A Pickle Short of a Jar

Even though you’re listening to this on podcast and not on the air, you can still call our toll-free number 877-929-9673.

And you can still send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

And you can still find us online at waywordradio.org.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, do you know what a full deckism is?

A full deckism. Is it a poker term?

Kind of. It comes from saying that somebody is not dealing with a full deck.

Oh, I’ve certainly been called that. Yes.

It means that they’re slow or stupid.

Martha, you’re none of those things.

Thank you.

Or you might say someone is a sandwich short of a picnic or a pickle shy of a full barrel or one spark short of a bonfire.

And I wanted to tell you that we have a new one in our house.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, my wife and I, we lost the keys to a family member’s car.

They loaned it to us while they were away on a cruise.

And we spent days looking for these keys.

Days.

Oh, no.

Yeah, and we didn’t want to call the locksmith because we weren’t sure whether or not we should do that.

And we weren’t, you know, all this stuff.

So they show up after their cruise.

And some other family members show up in order to drive them back to Sacramento.

And the AAA guy shows up to take the car back.

And we’re all standing there.

And my wife and I are red-faced and embarrassed.

And the keys are missing.

And it’s the only set of keys that anyone has for this car.

You know, it’s big drama.

You know, terrible stuff.

Trip ruined, trust broken, all that stuff.

And you didn’t get to use the car.

No, and we didn’t get to use the car.

The AAA guy says, oh, why don’t I just open it up right here?

We can see if the keys are inside.

So, of course he does.

And the keys are in there, and they’re behind the seat.

And so it’s like all this daze of drama of the missing keys and people doing things they wouldn’t otherwise have to do.

All the terrible stuff.

We just felt really foolish.

So in our house, you can now say somebody is one key short of an automobile.

It means that they’re not that bright.

And there’s a ton of these.

You know, I went looking for some more of these full-deck-isms, as they’re called.

And there’s a wonderful, long, long list by Alan Silverstein.

A handle short of a suitcase.

A few planes short of an Air Force.

A few pickles short of a jar.

Sure.

A few peas short of a casserole.

Yeah, tons of these.

A beer short of a six-pack.

Has it floored in neutral.

That’s a great one related to the car usage, right?

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Their driveway doesn’t quite reach the road.

Well, if a turn of phrase has turned your head,

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

We’re here to talk about grammar, slang, punctuation, and word histories.

You can also send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marty, and I’m calling from Grand Prairie, Texas.

Hi, Marty. Welcome to the program.

Hello.

Well, it’s about it’s.

I know there’s a hard and fast rule for it, but the it’s possessive and the it’s contraction, every time I get to that, I stumble.

It just locks up.

So I’ve pretty much given up, and now I just eliminate the apostrophe on both of them and just save a keystroke.

So every time you get to that, you lock up, huh?

Wait, it just doesn’t, I just, both apostrophes in both cases make sense.

It follows all the rules.

Interesting, interesting.

Yeah, well, that’s the thing, Marty, is that it doesn’t follow the rules.

There’s lots of things that do that.

Right, right.

And it is in that category.

And you know what?

I lock up, too, when I run across that expression as well.

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah.

And I’ll tell you why.

Actually, it’s really traumatic.

When I was in sixth grade, I had a really mean teacher.

She was super mean, especially to me.

And I used to confuse it’s apostrophe S and it’s with no apostrophe.

And, you know, I would write like a perfect paper, but I would have that one thing wrong in it.

If I wrote I-T apostrophe S and it was supposed to be it’s possessive, she would write sad.

It’s apostrophe S equals it is.

So I just always remember that.

It’s apostrophe S equals it is.

And I take off the sad.

I don’t have the advantage of having been traumatized in elementary school.

Well, I can do that for you if you like.

Marty, sad.

Just hear my voice in your head.

Okay.

I’ll try.

But, I mean, seriously, I mean, it was very traumatic for me,

But I remember it now that if you have I-T apostrophe S,

It equals it is every single time.

It’s is an exception, and that’s why you’re always locking up.

So you’re saying that if I can replace the it’s with it is

And it makes sense and it’s grammatically correct,

Then I should use I-T apostrophe S.

But is the reverse also true?

Right, right, right.

Well, the dog is chewing its bone.

Right. And it doesn’t work if you say dog is chewing, it is bone.

Exactly.

Very good. Very nice.

Marty, does that make sense?

Yes, it does.

Yeah?

I hope that will help.

All right. Well, Marty, send us an email once in a while and let us know if you’ve still got it.

If not, we’ll have Martha traumatize you again.

Oh, okay. That sounds good.

Thanks so much for calling, Marty.

You’re welcome.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

You know, I moved to California in July, Martha, and there’s an ice cream treat out here,

And it’s called It’s It.

Oh, no.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s hyphenated.

It’s I-T apostrophe S hyphen I-T.

It’s kind of like a moon pie or an ice cream sandwich.

It’s like a cookie with ice cream in the middle.

I don’t know exactly what it is.

I’ve never had one.

But it’s really, you look at this sign, you can look at this sign for an hour and wonder if there’s a mistake up there.

