what it means to take a roll in the hay. We're sure it'd have Statler and Waldorf whipping out their opera binoculars.

http://waywordradio.org/a-murphy-a-melvin-and-a-wedgie/

http://bit.ly/fNoots

Who is Boo-Boo the Fool? A listener wonders if this African-American character has any relation the Puerto Rican fool, Juan Bobo. Martha draws a connection to the Spanish term bobo, meaning "fool," and its Latin root balbus, meaning "stammerer". Grant notes that the name Bobo has been extremely common for clowns since at least the 1940s, and the bobo/clown/jester character is prevalent in most all cultural folklores, be they African, South American, or Anglo-European.

When it comes to language, a listener from Dallas wants to know, as a fellow Texan might put it, "Who's the decider"? Grant explains that nobody makes the rules about language--and everybody does. For those seeking professional guidance, a whole community of lexicographers, dictionaries, and style guides offers rules and provenance on vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. However, on a daily basis all the users of a language implicitly write the rules by choosing words and syntax that have semantic clarity for the people they're trying to communicate with. You could go to a reference book, or you could say something to your neighbor, then judge by their reaction whether or not you made sense.

Your mother gave you life, and you gave her . . . a boondoggle? Or is it a lanyard? Or maybe a gimp? Grant assures a listener there are several terms for that long key fob you made at summer camp out of plastic yarn. Boondoggle seems to have originated among Boy Scouts in the Rochester, N.Y., area in the 1930s, and was later picked up by those in politics to mean "a wasteful debacle." Grant also shares a French term for these summer-camp crafts, scoubidou, pronounced just like the cartoon dog, but apparently no relation.

Nobody writes more movingly about lanyards than poet Billy Collins.

http://bit.ly/YqF7g

If you get an email called Life in the 1500s, hit "delete"! Grant explains that the etymology provided is not entirely accurate. That's what this show is for. Also, if you're getting an email that says Free Money, Click Here, you shouldn't trust that either. That's what jobs are for.

Snopes.com has a good debunking of these linguistic urban legends.

http://bit.ly/fJQD

A college senior has invented a word to describe that anxiety we feel when there's unfinished work looming over us. He calls it desgundes. As in, that twenty-year-old in the library making a three-foot boondoggle must likely be dealing with some inner desgundes.

An Indianapolis listener says his father used to often speak of "leaving this veil of tears." His son wonders about the origin of that phrase. Grant and Martha explain the term is actually vale, a synonym for valley. In some translations, Psalm 84 refers to traveling through a vale of tears.

Like Death Eating a Cracker (rebroadcast) - 25 Apr. 2011

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:09:00 +0000

[This episode first aired May 1, 2010.]

SUMMARY

Digital timepieces may be changing the way we talk, at least a little. There's Bob o'clock (8:08), Big o'clock (8:19), and even Pi o'clock. Also this week, what do you call that gesture with your fingers when you want to make an image larger on an iPhone? Does anyone use the expression fat chance any more? And do the expressions graveyard shift, saved by the bell, and dead ringer has anything to do with weird Victorian burial practices?

FULL DESCRIPTION

As members of the Bob o'clock Facebook group know, the expression "It's Bob O'clock!" means, "It's 8:08!" The hosts discuss this and other silly ways to tell time inspired by the boxy numbers on a digital clock.

http://bit.ly/cufbDx

What's the word for that gesture you make with your fingers when you want to make an image larger on an iPhone? Unpinch? Fwoop?

A Wisconsin man says he learned an expression that sounds like quixibar from his father to describe something confusing or befuddling. But he's never heard anyone else use it. Is it unique to his family?

Does anyone use the expression fat chance any more?

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a puzzle about heteronyms, words that have the same spelling, but different meanings, like "moped" as in "acted glum" and "moped" as in a motorized bike.

A San Diego caller wonders about the expression a-gogo, as in the name of a local restaurant, Hash House A-Gogo. Where'd it come from?

You look like death eatin' a cracker walkin' backwards. In Appalachia, this phrase means, "you look terrible." A caller wants to know its origin.

