A Shoo-in

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. As you know, I do a lot of hiking in the mountains around San Diego County.

And I find that often when I get up to around 4,000, 5,000 feet, I’ll suddenly see butterflies.

And they’re usually these beautiful black and yellow swallowtails. They’re kind of big and they’re right up there on the mountain peaks. And the first time I went up there and saw them, I thought, well, cool, you know, we’re all celebrating. I got up here.

The second time I thought, well, that’s weird. It happened again.

And the third time I thought, what is going on here? Every time I go to a mountaintop, there are butterflies.

And sure enough, I learned last week on a hike with some guys from the San Diego Natural History Museum that indeed there’s a word for this.

It is a thing. What is it? Hilltopping.

Hilltopping is what the butterflies are doing?

Yeah, yeah. It’s called hilltopping.

And it turns out that male butterflies of many species, they’ll go and hang out on top of mountaintops waiting for the ladies. And the ones that go to the highest point clearly have the best genes.

And it’s sort of like advertising. Yo, you know. All right. Come get some of this.

Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got great genes.

I was so excited to hear that there was a word for it. But it seems to me that this is also a word that we could adapt for human behavior.

You know, when you’re trying to impress somebody, you’re strutting a little more than usual, whether, you know, whether you’re trying to impress your boss or a potential partner, hilltopping.

Hilltopping, sure. Like a butterfly on top of a mountain.

Okay, we’ll try it. We’ll see how it goes.

This is a show about words and language, speaking and writing, all the things we say and why we say them and when and how and so on and so forth.

877-929-9673. Send an email to words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Judy from Huntsville, Alabama.

Well, hello, Judy. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Judy. What’s up? What can we help with?

Well, I’m one of those people that has about hundreds and hundreds of song lyrics that play on auto shuffle in my head. And the other day one popped up and it was Polka Dot Polka.

And it occurred to me that those two things seemingly don’t have anything to do with one another. So I wondered how polka dots became associated with that lively polka dance.

Oh, that’s a great question. And well put, because that’s a complicated topic.

Do you have a lot of polka music in your head?

I do. I grew up in Wisconsin, and we did a lot of polkas and shottishes and waltzes and so forth.

Nice. That’s cool. Yeah, I can hear the accordions now. I can hear the Wisconsin.

Judy, it’s an interesting story about the 1830s or so, early 1830s, a cool new dance trend hit Europe. And it was called the polka, which is the way that you refer to a Polish woman in that language.

She’s a polka, whereas the man is a Polak. And the dance was huge. I mean, we’re talking like it was the lombada plus the macarena of its day. You know what I’m saying?

And just a really, really, all the dance floors were doing it, all the kids were doing it. And because this trend was so huge, the word polka kind of borrowed out of the Polish language began to be used for a lot of products and things that you could buy in the store.

And we’re talking different types of clothes, different types of all different sorts. And it wasn’t really the fabric necessarily so much as the shape, the pattern, the cut, the style, that sort of thing.

But one of the things that came out of that, and probably the only polka thing that’s left from that trend of naming things after the dance, is the polka dot pattern.

So we have…

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. So that dot pattern of the big round dots, they were just called polka dots after the song. It didn’t mean that people were wearing polka dots to do the dance. It didn’t mean that Polish people wore those dots. It was simply borrowed just to take a little bit of the halo from the huge success of the dance.

Huh, the marketing scheme.

Yeah, marketing scheme. And you can see this happening all the time today with products, right? Remember when everyone added I in front of something to indicate that it was having to do with Internet or the digital world, borrowing it kind of from Apple and all their I products?

Yes, indeed. That’s very interesting. I would have never put that together as a reference to the Polish dance.

Yeah, it was a wild craze. I mean, people were just nuts for that stuff. They’re still wild and crazy for it in Wisconsin.

For polka dots or the polka?

The polka.

The polka, yeah. In any case, the dot pattern dates to around the 1850s or so. So it was a couple decades after the dance.

But it’s not like today where when we have some hot new thing, some trendy item, that it peaks like after just a few months or six months or maybe a year. Like at the time, trends really lasted because culture moved a little bit more slowly.

Yes, I’m sure. Judy, thank you so much for calling.

Well, thanks for answering that question because now when I sing the polka dot polka in my head, I will know what I’m talking about.

I love that, by the way, that they borrowed the word polka back to make a song of polka music. That’s cool, right?

Yes, indeed. Bye, Judy. Thank you so much for your call.

Thank you. Bye now.

You know, Judy reminded me that I am ever so grateful to whoever the listener was who called us to tell us about their word for if two people are walking on the sidewalk and they’re headed for each other. And so they sort of go back and forth, you know, doing this whole dance. Who’s going to pass on which side?

Yeah. Yeah, they call it a polka dodge.

Polka dodge. Nice.

877-929-9673. I’ve been looking at writing advice from Mark Twain again. He was not a fan of adjectives.