Because it’s just not a logical name for a food item.

Oh, man.

It’s it.

That’s really catchy.

You think it’s good advertising?

I’m told that they’re very good.

And I think I’ve even driven by the factory, but I haven’t had one yet.

Okay, so if it has the apostrophe, then it is it, right?

Yeah, I think that’s what they’re saying.

I think they’re saying that this is the treat that you’ve been waiting for, so it’s it.

Okay.

We’ll see.

Tell us about your grammatical traumas or tricks.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is David Block, and I’m calling you from Greenwich, Connecticut.

Well, welcome to the program.

What can we do for you, David?

About 15 or so years ago, we were invited to a friend’s house down in an island off the west coast of Florida,

And another friend of theirs and mine was invited as well.

And during the course of our vacation, we may have been fishing, but we may not have been fishing.

I can’t remember that exactly.

I happened to say to my friend Mel, who was an architect and a very argumentative fellow, I might add,

I happened to say to him, well, listen, let’s either fissure cut bait.

And he looked at me and said, what do you mean by that?

I said, well, let’s either stop doing what we’re doing and go on to do something else,

Or that’s what that means to me.

And he said, no, no, no, you’re wrong. You’re completely wrong.

I said, well, what do you think the expression means?

And he said, well, we can either fish, that is, go on fishing,

Or we can stop fishing, sit on the dock, and cut bait.

And I just didn’t think he had a leg to stand on.

And here you are, the jury.

You can tell me what you think.

Wow, a jury of two.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, so you’re wondering if it’s fish or cut bait,

Meaning to stop fishing entirely and go play checkers or something?

Well, I would say it’s either do it or stop trying to or pretending to do it

And get on to the next thing.

That’s how I view it.

And he obviously viewed it that you’ve got two choices.

You can fish or you can go sit on the dock and cut bait.

Okay, okay.

You know what? Growing up, I always thought it was the way that you’re saying it, just fish or – and I think this was because when I was very young and when I used to fish, my lines would get all tangled up.

And you’d cut bait.

Yeah, yeah.

So I would actually cut the line and cut the bait off because, you know, my only experience with bait was, you know, the poor little worms, you know, just sticking one little worm on the hook.

And so that’s what I always thought it was, fish or cut your line.

But this idiom means something else.

Cutting bait is what? It’s a useful activity.

Engage in a useful activity besides fishing, right?

Yeah, but if you’re cutting bait, you’re cutting up trash fish so that you can bait your hooks or bait your traps with that, right, to catch something else?

I would agree with that, yes.

Yes, that’s what I subsequently learned, that the idea is to either fish or make yourself useful doing something and let somebody else get in front of you and fish.

Right, right.

Yeah.

What is the jury saying?

I’m a little lost here.

The jury is waffling as usual and hedging and caveating in a way that only the jury can do.

Well, I think there are two ideas here, either fish or cut bait, meaning fish or stop completely.

And then the other idea is fish or cut bait, meaning to either fish or get out of the way and go do something useful.

Productive. Yeah, I see what you’re saying.

Yeah, one way or the other, you need to be busy.

And if you don’t have it in you to do the fishing, then go cut bait so somebody else can do the fishing.

That’s the way that I always understood it.

So you lean more towards my argumentative architect friend.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I mean, that’s the way that I learned it.

But the thing is, even though one origin or the other might have been original, since both kinds of understandings of this are current, they’re both actually still operative.

Does that make sense?

So whichever way you take it is still a useful idiom.

I feel relieved to know after all these years, and I really appreciate your thoughtful input.

Well, it’s our pleasure.

We’re on the air in Alaska, and I bet there are some fishermen up there who can call us and let us know exactly what they think about fishing or cutting bait.

Hey, David, thanks a lot for calling.

Thank you, Martha, and thank you, Grant.

All right, take care.

Had a good one on the hook there, didn’t we?

We did.

We did.

We’ll be waiting with bated breath for your calls and emails.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org.

Not long ago, we were talking about linguistic false friends, those words that look like they translate into English, but they don’t, like the German word gift, which means poison.

In German. We got a great letter about this from Liz, who listens to us in Cape Cod. She says, when I was a student at the University of Oslo summer school, my Norwegian language skills were apparently far beneath my confidence level.

One Saturday, another American friend and I decided to go to the municipal swimming pool. Being very fair skinned, I stopped at the drugstore to buy a tanning cream. After looking at all the products, I found one that said tan paste and another one that said tan cream, T-A-N-N.

It seemed self-evident that this was their version of a tanning product, so I bought one. When we got to the pool, I rubbed it all over the exposed areas of my body. The Norwegians at the pool seemed to be staring, and small children were peeking at me and giggling.

After about 20 minutes, the cream had become hard and rather flaky. It was also light green. All of this seemed part and parcel of the Scandinavian foreignness to which I had become accustomed.

After a few uncomfortable hours in the sun, I returned to the dorm, and the person checking me in asked what in the world was on my skin. When I showed her the tube of tanning cream, she went wild with laughter.

In Norwegian, tan is the word for tooth. My body was covered with toothpaste.

That’s brilliant. That’s fantastic.