A Dallas listener is struck by the fact that Texans talk about East Texas, North Texas, South Texas, and West Texas. So why, she wonders, do people in other states say things like Southern Indiana and Northern California?

Grant talks about his daily work as a lexicographer.

A Wellesley College student has been reading about the Victorian fear of being buried alive -- also known as taphophobia -- and the bizarre 19th-century burial practices associated with it. She's heard that they gave rise to such expressions as dead ringer, graveyard shift, and saved by the bell. Martha and Grant debunk those linguistic myths. By the way, here's a cool article about those weird Victorian "escape coffins."

http://obit-mag.com/articles/escape-coffins-the-fear-of-being-buried-alive

A listener in Buford, Ga., says his mother's maiden name was Barnett, and reports that he was told that the addition of an "e" to a last name was once an indication that the person was descended from slave families.

Why do physicians speak of turfing an undesirable patient?

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordrad

A Pickle Short of a Jar (rebroadcast) - 20 Apr. 2011

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:53:00 +0000

[This episode first aired April 10, 2010.]

SUMMARY

A few pickles short of a jar, a few peas short of a casserole, two French fries short of a Happy Meal -- this week, Martha and Grant discuss these and other full-deckisms, those clever ways to describe someone who falls short in some way. Also, what's the story behind the old phrase "fish or cut bait"? When does the word "it's" have an apostrophe? And is "That's a good question" really a good response?

FULL DISCRIPTION

"Not the brightest bulb in the Christmas tree lights," "The wind is blowing but nothing's moving," "A few tacos short of a combo platter." After Grant tells a story on himself, the hosts discuss euphemistic ways of saying someone's not playing with a full deck.

Is it ever okay to write the word it's to indicate the possessive? Is the correct sentence "The dog is chewing its bone," or "The dog is chewing it's bone"? It's easy to figure out once you know the formula: It's = it is.

By the way, Grant mentions that there's an ice cream called "It's It." Here "it" is:

http://www.itsiticecream.com/media.cfm

Fish or cut bait. What does it mean, exactly? Stop fishing and cut your line, or stop fishing and do something else useful, like cutting bait?

In an earlier episode, we discussed linguistic false friends, those words in foreign languages that look like familiar English words, but mean something quite different.
Martha reads an email response from a listener who learned the hard way that in Norway "Tann Paste" is not the same as "tanning cream."

http://www.waywordradio.org/a-gazelle-on-the-lawn/

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a puzzle called "Categorical Allies." After he says a word, you must come up with second word that's in the same category, and begins with the last two letters of the original word. For example, if he says "Sampras," then the category is tennis, and the second word is "Ashe." Now try this first clue: "Sacramento." The second word would be . . . ?

If someone says, "That's a good question," do you find it annoying or insincere?

A Texas caller wonders about the origin and meaning of the term ultra-crepidarian.

Grant shares an entomological--not etymological--riddle.

The expression It'll never be seen on a galloping horse means "Don't be such a perfectionist." But why? A caller remembers an even odder version: It'll never be seen on a galloping goose.

In an earlier episode, a caller named Todd said that people are forever calling him Scott. He wondered if there was some linguistic reason that people so often confused these names. Grant does a follow-up on why people sometimes mix up names.

http://www.waywordradio.org/sailors-delight/

You're struggling to live on a budget. Are you trying to make ends meet, or make ends meat?

The hosts offer some more full-deckisms, such as "He doesn't have all his cornflakes in one box" and "She thought she couldn't use her AM radio in the evening."

A San Francisco man confesses he routinely pronounces the word "both" as "bolth." Grant gives him the results of an informal online survey that shows the caller he's not alone -- some 10 percent of respondents said they do the same thing.

Is there a single word that sums up the idea of morbid fascination?

