Above Your Raisin’ (episode #1414)

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. It seems like only yesterday that the word selfie suddenly sprang on the scene.

And all of a sudden we saw it everywhere and wondered if it was going to stick around.

And of course it is. It’s got great staying power and it’s spawning other words like droney.

Droney, this is a picture you take of yourself with a drone.

Exactly.

I’ve also seen healthy, which is a self-portrait of your hair, and belfy, which is one of your butt.

But I don’t think that those have staying power.

But one that I came across recently that you’ve probably seen as well, too, Grant, is selfie stick.

Oh, yeah.

These are all over Asia.

This was one of my big words for 2014, actually.

Selfie stick, which is also called a monopod.

Ooh, nice.

You’ve seen that?

It’s one of these telescoping sticks that you use to hold out your phone so that you can take a better selfie of yourself and somebody else.

Right. You get more of the background, right?

Yes. Yes. And these are all over Asia.

In fact, South Korea is starting to regulate them because they operate with a Bluetooth system.

And there’s some of them that they are afraid will jam medical devices.

A selfie stick.

I think that’s going to stick, at least until we figure out a better way to take long-distance shots of ourselves.

I think so, too. And I don’t have any problems with selfie either. I know that was the word of the year for some dictionary makers in 2013, I believe.

Yeah.

But it’s a great, useful word. It’s got a lot of purpose and it kind of reflects the spirit of the age.

It does, doesn’t it? Yeah, I was afraid that it might just be a flash in the pan, but I don’t think so.

What’s the word or language that you’ve heard or invented yourself that you’re sure is going to have staying power that you want to share with us and all of our listeners?

Let us know, 877-929-9673, or tell us all about it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Barb from San Diego.

Hi, Barb.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help you?

Thank you.

An expression that my great aunt used to use frequently, and it was, son of a who cut your hair last.

A who, a what?

Can we say that on the radio?

Son of a who?

Son of a who?

Son of a who cut your hair last.

Sounds naughty.

Is it?

No, it just means son of a gun.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, and she would also say you’re full of old shoes.

Full of old shoes.

You’re full of old shoes.

Nice, that’s good.

I’ve never heard that.

Son of a who cut your hair last is really clever.

It kind of avoids being completely offensive, but also adds another insult because it indicates you have a bad haircut.

That’s true.

Or somebody did a very bad job cutting your hair.

She also used to say you’re full of what makes the grass grow.

You’re full of what makes the grass grow, yeah.

Or fish fertilizer. You ever smelled those piles of fish fertilizer?

Oh, nasty.

Yeah, terrible.

She sounds like a colorful, opinionated person.

She was. She truly was. And it was all delivered with a severe Boston accent.

Okay. So who cut your hair last?

Yeah, your hair. Your hair last. And I was, oh, Barbara. Barbara, you’re full of old shoes.

Nice.

You’re full of what makes the grass grow.

There’s this old comedy play from the 1850s, the kind of thing they would do on stage, vaudeville sort of stuff, where it’s this whole routine where this guy comes into this barber shop and the barber doesn’t remember him.

And the barber says, who cut your hair last?

And the guy’s like, you did.

Anyway, I don’t know if it’s related, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Oh, maybe.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Oh, that’s so funny.

Yeah, she was very colorful.

She also told me when I became a teenager, I should always stick some mad money in my budge, just in case my fella got mad on me.

Your budge?

I know, mad money.

That’s if you get mad on the date, right?

Is your budge your bosom or your pocketbook?

Yeah, she never wore a bra, so she just stuck it in her budge.

Oh, okay, gotcha.

Oh, I would have guessed budge was a purse.

No, no, she told me it was in your budge, just in case.

Your fella got mad on you, you got mad on your fella.

She sounds like something out of an old movie, I’m telling you.

She sounds like a script written just to, like, wow the crowds.

Yeah.

That’s amazing.

Barbara, thank you so much for sharing these stories and your memories.

Well, my pleasure.

Thank you for allowing me to.

All right, take care now.

All right, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We know you have a bunch of colorful talkers in your family.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or tell us all about it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Jessica, and I’m calling from Grand Prairie, Texas.

Hi, Jessica.

What can we help you with today?

Okay.

I have several family members and a very good friend’s husband who are in law enforcement.

And we were listening to the show about three months ago and talking, and it came up.

Why do people call cops pigs?

Okay. Well, I have some answers for you. We know where it came from and we know when it came from and have a really strong reason about why it came from those places. So it’s originally British. It came from underground criminal slaying as early as 1800.

And it’s directly connected to the idea of pigs as disgusting creatures who take more than their share.

The idea is that the cops weren’t as likely to help you as they were just to steal your goods that you were trying to sell.

Or to take your illicit gains for themselves or to just take your wallet or your purse and run away with it.

So this was a different time.

And it’s lasted ever since.

Now, pig to mean cop or police officer has ebbed and flowed in its popularity over the centuries, with a big rise in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly among the counterculture here in the United States.

But it’s still used today.

As a matter of fact, when I survey high school students here in San Diego about the slang that they use, they still use pig to refer to police officers.