That’ll teach you, right? Never assume.

Yeah, let’s hear about your linguistic misunderstandings, 1-877-929-9673, or send your horrible tales of getting it wrong to words@waywordradio.org.

Word puzzles and your questions about language as A Way with Words continues.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and we’re joined once again by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Hello, Greg.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Marissa.

Welcome back to the program.

What have you been up to?

Well, you know, we haven’t talked about the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Oh, that was a while back. How’d that go?

It went very well. I was very pleased with my finish.

Yes. At 34th place, which is 10 or 12 places up from where I have been lately.

Were there 35 people there?

There’s hundreds, right? Or maybe more than 1,000?

Oh, it’s cold in here.

No, there’s about 600-something people.

Oh, wow. Very nice.

Well, what about clues and puzzles for us?

I have a puzzle this week that’s called Categorical Allies.

Okay.

All right. And the way it works is this. I’ll give you a word, and you have to come up with a second word that’s in the same category as the first, and that begins with the two letters that the first ends with.

Okay.

For example. So if I said, for example, Sampras, you would know that the category is?

Tennis.

Tennis players. Somebody’s name begins with A-S.

And then you need an answer starting with A-S that fits the category.

Well, it’s not Agassi. I don’t know very much about tennis.

You’re the tennis lady.

Well, I know. I mean, this is a lob into Martha’s court here.

Oh, he’s got a stadium named after him.

Yeah, Arthur Ashe.

Arthur Ashe, of course. How embarrassing.

Okay. So you see how this works.

Yeah, I see how it works. Let’s go for it.

Diabolically. Your first word is Sacramento.

Tomato.

What’s what?

I’m just saying. They grow a lot of tomatoes in Sacramento.

Oh, okay. They do.

So what’s the category?

Capitals, Topeka.

There you go.

Oh, state capitals, Topeka. Look at that. Look at that. Not even a pause. That whole thing with tomato was just buying some time.

No, no, I’m serious. They grow a lot of tomato. They call it Sacra-Tomato sometimes.

Of course. Of course. Of course.

All right, here’s another one for you. Bach.

B-A-C-H. Bach and, I was going to say chamber music, but Bach and…

Well, what’s the category, obviously?

Composers.

Composers. Chopin.

Chopin would be the one I was looking for, yes.

How about Caliph?

C-A-L-I-P-H. Pharaoh.

Pharaoh, very good. So those are, what do we say, Middle Eastern leaders?

Or something like that.

Middle Eastern rulers, yes.

Rulers, titles, yeah.

Titles, yeah, very good.

How about Cisco, C-I-S-C-O?

This is a computer networking equipment manufacturer.

Yep.

So another one that begins with CO would be?

This is your question, Grant.

Yeah, maybe.

Well, it’s not, I’m actually thinking of it not specifically the industry that it’s in, but the fact that it’s one of the Dow Jones 30 industrials.

Oh, I see. So for another big company that starts with CO.

Coors.

No, I don’t know. I have no idea.

I’m thinking it was CompuServe. That dates me.

CO. Who else?

Coke.

Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola.

There you go.

How about another music one? Tuba.

Tuba bassoon.

Bassoon, yeah.

Bassoon. Very good.

Yes. Other orchestral instruments. You could also say bass or bass clarinets.

Okay. How about iodine?

Neon?

Neon. Yes.

Very good. Chemical elements. Also neptunium and neodymium.

I was going to say that. Those are the other ones you were thinking of, right?

Molybdenum.

Molybdenum.

Molybdenum.

Yes.

All right. So here’s another one for you. Nike.

Keds.

Oh. Nike Keds.

Yes. Shoe manufacturers.

How about drachma, D-R-A-C-H-M-A?

Drachma. Mark.

Mark, very good. The category would be…

Currency.

Currencies, and specifically defunct European currencies.

I was going to say that.

No, really. Mark from the German currency, or Marka, which is the Finnish currency that preceded the euro.

Did not know that.

And one more for you to dance off with. Mambo.

Bossa Nova.

Bossa Nova.

Very nice. Or Bolero.

Oh, of course. Bolero.

And actually, I had one going with Latin dance styles that started with salsa.

And you can do a string of three more.

You go from salsa to samba.

Samba.

And from samba to…

Baccarina.

Baccarina.

Baccarina.

Baccarina.

Is it baccata?

I’ve always said, is it baccata or bachata?

Maybe it’s bachata.

I don’t even know, actually.

It’s actually the dance of the Dominican Republic.

I believe it’s bachata, though.

I think I’ve heard it in some of the music.

Bachata, and then it gives you a TA for one more.

Tango.

Tango.

Tango, exactly.

Wow.

Very nice.

Around the world in five dances.

Yeah, four dances.

Thank you so much, Greg.

That was great fun.

This is the kind of game we can win.

It takes three to tango.

That’s true.

You can be our third wheel anytime.

Oh, thank you.

And you can give us a call at 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Holly from Lakeside, California.

Hello, Holly.

Welcome.

What can we do for you?

There is this comment that is in our conversation these days that I have a little trouble with.

And the comment is, that’s a good question.