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Heads Up! It's a Meteor - 12 April 2011

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:51:00 +0000

SUMMARY:

"Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit!" Martha and Grant talk about great catch phrases from old-time radio comedies. Also, why do we speak of a meteoric rise? Don't meteors plummet? What do you keep in a Fibber McGee drawer? Plus, myriad vs. myriad of, enamored of vs. enamored with, autocorrected text messages. And Martha shares a trick for eliminating those annoying verbal fillers like "um" and you know" from one's speech.

FULL DETAILS

They say it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an autocorrected text message to be, well, correct. Listeners like Arnold share their funny Autocorrected text messages. And by Arnold, we of course mean Brooke.

http://n.pr/fz6qI4

Well, shut my mouth and call me Shirley! Butter my buns and call me a biscuit! A listener shares several of these humorous imperatives. Grant explains that the roots of these phrases probably go back to the 1940s. Phil Harris, the bandleader on Jack Benny's radio comedy, was known for using such colorful catchphrases. An early version was Cut off my legs and call me Shorty!

http://bit.ly/exqCLY

Martha shares a childhood misunderstanding sent in by a listener. Seems her three-year-old daughter confused the phrase "exposed to the elements" with "exposed to the elephants."

What do you call an expert speller? A "Words With Friends" enthusiast wants to know. Martha tells her that a great speller is called an orthographer or orthographist, from the Latin roots ortho- meaning "straight" or "correct", and -graph meaning "to write". A bad speller, on the other hand, is a cacographer, or as it's known among them, a kakagrifar.

What is the term for that big inflatable play area you see at the park, or in your neighbor's yard? Is it a bouncy house? A jump? Grant asks listeners what they call this modern pumped-up playpen.

Our multi-talented Quiz Guy Greg Pliska, served as musical composer for the television documentary Flying Monsters 3-D.

http://www.flyingmonsters3dmovie.com/

That experience inspired him to create a puzzle using phrases that have the same letter appearing three times in a row. For example, where will you find trumpets and trombones? In the braSS Section.

What do you keep in your Fibber McGee drawer? That's what some people call a catchall container for household items. Grant traces the term for the drawer back to the old Fibber McGee and Molly radio comedy. Whenever Fibber had to fetch something from the closet, that meant a green light for the sound effects guy to let anything and everything come tumbling out. Classic Fibber!

http://bit.ly/igh3Hs

Why do we say someone whose career on the ascent is enjoying a meteoric rise? Don't meteors plummet? For that matter, a caller asks, why do we call "Heads up!" when a ball is coming towards us? Shouldn't it be "Heads down"? The hosts explain that "meteoric" in "meteoric rise" refers to the speedy, brightly streaking nature of a meteor. As for "Heads up," well, no language is perfect.

Grant shares a word he's been encountering at conferences: discussant. A discussant is someone who, after a series of papers are presented, takes the microphone to summarize the information given and offer opinions on the matter.

Should you use enamored of or enamored with? Grant explains that while North Americans use both, enamored of is the more common of the two. In Great Britain, it's enamored of, a construction similar to those in several Romance languages. Enamored by, on the other hand, should never be used. But then, love is always worth expressing, no matter the preposition.

A listener reports that when her cat starts whining, she tells it to shut its kibble-hole. If only cats understood wordplay--or English.

Ben Schott's language blog Schott's Vocab on the New York Times website held a contest for modern age greeting cards called Get Web Soon. Among the favorites: "Heartfelt condolences on the loss of your data" and "Congratulations on your relationship update".

http://nyti.ms/e0YbYe

A listener from Tennessee has a saying that doesn't quite land with his friends: "Is it any count?" Martha confirms that the phrase is most definitely Southern. It originates in the word "account," and the question of whether something "adds up."

What does hoot mean? You might describe someone as a real hoot. But is the hoot in the phrase not give a hoot a different kind of hoot? Grant explains that in the positive case, hoot is a shortening of hootenanny, a informal party with folksy music. In the negative sense, however, to hoot at somebody means to disapprove of something.

