A Hole to China (episode # 1368)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And if you’re a grammar enthusiast, then March 4th is the holiday for you.

It’s the date that many people celebrate as National Grammar Day.

And Grant, you and I know about the National Grammar Day Tweeted Haiku Contest.

Tweeted Haiku Contest.

Yes, we do.

In fact, we’ve been judges.

Yeah, with the judge last year, you judged this year.

Was there anything good?

Oh, there was some great stuff.

The challenge, of course, is to write something compelling about grammar in just 17 syllables.

And I have to say, I really love the winning entry All the Judges Did.

It was by Erica Okrant.

Oh, we know her.

Yeah, yeah.

She happens to be a linguist, and she’s the author of that wonderful book called In the Land of Invented Languages.

In fact, she actually speaks Klingon.

Oh, very good.

If she raises a child speaking only Klingon, then even better.

But for this contest, she tweeted a poem that crystallizes a familiar moment for all of us.

It went like this.

I am an error, and I will reveal myself after you press send.

Isn’t that great?

And the genius part about this was that afterwards she realized that she forgot to put the word send in quotation marks.

So she had to tweet again and tweet a correction that said, make that quote unquote send.

And it became this self-fulfilling haiku.

She says she didn’t mean to do it.

So even though we’ve missed National Grammar Day this year,

Next year people should look for this haiku contest.

Yes, definitely.

Well, if you’d like to talk about any aspect of language,

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Pete Owens calling from Big Sky, Montana.

Well, hi, Pete.

What’s going on?

Yeah, I had a question for you guys that arose when I was working with a guy that I work with,

And we were digging through snow to a doorway,

And we started joking around about the term digging to China.

And we thought it’s silly that we were digging in the snow to China,

But it’s just as silly as you were digging through the earth to China.

And then we started talking about, do people in China say dig to America?

And what goes on there and how did we get this.

So I gave you guys a call.

And here we are.

Here we are.

So you know digging into China.

It’s probably something you’ve been saying your whole life, right?

Oh, when I was a kid, my mom would tell me, you know,

I’d go outside and she’d ask me what I was doing.

Oh, digging a hole to China.

Yeah, my whole life, absolutely.

Yeah, I actually tried to do that.

We got about five feet deep before we gave up.

We had a ways to go.

And I can tell you that we check out a lot of library books in my house to read to my son.

There are a lot of kids’ books where the whole premise of the book is somehow built around a kid trying to dig to China.

Lots of them.

No kidding.

Well, there are lots of cartoons, too.

You know, Yosemite Sam and Family Guy.

There are a lot of cartoons.

You can Google the question of what people in China say when they’re talking about digging through to the earth.

I think there are different answers.

They usually just pick another well-known place.

Well, they do talk about tunneling to the United States.

Like if you miss a plane to the United States, you might say to somebody, well, you could just go through the earth, too.

But a lot of people around the world, particularly from European culture, say they’re digging to China, even though it’s not perfectly on the other side of the earth.

Well, and in Britain, and I know in Austria as well, they say digging to Australia.

Yeah, there we go.

But the problem is that if you dig a hole through the earth from the United States, from almost any place in the United States, you’re going to hit water.

Oh, so don’t dig a hole through the earth, then?

No, don’t. Don’t.

Stop your son, Grant.

No.

But what’s really interesting, so I’ve done some digging on this, so to speak.

So to speak.

Looking at the historical archives of newspapers and books and what have you.

And I can trace this idea back as far as the 1870s.

I believe it.

There was a fiction piece that appeared in the Chambers Journal from 1872.

And it’s a funny little piece.

It has a bunch of beavers, you know, who build dams and creeks here in the United States and have the flopping tails.

They are what engineers become after they die.

And so there’s like this one beaver is telling a newcomer what all these other people used to be when they were human engineers.

He’s talking about one villain and he says, did you ever hear of the projected tunnel to China that was to be built under the sea and lined with porcelain?

That was the very man who brought it out.

So it was about a guy who had invented this fanciful tunnel to China to get all this money and just kind of ripped off his investors.

And that’s the earliest use I could find.

And I bet if I spent way too much time on this.

Digging.

Digging.

I could probably find out a lot more.

But we at least know, what are we talking there, 140 years?

Yeah, yeah.

That’s a good long haul.

Probably longer.

Probably longer.

And Peter, if you do want to dig to China, the place that you need to start is in northern Argentina.

Oh, okay.

That’s good to know.

Yeah, yeah.

How long would that take?

A while, and there would be a lot of physics involved, you know, falling through, and it gets pretty complicated.

And at some point you melt, don’t you?

Exactly.

You’re atomized by the heat of the earth.

Yeah, but once you get on the other side, then you’re good.

You know what?

We’re going to call them myth busters.

They can handle this.

You would have thought that they did that.

There is a guy who has a project online called If the Earth Were a Sandwich,

And he encourages people to find their antipodes, who are the people on the other side, exactly opposite the earth.

And then you put a piece of bread on the ground, and each of you is made an earth sandwich.

And you take a picture and make a sandwich, and then you eat it.

That’s just crazy.

So, Peter, you got your leisure time activity.

Why don’t you finish all that digging?