And they actually think of it as theirs.

They don’t even really know.

Oh, really?

They don’t know that it’s got a 200 year history at all.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that’s it. It’s as simple as that. Pigs is a disgusting creature.

And pig in this way has been used for almost always in a negative way to refer to other people who are detestable or disgusting.

Considering some of the books I’ve read, well, fiction I’ve read, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, it’s an interesting word. You know, my father was a police officer for a long time.

When I was a boy, he told me, and I remember this clearly, that he thought the word cop was offensive.

And he did not like, for him and his officers, because he was a police chief in a small town at that time, to be referred to as cops.

Really?

They were police or police officers.

That was it.

And I still to this day don’t know.

I should ask him.

I still don’t know why he didn’t like it.

And I’ve talked to other police since who have never, they don’t feel that way.

But for him, cop was a problem.

But pig has persisted.

And it’s still offensive.

Any cop is going to get angry if you call them a pig today.

Any person is.

Well, I should tell you both.

There was one case in history where pig was used in a positive way.

It was a term of affection for a pretty lady.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I’ve heard of pig’s knee, like a shortening of pig’s eye.

Because pink and smooth and, you know, just bouncing and kind of plump.

I can see pig kind of working.

Yeah, go ahead and try that.

Let us know how that’s working out for you, okay?

Yeah, definitely.

If I have to sleep in the car, I’ll let you know.

Hey, Jessica, this was fun.

Thanks, Jessica.

Thank you, guys.

Take care now.

I appreciate you letting me be on the show.

Oh, our pleasure.

Have a wonderful week.

You call us again sometime, all right?

Okay.

Take care now.

All right.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Has a word arrested your attention?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Email us at words@waywordradio.org.

And, you know, we have an incredibly active Facebook group where a lot of really bright people are talking about language.

Try us there as well.

Remember when we were talking about what I call my anyway friends, my friends who I might not see for years and years, and then I see them and I just start talking with them immediately?

You have those kinds of friends too, right?

Anyway, and it could have been a week or a month or years, and there’s no break in the relationship.

And we asked you to share your terms for these kinds of friends.

And we heard from Romy Burgraff in Chicago, who writes, my husband Robert uses a darling expression when I’m reunited with my girlfriends now scattered about the country.

He says, your friends are like fish. They’re fresh when you catch them.

Isn’t that nice?

That’s nice.

Yeah.

She says he’s not a fisherman, but I kind of like that, you know?

I think I’ve heard of a collective noun for a group of women saying hello.

It’s called a squeal.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, right.

Right.

We’d love to hear your new language.

What do you call it when you see a friend that you haven’t seen in a long time and you just instantly reconnect?

Maybe there’s something new you should teach us.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Mary Poizel, and I live in the Dalles, Oregon.

And I have issue with people saying this, that, them, their, those, instead of this, that, them, their, and those.

And I was hoping you could give me some input.

I don’t think it’s regional or cultural, because I hear this from a broad range of people on TV programs, on the radio, and popping out of the mouth of people who sound well-educated in the rest of their conversation.

It’s just driving me crazy. I hope you can help me.

Well, Mary, there’s a lot to unpack there. Do you feel better getting it off your chest?

Yes, I do.

Okay.

Well, thanks for calling.

Glad to help.

You know, let’s get to the bottom of this real quick.

It is actually regional.

It turns out that this is really common in New York City, Philadelphia, all around the Great Lakes, particularly Chicago, New Orleans, and in the speech of African Americans.

I mean, we are talking probably at least a third of Americans pronounce the words like these and that as D’s and that.

And some of them don’t even know they’re doing it.

The second thing to tell you is it’s incredibly common in English as a whole.

We find this in Scotland and Ireland and London because there’s this physical cause.

Say the word these and you can feel your tongue vibrating on your teeth.

We’ll just call it a voice TH, okay?

And if you now do D’s and the D sound is on your palate, just a little bit behind your teeth.

The difference of where your tongue is, is a centimeter or two.

It is a micro distance.

And it’s really common for these sounds to alternate and to swap out for each other.

Not only in English, in Spanish.

And in tons of other languages as well.

So there’s like this mechanical reason that somebody might do that.

And then you learn that pronunciation from the people around you.

And there’s another thing happening here too.

We are a country of immigrants.

And it turns out that a lot of people who speak languages like Finnish and German, when they try to speak English, it turns out that they probably are going to pronounce words like these and that and them and those as these and that and them and those.

Just because of the way their mouths are wanting to do Finnish in German, but instead in English, it doesn’t quite work for them.

They bring some of the phonetics over from their home language.

And in English, of course, it’s a very permissive language.

We can understand them without them getting it exactly right.

So there’s no laziness here.

People aren’t necessarily miseducated or uneducated.

I mean, you can go to Chicago to an alderman’s meeting and hear almost everyone in the room using these sounds because it’s ordinary for people from Chicago.

Aha.

So I suppose it’s been there all along and I’ve only just now become aware of it.

And I suppose now that I can understand where it’s coming from, I can turn a deaf ear.