And the other day I heard on the radio someone say, that’s a great question.

And the reason I have trouble with it is it sounds like my questions are being judged.

And that, you know, oh dear, was the question I asked before just ordinary and not great?

And I’m just wondering, first of all, how this got in, and it’s in our conversation all the time now.

Did people just answer questions before without commenting on their quality?

Oh, gee, Holly, you wouldn’t have heard that on this show, would you?

No, I don’t think so.

But you know what I mean?

Well, yes, you’ve raised a great, never mind.

Well, there are a couple of possible things that are happening here.

Sometimes they mean it, right?

They think you’ve said something by your question.

You were kind of stating a fact and making that fact apparent to everyone.

So questions sometimes aren’t actually functioning as questions so much as they are the rhetorical tools for bringing us closer to some truth, right?

They contain within them the answer to themselves or the answer to the other things that are being discussed.

And I definitely think that it’s a necessary part of a conversation to goad the other person into saying more of a really good thing.

And so maybe that kind of comment can do that.

I do think it’s sometimes a crutch, and maybe that’s what you’re talking about.

I think so, because does it give the speaker time to gather their wits?

Well, I think so. It’s a crutch with my name on it, I think.

I mean, I know I say that all the time.

I say that’s a good question or that’s a great question or I love that question.

And, you know, maybe it is conversational filler to some extent, but to me, every question is good.

I mean, it’s like choosing a favorite child.

It’s probably my own natural exuberance, I think.

Well, it sounds like you’re against being judged, though.

You feel like the other person.

No, it can be looked at that way.

I don’t take it that way.

But when you hear it in a conversation, and maybe I’m just tired of hearing it,

You know, that’s a response that is just continual now.

So you’re saying that it gets used so much that it loses its meaning entirely.

I think so.

It might as well not be there.

Yeah.

At least it seems like to me.

But, I mean, if you really look at it, it is sort of a judgment.

And I thought, well, I wonder, you know,

Just wonder if people even realize what they’re saying when they say it.

So by saying that, you’re somehow implying the other questions

That you did not remark upon were stupid.

Well, no.

You know, it’s just like, is there a criteria by which my questions are falling into,

Like ordinary or good or great, you know?

I don’t know.

I don’t know that I have a problem with it as long as you’re saying,

As long as they mean it.

As long as they actually do mean that it’s a good question.

I think that’s, yeah, and it’s not just a trite answer.

Right, right.

You know what, Holly?

At first I didn’t think this was a good question, but now you’re making me think about it.

Well, I’m not convinced yet, but no.

You’re not convinced that it’s a good question.

Holly, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, Holly.

I think you’ve asked a great question.

I’m sorry.

I apologize.

I think this is a so-so question, really.

No, no, it’s a good question.

It’s kind of a meh question.

No, I think.

Yeah, it was an amazing question.

It was.

Brilliant.

Exciting.

Brilliant.

I can’t believe we’re even talking about it.

Hey, Holly, thanks for you-know-what.

Yeah.

Well, it’s just been such fun.

Thanks for talking with me.

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We do welcome your great questions and your bad questions,

Your stupid questions and your smart questions.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673,

Or send them along in emails.

You can make them anonymous if they’re really terrible to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Patrick Wilson from Dallas, Texas.

Well, welcome to the program, Patrick.

Thank you.

I have a question about the word ultra-crepidarian.

Oh, love it, love it, love it.

Where did you run across that word?

Yes, I ran across it in a book by legal writer Brian Garner.

Oh, of course.

We’re big fans.

Yes.

Brian Garner is one of my favorite authors of legal writing texts.

And so I read that it was the definition of somebody who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

So you called us.

I see.

Well, I was wondering how the word came about.

And was it ever used with any frequency?

I wouldn’t say any frequency, but I love this word, and I love the etymology that goes along with it.

It’s actually an etymology that’s very, very clear and that we know.

So are you ready?

I am.

Okay.

The Latin word for sole of the shoe is crepita.

Okay.

Now, back in ancient times, there was a painter named Apelles who had a habit of doing full-length portraits of people and then displaying them so that everybody could see them.

And he would go and hide and eavesdrop to hear what their comments were.

So are you with me so far?

Yes.

Okay.

So this painter, Apelles, is listening to people comment on his latest painting.

And a cobbler comes up and he looks at the shoe that’s rendered in this painting.

And he’s saying, no, that’s not right.

It needs an extra loop.

And so Apelles comes out from hiding and says, oh, you’re right.

Okay, well, let me fix the shoe here.

So he fixes the shoe on the painting.

And then the cobbler, emboldened, says, well, and, you know, while you’re at it, the leg isn’t quite right.

And that’s when the painter says the Latin equivalent of mind your own business, stick to the soul, stick to the stuff you know, in other words.

So there was a famous Latin phrase that used the term crepita, which means sole of the shoe.

So the idea there was to mind your own business.

Don’t talk about things you don’t know about.

And for a cobbler, that would mean limit yourself to criticizing the sole of the shoe.

Yeah, lexicographer Eric Partridge phrased it this way.

Let not the cobbler judge in matters above his sandal.