Is it really possible to change your style of speaking so that you stop using the verbal fillers "um" and "you know"? Yes, you can. Martha relates her experience with dialect-coach-to-the-stars Sam Chwat. He was adamant that by catching ourselves every time we use that conversational crutch, we can consciously train ourselves to avoid it.

http://n.pr/eoFauX

Should you use myriad or myriad of? Actually, either is fine. Here's what David Foster Wallace had to say about the question in his commentary for the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus: "[A]ny reader who's bugged by a myriad of is both persnickety and wrong--and you can usually rebut sniffy teachers, copyeditors, et. al. by directing them to Coleridge's 'Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth.'"

http://bit.ly/bSX35G

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Cathead Biscuits - 5 April 2011

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 04:06:00 +0000

Ever eaten golden catheads for breakfast? Yum! A listener shares this Southern term for big, fluffy biscuits. Also, how did people greet each other before "hello" became a standard greeting of choice? What does it mean if someone's fair to middling? How do you pronounce the word bury? Is the phrase whether or not redundant? Should we use try to or try and? And if Sam and them are coming, who exactly is "them"? Plus, Grant and Martha share some classic riddles, and Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game of animal name mash-ups.

FULL DETAILS

What happens when you throw a yellow rock into a purple stream? It splashes. (Ba-dump-bum.) Grant and Martha share this and other favorite riddles, some with deceptively obvious answers.

Why do we pronounce bury like berry and not jury? The word originates in the Old English term byrgan, and the pronunciation apparently evolved differently in different parts of England. Grant explains why many terms go mispronounced if we read things without hearing them out loud.

What do you say when you answer the telephone? On the NPR science blog, "Krulwich Wonders," Robert Krulwich notes that hello did not become a standard greeting until the mid-19th Century, when the Edison Company recommended the word as a proper phone greeting. Before that, English speakers used a variety of phrases depending on the circumstance, from hail to how are you? One thing's certain: If we'd followed Alexander Graham Bell's recommendation, we'd all be greeting each other with "Ahoy!"

http://n.pr/gscLCA

A riddle, a riddle, I suppose, a thousand eyes and never a nose. Nothing shakes up the dinner table conversation like a good potato riddle!

Greg Pliska, musical director for the Broadway show War Horse and our very own Quiz Guy, has a puzzle about Animal Hybrid Phrases combining two common expressions involving animals. For example, what do you get when stuffed animal stocks go down? A Teddy Bear Market.

Here's a link to Greg's musical bio on the Lincoln Center website:

http://bit.ly/gt9h84

Ever had golden catheads for breakfast? A native of Tennessee wonders about the origin of this term meaning "biscuit"--specifically, ones that are light, fluffy, and about the size of, well, a cat's head. Martha explains how the names of many foods derive from their resemblance to other things--a head of cabbage, for example.

A listener has spent the last 30 years looking for the origin of the playful phrase "you're the berries." This affectionate expression first appears in literature in the 1908 book Sorrows of a Showgirl, then made its way into popular slang by the 1920s. However, it seems to disappear during the next decade, and it remains only as a relic heard in the vernacular of those who lived during the era.

http://bit.ly/gyF9TV

Should we use try and or try to? Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says it's grammatically permissible to try and go to the store, or to ask someone to try and speak up. However, a fan of formality ought to stick with try to. Still, Grant warns against trying to force logic on the English language by creating rules that don't exist.

http://bit.ly/cQrxPx

http://bit.ly/eydxnN

Whoever makes it tells it not. Whoever takes it knows it not. Whoever knows it wants it not. What is it? Martha shares this old riddle.

The question of how children acquire language has long intrigued parents and scholars. MIT cognitive scientist Deb Roy recently found a novel way to study what he calls "word birth." He wired his home with cameras and microphones, and recorded his infant son's every utterance as he grew into toddlerhood. He then combined the 90,000 hours of video and 140,000 hours of audio into some astonishing montages. Dr. Roy shared his findings at a TED conference.

http://bit.ly/eaKVBS

More visuals and audio from the study in this article from Fast Company:

http://bit.ly/hOOf3Z

If you're fair to middling, you're doing just fine. A native of the Tennessee mountains wonders about the origin of this phrase her good-humored grandfather used. As it turns out, fair to middling was one of the many gradations a farmer would hear in the 19th Century when they'd bring in their crop--usually cotton-- to be priced and purchased.