And every time you hear it, it’ll be a little hello from Grant and me.

Yeah.

All right.

Pictures waving.

Well, I certainly do appreciate your input, and you guys keep up the good work.

Thank you, Mary.

Thanks a lot.

Take care now, all right?

You too. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Mary’s got a good point. You see it. It pops up. You’ve got a big question. Where do you go for answers?

You go here, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

More stories about what we say and how we say it. Stay tuned.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And on the line is our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, John.

I’m back again.

Welcome back.

You got a quiz for us?

Something fun?

I do have a quiz for you, yes.

You know, I was going to do another one of those roundups of recent news stories in limerick form.

Yeah.

But you know what?

No way.

Not this year.

Not this news.

Not the times we’ve had lately.

So instead, here are the top historical news stories in limerick form.

Oh, boy.

Oh, wow.

Let’s see how this goes.

News stories through history.

I’ll give you everything but the last word, of course, which you must supply.

And, of course, this does include my rather limited style of poetry.

So here we go.

Here’s the first one.

The Senate had thought him too wild, so his abdication was filed.

Napoleon then said goodbye to his men, and to Elba the dude was…

Exiled.

Exiled, yes.

That was in 1814, by the way.

So here’s the next one.

Speaking of exile, while in exile, this monarch stayed steady and returned amid cheers and confetti.

The noble said, Mac, we’re inviting you back.

Thus the return of Ethelred the…

Unready.

Unready, yes.

Back in 1014.

By the way, you do learn things here.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s what I’m just saying.

Pay attention.

If you don’t know things, you will know things when we’re done.

Here’s the next one.

John Smith was obnoxious and pompous, told tall tales of that there’s no contest.

No romance was played with an Indian maid.

It was John Rolfe who wed…

Pocahontas.

Pocahontas, yes.

What did you rhyme with pompous contest?

Pompous and contest.

Pocahontest.

Got it.

Got it.

I take liberties.

I take all the liberties.

Here’s the next one.

Britain’s parliament offered their gratitude and a prize of 10,000 pounds magnitude if you’d take a trip on a sailing ship and accurately determine its latitude.

Latitude.

Not latitude.

What?

Attitude.

No, the other one.

Altitude?

Longitude.

Longitude.

That was a trap.

Find me one rhyme for longitude.

That was a trap.

I haven’t read that book by David Sobel.

So did I.

Isn’t that a great book?

It’s a wonderful book.

That was 1714, by the way.

Here’s the next one.

By now Copernicus was finally done, writing Comentellarius, which he had begun.

Years before in this outline, he begins to opine that the center of things is the sun.

Sun, yes.

That was 1514, by the way.

Here’s the last one.

Here we go.

This is 1914.

On St. Patrick’s Day of this year, a club in the Bronx gave a cheer.

Dr. Tom Curtin came round and debuted to the town the very first pint of green beer.

Beer, yes.

Dr. Tom Curtin debuted green beer in 1914.

Who?

That’s the historical story I’m going with.

That’s wonderful.

How exciting.

Green beer.

John, thank you for your poesy.

Thank you so much.

You’re welcome.

Thanks, John.

Really appreciate it.

Okay.

See you guys next week.

Bye-bye.

And if you want to talk with us about any aspect of language whatsoever, call us, 877-929-9673, or send your comments and email to words@waywordradio.org.

And you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Melissa calling from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Hi, Melissa. Welcome to the program.

Howdy.

So it was the day after Thanksgiving, and I was at a leftover Thanksgiving party.

And we were sitting around a fire, and the chatter got kind of quiet.

And so I brought up, I said that maybe we should all go around and see what we were thankful for.

And so the conversation went on to talk about whether each of us actually does that at our family gathering.

And so I was at my family’s table on Thanksgiving Day, and I said, maybe we should all go around and do that thing where we talk about how grateful we are before we stuff our faces with food.

And then my dad proceeded to say, maybe you should stop talking so much and say thanks for eating your food.

No!

Yeah.

Dad!

So then, yeah, I know it.

So then we were back by the fire, and I was telling my friends a story, and then I said, I can’t believe my family gave me so much slack for trying to express things.

And then everyone around the fire was like, wait, what?

Slack?

What?

And either they had never heard the word or never heard it in that context.

And so, you know, of course, I was like, of course, it’s a word.

So I pulled out my phone, pulled out my dictionary app, and I started to look it up and I couldn’t find anything that was really relevant.

Like I found F-L-A-C-K, which means a press agent, and then F-L-A-K, which was like some kind of military term or something.

Aha.

So my question is, how did it become a word that means to give grief, and why had my friends never heard it in that context?

Are they all your age? How old are you guys?

We’re all between like 24 or 25.

Okay.

Well, you were getting warm.

You were in the right neighborhood with the idea of flak being an anti-aircraft gun, F-L-A-K.

It’s a word that comes to us from German, German flak, which is this mercifully condensed word.

It’s actually Fliegerabwehrkanone, which is a pilot warding off cannon is the way it translates.

So like a flak was an anti-aircraft gun.

And that eventually became transferred to the stuff flying from it and then metaphorically to stuff flying at you.

