Shank of the Evening

What time is it if it’s the crack of chicken? When exactly is the shank of the evening? How do you pronounce the word spelled H-O-V-E-R? Did Warren G. Harding really coin the word normalcy? Also, a name game, sports nicknames, flounder vs. founder, Laundromats vs. washaterias, Black Dutch, nosebaggers, medical slang, and a look back at the joys of the early internet. This episode first aired April 21, 2012.

Names for Rolling Stops

 When a car rolls slowly through a stop sign, it’s often called a California stop or a California roll. But the Midwest has its own monikers for this sneaky move, including the farmer stop, the Chicago stop, and no cop, no stop.

Crack of Chicken

 How early do you have to wake up to see what one listener calls the crack of chicken? It seems to be a twist on the term crack of dawn. Other terms for this early-morning time are o’dark thirty and the scratch of dawn.

Harding’s Normalcy?

 Did President Warren G. Harding coin the term normalcy in his famous Return to Normalcy speech? Turns out the word normalcy was already in use before Harding made it famous. Its synonym, normality, is generally the preferred term. Harding is also credited with — or blamed for — bringing the term hospitalization into the common vernacular.

In his book Presidential Voices: Speaking Styles from George Washington to George W. Bush, Allan Metcalf points out that U.S. presidents have contributed or popularized quite a few neologisms to the English language.

More Names for Rolling Stops

 In Texas, the California stop is also known as an Okie yield sign, an Okie crash sign, and a taxpayer stop.

Gorked and Crimped

 What does it mean to be gorked or crimped? These slang terms for “high on drugs” are used by hospital and emergency medical services workers to help cope with the stress of such traumatic work and to build solidarity among co-workers.

Aptronym Word Game

 Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game of aptronyms for people whose names fit certain locations or conditions. For example, a guy hanging onto a wall might be named Art. Or what do you call a woman between two buildings? Ally!

Black Dutch

 The racial descriptor Black Dutch is sometimes used by people who want to disguise someone’s true ethnic origins. Black Irish and Black German are also used.

Flounder vs. Founder

 What’s the difference between flounder and founder? To flounder is “to struggle or thrash about,” while to founder is “to sink or to fail.” Surprisingly, the verb flounder shares no etymological root with the fish, though the image of a flounder flapping helplessly about on the shore may have influenced our sense of the word.

Skeuomorphs

 Skeuomorphs are aesthetic elements of design that no longer correlate with their original function. Computer software is full of skeuomorphs. For example, the save button that we’re all used to is a picture of a floppy disk. But then, who uses floppy disks any more?

Sports Nicknames

 With linsanity and tebowing sweeping the country, we’re thinking about other great sports nicknames. Unfortunately, it seems that with unique names taking up a greater percentage of children born, there’s no longer as much practical demand for nicknames. Still, the Babe, Magic, and The Refrigerator live on in legend.

Like A Broken Record

 The increasingly musty expression like a broken record has caused some confusion among digital natives who’ve heard of broken records only in terms of sports!

Internet Meme Lexicon

 Ben Zimmer published a brilliant collection of internet memes from the past twenty years in a the journal American Speech. Memes like facepalming and the O, rly? owl have allowed us to communicate otherwise unwritable sentiments via the internet.

Pronouncing Hover

 How do you pronounce the word hover? In England, it rhymes more with “clobber” than “lover.” If you want to learn how to say “My hovercraft is full of eels” in lots of different languages, head on over to Omniglot.

Shank of the Evening Expression

 It’s the shank of the evening! But when is that, exactly? This phrase is typically suggests that the night is far from over, shank being an old word for something straight, or the tail end of something. But as the Dictionary of American Regional English notes, in the South, evening is considered “the time between late afternoon and dusk.”

Nosebaggers

 If you’re on vacation, watch out for nosebaggers. This mid-19th century slang term refers to tourists who go to resort areas for the day but bring their own provisions and don’t contribute to the local economy. A modern nosebagger might be the type of person who brings their own snacks to the movies.

Laundromats and Washaterias

 Do you wash your clothes at a Laundromat or a washateria? A chain of Laundromats in Texas that dated from 1930 to 1950 had the name Washateria, and it took hold as a general term, especially in Texas.

Even More Names for Rolling Stops

 A couple more variations of the California stop: the jackrabbit and the California slide.

Photo by Barbara Spengler. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Books Mentioned in the Episode

Presidential Voices: Speaking Styles from George Washington to George W. Bush Allan Metcalf

Dictionary of American Regional English

Music Used in the Episode

Title	Artist	Album	Label
Awareness (Suite)	Buddy Terry	Awareness	Mainstream Records
Hot Dog	Mongo Santamaria	Soul Bag	CBS
Super Strut	Deodato	The Roots of Acid Jazz	Sony
Funk Yourself	Eumir Deodato	First Cuckoo	MCA Records
Dig The Thing	Bill Doggett	Lionel Hampton Presents: Bill Dogett	Who’s Who In Jazz
Love Song	Sonny Red	Sonny Red	Mainstream Records
Sideman	Lonnie Smith	The Roots of Acid Jazz	Sony
The Immigrant	Gas Mask	Their First Album	Tonsil Records
Soulful Proclamation	Messengers Incorporated	Soulful Proclamation	SMI Records
Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off	Ella Fitzgerald	Ella Fitzgerald Sings The George and Ira Gershwin Song Book	Verve