Is the phrase whether or not redundant? Well, take this sentence: "Whether or not you like it, Martha is dressing as a ballerina." Would that sound right without the or not? Now, the or not is technically redundant, but depending on the case, it's best to pick the wording that won’t distract the reader or listener.

http://bit.ly/91hA3J

Only the grass dies when elephants fight. This Liberian proverb is a reminder that it's the powerless who suffer when governments or factions fight.

If Sam and them are going to be here after while, can the "and them" mean just one additional person? In some parts of the country, it could be Sam's wife, or Sam's entire softball team. A listener from Texas shares this charming colloquialism.

What goes 99, clump? If you woke up at night and scratched your head, what time would it be? Grant has the answers to those riddles.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

A Murphy, a Melvin, and a Wedgie (rebroadcast) - 29 March 2011

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:19:58 +0000

[This episode first aird March 13, 2010.]

When it comes to joining Facebook affinity groups, grammar lovers have lots of choices. Take, for example, the group whose motto is Punctuation saves lives. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-eat-Grandma-or-Lets-eat-Grandma-Punctuation-saves-lives/276265851258 It's called Let's Eat Grandma!'" or "Let's eat, Grandma! http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-eat-Grandma-or-Lets-eat-Grandma-Punctuation-saves-lives/276265851258 Martha and Grant talk about their favorite tongue-in-cheek "Facebook groups for grammar lovers." Also this week: when to use "apostrophes," whether to distinguish between "bring and take," and the "difference between a murphy and a wedgie."

Martha and Grant share some favorite Facebook groups:

Ambrose Bierce was the baddest-ass lexicographer who ever lived.

http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=I+judge+you+when+you+use+poor+grammar&init=quick#!/group.php?gid=2209136261&ref=ts

I judge you when you use poor grammar.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2209553478&ref=search&sid=730080987.3196765532..1

I judge you when you call acceptable usage 'poor grammar.'

http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=punctuation+saves+lives&init=quick#!/group.php?gid=44033721482&ref=ts

What are grammar?

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=272109356251&ref=search&sid=730080987.1532898575..1#!/group.php?v=wall&ref=search&gid=272109356251

People Who Always Have To Spell Their Names For Other People

http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=what+are+grammar&init=quick#!/group.php?gid=2221197812&ref=ts

Of course, you can also find "A Way with Words" on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/waywordradio?ref=ts.

Ever notice how you can sing the lyrics of "Amazing Grace" to the theme from "Gilligan's Island" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WbnDN14tw8 -- or for that matter, to The House of the Rising Sun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDE4URgxVas? Turns out there are many more examples of this. Is there a word for this musical phenomenon? (Did you know Garrison Keillor can sing "Amazing Grace" to theme song of "The Mickey Mouse Club" http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2008/05/01/amazing_grace.php.)

A Connecticut listener says her Generation Y friends make fun of her when she describes something happening in "fits and starts." Is it that antiquated a phrase? Where does it come from, anyway?

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a quiz about famous trios. Try this one: "Steve Martin, Martin Short, and ___________?"

If someone gives you "crazy props or mad props," they're congratulating you. A Chicago college student wants to know what props means in this context.

What's the difference between "bring and take"?

When someone grabs your underwear from behind and gives it a good, vertical yank, it's called a "wedgie." A caller knows that term, but wonders whether and "how a wedgie differs from a murphy or a melvin."

Grant quizzes Martha about the meaning of several rhyming verb and noun phrases: "cuff and stuff," the "cherries and blueberries," "chew and screw," "eat it and beat it," and "flap and zap."

A Lawrenceville, Georgia, woman wonders: If chalkboards go the way of the buggy whip, what simile will replace the expression nails on a chalkboard?

Grant answers a listener's email question about the meaning of the musical phrase "chicky-wah-wah."