So the debris from the weapon being used that might also kill bystanders, the chunks of metal, that actually took the name of flak then from the weapon.

Right.

Okay. And so if you’re catching flack at a post-Thanksgiving gathering, you’re kind of catching pieces of metal from other people there.

Yeah.

All right.

Does that make sense?

Okay. Yeah, it does. That’s pretty interesting.

So I’m surprised that you were catching flack for talking about being thankful.

Yeah. Well, everyone was just really hungry, I guess.

Well, go back to your friends, educate them all, and now you all know, all right?

Okay.

And they should thank you for that.

Give us a call another time, all right?

Thanks. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure thing.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language, or you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Victor from Dallas.

Hi, Victor. Welcome to the program.

Hey, Victor.

What’s going on?

Well, I had an interesting question about spelling bees.

It seems that spelling bees only exist in English-speaking countries, and I’m wondering why that is.

Good question. Have you been in a spelling bee before, Victor?

Yes, in third grade. I think that was the last one.

How’d you fare?

I did well in spelling. I don’t recall exactly.

I did.

We’ve talked about this on the show before, but when you lose the school spelling bees, it stays with you for life.

Oh, it’s so painful.

But that’s a good question. English has spelling bees. What do they do in the rest of the world?

Not a whole lot in terms of spelling bees per se.

It looks like spelling bees are a distinctly American creation.

It looks like they arose in the 1870s, early 1870s, which sort of makes sense.

You know, you’re out on the prairie and you’re trying to figure out a way to entertain the folks.

And it makes sense that we would have it in English because, of course, English is this complete mess in terms of spelling.

Seriously.

The mutt brought all these spellings in from all these other places.

Right.

Exactly.

I mean, it’s a language based on Latin and Greek and German and all kinds of different words.

So it’s quite different from, say, Spanish, where just about every word sounds like the way it’s spelled.

There are a few exceptions.

Yeah, you might have a B and V confusion, but generally it’s really consistent.

Exactly. So it’s not going to be that challenging.

So in other countries, they have to find other ways to challenge people in terms of words and spelling.

I know in French they have dictation contests, for example.

Yeah, have you heard of the dictée, Victor?

I have not. How does that work?

Well, French is interesting is that its problem isn’t so much as English where words are spelled variably.

It’s fairly consistent.

The problem is that a lot of words sound alike.

Their homophones are abundant.

And so they will have a famous author.

They do this in Quebec as well.

Famous author will write a really nice passage and then read it aloud on the radio or in some other forum.

And everyone will do their best to write it exactly, get the accents exactly right, the spelling exactly right, the conjugation of the verbs exactly right.

There are verbs in French where, even though it might be conjugated a bunch of different ways, three or four of the conjugations sound the same, even though they’re spelled differently.

And so it’s really incredible.

And you can walk around with pride if you scored very highly on the DIC day.

I think I’ll stick with spelling.

Yeah, yeah.

Spelling beats are more just a contest of memorizing, really.

And it’s odd that we don’t see them really in the UK.

They have them, but they’re not nearly as popular.

Maybe because their spelling is all wrong, right?

With all those U’s where they’re not supposed to be.

But it’s interesting in China, too.

I think they have contests where you race to look up a word in the dictionary because they’re all different ways that the Chinese words are spelled out or written out, rather.

So it’s sort of like the old sword drills in Baptist churches.

Yeah, so for the most part, spelling bees are an English language phenomenon and exist only mainly in the United States.

They do exist in Australia and the U.K., but they’re not nearly as popular as they are here.

Well, thank you. That’s very helpful. I appreciate the insights.

Cool. Thanks for calling, Victor.

Thanks for calling, Victor.

Take care.

You bet. Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear your language questions.

You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

All right, Grant, do you know what the color of the year is for 2015?

For 2015?

Yes.

I don’t know.

It’s Marsala.

Why?

Well, have you heard of the Pantone Color Institute?

Yeah, sure.

I used to have some certain Pantone colors memorized because I needed them for my job.

Yeah, because logos would be like this particular Pantone color.

Okay, very good.

Well, they chose Marsala this year, and what they did was they pulled designers and creative types.

And what they’re trying to do is figure out what color represents the global zeitgeist.

What does it look like?

I was going to say, do you even know what Marcella is?

It’s an Indian thing, right?

It’s an Indian type of spice, I think.

So is it reddish brown?

Yes, it is.

And it’s actually named for a wine that comes from the west coast of Sicily.

And it comes from Marcella, which is a harbor town.

And that term comes from the Arabic, which probably means harbor of God.

There are other possible etymologies for it.

Marsala is the color of the year.

Yeah.

So it’s sort of this robust, earthy wine red.

Okay.

Actually, it’s like the shirt you’re wearing.

You’re very…

Yeah, my Guayabera is working for you, right?

Perfect.

All right.

You’re Marsala Guayabera.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language.

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

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have Way With Words.

Hi, this is Michelle Abramson.

I’m calling from Lexington, Massachusetts.

Hi, Michelle.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What’s cooking?