I know.

It sounds like it.

Yeah, it’s cool, though.

I’ll try to find my antipode.

I guess there’s going to be somebody in a boat, though.

Yeah, that’s true.

Maybe it would be an Indian boy with a tiger in a boat.

That would be cool.

That’s where we’ll start.

Thanks, buddy.

Thanks for digging all that up for me.

No worries.

Take care now.

We can shovel with the best of them.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Laura calling from Athens, Ohio.

Hi, Laura, welcome.

Hey there, what’s up?

How can we help?

Well, we have a directory here at my workplace that, rather than just being a standard alphabetical by last name, is by what people do.

And it was called the Whom to Call About What directory.

And when I was given responsibility for this directory, a faculty member came to me and said,

This really should be who to call, whom is not correct.

A faculty member?

Mm—

Not in the English department.

No, not in the English department.

And so I did a quick Google search and found a couple of grammar checkers,

And neither one was marked as incorrect.

So I sort of started wondering about it and then put it on the back burner,

And then somebody else came to me and said, this is wrong.

I’m pretty sure this is wrong.

And my background is actually in English.

My aunt was an English teacher.

We were always corrected on our grammar when I was little.

And so my thing is, I realize that in common speech, people rarely use whom.

But I’m pretty sure in this instance, whom is technically correct.

So I guess I’m just wondering.

Well, you’re absolutely right that it’s technically correct.

I mean, that’s the way that so many of us were taught.

Yeah, whom to call about what is absolutely perfect English grammar.

Great.

But.

There’s always a big but, and you touched upon it.

The big but is, and it’s a big Calipygian but.

I don’t know about the Cali.

The problem with this is that most people are so unused to who and whom being differentiated

That they think of whom as only a very elite or sophisticated form

And not a standalone word in its own right.

They think you use whom if you’re trying to sound important or fancy

And not because it’s the direct object of a verb.

And that’s the problem that Laura and I have

Because we’re not trying to be fancy, are we?

No, I’m not trying to be fancy at all.

I’m trying to be right.

-huh.

Trying to be accurate and trying to do what you were taught.

That you spent a lot of effort learning, right?

Or maybe not so much with this rule. It doesn’t take that much effort to master it.

Part of the thing is the way that these people approached me.

If they had come to say, you know, whom sounds a little formal, people don’t really use it anymore.

Okay, fine. But telling me I’m wrong, that gave me pause.

Yeah, miscorrections. That’s the bane of everyone’s existence if they care at all about language.

And, Laura, did they give you any evidence, or did they just say, this just feels wrong, or this is just flat-out wrong?

I mean, what did they say exactly?

Well, one of the women said she didn’t really say anything.

She just said it was wrong, and I need to change it.

And the other one said, well, my mother and my sister are grammar nerds, and they went into something about participles and blah, blah, blah,

And I don’t really know what they were talking about, but I’m pretty sure that it should be who.

Really?

Whom is correct, but you’re going to continue to get these people who think it’s wrong, and they may or may not talk to you about it.

And they may be judging you because they don’t understand English well enough to make the right call on that.

And this is not anything that you can save them from.

You can’t educate them all one at a time.

Even if you had a national radio show, you would find it really difficult to consistently get people to use whom when whom is called for.

I know. I have to say that as much as I’ve held the line over the decades, it’s getting more and more easy to think about throwing in the towel.

It is. That line seems to get blurrier and blurrier, and certainly language evolves, and sooner or later we probably just won’t use whom at all.

I think you’re right.

Don’t tell me that I’m wrong when I’m not wrong.

Right. That’s the main thing.

I mean, we could reframe this instead of a grammar question as a manners question.

Yeah, yeah.

If you’re going to go to somebody and correct them, you better come with facts.

You better come with authorities.

You better come with resources that you can explain to them and show why you’re right.

And not just because you’re working by the seat of your pants.

Right.

So I hope we’ve helped you some.

I hope you can sleep at night now.

Yes, absolutely.

You have given me everything that I wanted.

Thank you.

We aim to please.

Thanks for calling, Laura.

Good luck.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Who and whom?

How many times do we answer this question?

Oh, my gosh.

In email, on social media, face-to-face, and, you know, when we do live events.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, every time, right?

On the air, we’ve handled it quite a few times.

We could do a whole show every week just about who and whom.

Shall we?

No.

You think we could get a grant for that?

I think we’d lose a listenership for that.

I think 99% of our audience would stop listening after the second week.

Whom you going to call?

877-929-9673.

Grant, here is another awesome tweeted haiku on the subject of National Grammar Day.

This one comes from Liz Morrison of San Diego, California.

It goes, serial comma, Chicago yes, AP no, you bewilder me.

It’s true.

Isn’t it?

It’s true.

Yeah.

It’s a real comma.

We’re on Twitter.

We’re on Facebook.

You can find us on our discussion forums or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hop on the word bus as A Way with Words continues.

¶¶

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. And joining us now is John Chaneski, our quiz guy. Hiya, John.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

Hi, buddy. What’s up?

This quiz is about professions. Specifically, it’s about words for professions that are exactly the same as the verb practiced by those professions.

For example, a dancer can’t dancer. A dancer can dance.