A caller from Veroqua, Wisconsin, is fascinated by "hoarfrost" and wonders about the origin of its name. Grant explains its relation to the English term hoary.

The mother of a boy named Hendrix wonders how to punctuate the possessive of his name.

Should she add an apostrophe or apostrophe with an "s"? Hendrix' or Hendrix's?

"A Way with Words" is supported by its listeners. Donate today! http://www.waywordradio.org/donate

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Sailor's Delight (rebroadcast) - 21 March 2011

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 03:21:29 +0000

[This episode first aired March 6, 2010.]

"Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning." Martha talks about this weather proverb, which has been around in one form or another since ancient times. Grant shares a favorite weather word: slatch http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/slatch. Also this week: Is there a better alternative to the word "mentee"? What's "pooflapoo pie"?

A Dallas listener and her boss have a dispute. The boss says the staff should get "on the stick." The caller and her co-workers say the correct phrase is "on the ball." Grant gives her an answer, then suggests a third option used in Hawaii: "on the kinipopo." http://bit.ly/bHw1F6

What's the best term for "someone who's being mentored"? A woman in a mentoring program at church thinks the word "mentee sounds like "manatee." She's hoping for an alternative.

Grant shares another weather-related word from Britain: parky.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=57638

Quiz Guy John Chaneski offers a puzzle in honor of the hosts' initials. Every clue prompts a two-word answer beginning with the letters M and B or G and B. For example: "Paper or plastic?"

A caller named Todd says that when people meet him for the first time, they sometimes call him Scott, even if he's wearing a nametag with his real name on it. It's happened too many times to be a coincidence, he says, and wonders if there's something about the double letters that registers the wrong name in people's minds. Why do we get other people's names wrong?

Whip up a big batch of pistachio pudding, then add pineapple, walnuts, Cool Whip, and marshmallow bits, and what do you have? A Los Angeles woman says her grandmother used to make a dish with those ingredients that she called "pooflapoo pie." Is that just her family's name for it, or do other people refer to it that way? Other people call it "Watergate salad" or "ambrosia."

Have trouble remembering the difference between stalagtites and stalagmites? Martha shares a mnemonic that will help.

A police officer says that the prosecutor edits out the word "that" from the reports he submits, as in, "The subject stated that he met the co-defendant at a party." Is the word "that" necessary here? Martha and Grant disagree. Also, the cop also has a brain-teaser for the hosts: Can you use the word "that" five times consecutively in a sentence correctly?

The hosts talk about the tricks they use to remember how to spell certain words.

Why do we say that someone finely attired is "dressed to the nines"?

A woman says that when playing hide-and-seek with a small child, her mother-in-law says "peep-eye"!" instead of "peekaboo"!" Is that usage limited to certain parts of the country? And where do they say "pee-bo"!"?

Grant talks about two other weather-related terms, "frontogenesis" and "aeromancy."

When comparing one item with the rest of the items in a group, "which is better: more or most"?

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

Qi, Qat, and Za: Great Scrabble Words - 14 March 2011

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 04:46:11 +0000

SUMMARY

Need a good Scrabble word? Grant shares some of his favorites, and invites listeners to challenge him on "Words with Friends." Also, why do we call those classic screwball films madcap comedies? And what does it mean to walk in a crocodile? Plus, mondegreens, naval slang, learned versus learnt, and no way, Jose. And what do you call that flourish at the bottom of John Hancock's John Hancock?

FULL DETAILS

Need a Scrabble word with q or z? Grant shares some of his favorite legal Scrabble words: qi (the circulating life force in Chinese philosophy), qat (a leaf chewed in some cultures for stimulating effects), and za (a shortening of the word "pizza"). He's inviting listeners to challenge him on the game Words with Friends on the iPhone or Android: search the username grantbarrett. What good is a smartphone without smart friends?

Where do we get the phrase belly up? The expression has made its way to the bar, but the original belly up belonged to a dead fish.