Oh, why?

He thought that they were just too, too much. In Puddin’ Head Wilson, he says, as to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.

And he wrote a letter to someone, and it said, you need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention.

These are God’s adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much, the reader ceases to get under the bed by and by.

Very good. But the original part of that sentence is advice that I still see from people who know writing, which is it’s not really about the first draft ever. It’s all about the redraft and the redraft and the redraft. It’s about the editing.

Always. Your own editing and the editing of other people. He’s good for writing advice, that Mark Twain.

Sure.

877-929-9673. Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

My name is Chris Fezenmeyer. I’m calling from Reno, Nevada.

Welcome to the show, Chris.

So my late father used to do this thing where if you asked him a question when the answer was just obviously yes, he had three things. Is it pig pork? Or is the Pope Catholic? Or does a bear poop in the woods?

And he didn’t use the word poop either.

Right. And later, like, as we all got older, I’m the youngest of five kids. And I think by the time we all, like, were old enough to understand the joke, he would just clip it. Pig pork or pope Catholic.

Those are the only three that I have in my arsenal, and I was hoping to add a lot more.

A lot more.

Oh, boy. And also, I was wondering, like, does this kind of thing span different languages? Is there a thing for this in other languages?

It’s a really good question. And there’s a lot to say about what we call these sarcastic interrogatives. There have been a lot of different terms suggested for it. But the one that seems to have settled in, among folklorists at least, is sarcastic interrogative.

And that’s, as you described, it’s when somebody asks a question that’s really, really stupid.

And the answer should be obvious, right?

And so the response is a question that also has a really obvious answer.

And the answer is yes.

That’s the formula for it.

And that’s called a sarcastic interrogative.

I love that term.

I never heard that.

I’m going to keep that in the back of my mind.

Well, there’s lots of information about that in an article by Charles Clay Doyle that you can find online,

And it’s called Is the Pope Still Catholic?

And it’s about, I don’t know, it’s about 30 pages or so.

The one about the Pope being Catholic only goes back, as far as I can tell, to the early 1960s.

There are earlier versions of this type of question, like, does a duck swim?

There are a whole lot of duck swimming ones that go back at least 150 years.

I know, but that’s not funny.

Yeah, right.

Or does a one-legged duck swim in circles is another version.

Oh, that one’s funny.

The one that I really like is, is the hole close to a donut?

That’s something to think about.

But anyway, Charles Clay Doyle goes through all these different languages and historical periods.

He even goes back to a saying that he found in ancient Sumeria that is, can one get fat without eating?

So what year are we talking about here then for this kind of sarcastic interrogative?

Well, the thing is, he says that’s not really one of those.

I mean, if you think about it, there are passages in classical literature or…

So thousands of years.

Well, but no.

No, what I’m saying is that there are somewhat similar versions, but they’re not really sarcastic interrogatives.

Like, for example, in the Bible, in the book of John, Jesus says something like, are there 12 hours of daylight?

And the answer is yes, but it’s not like he’s doing a sarcastic interrogative where somebody had just asked him a stupid question.

So what I’m saying is that this guy did exhaustive research, and what he found was pretty much the duck one.

Going back about 150 years.

So I don’t know that other languages really do this the way that we do.

I have seen them in Spanish and French,

But only by people that I know to be bilingual.

So I’m not quite sure if they were borrowing it from their English

Or if it exists alone in Spanish and French.

Okay.

But if you want lots more of these,

You can find them in this article called Is the Pope Still Catholic?

I’m going to look that up because I did do some, you know,

Googling before I called you,

And I couldn’t find anything, but sarcastic interrogative.

I’m going to look up that, and I’m going to look up that article, Martha.

Okay, great.

Another thing you might look up is echo questions.

In general, when you answer a question with a question, linguists call that an echo question.

And a lot of times they do play a sarcastic role, or in the Bible bit that Martha quoted,

They’re just really about bringing you to an answer without giving you an answer.

And they’re an important part of the discourse, how we talk to each other and how we communicate at the secondary level, not on the surface with the words we use.

So echo questions.

Well, that is really helpful.

And I’m just so thankful to talk to you both.

Yeah, sure.

Our pleasure.

Sounds great.

Take care now.

Thanks a lot for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Give us a call or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

And you can always call us at 877-929-9673.

The Greek word for cuckoo bird is kokoux.

And that is important to us as English speakers because our coccyx, C-O-C-C-Y-X, or our tailbone.

Right, right at the end of your spine.

Right, is named for the bill of a cuckoo bird because it looks just like one.

That’s very strange, right?

I think it’s gorgeous. I think it’s part of the poetry of anatomy.

Right. So maybe it’s somebody who was a zoologist or biologist who studied all life forms, just happened to notice.

Yeah, it may have been Galen. I’m not sure who.

Interesting.

Maybe it’s the same person who named our tibias tibias because that’s the Latin word for flute.