I like that.

Yeah, exactly.

And in English, we have the expression, a cobbler should stick to his last, you know, his tool.

So that’s the idea.

And I think that the first reference we have to ultra-crepidarian in English was by the English essayist William Hazlitt in the late 19th century.

But it’s never been common, right?

It’s just an inkhorn term, which means people use it to show off.

An inkhorn term, yeah.

Yeah, well, I use it every day.

You and Brian Garner, what a pair.

Yeah, but do you use it in your daily life?

I’m trying to work it in more often,

But it makes it more difficult when people have no idea what I’m talking about.

Yeah, that’s the problem, right?

Unless you’re talking to cobblers, I guess.

That’s wonderful. Thank you so much for your help.

It’s our pleasure. Thanks for calling, Patrick.

Yeah, we appreciate the opportunity to talk about that word.

Oh, thank you. Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We like your stumpers.

We like your long words, your crazy words, your made-up words.

The stuff that just doesn’t make sense in the mouth.

It sounds good of the year.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, I got another riddle for you.

One of these days, I’ll stump you.

One of these days.

Okay, not today.

It’s got a word indict in it.

I just want to say that means to compose, like you might compose a verse, okay?

Oh, okay.

Fireflies can’t figure, mites can’t write, or gnats indict.

Still, I know right well a bug that can spell.

What is it?

Spelling bee.

Very good.

Yoo!

Send your riddle jokes, questions, or language problems to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call, 1-877-Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Debbie Sullivan, and I’m calling from San Diego, California.

What can we do you for?

Well, I grew up with a saying that my mother said she was born in 1934, I believe, in Long Beach, California, and she was a seamstress.

She did a lot of sewing, which she luckily passed down to me.

And if you made something and it wasn’t quite right, she would say, you’ll never see it on a galloping goose.

And I’ve never heard anybody else say it, but I did just recently ask my aunt, who is the only still-living sibling, if she remembered it.

And she said, you know, I remember something about a galloping goose, but not in that form.

And Debbie, what does she mean by it?

Well, I think it was a case of where if there was an imperfection in something you made, let’s say you didn’t match the plaids exactly right on the side of the skirt or something, that you’re usually not standing still and having somebody look exactly at everything you’ve done.

Yes.

That’s perfect.

Yes.

Yes.

Well, Debbie, I think we can help you with this some.

I’ve never heard the galloping goose version, though.

This is great.

The version I always heard was, it’ll never be seen on a galloping horse.

Goose horse.

Yeah, goose horse.

What’s the difference?

It’s a farm animal.

Yeah, it’s a farm animal.

Who cares?

But I love this expression.

I absolutely love it.

I mean, it’s a great expression for perfectionists to remember, right?

Is this just for tailors and seamstresses and people who make clothing, or is it for other things as well?

Well, interesting you should ask, because in the 1950s, it became very popular among quilters.

And it makes sense.

You know, you screw up and, well, you know, if you’re on a galloping horse, you’ll never see it, right, from a distance.

Very good. Makes sense. That’s right.

Yeah, and I think it probably goes back to an earlier expression that was popular at least as early as 1894, which was a blind man on a galloping horse would be glad to see it.

It may have to do with that, or a blind man on a galloping horse wouldn’t see it.

Right, right.

So it’s something terrible, badly made, and you don’t really care because nobody’s going to pay close attention to it, right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

I think it’s a fantastic phrase.

And I love the goose.

I may steal that because that’s even better.

Galloping goose, though, is a name for an automobile or some kind of vehicle that doesn’t run very well.

I didn’t know that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I find something here from the 1938 in the Federal Riders Project, a gas-propelled combined express and passenger railroad car distinguished by a stripe in front.

And then a little later, Jonathan Green in his slang dictionary defines it as a train, car, or plane that runs badly.

Now, that may make even more sense because my great-grandfather worked on the railroads in Idaho.

Very good.

So maybe she took the old galloping horse saying and she heard galloping goose from your grandfather and put the two together and made something brand new.

It could be.

I always wondered if it was original.

It looks like it might be partially.

If you look in the newspaper archives for galloping goose, you’ll find there were a lot of different trains at different times and different places that were called the galloping goose.

And they usually refer to the fact that they were rickety and didn’t run very well.

Well, you’re not supposed to see it one way or the other.

So don’t be a perfectionist.

Just probably the end lesson on that.

Exactly.

I love that.

Words to live by.

It’ll never be seen on a galloping goose.

Well, it sounds like we solved your problem, Deb.

Well, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Okay.

My pleasure.

Thank you for calling.

You’re welcome.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What did your mother used to say?

What did your father used to say?

Give us a call and we’ll talk about it.

1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Stay tuned for more linguistic curiosities here on A Way with Words.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

Learn more at nu.edu.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. A couple of weeks ago, we took a call from a listener whose name is Todd, but he’s regularly called Scott, even when he has a name tag on.

And it was a really interesting call. And of course, we got tons of mail about this.

A lot of people thought it might be because one says, my name is Todd or something like that.

And the S sound from is sounds like it’s a part of the following word. Makes sense, right, Martha?

Yeah.

Yeah, it could be.

But it doesn’t explain all the Scots we heard from who are also regularly called Todd, does it?

Interesting.

We heard from a lot of Todds and a few Scots about this, so we can confirm that it happens to more than just our original caller.

A Todd in San Diego wrote to say that a few of his coworkers, who he’s worked with for years, still sometimes call him Scott by accident.

Jeff called to say his son is named Todd and his brother is named Scott, and he’s always been embarrassed because he mixes them up.

You’d think it would be different for your own family, right?

Yeah, yeah, he would.

Well, these aren’t the only names that get confused.

Don says people call him Bob.

Tracy said people call her Stacy.

Michelle says she and her mother regularly mix up Pam and Amy.

And Catherine is sometimes called Margaret.

Crazy stuff.

Catherine, Margaret, three syllables.

I wonder if it has to do with the length of the words.

But I remember one of the first emails we received was from a guy named Todd who said the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I heard you talking about this because it’s happened to me for years.

I mean, there’s something going on there.

It’s a thing. It is indeed a thing.

Thanks to everyone else who wrote, especially you, Todd, and you, Scott.

Or is that Scott and you, Todd? I don’t know.

If you’d like to call us and talk about people getting your name wrong or anything else wrong in the English language, 1-877-929-9673 is the number, or send it in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

I’m doing well. Who’s this?

This is Helena from Indianapolis.

Hi, Helena.

Hello.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

I have a question regarding the saying to make ends meet.

I received a call from a good friend about a month ago, and she was questioning if I knew that the spelling of the word neat in the saying to make ends meet was spelled M-E-E-P.

And the funny thing was that the both of us had never read this thing before and had only overheard it.

And we both thought that the spelling was meat, M-E-A-T, like the food.

And we just associated it with having enough money to put food on the table.

So, you know, I guess I’m just wondering if maybe you guys have a good background of the saying and maybe kind of clear up why it’s spelled M-E-E-T.

Okay, so make ends meet as in having a sufficient amount, right?

Right.

Enough to go around.

So you’d rationalized it to believe that meant having enough money to put meat on the table.

Right, because as a child, pretty much I only heard it as while at the grocery store shopping.

You’re just like, hey, mom, buy this.

She’d be like, well, we’re making ends meet.

So I’d always just associate it with food.

We have enough money to put food on the table.

Okay.

Well, I can see how you would think that.

Yeah, that’s logical.

It’s a logical rationalization.

It isn’t etymologically or orthographically sound.

It is M-E-E-T, but you made sense of it when you needed to, right?

Yeah.

Right.

This comes to English from French, where the expression is joindre les deux beaux, to join the two ends.

And it means in French still the same thing as it means in English.

And apparently this goes back to one of two origins and I think they’re actually intertwined.

You talk about a budget or for a week or a year or a month meeting your needs through the end of that budget period, and so sometimes you might come up short until the next paycheck. So you want the beginning of the next period, which is an end of itself, to meet with the end of the last period, so you’d have these two ends meet, right? You might even borrow against your advanced earnings in order to make the two ends meet. And that’s one explanation. But more interestingly is the one that comes from sailing and ships and seafaring and so forth, which is it used to be common to take old ropes that might be frayed or broken and to splice them together in order to make a new rope because it’s, you know, you take the twine or the sisal and why throw it out when you can just reuse it? And so you literally make the ends of the ropes meet. So it’s sort of like Avatar. Yeah.

Have you seen Avatar yet?

I have, yeah.

Yeah, but what about Avatar?

You know, where they take the end of their tail and they make the ends meet and then they have this bond. They interface with the mother planet and so forth.

I understand.

Yeah, something like that.

Something like that.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anybody who is a rope splicer, but it’s an incredibly intricate activity and it requires a high level of skill.

And obviously, if you’re using these ropes for things that are, you know, like sailing ships, there’s life in the balance.

So you have to do it well.

I haven’t seen a rope splicer.

I don’t know.

It’s really interesting.

You have, Grant?

I have, yeah.

Have you, Helena?

It was like one of those old-timey fair thingies where everyone pretends to be from 150 years ago or 200 years ago.

It was really interesting.

Huh.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thanks, guys.

It was a pleasure talking to you.

Great talking with you, too.

All right.

You have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your misunderstandings of English or the misunderstandings of others, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, you were talking about full deckisms earlier, and we’ve all heard lights on nobody home, but I really love this one. The wind is blowing, but nothing is moving. I just love that. It makes me think of somebody with a lot of how they are, right? How about this one? It doesn’t have all his cornflakes in one box. It doesn’t have both oars in the water. Or how about, she thought that she couldn’t use her AM radio in the evening. Love it, love it.

Call us with your full deckisms, 1-877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Roger from San Francisco.

Hi, Roger. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Roger.

Well, thank you very much.

I’m wondering if you can help me with my deflated ego today.

Well, of course we can. You look great. I love that shirt. Nice shoes. Time matches your eyes.

I feel better already, but let me tell you what happened to me recently.

I had my fatherly and my intellectual bubble burst when my 29-year-old reader-writer daughter pointed out recently that her younger sister, see, it ought to be okay, it’s her younger sister, not me, that she pronounces a word incorrectly.

Oh, right.

And it’s such a common four-letter, one-syllable word.

It talks about the two of us.

I’ll even spell it for you before I pronounce it.

Okay.

It’s B-O-T-H.

B-O-T-H.

How could you mess that up?

Well, I’ll tell you.

You add an extra L sound right in the middle, kind of make it sound like soup bowl, and you put a T-H on the end, and now you have both.

Both.

And that’s how I say it.

Oh, both.

And you know where my daughter gets it from?

Where?

Well, Dad, you pronounce it that way, too.

I’m completely devastated.

Oh, so not only are you messed up, but you’ve messed up your daughter’s psyche as well.

Evidently, evidently.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

So I thought, you know, I could ask my mom and dad, but, you know, they were already gone. They passed on. I figured I must have got it someplace.

Yeah.

My next choice was then to call, you know, Grant and Martha and say, you’ve got to let me off the hook here, you know.

You were going to call both of us?

Surely it’s something regional or something in my background.

Well, I will tell you, Roger, I’m going to talk just for a second about how we produced this show. We got an email from you about this, and we decided to talk to you on the subject, right? And so we’re talking now because of that. And so what I did is I put a survey online and asked the Internet at large how they pronounce the word B-O-T-H. And so I’m looking at the data right now, and you will be relieved to know that 10% of the people who’ve taken the survey, they self-report. That is, they claim that they also pronounce it as if there’s an L in the word.

Wow, they actually admitted it, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah, 10%?

10%.

That seems like a lot.

Yeah, it’s not bad.

I thought we’d hear from two people. We’d hear from both of them.

I don’t know if there’s only 270 plus respondents so far. I think we’ll get some more.

I don’t know if we have enough data here to make any conclusions about regional accents or variants or dialects and so forth. But so far, nobody east of Detroit claims to pronounce it that way.

And notice all the caveating and hedging there, because sometimes people don’t know that they’re saying it that way, and somebody else is in your case.

Well, I guess that was a surprise for me, Grant, is that I lived 40, almost 50 years of my life, and then completely unaware of that, and I don’t even remember really hearing somebody mispronounce it.

I’ve heard people say it like with a rhyme with O for something like both. I’ve never heard that L sound in there until somebody pointed it out.

Let me ask you a question.

What state is Seattle in?

Seattle is in Washington.

And after you go to the bathroom, you should what your hands?

You should wash your hands.

I don’t sneak that R in there, do I?

I was looking for it.

You know why? There is some data in the journals, in the academic journals, that suggest that people who also say Warsh instead of Wash or Washington instead of Washington also do this with the L. This is called intrusive L or L-epenthesis, E-P-E-N-T-H-E-S-I-S, L-epenthesis. What this is is when you insert a letter or a sound in a word where it doesn’t ordinarily belong, that is, etymologically, there’s no reason for that letter ever to have been there.

You know, I apologize for my intrusive L.

Yeah, I’ve got a bad case of a pimphesis.

I’m sorry.

Right, right.

And they go, oh, I’m sorry. Are you seeing a doctor for it? A little cream will clear that up.

I’m sorry.

I knew you guys would make me feel better.

Yeah, you do?

You do feel better?

Well, you know, evidently some people out there are, like, really incensed or upset about it. I found recently that there’s actually a group on Facebook.

Oh, there are three groups on Facebook. And the name of the group is B-O-T-H, not B-O-L-T-H.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they have the word both written with a circle and a slash through it.

Yeah, exactly.

But I see here that there is a response group to that, which is called, Both is so a legitimate pronunciation of both. So that’s another group of people who decide that both is fine.

I had no idea.

I’m going to have to join that group.

Yeah, you will.

You guys have come to the rescue again.

We aim to please.

Thank you for calling us.

I’m so glad we could help, Roger.

All right.

Thanks to you both.

I appreciate it.

I really enjoy the show.

All right.

Peace out.

I enjoy both of you.

Thanks a lot, Roger.

Bye-bye.

You’re welcome.

Bye-bye now.

We would love to hear about the thing that you pronounce incorrectly.

It’s kind of like fieldwork, Martha, isn’t it?

When somebody mispronounces something, it’s not necessarily a chance to condemn or to get angry.

You just look at it and say, all right, what’s the machinery behind this?

How did that happen?

And do other people do it too?

Yeah, it’s like, whoa, cool.

We’d like to help you with that, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Howdy, this is David Cobb calling from Eureka, California.

Howdy, David.

Hi, David. How are you doing?

That’s Eureka, California by way of Texas.

I hear it. I hear it.

Welcome to the program.

I am hoping to get some help.

There is, I think, a word, and I believe there’s a perfect word to describe that sense of morbid fascination that we feel.

You’re driving by an automobile accident.

You know you shouldn’t look, you’re not going to look, and at the last moment you find yourself looking over and staring.

That feeling that you get, you don’t want to be looking, but you look.

And it doesn’t have to be visual.

It’s also come up when you say, ooh, this smells horrible.

Here, smell this.

And you try to get somebody else to smell it.

Right.

Right.

Or you turn on the tube and they’re political commentators.

Same thing, right?

Yeah.

Shut up, you.

You’ve got to come listen to this idiot.

Exactly. Yeah, why do people do that? This tastes terrible. Try it. That is weird.

We doubt our own experience.

And I will share with you, this has come up from time to time with me, this phenomenon.

And each time, I feel like there is a word, a perfect word.

And actually, I think it’s from, I don’t know if it’s Attic Greek, but for some reason in the back of my head,

I’ve got the notion that this word is either of Greek origin or Latin origin.

I suppose that’s probably true for most of our words,

But I’ve got it in the back of my mind that there’s actually a word to describe this,

But for the life of me, I can’t come up with it.

And for the last 10 or 15 years, it’s actually come up from time to time,

And it always stumps me.

I have a word for you that is Greek in origin that might be the one that you want,

Although it’s a little severe for things like sharing spoiled milk with your housemates.

It’s thanatophilia, T-H-A-N-A-T-O-P-H-I-L-I-A, thanatophilia.

And it means an undue fascination with death.

And it comes from the Greek thanatos, meaning death.

Right, thanatos, meaning death.

Thanatos, I’m sorry.

Yeah, and we get the word euthanasia from the same root.

Good death.

I bet that that may have actually been it.

Really?

I did study a, occurring to me that in my undergraduate studies at the University of Houston,

We had a Greek professor, and so that may be why I’m assigning the,

Or the memory is specifically around a horrible auto accident and wanting to look at it anyway.

But the element of wanting to share it with other people makes me think of another word,

Which is algophilia, which is a morbid pleasure in the pain either of oneself or of others.

There’s something a little sadistic about that, I guess.

Isn’t there also a German word, schadenfreude, that’s similar to this?

Well, there’s schadenfreude, which is joy in another’s pain.

And, yeah, what was that word, Grant, algophilia?

Algophilia, you can break that down into its components part, right?

Pain and an anphilia.

Sure, like an analgesic takes away pain,

And nostalgia is the pain of not being able to return.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

So those are the candidates.

And there’s also something, this is even further afield,

But the word macabre has something to do, I believe,

With wanting to view the remains of a car accident.

Again, it doesn’t have anything to do with sharing the moldy food from your refrigerator

Or wanting to share some terrible car wreck of a TV show.

Right?

Right.

Right.

I will say that, again, the concept is not so much sharing it with somebody else,

But just the morbid fascination associated with it.

Yeah.

But I will confess that neither of the two words,

Although they’re certainly candidates, are definitely words that would make me say,

Aha, I actually knew that word.

I mean, I would like to pretend like I knew those words,

But if I was honest with you and myself, I would say those are not words in my vocabulary.

But morbid fascination, the two-word compound, that does the job for you, right?

It’s just that you feel like you think you’re remembering that there’s a single word for this concept that might be a bit shorter.

That is exactly right.

And the reason that I’m thinking that it may have been the first one is because I had in the back of my head that it comes from Greek,

And I thought I was remembering some conversation or some lecture at some point that was used to describe that phenomenon.

I don’t have it.

Maybe some of our listeners will have it.

They’ll know the word, possibly Greek origin, means morbid fascination, right?

Right.

Well, I will be listening on KHSU radio,

And if one of the other listeners of the program does know, I’d love to hear it.

But in the meantime, you’re right.

The two words, morbid fascination, will have to suffice.

Okay, thank you so much for your call, David.

We’ll put the call out, and we’ll talk about the answers we get on a future show, okay?

Fantastic. Thanks so much.

Okay. Bye, David.

So much to explore here, so many things, so many different ways that this could go in trying to uncover these words.

Do you start looking by the Greek root?

Do you just kind of look for everything that ends in the word philia?

Or mania, yeah.

Or mania, a lot of different ways to take this.

But you know the shortcut, Martha, is the telephone line.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673 if you think you have the answer to David’s question.

Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, here are a couple more Fuldeckisms.

Oh, yay.

Full dick-isms. Those are the things that you say that kind of insult somebody’s intelligence.

Like a few keys short of a full key ring?

One bun short of a dozen?

Mm-A lot of food ones.

Yeah, tons of them. A taco short of a taco stand?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two french fries short of a Happy Meal.

Oh, very good.

Send your turns of phrase to words@waywordradio.org

Or call us if you have a question about language.

1-877-929-9673.

Things have come to a break.

That’s our show for this week.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University.

Change your future today.

Find out how at nu.edu.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message anytime.

That number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

You can stay in touch with us all week by following us on Twitter.

We’re there under the username Wayword.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell and Jennifer Powell.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And from San Francisco, I’m Grant Barrett.

Thanks to Paul Lancour for engineering our show from the studios of KQED Radio.

Bye now.

See you.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University,

Where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

Learn more at nu.edu.

Hi, it’s Martha.

Did you know that A Way with Words is independently produced by a small nonprofit?

To keep bringing you the show, we need your help.

We welcome your contributions of any size.

Go to waywordradio.org, click on membership.

Your donations do add up, and they make this program possible.

Thanks.