A cartographer can’t cartograph. A cartographer can make maps.

However, if I ask you what does a particular person in the aviation industry do, what would you say?

Like a pilot?

A pilot can?

Pilot.

A pilot can pilot.

Very good.

They’re exactly the same.

Okay.

Let’s try some more clues.

Let’s talk about the TV industry.

Not everything is allowed on TV.

I mean, an editor does an editor, but…

A sensor sensors.

Yes, very good.

Let’s move on to education.

Sometimes you need some special help.

I mean, a teacher doesn’t teacher, but…

And aid aids.

Maybe.

They do.

Sort of.

Yeah, aid aids.

Thinking of gym and principals and superintendents.

Coach coaches.

There we go.

That’s a good one.

Well, that’s pretty good.

I probably would have put that in the sports category, but…

It’s not exactly the same because it’s coaches at the end.

Yeah, okay.

But if you need special help with a certain subject…

Tutor, tutor.

Yes, a tutor tutors.

Let’s talk food.

I mean, a baker doesn’t baker, but…

Cook cooks.

Cook cooks, but let’s talk about meat.

Barbecue?

No.

Meat.

Butcher butchers.

Butcher butchers, yes.

Very good.

In literature, we find one if we change status to a more formal title.

I mean, a writer doesn’t writer, but…

An author authors.

Yes, an author authors.

There are two in the hospital.

I mean, a surgeon doesn’t surgeon, but…

A doctor, doctors, and a nurse, nurses.

Yes, you each got one of those.

A doctor, doctors, and a nurse, nurses.

Good.

In finance, we can talk investments.

I mean, a banker doesn’t banker, but…

A broker, brokers.

Yes, a broker, brokers.

Good job.

Let’s talk about railway transport.

I mean, come on, a conductor doesn’t conductor, but…

An engineer, engineer?

Yes, and engineer engineers.

Now, you guys should know this one.

In the radio industry, what do you guys do?

Host hosts.

Host hosts.

Nice work.

Now, I’ve got one extra credit for you.

Okay.

Can you name a 1974 novel that contains no less than four professions that fit this category in its title?

It was written by John Le Carre.

Oh, Sailor Tinker Soldier Spy.

That’s what I was thinking, but…

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Tinker Tinkers?

Oh, I was thinking.

It was a sailor.

Spy, spies.

Okay.

A soldier, soldiers.

A soldier, soldiers, and a spy, spies.

You guys did fantastically.

Thanks, John.

Hey, thanks, John.

That was a new one, and I like that.

It was a new kind of structure.

I really appreciate that.

Yeah.

Come back again soon, all right?

My pleasure.

I’ll see you guys next time.

Take care now.

Bye, John.

Thanks.

Bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or you can send them an email to words@waywordradio.org,

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Lisa from San Diego.

Hiya, Lisa.

Hey there, what’s up?

Well, I have a question about a word that I’ve heard my 20-something-year-old kids use.

Okay.

Or a word or not a word, I’m not sure.

That’s what I want to know from you.

The word is conversate.

-huh.

The first time I heard one of my kids use it, I corrected them and said, you know,

That’s cute, but it’s not a word, it’s converse.

And I thought it was just that one kid, and then I heard my other kid use it,

And then I’ve heard it on the radio.

And I’ve heard, you know, now it seems to be the new word.

So I was curious if you knew how that happened.

And Lisa, how are they using it?

Well, they’ll say, you know, well, you know, we can go over there and, you know, conversate about that.

So they’re talking just going to a friend’s house or is it like out to a party or talking with a romantic partner, that sort of thing?

I think it can be all of those things.

Okay, so you think it’s a synonym for converse?

That’s what I’m guessing.

And did you converse with them about it?

Well, as much as you converse with a 20-something that wants to be corrected.

Which is never.

Well, yeah, that.

Lisa, let me ask you a question.

I hope you don’t mind.

Are you an Anglo family, African American, something else?

I’m an Anglo family.

Okay.

There’s a really important reason to ask that question because conversate has been in the dialect of African-American vernacular English for, I don’t even know, 70 years at least, a long time.

And in African-American vernacular English, conversate has come to mean something a little different than converse.

It means to talk raucously or in an excited way.

It’s conversing with the intent of just kind of having fun and goofing around and not so much

About well here for example if i go to a hotel front desk and say is my room ready then i’m

Conversing with the the person at the desk on the other hand if i see a bachelorette party sitting

Next to me in a restaurant and i start talking with them i’m conversating with them because it’s

A crazy time and we’re goofing off and doing shots or whatever right and so in african-american

Vernacular English, Conversate has

Meant something different for a long time.

Do your children listen to a lot

Of hip-hop?

Yes, they do. Do they watch

A lot of African-American movies or

Read African-American literature?

Yes, they do. It’s entirely possible

That they picked it up from the media that they’re

Consuming, and

That’s a fair way to pick up a word.

So, the difficulty here is this,

Is that you’re likely to be judged if you use it,

Just as you’ve judged your own children, right?

Heaven forbid.

Negatively judged.

And so it’s not in the most formal registers of English, and yet it’s got a really long history.

I found uses of conversate as far back as 1811.

