A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over

Humorist Roy Blount Jr. stops by to try his hand at a slang quiz specifically about Southernisms. Blount, who is president of the Authors Guild, also joined Grant for a wide-ranging conversation about such topics as the controversy over writers' rights and the Amazon Kindle 2. Listen here. http://www.waywordradio.org/a-conversation-with-roy-blount-jr/ -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If a restaurant menu states, 'We cook off our potatoes,' what in the heck does that mean? A truck driver who encountered such an announcement at a roadside cafe is still puzzling over what it means to 'cook off' a tuber. He phones in to hash it out. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No, it's not the neurological effect of spending too much time researching odd new terms. Slang jang is a tongue-tickling sauce found in East Texas. For more about slang jang, including recipes, check out etymologist Barry Popik's site. http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/slang_jang/ -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it acceptable to make a brand-new adverb simply by adding an -ly to an adjective? A scientist wants to know, and specifically a term she uses, nuclearly. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a brand-new season of A Way with Words! Grant has big news, too: He's used up his last Metrocard, packed up his belongings, and moved to the Left Coast. He reports on some features of California language there that are already catching his ear. Also in this episode, what's the real meaning of decimate? And what does it mean when someone says don't leave your endgate up? A Wisconsin community is about to open its first dog park. But what to name it? 'Scentral Park'? 'Unleashed'? Martha and Grant try to help. Why do we call a run-down area skid row? A Philadelphia listener has a Yiddish twist on an old palindrome: 'Unable I was ere I saw Elba, nu?' 'If you're writing out the names of numbers, what three numbers require six e's and no other vowels?' Quiz Guy John Chaneski has the answer in his latest word puzzle. Instead of saying 'Good-bye' or 'So long,' a Hoosier says, his great-grandfather used to say, Don't leave your endgate up. What's up with that? 'Are you shining me on?' means 'Are you trying to fool me?' But what does shining have to do with tricking someone? Grant talks about the surprising beauty to be found in, of all things, the names of shantytowns. Rock climbers use the term beta to refer to any information they receive about a route before climbing it. Is it related to beta as in 'beta-testing software'? The word decimate has a grisly etymology. It derives from a Latin military term meaning 'to execute every tenth man in an army unit'--the penalty for a failed mutiny. As a result, some sticklers insist that the English word decimate should be used only to indicate 'destroying a fraction of something' rather than 'destroy completely' or 'utterly wipe out.' Who's right? A Pittsburgh woman reports that when she went away to college, she was surprised to find people correcting her grammar when she'd say things like 'the car needs washed' or 'the kids need picked up.' She wonders if she's been saying it wrong all these years. There's a new Facebook group called People for a Library-Themed Ben & Jerry's Flavor. They say that libraries are awesome, B&J ice cream is tasty, so why not combine the two and convince Ben & Jerry's to produce a new flavor with a library theme? Candidates so far include 'Gooey Decimal System' and 'Rocky Read.' Do you have others? Tell us about it in the forum. A 14 yr-old teenager pronounces the word 'bagel' as BEH-gul, rather than BAY-gul. Her family thinks she's crazy. Who's right? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode originally aired October 11, 2008.] This week, Martha and Grant discuss terms from Australia, including aerial ping-pong, pumpkin squatter, andâkangarooster? They explain the connection between stereotypes and stereos, and why we call the person clearing tables in a restaurant a busboy. Also, what's the plural of moose? Meese? Mooses? Great news for language fans: The Australian National Dictionary is now available online for free. It's full of fascinating words from Down Under. Contrary to what you might think, for example, kangaroosters are pouchless and feather-free, and a pumpkin squatter isn't a trendy thigh-reducing exercise. Ever been accused of faunching around? A San Diego listener says her family used this expression to describe the act of squirming fussily or impatiently, the kind of thing that happens when a toddler gets a haircut. She asks if the word is unique to her family. Say there's one moose, and then another comes along. Now there are twoâwhat? Meese? Mooses? Moose? A Denver man wants to know the correct plural term for moose. The hosts offer news you can use about moose. If Grandma thinks you're coming down with the epizootic, she'll probably want to put you to bed and bring you a bowl of soup. But what's an epizootic, anyway? And does being diagnosed with it make you feel better or worse? Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a puzzle called 'Blank the Blank' or 'Verb the Noun,' about three-word phrases with a 'the' in the middle. It's harder than you might think, so play along and see if you can 'blank' the 'blank.' How about the phrase saddle my nag? No, this phrase isn't some obscure bit of jargon from world of finance. It's an expression familiar to Aussie schoolchildren. Martha explains what it means. If the word is spelled a-s-k, why do so many people pronounce 'ask' as 'axe'? Grant has a surprising answer, one that goes all the way back to, believe it or not, the time of Chaucer. If a tippler has one too many, he's said to be three sheets to the wind. But why three? And why, of all things, sheets? A Wisconsin listener remembers a boss who used to use an odd expression whenever he wanted to change the subject of a discussion. The boss would say, 'Well, wet birds don't fly at night,' then switch to another subject. Grant explains what the term likely means. Hint: Not much! Aerial ping-pong: Is it a new Olympic sport? A less intense version of tonsil hockey? Martha reveals the meaning of this Australian English term. In this week's installment of 'Slang This!' a contestant from the National Puzzlers' League tries to guess the meaning of the term vigorish. And no, it's not a Viagra-laced anise liqueur. He also guesses the meaning of the phrase how we roll. Everyone knows the term stereotype, but did you ever stop to wonder what the word has to do with stereos? Not much, really. But it does derive from the world of printing. Why do we call the fellow clearing the dishes and silverware a busboy? A Chicago listener isn't satisfied with the answer, 'Because he's bussing the table.' Grant reveals the terms likely Latin roots. You're going to meet yourself coming back. A New York City woman who's always used this expression is surprised when a friend is puzzled by it. Is it really that unusual? Grant assures her that it's been around for quite a while. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does your family have a word for the cardboard tube left over from a roll of toilet paper? A caller says his family refers to them Oh-ah, Oh-ahs. Turns out many families have their own terms for them, including drit-drit, dawda dawda, hoo-hoo, to-do, taw-taw, and der der. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many of the world's languages apparently derived from a prehistoric common ancestor known as Indo-European. But since no one ever wrote down a word of it, how do we know what it was like? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired October 4, 2008.] Proverbs pack great truths into a few well-chosen words, no matter which language you speak. Check out this one from Belize: 'Don't call the alligator a big-mouth till you have crossed the river.' And this truism from Zanzibar: 'When two elephants tussle, it's the grass that suffers.' Martha and Grant discuss a new paremiography--a collection of proverbs--from around the world. A woman from Cape Cod is looking for a polite word that means the current wife of my ex-husband. She's thinking about 'cur-wife,' but somehow that doesn't quite work. Neither does the phrase 'that poor woman.' The hosts try to help her come up with other possibilities. 'It's raining, it's pouring.' But what exactly is the 'it' that's doing all that raining and pouring? This question from a caller prompts Grant to explain what linguists mean when they talk about the 'weather it.' Hint: It depends on what the meaning of 'it' is. Your eyetooth is located directly beneath your eye. But is that why they're called eyeteeth? A Boston caller would give her eyeteeth to know. Okay, not really, but she did want an answer to this question. Quiz Guy John Chaneski invites Grant and Martha to busta rhyme with a word puzzle called Rhyme Groups. You've seen people indicate emphasis by putting a period after each of several words, and capitalizing the first letter of each word. A Michigan listener wonders how this stylistic trick arose. Her question was prompted by this description of French model-turned-presidential-spouse Carla Bruni: 'She's got a cashmere voice and a killer body. Plays decent guitar and writes her own lyrics. Can hold her own with queens and statesmen. She. Must. Be. Stopped.' Jealous much? Do you want to get down? Ask that in parts of Louisiana, and people know you're not inquiring whether they care to dance, you're asking if they want to get out of a car. A former Louisianan who grew up using the expression that way wonders if it's French-inspired. The hosts proceed to use the phrase 'get down' so much they end up with a dreadful K.C. and the Sunshine Band earworm. Which is correct for describing a close family resemblance: spittin' image or spit and image? Grant and Martha discuss the possible origins of these expressions, including a