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

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

Where in the world would you be likely to find sculch in your dooryard, or ask for just a dite of cream in your coffee? Martha has the answers in this minicast about some distinctive regional terms. ... Here's a linguistic puzzle for you. Suppose you stopped by my home and said, 'Martha, did you know there's sculch in your dooryard?' That's right, sculch in my dooryard. So, in what part of the country would you expect to hear these terms? The answer? We'd probably be in New England, and most likely Maine. There the word 'sculch' means 'trash.' And in much of New England and part of New York State, you'll often hear people refer to the yard near a house as the dooryard. Over the next few weeks, I want to talk with you about regional expressions like these. Terms that will be perfectly familiar to those who live in one part of the country, but mystifying -- or even jarring -- to those living somewhere else. Or, as they say in Maine, to someone who is 'from away'-- that is, anywhere other than their state. Another word you'll find mainly in Maine is dite. It's spelled either D-I-T-E or D-I-G-H-T. In Maine, the word 'dite' means 'just a little, a smidge.' As in, 'Oh, give me just a dite of butter,' or 'Move over just a dite, will you?' It appears the term 'dite' comes from a Scots word that means the same thing, and derives in turn, from a Dutch word that means 'a small coin.' Well, that's just a dite about some of the words you'll hear in New England, especially in Maine. We want to know what regional expressions you found jarring the first time you heard them. Email us at [email protected]. By the way, if you want to hear some recordings of the distinctive Maine accent, check these out. http://web.ku.edu/idea/northamerica/usa/maine/maine.htm Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go clean out the sculch someone left in my dooryard. ... Like what you hear? If you'd like to support 'A Way with Words,' you can make a contribution: 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

Obamamania, Obamabot, Obamathon, Obamamentum— the list of variations on the name “Obama” goes on and on. Is there an English word that means “the in-laws of your son or daughter”? And what does it mean when someone says, “Well, that was odder than Dick’s hatband!”? Read full show notes, hear hundreds of free episodes, send your thoughts and questions, and learn more on the A Way with Words website: https://waywordradio.org/contact. Be a part of the show: call 1 (877) 929-9673 toll-free in the United States and Canada; worldwide, call or text/SMS +1 (619) 800-4443. Email [email protected]. Twitter @wayword. Copyright Wayword, Inc., a 501(c)(3) corporation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen: Can you guess what this is? 'Huup huup huup . . . huup huup huup . . . huup huup huup.' No, it's not Morse code. Not a baby chimp. It's the sound of the hoopoe. Funny-looking bird, the hoopoe. It has a pink head, zebra-striped wings, and what looks like a great party hat of pink feathers tipped in black and white. The hoopoe's flight is somewhat erratic, more like a butterfly than a bird. One other odd thing about hoopoes: their nests are extremely stinky. Hoopoes line their nests with their own droppings, all the better to keep predators away. Even the bird's name looks weird: It's spelled h-o-o-p-o-e. The hoopoe is found in much of Europe, Africa, and Asia. In many cultures, this bird is highly regarded. The Biblical King Solomon is said to have taken advice from a hoopoe. In fact, just last year Israelis voted the hoopoe their country's national bird. In other cultures, though, the hoopoe isn't so well-regarded. In Greek myth, this otherworldly bird was a symbol of death. And in France, the hoopoe has long been considered stupid. Maybe that's because of its colorful, clownish appearance, although I'm sure the nest thing didn't help. So, why am I telling you all this? In ancient Rome, this bird that went 'huup huup huup' was called the upupa. Logical enough. In Middle French, this name evolved into something that sounded more like uppe. It's likely that from this word for the bird arose the modern French 'dupe,' a shortening of 'tete d'uppe' or 'hoopoe head.' In French, a 'dupe' is a 'fool or simpleton.' As you may have guessed, it's this French word dupe from which we get the English word 'dupe' â someone who's been played for a fool. We're hearing this word more and more, as the sordid details of Wall Street scandals emerge. And each time I come across that word 'dupe,' I can't help but hear the distant call of the hoopoe. -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Last week we talked about words that came from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Gas prices have been all over the place, but worse still than high gas-prices are accidents caused by DWT, which is short for 'driving while texting.' Legislation and rules were considered in municipalities across the country to stop people from sending text messages on their phones while driving, though few bills seem to have passed. Thanks to high fuel prices, the word gas-sipper made a comeback in 2008. It's the opposite of a gas-guzzler. If a car sips gas, it consume less. Another approach to conserving fuel would be hypermiling. This word, created in 2004, was Oxford University Press's word of the year for 2008. It means to take extraordinary measures to conserve fuel, things like turning off the engine when going down hills, avoiding the brakes, and drafting behind larger vehicles. Drafting means riding up close where wind resistance is less. This approach to fuel economy is stock in trade for the carborexic. That's a person who is energy anorexic, meaning they do things like never use air-conditioning, turn off their refrigerators when they go a way for the weekend, and fill the few lights they use with low wattage bulbs. And that's it for our word-of-the-year minicasts. You can find more words of the year at the web site of the American Dialect Society, at americandialect.org. Also, on our web site at waywordradio.org, you can find more minicasts, news about language current events, and full episodes of our call-in show, all at no cost to you. -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hockey mom, mavericky, snow machines, and--how could we forget that other memorable phrase from the 2008 presidential campaign?--lipstick on a pig. Some new and not-so-new terms leapt onto the national stage during Gov. Sarah Palin's run for the vice presidency. Grant discusses these expressions as our 'Word of the Year 2008' series continues. We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Last week we talked about the acronym PUMA. When Sarah Palin took the stage this year as a surprise pick for the Republican vice-presidential nomination, the election changed. Her hugely popular public appearances, her good looks, and her role as a Washington outsider served as catalysts for new words and catchphrases. For example, she described herself as a hockey mom. It's a decades-old term for someone who spends a great deal of time passionately aiding her children's interest in the sport that uses a puck and a stick. The only difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull, she was fond of saying, is lipstick. So, when Barack Obama said in a speech, 'You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig,' many people assumed he meant to call Palin a pig. The brouhaha about that was called Lipstick-gate by some press and commentators. That's not the only term that Caribou Barbie, as some people have called her, brought to the fore. Her constant use of the term maverick led writer and actor Tina Fey to use the word mavericky in her Saturday Night Live impressions of Palin. It simply means 'having maverick-like qualities.' Also, through interviews and background news stories, the other 49 states learned that Alaskans call snowmobiles snow machines, though there's nothing new about that, and that they often refer to the country beyond Alaska as Outside. That's all about Sarah Palin-inspired words of the year. Next week we'll talk about Olympic-related words of the year. ---------- You can support this program