Flute. Okay. Very interesting.

877-929-9673.

This show is about language examined through family, history, and culture. Stay with us.

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 joining us on the line from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hey, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hey, Grant.

How you doing?

You know, when we do our little quizzes here, I try to avoid puns here because we’re above such low humor.

Just kidding.

In this quiz, I’ll give you a pun with a keyword missing.

You fill in the missing word.

Oh, boy.

I’ll give you the first letter of the missing word.

Here we go.

For example, if you don’t pay your E, you get repossessed.

The answer is exorcist.

You don’t pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.

Repossessed.

So E is just the first letter of the word.

That’s just the first letter of the word, yeah.

I was trying to figure that out.

Okay.

And you know that Grant is allergic to puns.

He may break out in hives here.

Well, that’s a good thing we’re doing this.

My lips are so many.

His tongue starts to swell.

Yeah, it’s okay.

What’s the definition of a W?

It’s a dead giveaway.

What’s the definition of a W?

It’s a dead giveaway.

It’s a dead giveaway.

A will?

A will, yes.

A will is a dead giveaway.

You know, the electricity went off at the school.

The students were D.

Delighted.

Yes, they were.

They were delighted.

Speaking of school, it wasn’t school I disliked.

Just the P of it.

The principal of it.

The principal of it, right.

I knew a government employee in Spain who was an S servant.

Seville servant?

Seville servant, yes.

Oh, Lord.

Nice.

I dreamt I had written The Lord of the Rings.

My wife said I’d been tea in my sleep.

Talking in your sleep.

Talking in my sleep.

You know, I couldn’t figure out how to work my seatbelt.

Then it C.

Click.

Then it clicked.

Right.

Hey, did you hear about the two Wi-Fi antennas that got married?

The R was fantastic.

The reception.

The reception was fantastic, yes.

I’d love to learn about the R of the Earth.

It would totally make my day.

Rotation?

Yes.

Yes, I’d love to learn about the rotation of the Earth.

It would make my day.

It would make my day.

Oh, it took me a second.

I’m a little slow today.

Speaking of which, did you hear about the new restaurant on Mars?

The food is great, but it lacks a…

Atmosphere.

Atmosphere, right.

Speaking of which, do you know the best way to organize a solar system party?

You pee.

You plan it.

You plan it.

Yes, very good.

Finally, 43 consonants, 21 vowels, a comma, and an exclamation point were all put on trial.

They will be S next Friday.

Sentenced.

Sentence is right.

Nicely done.

Oh, my gosh.

John, I think you found Grant’s sweet spot.

Oh, I did.

Super sweet spot.

I just said no puns.

He hates them.

No line enemy.

He’s good at them.

He just hates them.

John, you’re a real ball of fun.

Really appreciate you coming out and doing this each week.

Thank you, guys.

It’s been a lot of pun.

A barrel of monkeys.

Bye.

Bye, John.

See you.

Bye.

Well, we hope this show has grown on you.

Ouch.

I’m dying over here.

I mean, I really am dying over here.

You are.

You’re red in the face and all those little blotches.

I think I can reattach these limbs.

877-929-9673.

Hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

And send all your puns to Martha.

martha@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, it’s Steve Gardner.

Hi, Steve.

Where are you calling from?

Bend, Oregon.

In the past several months, I’ve seen the expression bully pulpit being used quite a bit, often in a relatively pejorative sense.

Some time ago, I know that’s a, or I’m pretty sure it’s a Teddy Roosevelt line saying the presidency is a bully pulpit,

But I don’t think he meant it in the sense of schoolyard bully, but rather as he used the word bully to mean something like awesome.

And I can’t find anything other than my own opinion to back me up on that.

Bully like bully for you.

Yes.

Yeah, you’re right.

I’ve noticed the same thing.

And you, Steve, are very observant.

And so props to you.

The thing that’s happening here is really interesting.

We’ve got that double meaning of bully.

And the old meaning has fallen away.

The old meaning, meaning good or great, has disappeared.

And it’s not the first time that that has happened to that particular bully.

Originally, it meant a good or great person or just a swell fellow, a nice guy, somebody that you could pal around with.

And then later it became the general adjective.

And today we only know bully as in the guy who harasses you or is mean to you because it gives him pleasure, that sort of thing.

And in between those two, in between the old meaning of bully and the new meaning of bully, people started making the obvious joke playing on both meanings of bully.

And then we got to where we are today, where the old meaning is gone.

And we only know bully pulpit is a pulpit that you would stand in front of, say, at a church and be mean from.

But I’m with you.

I think that people kind of need to be reminded of this Teddy Roosevelt phrase.

It was in 1909.

One of the people that worked with him, Lyman Abbott, told a story that was widely circulated in the newspapers about Roosevelt sitting down and writing something kind of preachy.

He really saw the role of president as a place to deliver moral messages and to talk about what it meant to be a good person, a good American, a good man, that sort of stuff.