recent hypothesis that's sure to surprise. In this week's episode of Slang This!, Dave Dickerson from the National Puzzlers' League tries to guess the meaning of the terms cowboy up and money bomb. If you've used the word sickly too many times in a paragraph and need a synonym, there's always dauncy, also spelled donsie and dauncy. Grant explains the origin of this queasy-sounding word. A Navy man stationed in Hawaii phones to settle a dispute over the difference between acronyms and initialisms. Here's hoping he didn't go AWOL to make the call. Is English is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket? A Wisconsin grandmother thinks so, particularly because of all the ums and you knows she hears in everyday speech. The hosts discuss these so-called disfluencies, including how to avoid them and how to keep other people's disfluencies from grating on your nerves. We leave you with a couple other proverbs translated into English. They're from David Crystal's paremiography, As They Say in Zanzibar: Proverbs are like butterflies; some are caught and some fly away. (Germany) Teachers open the door; you enter by yourself. (China) -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired Sept. 27, 2009.] OMG, text messaging! It's destroying the English language, corrupting young minds, turning us into a nation of illiterates. It's probably shrinking the ozone layer, too. Or is it? In his new book, 'Txting: The Gr8 Db8,' author David Crystal offers a different perspective. The book's surprising message is one which linguists have shared for years: Far from obliterating literacy, texting may actually improve it. So put that in your message header and send it! The French phrase 'au jus' means with sauce, which is why it drives some diners to distraction when a menu lists beef with 'au jus sauce.' A Wisconsin listener calls to say this phrase sets her teeth on edge. The hosts order up an answer fresh from the 'Waiter, There's a Redundancy in My Soup!' Department. In medical parlance, your big toe is your 'hallux.' But what about the other four? Do they have anatomical names as well? A San Diego man who hurt the toe next to his big toe is tired of referring to his injured digit as 'the toe next to my big toe,' and wants the proper medical term. How does 'porcellus domi' grab you? Prehensily? Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a letter-shaving game called 'Curtailments.' In this game, Grant and Martha leave everything on the floor. A caller from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, was puzzled when she moved there and locals asked, 'What's your name from home?' meaning, 'What's your maiden name?' The community has a strong Polish heritage, and she wonders if there's a connection. It's a good hunch, and Martha explains why. Say you have a particularly rambunctious child. Okay, a little hellion. Is it proper to describe the little devil as a 'holy terror'? Or might it be more correct and more logical to call him an 'unholy terror'? A Los Angeles caller thinks it's the latter. If you've flown from Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport recently, you may have noticed an odd but official-looking sign that reads: 'RECOMBOBULATION AREA.' A caller from Madison was discombobulated to see it, then started wondering about the roots of such words. See if it does the same for you here: http://tinyurl.com/4mc8dm The real problem with texting isn't how it affects language, but what it does to social interaction. Is there anything more annoying when you're trying to have a conversation than watching your companion's eyes flitting to his phone when he sees that a text message just arrived? The hosts discuss the need for a new text-messaging etiquette. Let's say that you're getting 'diesel therapy' at 'o-dark-thirty.' What are you getting and when are you getting it? A New Jersey contestant from the National Puzzlers' League learns the meaning of these terms in this week's slang quiz. What do you call a word made from a blend of two other words, like 'motel' from 'motor' and 'hotel'? A listener says his term for them is 'Reese's Peanut Butter Cup words,' after the old commercial: 'You got chocolate in my peanut butter! You got peanut butter in my chocolate!' But he wonders if there's another, more established term. The hosts introduce him to the word 'portmanteau.' When it comes to text messaging and its effect on English, the linguistic apocalypse is not nigh. Quite the contrary, in fact. Grant talks about some eye-opening research about text-messaging and teen literacy. That's all for this week. L8r! -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired June 6, 2009.] Has the age of email led to an outbreak of exclamation marks? Do women use them more than men? Also, is there a word for the odd feeling when you listen to a radio personality for years, then discover that they look nothing like your mental picture of them? And what's the origin of the verb 'to bogart'? Writing in the 'Guardian,' Stuart Jeffries contends that our email boxes are being infested with exclamation marks , known as 'bangs' or 'bangers' (without mash) to some people. Jacob Rubin also wrote on the subject a couple of years ago in Slate. If you tell a buddy, 'Don't bogart that joint,' you're telling him not to hog the marijuana cigarette. Ahem. We know phrase was popularized in the film 'Easy Rider' (performed by The Fraternity of Man ) but does it have anything to do with Humphrey Bogart? You know that odd feeling when you've listened to a radio personality for years, but when you finally meet them, they look nothing like you'd imagined? Is there a word for that weird disconnect? 'Radiofreude,' maybe? Martha shares what F. Scott Fitzgerald and Elmore Leonard had to say about exclamation marks. Short version: Neither is a fan. Quiz Guys John Chaneski and Greg Pliska lead a couple of rounds of 'Chain Reaction,' a word game that's great for parties and long car rides. Two players try to make a third one guess the word that the other two are thinking of. The trick is that they have to give alternating one-word clues to build a sentence. Hilarity ensues. Hillary sues. Why do some people refer to a couch or a sofa as a 'davenport'? How should you pronounce the word 'gala' ? Grant reports some etymological news: A recent article in the journal American Speech suggests a new source for the term that means 'drunk,' 'blotto.' If you're in New Zealand and are told to 'rattle your dags,' you'd better get a move on. Literally, though, the expression has to do with sheep butts. Martha reviews the new book, 'Dreaming in Hindi,' by Katherine Russell Rich , a memoir about setting out to learn a second language in mid-life. Rich spent a year in India to learn Hindi, and became so fascinated with the process that she went on to interview experts about the mechanics of second-language acquisition and how it affects the brain. Publisher's Weekly has an interview with Rich . Grant discusses an article about what happens to the mother tongue voice when first-language speakers of indigenous languages in India learn English and then spend years focused on speaking and writing in their adopted tongue. How did the word 'pigeonhole' come to mean 'classify' or 'categorize'? An employee who gets a great termination package is said to leave the company with a 'golden parachute.' Where'd that term come from? A caller is adamant honorifics should be used to address the President of the United States, as in 'President Obama,' never 'Mr. Obama.' He thinks it's disrespectful and divisive when news organizations use 'Mr.' -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired May 16, 2009.] Pickle, baboon, cupcake, snorkel, pumpkin, Kalamazoo -- let's face it, some words are just plain funny. But what makes some words funnier than others? Martha and Grant consider this question with an assist from Neil Simon's play (and movie) 'The Sunshine Boys.' Also in this episode: 'There are three words in the English language that end in -gry. Angry and hungry are two of them.' The hosts explain how this 'aggravating riddle' works -- and doesn't work. And what's a 'shivaree'? Do you know this diabolical riddle? 'There are three words in the English language that 'end in -gry.' Angry and hungry are two of them. What's the third?' The hosts explain that the answer's not as simple as you might think . Does the expression 'to boot,' as in 'I'll sell you this Hummer and throw in a free tank of gas to boot,' have anything to do with booting up a computer? In an earlier episode, the hosts discussed the phrase 'all over it like a duck on a junebug' , which refers to doing something with great eagerness. Martha shares an email from a Wisconsin listener who's watched plenty of ducks interact with junebugs and offers a vivid description of what that looks like. In this week's puzzle, Quiz Guy John Chaneski is looking for phrases in which the only vowel is the letter A. Try this clue: 'This person said, 'I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant, sometimes it is fearful, but nevertheless, it is inevitable.' Hint: The speaker's first name is the same as one of this show's hosts. What do you call the wheeled contraption that you push around the grocery store? Shopping cart? Shopping carriage? Shopping wagon? Buggy? A former Kentuckian wonders if anyone besides her calls them 'bascarts.' Check out this dialect map featuring these and other names for this device. One definition of a 'shivaree' is 'a compliment extended to every married couple made up of beating tin pans, blowing horns, ringing cowbells, playing horse fiddles, caterwauling, and in fine, the use of every disagreeable sound to make the night hideous.' Also spelled 'charivari,' this old-fashioned form of hazing newlyweds often involved interrupting them in the middle of the night with a raucous party. A former Hoosier calls to discuss boyhood memories of a shivaree and wonders about the source of this term. How do you 'pronounce February'? Is it FEB-roo-air-ee or FEB-yew-air-ee? A husband and wife have a long-running dispute over whether the word scissors is singular or plural. Is it 'a scissors' or 'a pair of scissors'? Grant recommends a couple of favorite children's books by Kate Banks and Georg Hallensleben: 'Baboon' and 'The Night Worker' . Martha explains the story behind the expression 'richer than Bim Gump.' Find out more about the long-running comic strip that inspired it here . The names Australia and Austria are awfully similar. Is it a coincidence? The H1N1 virus has a lot of people wondering about pandemics vs. epidemics. Grant explains the difference. Martha explains the origin of the word 'coin,' as in 'to coin a phrase.' -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does it bug you when people talk about themselves in the third person? A caller finds herself mightily annoyed by this habit, which she observes especially among politicians and celebrities. There's a word for the practice of referring to oneself in the third person: illeism. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired May 2, 2009.] In this downbeat economy, some advertisers are reaching for upbeat language. Take the new Quaker Oats catchphrase, 'Go humans go,' or Coca-Cola's current slogan, 'Open happiness.' Martha and Grant discuss whether chirpy, happy ad copy can go too far. Also this week, why New Yorkers insist they 'stand on line' instead of in line. And who is 'William Trembletoes'? And what's a 'zerbert'? (The title of this post is taken from a routine by comedian Bill Hicks .) Here's a New York Times article about perky ad copy in a sluggish economy. 'William Trembletoes, he's a good fisherman. Catches hens, puts 'em in the pen...' If you recited this rhyme growing up, you're probably tapping your foot along with its singsong cadences right now. The rhyme accompanied a children's game, and is the source, by the way, of the title of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. A caller who played the game as a child wonders if its roots lie in her Cajun heritage. It's an easy way to separate New Yorkers from non-New Yorkers: 'Do you stand on line or in line?' A Midwesterner who relocated to the Big Apple wants to know why people there are adamant about waiting on line instead of in line. See a map showing the dispersal of both forms across the U.S. . Quiz Guy John Chaneski conducts a word puzzle involving musical instruments hidden in various sentences. Try this one: 'My cousin is a Santa Monica zookeeper whose specialty is hummingbirds.' (Keep saying it over and over until you hear this instrument's name.) If you're doing a hasty, haphazard job, you're said to do it with 'a lick and a promise.' What's the origin of that expression? Who put the piping in the expression 'piping hot'? Oh, that gives me 'agita'! A Connecticut native says her Midwestern colleagues office were flabbergasted to encounter this expression, which she's known all her life. Grant and Martha discuss this word for 'upset' and its likely linguistic roots. Hear the song about 'agita' from the movie 'Broadway Danny Rose'. When somebody cuts you off in traffic do you 'feel all stabby'? Grant discusses this slang term. You know the sputtering, raspberry-like noises you make with your lips on a baby's tummy so he'll giggle? Many people call that a 'raspberry,' but some people call that a 'zerbert.' A caller's husband insists that Bill Cosby coined the term on his popular sitcom. She begs to differ. The expression 'over yonder' isn't just the stuff of Carole King songs and old-timey hymns. To many Southerners, it's everyday English. The hosts discuss this poetic-sounding turn of phrase. For tech-savvy types, saying 'ping me,' meaning 'contact me,' is as natural as grabbing a snack while waiting for your computer to boot up. The hosts disagree about whether the verb to ping has already moved into common parlance in the larger world. It's a grammatical question that trips up even the best writers sometimes: Is it 'who or whom'? A physician says he likes the sentiment in a colleague's email signature, but he's not sure it's 100% grammatical. The sentence: 'There are some patients whom we cannot cure, but there are none we cannot help, cannot comfort, and none we cannot harm.' -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If a colleague repeatedly mispronounces a word, what's the best way to handle it? Should you correct him? Ignore it? Is it possible to discuss the proper way to say something without being rude or condescending? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The English language has no shortage of words that mean nonsensical talk, including one that's piqued a listener's curiosity: How did flannel come to mean 'empty chatter' or 'hot air,' as in 'Don't give me any of that flannel!'? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired Apr. 11, 2009.] Why are the names of cars so unimaginative? Grant argues that auto manufacturers might take inspiration from 'ornithology' to build a better car name. (Then again, would you be any less aggravated if you were rear-ended by a 'lazuli bunting'?) Also this week, why do so many young folks 'pepper their speech with the word 'like,' and what, if anything, can be done about it? All that, plus Luddites, chicken bog, a ducks on June bug, and the possible origins of the phrase to get one's goat. Ever been met with a quizzical look and the question, 'Do what?' The hosts discuss this dialectal equivalent of 'How's that?' or 'Come again?' For many Southerners, it's very picture of eagerness and alacrity: 'He was all over that like a duck on a June bug!' Martha and Grant reveal the memorable image behind this curious expression. Grant notes that birds sometimes get re-christened with a different name. Often a bird's 'commemorative name'--one that honors a bird's discoverer--will be replaced years later. Case in point: 'Rivoli's hummingbird' is now known as the 'magnificent hummingbird.' Puzzle Guy Greg Pliska takes equal portions of words and numbers, mixes well, and whips up a quiz called 'Initiarithmetic.' The idea is to guess the words based on the initial letters of well-known phrases involving numbers. For example: 'There are 12 M in the Y.' Wait, that was too easy. How about this one: 'There are 2 K of P in the W. T W D the W into T K of P, and T W D.' Is there a way to get youngsters to stop overusing the word 'like'? The mother of a middle-schooler who's picked up the habit wonders where it came from and how she can stop it. Grant and Martha have suggestions, and Martha mentions this enlightening essay about teenagers and 'like' by linguist Geoffrey Nunberg 'Chicken bog' isn't a bird name, nor is it a place. It's a dish of rice, chicken, country sausage, and lots of black pepper, found primarily in the Southeast. It sometimes goes by the name chicken perlow or pillow or pilau. A South Carolina caller wonders about the origin of these food terms. By the way, if you like chicken bog, you'll love the annual bog-off in Loris, South Carolina. Some folks use the old-fashioned exclamation 'Good night, nurse!' as a handy substitute for a cussword. But where'd it come from? Grant explains how this phrase became popular in the early 20th century. What's a 'Luddite'? Martha explains that this term for 'someone resistant to technological change' has its roots in a form of populist rage in the early 19th century. A Texas grandmother says she's long been baffled about the origin of a counting rhyme that she learned from 'her' grandmother. During the game, her grandmother bounced her on her knee, saying, 'Malagee Buck, Malagee Buck, how many fingers do I hold up?' The caller learned that the game she loved as a child is incredibly widespread throughout the world in various forms, and dates back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. If you're told to 'keep your eyes peeled,' you're being warned to stay alert. But--'peeled'? Where'd we get the expression to 'get someone's goat'? A caller suspects it comes from a Sicilian folk tale. But does it? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode originally aired March 28, 2009.] Why is it that what you say to your family and what they hear are different? If you say 'no,' your child hears 'maybe,' and if you say 'maybe,' she hears 'ask again and again, and yes is just around the corner.' Grant and Martha discuss ways that families communicate and miscommunicate. Also in this episode: the West Coast exclamation 'moded!,' the Navy expression 'turn to,' how to pronounce 'llama,' what it means if someone says your car is 'banjaxed,' and more. Grab some popcorn, slip into a folding seat, and you're ready to watch the coming attractions. But if they're shown before the main feature, why in the world are movie previews called 'trailers'? Enjoy old movie trailers at Turner Classic Movies. It's California in the 1980s, and--uh-oh!