by making a donation at http://www.waywordradio.org/donate/. Thank you! -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The death of Martha's favorite cat Typo prompts her to reminisce about him, and about one of her favorite ailurophilic words, chatoyant. My cat Typo was a gray tabby. Greenish-gold eyes, always getting into trouble. In fact, I'm sure that during his 17 years, he used up far more than 9 lives. As a kitten, he once jumped head first into a bathtub filled with water. (All I'm going to say about that is 'ouch.') Staying indoors left him indignant. So I tried to train him to walk on a leash. That didn't go so well either. He broke free, skittered all the way up a huge tree -- and nearly hung himself. Thank goodness my neighbors had an extra-long extension ladder. Typo earned his name the first day we got him: He walked right across the top row of my keyboard, and typed '66666.' This year, Typo died peacefully. I'll miss the way he used to butt his head up against mine, how he squinted whenever he was happy. You know what else I'll miss? Sometimes, at dawn or at dusk, I'd walk into a room and I'd catch the sudden glow of his eyes. You know what I'm talking about? That iridescent shimmer? There's a great word to describe that. It's 'chatoyant.' It means 'having a changeable, iridescent luster, like a cat's eyes.' You might describe a 'chatoyant gem,' for example. Or a 'chatoyant silk dress.' I once read a poem that included the phrase 'a silence chatoyant.' Where'd we get such an odd-sounding word? If you speak French, you'll see the word for cat curled up inside this word. Chatoyant is from French 'chatoyer,' literally ' to shimmer like a cat's eyes.' Speaking of the word 'tabby,' did you know its linguistic roots go all the way back to a suburb of Baghdad? Back in the 17th century, a kind of silk cloth with streaked markings was produced in the part of Baghdad known as al-'Attibya. The cloth took its Arabic name from the name of the place where it was made. A version of this word passed into Medieval Latin, French, and ultimately into English, and soon came to be applied not just to 'striped silk taffeta' but the cats who resemble it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Last week we talked about "ground game." Another political term that we crossed paths with was PUMA. PUMA is an acronym for Party Unity My Ass, which began as a Facebook group. Members of that group were Democrats who were disaffected after Hillary Clinton failed to secure a sufficient number of delegates to win the Democratic nomination. Some of these disaffected Democrats formed groups and committees in order to try to bring the matter to a head-to-head smackdown vote at the national convention. Other PUMAs, as they call themselves, switched allegiances completely and came out in favor of Republican candidate John McCain. The PUMA umbrella name was widely embraced by the Republicans and was even seen as a false front for true Republicans masquerading as ex-Democrats in order to lure fence-sitting Clinton supporters over to McCain. As the PUMA movement grew--its true size is not really known--the acronym was revisited and it began to be said that it stood for the much more politer Party Unity Means Action. The PUMA organization became increasingly irrelevant when Hillary Clinton acknowledged Barack Obama would be the party's nominee. We may have to wait another four years to see if the term is revived. That's all about "PUMA." Next week we'll talk about the "hockey mom." -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Being an election year, it generated a huge amount of political language. One expression that was not new, but which certainly seems to have exploded in use, was 'ground game.' Ground game is a political term that refers to the door-to-door, one-on-one tactics used in the presidential campaigns. The victory of the Obama campaign, in particular, has been widely credited to its voter registration drives, its organized efforts to sway undecided or independent voters, its email lists, and its repeated reminders of when and where to vote. Ground game has its roots in sports. In football, playing a ground game is about not kicking or passing, but pushing the ball step by step toward the goal with scrimmaging. It's a slog to the end zone, but it avoids investing too much hope on a single play. In martial arts, a ground game is the kind of fighting that happens on the mat or floor, as opposed to the kicking and punching that happens when standing up. It puts the combatants face-to-face. This, too, is a tough slog toward victory, though perhaps a more sure one as it does not rely on a miraculous kick or punch. That's all about 'ground game.' Next week we'll talk about the acronym 'PUMA.' -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired September 20, 2008.] Here's a bit of political slang now making the rounds: sleepover. No, we're not talking about another pol caught with his pants down. We're talking about spending the night with, well, a voting machine. In this week's episode, we examine this and other examples of political language. You call the repairman to fix a balky garage door, but when he gets there, it inexplicably works. You summon a plumber, only to find that when he arrives, your toilet's no longer leaking--and you're out $150. Or you discover that somewhere between your home and the doctor's office, your kid's sore throat miraculously healed. A caller in Traverse City, Michigan, is tearing her hair out over this phenomenon, which she calls "phixophobia." But, she asks, might there be an even better word for the way inanimate objects seem to conspire against us? We think so: resistentialism. Great Scott! You've heard the expression. But who was Scott and why was he so great? Or was he an impressive Scotsman? Martha and Grant can't say for sure, although the evidence points toward a Civil War soldier who happened to go by that name. Our hosts bandy about some more political slang terms and explain their meaning and origin. Or did you already know the difference between a moonbat and a wingnut? Quiz Guy John Chaneski strikes up the band, begins the beguine, and treats Martha and Grant to musical quiz. Warning: Songs may be sung. Not to worry, though--all three have promised to keep their day jobs. If someone handed you something and told you to stick it in your jockey box, where would you put it? A Baltimore caller who grew up in Utah says when he used this term on a road trip with a friend, his pal was flummoxed. Is jockey box an expression peculiar to one part of the country? Is that oh-so-handy sticky stuff called "duct tape" or "duck tape"? An Emmy-nominated filmmaker is wondering, specifically because he has to instruct narrators to be careful to avoid running together a T sound at the end of a word with the T sound at the beginning of a word. And that has him further wondering if such elision of consonants has created other terms. We offer him an answer and a glass of ice tea. Or would that be iced tea? It's Obamarama time! We discuss the growing number of plays on the name of the Democratic presidential candidate. A North Carolina pediatrician is this week's contestant for an animal-themed version of our slang quiz. He tries to figure out the meaning of dead cat bounce and pigeon pair. A caller's question about the word wonky, in the sense of askew, leads to a broader question: What makes a word slang, anyway? Why do we say something is jet black? Does it have to do with the color of a 747's exhaust? Or skid marks on the runway? Or something else entirely? We provide a color with a mineralogical answer. A listener phones with his pet restaurant peeve: When your waiter ask, "Are you working on that?" Martha and Grant agree and pile on with gusto. -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We kick off our series on contenders for 2008's "Word of the Year" with a look at "nuke the fridge." The American Dialect Society will hold the 19th annual "Word of the Year" vote in January. It's the granddaddy of all word of the year votes--the longest running, the most academic, and the most fun. And as we approach January 9th in San Francisco, we'll be talking here, in these minicasts, about some of the likeliest candidates. One very odd one that caught