Well, I got very interested in one of the topics on the Way With Words Facebook page. Somebody had put a picture of the thing that you ride around in the grocery store with, which I have always called a wagon.

But you write in it? You, like, climb aboard and then, like, push yourself along?

No, no, like the little, you know, the shopping cart, wagon, buggy. I was trying not to say what it was called so that you could picture it in your head.

But, yeah, somebody posted a picture of it and said, what do you call this? And there were many, many, many responses, which you probably, I think you monitored, so you probably saw it.

Yeah, we read it. We dip in as often as we can. Most people said a shopping cart. Some people said buggy, and they were from the south. And some people from New England refer to it as a carriage.

Sure, right. And it’s a trolley in England.

But anyway, I got really interested, so I thought, well, let me put this picture on a couple of other Facebook pages that I, you know, my personal things, and ask people the same thing.

And I thought, well, the people that I grew up with are definitely going to call it a wagon. And they didn’t. Most people called it a shopping cart. A couple people called it a wagon.

Sure enough, I was in the grocery store with my mother. She was visiting over Thanksgiving. And she said, let me just go get a wagon. That’s where I got it.

Now, my mother’s from Mississippi.

Oh, she is?

Yes.

So I said, I mean, she’s lived in New York for 60 years or something on Long Island. That’s culture shock.

I said to her, did you ever hear of it called a buggy? And she said, no, I never heard that. It’s a wagon and maybe a shopping cart. And it’s like, she said, where’d that come from?

And then I explained this whole thing. And she said, well, that’s very interesting.

So I’m just wondering where I got this wagon other than my mother coming up with it. And I’m sure she didn’t make it up.

No, she didn’t make it up, but you probably got it from her anyway.

And she’s been in New York long enough that she’s far more New York than she is Mississippi.

Huh, yeah.

Linguistically, I mean, she’s probably got just footmarks all over her language that have nothing to do with the South.

Oh, there’s a lot of them that do, though.

Don’t ever call it a pecan to her.

She’ll get better.

Nice.

Oh, yeah, what does she say?

Pecan.

Oh, pecan, of course, yes.

Pecan pie.

That’s awesome.

You know, if you do this survey pretty much anywhere in the United States, it’s fun to talk about.

Just like you.

Your fieldwork is amazing, Michelle.

You did exactly the right thing looking for answers there.

And professional linguists have done this or dialectologists have done this and done surveys on this and found, coincidentally enough, that shopping wagon is used in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and Massachusetts with a few little data points here and there, but mainly in that small, tightly controlled region.

Yeah.

So it’s completely ordinary that you and your mother would say wagon because you’re from that part of the country and you picked it up from maybe it was what was used on the signs in the store or the staff at the store or your neighbors use it or when you go shopping with your aunt or somebody else, they use it.

It’s completely ordinary that you should both say shopping wagon.

It’s not common still even in New York, though, but it is used there more than anywhere else.

No, it’s not. I mean, plenty of people I know from New York don’t use it.

And actually, if you go to return your shopping cart in Massachusetts, where I live now, it’s going to say carriage return.

Nice.

Carriage return? I thought that was on a typewriter.

Carriage is a very, it’s like very, very Boston.

Yeah, there’s no, I mean, there’s no like rhyme or reason to the shape of these dialect maps.

But we do know if we survey people more than anywhere else, it’s in that part of the country.

So for what it’s with, but it’s really, it’s like less than a percent.

Like fewer people say it than just about anything else that we call a shopping cart.

Yeah, it’s not very many.

And you know, here’s an interesting thing.

This language is spread by the shopping chains.

The language they use for the food, the language they use for all of the mechanics of shopping tends to be spread to their customers.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if originally it started with, like, whatever D’Agostino’s used to be in New York or whatever.

Yeah, it was probably Wall Bounce or something like that.

Wall Bounce, yeah, exactly.

In a real long sense.

Some of these chains that are long gone, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Michelle, we’ve confirmed for you that you’re not weird and that you didn’t make this up.

Well, as far as we know, you seem very nice to us.

Oh, thank you.

You too.

And just know that when you say shopping wagon, it’s ordinary for a lot of people.

Own it.

Live with it.

Love it.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you so much for calling.

Happy shopping.

Oh, thank you.

Bye, Michelle.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care now.

What do you say, Martha?

What did you grow up with?

I grew up with shopping cart.

Yeah.

I remember a few years ago reading an article about the origin of shopping carts.

Oh, yeah?

And I think they were invented by some guy to get more customers into his store.

It was this huge, long article.

It was really fascinating.

I’ll try to find it and post it to the website.

That’d be amazing.

And you know what’s funny?

I love talking to people like Michelle about these things because this difference and what we call this device that we all know still persists.

Even though we think that this is a media-heavy country where the common misconception is that we’re all going to end up talking alike, the differences are still there.

And sometimes they’re becoming more pronounced.

Yes.

It’s cool.

So what have you heard when you move to someplace new?

You’ve heard a term that you’ve never heard before that everybody else takes for granted.

Call us about it, 877-929-9673, or talk about it in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

There is a new way to be emphatic in English, and this is to say the word yes differently and to spell it differently.