And Lyman Abbott writes about Roosevelt had just finished a paragraph of distinctly ethical character.

Those are his words.

When he suddenly stopped, he swung around and said, I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit.

And in that sentence, that quote, which is the source of all the references for Roosevelt saying that,

In that source you can actually feel that bully is clearly an adjective that means something positive

And has nothing to do with being mean on purpose in order to make people feel bad or to hurt them.

So it’s an adjective modifying pulpit?

It is. That’s right. Bully meaning a good pulpit, meaning a very great place to preach from.

Oh, super cool.

The pulpit obviously being the thing in the church that the sermon is delivered from.

Right.

Yeah.

So in any case, so now here we are many years later and that old sense of bully is gone.

But we’ve got bully pulpit is an idiom that is widely misunderstood.

I know y’all are much more towards the living language concept than I am.

In this instance, granted, bully itself has changed.

But does that mean it’s okay to misquote the president, the old one?

Yeah, it’s funny. I don’t know that harm is being done, but certainly a few minutes with the dictionary would give anybody clarity and allow them to more properly understand what he meant, which would change probably the way that they would reflect on his presidency.

I mean, just understanding that one word bully better makes you know the man better.

And so I think any student of history or language probably should know that old meaning and get it.

So even though I’m a huge fan of the living language idea that English is always changing and we shouldn’t worry too much about it, just enjoy it as it is and do well for ourselves to speak and write, I think this is one of those cases where going back in time serves a real purpose.

It’s not just desperately holding on to an archaism.

What do you think about that, Stephen?

In my case, it’s not holding on to an archaism as much as it is just being full tilt pedantic.

Because I knew that, I don’t know, since I was a child, I knew that Teddy Roosevelt used the word bully.

I don’t know where that came into my knowledge.

And it hit me several years ago that his expression was being misused.

Well, there we go.

Bully pulpit doesn’t mean a pulpit from which someone is mean to people.

It means a great place to deliver your messages and your ideas.

Thank you very much for calling.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Thanks.

Take care.

Take care.

Bye.

Thanks.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi. This is Hamid calling from San Diego.

Hi, Hamid. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

What’s on your mind?

You know, my wife is a recruiter, and she’s always constantly trying to fill these high-profile roles.

And she’ll come home from work and say, you know, I spoke to this candidate and this candidate’s a shoe-in.

And she says that all the time.

I’ve always wondered, you know, what does that necessarily even mean?

And what maybe the history behind that was.

I always thought it was a real interesting way of saying

That something was guaranteed or easy or obvious.

But I didn’t really understand or couldn’t really,

There’s not much to it to really get much out of it,

To really understand where it came from.

And, Hamid, how are you spelling it?

I don’t think we’ve ever actually put it on paper.

I think it’s just been one of those things that we’ve just kind of verbally thrown around.

Okay, okay.

Are you picturing a shoe like somebody getting a foot in the door?

That’s exactly what I’m thinking.

I don’t know if it was maybe my natural feeling would be maybe a shoe that fit well.

Maybe, you know, it was just a natural fit.

You know, the shoe fit perfect.

But really, I’m not sure.

Okay.

Well, this may surprise you, but it’s not even spelled that way.

It’s S-H-O-O hyphen in, a shoe in.

And the shoe in this case is the kind of shoe when, say, a pesky gnat is flying around your face and you wave it away and you shoe it away.

You know, you’re shoeing chickens around a barnyard or something.

So you’re making this noise saying shoe, shoe, and you’re literally driving them away, say, with your hands or something.

Or driving them toward a goal rather than away.

Yeah, toward a goal.

Yeah, and Grant is leading up to the other really cool part of this expression, shoe in, because it comes from the world of horse racing.

And the fact that sometimes when people would rig a horse race and they would secretly agree, well, this horse is going to win, and all the jockeys agree on that,

Then what happens in this sort of prearranged race is essentially that the other horses sort of shoe the winner across the finish line.

It’s like they’re driving the winner across the finish line, and so that winner is a shoe-in.

I had no idea. Yeah, I literally thought it was a well-fitting sneaker.

I had no idea. That’s as far as I got with it.

Yeah, and in the horse racing, the other thing there to keep in mind is it usually was a horse that wasn’t expected to win.

So there’s a little bit of a joke there.

If you’re shooing it in, it’s a horse that just can’t do it without some encouragement.

So everyone else is reining back their horses, and this glue factory nag is just having to be, like, provoked just to get across the tape.

Wow.

Well, then that makes it seem like it’s not a well-deserving, you know, victory.

Although it’s changed now.

Now it is.

Now it typically means, like, they’re a cinch.

They’re a lock.

They’re a natural.

Yeah.

And there’s no negative connotation now.

Well, no, that’s great.

Very interesting.

Thank you, Kate, so much.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah, sure, Hamid.

Really appreciate it.

Take care.

Thanks for calling.

All right.