our eye was "nuke the fridge." Putting it politely, it means to exhaust the possibilities or merits of a movie franchise. Putting it negatively, it means to destroy a movie franchise through the hubris and arrogance of a successful producer or director. The term was coined based upon a scene in the latest Indiana Jones movie, in which the hero survives a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator. "Nuke the fridge" is patterned after "jump the shark," which was coined a few years ago to refer to anything that had peaked in popularity or quality and was now on a downward slide. Jumping the shark referred to an episode on the sitcom Happy Days in which Fanzine water-skied over a shark, a moment thought by Happy Days aficionados (there are such things!) to be the surest sign of the show's decline. That's all about "nuke the fridge." Next time we'll talk about "ground game." -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's that time again, when people start thinking about a 'new or resurgent word or phrase that best captures the spirit of the past year.' And what a year! We heard the words 'bailout' and 'lipstick' more times than we'd ever dreamed, and saw also the rise of invented words like 'staycation' and 'recessionista.' What are your nominations for 2008's Word of the Year? 'Do English-speaking foreigners understand you better if you speak English with a foreign accent?' A Californian says that on a recent visit to Armenia, he discovered the locals had an easier time if he spoke English with an Armenian accent. Is this okay or could it be seen as condescending? 'Buckaroo' is an English word adapted from the Spanish word vaquero, meaning 'cowboy.' Is there a specific term for the linguistic process whereby such words are adapted into English? Martha nominates another Word of the Year candidate: 'Joe the,' as in 'Joe the Plumber,' and subsequent variations on the 'X the Y' formula arising from a certain drain-fixer's quarter-hour of fame. Quiz Guy John Chaneski stops by with a quiz about superlatives. Naturally, his name for the quiz is 'Best. Puzzle. Ever.' Why do we say someone's 'bright-eyed and bushy-tailed'? Your chipper, chattering hosts are ready with the 'sciurine' answer. 'http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sciurine&r=66 An Indiana woman shudders every time anyone uses the expression 'comprised of.' She wants to know if she's right that it's bad grammar, and more important, is she right to be a stickler about it? Martha and Grant discuss some other Word of the Year candidates, including 'hockey mom' and 'hypermiling.' The term 'Chinese fire drill' can mean either a 'state of confusion' or the adoloscent ritual involving a red light and a carful of rowdy teenagers. But a caller who overheard the expression at work worries that expression might be racist. This week's slang quiz challenges a Seattle video game designer to pick out the correct slang terms from a mishmash of possible answers, including 'hammantaschen,' 'party party,' 'play pattycake,' and 'get off.' In 2008, is using the term 'jive turkey' politically incorrect, or just a little dorky-sounding? A Las Vegas schoolteacher jokingly used it with her students, then had second thoughts. Grant sets her mind at ease. It's raining, it's pouring, but the sun is still shining. Quick--what do you call that? Some folks refer to it a 'sunshower,' and others call it a 'monkey's wedding.' But a woman says her Southern-born mother used a much more unnerving expression: 'The devil's beating his wife.' Martha and Grant discuss the possible origins of this expression and its variants, like 'The devil is beating his wife and the angels are crying.' Around the world, this meteorological phenomenon goes by an astonishing range of names. In Lithuanian, the name translates as 'orphan's tears.' In Korean, 'a tiger is getting married.' Here's a list of many more, collected a few years ago by linguist Bert Vaux: http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/9/9-1795.html Which of the following three factors has the 'biggest influence on a person's accent'? Is it your geographic location, your family, or the media? -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a warm day in late autumn. You're out for a stroll in the country. If the air is still, and the sun is at just the right angle, you may see the glint of spider threads floating lazily in the air. Particularly at this time of year, some tiny spiders use an odd way to travel: They shoot out threads of their own silk, and then hitch a ride on the breeze. Entomologists call this technique 'ballooning.' Walt Whitman described it in a poem, writing of a 'noiseless patient spider' launching forth 'filament, filament, filament, out of itself. / Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them....' And the word for these silky threads? 'gossamer.' It's a beautiful word, gossamer--almost sounds like itself, doesn't it? This term's meaning has come to extend to anything 'flimsy, insubstantial, or gauzy.' .' Cole Porter sang of 'a trip to the moon on gossamer wings.' And Charlotte Bronte wrote of 'a gossamer happiness hanging in the air.' So how did spider silk ever get the name 'gossamer'? It seems the spider's filaments take their name from an old word for late autumn. In this country, that period is often called 'Indian Summer.' But in Britain, the same period was long known as 'St. Martin's summer,' a reference to Martin's feast day, November 11. Centuries ago, though, speakers of Middle English referred to this period as 'gosesomer'--a name that means 'goose summer.' Why the goose in goose summer? That's where things get a little hazy. The most likely explanation is that early November traditionally was the time when people feasted on fattened geese. In fact, an old German word for November literally translates as 'geese month.' The name for this warm period, goosesummer, was later applied to the phenomenon that country folk observed at that time of year, those silky, gossamer threads floating in the autumn air. It seems that over the years, just like those tiny spiders, the word 'gossamer' has drifted a long way. ... You'll find the Walt Whitman poem here: http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=222 For more about gossamer, including Henry David Thoreau's fascination with it, check out 'Beneath the Second Sun: A Cultural History of Indian Summer,' by Adam W. Sweeting. http://tinyurl.com/56odbo -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired September 13, 2008.] When you get to the end of a wonderful book, your first impulse is to tell someone else about it. In this week's episode, Martha and Grant discuss what they've been reading and the delights of great prose. An Illinois man recalls that as a kid, he used to mix fountain drinks of every flavor into a concoction he and his friends called a 'suicide.' He wonders if anyone else calls them that. Why a 'suicide'? Because it looks and tastes like poison? It started as a typo for 'own,' now it's entrenched in online slang. A Kentucky caller is curious about 'pwn.' It rhymes with 'own' and means 'to defeat' or 'to triumph over.' Our hosts talk about a special meaning of 'own' in the computer-gaming world. Quiz Guy John Chaneski is Havana good time with Martha and Grant on an round-the-world 'International Puzzle Hunt' that will leave you Beijing for more. You seem to hear it on all the television hospital dramas: 'stat!' A physician says she knows it means 'immediately,' but she doesn't know its origins. Quick! Is there a Latin expert in the house? A San Diego fisherman notes that he hears mariners talk about 'snotty weather.' 'Snotty?' Is it the kind that gives you the sniffles? Or is does it cop an attitude? Do you ever stare at a word so long that you think it's mispellllled? Even though it isn't? Your dialectal duo hunt up a word for that phenomenon. Grant and Martha reveal what books are on their own nightstands, waiting to be read. Just the top of the stacks, natch, because there are just too many. This week's 'Slang This!' contestant tries to guess the meaning of the terms 'liver rounds' and 'put the bite on someone.' An Indianapolis woman who grew up in the South says that when her slip was showing, her father used to say, 'Who do you think you are, Miss Astor'?' Martha shares other euphemisms for slips showing. If someone sidles up to you and says, 'Pssssst! Mrs. White is out of jail,' it's time to check your hemline. You can tell someone's an 'A Way with Words' listener when they confess to lying awake at night wondering about questions like, 'Are the words 'fillet' and 'flay' etymologically related?' A Minnesotan has been observing his infant babbling, and wonders if words like 'mama' and 'papa' arise from sounds that babies naturally make anyway. Are there some words or sounds that are instinctive? Or do they only learn them from their parents? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Usage, grammar, spelling, punctuation, slang, old sayings, other languages, speech, writing, you name it. Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, [email protected], or visit our web Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last year British slang lexicographer Jonathon Green struck a deal with the publisher Chambers Harrap to create an exhaustive dictionary of English slang. Now, says the London Telegraph, the first fruit of that relationship has appeared in the form of the Chambers Slang Dictionary. The main sources of slang, Green says, have remained the same: sex and sexual organs, drinking, and terms of abuse. But ,there are always innovations. The Telegraph offers some of them: boilerhouse, modern British rhyming slang for spouse. Jawsing, US teen slang for lying. And, muzzy, an Irish word for a naughty child. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/27/sv_slangmain.xml http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/27/sv_slang.xml In the Paper Cuts blog of the New York Times, Jennifer Scheussler reviews 'On The Dot,' by Nicholas and Alexander Humez. It's an exhaustive look at the period or the dot, that little piece of punctuation that does so much. And I do mean exhaustive. The book is so digressive and sometimes so far afield of its subject matter that you might find yourself flipping to the front to make sure you're still reading the same book. http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/dot-everything/ In the discussion forum on that page, I discovered the 'fini.' This is a new piece of punctuation created by Dave Rosenthal, an assistant managing editor at the Baltimore Sun. The fini is a square instead of a circle. Dave says, 'A period is usually a fine way to end a sentence. But when there's a forcefulness attached to the words, I worry that the period will roll away. It is, after all, just a tiny black ball.' http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/books/blog/2008/07/the_endofdiscussion.html Do you want to find out what Virginia Woolf and John Steinbeck sounded like? They're part of an audio collection from the British Library, called 'The Spoken Word: British Writers.' It was discussed and played on NPR's All Things Considered. The audio is a rare find, as many recordings of the early days of radio were never saved. Recordings by George Orwell, for example, have yet to be found, even though he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96030704 -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on 'A Way with Words': Feel like having a little 'hair of the dog'? Grant and Martha explain what dog hair has to do with hangover cures. And what do you call it when random objects form a recognizable image, like a cloud resembling a bunny, or the image of Elvis in a grilled cheese sandwich? With all this talk about this year's election ballot, did you ever stop to think about where the word 'ballot' comes from? Martha and Grant discuss terms related to politics, including 'ballot' and 'leg treasurer.' 'A fish stinks from the head down.' When an Indianapolis woman is quoted saying this, she's accused of calling the leader of a particular organization 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. 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. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=crapulent&r=66 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.' What's up with that? For a wonderful site about the dialect of that area, check out Pittsburgh Speech and Society. http://english.cmu.edu/pittsburghspeech/index.html 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. Here's the article Martha mentions from wordorigins.org: http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/audio_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 http://www.murrayscheese.com/ 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 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here's a riddle: 'Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven.' Think you know the answer? You'll find it in this week's episode, in which Grant and Martha discuss this and other old-fashioned riddles. Also: how did the phrase 'going commando' come to be slang for 'going without underwear'? And which word is correct: 'orient' or 'orientate'? To go commando means to 'go without underwear.' But why 'commando'? An Indiana listener says the term came up in conversation with her husband after one of them had a near-wardrobe malfunction. She mercifully leaves the rest to the imagination, but still wonders about the term. Grant says its popularity zoomed after a popular episode of 'Friends.' Watch the clips here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0JgkuNBuWI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q--6wtCPHg8&feature=related A woman who grew up in India says she was baffled when someone with aching feet complained, 'My dogs are barking.' The answer may lie in a jocular rhyme. Martha is baffled when Grant shares another riddle involving 'four stiff standers, two lookers, and one switchbox.' Can you figure out the answer? To-ga! To-ga! To-ga! John Chaneski's latest quiz, 'Classics Class,' has the hosts rooting around for the ancient Greek and Latin origins of English words. Those who commute coast-to-coast are 'bicoastals.' But what do you call someone who commutes along the same coast--between, say, Miami and New York? A woman who now travels regularly between Northern and Southern California to visit the grandchildren wonders what to call herself. She's already considered and nixed 'bipolar.' The hosts try to come up with other suggestions. Remember when no one ever thought about adding the suffix '-gate' to a word to indicate a scandal? Now there's Troopergate, Travelgate, Monicagate, Cameragate, Sandwichgate, and of course, the mother of all gates, Watergate. Grant talks about the flood of '-gate' words inspired by that scandal from the 1970s. An Atlanta listener seeks clarification about the difference between may and might? Might 'may' be used to express a possibility, or is 'might' a better choice? In this week's slang quiz, a member of the National Puzzlers' League http://www.puzzlers.org from Somerville, Massachusetts tries to guess the meaning of bottle room and shred, as used in the context of snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing. Do you cringe when you hear the words orientate and disorientate? A copy editor in Waldoboro, Maine does. She'd rather hear 'orient' and 'disorient.' The hosts weigh in on that extra syllable. They were the last words Abraham Lincoln heard before John Wilkes Booth assassinated him: 'Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside-out, old gal--you sockdologizing old man-trap!' Booth knew that this line from the play 'Our American Cousin' would get a big laugh, so he chose that moment to pull the trigger. A Wisconsin listener wants to know the meaning and origin of that curious word, 'sockdologizing.' If you want to read the whole play, which has some silly wordplay and a dopey riddle or two, it's online at Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3158 Does one take preventive or preventative measures? A caller in Ocean Beach, California who just graduated from an exercise science program wants to know which of these terms describes what she's been studying. -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The British publishers of the Collins dictionary have announced 24 words on their endangered species list. They're words like 'vilipend,' which means 'to treat with contempt,' and 'nitid,' that's n-i-t-i-d, which means 'glistening. ' The