You can spell it Y-A-S-S or Y-I-S-S or put a lot more S’s and a lot more I’s or A’s in it.

So it’s yes or yes like that.

Yes.

Do you use this?

I use this.

In writing or talking?

Either one.

Whichever is fine.

I don’t use it in writing, although I’ve seen it online.

Yes.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

More stories about what we say and how we say it.

Stay tuned.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

You know, throughout the year, I share with you and everyone else, Martha, the dribs and drabs of the language that I find in my reading and my word hunting and the slang work that I do when I talk to kids on high school campuses and things like that.

But I wanted to give you like kind of a big lump for once.

Some stuff that I’ve been looking at, say, the last year and a half.

Okay, a bunch of drips and drafts.

Just a few things.

Okay.

For example, I’m heavily involved in the tech scene, at least as an observer.

I like to read about the latest advances in tech.

And I came across a word called the hamburger.

The hamburger.

The hamburger is short for the hamburger menu.

Now, it’s more common on Android phones than it is on iOS phones.

Wait, you can order a hamburger on the phone?

No, no, no.

It’s an icon of three parallel lines that are identical, stacked on top of each other, with kind of a rounded corner box.

And that is the hamburger.

Oh, the thing right up there in the corner.

Yeah, usually the upper left.

You click on it, you’ll see settings or more navigation options or something like that.

That looks vaguely like a hyper-stylized hamburger.

Bread with some slices of meat and cheese and tomato, right?

Oh, I had no idea.

So that’s called the hamburger menu.

Oh, wow.

And so when you look at a word like that, you wonder how long it will last.

And for this one, we have a pretty good answer.

Probably not very long.

Oh, really?

People will talk about it, but it’ll become archaic pretty quick because user interface design changes rapidly.

In five years, we will only talk about the hamburger menu probably as a thing that was rather than a thing that is.

Okay.

I didn’t know that was what it was called.

Yeah.

Interesting.

But again, you might only know that if you follow tech closely or follow user interface design closely.

Another one is the expression web rooming, W-E-B-R-O-O-M-I-N-G.

Web rooming.

Now, this is the opposite of showrooming.

Now, these might be manufactured terms.

By that, I mean that marketing people come up with them in order to try to prove that they’re on top of shopping trends.

And therefore, you as a company should invest your money with this marketing firm in order to figure out what’s really happening with consumers.

But I’ll share it with you anyway.

Red grooming is when you are at home on your computer and do tons of research on what you want to buy, say a new Wi-Fi router or a new mobile phone or even just the blouse or shoes.

But you don’t order it online.

You actually go to the store to get it because you want immediate gratification.

Even 24-hour delivery isn’t enough for you.

You want to get it right away.

And that’s web rooming.

Oh, interesting.

Because there’s also the opposite of that, right?

Right.

That’s showrooming.

Showrooming is when you go, let’s say, you want to buy a new television.

But you really want to see how it looks.

Does it feel giant to you?

If you are 11 feet away from it, you know, the distance between your couch and your console, does it feel big enough?

And so you go to Best Buy or wherever and you look at them.

But you don’t buy in the store because you know you can get a better price online.

And it will be delivered to your house so you don’t have to worry about hauling an 85-pound television out to the car.

Exactly.

Yeah, I know people who do that with books all the time.

So these two terms probably are going to have some legs, but they wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago when online commerce basically didn’t exist.

Neither one of these things were a thing.

So this is why they’ve come alive.

We have a new concept that needs a new term, and they will persist in the language as long as we do those behaviors.

Now, another one that’s probably more ephemeral, but I love it so much, is smug shrug.

This is usually presented as one word.

The smug shrug is an emoticon, but it’s a pretty complex one.

It’s a bunch of characters typed into your text line, into your text field, that look like somebody with a halfway smile, almost like a kind of a wry smile.

And their arms out, like they’re going, oh, well, you know, just do that.

You kind of have your hands up, palms facing the sky, head turned to the sign, kind of like a rise, oh, well, kind of like that.

The smug shrug is just kind of thrown in anytime somebody does something that you’re like, I don’t have a good response to this or there’s nothing I can do about that or I’m just kind of resigned to whatever is taking place.

And you throw in this smug shrug emoticon like, oh, well.

I like the word a lot.

If you want to talk about any aspect of language whatsoever, smug shrugs or web rooming or anything else, call us 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Christina. I’m calling from Oakland, California.

Hi, Christina. Welcome to the program.

Hi, what can we do for you?

I have a question about something I heard on another podcast I was listening to.

And the question is this.

A guy was answering a question about why it was difficult for straight men to dress well.

They thought straight guys want to dress better, but they’re just afraid that they can’t pull it off, that they will be accused of getting above their raisin, as they say in West Virginia.

And I never heard this before, and I took it to my friends and family who had also never heard it before.

I looked it up and found out that it was above your raising.

Is that consistent with what you guys know?

Yeah, above your raising, going beyond how you were raised as it brought up.

Right, nothing to do with dried grapes.

Right, which is how I originally heard it.