You have a great day.

Thank you.

You know, we get so many terms from horse racing,

And another one that has to do with winning is the term hands down.

You know, somebody’s a winner hands down,

And that refers to when the jockey is so far ahead of the other horses

That he or she can just relax.

No, so they don’t have their reins up.

Yeah, yeah, they’re winning hands down.

So a shoe in wins hands down.

And I wanted to talk a second about shoe.

That’s onomatopoeic for this noise that we make, right?

But it exists in other European languages,

This shoe noise used to encourage animals or kids

Or other things that need to be herded to do stuff.

Shoe.

Shoe, yeah.

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

And talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

I grew up in Kentucky where the state religion is basketball.

And so I played many, many rounds of horse as a kid.

Did you play horse?

A little bit, yeah.

Yeah.

You know how you do it.

You throw the ball through the hoop and if you get that.

And then the other person has to throw it from the same place you threw it.

Yeah.

And if they miss, then they get a letter and it goes H-O-R-S-E.

And if you get all the letters, then you lose.

I see. Gotcha.

I thought of that the other day because I was watching a video of Steph Curry, the basketball player,

Who dropped in on a group of students who were playing basketball.

And, of course, they were all really excited that this basketball superstar was there.

And they thought that he was going to challenge them to a game of horse.

But he said, no, I’m not going to challenge you to a game of horse.

I’m going to challenge you to a game of sesquipedalian.

Give them a chance yes and so well now he of course won of course yeah how old were they

Probably high school high school but still a story they’ll talk about the whole oh my gosh yes yes and

It reminded me of how much I love the word sesquipedalian which comes from latin words that

Mean literally a foot and a half long the sesquia is like sesquicentennial 150 and the

Pedalian is like you know all those pedal words all those words they have to do with your feet so

A sesquipedalian word is a word that’s a foot and a half long.

Foot and a half long.

Hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rodney from Suffolk, Virginia.

Hi, Rodney. Welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks.

What can we do for you?

Well, I’ll tell you the word I’m interested in.

I used to hear my grandmother say every once and again when I was younger

Is the word tattoo.

And as I got older, of course, I knew tattoo was related to skin art.

But the way she used it was when her and my grandfather would go see a concert or a band,

You know, if she really raved about it, talking to other family members or friends,

She would say it was just such a wonderful tattoo.

And it never really struck me as a child until I got older,

And I wondered why she would use, you know, that word in that type of situation.

And did she say it about concerts specifically or other things?

She would use it if she went to a wedding, but I think it was mostly if it had to do with music behind it, that kind of thing.

That was the whole tattoo.

It was such a wonderful tattoo is how she would say it.

Interesting.

And it never struck me until we moved to the Virginia area.

My wife’s in the military, and they have what’s called the Virginia International Tattoo.

And come to find out it has nothing to do with skin art or anything along that nature.

-huh. And tell us what that is.

Honestly, I’ve never been. I really don’t know.

Other than there is music behind it or it’s music-oriented.

And it’s like a concert or something?

Yeah, apparently it’s many different bands.

I think there’s also like a Scottish-type bag typing and things of that nature.

That makes sense.

Yeah, part of the problem here is that there are two different uses of the word tattoo, T-A-T-T-O-O, and they’re completely unrelated.

There’s the tattoo that, as you said, refers to skin art, and that comes from the languages of the South Seas, where tattoos, I think, originate.

Or were first observed by Westerners.

And then the other kind of tattoo is a kind of military signal

That calls sailors to quarters at night or calls in soldiers.

And it’s a kind of signal that gets sent out to them to tell them to come on in.

But that has a Dutch origin and isn’t related to the Polynesian or Micronesian language.

Right, right.

So it’s two different words that are spelled exactly the same, two different tattoos.

Ain’t English wonderful?

Yeah.

Mm—

Yeah, and so what I’m thinking is that this kind of tattoo may have to do with sound.

You know, the fact that a tattoo, a military tattoo, can call soldiers in for the night.

So we’re talking bugles and chumping and drumming.

Drumming.

Yeah, that kind of thing.

Okay, well, that makes a little more sense.

Yeah, that’s the only connection that I can see there.

Yeah, I need a time machine.

We go back and talk to her and figure it out.

I was probably 10, 11, you know, at the time whenever I would hear her say this.

And like I said, it was mostly when her and my grandfather would go out to see a concert or something along those lines.

And, you know, she really raved about it.

You know, I just remember, you know, she would say, you know, it was just such a wonderful tattoo.

Such a wonderful tattoo.

And were your grandparents military folk?

Were they part of that culture?

My grandfather was, yes.

Yes, he was in the military during World War II.

That’s possible she picked it up.

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.

And so she borrowed the usage kind of indirectly and just generalized it,

Which is kind of the way words and new meanings are formed.

Well, cool.

If we find out more about somebody else using tattoo kind of as a compliment

Or catchphrase like that, we’ll let you know, Rodney, all right?