And it’s interesting that it’s a different shade of meaning, too.

It’s a slightly more elaborate word that means something a little bit different.

And it’s formed from the word conversation.

It’s what we call a back formation, which is where someone tried to break conversation, the noun, back down into a verb.

And instead of reducing it to converse, they reduced it to conversate.

And this happens again and again in English.

And it’s one of the typical ways that we form new words.

It’s a legitimate word formation, but it’s almost always marked in the ear of the hearers as not quite right.

So you’re like, eh.

You’ve got kind of like, there’s a little friction there when you hear it.

Because you’re like, wait, I know that’s not right.

Unless you’re used to hearing it.

Yeah, unless you’re used to hearing it.

Yeah, right.

Before, in the early 1900s, it pops up in the speech in the mouths of characters in fiction who are represented as rustic or rural, hicks, hillbillies, that sort of thing.

And so, and not African American in particular, but just the speech of people who aren’t urban or cultured or sophisticated or highly educated.

And it actually shows up again and again in Caribbean English.

It is still used today in the Bahamas and in Jamaica and in some of the other English-speaking Caribbean islands.

And you’re going to love this Thackeray used it in one of his short stories that was published before 1853.

And so Condorcet’s got this long history, but in American English, it tends to pop up only in African-American vernacular English

Or in the language of young people who consume a lot of media that’s created by or for African-Americans.

So what you’re telling me is I have to go tell my kids that they were right.

And I was wrong.

Well, what you can say, though, you can say that, yes.

That’s a good parental thing to do.

That’s what they want to hear.

But I would also say you’ve got to realize that some people are going to judge you if you use that word.

It’s not the kind of word you want to use, say, to a person of authority.

So don’t use it in an interview, but you can use it with your friends when you’re ready to go out and conversate.

Perfect.

So, Lisa, maybe you go and slap them on the back and, you know, say, let’s conversate about this.

I was going to say, the best way that a parent can stop their kids from using a word or a particular part of language,

Start using it yourself?

Yeah, and then they’ll cringe and they’ll back away from it and stop using it because you’ve, like, intruded upon their territory.

There’s a thought.

I do have a habit of doing that.

And they will seek out language of their own that you don’t know.

Well, thank you for calling.

Well, thank you for answering.

Thank you.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

Grant, as you know, I spoke at an Audubon Society event recently.

Yes.

And one of the things I mentioned that caused aha moments for a lot of people was I was talking about the Latin word for flock, like a flock of birds, which is grex, G-R-E-X.

And the stem of that word is g-r-e-g.

And we see that in a whole lot of English words.

Like gregarious?

Like gregarious, yes.

Like congregate.

Aggregation.

Aggregation.

And I love this one, egregious.

Egregious is somebody who literally stands out from the flock.

Because e is a separating word, right?

It’s a negative.

It’s like x, yeah.

All from those bird words.

Every week, more evidence from you that I should have studied more etymology.

You do that all the time.

Call us 877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Kian calling from Dublin, Ireland.

Hi, Kian from Dublin, welcome.

Hi, Kian, welcome to the show. How can we help?

Thanks, guys. Yeah, I just had a quick query about a phrase.

I hear it all the time on television over here.

It’s being at sixes and sevens.

What does that mean when you hear that? What are they saying?

So normally you’d hear from, like, sportscasters, if they’re commentating on, you know, soccer or rugby or something.

The context would sort of mean that, you know, the defense is a bit disorganized, muddled, you know, sort of all over the place.

And you use this yourself?

Oh, yeah.

I think it would be a pretty common term over here.

But nobody seems to actually understand the actual literal meaning.

But everyone, you know, understands what it means just through context.

Martha, do you use this to say you’re at six and six?

Every once in a while.

Well, I’m not disorganized, but if I’m talking about the idea of being disorganized,

Every once in a while, yeah, or if I’m nonplussed,

If I just can’t figure out how to do something else, I’m at sixes and sevens.

I know it, but it’s only from watching British TV shows

And reading British newspapers on the Internet and listening to the BBC, that sort of thing.

But it’s not something I ever use.

Really?

At sixes and sevens to mean disorganized or chaotic.

I do.

Yeah.

And the phrase itself is sort of that way.

It’s sort of disorganized and chaotic.

And it’s history.

It’s hard to figure out.

Yeah, it’s history.

It’s etymology is disorganized as well, Kian.

There are a number of theories.

And as often the case, most of the theories are rubbish.

But there may be one theory that has some legs, as they say in Hollywood about a successful film.

And that is it might come from an old dice game that used French language for the numbers.

Which was cinq et six, and it was misunderstood in English as sixes and sevens,

And you wanted to get or didn’t want to get a certain combination on your dice rolls,

And therefore, if you got the wrong combination, you were at sixes and sevens.

It’s vaguely like the modern-day craps.

Yeah, that particular combination was the most risky when we were throwing dice.

Yeah, and it was called hazard, which is also the root of our English word hazard.

Yes.

Which is very interesting.

Yes, it goes all the way back to Arabic.

Arabic, oh, very nice, very interesting.