editors warn that if they don't see evidence of these words being used in everyday speech and writing, they'll drop them from the dictionary's next edition. They've even set deadline for the doomed words: February 2009. But they've also offered the public a chance to weigh in, and vote for which words deserve a reprieve. Sure, it's a great publicity stunt. But I have to say that the thought of any word being voted off the lexical island makes me wince. I understand, of course, that culling the herd is a necessary evil. First, there's the economic reality of dictionary publishing--more words mean more pages, and more pages mean more costs per unit. Still, I have to tell you I was aghast to realize that on the list was one of my favorite words ever. The word is caducity--c-a-d-u-c-i-t-y. Caducity. It means 'perishability, transience.' More specifically, it can denote 'the infirmities that accompany old age.' Caducity comes from the Latin word 'cadere,' which means 'to fall.' The same root produced other falling words, like 'cascade' and most likely, 'cadaver,' literally, 'one who has fallen.' So what I love about this word is that tucked inside it' is a picture of falling away, like leaves in autumn. You might speak of 'the caducity of fame' or the 'caducity of nature.' Or you might say, 'I worry about my parents' growing caducity.' There's a wistful beauty about this word. And it's not just poetic, it's musical. Listen: caducity. Contrary to what you might think, lexicographers say it's incredibly hard to coin a word that sticks around long enough to wind up in the dictionary. Same goes for self-conscious efforts to revive words that have become obsolete. But I'm convinced that 'caducity' has hardly outlived its usefulness. So I'm asking you to join me: Adopt it as your own. Use it. Drop it into casual conversation. Put it into a poem. On a vanity license plate--I don't care. Just use it. Another thing lexicographers tell us is that just because a word isn't in a dictionary, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So regardless of what the Collins editors decide in February, I'm going to hang on to this one. Then again, if we all start using it, maybe we can save this lovely word from, well, caducity. Check out the other words on Collins list here. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3046488/Collins-dictionary-asks-public-to-rescue-outdated-words.html -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reading the OED from A to Z (minicast) Word nerd Ammon Shea quit his job as a furniture mover in New York City to spend an entire year reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary. The result, in addition to eyestrain, headaches, and skeptics' puzzlement, was Shea's new book, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 pages. Martha talks about what he learned along the way. http://ammonshea.com/oed.html Years ago, I covered a story for a sports magazine about Tori Murden, a woman trying row a 23-foot boat across the ocean. She set out from the Canary Islands with four months' provisions...and little else: No motor, no sail, no support vessel traveling along with her. And after 81 days, and 2,962 lonely miles at sea, she reached her goal, becoming the first woman ever to row a boat across the Atlantic. But for Murden, the challenge of rowing an ocean was nothing compared to the struggle of trying to explain why she'd done it in the first place: Why endure crushing boredom, blazing heat, chilling rain, blisters, and backaches day after day - all in order to row a little boat from one continent to the next? Recently I thought of Murden while I was reading a book about, of all things, dictionaries. It's by Ammon Shea, and it's called...'Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages.' You see where I'm going here: When it comes to dictionaries, Shea is into extreme adventure. This book chronicles his quirky quest to scale the Mount Everest of lexicography: the great Oxford English Dictionary. Shea is besotted with words. In fact, he quit his job as a furniture mover in New York City in order to spend a whole year reading the OED. He writes that he did so to find out 'what words there are for things in the world that I had always thought unnamed.' And find them he did. Words like: Petrichor (PEH-trih-kerr). That's p-e-t-r-i-c-h-o-r. It means 'the pleasant smell of rain on the ground, especially after a dry spell.' You knew there should be a word for that, right? Or how about 'apricity'? That word denotes 'the warmth of the sun in winter.' Or how about 'balter,' 'to dance clumsily.' Now that's handy. Trudging though page after page, the author suffers headaches, eyestrain, and a growing ghastly pallor from long days reading in the basement of a New York. Fortunately for Shea, his girlfriend is a former lexicographer for Merriam-Webster - and, one assumes, an extraordinarily patient person. Shea's long march from A to Z is often exhilarating, sometimes numbing. His heart sinks upon realizing that the section of words starting with the prefix 'un-' -- as in 'unabandoned, unable' -- goes on for 451 pages. He write: 'By the time I've read one hundred pages I am near catatonic, bored out of my mind, and so listless I can't remember why I wanted to read any of this in the first place.' After pressing on through the letter U, Shea is rewarded with gems like velleity, which means 'a mere wish or desire for something without accompanying action or effort.' And zoilus. A zoilus is an 'envious critic.' As for the question 'Why?' Shea has a ready answer. He writes that he read the dictionary cover to cover because, quite simply: 'It was the most engrossing and enjoyable book I've ever read.' It's also why, after finishing the last page, he writes, he happily started over. And I thought I was a big word nerd. And now, I have to get back to some dictionary-diving myself. -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The world of politics tops this week's language headlines, including an explanation of the Bradley effect, and the ongoing debate over bilingual education. Also, what does the word fubsy mean? Grant has the answer, and reports about a new favorite blog described as 'LOLcats for smart people.' Ever since it started looking like Barack Obama was more than a long shot for his party's nomination, pollsters, and pundits have been talking about the 'Bradley effect.' It's when polls show a black political candidate way out in front. And yet, when the votes are cast, the black candidate barely wins or doesn't even win at all. As William Safire writes in the New York Times, the expression comes from Tom Bradley's loss of the governorship of California in 1982. Then, polls predicted that he would win, but, in fact, he lost by a small margin. Many people felt that Bradley, who was black, lost because hidden racists wouldn't admit to pollsters their true intentions. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/magazine/28wwln-safire-t.html Also in the campaign coverage is an ongoing discussion of bilingual education. Is it better to teach immigrant children only in English or should we teach them in a language they already know? http://tinyurl.com/5xrt93 That's the premise of a debate on the New York Times Education Watch blog. The presidential candidate's views come under some scrutiny by a couple of experts, but most interesting are the reader comments. One wrote, 'I am struck by how much the debate about the quantity of English in the classroom quickly devolves from a sensible search for the best strategy, to an ideological war that produces some very silly teaching strategies.' Speaking of campaigns, ever heard of the word fubsy? Well, British dictionary publisher Collins is threatening to cut that and other archaic words from its dictionaries. It's mainly a public relations effort, but they've succeeded in bringing out the word-lovers to nominate and mull favorite archaic words of their own. Fubsy, by the way, means 'short and stout.' http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4798835.ece http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1847038,00.html And finally, it's the latest in a long line of many similar sites, but a new favorite blog is Wordsplosion. There you'll find photographs of English gone