That’d be wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your call.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for sharing this linguistic heirloom with us.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye, Rodney.

877-929-9673, or tell us all about it on Twitter @wayword.

I’ve just learned what a belly flower is.

What’s that, a tramp stamp that’s on the front, not the back?

No.

No, it’s a term for a small, low-growing wildflower, the kind that you have to get down on your belly to see.

Okay, belly flower, that’s nice.

It’s a term that you hear mostly in the West, particularly California, a belly flower.

Go out to the desert, Anza Borrego Desert.

You’ll see all these little belly flowers.

We had a great bloom this year.

Oh, didn’t we?

The super bloom.

All the rain.

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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 I have a book I want to recommend to you.

Okay.

It’s called PAX.

That’s P-A-X, like the Latin word for peace, Pax.

It’s by Sarah Pennypacker, and it’s spent about a year on the New York Times bestseller list, and with good reason.

It’s been described as a worthy successor to the children’s classic Charlotte’s Web.

It’s written for about 8 to 12-year-olds, but adults will also find it keenly observed and deeply moving.

I certainly did.

It’s a story about a boy who raises a pet fox from the time it’s very young, and then he has to let the fox go.

And they have such a bond that the boy eventually goes in search of this fox, and that’s what the story is about.

And a few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to lead a discussion with the author, Sarah Pennypacker, when she spoke at California State University San Marcos, just north of here.

And one of the things that she told the students there was how much time she spent observing fox behavior

And talking to experts, biologists who study foxes, and how they communicate.

And it’s one of the things I really love about that book,

Because all that research pays off even in the first paragraph, which I wanted to read to you.

The fox felt the car slow before the boy did, as he felt everything first.

Through the pads of his paws, along his spine, in the sensitive whiskers at his wrists.

By the vibrations, he learned also that the road had grown coarser.

He stretched up from his boy’s lap and sniffed at the threads of scent leaking in through the window,

Which told him they were now traveling into woodlands.

The sharp odors of pine, wood, bark, cones, and needles slivered through the air like blades.

But beneath that, the fox recognized softer clover and wild garlic and ferns.

And also a hundred things he had never encountered before, but that smelled green and urgent.

And it’s such a great beginning to this.

That’s the first paragraph of the book.

That’s the first paragraph, and the boy is in the car holding this fox that he’s raised since the fox was tiny, and he has to let it go.

So it’s got that Charlotte’s Web depth and heft to it.

But it’s a fantastic.

And she keeps it up?

All throughout.

She set a pace for herself that must be hard to keep up.

Yes.

What’s really cool is that it’s told from two points of view, the boys and the foxes.

And, you know, at first I was thinking, can you really tell a story from a fox’s point of view?

But it’s just, it’s gorgeous.

That’s great.

I will recommend this to my son if he hasn’t read it already.

Oh, I think Guthrie would love it.

And I’ll read it myself.

Okay.

So that’s Pax, P-A-X, by Sarah Pennypacker.

Right.

Thank you for a great book recommendation, Martha.

You’re welcome.

We love to talk about language on this show, including book recommendations.

If there’s something you’ve read that you’d like us to share with the rest of the world, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or spread your excitement in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Zach Smith calling from Plano, Texas.

Hi, Zach. Welcome.

What can we do for you?

So I was watching a documentary called Yuro Dreams of Sushi.

It was about this guy in Japan that’s a sushi artisan that’s been doing it for the last like 80 years.

So much so to the fact that he’s had several round of apprentices come through training with him.

And so part of the documentary was focused on him and the other was focused on the people that he’s worked with.

And one of his apprentices was like describing his time with the master and it was like all positive.

And then it got to an idiom that I had no idea if it was either positive or negative.

And the idiom was, I don’t sleep with my feet in his direction.

And I couldn’t tell if that was a positive or negative thing.

Yeah, and you couldn’t tell from the context either then.

Yeah, because it was positive, but he ended this long, like, you know, I’ve learned so much from him and going on and on and on.

And then it was almost like a tonal change and then this idiom at the end.

That’s really interesting.

Yeah, it was a positive.

It was meant as a compliment.

And it has to do with this cultural idea that the feet are filthy and the feet are unclean.

I mean, in a literal sense and more in a cultural, emotional sense.

For example, not just in many Asian cultures, but in the Middle East and in some other places, you don’t show people the soles of your feet.

You take off your shoes in certain environments.

To step on a picture of someone is considered extremely rude.

And even in Japan in particular, to sleep with your feet in someone’s direction.

Like, even if your bedrooms are next to each other, you will rearrange your sleeping quarters so that your feet do not point to the other person in the other room while you’re sleeping.

I mean, if you believe in these things.

That’s so interesting.

Yeah.

And so to say that you don’t sleep with your feet in someone’s directions means you don’t show them any animosity.

You have no ill will.

There’s no residual negativity between the two of you.