Is that right, dude?

Yeah, because the way you described it, the context is a little sparse.

It’s not altogether clear that he’s dropping into this kind of regionalism and going to start using language that is not about fashion and style.

Right, and not only that, has it not made it out to the West Coast at all, or is it just the people that I’m associating with haven’t heard this phrase?

You’re right.

You’re right.

Are all your people basically from California or Oakland or around there?

Basically, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s true.

What do we find?

If you look at all the different uses of it, it’s really common in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky.

It pops up a little bit in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Very much a Southern phrase, and almost always with that G dropped on raising, so it sounds like a raisin.

Ricky Skaggs popularized it in a song of his, Don’t Get Above Your Raisin.

So if you don’t get above your raisin, it means that you are not acting like you’re better than everyone else, that you are not forgetting where you came from.

You’ll find this pop up actually in a lot of songs.

Like, remember the Jennifer Lopez song, I’m Still Jenny from the Block?

She’s kind of talking, telling people in the song that she is not getting above her raisin, that she is actually still acting like she’s one of the homegirls from the Bronx.

So it’s almost always desirable not to be above your raisin.

Yeah, because it means that you are rejecting your past and where you come from, and you’re rejecting your people.

Yeah, or you’re a tall poppy.

I don’t know if you’ve heard that phrase.

I haven’t heard that.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s awesome.

Yeah, your poppy blossom is above everybody else’s.

You see that in Italian, too.

Thanks for calling, Christina.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, yeah.

Our pleasure.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

If you’ve got a question about something you heard and just didn’t understand, we’ll help you sort it out.

877-929-9673.

Send an email to words@waywordradio.org or try us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Micah from Texas.

Hi, Micah. How are you doing?

I’m good, thanks.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Well, I was thinking about the distinction between the words speak and talk.

They’re kind of interchangeable in meaning, and yet they’re somehow distinct.

We use them in different ways.

And I was thinking of that, especially in terms of, like, how would you describe the distinction to the native speaker of a language that only has one word where we have the two?

I was thinking, like, in Spanish, we have, they have a blar, and in French, they have a palais, and that covers what we would use, that covers both of those.

Boy, what a great question.

Yeah.

Well, you’re exactly right.

They are very, very close in meaning.

And I would say that there’s a kind of subtle distinction between the two of them in that speak is a little bit more formal.

And maybe you find that as well.

You know, like you speak out against discrimination or you talk about the speaker of the house, not the talker of the house.

You wouldn’t say speak dirty to me, I guess.

I mean, unless you’re, I don’t know, hot chat for nerds or something.

And the other thing is that talk is often a word that connotes more of the idea of conversing and exchange rather than spoken to.

Bidirectional, it’s two-way, right?

Yeah.

Would you find that those are pretty much the distinctions that you see as well, Micah?

Yeah, I think functionally the usage seems to differ in terms of what the formal setting is.

And talk is more of conversation and speak is more of, you know, needing to formally communicate something.

Also, maybe that’s based on something more fundamental, which is that talk is directly with someone, whereas speaking, you can speak without reference to a listener in particular.

Like you speak a language, that doesn’t make reference to a particular person who is listening.

Mm-Right.

But you talk with someone.

Exactly. Exactly.

Sort of like the difference between talk radio and speak radio.

Right.

If you want to get really wonky about this, Micah, I have a book title to recommend.

It is truly wonky, but they have discussed in this book the words speak, talk, say, and tell.

And the book is called The Scene of Linguistic Action and Its Perspectivization by Speak, Talk, Say, and Tell.

I really like the movie better.

And it’s by Renee Dervin and others, and it’s published by John Benjamin.

But they have a really great, you can just flip to the conclusion, and they have a whole section of the conclusion, which compares the word speak and talk.

And some of what you guys have talked about here, it mentions in there, they really summarize the particular relationship between speak and talk by explaining that speak is what we use when we focus on the faculty, that is the ability, the thing that happens with the mouth.

And talk is what we use when we’re focusing on the performance.

It’s what we’re doing as a human being, if that makes sense.

The communication.

The communication.

And again, it’s the summary, so you’d have to read the actual section of the book to really get the full gist of it.

And it confirms what you guys just said, that speak is usually one way and talk is usually two way.

All right. Sounds good.

Well, I do like to nerd out every now and again, so that might be interesting.

Cool.

Okay, cool.

Micah, thanks so much for your call.

Really appreciate it.

Nice talking with you.

All right. Thank you.

Cheers.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, we’d love to talk with you. So call us 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And you know what? We are all over Facebook and Twitter.

We asked for examples of workplace jargon, and we got some great stuff from Jill Foreman, who lives in Ventura, California and works in medicine.

She says that in her line of work, the word sign is often used to mean a response to a maneuver that gives the examiner information as to the presence or absence of a condition.

For example, if a doctor is looking for Murphy’s sign, the doctor is examining a person for upper abdominal pain.

And if they happen to kind of catch their breath when they’re doing this little procedure, then just with the hands, then it’s a possible indicator of gallbladder disease.