A listener wonders why his girlfriend remarks "hubba-hubba" when he's dressing up for the night. The flirty call had its heyday in the 1940s, when World War II soldiers would see a pretty lady walking down the street. Although no one's sure of the origin of "hubba hubba," new research suggests it might have evolved from a catchphrase used by the "Ki Ki, the Haba Haba Man," an employee of P.T. Barnum.

There's nothing like some joe with cow and sand in the morning. That would be "coffee with milk and sugar" in World War II naval slang.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1495930

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game of rhyming headlines based on the 1937 Variety issue, "Sticks Nix Hick Pix," claiming that rural folks avoid movies about rural folks.

http://bit.ly/fgtLlM

What is a madcap comedy? A fan of classics like Bringing up Baby wonders about the origin of the term. Martha explains that years ago, the word cap sometimes referred to one's "head." So if someone's "madcap," they're crazy in the head. And of course, what would Shakespeare's Henry IV be without the "nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales"?

Did you say "shtreet"? The str sound is becoming shtr in more and more mouths of English speakers. Grant explains that this pronunciation of "street" as "shtreet" is simply a feature of language--sort of the consonant version of a diphthong.

What do you call that embellishment at the bottom of old signatures, like the hash-marked line beneath John Hancock's name? It's called a paraph, originally used as a distinct mark to protect against forgery.

A listener was confused when she heard a radio announcer say a man had "Amanda Lynn" in his hands, only to find out that it was "a mandolin." These funny misheard phrases are called mondegreens, a term coined in Sylvia Wright's 1954 Harper's article, "The Death of Lady Mondegreen". It comes from a mishearing of the song "The Bonny Earl of Moray": "They have slain the Earl o' Moray, and laid him on the green." Another example: "Olive, the other reindeer" for "all of the other reindeer" in the song about Rudolph.

http://bit.ly/f0OLUE

http://huff.to/15mHyy

Here are The Two Ronnies from the BBC television show in a sketch about the mishearing of "fork handles" as "four candles."

http://bit.ly/g9bWg

Grant reads from a listener's favorite poem by Lisel Mueller called "Why We Tell Stories." It reads in part: "We sat by the fire in our caves,/ and because we were poor, we made up a tale/ about a treasure mountain/ that would open only for us."

http://bit.ly/gtwrCt

Martha shares an email from a longtime listener, Lois Teeslink of Vista, Calif., about a favorite childhood librarian.

What's the source of the phrase No way, Jose? And who in the world is Jose? Grant says the expression doesn't show up in print until 1973, contrary to the oft-repeated story that it appeared in The Village Voice during the 1960s. The phrase "No way" was often used then; the name Jose was likely tacked on just because it rhymes.

The saying Act in haste, repent at leisure is typically a warning that means "if you make a hasty decision, you'll have plenty of time to mull over your mistake later." It's likely a variation of an older version, "Marry in haste, repent at leisure." David Foster Wallace had a most apt use of the phrase in his novel Infinite Jest: "The shopworn 'Act in Haste, Repent at Leisure' would seem to have been custom-designed for the case of tattoos". Be it a tattoo or a marriage, it's wise to think about the consequences before you act.

Did you ever walk in a crocodile? In Britain, a crocodile can be "a group of children walking two by two in a long file." The phrase came up in an interview with the stylist Vidal Sassoon, who, as a child in London walked in a crocodile to school with other Jewish students being heckled by Nazi sympathizers.

http://bit.ly/6n71BG

http://n.pr/eoRkT7

Are we tested on what we've learned, or what we've learnt? Grant explains how efforts to replace the "t" verb ending with "ed" gradually took hold in the United States, but not in Britain. Affiliated nations, such as Australia, New Zealand, and India, also use the "t" form. Either way, they're both correct. Grant recommends some books on Indian English.

http://bit.ly/fesVDe

http://bit.ly/ggom2v

"Imitation is the sincerest form of television," said the radio comedian Fred Allen. Listeners are invited to share their favorite modern proverbs like this one, as well as their favorite classics.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.