--you're outsmarted or caught doing something stupid and someone else says, 'Ooooooooooo, moded!' This Schadenfreudian slip of an expression was sometimes accompanied by a chin-stroking gesture, or elaborated still further as 'Moded, corroded, your booty exploded!' Grant has the goods on this expression's likely origin. Check out his entry for itâand the comments of people who know the termâat his dictionary site . In a previous episode, , a caller sought a classy term for a worker in the meat section of a cheese shop, something a little more sophisticated than, say, 'meatmonger.' The helpful suggestions from listeners keep rolling in, and Grant and Martha share a few. Wait, did they really suggest 'carncierge' and 'meatre d''? Quiz Guy Greg Pliska drops in with a word game called 'False Opposites.' They're pairs of words whose prefixes, suffixes, and other elements make them appear to be opposites, even though they're not. For example, what seeming opposites might be derived from the clues 'forward motion' and 'American legislative body'? Feel free to weigh the pros and cons of your answer. Navy veterans will recognize the two-fingered gesture that looks as if someone's turning an invisible doorknob. It accompanies the order 'turn to,' meaning 'get to work.' How did this handy expression get started? If you appropriate something that no one else seems to be using, you may be said to 'kipe' that object. A Wisconsin caller remembers 'kiping' things as a youngster, like a neighbor's leftover wood to build a fort. Grant discusses this regionalism and its possible origins. Is there a distinction to be made between 'envy' and 'jealousy'? The hosts try to parse out the difference. Grant gives a brief review of the new third edition of Paul Dickson's 'The Dickson Baseball Dictionary' , all 974 pages and 4.5 pounds of it. To some folks, they're 'thermals.' To others, they're 'long underwear.' And some folks call them 'long johns.' Are these warm undergarments named after some guy called John? If your car's broken down you might say it's 'banjaxed,' especially if you're in Ireland. A caller who grew up in Dublin is curious about the word. Martha and Grant revisit the 'apple core, Baltimore' game they discussed a few episodes ago . Many listeners learned it from this Donald Duck cartoon . How do you pronounce the word 'llama'? A caller who learned in school that Spanish 'll' is pronounced like English 'y' thinks it's a mistake to pronounce this animal's name as 'LAH-ma.' Is he correct? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An Alabama high-school teacher observes that one of his fellow teachers tends to write words that should be plural as singular, such as 'I graded all 50 test' instead of 'I graded all 50 tests.' The reason for this locution has to do with some interesting features of Southern English. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired March 21, 2009.] Sure, there's 'Grandma' and 'Grampa,' but there's also 'Gammy,' 'Bumpy,' 'Dadoo,' 'Gre-Gre,' 'Kiki,' 'Kerkel,' 'Monga,' 'Nee-Nee,' 'Pots,' 'Rah-Rah' and 'Woo-Woo.' Martha and Grant talk about the endlessly inventive names grandchildren call their grandparents.'They also discuss 'Seinfeldisms,' 'couch potatoes,' and where in the world your car can and will be stopped by robots. Really! You've heard people describe something momentous as 'a watershed moment' in history. What is a watershed, exactly? Besides an Indigo Girls' song , that is. In Ireland you'll find that some folks have an odd habit of gasping in mid-conversation. A Texan who lived in Dublin for years says he found this speech trait disconcerting. The hosts explain that this 'pulmonic ingressive' is heard other places around the world. More about ingressives here , including examples in audio clips from Sweden and Scotland. Martha shares listener email about what to call that icy buildup in your car's wheel wells. 'Fenderbergs,' anyone? Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a puzzle called 'Wordrows,' a.k.a. 'Welded Palindromes.' They're two-word palindromes, in other words. For example, what two-word palindrome means 'beige bug'? Yadda yadda yadda. Newman! No soup for you! The 1990's sitcom 'Seinfeld' popularized these expressions and more. Check out this Paul McFedries article from 'Verbatim' . What's the origin of the term 'couch potato'? Grant has the story of the guys credited with coining this term for 'boob-tube aficionados.' Your dining companion suddenly starts choking. Once his coughing subsides, he exclaims, 'Whew! Something when down my 'Sunday throat'!' Sunday throat? Martha explains this odd expression. A few episodes back, Grant and Martha discussed what linguists call 'creaky voice.' Many of you wrote to ask for more examples of this curious speech trait. Here are a few , about halfway down the page. In this week's installment of 'Slang This!,' Grant and Martha are joined by June Casagrande , author of 'Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get you Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs -- Even If You're Right.' June tries to pick out the true slang terms from a group that includes the expressions 'hot wings,' 'bird farm,' 'bellybag,' and 'budget.' When you're late for something in Johannesburg, you can always say you were 'held up by robots' and no one will think twice. That's because in South Africa, a robot is a traffic light. Check out this haunting video called 'Death of a Robot' . The hosts discuss this and other terms for those helpful semaphores. What's the best style guide for online writing? In William Howitt's 'Madam Dorrington of the Dene' , a character named Vincent says, 'Don't let my father be fearful of me. I will be as ravenously ambitious, and as gigantically 'work-brickle' [...] as he can desire.' Grant has the goods on the dialect expression 'work-brittle' or 'work brickle,' which means 'energetic' or 'industrious.' -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired March 14, 2009.] If English isn't your first language, there are lots of ways to learn it, such as memorizing Barack Obama's speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention. Martha and Grant talk about some of the unusual ways foreigners are learning to speak English. Also, a golfer wonders if it's ever proper to say 'I'm going golfing' rather than 'I'm going to play golf.' And they share an easy way to remember the difference between 'lie' and 'lay.' Here's the The New Yorker article about Crazy English that Grant mentions. Why do aviators say 'roger' to indicate they've received a message? A pilot phones the show about that, 'wilco,' and similar language. For some golfers, the phrase 'go golfing' is as maddening as a missed two-foot putt. The proper expression, they insist, is 'play golf.' A longtime golfer wonders whether that's true. He's sharp as the corner of a round table' She's so sad she's pulling a face as long as a fiddle. If startling similes leaving you grinning 'like a basket full of possum heads,' you'll love the book Intensifying Similes in English, published in 1918. It's available at no cost on the Internet Archive. Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game called 'Odd One Out,' the object of which is to guess which of four words doesn't belong with the rest. Try this one: dove, job, polish, some. 'Yo!' Why did people ever start using the word 'yo!' to get someone's attention? Grant explains that in English there's mo' than one yo. It's one of the biggest grammatical bugaboos of all, the one that bedevils even the most earnest English students: 'Is it lie or lay?' Martha shares a trick for remembering the difference. See below for her clip-and-save chart of these verbs. Print it out and tape it to your computer. Better yet, laminate it and carry it in your wallet at all times. And if you choose to tattoo it onto some handy part of your body, by all means send us a photo so we can post it on the site. How are things in your 'neck of the woods'? And why heck do we say neck? Grant reads a few lines from a favorite poem:'A New Song of New Similes' by John Gay. It also appears in the front of the book 'Intensifying Similes in English' linked above. In this week's installment of 'Slang This!,' the president of the National Puzzlersâ League tries to pick out the slang terms from a list that includes 'poguey,' 'pushover,' 'noodles,' and 'naff.' In a 1936 episode of Jack Benny's radio show, a woman says that her father sprained his ankle the night before while 'truckinâ.' This has an 'A Way with Words' listener confused; she thought trucking was a term from the 1970s. Grant clears up the mystery, and along the way inspires Martha to bust some moves. Grant explains the connection between 'sauce' and 'don't sass me.' Why do some people pronounce the word 'wash' as 'warsh'? Martha and Grant discuss the so-called 'intrusive R' and why it makes people say 'warsh' instead of 'wash' and 'Warshington' instead of 'Washington.' -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A caller wonders why some versions of The Lord's Prayer include the phrase 'forgive us our trespasses,' while others substitute the word 'debt.' -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's the deal with using the two-letter postal code abbreviations for states, instead of the longer, more formal abbreviations? That is, why write IN for Indiana instead of good old Ind.? A caller is annoyed by U.S. Postal Service abbreviations creeping into modern prose, and thinks they should be reserved for postal addresses. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired February 23, 2009.] Does your 'handwriting' look like chicken scratches, calligraphy, or maybe something in between? Martha and Grant discuss the 'state of penmanship,' the phenomenon linguists call 'creaky voice,' euphemisms for going to the bathroom, and the New England expression 'I 'hosey' that!' There's a new book out about the history of penmanship. It's called Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, by Kitty Burns Florey. If you want to claim something--say, the front seat of a car or the last piece of cake--what do you say? 'Dibs'? 'Boney'? How about 'I hosey that!'? The hosts talk about this New England expression, its possible origins, and its equivalent in other parts of the country. A caller has a hard time remembering which is correct: 'Give the book to my husband and me,' or 'Give the book to my husband and I.' Martha offers a sure-fire, quick-and-easy way to know if 'husband and I' or 'husband me' are right every time. According to a listener in San Diego, when a DJ plays a great set, he's said to 'rinse it.' In honor of the 44th U.S. president, Quiz Guy Greg Pliska offers a word game 'Glom-a Obama.' The object: Figure out a series of rhyming two-word phrases by guessing the word to be added to the name 'Obama.' For example, if Mr. Obama had been born in one of Japan's second-largest city, he would be '_____________ Obama.' 