Yeah.

And that makes sense because he had moved past and he had his own.

The apprentice at this point had his own restaurant.

And he was like…

And so that actually…

I’ve learned a ton from him, and I don’t hold anything against him, even though now we’re maybe competitors.

Yeah.

Makes sense, yeah.

That makes perfect sense.

Thank you guys so much.

Our pleasure.

By the way, that is a wonderful film, isn’t it?

It is.

It is really, really good.

Like, you know,

My fiancé and I went to Japan last year, and we’ve just become just infatuated with the culture that…

This guy was just, for the last almost century, he’s just been cultivating and refining his ability to make good sushi.

And he doesn’t care about prestige, fame, or money.

He just wants to do it because he wants to be good at it.

And it just is so cool.

Thank you for recommending this film to everyone.

And thanks for a really good question.

It sounds like you were doing a close watching of the film.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, take care now.

You guys have a great day.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Zach.

I’ve heard a lot of people raving about that film.

Its title again is?

Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Okay.

It’s on my list.

This whole shoe cultural thing, if you remember the press conference with George W. Bush getting a shoe thrown at him, it wasn’t just because the shoe was a readily available weapon.

Right.

It was an insult.

It was an insult, yeah, a cultural insult.

And you find again and again places, I mean, your feet are walking on the place where all dirt ends up eventually, right?

Everything that happens in the world ends up on the ground and your feet are chapesing through and then you track that into the house.

It’s really interesting.

Don’t sleep with my feet in his direction.

Yeah, I don’t sleep with my feet in his direction, meaning I don’t have any ill will.

Well, send some emails in our direction.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

We have a very active Facebook group and you can find us on Twitter at Wayword.

I was talking earlier about my conversation with the children’s book author Sarah Pennypacker, and we were talking about the fact that usually writers of children’s books do not collaborate up front with the artists or the illustrators.

John Klassen, her illustrator for the book Pax, was in on that conversation.

At the university, and he’s the Newbery Award-winning illustrator for books like I Want My Hat Back.

She was talking about the fact that on other children’s books, she also did not collaborate up front with the illustrator.

And she wrote one book called Stuart’s Cape, which is about an eight-year-old whose family moves, and he’s really nervous about getting locked in the bathroom at the new school, or the other third graders won’t like him.

And he was also worried about man-eating spiders in the closet at his new home.

And the manuscript was given to an illustrator whose first language is French.

And so when the illustrations came back, there was a picture in the closet.

Of a man eating spiders?

In the closet.

And what I love about Sarah Pennypacker is she said she loved that.

She just changed her language because she loved the image so much.

She changed it to what if there were man eating spiders in his new bedroom closet or a man eating spiders.

And she was saying that that’s one of the glorious things about working with an illustrator is that they show you things that you would never have thought of yourself.

But isn’t that great?

It is great.

And it shows the power of the hyphen that you need between man and eating, right?

The power of the hyphen.

But if English isn’t your first language, you might not pick up on the nuance of that hyphen.

Yeah.

That’s cool.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Greg DeMonte. How are you?

Hi, Greg. How are you doing? Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Norfolk, Virginia.

Norfolk, Virginia. Welcome to the show. What’s up, Greg?

Thank you. I was calling because there’s a word that I use quite often, and sometimes when I use it, you know, it’s 50-50.

Either some people look at me like I’m crazy, they’ve never heard this word before, and other people know exactly what I’m talking about, and the word is smarmy.

To be honest, I’ve always assumed that smarmy is something to mean like someone is kind of untrustworthy or always trying to get maybe something for nothing or, you know, just kind of sneaky kind of person.

And the other question I had about it was, is it a combination of words?

Like, is it even a real word?

Did somebody just make it up?

Well, all words were made up by somebody at one point, but I know what you mean.

It’s definitely a word.

Yeah.

I love the word smarmy.

Smarmy.

It’s just somebody who’s just, ugh, just icky.

Well, yeah, and you have to say it like you said, like smarmy, like you can’t, you know what I mean?

It’s just, they kind of go hand in hand.

Right.

Yeah, it’s a word that sounds like what it means.

And it’s related to an old verb, smarm, that means to smear or bedob.

So imagine making something greasy or oily and then think about the meanings that we have for somebody who is greasy or slick, right?

Exactly.

Unctuous.

Well, I was going to say it reminds me of the word unctuous, which comes from a Latin word that means to anoint, you know, with oil.

It’s related to unguent.

And unctuous means just kind of oily and sleazy and smarmy.

Too slick to get a hold on, right?

They always get away.

Yeah, just pouring it on a little too thick and, yeah, smarmy.

Well, I appreciate that.

It’s definitely something that I feel like I’m happy to know that I’m using it in the right way.

Oh, absolutely.

I’m surprised that you have people who don’t believe that that’s a word.

Yeah, they just need to read more, I think.

I had that response once.

It didn’t really go well, but I agree.

By the way, it’s got at least a hundred-year history.

Can find the first use I know of the adjective smarmy, which is newer than the verb to smarm,

Is 1899. So it’s got a long history of English.

All right.

So definitely not just you.

Not just you.

Good. I don’t feel like such an island anymore.

Great.

Bless your heart.

Thank you for calling. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, guys.

Cheers. Take care. Bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

So this first use of 1899 is from a word contest in a journal called The Academy.

And they’re making up new words.

I don’t know what the, I think it was just for fun.

And smarmy is there as an adjective.

Now, the thing about smarmy, that is the first use of it as an adjective that I can find.

Really?

How smarm is the noun and smarm is the verb are much older.

They’ve got 50, 100 years prior they’re out there.

But it’s really interesting.

I don’t think it came from the word contest, but somehow it was in the ether.

And this contributor threw it in there.

And that was how long ago?

1899.

Oh, how about that?

If a word has caught your ear and you want to talk about it, call us at 877-929-9673 or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Andrea Warfel and I live in Hazlitt, Michigan in the greater Lansing area.

Gotcha. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

Well, I’m here with my six-year-old daughter, Neve.

I’m raising up a couple of word nerds here, and she asked me a very good question the other day that I did not know the answer to,

But I said we should call Grant and Martha because I bet they can tell us.

Oh, boy.

All right, so I will pass you over to Neve. Here she is.

Okay.

Why does XOXO stand for hugs and kisses?

Why does XOXO stand for hugs and kisses?

Neve, what a good question. What made you think about that?

We were texting back and forth with Daddy, who was off working in Detroit, and he wrote back XOXO, and we got to wondering if the O was for hugs, like the arms around the body, but then why the X for kisses?

Because when you go to kiss someone, what shape does your mouth make?

Oh.

Yeah.

You’re right.

Well, we don’t 100% know for sure why we use X for kisses and O’s for hugs.

But the best theory that people who study these things have come up with is that the X used to be a way to sign important documents to show that you were being faithful and honest and true.

And you would actually kiss the spot, which kind of confers a blessing upon the document or shows your sincerity.

And that X has to do with the cross, the Christian cross that Jesus died on.

And in fact, in many cases, you will find people talk about that X not as an X, but as a bunch of crosses, even though they’re on their side.

And that’s the best theory that we’ve found so far.

So it was a way to sign documents and then you might kiss it to show, kind of make it formal, to formalize it.

Kissing is always involved in rituals and things, even now, right?

So the O’s are the hugs.

The O’s are the hugs.

Many people just think it was a way to indicate the physical arms encircling someone else.

Okay, and that’s what we thought, but we just couldn’t figure out where that X came from.

Yeah, so the X is the kiss, though, and the O is the hug.

We’re glad you’re talking about that and raising new word nerds.

Yeah, we try. Her name is even a portmanteau. She goes by Neve for short.

Nice.

My new name is Neva Lena, and we were six people together to make Neva Lena.

Oh, you’re so sweet.

Well, thank you guys for your time and for answering our questions.

Thank you, Andrea.

Thank you, Neva.

All right.

Neva, will you call us again sometime?

Yes.

All right.

Excellent.

Bye-bye.

Take care now.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Oh, how sweet is that?

We don’t 100% know that that’s the origin of the XOs.

We do find X and O’s being used quite a ways back, 100, 150 years.

But sometimes it’s not clear.

Sometimes it just looks like they might be putting a row of X’s to separate two sections because there’s nothing else listed about kisses or love or anything like that.

So it’s one of those origin uncertain ones.

Oh, those are so frustrating, aren’t they?

But how great to see that young curiosity.

I know, right?

And that little voice.

I know.

Well, we welcome your little voice or your big voice, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Or join our Facebook group and talk to thousands of like-minded word nerds like yourself.

Have we talked about plot bunnies on the show?

Plot bunnies?

So P-L-O-T, as in like the plot of a book, and then bunny, like bunny rabbit.

Is this like a MacGuffin?

Kind of. A plot bunny is a writing idea that you have that you can’t get rid of.

It just will not leave your brain. It constantly comes up.

And the only way to expel it is to write it.

Ooh, I like that.

You have to put it down on paper or put it down on the computer one way or the other and purge yourself of the plot bunny.

But as they say, the problem with all bunnies is that they breed.

I was going to say.

And plot bunnies make other plot bunnies.

They take over your life.

I learned that from the writing community.

And I know we’ve got a ton of writers who follow the show.

So plot bunny is probably something.

They’re all going, yes, I know the feeling.

It won’t let go.

It will not let go.

You have to purge yourself of it.

Well, write to us, words@waywordradio.org, or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Want more A Way with Words?

Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org

Or find the show on any podcast app or on iTunes.

Our toll-free line is always open,

So leave us a message at 877-929-9673 and we’ll take a listen.

We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org

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And look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten,

Director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chaneski, and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.

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