So it’s probable all of the best etymological resources,

The ones that we trust, the Michael Quinion there in the U.K.,

Well, not there, but not far from you in the U.K.,

And Oxford English Dictionary and a couple other resources,

All are pretty firm on this coming from the dice game.

Okay, so it would be a pretty old term then.

Yeah, it’s very old, hundreds of years.

But you’re hearing it a lot with sportscasters.

That’s interesting.

It seems to be their default go-to when somebody goes through the defense and scores a goal,

And the defense is all over the place.

They always say it’s sixes and sevens.

Oh, interesting.

I guess it kind of always makes me laugh because I never know the origin of it.

Did you get what you were after?

Absolutely, yeah.

I’ve been looking for that for a while, so I really appreciate that.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Great.

Thanks very much.

Cheers.

All right.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673, or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

And find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

My name’s Carol Humphreys, and I’m calling from Elon, Virginia.

Elon.

Out in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, right.

Not far from Lynchburg.

Okay.

Okay, got it.

Hi, Carol.

Welcome to the show.

Hi.

Thank you for having me.

What can we do for you?

My grandmother grew up with me.

She was in the family from the time I was born.

She’s from East Tennessee.

Mm—

And I’m in my 60s.

This has been a long time ago.

She always used an expression, so-and-so was an old Edward saying.

And I assumed that it was old Edward is what she was saying.

But it was an old Edward saying, and I’ve never heard it anywhere else.

She called somebody an old Edward saying?

No, she would say some kind of proverb.

And she’d say, but that’s just an old Edward saying.

And Carol, I have to ask you, was your grandmother a fan of old-time radio?

I’m sure she was. She listened to her stories on a regular basis.

-huh. Okay.

Because that comes from an old-timey radio show from the 1930s.

Amazing.

Yeah, it was called, I don’t know if she ever talked with you about this.

No, she didn’t.

It was called The Lum and Abner Show.

Well, I have heard of it.

Have you?

Mm—

Okay, well, this featured two characters.

Abner Peabody and Lum Edwards.

And you can listen to old recordings of this show online.

And it’s funny just because it’s this terrible cornball humor.

So there are two storekeepers in a small town in Arkansas, right?

Right.

Called Pine Ridge.

Right.

And so a lot of it involves showing that the rural rustic folk are a little more wise than the city slicker.

Giving comeuppance to people who are acting better than themselves.

Right.

Like Green Acres.

A little bit, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But there were all these old Eddard’s sayings from Lum Edwards,

But they were so goofy.

I mean, for example, it would be something like,

I always found out that the best way to figure out what tomorrow’s weather was going to be

Is to wait until tomorrow comes along.

That way you never make a mistake.

I mean, it’s just silly.

Don’t throw that nitroglycerin.

You might drop it and break the bottle and have glass all over the floor.

I mean, it was just as corny as could be.

But this show became really, really popular.

It became a national show for a while.

And it was so popular from the 1930s to the 1950s that the town that it was based on, Waters, Arkansas, changed its name to Pine Ridge.

Yeah, because everybody was going there.

And you can go to Pine Ridge today and look at the Lum and Abner Museum.

Oh, that is so funny.

Yes, I have heard them speak about woman Abner.

Okay.

So it’s not a foreign concept.

No, there you go.

So old Eddard is the character who had all these wise but not wise sayings.

I’ll be.

Thank you so much.

You’re welcome.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

You’re welcome.

I always wonder if there’s more influence on old radio on American speech than anyone has ever figured out.

I hear a book in there somewhere.

I don’t know.

You’ve just got to know that prior to television, that was it.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, we’re talking huge, huge percentages of America listen to the same programs devised by cornball humorists from around the country.

This could be a book, Grant.

It could come with a CD.

Wouldn’t that be great?

Yeah, sure.

Why not?

You know, old radio and new radio.

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

I want to do a quick slang roundup, Martha.

Oh, yeah, I love these.

Really super quick.

Okay.

Okay, did you know that rack is sometimes used to mean a thousand?

No.

When I say I have 40 racks, it means I have $40,000.

No.

Oh, I had no idea.

Here’s another one.

Do you know what gallon smashing is?

Gallon smashing.

Yes, this is where people take two gallons of a liquid in a grocery store,

And they film themselves pretending to fall and smashing the gallons on the ground of the store.

This is gallon smashing.

This is what people do with their time.

And catfishing, and we can get more into this later on another episode,

But catfishing is now meaning to lie on the internet, and it comes from a movie.

Ooh.

Yeah, so if you catfish, it’s where you’d vit this fake elaborate story about a girlfriend or an illness or some big problem that you’re seeking help for.

Usually it’s because you’re trying to attract attention.

Okay, catfishing.

Just a quick slang roundup for you.

All right.

If you’ve got some slang that I need to know and you’re pretty sure I don’t, send me an email to words@waywordradio.org.

More of your questions and conversation about language as A Way with Words continues.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

We talked at the top of the show about National Grammar Day.

And for both of us, it’s a day when you should think more about the sturdiness and resilience

And the rich diversity of English rather than peeping for peeping’s sake.

And along these lines, National Grammar Day also inspired a fascinating blog post by Dennis Barron,

The linguist at the University of Illinois.

Because in 1918, he notes that the Chicago Women’s Club initiated this thing called Better American Speech Week.

And they promoted it in the nation’s schools.

And students were required to take something called the Better Speech Pledge.

And Grant, you’ve seen this online.

I mean, the posters are pretty creepy.

Right.

Like it goes, Better American Speech Week.

One language for a united people.

Speak the language of your flag.

Slovenly speech bespeaks a slovenly mind.

Watch your speech.

And it sort of makes you shudder.

Right, because they’re trying to get people to conform to one particular type of speech.

And we just know that the diversity of English is bigger than that.

Basically, they’re saying, speak only like me.

Yes.

I’m right.

You’re completely wrong.

Yes.

And they’re relating it to patriotism, too.

There’s this other scary poster.

It sounds suspiciously like some of the nationalism that came out of World War I and II.

Yeah, well, exactly.

Here’s another poster.

And you have to remember that this is a time that was a little bit less enlightened.

I mean, it makes students promise that I will not dishonor my country’s speech by leaving off the last syllables of words,

That I will say a good American yes and no in place of an Indian grunt, hum and nup

Or a foreign yeah or ya or nope.

Oh, so this is just coded racism.

Pretty much.

Ethnocentrism.

Yeah.

But then it goes on that I will do my best to improve American speech by avoiding loud, harsh tones,

By enunciating distinctly and speaking pleasantly, clearly, and sincerely,

That I will try to make my country’s language beautiful

For the many boys and girls of foreign nations who come here to live,

That I will learn to articulate correctly one word a day for one year.

And the thing is, there’s interspersed in there are some good intentions.

Yeah.

I do believe that you should work a little bit on improving your language.

Sure.

I do think that if you speak well, it will be appreciated by others.

Sure.

But the things that they’re asking for that are concrete are almost completely wrong, are wrong-headed.

And the things that they’re asking for that are more subjective, like beauty and pleasure, you can’t really nail that down.

It’s going to be up to the person or the family to decide what’s right.

Well said.

And you can see these posters online at Dennis Barron’s blog.

We’ll link to them.

And, you know, I guess there’s one more thing to say, and I have to be careful about this.

But I find that in a smaller degree, some of the hardcore peeping we see about language today is also coded.

It’s coded racism.

It’s coded elitism.

It’s coded ethnocentrism.

Sure.

Some of it is coded ageism.

Some of it is coded classism.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And that’s why, again, if you’re going to talk about National Grammar Day, there’s a different way to talk about it.

Right, yeah.

Talk about joy and pleasure and delight and not about anger and frustration and aggression.

Well said, Grant.

Well, we’d love to hear your peeves anyway.

877-929-9673.

Or email us your joyful, pleasurable English phrases to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Stanley Wilkins from Tyler, Texas.

Hello, Stanley. Welcome.

Hey, what’s up?

Thank you. Thank you very much.

I had a phrase for you guys, and I’ve heard it in Tyler, Texas, East Texas.

I’ve grown up in East Texas all my life.

And I’ve heard this phrase around, so I just wanted to run it by you guys, get your thoughts on it,

So you can give me some more insight there.

But the phrase goes like this, that I’m as nervous as a polecat in a perfume parlor.

As nervous as a polecat in a perfume parlor.

Correct.

And do you know what a polecat is?

I think it’s a skunk.

At least that’s what I’ve heard in reference to it.

And what about a perfume parlor?

I’ve never even heard of that.

It’s like a Sephora at the mall?

That’s kind of my visual on that is just that.

It’s like a perfume counter as you’re walking into the mall or something like that.

Okay.

All right.

Getting spritzed.

You can lounge on the velvet couch and the models come by and you smell their wrist.

Exactly, exactly.

And you find the fragrance that you want.

That is the one I want, yes.

And so a polecat would be nervous in a perfume parlor because a polecat is known, you know, as a skunk, known for not smelling well, right?

Sure.

Is that your understanding of it?

Exactly.

And that’s kind of my initial thoughts where, yeah, I mean, a skunk obviously would stick out like a sore thumb, if you will, and something where the fragrances are sweet and inviting.

And then here’s this horrible odor prancing through the perfume parlor.

Yeah, this reminds me, what was that movie with Reese Witherspoon where she played a lawyer and she’s like the all pink, frilly kind of girly?

Is that Legally Blonde?

I think that’s it.

And is it the scene where she goes to the fancy dress party?

Is that that movie?

Oh, I don’t remember.

She doesn’t realize that it’s not a costume party, so she comes dressed as a sexy bunny,

And everyone else is wearing nice gowns and tuxedos.

Right.

That’s how the skunk feels in the perfume parlor.

There you go.

Okay, okay.

Just out of place, unwelcome, not of that class of person.

But, of course, the version that everyone’s screaming at the radio right now is nervous

Is a polecat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Or a long-tailed cat.

Or a long-tailed cat.

In a room full of rocking chairs.

Well, the polecat is a figure of derision in idiomatic and proverbial sayings.

I’ve got a whole bunch of them here.

As nervous as a polecat at a police dog convention, as nervous as a polecat on a hot tin roof,

As nervous as a polecat facing hunting hounds, as nervous as a polecat surrounded by alligators,

As nervous as a polecat in a standoff with a porcupine.

Wow.

Wow.

Oh, wow.

It’s very complex then.

And the polecat, you can say, as mean as a polecat, as lonesome as a polecat, I guess,

If you stink, then you don’t have a lot of friends, right?

Yeah.

As ornery as a polecat, as popular as a polecat, meaning not popular.

Okay.

This is one of my favorites.

As tickled as a polecat eating briars, which means not tickled at all.

They were grinning like a possum eating persimmons.

We could go on and on.

Yeah, there’s a ton of these.

But polecats, first, they’re distinctive.

They’re black and white striped down the middle.

Second, they’ve got that smell that goes for miles.

You know when a polecat is scented because you can smell it from quite a distance.

I actually like this smell from far away.

Yeah, some people do.

Some people really like it.

It just reminds me of growing up in the country.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There you go.

But not close.

Yeah, some people really like it.

Keep it a half mile or further.

Right.

That’s what we know about pole cats.

Excellent.

Excellent.

So, yeah, it sounds like then there’s enough, I guess, culture around just the pole cat and using it in different areas.

That makes a lot of sense.

Mm—

Well, Stanley, thanks for calling.

Yes.

Thank you very much, guys.

Very insightful.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Thanks.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org.

Brent, you remember the woman who called and asked about the phrase going to Texas?

It was a term that she used for a game that they used to play.

Right, where two kids hold hands and then they both spin around and they get dizzy and silly.

Yeah, and the point is sort of to get dizzy and silly.

And we did hear from people.

Becca Turpel of San Diego said that when she was growing up, she called it wrist rockets.

Wrist rockets.

I love that, you know, flying off into space.

And Katie Wachowski wrote us to say that they called it dizzy, dizzy dinosaur.

You know what?

What?

I think that’s familiar to me.

Really?

Yeah, I think I’ve heard that one.

Shall we do it right now?

No, but I think we used that word as a kid.

Wow.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Oh, Grant’s having a moment.

I’m having a moment.

Am I at Grant’s stage?

It’s hard to remember.

He’s back in Missouri.

If you’ve got a name for the game where two kids hold hands and spin around like crazy loons,

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Doing well.

Who’s this?

This is Greg from St. Joseph.

Hi, Greg.

St. Joseph.

Is that Missouri?

Well, that’s the whole reason I’m calling.

Okay, so you’re in the north.

How it’s pronounced.

Explain the dilemma to us.

Well, some people say Missouri, and some people say Missouri.

And it’s actually politicians wrestle with how to pronounce it.

And I’ve looked into it, and I don’t think that there’s a correct way of knowing it.

And how do you pronounce it?

Well, it depends upon the circumstances, probably, but usually Missouri.

And are you born and raised in Missouri your whole life?

Yes.

Okay.

And Grant, you’re from Missouri, too, aren’t you?

I am, yeah.

Born in St. Louis, lived mostly in the east and southeastern part of the state.

My father’s people are from just above the boot heel, and my mother’s people are from around St. Louis.

So where is St. Joseph?

Northwest, just north of Kansas City.

Yeah, north of Kansas City, about 50 miles.

It was the famous starting point for a lot of the wagon trains west.

And the Pony Express.

Yeah, St. Joe was very important to the history of the west.

Okay, but you stayed behind.

And Jesse James was shot here.

Jesse James was shot there?

Yes.

Did you say?

Okay.

All right.

So this is a really interesting question.

Do you mind if I ask how old you are?

I’m 62.

62.

And are your parents perhaps still around, or do you remember what they said?

Did they say Missouri or Missouri?

My mother’s still alive.

Okay.

Do you know what she says?

And I think she usually said Missouri.

Okay.

Yeah.

And you’re a Missouri sauer.

Do you have kids who say?

No.

Okay.

What, nieces, nephews maybe?

No, I don’t really know.

I have nieces and nephews, but I don’t know.

There was a linguist by the name of Donald Lance who died a few years ago.

He was at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and he studied this exact thing.

And there was a paper published after he died where one of his students and colleagues put it together,

And he has summed up the entirety, everything that is known about the pronunciation of Missouri since the 1600s.

I’ve seen that paper. It’s like the history of Western civilization.

Yeah, it’s fantastic.

And I think it’s readable even by the…

It’s like the explorations and Indian tribes

And the proper pronunciations of final eyes

And all sorts of things.

Yep, we’ll link to it.

It’s called The Pronunciation of Missouri,

Variation and Change in American English.

And he pegs this to the French in the United States.

He pegs this to the various interpretations

Of the languages that were spoken by the native people.

He even pegs this to the variability of spelling

In the individual notes of the particular explorers and the people who did the traveling

In the West, as it was known that Missouri was considered the West at that point.

Anyway, in sum, what we find is that the inconsistency in pronunciation has been with us

Basically for 400 years. And you do find two or three major trends. One is the pronunciation of

The state as Missouri grows more frequent as time passes. And we have this over the last hundred

Years or so. We have pretty solid data on this. Therefore, you find that the younger generation

Is more likely to say Missouri, and the older generation says Missouri. It’s the same in my

Family. My father, who is 72, says Missouri, and I say Missouri, even though we’re both native

Missourians. And the other thing that you see is that in Missouri itself, in the state, people are

More likely to say Missouri, and yet up the Missouri River in the other states, you’ll

Find that people are more likely to say Missouri.

So this is just as you go northwest, up the Missouri, follow it upstream all the way to

Its origin.

It’s just more and more likely to be Missouri.

So these are the three major things that are happening there.

But you’re right.

You hit something on the nail on the head.

Politicians tend to say Missouri because they struggle for authenticity.

They want to sound folksy.

And they know maybe they had an advisor that says older people vote.

Older people say Missouri.

You should say Missouri, too.

So you’re right.

Neither pronunciation is correct.

There are known characteristics about the people who use one pronunciation or the other.

And there is a trend for Missouri to become more common.

Probably in another 50 to 100 years, Missouri will be almost completely gone.

Well, Greg, I hope that Grant has boiled that article down for you.

We’ll link to it, of course, and everyone else can read it.

I think it’s very comprehensible by anyone, even if you don’t have linguistic expertise.

Well, it was fun.

Take care now.

Bye, Greg.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

I have another winner in the National Grammar Day tweeted haiku contest.

This one is from Nancy Friedman.

It goes, Dear Yoga Teacher,

If you say lay down once more, I’ll hurt you.

No lie.

Well, Nancy’s a friend of the show.

She runs a blog called…

Yes, Frida Nancy.

Frida Nancy, and she discusses naming of things, businesses and products.

Yes, she’s a name developer up there in the Bay Area.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tom from Carlsbad. How are you?

Great, Tom. What’s up?

Hi, Tom. What’s going on?

I work at a business coaching company,

And one of my clients used the phrase pound of pennies one day on the phone with me,

And I wanted to talk to you guys about that.

Okay. How do they use it?

Well, we are a business coaching company,

And so we try and do whatever we can to help people improve.

So I was talking to her about her office setup,

And she was talking about her assistant who was a friend of hers who had become her assistant.

And she was from somewhere in the south, and she said, well, you know, she’s just a pound of pennies.

And I laughed, and I had no idea what it meant.

And she heard me laughing, and she said, do you know what that means?

I said, no.

And she said, well, it’s like a pound of pennies.

It has value, but it’s a pain in your butt.

So, like, it’s not organized.

So she was talking about her assistant.

She loves her, and she knows that she has some value, but she’s also a pain.

That’s fantastic.

I tried to find out what I could about it, and I found nothing.

And I love your guys’ show, so I thought you might know.

Did she suggest where she picked it up from, or did she make it up herself?

She had said that it’s something that they say in her family,

But it wasn’t the focus of our conversation, so I didn’t really get anything else.

And, Tom, do you know how much a pound of pennies is worth?

I have no idea.

Well, it depends on the year of the pennies, because they used to be heavier than they are now.

But a pound of pennies is $1.46.

I’ve never heard this expression to apply to somebody who has value but is kind of annoying to deal with.

Yeah, I’ve been adding this.

But I am adding this to my ideologue.

No kidding.

This is a new one for me.

This is brilliant.

Everybody loved it.

When she told me, I told the people that I work with and everybody loved it.

Now we use it here, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think you just popularized a new term.

She’s a pound of pennies.

She’s valuable.

We love her, but she’s a pain.

I think that’s wonderful.

But this is our way of saying, because we can’t add anything more to what you’ve offered us.

We’ll put the word out.

We’ve got hundreds of thousands of people who listen to this show.

Maybe somebody else has something to say about a pound of pennies, right?

Yeah, I would love to hear more about it.

So, yeah, well, I’m a little, I don’t want to say disappointed, but I was hoping to find out more about it because I really couldn’t find anything myself.

So I guess it’s just one of those things.

Yeah, it could be.

Yeah, our answer was just worth about a pound of pennies, right?

A special language has to start somewhere.

Maybe you’re close to the source.

Yeah, well, that sounds great.

So I will continue to use it.

I hope you guys do.

Thanks, Tom.

Okay, thank your employee, Tom.

All right, thanks.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

Well, if you know anything about a pound of pennies is a way to kind of praise someone but criticize them,

Call us 877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I recently came across the word chick as a verb.

Have you run into this?

I don’t think so.

It’s very interesting.

This term is being used more and more among triathletes and long-distance runners.

To be chicked means you’re a guy and you got passed by a female.

Oh.

You just got chicked.

And in fact, there are shirts you can buy online in women’s sizes.

And on the back, it says, you just got chicked.

That’s funny.

Yeah.

So the men are upset about it because they feel like it’s a loss of masculinity or they’re used to always winning?

Yeah, that’s pretty funny.

Chicked.

You know, I was on the trail the other day on the mountain.

You know, I go hiking a lot on a mountain near my home, and I got nine-year-olded.

This kid just went tearing down the path past me.

Call us with your observations about language, 877-929-9673.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

That’s the end of this week’s show.

For more A Way with Words, including hundreds of episodes, a blog, a newsletter, a dictionary, mobile apps, and conversations with other listeners, go to waywordradio.org.

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Just as we do, they believe in lifelong learning, better human communication, and the value of a thing well said or well written.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

You like potato and I like potato.

You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.