'He's been sick three days 'hand-running.' Huh? In some parts of the country, 'hand running' means 'in succession, consecutively.' The hosts muse about the possible origins of this phrase. One of the Olsen twins does it, some public radio hosts do it, and at least one former U.S. president does it. Grant describes the curious speech trait linguists call 'creaky voice.' A 'red letter-day' is a special occasion. Martha explains how this term came to be. A listener says she and her husband called their unborn child 'wohube.' What other 'noms de fetus' are there? In this week's installment of 'Slang This!', a member of the National Puzzlers League tries to separate the real slang terms from the fake ones. Try this one: Which of the following expressions really is a British synonym for the 'willies', the 'heebie jeebies' or a similar kind of 'nervous freakout'? Would that be the 'belching withers' or the 'screaming abdabs'? And which of the following terms is Australian slang for 'people from the United States'? Is it 'septics' or 'songbirds'? (The Aussies are all rolling their eyes at this obvious answer.) If you're having a conversation with someone, are you speaking with them, speaking to them, talking to them, or talking with them? A caller wonders what differences, if any, exist among all those expressions. You might have heard Brits say 'I'm going to spend a penny' when they have to visit the loo. The hosts discuss the reason for this phrase, and other euphemisms for making a trip to the toilet, such as 'I'm going to 'visit Miss White' and 'I'm going to go drop off some friends at the lake.' A caller observes that after moving to Indianapolis, he noticed that many of the locals say the names of commercial enterprises as if they're plural or possessive, even when they're not, such as calling Walmart 'Walmart's.' Grant explains the inclination to add the S sound to the names of businesses in casual speech and writing. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are serial commas always necessary? An English teacher says she was surprised to learn that she and her husband, who's also an English teacher, are giving their students conflicting advice. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired February 14, 2009.] Martha and Grant share a couple of favorite online sources for reading about language: Michael Quinion's World Wide Words newsletter and Arnold Zwicky's blog . Be sure to check out Zwicky's post, 'Dialect dangerous to cats' for a look at The Lion Cut If you're a Texan, you may be familiar with the phrases 'raise the window down' and 'help your plate.' If not, you'll find translations here. What's lurve got to do with it? A caller is puzzled by a greeting card with the phrase 'crazy cosmic lurve god.' Linguistics fans will fan themselves as Grant explains the roots of this expression with linguistic terms like the 'intrusive R' and epenthesis . Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a puzzle called 'Weight Loss Program.' The object is to guess a pair of words from his clues. Remove a unit of weight from the first word in the pair, and you'll get the second word. Example: 'A Palm Beach County resort town whose name is Spanish for 'mouth of the rat,' and 'A timely benefit or blessing.' The answer weighs in at 2,000 pounds. If the 'subjunctive mood' were to disappear from English, would our language be the poorer for it? The hosts have strongly different opinions about it. Ever notice when people start to answer to a question with the words, ''Yeah, no'â'? Linguists have been studying this seemingly contradictory phrase for years. It may look like oxymoron, but it's not. 'Ennead,' anyone? If you need a word for 'a group of nine things,' that one will do the trick. In this week's installment of 'Slang This!,' a member of the National Puzzlers League tries to separate the real slang terms from the fake ones. Try this one: If you have chutzpah, might you also be said to 'have the stitches' to get things done, or 'have the brass' to get things done? Here's another: Which of the following is a slang term for 'daybreak'? 'Rancid butter's melt'? Or 'sparrow's fart'? The cleverly named 'Buy n Large' corporation in the movie Wall-E has a caller wondering why we say use the phrase 'by and large' to mean 'generally speaking.' It has its origins on the high seas. Does the word 'swarthy' mean 'hairy'? A man has a running dispute with his wife the English teacher, who insists it does. Is she right? Cleave, dust, and screen are all 'words that can mean the opposite of themselves.' You can cleave to a belief, meaning to 'adhere closely,' but you can also separate things by cleaving them. Words that mean the opposite of themselves go by many different names, including 'contranyms,' 'contronyms,' 'auto-antonyms,' and 'Janus words.' Lists of such words: http://people.csail.mit.edu/seth/misc/selfantonyms.html http://polysemania.blogspot.com/2007/03/janus-words.html http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/4264 Martha talks about 'enantiodromia,' which is 'the process by which something becomes its opposite,' particularly when an individual or community adopts beliefs antithetical to beliefs they held earlier. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can the word 'friend' possibly describe both the people you went to school with *and* the people to whom you are connected through Facebook and MySpace? Are friends on the social sites really friends? Is there a better word to describe someone who follows you on Twitter? A caller thinks the English language could use some new words to differentiate among varying levels and types of friendship. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

'Great Googly Moogly!' A caller wonders where that exclamation comes from. Here's the Snickers commercial that includes the phrase. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSAXLayoMKI -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A special message for podcast listeners. Also, this just in: The term gunny sack is a pleonasm! Who knew? (So sue us -- we can't help getting excited about that kind of thing.) -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired February 7, 2009.] Are fairy tales too scary for children? A survey of parents in Britain found that more than half wouldn't read them to their children before age five. Martha and Grant discuss the grisly imagery in fairy tales, and whether they're too traumatizing for kids. Also, when did 'dog food' become a verb? And does the word butterfly come from 'flutter by'? How did serialized melodramas come to be called soap operas? The answer has to do with the suds-selling sponsors of old-time radio shows. When a theater company gives out free tickets to a performance, it's called papering the house. But what kind of 'paper' are we talking about, anyway? Our show's pun-loving Quiz Guy, Greg Pliska, whips up a word game called 'Country Kitschin'.' The challenge is to fill in the blank in a sentence with the name of a country so that the spoken sentence makes sense. Try this one: 'We'll take our time today, because you'd hate to _____________ quiz as good as this one.' 'Don't tump over the canoe!' The verb to tump is familiar to folks in many parts of the United States. Use it elsewhere, though, and you might get some quizzical looks. What does it mean and who uses it? The hosts tump over their reference works and answers spill out. Why do some people add a final 'th' sound to the word 'height'? At one time, that pronunciation was perfectly proper. If you work in the software industry, you may already know the term dogfooding, which means 'to use one's own product.' Grant explains how dogfood became a verb. In this week's installment of 'Slang This!,' a member of the National Puzzlers League (http://www.puzzlers.org/) tries to separate the real slang terms from the impostors from a list that includes: backne, button cotton, snake check, and filter filter. A caller suspects that the word butterfly derives from a reversal of the expression 'flutter by.' But is it? Her question leads to a discussion of butterfly behavior and a handy five-letter word that means 'caterpillar poop.' That groove between your nose and upper lip? It's your philtrum, from the Greek word for 'love potion.' Martha explains. Which is correct: 'I'm reticent to do that' or 'I'm reluctant to do that?' -- Do you like what you hear? Help support the program with a donation: http://waywordradio.org/donate/ -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, [email protected], or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do we say someone is 'on the wagon' when they abstain from drinking alcohol? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired January 24, 2009.] President Barack Obama hopes to boost the economy by pouring federal dollars into efforts to rebuild the nation's infrastructure, much like the old Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. But how about reviving that other jobs program from the New Deal era: the 'Federal Writers Project.' Martha and Grant discuss the pros and cons of subsidizing writers with taxpayer money. A caller from Juneau, Alaska, says she was tickled when her friend from the South told her he loves 'vye-EEN-ers.' It took a while before she realized he was saying Viennas, as in that finger food so often found a can, the' Vienna sausage.' So, just how common is the pronunciation 'vye-EEN-er'? It's been called the 'ape drape,' the 'Kentucky waterfall,' the 'Tennessee top hat,' 'hockey hair,' and the '90-10.' We're talking about that haircut called the 'mullet,' otherwise known as 'business in the front, and party in the back.' But why 'mullet'? The word 'borborygmic' means 'pertaining to rumblings in one's tummy or intestines.' Martha explains that it comes from the Greek word 'borborygmus' ('bor-buh-RIG-muss'), a fine example of onomatopoeia if ever there was one. Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a word game in which the object is to guess the 'color-related terms' suggested by his clues. Try this one: What color-coded term is suggested by the phrase 'information gained without serious effort'? What do you call the 'strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk'? Depending on where you live, you may call it a 'tree lawn,' a 'berm,' a 'city strip,' the 'parking,' or one of a host of other regional terms for it. In a small part of the country, this narrow piece of land called a 'devil strip.' In fact, this expression figures in a great story about forensic linguistics: When a linguist analyzed a ransom note and saw the term devil strip, he realized this was a telltale clue--one that would lead authorities right to the kidnapper. Does the English expression 'falling in love' derive from the biblical story of Rebekah and Isaac? A caller thinks so. The hosts don't think so. You may have used the expression, 'Nobody here but us chickens!' Would you still use it if you knew its origins lie in a racist joke from the turn of the 20th century? In an earlier episode , the hosts heard from a woman who, as a teenager, was scolded by her grandmother for wearing a skirt that Granny said was 'almost up to possible.' The woman wondered about that phrase's meaning and origin. Grant shares listener email about this question, plus information he's found linking the term to James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. This weekâs âSlang This!â contestant from the National Puzzlersâ League tries to pick out the real slang terms from a puzzle that includes the expressions 'board butter,' 'cap room,' 'mad pancakes,' and 'mad gangster.' http://puzzlers.org/dokuwiki/doku.php Is the proper expression 'in regards to' or 'in regard to'? In regard to this question, the hosts say, the answer is clear and unambiguous. A sampling of several kinds of wine is called a 'flight.' But why? And while we're on the subject of sampling lots of different savory things, what's the 'difference between a smorgasbord and a buffet'? Or is there one? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another minicast from A Way with Words. Iâm Grant Barrett. [Music] Hip-hop is high art. Yeah. Thatâs right. And if you donât understand that, then youâre missing out on some of the best poetry. Literary scholar Adam Bradley examines the style and poetry of hip-hop lyrics in his new book titled: Book of Rhymes, the Poetics of Hip-Hop. 'When a rapper's flow is fully realized,' he writes, 'it forges a distinctive rhythmic identity that is governed by both poetic and musical laws.' A hip-hop MCâthe one who sings or chantsâis a rhyme-maker and 'flow' is what an MC has when the rhymes lie easily on top of the rhythm. Rhyme in hip-hop means more than words that sound alike; spitting rhymes is waxing poetic is writing lyrics is storytelling. [Music] There's a structure there, things that are permitted and forbidden in the art form. Rules about accent, pitch, intonation, force. The conventions of poetry are all there. So, these hip-hop lyrics are complex. They are connected to each other across samples, across songs, across albums, across artists, across the decades. They could be mapped like a family tree because a good MC knows the hip-hop canon. [Music] And there is a canon, just as there is in literature. Bradley writes, 'Hip hop is haunted by this sense of tradition. It is a music whose death was announced soon after its birth, and the continuing reports of its demise seemingly return with each passing year.' The old school, the new school, everything that you see in the worlds of prose and in the worlds of poetryâthe complex relationships between creator and consumer, between colleagues and competitors, between art and businessâthose exist in hip-hop. Hip-hop may be the only place in America where poetry still rules, where it is savored and appreciated by a vast, educated audience. Itâs where great poetic skill is rewarded with respect, fame, and money, more often than is the case with the precious poetry you might find in tiny pamphlets near the bookstore register. I, for one, believe in the pleasure derived from poetically sophisticated rhymes. And I think they're here to stay. [Music] Adam Bradley's 'Book of Rhymes' is just published by Basic Civitas Books. You can find out more about him at AdamFBradley.com For A Way with Words, Iâm Grant Barrett. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Martha muses about the language of falconry, and in the process, reveals the origins of several words and phrases in one fell swoop. Did you know that a falcon's eyeballs are so huge that they take up most of its head -- and that those two eyes are separated only by a thin membrane? That's just one of the fun facts I learned from a new book called Falconer on the Edge: A Man, His Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West. The author, Rachel Dickinson, is married to a falconer. Her book is a glimpse into the world of this centuries-old blood sport. Now, I'll admit it: The blood part makes me queasy. but the book gave me a whole new appreciation for the vocabulary of falconry. Take the word haggard. It describes a worn, tired, gaunt appearance. But did you know that originally haggard applied to birds? Specifically, haggard described an adult female hawk caught in the wild, not raised in captivity. By the 16th century, the word had came to denote anyone similarly 'wild or intractable.' Later haggard was applied more generally. In Shakespeare's day, falconry was an aristocratic sport. You see lots of images from it in his plays. There's jealous Othello, fretting that Desdemona may prove to be 'haggard' -- that is, wild and out of his control. Or in Macbeth, the character MacDuff is aghast when he learns that his family's been murdered in 'one fell swoop.' The image of is the way a falcon swoops down from the sky, and strikes with swift ferocity. The 'fell' in 'one fell swoop' is an adjective. It means 'inhumanly cruel.' This fell is a linguistic relative of 'felon.' Then there's the term 'pride of place.' Today it means 'the highest or most important location': as in 'High-definition TVs enjoy pride of place in many living rooms.' Originally, 'pride of place' meant the airy height from which that falcon swoops. You see this phrase in Macbeth, when Shakespeare uses it to suggest that unnatural, ominous things are happening: 'A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.' Anyway, if you want a closer look at the odd and bloody subculture of falconry, check out Dickinson's book. It'll give you a whole new sense of birds and words. http://www.amazon.com/Falconer-Edge-Vanishing-Landscape-American/dp/0618806237 -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humorist Roy Blount Jr. sits down with Grant for a conversation about the controversy over writers' rights and the Amazon Kindle 2. As president of the Authors Guild, Blount has argued that writers whose work is featured on the Kindle 2 should earn extra royalties because its text-to-speech feature essentially turns written works into audiobooks. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html Blount also discusses his own recent book, Alphabet Juice, talks about 'sonicky' words and noodling for catfish, and clears up the mystery of whether the cancan dancers at George Plimpton's memorial really did honor the late writer's request that they perform without panties. Read the first chapter of Alphabet Juice here. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/books/chapters/chapter-alphabet-juice.html Find out more about Blount and his work here. http://www.royblountjr.com/ -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we're going through the e-mail bag. Here's a savory, sensuous one. It's from Stacey in Boulder, Colorado. Stacey grew up out West, but says she spent summers and Christmases at the home of her maternal grandparents, just north of New York City. 'This side of my family,' she writes, 'is unapologetically Italian. For me, a highlight of every visit was the night of arrival. My grandma would welcome us home with a big pot of gravy. After the day-long trip to get there, Stacey writes, 'nothing was more comforting or restoring than walking into a Grandma-sized hug, and a house positively perfumed with the sweet, heady scent of garlic and tomatoes.' Now, about that pot of gravy, she writes: 'In Colorado, or anywhere else I've been, it's called marinara sauce. Outside of my family, I have never heard the word gravy used to describe anything other than the brown gravy you put on a turkey at Thanksgiving.' And, she says, 'Hearing the word gravy used in this way evokes just as much warmth and contentment as the smell or taste of the gravy itself. I can almost feel my grandmother's bone-crushing hug swallowing me up once again.' Stacey wants to know: Is gravy just her own family's weird word for tomato-based sauce? Or is there anyone else out there who understands what she calls 'the intimate, emotional, have-some-macaroni coziness behind this seemingly simple term.' Stacey, you'll be pleased to know that lots and lots of people refer to this stuff as gravy. In fact, this kind of gravy made an appearance in an episode of the HBO series The Sopranos. A member of the mob in New Jersey goes to Italy. He dines out in Naples. But he can't find what he wants on the menu. Check out what happens. http://tinyurl.com/che59s So, using the word 'gravy' in this way isn't unique one family. But I must add an important word of caution: Many Italian-Americans do call it 'gravy,' but others are adamant -- and I do mean adamant -- about calling it 'sauce.' In fact, you can find some amazingly heated debates online about which is the correct term. In Italian, the word sugo can mean either 'sauce' or 'gravy.' It may be that some Italian immigrants translated it into one English word, while those in other communities used a different English translation. So, pasta lovers: Which is it? Sauce or gravy? Let us know. We'd also like to what other odd food names evoke vivid sensory memories for you. And, as always, we welcome your thoughts about any aspect of language. Our address is [email protected]. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's a 'Hobson's Choice'? If you're facing a Hobson's choice, you don't really have much to choose from. The phrase describes a situation in which your options are either to take what's offered, or else take nothing at all. Martha offers some choice words about the origin of this term. Recently a friend emailed to ask about a curious phrase she'd run across. A newspaper columnist argued that when it comes to fixing the economy, the Obama administration faces a Hobson's choice. In other words, the writer said, shoring up U.S. banks may be wildly unpopular, but economic recovery requires doing exactly that. You might guess from the context that a Hobson's choice isn't really a choice at all. You either take what's offered, or get nothing. A great example is the declaration by automaker Henry Ford. In his 1922 autobiography, Ford wrote that his Model T would be available in any color, quote, 'so long as it is black.' The phrase Hobson's choice goes all the way back to 17th-century England. For 50 years, Thomas Hobson ran a stable near Cambridge University. There he rented horses to students. Old Man Hobson was extremely protective of those animals. He rented them out according to a strict rotating system. The most recently ridden horses he kept at the rear of the stable. The more rested ones he kept up front. That meant that when students came to get a horse, Hobson gave them the first one in line -- that is, the most rested. He'd let them rent that horse, or none at all. Hobson and his curmudgeonly take-it-or-leave-it rule apparently made quite an impression on Cambridge students. They included the great poet John Milton, who wrote about Hobson. Meanwhile, his horses left their hoofprints in our language, in a phrase that means 'taking what's available, or else not taking anything.' Well, if you want to talk about language, I hope you'll choose to email us. Our address is [email protected]. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What The Cluck, Part 2 What does the expression egg on have to do with chickens? Nothing, actually. Martha explains why, and tells the story of how the term curate's egg came to mean 'something with both good and bad characteristics.' Last week I told you about a letter from Randy in San Diego. He's the guy who's raising three chickens in his backyard. That got him wondering about expressions in English involving chicken. For example, what about 'to egg someone on'? Randy says he gave his trio of hens three different nesting boxes. But they all insist on taking turns using the same one. Now, you have to picture this. He writes: 'Every day about 10 a.m., they each lay one egg. The hen who is laying the egg sits in the nesting box. The other two always stand near the nesting box squawking loudly until she is done. When the first hen finishes she trades places with one of the others and the whole thing happens again. They have always done this so I assume the behavior is where we get the expression to egg someone on.' Good guess, Randy. But get this: the 'egg' in 'egg on' has nothing to do with the kind you eat. To 'egg on' comes from an Old Norse verb, eggja, which means to 'goad or incite.' Eggja and 'egg on' share a common linguistic ancestor with many other sharp, pointy words, including 'edge.' In fact, in the past, the phrase 'to edge on' has been used in exactly the same way as 'egg on.' Here's another egg expression I really like. It's 'curate's egg,' and it means 'a mixed bag' -- as in 'I just read a curate's egg of a book. The plot was flimsy, and the characters were wooden, but I still couldn't put it down.' The expression 'curate's egg' goes back to a cartoon published in 1895 in the British magazine Punch: A meek curate -- that is, a clergyman -- is dining at the home of his bishop. Unfortunately, he's served a bad egg. The bishop notices that something's wrong and politely says, 'I'm afraid you've got a bad egg.' But the curate hastily replies, 'Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you...parts of it are excellent!' The joke, of course, is that if an egg is bad, it's going to be totally bad, not partly. But the curate's too timid to say so. The term curate's egg has since come to mean 'something with both good and bad characteristics.' Now, I'm egging you on: If you have a question about words, or any other aspect of language, please drop us a line. Our address is [email protected]. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we received an email from Randy in San Diego. Randy writes: 'I recently got myself three hens for the back yard as a hobby that I thought my kids would enjoy. I highly recommend backyard chickens, by the way â theyâre better than television. During the months we have had these chickens, around I have had an opportunity to closely observe their behavior. This has me wondering about all the expressions and words we have in the U.S. related to chickens.' Great question, Randy. For starters, back in the days when most folks raised their own chickens, everybody knew that putting a fake egg in a chicken's nest would encourage her to lay more eggs. This fake egg was either wooden or ceramic. It was called a nest egg. Over time, this expression acquired the figurative meaning of 'a reserve of cash set aside.' Like those fake eggs that help get a chicken in the mood, your own nest egg of cash is supposed to help you acquire more. Of course, notice I said 'supposed to.' By the way, that reminds me of some chicken-based financial advice I once got from a fellow in eastern Kentucky. It went like this: Chicken for lunch, feathers for supper. In other words, be thrifty now, so you'll have some reserves for later. Want another example of hens nesting in the English language? In the 1920s, a Norwegian zoologist studying chicken behavior observed that the birds create strict social hierarchies. A bird's status within it determines such things as whether she can eat before everybody else, or has to wait her turn. The zoologist published his observations in scholarly article. Writing in German, he noted that hens create and enforce that hierarchy by pecking at each other. Searching for a word to describe this, he combined the German word hacken, which means 'to peck,' and ordnung, which means order. Soon after, Hackordnung was translated into English as pecking order. Of course, these days pecking order also applies human hierarchies. By the way, in case you missed it, you can hear even more about chickens -- specifically, the expression Nobody here but us chickens, which has an interesting backstory -- in this episode. http://www.waywordradio.org/days-of-wine-flights-and-mullets/ Has a linguistic question ruffled your feathers lately? Email us at [email protected]. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently The New Yorker magazine ran a profile of the writer David Foster Wallace, who died last year at the age of 46. The article included a line that I think Foster himself might have appreciated. It went like this: 'He was known for endlessly fracturing narratives and for stem-winding sentences adorned with footnotes that were themselves stem-winders.' So what's a stem-winder? Stem-winder goes back to the mid-19th century. It refers to an invention that was as nifty and state-of-the-art then as the coolest iPhone apps today. Think back to the days of pocket watches. In the really old days, people had to wind a watch the same way they wound clocks. They used a little key. Not only was that a hassle, those keys were easy to lose. In the 1840s, a watchmaker in Switzerland perfected a different way to keep a watch running. He put a knob on a tiny metal stem, and attached it permanently to the spring mechanism. People lucky enough to own these newfangled timepieces could throw away their key, and wind their watches whenever they wanted. These fancy new stem-winders were some of the coolest gadgets around -- so cool that by the late 1800s, people were applying the term stem-winder to mean anything excellent or first-rate. Over time, stem-winder also came to apply specifically to a rousing, impassioned speech or to a great orator. Perhaps that's because a stirring speech or an energetic speaker could get folks in a crowd wound up, just like a watch. Dictionaries apparently haven't caught up with the fact that these days, many people use 'stem-winder' in a different sense. Occasionally you'll hear the term applied to a long-winded, boring speech -- one so long and boring you're tempted to look down at your watch and wind it. Or you would if it didn't run on batteries. And I have to wonder whether the notion of 'winding,' in the sense of something 'circuitous,' also influenced the magazine writer's choice of 'stem-winding' to describe those long, stirring sentences of David Foster Wallace. By the way, if you're a word lover, you'll want to check out that article in New Yorker. You can read it here. You can also read an excerpt of the last novel Wallace ever wrote, which will be published posthumously in 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_max?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/03/09/090309fi_fiction_wallace What word or phrase has caught your eye lately? We'd love to hear about it. Send any stem-winders you find to [email protected]. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Martha explains how experiments with dead frogs and live wires led to the invention of the battery, and inspired a couple of familiar English words. I had to change the batteries in my flashlight the other day, and that makes think, as it always does, of Luigi Galvani. No, really, it does. Let me explain: Galvani was an 18th-century Italian physician and physicist whose experiments accidentally paved the way for modern batteries. The focus of his research? Galvani experimented with dead frogs and live wires. In 1791, he published a paper describing how he'd touched a dead frog's leg with one wire, and touched another wire to both the frog and the first wire. When the second wire made contact, the lifeless body jerked. Galvani believed these convulsions were the result of 'animal electricity,' a mysterious substance secreted by the body. What Galvani failed to grasp was that by touching wires made of two different metals to the frog -- and to each other -- he'd simply created a closed circuit. At the time, Galvani's report was nothing short of astonishing. As one of his contemporaries wrote in a letter: 'Now here the experiments are also repeated in ladies' salons, and they furnish a good spectacle to all.' A generation later, Mary Shelley would write her novel Frankenstein, and specifically credit Galvani's experiments as an inspiration. But his work also inspired further research by another Italian scientist, one who didn't buy the idea of 'animal electricity.' His name was Alessandro Volta. He suspected that the frog's body didn't secrete electricity, it conducted it. Soon Volta was stacking pieces of zinc and silver and, instead of animal tissue, cardboard soaked in brine. The electrifying result was the first 'voltaic pile,' forerunner of the batteries we use today. As you may have guessed, Volta's name lives on in our word for that unit of electrical measurement, the volt. Despite his scientific mistake, Galvani achieved a measure of linguistic immortality as well. Today you'll find his name inside a word that means to 'jolt' or 'jump-start': galvanize. Incidentally, if you're having a hard time picturing Galvani's many experiments, there are lots of illustrations on the Web, including here and here. http://galvanisfrog.com/Home.php http://www.batteryfacts.co.uk/BatteryHistory/Galvani.html -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: U.S. toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, London +44 20 7193 2113, Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[Portions of this episode were first broadcast November 1, 2008.] Apple core, Baltimore! Ever play the rhyming game where you eat an apple, then shout 'apple core,' and then the first person to respond 'Baltimore!' gets to decide where (more specifically, at whom) the core gets tossed. This old-fashioned game is hours of fun for the whole family! We promise. 'A fish stinks from the head down.' When an Indianapolis woman is quoted saying that, she's accused of calling someone a stinky fish. She says she wasn't speaking literally, insisting that this is a turn of phrase that means 'corruption in an organization starts at the top.' Who's right? Dude, how'd we ever start using the word 'dude'? The Big Grantbowski traces the word's origin--it's over 125 years old. Here's a poem about dandy dudes from 1883 , the year the word zoomed into common use. Ben Zimmer at Visual Thesaurus also has a very good summary of what is known about 'dude.' Quiz Guy John Chaneski drops by with a puzzle involving overlapping words. He calls it, of course, 'Overlap-Plied Linguistics.' If you're hung over, and someone offers you a little 'hair of the dog,' you can rest assured you're not being offered a sip of something with real dog hair in it. But was that always the case? Grant has the answer, and Martha offers a word once proposed as a medical term for this crapulent condition: veisalgia. A new resident of Pittsburgh is startled by some of the dialect there, like 'yinz' instead of 'you' for the second person plural, and nebby for 'nosy.' For a wonderful site about the dialect of that area, check out Pittsburgh Speech and Society . If someone says he 'finna go,' he means he's leaving. But finna? Grant has the final word about finna. Good news if you've wondered about a word for recognizable images composed of random visual stimuli—that image of Elvis in your grilled-cheese sandwich, for example. It's pareidolia . In this week's 'Slang This!,' a member of the National Puzzlers' League from Boston tries to guess the meaning of four possible slang terms, including labanza, woefits, prosciutto, and moose-tanned. At Murray's Cheese in Grand Central Station, the workers who sell cheese are called 'cheesemongers.' The store's opening up a new section to sell cold cuts, and workers there are looking for more appetizing term than 'meatmonger.' (Meat-R-Maids? Never mind.) Martha and Grant try to help. At sports events in North America, we enthusiastically root for the home team, right? But a woman from Kenosha, Wisconsin, says an Aussie told her that they most assuredly don't do that Down Under. There, he tells her, rooting means 'having sex.' Is he pulling her leg, she wonders? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: U.S. toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, London +44 20 7193 2113, Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time for another linguistic mystery. Where would you be if you decided to go twacking around duckish, and then you came home and wrote about it in a scribbler? Any idea? If you're going twacking around duckish, you're likely in Newfoundland. The type of English spoken there may be the most distinctive collection of dialects in Canada. Some of it sounds a lot like Irish-accented English. Other dialects in Newfoundland have echoes of the speech of immigrants from the West Country of England. Visit Newfoundland, and you'll be greeted by some colorful vocabulary. The verb to twack means 'to go shopping and ask about the prices, but then not buy anything.' I guess that's the Newfie version of 'window shopping.' Duckish means 'dusk' or 'twilight.' And a scribbler is a 'notebook.' If you want to hear some terrific examples of Newfoundland English, check out the International Dialects of English Archive online. http://web.ku.edu/idea/northamerica/canada/newfoundland/newfoundland.htm Here's another online treat for word lovers: the Dictionary of Newfoundland English. Start rummaging around on this lovely site, and you'll discover a yaffle â that means an armful â of great words, like dumbledore. That's right, spelled just like the Harry Potter character. In Newfoundland, a dumbledore is a 'bumblebee.' We'd love to know what regionalisms have caught your ear lately. Send them along to [email protected]. As they say in Newfoundland, we'd be wonderful happy to hear from you. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: U.S. toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, London +44 20 7193 2113, Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time for another linguistic mystery. In what part of the country would you be likely to hear older folks using the following phrases? 'He sure was mommucking his little brother.' And: 'Why, those kids used to play meehonkey every afternoon!' And: 'Ohhhhhhh, I was quamished in the stomach.' Give up? The place you're likely to hear the words mommucking, meehonkey, and quamished is called Ocracoke. It's just off the North Carolina coast -- one of the Outer Banks barrier islands. Settled by the British in the early 1700s, Ocracoke's small, relatively isolated community developed its own distinctive dialect. One of the dialect's most striking features is its pronunciation. In the so-called 'Ocracoke brogue,' the expression 'high tide' sounds more like 'hoi toid.' On the island, you'll also hear some words that you won't find in many other places. Mommuck means to 'harass' or 'bother.' Quamish means 'queasy.' And old-timers on Ocracoke remember playing the island's special version of hide-and-seek. They call it meehonkey. You can hear some audio clips of Outer Banks English here, from the North Carolina State's Language and Linguistics Program. http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/english/linguistics/code/Research%20Sites/ocracoke_audio.htm And for a great introduction to the topic, check out Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks, by linguists Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes. http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/english/linguistics/code/Research%20Sites/ocracoke/hoitoidebook.htm And here you'll find video of O'cokers, as they call themselves, in conversation. http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4811 What regional expressions have caught your ear lately? Email us at [email protected]. --- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, [email protected], or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time to solve another linguistic mystery. You're in a restaurant. You overhear a conversation at the next table. The woman says to her friend, 'You know, I just love the taste of joe floggers.' And her dining companion replies enthusiastically, 'Joe floggers? Oh, so don't I!' Okay, so where would you likely to hear people talk about the joys of 'joe floggers'? Well, chances are you'd probably be in...New England, most likely coastal Massachusetts or Maine. There 'joe flogger' is a name denoting a variety of culinary treats. It may be a pancake stuffed with plums, or it may be a kind of doughnut. They're sometimes known as 'joe froggers' or simply 'frogs.' And, as is typical with many food names, 'joe frogger' also does double duty as the term for yet another confection: a large, molasses-flavored cookie. So how about the enthusiastic expression 'So don't I!'? This odd construction actually expresses agreement, not disagreement. For example, someone might say, 'I like ice cream,' to which you'd reply, 'So don't I!' meaning 'I do, too!' It's been called 'the Massachusetts negative-positive.' But the truth is that 'So don't I!' is found in pockets throughout New England. And its origins remain a puzzle. Speaking of puzzles, I'll be back with another linguistic mystery next time. In the meantime, I'd love to know what regional expressions jumped out at you the first time you heard them. Email me at [email protected]. Want to try baking your own batch of joe froggers? Here's a recipe. http://www.cakespy.com/2008/08/not-joe-mammas-cookies-legend-of-joe.html Like what you hear? If you'd like to support 'A Way with Words,' you can make a contribution here. http://www.waywordradio.org/donate/ -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, [email protected], or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices