A Whole Nother

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

And I’m Grant Barrett.

These days, some of my favorite little bits of laughter come from the fellows who run the Twitter account called Fake AP Stylebook.

Do you know this one, Martha?

Oh, boy, do I.

There, they give their version of English usage advice for journalists in a send-up of the stodgy and the self-important Associated Press.

Stodgy and self-important means it’s another way of saying ready for a takedown.

So they put things like advice like the British spelling of color is blimey color, I say.

What?

Ho!

Or Xerox is a trademarked name, use butt duplicator.

I mean, because all this, if AP Style Guide takes itself so seriously, even on their own Twitter account, and it’s, I don’t know, it’s just begging for this kind of treatment.

One other bit of advice from the fake AP Style Book guys is, it’s inappropriate to bluntly state how dumb your city’s kids are, just hope readers understand what underperforming means.

And so they’re also speaking kind of truth about the tiredness of some types of journalism, aren’t they?

Yeah, yeah. And everybody I know turns to the AP Stylebook as this bible of style and usage.

One of my favorite tweets from them was, do not change weight of gorilla in phrase 800 pound gorilla in the room.

Correct weight is 800 pounds. Do not change gorilla’s weight.

Another one that I liked was the correct plural of moose is I have been living in central Maine for far too long.

I mean, these are questions that people ask all the time.

Why don’t we say meese instead of mooses, you know?

And frankly, sometimes the funny answers are more useful than the real ones.

Because at the bottom of this, AP Stylebook is a constructed style guide.

It’s a group of people’s opinions.

It’s not like it’s the universal law of English.

And to assume that it’s some kind of like reverent Auguste manual that must be obeyed is foolishness.

And this kind of foolishness underscores it even more.

Yeah, yeah.

I love the specificity of fake AP style book.

Like use the quintuple vowel to transcribe the utterances of small children.

Daddy, I want a pony.

The quintuple vowel being four letters in a row.

Five.

Five.

In any case, those laughs and more just like it come from the Twitter account called Fake AP Stylebook.

It’s twitter.com slash fake AP stylebook.

You can also find us on Twitter at twitter.com slash Wayword.

That’s W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

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

And give us a call on the telephone at 1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who is this?

This is Catherine from Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Well, hello, Catherine. Welcome to the program.

Hey, Catherine.

Thank you for having me.

Oh, it’s our pleasure. What can we do for you?

Well, I am finding it kind of irritating that there’s so many apartment complexes and office parks that are named after natural landscapes that are nowhere to be seen.

-huh.

For example?

Since I was driving down the highway on I-69 here in Indiana, and there was a big giant apartment complex sitting right on the highway, and it was called Bayview Apartments.

And I don’t think there are any bays in Indiana.

Not many. Maybe on some artificial lakes.

You’re so right.

That’s pushing it.

Katherine, you’re so right. Who are the people who come up with these names?

Optimists.

I think they’re the same ones who name the paint chips, you know, when you go to paint your house.

I mean, it’s crazy, right?

I don’t think there’s any special qualifications for the people who get to choose these names.

Maybe it’s just because they want something that’s evocative of another place, a foreign clime or the Mediterranean or something else.

Maybe they’re just trying to make it seem exotic.

And, you know, if you live in the plains where there are no bays, maybe a Bayview apartment sounds really great.

But it just kind of seems like a slap in the face, too.

Yeah, you know, you’re not the first one to notice this.

There’s a Sesame Street movie starring Big Bird called Follow That Bird.

And he ends up in, I believe it’s Oceanside, Illinois.

There’s no ocean side, I don’t know why.

Yeah, I think there must be some kind of formula for naming these subdivisions, you know, where you take the name of the natural habitat that you’re destroying and then you put it on the sign there.

You know, I mean, I used to drive past this place where they kept clearing the trees and clearing the trees, and then they put up this subdivision, and they called it the Woods of St. Thomas, and I’m thinking, where are the woods? The woods are gone.

Oh, yeah, definitely. They named the place, they named the very streets after the trees they tore down to build the streets.

Yeah, yeah.

Or the wildlife.

Yes, yes.

The deer creek path neighborhood.

Right, a lot of runs, a lot of crossings, mallard crossings.

Where are the mallards?

Well, I hesitate to say this because I know these houses aren’t empty and these subdivisions are full, right?

And there are people that live there and they have great lives and they’re good folks and stuff.

But in my opinion, the names of those subdivisions are about as soulless as the architecture of the houses that are in them.

Whoa, what do you think about that, Catherine?

Ouch.

Well, I’m just saying, you know, when I grew up in Missouri, there’s a beautiful countryside that’s just vanished.

And it’s covered now with cul-de-sacs and just terrible, terrible condos and just ugly stuff.

Just ugly, ugly, ugly.

And it’s gone.

What used to be a beautiful green forest and probably wasn’t first growth, but it was still wonderful.

It’s gone.

Completely gone.

And it’ll be 100 years before it ever grows back, if it ever does.

And now there’s an office park there named Lush Grove.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I love that.

But, you know, one of the things, to get a little serious about this, one of the things that happens is that these developments are often designed on a national level.

So it might be somebody in Chicago who’s working up the plans for this place.

And what he’s going to do is use these plans all around the country.

And it’s entirely possible that when the name Bayview Apartments was coined, it wasn’t coined just for one set of buildings, that it was coined for many, and they just used the same name every place.

So it’s not necessarily that this is all done on a local level.

You can buy whole subdivision plans, kind of like lock, stock, and barrel from the blueprints all the way down to the last nail and just roll it out.

I’m not comforted.

Well, you know.

Bless your heart.

Yeah, I’m with you on that.

But let me ask you kind of an inverse of this.

What would you call it?

Yeah, I guess no one would want to live in an apartment called Highway Side.

Between two ditches.

There’s a wonderful one here in our town that really sits right on the highway.

It’s just totally out in the open.

It’s an apartment complex, and it’s called Hidden Point.

And does it have an E?

They always have an E on the end of point.

Oh, right.

It’s Hidden Pointy.

Yeah, Hidden Pointy.

Oh, that’s hysterical.

Be sure, when you get a chance to find, there’s a Billy Collins poem called The Golden Years, and it makes fun of this same little issue.

Oh, really?

Check it out and enjoy that. It’s a great poem.

Okay. Thank you so much for calling, Catherine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org, or you can call us 1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ricardo. I’m calling from Charlottesville, Virginia.

Well, welcome, Ricardo. What’s up?

Hi, Ricardo. Welcome to the program.

Well, my question is about the use of the second person possesses.

This is something I’ve noticed repeatedly, but it’s sort of come to my attention more recently.

I hear it when people are, often when they’re listing things.

We’re having our kitchen redone, for example, and it struck me when we went to go talk to the guy who’s doing our cabinets.

You know, he was telling us about the different woods that we could use.

And he said, you got your cherries and you got your maples and you got your walnuts.

You know, and so that use of the second person possessive, you know, it’s not something that I would ever use, but I hear it often.

And I don’t know if it’s a regional thing, if it’s a class thing, you know, what the story is behind it.

I know what you’re talking about, Ricardo.

I encountered this recently in the Curious George Christmas special.

What?

Oh, really?

My son was watching.

Yeah, A Very Monkey Christmas, I believe it was called.

You’ll find it on PBS.

And in there, there’s a scene where Bill, who’s a young, he’s like a teenage boy, is manning this Christmas tree lot.

And at some point, he feels obligated to explain all the trees.

And he does it exactly like that.

It’s something along the lines of, you got your pines, and you got your cedars, and you got your short pines, and you got your hard pines.

And he goes through the shtick.

And it’s very much, it’s not just that they’re listing things.

It’s that they’re teaching.

They’re telling you.

They’re like inventorying something that you need to know in order to make a decision.

Right, exactly, yeah.

When you Google this in a variety of databases and books, you’ll find that almost always there’s an element of teaching there or an element of explanation.

It’s that person A knows the list and person B does not know any of the list.

And person A is going to dump it all in one shot.

And that’s how they do it.

Yeah.

But as far as the your, which you called second person possessive, I think what we’re talking about here is just a very informal.

It’s kind of the mirror image of one.

Or you might say one has one softwoods, one has one cherry, one has one maple, right?

Right.

But that sounds stuffy and pretentious.

But how do you really get across the idea that it’s like those woods don’t belong to the guy who’s speaking really?

And they don’t belong to you because you’re a customer and they’re just kind of like they exist.

And so by saying you got your hardwoods and you got your maple and you got your oak and your pine and your what have you, you’re kind of just saying they exist.

It’s just a way of being kind of indirect and inspecific.

Do you guys think it’s so much the language of educating somebody as the language of sales?

I mean, I’m hard-pressed to think of somebody saying, like a science teacher saying, you got your kingdom, you got your phylum, you got your class, you got your order, you got your family, you got your genus, you got your species.

I’m a teacher myself, and it never occurs to me.

Well, I’ll tell you, when I Google it, though, I do see people using it to explain things about.

They’re often, I hate to say this, and it’s not always the case, but it seemed to be frequently the case that when I look at the data that I can gather, it’s people who have some bias against many groups of other kinds of people.

And then they list them in this fashion, which leads me to believe that there is a class issue here, an education issue, that it might be the kind of thing that you’re not going to hear a president or a queen say.

The pope is not going to inventory his cardinals and go, you know, he’s not going to list them one by one.

You got your gluttony. You got your sloth. You got your blood.

He’s not going to.

Why?

So it’s a kind of, it’s definitely highly informal and probably highly correlated with poor education.

Okay.

I don’t know.

What do you say?

I’m just basing it on like a sussing out of the data that I can gather from a variety of public sources, you know, including books, blog posts, Usenet posts, just all the kinds of stuff, just different levels of discourse.

You don’t find this in the highest levels of discourse.

You do not find this in science books.

You don’t find it in treatises about world economics.

You don’t find this in people talking about relationships.

You find this in books that are talking about really mundane, ordinary stuff.

Ricardo, what do you think?

Well, you know, whenever I run into it, it’s usually, you know, like, for example, not only does my cabinet guy use it, but my contractor uses it.

So it is something to me that sounds kind of like a blue-collar construction, you know?

Okay. A tradesman, maybe?

But, you know, I’m also, you know, I live in a part of the country where I didn’t grow up, really.

So I was wondering if it might also be a regional thing, if it’s a rural thing or a southern thing or anything like that.

If it is, I don’t know a thing about it.

We’d welcome data from our listeners, though, if it’s the kind of thing that you grew up with or you use yourself.

And probably some email saying, I’m not uneducated and I use it.

And that’s fine, too.

Go ahead and send those emails and make those calls.

We welcome those as well.

Okay, great.

Well, I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Thanks.

Bye-bye, Ricardo.

Thanks.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Well, you got your word and phrase origins.

You got your slang.

You got your grammar.

You got your answers right here.

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

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined now by our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

How are you?

Hi, John.

Doing well.

Well, it’s cooking over there, buddy.

Well, you know what?

We just signed Max up for this after-school science class, you know, sort of on Fridays.

He’s going to go once a week to this guy, Carmelo, the science fellow.

Not to be confused with Bill Nye, the science guy.

Right, right.

But I was thinking I should get some sort of nickname like that.

But the best I could come up with is John the Puzzle Don.

And that just doesn’t work for me.

Nice, nice.

Well, John the Puzzle Don Juan.

Yeah.

Speaking of puzzles.

Yes.

Today’s puzzle is based on a classic form of humor.

The Tom Swifty.

Okay.

Okay, you’re familiar with Tom Swifties, I assume?

Mm—

It’s a phrase in which a quoted sentence is linked by a pun to the manner in which it is said.

For example, pass me the shellfish, Tom said crabbly.

All right, that’s pretty basic, okay?

Sometimes the pun is a little more clever, such as won’t be sticking my arm in a lion’s mouth again, Tom said offhandedly.

So those are examples of Tom Swifties.

What I’ll do is I’ll give you a quote, and then you fill in the blank with the appropriate adverb.

For example, if I said, guess I’ll skip school today, Tom said.

Hookily, truantly, guess I’ll skip school today.

Absently.

Absently, right.

Guess I’ll skip school today, Tom said, absently.

Very good.

Thank you.

Let’s see how you do with the quiz proper.

Here it is.

Why I happen to be a great linebacker, Tom said.

Gosh, blockingly, tacklingly.

Offensively.

Oh, try the other way.

Defensively.

Very good.

I happen to be a great linebacker, Tom said.

Defensively.

Defensively.

It’s the nerd hour.

Okay.

This next one requires a little bit of acting.

Let’s see if I can do it.

Stop.

You can’t go any further, Tom said.

Haltingly.

Haltingly.

Very good.

Yes.

Where’s my Oscar?

Here’s another one.

Number one, I’m going to travel to Tibet.

Number two, I’ll study for two years in a monastery.

And number three, I’ll write a philosophy book that will change the world, Tom said.

It’s about lists and stuff?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That word will help.

It has a list in it?

Yeah.

Idealistically.

Yeah, go with it.

Idealistically.

Idealistically.

Oh, my heaven.

That’s a tough one.

Okay, this one should be easier.

Here we go.

I’m canning peaches, Tom said.

I’m canning peaches?

Yeah.

He said.

Jarringly.

Jarringly.

Very good, yes.

Again, five years of acting school right there.

I hope it was worth it.

Bachelor of Fine Arts.

There we are.

Okay, here’s the next one.

One, three, five, seven, nine, eleven.

Tom said…

Primly?

Oddly?

Oddly, yes.

Well, I said primly because of prime numbers.

Never mind.

But nine was not a prime number.

Grant’s playing with the letters.

Here’s another one.

My calendar seems to be missing a few pages, Tom said.

Datelessly?

No.

Weekly?

No.

Weekly.

I’ll try the acting part again, better again.

My calendar seems to be missing a few pages.

Oh, I get it.

Lackadaisically.

Lackadaisically.

Very good.

That’s terrible.

Oh, my gosh.

That’s terrible.

You got it.

Thank you.

That’s great.

This one you’ll like a lot better.

It will be a lot less groan-inducing.

I play guitar in a U2 cover band, Tom said.

Pluckily?

Edgily.

Edgily, right.

Here’s the next one.

This one, again, is a long adverb, so I hope you’ll be able to get this one.

Here comes the acting.

All right.

Ow!

Oh, you guys really know how to hurt a vampire, Tom said.

Garlic-lit crossly.

No.

That’s really good.

That works, but that’s not what it’s going for.

Mistakenly?

No.

You’re close.

You’re close.

It starts with a P.

Oh, there we go.

Painstakingly.

Painstakingly.

Very good.

This one’s also long, but I think it’ll be a lot easier to get.

Here’s the next to last one, the penultimate one.

Let’s have a look under the hood, Tom said.

I just want to say all of your acting sounds like William Shatner.

Thank you.

Let’s have a look under the hood.

He said mechanically.

Mechanically.

Very good.

And here’s the last one.

It’s very appropriate.

You really enjoyed that puzzle, Tom asked.

Quizzically.

Quizzically is right.

Oh, my gosh.

John, I think the Oscar for best supporting quiz guy goes to you this week.

I hope it’s John the Puzzle Don.

Oh, that’s great.

Terrific.

Thank you.

Thanks, John, for the fun one.

Tom Swifties are always good.

Oh, yeah.

Nothing like a good adverb.

You guys take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

And if you have a question about adverbs or nouns or adjectives or any kind of wordplay, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dave from Chicago.

Hello, Dave.

Welcome.

Hi, Dave.

How are you doing?

I’m doing great.

How are you guys doing?

Doing great.

What would you like to talk about?

Well, there’s a phrase that I have used just about all my life, and I didn’t notice until I was maybe 40 years old that it actually wasn’t using English words.

The phrase is a whole nother, as in, that’s a whole nother thing.

And, you know, for 40-some odd years I said this, and one day I went to write it down, and, like, my pencil stopped in my hand because I’m trying to figure out how to spell this.

And I’m like, wait a minute, that’s not a word.

How is it possible I’ve used this all my life and never realized this before?

So that kind of confounded me a little bit.

And since then, every time I go to say the word, you know, the words kind of get stuck in my mouth.

And I say, now what do I do, right?

Because I know it’s not really right, but it’s something I use.

I know what I mean.

So I just wanted to know if you guys had encountered this before and what you thought about it, if there was any real background behind this or just a shortcut that everybody uses.

So you’ve been using nether as a whole other word.

Or a whole nother word.

Or a whole nother word. N-O-T-H-E-R.

Right.

Well, I think we can offer some comfort there, Grant.

Yeah. Well, first of all, congratulations on noticing it, I guess I should say.

But on the other hand, this is not really that egregious of an error.

It’s so incredibly common that virtually every style guide that you could check has a note about this.

And what you might be relieved to find is almost all of them say, it’s not really that big a deal.

And the reason it’s not that big a deal is that another actually used to be a word.

And that what might be happening here is some lingering, in the exact phrase, a whole nother, some lingering remnant of nother kind of showing its head.

It’s not necessarily what they call a misdivision of another, where you are mistakenly thinking that a-nother is a phrase rather than a single word, and then allowing you to insert an adverb or an adjective in between.

Well, and I’m looking at the American Heritage Dictionary, and it’s in that dictionary.

It’s listed as informal, but it’s in that dictionary, and it’s also in Merriam-Webster.

No kidding.

So it’s not as if it’s not a real word, but it’s regarded as informal.

And it’s easy to say, right?

Oh, yeah.

It just rolls off the tongue.

Right.

Exactly.

I’ve never seen it in print, though, which is, you know, why when I started to write it, it looked so strange to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A whole other is probably ideal, especially in anything that’s even remotely formal.

But a whole nother is so widespread and so common.

And actually, it’s funny.

It’s one of those things that I find to be charming.

I like what it says about the way that we work with language.

And we pretend that there are these rules that are absolutes in English, but really all of the rules that we think we have are only divined and discovered after the fact.

The English is a tangled, tangled mess.

And there’s some interesting things like this that we can do, where you can make something that’s perfectly comprehensible, but perhaps not completely logical.

So what I’m hearing is I can just relax and continue to say it.

That’s what we always say to people.

I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Yeah, we always say that when people are worried about something in their own speech, just relax.

For example, here’s a book by Bill Brohau.

I think that’s how you say his name, B-R-O-H-A-U-G-H.

It’s called Everything You Know About English is Wrong.

And he says the choice between an other and another, he says, which is correct?

Another.

Another is a whole other word, literally and figuratively, an obsolete old English word meaning neither or neither.

So, yeah, you’re cool. You’re good.

Maybe use a whole other when you’re writing business documents or writing something to the president or the pope or the queen, but other than that, you’re good to go.

Yeah, when you’re texting us, just another.

But cool, Dave.

Well, thank you very much.

Glad to help.

That’s really informative and useful.

Yeah, you help you feel better.

Oh, I feel great. Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right, take care.

Bill Brohau’s book, Everything You Know About English is Wrong, is actually a really nice read.

Is it? Is it fun?

Yeah, yeah.

And the cool thing is, I think when it comes to these kind of books, and you and I both have tons of these sorts of books on our shelves, when they don’t preach, they’re far more enjoyable, and I think I learn more from them than when they do preach.

If somebody’s not trying to hammer me upside the head, then it’s easier to learn.

If you’ve got a question about something you noticed in your own speech, have you been doing it wrong for 40 years? Send us an email, words@waywordradio.org, or give us a telephone call, 1-877-929-9673.

And you can actually try us on Twitter at twitter.com slash Wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Sarah Noel, and I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Well, hello, Sarah. Welcome to the program.

Thank you. Thanks.

So I have kind of more of a phrase than a word, but we were having Thanksgiving with my in-laws, and my mother-in-law just randomly said to comment on something, well, thinkers, uppers, thinkers, it.

And we all looked at her and had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

And so we probed a little bit, and she said it was a phrase that several of her friends used and her parents had heard her use throughout her childhood.

And basically she was saying it meant if you think it up, you do it.

So, for example, you know, I think we should have cake for dinner tonight.

And then you would say, well, thinker’s up or thinker’s it.

And so we called around to some other family members to see if they had ever heard of that.

Nobody seemed to know where it came from, if it was a legitimate phrase.

So I was curious to know if you’ve ever heard of it.

-huh.

And so you said, gee, I wonder if anybody at A Way with Words has ever heard that.

And everybody said, thinker’s up or thinker’s it.

I immediately thought of you guys and thought, well, if anybody’s heard of it, you know, if it’s really legitimate, then surely you have heard of it.

What a funny little phrase, though.

Thinkers uppers, thinkers it.

I love it.

So thinkers uppers is the plural of thinker upper.

And that’s the person who thinks something up.

So if you think of an idea and then you speak it, or then you are the person who’s it, just like a game of tag on the playground.

So if you say, boy, these dishes really need to be done, then you’re it, and you’re the one who’s going to do the dishes, right?

Or all my favorite pants are dirty, then you’re the one doing the laundry, right?

Yeah, well, I have to tell you, I have never, ever, ever heard this phrase or read it anywhere.

What about you, Grant?

Really?

No, I haven’t, but the concept is very clear to me.

I mean, we never had any kind of institutionalized phrase for that in my family, but definitely operated on the same principle, Sarah, definitely.

Just the idea that, you know, if you want something done, instead of sitting there bellyaching about it not being done, then just get up off your lard butt and do it.

Right?

It’s a pretty universal family concept, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Exactly.

So maybe it just originated in her family and then it just spread, you know, throughout her circle of friends.

It could be.

We say this all the time, Martha, but I think this is one phrase that I’m going to have to introduce into my family’s vocabulary.

Absolutely.

Thinkers, uppers, thinkers.

I’m glad I could help with that.

Yeah.

I haven’t heard of it anywhere else, Sarah, by the way.

I don’t think it’s widespread.

Like I say, the concept is definitely very clear to me.

It’s very well known, but it sounds like it’s something that belongs to your family.

And thank you so much for telling the story.

Sure, sure.

Well, thank you guys so much for taking my call.

Okay.

All right, take care.

Bye-bye, Sarah.

Okay, bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question that’s racking your thinker-upper, call us, 1-877-929-9673,

Or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hey, Grant, I have a word riddle for you.

Oh, please.

What English word can have four of its five letters removed

And still retain its original pronunciation?

I don’t know. If this was French, it would be a lot easier.

What word?

Well, that’s not a bad instinct there.

We’re talking about a five-letter word.

Takeaway for you still have the original

Pronunciation of the five-letter word.

I don’t know. What is it?

How about, speaking of French, or speaking

Of lining up in England…

Oh, Q. Very good.

Very good. Excellent.

Well, if you have a question for us,

Call us 1-877-929-9673

Or send an email to

Words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello. Hi, who’s this?

This is Carol Owens

From Glickfield in upstate New York.

How are you doing today?

Super. Welcome to the program.

Thank you very much.

My wife and I try to get out every day

And walk in our neighborhood.

We live on the western edge of the Adirondack Park.

We walk frequently,

And sounds are part of the experience.

Birds, animals, rain, wind, that sort of thing.

But in our neighborhood, most of the trees are red and white pine.

The wind blowing through the trees makes a sound that I have not heard described before.

So I was wondering if there is a name for that sound.

Carol, can you describe it for us?

It’s not a moaning, exactly, but it’s a long, stretched-out whooshing is the best that I can come up with,

And that’s not very descriptive, I’m afraid.

And it’s not a bellow or a howl, is it? It’s something quieter than that.

It’s not deafening by any means. It’s a mellow sound, I would say.

Mellow, there’s the word. It’s something like a sigh then, right?

Yes.

Let me ask you one more question. How do you and your wife feel about that sound?

Comforted, calm, serene, how should I say, familiar.

Nice.

Yeah.

Calls to the heart, doesn’t it?

Kind of like the ocean.

Yes.

It certainly would be maybe a good candidate for a white sound on one of those recordings,

But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard it in that context.

Carol, I think you’ve described it really well, but what you want is a one-word summation of it.

Is that right?

That’s what I was looking for.

How about this for a word for that sound?

Susurration.

That sounds very nice, and I can honestly say that I have never heard it before.

Yeah, the susurration in the tall trees.

It comes from the Latin word that means whisper.

Or murmur or hum.

Mm—

Mm—

Excellent.

Sounds prettier in Spanish, susurro, but…

And so then the verb is…

Very good.

Susurrate.

Oh, yeah.

I guess you’re right.

Yeah, but the susuration is…

I like the shun at the end because all of those sibilant sounds,

They evoke exactly what you’re talking about,

The whispering kind of subtle, tiny whistle of the wind in the needles.

How do you spell it?

Good question. It’s S-U-S-U-R-R-A-T-I-O-N.

Susurration.

Okay, I can’t wait to insert this into my next conversation with people who I know,

Who think they know a lot more than I do.

But anyway.

Now you’re armed.

It’s a good, strong word. It’s real English. It comes from Latin.

And it’s a wonderful poetic word that I would love to see used more often in the right places.

Well, very good. I certainly will make a habit of doing that.

And thank you for the contemplative question. I always appreciate something that’s well thought out.

Good luck, Carol. Take a walk in the woods for us, will you?

Certainly will. Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Bye now.

Call us 1-877-929-9673.

Stay right there. Your calls and much more next on A Way with Words.

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

A while back, we had a conversation on the show about the language of train conductors.

Remember that, Grant?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It prompted an email from Jeannie Perry in Port Wing, Wisconsin.

Jeannie writes,

Calls out a long line of gibberish, vowels and consonants that don’t spell anything and are unintelligible.

In the second picture, he leans in again with a different line of gibberish.

And in the third picture, once again.

In the last picture, the man behind the desk is shaking his hand saying,

Congratulations, you have the job as our new railway conductor.

Pretty good, huh?

Yeah, that’s pretty good.

And then Jeannie says the other cartoon is a Wisconsin joke.

A lady and her young son are riding on the train when the conductor leans in the door of their rail car.

The woman turns to her little boy and says, what did the conductor say?

The little boy says, nothing.

He just leaned in the door and sneezed.

The mother says, get ready to get off.

That’s our stop.

Oshkosh.

That’s pretty good.

And we had one other response in a different vein to that same segment of our show where we talked about language kind of being corrupted over time.

Airman Mike Peek wrote to say that he’s in the military, and he just had to bring up the fact that the same thing happens on the parade grounds.

For example, forward march sounds like, forward march!

Or, forward!

I’m not even doing it well.

And he says, when called to present arms or to salute, it’s yelled.

He spells it like this, capital H, capital U, G-H-H-H-H-H.

Call them half-left, hatch!

Brought me to attention.

Yeah, but his point is very good.

It’s that when you say something over and over, particularly when you’re shouting it,

There’s a kind of corruption there.

And I don’t know why we didn’t think of the military example.

It’s one we’ve seen in a thousand movies, right?

Yeah, that’s a perfect example.

Or experienced ourselves.

Sure.

If you’ve got a comment on this or anything else we’ve talked about on the show,

By all means, email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And we welcome your phone calls at any time, 1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John in Dallas.

Hello, John.

Hi, John. Welcome to the program.

Thanks. My question is, all of the O’s that you hear in the Irish words like O’Reilly, O’Malley, or Lucko the Irish,

I was just curious, where does that come from?

And, you know, is it popularized here in America, or did it really start over in Ireland?

Well, John, you have to tell us why you’re wondering about that.

Well, I was traveling in Europe, and I met a young Irish traveler,

And he was telling me that it was the Americans who popularized this and made it a big thing,

And it wasn’t really the Irish at all.

And I didn’t really believe him when I heard that, so I had to call you guys.

Really? So what is he implying, that in Ireland nobody goes by O’Malley or O’Grady?

I guess he was saying that we just took it and ran off with it,

And they didn’t really have it.

But I still didn’t believe him when he told me that.

Your instincts are right, John.

He’s full of a bunch of balarney.

But I should point out that the luck of the Irish is something different.

The of the Irish is what it’s abbreviation for.

It’s a different O than you would find in names like O’Flaherty and so forth.

Obama.

Not Obama.

But it’s interesting that you bring this up, and there’s something to talk about here.

These, that O apostrophe, or say the Mac and McDonald, or the Fitz and Fitzgerald, the Fitz, the Mac, and the O, are what we call patronymics.

P-A-T-R-O-N-N-Y-M-I-C.

Patronymics.

And they just mean that you are the son or the descendant of a certain person, usually the father, sometimes the grandfather.

So it’s like Judah, Ben, Hur.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you find it in Hebrew and you find these kind of patronymics in a mini language, Arabic as well, with the ibn, I-B-N, the same sort of thing happening there.

And the reason I can tell you that this Irish fellow didn’t know what he was talking about is that these go back to the 1500s, at least in printed matter.

And that was, of course, well before the Irish ever came to the New World in any numbers whatsoever.

So he was pulling your leg, I guess.

Well, speaking authoritatively.

But what’s really interesting, it’s so common, actually, in the 1600s

That there was a pat-set phrase that’s less used today,

But where they’d call the Irish in general the Macs and the Os,

Or the Os and the Macs.

It’s kind of like saying the Smith and the Jones.

It’s like the generic Jane Doe or Joe Sixpack.

Yeah, that sort of thing.

The Macs and the Os, that sort of thing.

Oh, very cool.

Well, glad to help you.

What were you doing in Europe?

Oh, I was just backpacking for a few months

And ran across quite a few interesting characters,

And that was one of them.

Oh, yeah, yes.

Thanks so much for your call, John.

Glad to help.

Thank you.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye.

Fitzgerald is one that usually surprises people.

A lot of people don’t know what that Fitz is doing in that world.

Yeah, well, you think Fitzpatrick, Fitzgerald.

But Fitz goes back to the Latin word for sun, gilius.

Sure, sure, that makes perfect sense.

Through a couple varieties of French.

Sure, and fils, yeah, in French, yeah.

Makes perfect sense.

Do you need a Blarney detector?

Did somebody say something about language that you don’t think is true?

Give us a call.

Martha and I will sort it out.

1-877-929-9673.

Or send your stories to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Micah calling from California.

Hi, Micah.

Welcome to the program, Micah.

How are you doing?

I’m doing all right.

I’ve been wondering about the words naturalist and biologist.

I’d been told back in grade school that people who studied life were called naturalists before the term biology was termed.

But I’ve been seeing more lately that people have been just calling themselves naturalists

Who have that same extensive life training that they study nature and everything just like biologists.

So I’ve just been wondering, what is the actual difference?

If there is any, or has naturalists just come back into vogue?

What a great question. Are you reading a lot of books about this kind of thing, or are you in school, or what?

Well, I had heard in school, like I said, that Darwin was a naturalist, and then later everybody was a biologist,

But I’ve seen books by, like, E.O. Wilson, and they call him a naturalist.

Right, and he calls himself a naturalist.

A lot of people just claim that they’re naturalists.

Right, and he calls himself a naturalist, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Thomas Jefferson was a naturalist, and you’re right, Charles Darwin was a naturalist,

And historically, this term was applied to people who studied animals and animals in their biological context, in their groups, their behavior, and the classification of animals.

But the word kind of has had, until recently, this kind of quaint sound to it, don’t you think?

I mean, it kind of makes me think of musty old books and that kind of thing.

Yeah, or like throw out in the wilderness or something.

Right, right, right. Muddy boots rather than a crisp, clean lab coat, right?

Yeah, exactly. It does have a very different kind of nuance.

That’s a nice distinction.

Yeah, yeah. And more of an art than a science, really.

And I think what happened was that I’ve seen people talking about the fact that when World War II came along and people had to be more applied in their science, trying to get results.

And people were moving from the countryside to the cities and working more in labs and studying more the physiology and chemistry of animals and also starting to really specialize.

It kind of mirrors, I think, the history of medicine, you know, the way that physicians used to be students of physics, which comes from the Greek word for nature.

And then people got much, much more specialized.

And you’re right that only in the last decade or so have some biologists been reclaiming that name, naturalist, and trying to look at the bigger picture.

So a biologist then is probably degreed where a naturalist may have a great deal of knowledge, but it’s probably self-taught.

And it’s from their own interest rather than from the work that they do for a living.

Well, I think that’s true, but I think that there were historically departments of natural history at universities, and I think there are still a few, but I think there’s a movement among some people in the field of biology to bring back that whole idea of natural history and a broader look at the science.

Yeah, that E.O. Wilson had extensive biological training, but he refers to himself as a naturalist.

Yeah, that’s interesting.

Yeah, as he goes about, he does do all his stuff on his own, and he is out in the muck and everything.

Yeah, out in the muck.

I think naturalist does fit him better.

Yeah, that’s a great way to describe it, out in the muck.

And I think of Jane Goodall. I mean, would you describe her as strictly a biologist?

I don’t think so.

No.

No.

Yeah.

Well, great.

That jibes pretty much with what you were saying, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That was very informative.

Okay.

Cool.

Thanks for calling, Micah.

Great.

It was fun.

Okay.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

I get the sense that a naturalist is out in the field, and by the field I mean out in the world as it is given to us,

Rather than in the lab looking under a microscope, right?

I think that’s true.

We have a lot of scientists who listen to the show, though, so I’m sure if we got that wrong, we’ll be hearing about it.

Yeah, and if you’ve got a comment or a question about naturalist versus biologist or some other question along those lines,

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

Here’s a bit of new language I came across.

It’s Zaprudering.

Z-A-P-R-U-D-E-R-I-N-G.

Zaprudering.

It’s when you overanalyze a photo or video

To try to get as much information from it as possible.

From the old film of J.K.

Yeah, that’s right.

Like people have done with the Zapruder film

Of the Kennedy assassination.

Zaprudering is used online mainly to describe

The way fanboys obsess over invites

To new product announcements

From certain computerized fruit companies.

What?

Apple Computer.

Oh, oh.

Yeah, every time Apple sends out an invite to the press,

Somebody gets a hold of it

And they spend a great deal of time

Looking at it pixel by pixel

To figure out what it means.

Is it a tablet computer?

Is it a moon launch?

Is Steve Jobs going to become a cyborg?

Nobody knows.

Yeah, macromlinology, right?

That’s hilarious.

Send your new words to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Viviana from San Diego.

Hi, welcome, Viviana.

Hi.

Hello.

What are you calling us about?

Well, I’m a member of a student organization, and the acronym for it is called CASA, C-A-S-A.

And to date, it has been written as Chicano Architecture Student Organization.

I’m sorry, Student Association.

I was going to say CASO.

Yeah, no, Student Association.

Okay.

But now there’s some members that are challenging it, and they’re saying that the architecture should be architectural because it’s describing the association.

So it’s either architecture or architectural, and that’s the debate that we’re having right now.

Okay. Chicano Architecture Student Association or Chicano Architectural Student Association?

Yes.

And architectural, so it’s not about Chicano architecture. It’s about Chicano students, right?

Yes.

Yeah. It’s a bit of a dilemma there. You’ve got a noun versus the adjective.

Maybe the adjective would be more correct.

It sounds better to my ear for the noun, though. What about you, Mark?

Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it?

I mean, when I write it out, Chicano architecture, I look at that immediately and I think, wow, what does that look like?

You know, but then I, I mean, what do you call yourselves?

Do you call yourselves architectural students or architecture students?

Architecture students.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Boy, this is tricky.

I see your dilemma.

I do, too.

It’s a little misleading because you might think it might be about Chicano architecture if there is such a thing.

Have you considered any other phrases that might also spell CASA when they’re turned into an acronym?

Yeah, I’m assuming that you want the Spanish word for house there, right?

Yes.

Okay.

And actually, the organization was established in 1966.

Oh, wow.

And it’s been written this way.

Oh, it has already.

Yes, it has been written.

It has a long history.

So you wouldn’t change it to the Chicano Association of Student Architects?

No.

Okay.

Oh, really?

Oh, that’s a brilliant solution.

Isn’t that brilliant?

You flatter me.

No, I mean, that’s really good, isn’t it, Viviana?

But the history kind of precludes that.

And I think history might be your winning little bit of information here.

It might be slightly more correct to use the adjective, but are people really confused?

Well, the only reason it came up was because we’re deciding to put a website together.

And, you know, we want to be grammatically correct.

Oh, well, I think you’re grammatically correct the way it is.

It just, I did a double take when I wrote it down, but then after a second I got it.

Yeah, because the thing is, because here’s what’s happening here, Viviana, if we can get all geeky for a second, is that nouns can often behave in what’s called an attributive fashion.

That is, they kind of act like adjectives.

And so in this case, architecture is a little more than a noun.

It’s also describing student.

It’s doing the job of an adjective without actually having the AL ending there, the architectural.

It’s totally fine in that capacity.

English is filled with it.

The reason this throws most people is that you were not absolutely ever taught about attributive nouns in school.

They just simply don’t teach it.

But it’s incredibly common at the higher levels of linguistic study to talk about attributive nouns.

And in fact, there are people who make a habit of collecting phrases that are something like five or six nouns strung together in a row that only work because some of the nouns behave like adjectives rather than just flat out plain nouns.

Oh, really? Like what?

I don’t have one. I knew you were going to ask. Always.

Sorry.

Martha, always with the question that I don’t have the answer to.

But Chicano Architecture Student Organization is okay.

Chicano Architectural Student Organization is okay.

And whether you choose one or the other probably needs to be a matter of what it sounds best to your ear and what fits best with the history of the organization and not because somebody is bringing down what they consider to be the great rules of grammar because they’re going to be wrong.

I think that’s a really good solution.

Yeah, just what does your ear tell you?

All right, we’re on the winning side then.

Architecture.

Yeah.

It sounds like an interesting organization.

The website’s not up yet?

No, not yet.

All right, well, we’ll look for it.

And when you guys do get the website going, send us a link, and we’ll make sure that everyone knows about it.

All right?

Okay, will do.

Thank you very much.

Take care of yourself, Viviana.

Okay.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

If only all of our problems are solved so easily by a vote.

I was going to say.

Because you and I vote, and even when we agree, we disagree.

That’s true.

That’s true.

But, boy, I thought you had a great solution there, but then the history of the organization sort of.

Yeah, the NAACP had the same problem, right?

That’s why they’re strictly about the acronym.

They have this history behind their name about colored people, and we don’t call black Americans colored people anymore, really.

So they still kept the name, but they kind of adjusted to the acronym in order to maintain the long history that they have as an organization.

That’s a great example.

If you’ve got a dilemma where a bunch of you are arguing about something that you believe comes down to a matter of syntax or semantics, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send a message to words@waywordradio.org.

Here are some emails about school mascots.

If you’ll remember, we did a segment a while back about funny names that schools have, such as the Hickman Kewpies.

Erica wrote to tell us about the Grieford, Texas team.

They’re called the Jackrabbits.

Carrie called to tell us about the team mascot in Effingham, Illinois.

Her mascot was the Flaming Hearts, and one of their rivals were the Wooden Shoes.

And then Al called to tell us about the team in Mount Clemens, Michigan.

They are called the Battling Bathers.

I wonder what their uniforms looked like.

Send your odd team mascot names to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call at 1-877-929-9673.

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Visit mozy.com slash words.

That’s our show for this week.

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

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And check in with us throughout the week on Twitter.

We’re right there tweeting away under the name Wayword.

That’s W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

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

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

And from San Francisco, I’m Grant Barrett.

Thanks to Howard Gelman for engineering our show from the studios of KQED Radio with assistance from Seal Moller.

Adios.

Bye-bye.

If we call the whole thing off, then we must part.