But anyway, Jill says that in her line of work, they develop their own whimsical signs.

And here are two great ones.

One term that they use is suitcase sign.

Can you imagine what that is?

And this is in the medical field.

Yeah, yeah, like at a hospital.

Somebody who’s going to leave early, check them out, starts out early?

You’re close.

A suitcase sign indicates a patient who’s arrived with a fully packed bag, declaring that they just know they need to be admitted, you know, or they want to.

So someone like Jill might say, hey, Martha, just letting you know that bed eight is showing a positive suitcase sign.

So this is somebody who really wants to be admitted to the hospital.

And then the other one is a gown sign.

And that means she says that the patient is tired of us or they’re scared of a shot or just decides that they don’t want to be there anymore.

And they elope. That’s the term they use.

The person elopes and they don’t say anything to anybody.

It’s like ghosting at a party. Right.

And then the first sign that they see of the person having left is a gown right there on the gurney.

So they might say, I don’t know where bed one went, but we have a positive gown sign.

Nice.

Isn’t that good stuff?

And the elope is really interesting because it does mean to depart kind of like in secret.

So just like the wedding elope, it just means to escape from a nursing home or a hospital without full permission of your caring physicians.

Yep, exactly.

Well, we’d love to hear the workplace jargon that you’ve got.

The fun stuff, the boring stuff, share it all, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Monica Wallace from Irving, Texas.

Hello, Monica. How are you doing?

Hi, Monica.

Hi.

What’s going on? What can we help with?

Well, my step-grandfather, Raymond Granddaddy Black, he had eight granddaughters, of which I was one, and only one grandson.

But he called us all son.

He was born in around 1898, and I believe he was born in the northeast area of Texas around Sulphur Springs, where he and my grandmother lived when we were born.

And I don’t remember him calling us our names or calling us anything other than son.

Anyway, so my question is, where would he have gotten that little ism?

Monica, how interesting. So he would call you son when he was addressing you directly, or would he introduce you as, this is Monica, my son?

No, he would say, thank you, son. You know, one would bring him a glass of iced tea, or he’d say, hey, son, go ask your grandmom.

And, you know, and it followed up with whatever he needed us to do.

And he didn’t talk a whole lot, but he was a cattleman, cattleman.

And so he just always addressed us his son.

You know, it wasn’t like, hey, Ma, come over here for a minute.

It was like, hey, son, come over here for a minute.

Oh, gosh.

Isn’t that wonderful?

S-O-N or S-U-N, do you think?

S-O-N.

Okay.

That’s wonderful.

Yeah.

And he was from Northeast Texas, right?

Yes, ma’am.

Okay.

I ask because there is an entry for this in the Dictionary of American Regional English, and it says that it’s especially in North Carolina, this term of address to a female as well as a male.

And in fact, there’s an entry from a journal in 1946 that describes son as an affectionate term applied to a small boy and sometimes a small girl, usually in times of crisis.

Isn’t that interesting?

But he used it just any old time.

Right. And so not only are you not his son, I mean, you’re not only you’re not his daughter, you’re not his granddaughter.

I mean, you’re his granddaughter. So it’s different in a couple of ways.

There’s a more modern component to this too, though, right?

Son is incredibly common in African-American vernacular English to refer to people who aren’t your son.

And sometimes women and sometimes between women.

I’ve actually seen this among being used by two Latinas on the subway in New York City, where one of them said to their son, that’s not how it goes, and just talking to him, whatever they were talking about.

But as a term of address, it is still incredibly common, but it’s African American almost exclusively, except for white folks who’ve borrowed it from African American English.

Okay. Oh, interesting.

And, you know, speaking of African American English and the word niece, in parts of the country, particularly the South, sometimes the word niece can refer to either a niece or a nephew, or these are my nieces, and it’ll be two guys.

Huh, interesting.

Yeah.

That one.

Yeah, so sometimes, and well, and in fact, the word girl itself, I mean, back in the 13th or 14th century, girl could refer to either a boy or a girl.

Wow.

But I have not ever heard a real-life example of sun used in this way, so I’m thrilled to hear this.

Oh, well, I appreciate it. It’s great.

Well, Monica, thank you so much for your call.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thanks, Monica.

Take care now.

-huh.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We can solve your linguistic mysteries 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Have you heard the term black elephant?

No, I know pink elephant and white elephant.

Yeah, and you know black swan, right?

Right.

That’s like an unexpected or unlikely event that has really big consequences.

Yes.

Black elephant is something that environmentalists are using that’s a combination of black swan and the elephant in the room.

That is, it’s something that’s really big that’s going to hit us soon.

So it’s likely to happen and it’s going to have huge detrimental impacts.

Yes.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, what is the slang that you use in your field?

We’d love to hear about it.

877-929-9673.

Tell us about it on Facebook or Twitter as well.

Things have come to a pretty path.

That’s all for today’s broadcast, but don’t wait until next week to chat with us.

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Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

The show is directed and edited this week by Tim Felten.

We have production help from James Ramsey and Tamar Wittenberg.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning and better human communication.

The show’s coming to you from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye-bye.

So long.