wrong. Like the grocery store sign that says 'dairy choices.' And under that it says 'cheese and cheese.' http://www.wordsplosion.com -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A listener in Brazil challenges Martha's pronunciation of the odd English word antipodes. Their email exchange leads Martha to muse about a favorite collection of poems, where she first encountered this word. ... Recently on our show, I made a linguistic boo-boo. Did you catch it? We were talking about the word 'podium.' A listener named Joel called to say that the word 'podium' originally denoted something you stand on. But more and more, people are using it to mean something you 'stand behind.' Joel was none too happy about that. I told him he was right about the roots of the word 'podium,' even though its meaning has changed. M: I feel your pain Joel. Absolutely, podium comes from ultimately from a Greek word meaning 'foot.' G: Yeah, but that doesn't mean -- M: Hear me out. Hear me out! It's like podiatrist, the doctor who looks after your feet. It's like antipodes, the people on the other side of the world from us, exactly. There's a big old foot in that word. J: There sure is! Did you catch my mistake? One of our listeners in Brazil did. Luciano emailed from Sao Paolo to say I'd mispronounced that word for people on the other side of world. A-n-t-i-p-o-d-e-s, he wrote, isn't pronounced 'ANN-ti-poads.' It's 'ann-TIP-uh-dees.' - he's right! 'Ann-TIP-uh-dees' means, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it: 'Those who dwell directly opposite to each other on the globe, so that the soles of their feet are, as it were, planted against each other.' It's a poetic word, 'ann-TIP-uh-dees,' those Greek roots conjuring an image of people standing sole to sole, yet separated by an entire planet. The English word 'ann-TIP-uh-dees' was originally plural in form, referring to lots of people. The singular version, 'ANN-tih-poad,' came only later, by a process linguists call back-formation. In any case, my only excuse for mispronouncing the word is this: In elementary school, I'd seen that singular form, 'ANN-tih-pode,' and just assumed that the plural would naturally be 'ANN-ti-podes.' You may be wondering why an elementary-school kid would run into the word 'antipode' at all. Let me tell you about a book of poems that I just love. It's called 'Grooks' by Piet Hein. If you're not familiar with it, you're in for a treat. Hein was a 20th-century Danish scientist, poet, and designer. He was always trying to bridge the gap between art and science, which is probably why he counted among his close friends both Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. He also wrote short, insightful poems in Danish, English, and another passion of his, Esperanto. Here's a pithy poem called 'Problems': Problems worthy of attack Prove their worth By hitting back. Nuff said. Here's one that he called 'A Psychological Tip': Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, And you're hampered by not having any, The best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, Is simply by spinning a penny. No - not so that chance shall decide the affair While you're passively standing there moping; But the moment the penny is up in the air, You suddenly know what you're hoping. I tell you, I've used that tip more times than I can count. And finally, the poem that introduced me to the word 'antipode.' It will steadily shrink, our earthly abode, until antipode stands upon antipode. Then, soles together, the planet gone, we'll know the ground that we rest upon. The book is called 'Grooks' by Piet Hein. Here are some more examples of his poems. http://www.chat.carleton.ca/~tcstewar/grooks/grooks.html --- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mmmmmaverick. Maverick, Maverick, Maverick. Maverick, Maverick, Maverick, Maverick. Maverick. Is it just my imagination, or are we hearing this word a whole LOT more lately? You usually hear it applied a politician who's staunchly independent and stubbornly non-conformist. But where'd we get an odd word like this? The answer involves a Texas political dynasty that added not one, but two, familiar words to English. Samuel Augustus Maverick was 19th-century Texas lawyer who went into politics. He was elected mayor of San Antonio in 1839 and later served in the Texas State Legislature. He also speculated in land deals. And he owned cattle, which he kept on a 385,000-acre ranch. In those days, cattlemen didn't always fence in their land, which meant their animals often roamed free. So, ranchers branded their cattle to prevent theft, and resolve disputes over ownership. Well, all the ranchers, that is, except for Samuel Maverick. Maverick was notorious for refusing to brand his own livestock. So whenever his neighbors saw an animal without a brand, especially a calf that had strayed from its mother, they'd say things like, 'Oh, that must be a Maverick.' Maverick told people he considered branding cruelty to animals. Skeptics, though, charged that by refusing to brand his animals, Maverick could then lay claim to any unbranded cattle as his own. Over the years, this term for a 'stray, unmarked calf' also came to apply to any kind of strong-willed nonconformist, particularly a politician not 'branded' by special interests. And the linguistic legacy of this Texas family goes even further. The Mavericks can take credit for yet another familiar English word that involves politics: That word is gobbledygook. Ggggobbledygook, gobbledygook, gobbledygook, gobbledy--well, you get the picture. Anyway, it turns out that Samuel Maverick's grandson, Maury Maverick, also went into politics, eventually serving in the U.S. Congress. A folksy, plainspoken Texan, Maury Maverick was appalled by the fog of stuffy, obfuscatory, bureaucratic language that hangs over and permeates Washington. In 1944, he penned an official memo to his colleagues and subordinates, urging them to speak and write in plain English. The memo read in part: 'Stay off the gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For Lord's sake, be short and say what you're talking about... Anyone using the words 'activation' and 'implementation' will be shot!' Talk about a real Maverick. Congressman Maverick later said he wasn't sure why the crazy word gobbledygook popped into his mind at just that moment. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'I was thinking of the old bearded turkey gobbler back in Texas who was always gobbledy-gobblin' and struttin' with ludicrous pomposity. At the end of this gobble there was a sort of â 'gook.'' In any case, both 'gobbledygook' and 'maverick' turned out to be way too useful to be forgotten. Both found their way into dictionaries--and onto the front page, especially in this election year. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Usage, grammar, spelling, punctuation, slang, old sayings, other languages, speech, writing, you name it. Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, [email protected], or visit our web Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some people wouldn't be caught without the season's latest fashions, and others never leave home without their asthma inhaler. But for some of us, what strikes fear into our hearts is the thought of being caught without a book. Jeanie in Wisconsin has that kind of passion for audiobooks and calls to ask Martha and Grant to give her a name for her condition. If you have an idea for what this fear should be called, tell us about it! -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired January 19th, 2008.] Does your family use a special word you've never heard anywhere else? A funny name for 'the heel of a loaf of bread,' perhaps, or for 'visiting relatives who won't leave.' In this week's episode, Martha and Grant discuss 'family words,' and Martha reveals the story behind her own family's secret word, 'fubby.' Why do we say that someone who's pregnant is 'knocked up'? The hit movie starring Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen has a caller wondering about this term. A man whose last name is McCoy wants a definitive answer about the origin of the expression 'the real McCoy.' He's been told it comes from the name of turn-of-the-century boxing champ Kid McCoy. Is that really the case? A Michigander wants to know about the difference between 'titled' and 'entitled.' She'd assumed that a book is 'titled' Gone with The Wind and a person is 'entitled' to compensation for something. Grant and Martha explain it's a little more complicated than that. Quiz Guy Greg Pliska presents a quiz about 'False Plurals,' based on the old riddle: What plural word becomes singular when you put the letter 's' at the end of it? (Hint: Think of a brand of tennis racket, as well as the former name of a musical artist before he changed it back again.) Quick, which is faster? Something that happens 'instantly' or that happens 'instantaneously'? A caller wants to know if there's any difference between the two. A Brazilian has been researching why actors use the unlikely expression 'break a leg' to wish each other well before going on stage. He suspects it's a borrowing of a German phrase that means, 'May you break your neck and your leg,' but he's not sure. A caller who lived in the Bay Area during the 1960s remembers using the word 'loosecap' to describe someone who's 'not playing with a full deck.' He wonders if he and his friends are the only ones to use it, as in, 'Don't be such a loosecap!' This week's 'Slang This!' contestant tries to decipher the slang phrases 'dance at two weddings' and 'put the big pot in the little pot.' She also shares her own favorite slang terms for 'crumb crusher,' 'rug rat' and 'ankle biter.' By the way, you can read Grant's essay about slang terms for small children, 'Sprogs in a Poop Factory,' here. His column about language appears every two weeks in The Malaysia Star newspaper. A caller fears that the term 'Indian giver' is politically incorrect, and wants an alternative to teach her children. A Princeton University student wonders if his school can lay claim to being the first to apply the Latin word 'campus' to the grounds of an institution of higher learning. By the way, if you want to read about more family words, check out Paul Dickson's book, 'Family Words: A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Families.' Here's hoping all of you are happy fubbies! -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A caller from Imperial Beach, California has a punctuation question: Dr. Tei Fu Chen and his wife, Dr. Oi Lin Chen own and operate a large, multinational herbal food company. In company literature, the two doctors are referred to in several ways. The caller wants to know which is the best choice. Which of the following would you pick, and why? 1. The owners, Doctors Chens, are experts in the field. 2. The owners, Doctor Chens, are experts in the field. 3. The owners, Doctors Chen, are experts in the field. 4. The owners, the Doctors Chen, are experts in the field. See if your answer agrees with the one Martha and Grant decided on. -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Grant has the latest headlines from the world of language, including the debate over the name of the home of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Is 'Beijing' pronounced 'bay-JING' or 'bay-ZHING'? Also, a recent court decision concerning an offense that's coming to be known as 'Talking While Spanish.' And what's the origin of the phrase 'the skinny'? -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired December 8th and 9th, 2007.] This week Martha and Grant honor winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes, those wacky awards for weird academic research and they help a caller decipher a puzzling word from a personals ad: what does 'paratereseomaniac' mean? A electronic teenager repellent? An alarm clock that runs away from you to make you'll wake up? Yep, it's the Ig Nobel Prizes, those awards for academic research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. Martha and Grant honor this year's winners for linguistics and literature. A caller shares colorful expressions from her Texas-born mother, including 'turkey tail' and 'I'm gonna snatch you bald-headed.' She also wonders why her mother says' bread and butter' every time they're walking together and an object in their path makes them step to either side of it. A pair of business partners disagree whether to use one word, 'website,' or or two words, 'Web site.' Greg Pliska presents a groaner of a quiz about world capitals. Let's just put it this way: the number of puns in this quiz will be Dublin exponentially. A former resident of Buffalo, New York, puzzles over a strange word in a 12-year-old personals ad. What exactly is a 'paratereseomaniac' with extensive knowledge of osculation'? A former Navy man has a pet peeve about using the word 'utilize' instead of 'use.' Did Gary Owen invent the word 'insegrevious'? And is there a category for words that can mean anything you want them to? This week's 'Slang This!' contestant learns the difference between a 'trailer queen' and 'soup spitter.' A wife seeks consolation because her husband always implores her to 'drive safe' instead of 'drive safely.' Martha says if he really loves her, he'll use an adverb. Grant says it's a message of love, so maybe the '-ly' doesn't matter so much. You may have learned that an 'estuary' is where a river meets the sea, but a reference librarian asks whether she should eschew estuary as a word for the confluence of freshwater bodies. Martha and Grant tide her over with some more information. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAYâWORD/(877) 929-9673, [email protected], or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When is a mango not a mango? Why, when it's a bell pepper, of course! An Indiana listener says she and her Kentucky in-laws have entirely different names for this vegetable. She wants to know why, so we help her sort it out. -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode originally aired Dec. 1, 2007.] Pass the Gatorade! Martha and Grant work up a sweat this week as they tackle a sports quiz and lob vocabulary questions back and forth. They also settle a family dispute about the pronunciation of 'eco-friendly' and unlock the etymology of 'skeleton key.' Do you know what a 'rampike' is? Or a 'colobus'? Martha and Grant test each other's knowledge of ten-dollars words with the online quiz at FreeRice.com. A reader of Anthony Bourdain's 'Kitchen Confidential' thinks the book is snarky--but what does 'snarky' really mean? A husband and wife ask for wisdom about a long-running dispute: Is it 'last-stitch effort' or 'last-ditch effort'? To great effect, your unaffected radio hosts explain the difference between 'affect' and 'effect.' Greg Pliska's quiz about terms from football, curling, and other sports leaves Martha and Grant winded but wanting more. How do you pronounce 'eco,' as in 'eco-friendly'? Is it 'EE-koe' or 'EK-koe'? A seller of environmentally friendly products learns whether she can tell her teenage son to go spread his pronunciation in the garden. A Wisconsinite hopes to unlock the question, 'Why do we call it a skeleton key?' A caller in Texas stirs up a spat over whether it's ever grammatically correct to say 'between you and I'--even though Shakespeare did it. This week's 'Slang This!' contestant guesses what the terms 'tape bomb' and 'pixie money' mean. Improvised explosive devices made out of cassette tapes? We don't think so. Finally, if you release a collection of music on compact disc, can you still call it a 'record' or an 'album'? Or is it just a CD? A musician from Indiana wants an answer. -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Grant dishes up the latest language headlines from around the world. Oh, what a difference a letter can make! The Moscow Times reports this week that Tatyana Tetyorkina was stripped of her Russian citizenship because a government clerk's typewriter was missing a single letter. Instead, a different vowel was used, making her Teterkina rather than Tetyorkina--and making who she said she was and who her papers said she was disagree. Public outcry over the matter has since caused her citizenship to be reinstated, but Tatyana is still pursuing it in the Russian courts. In Slate magazine, Eugene Volokh takes a look at names that are so weird that they were brought before the courts. There's the nine-year-old New Zealand girl named Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii. Yes, that's the entire name. There's someone named They T-H-E-Y, there's Darren Lloyd Bean, spelled Darren Q-X Bean, and more Santa Clauses than a Santa Claus convention. Caroline Winter fills in for William Safire in the New York Times Magazine, where she discusses why we capitalize the pronoun 'I.' She says, in short, that a lowercase I is hard to see on the page, but an uppercase I is a cinch to read. She suggests, just for a little self-humbling, that we capitalize you, Y-O-U, instead. Also in the New York Times, Nicholson Baker gives a favorable review to Ammon Shea's book, Reading the OED, in which he spent an entire year reading the print version of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Baker calls the book 'oddly inspiring' and says, 'The effect of this book on me was to make me like Ammon Shea and, briefly, to hate English.' Finally, dictionary editor Erin McKean asks in the Boston Globe why people use a word and then sheepishly wonder if it is really a word. She writes, 'Whenever I see 'not a real word' used to stigmatize what is (usually) a perfectly cromulent word, I wonder why the writer felt the need to hang a big sign reading 'I am not confident about my writing' on it. What do they imagine the penalty is for using an 'unreal' word? A ticket from the Dictionary Police?' Cromulent, by the way, is a made-up word from The Simpsons. It means good or fine. Okay, fine. That's all for this week's language headlines. You can find links to all of these stories on the discussion forum of A Way with Words, public radio's weekly call-in show about language. Find it at waywordradio.org. -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode originally aired May 17, 2008.] If someone calls you 'dibby,' should you be flattered or insulted? You'd know if you were in college a century ago--it's outdated college slang! Also, we are 'voluntold' to play a word puzzle about Unknown Superheroes! What do we call it when new inventions or ideas change the name of something old? It used to be that the word 'guitar' was sufficient, but now we regularly distinguish between an 'acoustic guitar' and an 'electric guitar.' Same for television, a word that sufficed until we started saying 'color television' to distinguish it from the earlier black-and-white version. What's the word for such terms? We know you can't wait: it's 'retronym.' A Cincinnati man says that at the non-profit where he works, he often hears the word 'voluntold.' It comes up when someone is volunteered by someone else to do some task, rather than volunteering themselves. Does this term for 'involuntary volunteering' have military origins? 'You're the apple of my eye' is an ancient term of endearment. Martha explains the connections between apples, eyes, and other precious things. We share a listener's email about 'nicknames for the city of Vancouver, Canada.' How about ' Word-couver'? Quiz Guy John Chaneski is a huge fan of comic books featuring superheroes like 'Superman and Spiderman.' Lo and behold, John claims he's discovered a whole treasure trove of 'Heretofore Unnamed Superheroes,' and invites us to guess their names. What do you call the doughty superhero who can take any food item that is past its expiration date, send it back through time, and make it edible again? Need a clue? His mild-mannered alter ego is in his first year at NYU. An Oakland man is curious about a queasy-making phrase: 'a face that could gag a maggot off a gutwagon.' What's a 'gutwagon'? How's it used? Why is it used? Yech! 'Go fly a kite!' A caller from Washington, D.C. wonders whose kite is getting flown and why. Naturally, we have some ideas! A San Diego caller says he's noticed that his high-school grandson and his buddies habitually 'refer to each other only by their last names,' but his granddaughter says she and her own friends never do. Is this just a teenage guy thing? The book that Grant recommends here is A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address by Leslie Dunkling. Martha shares the oodles of listeners' emails responding to a caller seeking 'a better word than retiree' to describe himself and his wife. How about 'pre-tiree'? Or 'jubilant'? This week's Slang This! contestant is from Boston. She shares a slang phrase making the rounds among her friends at MIT: 'find your pants.' She then tries to guess the meaning of the slang term 'boilover' and the obscure word 'nycthemeron.' Is it 'toward or towards'? 'Forward or forwards'? Do they differ in American English and British English? A Seattle listener wants to know. A California caller is puzzled as to why 'the prefix un-' seems to function in two entirely different ways in the terms 'undone' and 'unmarried.' If you were raised in North Dakota like our caller, you might wonder about a phrase you heard growing up: 'It's a horse a piece.' It means something like 'six of one, half a dozen of the other.' She is curious about the origin of the horse phrase and whether it's a regional expression. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAYâWORD/(877) 929-9673, [email protected], or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For true word nerds, it's a guilty pleasure. You meet a stranger, and you find yourself listening closely to that person's way of speaking as you try to guess the accent. Martha and Grant confess they play "Name That Accent" all the time in the privacy of their own heads. Recently though, a listener phoned to challenge them to guess where she'd grown up based on her accent. See if you can figure it out! -- 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A caller has client who uses what sounds like a strange, three-syllable word: indice. The caller knows that the plural of index is indices. But, he wonders...indice? And should he talk about it with his client? ... 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode first aired May 5, 2008. ... Have you ever eaten a 'Benedictine sandwich'? Or savored a juicy 'pork steak'? What's a favorite dish you grew up with that may be mystifying to someone from another part of the country? Also, what does it mean to tell someone to 'put a snap on the grouch bag'? A rugby referee from Indiana calls to ask if his sport is the origin of the word 'touchdown' as it is used in American football. How do you pronounce the word 'patronize'? Is one pronunciation used if you say 'Don't patronize me!' and another one if you say 'We patronize local businesses'? Why do we say political campaigns that are in a 'dead heat'? Why 'dead' and why 'heat'? We play bingo on the air with Quiz Guy John Chaneski. His motives are not B9! A woman who went to school in New Orleans reports she was startled the first time she heard residents of the Crescent City talk about 'making groceries' rather than buying them. Grant explains the French origins of that expression. A listener who recently played in a Boggle tournament wants to know why we speak of 'seeding' such a competition. The German word 'uber' has found a place in American English. A New Jersey man says he and his colleagues find it to be more versatile than a Swiss Army knife, as in, 'He is uber in the middle of that situation,' 'That was an uber meeting,' and 'You guys are the language ubers.' An Indianapolis caller wants to know about curious expression she heard from her Aunt Harriet: 'put a snap on the grouch bag.' You would think it means 'Stop complaining!' but she says it refers to making sure your valuables are secure. What's the grudge? Martha and Grant discuss more regional food terms. If you order 'Albany beef' in upstate New York, for example, don't be surprised if you're served fish. This week's Slang This! contestant grapples with the slang terms 'squish' and 'optempo.' What's the trouble with using the expression 'drink the Kool-Aid' to connote blind, unquestioning obedience to a politician? A caller is bothered by the grisly origin of the phrase--a reference to the 1978 mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana--and thinks it's being used inaccurately, in any case. A caller is curious about the odd expression 'to who laid the rail,' which is used to mean, among other things, 'thoroughly, completely, excessively.' ... 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 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices