Alligator Mouth (episode #1620)

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. And I want to share a phrase that was new to me when I heard it this week.

Do you know what it means if somebody shows up with their arms swinging?

It means they didn’t bring anything to the house.

That’s it!

They brought no food, no drinks, nothing but themselves, and probably an empty stomach.

Exactly. You know, a mother might say to her adult child, don’t show up with your arms swinging.

And it doesn’t mean, you know, don’t come prepared for a fight, which is what I thought it would mean.

Yeah, you’re supposed to come with your arms crooked.

That’s right.

Your arms bent.

Carrying something.

Yeah.

And there are several phrases like that, like don’t be standing there with your two arms at the same length,

Or don’t go visiting with one arm as long as the other.

And another one that you and I have talked about before, Grant, ring the door with your elbow.

There we go.

Yep, yep.

Supposed to have drinks and a couple of side dishes.

And maybe a watermelon in a cooler on ice, something like that.

Yeah.

Well, we know you’ve got those homespun phrases and those little things that you like to say.

And sometimes they’re so common in your family, you forget that everyone doesn’t say them.

Well, pluck those out of your day-to-day speech and share them with us.

877-929-9673 is toll-free in the United States and Canada.

Or if you’re somewhere else in the world, there’s some way to reach us.

We promise.

You can go to our website at waywordradio.org/contact.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Debbie and I’m from Boulder and I’m obsessed with K-dramas.

It’s my guilty pleasure.

It’s intellectual, of course, because I’m reading subtitles, right?

So my husband doesn’t understand why I’m not fluent in Korean already.

Or for that matter, if I don’t know any words other than thank you, which is kamsamidan is the only word I know after all the Korean shows I watched.

My question is related to what I hear on these shows.

The South Koreans use the word fighting, like F-I-G-H-T-I-N-G, fighting, and they make like a fist, fighting, in English when they want to say good luck or go get them.

And I’m thinking it stems from the American GIs during the Korean War, but would like to check with my favorite grammar experts.

So you’re watching Korean dramas, K-dramas.

When do they say fighting?

What’s happening when they say what sounds like the English word fighting?

Fighting.

So it’s like when they’re saying, go get them or good luck.

You know, like you’re about to try something new and they want to say good luck.

So they say fighting.

Yeah, so it’s not the same way that we would say fighting.

So they’re not using it as a noun or the present participle of the English verb to fight.

They’re using it kind of as an imperative, like as a cheer.

Yes, exactly.

It’s like, go get them tiger, or do it, or come on team, or go, go, go, go for it.

Exactly. Right.

Right. So it’s a bit of Conglish, a mix of Korean and English. That’s K-O-N-G-L-I-S-H.

And Matt Van Valkenburgh of the blog Gusts of Popular Feeling has found a couple of early uses of it in Korean from 1972 and in English from 1975.

So it has a pretty long history.

It doesn’t go back as far as we’ve been able to find to the Korean War, but American GIs have been in Korea since the Korean War.

So there’s a chance it comes from them, but it could also just come from just the pervasiveness of American media in Korean culture since the war.

It doesn’t even have to be from the war itself or from the American GIs being there.

So I think more than likely it just came from Koreans watching American sports and American television shows, American movies.

Okay, well, that makes a lot of sense.

And just for everybody who’s listening, they don’t spell it when it’s transliterated in back into Latin letters.

They don’t spell it like we spell it.

It’s often spelled H-W-A-I-T-I-N-G or P-A-I-T-I-N-G.

And it sounds like three syllables instead of two.

So it might be like hoi-ting or pa-i-ting, like that.

Yes.

And sometimes it sounds like whiting, like with a W almost.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Kind of aspirated at the beginning.

Yes.

Well, Debbie, thank you so much for calling and sharing that.

Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Enjoy your shows.

Thanks so much.

Bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Call us, 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elijah in Fayetteville, West Virginia.

How’s my wordy friends today?

We’re delightful and delighted to have you here.

So let me tell you, I’m here in West Virginia, and I was born and raised in West Virginia.

But I often go to a job to do an estimate because I own a small painting company.

And people say, so where are you from?

And I say, I’m from West Virginia.

And they say, I don’t think so.

I say, I’m pretty sure.

They say, it’s because you have no accent.

I use some of the nomenclature, but not really.

I mean, y’all is just kind of convenient.

But I don’t say it like y’all.

You know?

And so I am looking for a word that means I am from here, but I don’t sound like I am.

All right.

I want to explore this a little bit.

First, what part of the state is Fayetteville in?

Fayetteville is about an hour south of Charleston.

It’s actually in the New River Gorge National Park.

All right.

So just on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains.

In the Appalachian Mountains.

Yeah.

In the Appalachian Mountains.

Okay.

So that’s important, I think.

And so you say that you don’t have an accent, and we’re going to put an asterisk on that and get to that in a minute.

But did you spend a lot of time away when you were growing up?

No, no.

I just grew up about two and a half hours north near the northern panhandle of West Virginia in a town that is full of accents.

But that’s next to Pennsylvania, isn’t it?

And Ohio?

It’s right next to Ohio, yes.

And did you act in theater productions?

No, no.

I was homeschooled all 12 years, but I still interacted with the community a lot and had friends that didn’t talk the way I did.

And so I’m from here.

I just don’t sound like it.

What do you think happened?

Yeah, I was going to ask you that, but I think you’ve already given us the answer.

I think the two things are that you lived in the panhandle and you were homeschooled.

And so we tend to speak like our peers more than we speak like our parents.

And schooling is one of the ways that we pick up the local dialect more than just about anything else in this country.

And it may be the reason that you don’t sound like your peers.

Also, your education would be different than theirs.

So you may have had a different kind of maybe perhaps even more book oriented English classes than your classmates or your age appropriate group.

But that panhandle thing is going to put you largely in a different isolate, as it’s called, than most of the rest of the state of West Virginia.

But that’s still not my question.

My question is, is there a word that says, I’m from here, but I don’t sound like it?

Stranger.

Outsider.

Somebody from away.

Outsider?

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Maybe that’s what I’ll say.

Well, there’s a passage in the book, Talking Appalachian, Voice, Identity, and Community by Amy D. Clark.

It’s a very good book.

And she writes in the preface about growing up in the heart of Appalachian here,

Eastern Kentucky, western North Carolina, and southern West Virginia.

And she says that while she grew up surrounded by the Appalachian Englishes,

And she uses the plural there,

She says she was never introduced to Appalachian literature in her high school English classes.

And she says she did not identify as Appalachian,

And she did not understand that she spoke a regional dialect.

But she understood that the rules of standard American English, and she knew about code switching,

That she needed to adjust her speech to sound more like your average American versus sounding more like a local.

And she could turn off that local dialect when she wanted to.

But she also says she was always at the risk of teasing from friends and family who believed that standard American English was for people who thought they were too good to be associated with their neck of the woods.

And so the question I have for you, do you encounter this kind of rejection or even subtle bias in people because you don’t sound like you’re from there?

No.

More of what I run into is I hear people say, you enunciate really well.

I just run into that a lot, which I think is part of what caused people to say, you don’t sound like you’re from around here.

You’re too clear.

Do you feel like your homeschooling perhaps was more rigorous than what other people went through in the public schools?

In my area, yeah.

Yeah.

My homeschooling grade was a grade or two ahead of the public school that I was in or that was around.

Yeah.

And I’m wondering what the folks who homeschooled you sounded like.

Were they West Virginians as well?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it was my mother and other homeschoolers around me.

They sound like they’re from the area.

I just don’t sound like I’m from the area.

It might be that your mother was very good at it,

And you had one-on-one attention,

Which is hard to get in a public school.

Which would make sense.

And having that kind of direct attention

When you’re doing pronunciation exercises

And English oral reading and speaking exercises,

That can make a lot of difference.

But you’re seeking a word for this,

And I don’t know that we’re going to have one for you.

Okay, okay, that’s fine.

I’ll just continue to say, I am from here, but I don’t sound like it.

Would you like the job?

I wanted to address the point that regional accents and regional dialects do change,

But you actually do have an accent.

I hear it.

And any linguist who listens to you for more than 30 seconds will hear it.

And it’s not necessarily in the words that you use.

It’s in the vowels.

And West Virginia is particularly known for more than 200 years.

West Virginia and its dyadic features have been known and studied.

It was interesting that you brought up you all because West Virginia has also

Traditionally been a yuns, second-person plural state.

Do you hear people say yuns there?

No, I’ve never.

Now, when you talk about vowels, I think about warsh.

I hear people talking about, you know, warsh and things.

That’s not what I say.

It’s wash.

Most of what happens that makes West Virginia stand out is in its vowels.

Vowels. Okay.

A great resource is the West Virginia Dialect Project at West Virginia University in Morgantown,

Led by linguist Kirk Hazen.

You can find that at dialects.wvu.edu.

That’s dialects.wvu.edu.

Okay. Well, guys, I appreciate your time.

We didn’t find a word, but I had a fun time.

Well, it’s possible. We have a lot of creative listeners that they’ll all come up with a word for you, and we’ll share that out.

A word for somebody who doesn’t sound like they’re from where they’re actually from.

Exactly. Perfect. Thanks, guys.

Good talking with you, Elijah.

Okay. Bye-bye.

Let’s talk about language. Call us 877-929-9673.

If you want to say you’re annoying me, in German, there’s a wonderful little idiom that goes,

Du geht mir auf den Keks, which means literally, you’re walking on my cookie.

Oh, yeah, that’s super annoying.

You’re walking on my cookie.

But you know, Martha, the response is, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Right.

I’ll have to figure out how to say that one.

Call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673.

More about language and how we use it as A Way with Words continues.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Perrett.

And here he is, blowing the doors off the joint.

It’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hey, Grant.

Hey, Martha.

I’m sorry about the doors, by the way.

I promise I’ll fix those.

I recently saw a movie that took place in an alternate universe.

And that’s one where one or two things have changed, resulting in a world similar to ours, but with just a few differences.

And that got me thinking about that one day years ago when I learned there was a radio show about language looking for a puzzle guy.

And I wondered, where would I be now if, instead of joining the wonderful folks at A Way with Words, I’d answered a phone message from, say, the Audubon Society and lit upon a radio show creating quizzes about nuthatches and northern flickers and ospreys.

In that alternate universe, I could have ended up on a show called…

Away With Turns.

Away With Birds.

Away With Birds is good.

Away With Turns, a little more focused, but yeah, I like it.

Away With Birds, we’ll go with.

Okay. So I’ll posit a life-changing event in which my timeline skews off into another universe.

You just have to tell me, away with what?

Here we go.

All right.

All right.

It’s 20 years ago, and I’m contacted by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

They want to produce a show about how they care and maintain the many buffalo and bison roaming America’s national parks.

What show is that?

Away with herds.

Away with herds. Yes, perfect.

I’d even listen to that show.

Now, I’d have to cross the pond and live in London if I were recruited by the Upper House of Parliament

For a show about the wackiness that they get up to.

What would that be?

Away with lords.

Away with lords.

No, sometimes orthographically it’s similar and this pronunciation is different.

But in this case, it is…

Away with lords.

Away with lords, yes.

Sometimes, yeah.

I like this pronunciation.

Away with lords.

Sometimes I just change one letter and it just makes something different.

Jerry of Jerry’s Bait and Tackle Shop in Charlotte, North Carolina,

They decided he could fill an hour discussing nightcrawlers and red wigglers,

But he needs a puzzle guy.

And that’s how I ended up on what show?

Away with worms.

Away with worms, yes.

Again, almost all of these I would probably listen to.

You guys know George R.R. Martin, the Game of Thrones guy?

He and I both grew up in New Jersey, and who knows?

If our paths had crossed, we might have worked together on a show about medieval weaponry.

What would that have been?

Away with swords.

Away with swords, indeed.

Say halberds.

There we go.

That’s good.

Away with halberds.

I like that, too.

Now, finally, this one is somewhat different from the others.

This one’s a very different universe.

Instead of a descriptive show that illustrates the many different variations in how language is used,

What if this were a prescriptive show that definitively stated rules for using English?

Instead of A Way with Words, we would be on…

The way with words.

The way with words, yes.

Some sort of terrible, horrible timeline where you guys tell people exactly how they’re supposed to talk.

We would never do that, of course.

Instead, I like the timeline that we’re in.

Just one of the ways with words.

Just one of the ways with words.

The ways with words, yes.

A possible way with words.

Anyway, you guys were fantastic.

Good job, A Way with Words.

Oh, man, John, that was great fun.

Thank you so much.

Thanks.

And we know you have A Way with Words, and we’d love to talk with you about it.

So call us, 877-929-9673, or send your thoughts about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lisa Rose Riley.

I live in Columbia, South Carolina.

Hi, Lisa.

Welcome.

Hi, Lisa.

What’s up?

Thank you so much. Hi. I’m originally from Brockport, New York. It is a small college town in western New York right on the Erie Canal.

And there is a word that we use when we were in high school to describe a very specific kind of student, classmate.

And the word is not something that anybody else, apparently even from outside of our town, knows and definitely not in the South.

I came down in 1992 to go to the University of South Carolina, and nobody knew the word.

And the word is Beeg.

I’m not sure about the spelling.

I think it’s B-E-E-G or maybe even B-E-A-G.

And so we call these students Beeg or Beegers.

And it described a student that kind of, I guess the best way to describe it would be like if you went back to, you know, the 50s times, it’d be kind of like a greaser.

So they were the kids that listened to like Iron Maiden and had mullets and smoked cigarettes and things like that.

So nobody else knows the word.

And it’s funny, there’s a Facebook group called Remembering Brockport, which is really nice.

It’s people that live in the town, people that have lived there their whole lives and alumni of the high school.

I went on to this Facebook group and posted the question about if anybody knows the origin of the word.

And I just looked at it a minute ago, and they’ve gotten 185 responses.

There was also another post previously about the word, and there are some theories.

So, of course, I thought you guys might have some.

At least you guys might be my best option to find an answer if there is one.

Oh, Lisa, this is wonderful.

Martha and I are big fans of high school clique names because they tend to be so specific or regional at least.

And they often take on the flavor and the tone of the community that they belong to.

But big.

I never heard that one.

I’m looking at these Facebook posts that you’re talking about here, The Rivering Rockport, and I see these.

There’s a lot here, but I’m looking particularly at the one by Michael Farrell, or Farrell, F-A-R-E-L-L, and he’s talking about this fellow William Byrd or Bill Byrd who keeps coming up.

And this is the theory that I think that makes the most sense, that it was derived from Beagle because people who tended to bum cigarettes kind of begged like a Beagle.

So it’s a short word Beagle.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, I did see his name come up.

Yeah.

William Byrd.

But he keeps coming up again and again and again, although it does look like there is some alternative theory that it had something to do with people who are kind of boring and beige.

So it’s an intentional mispronunciation of beige.

I did see that one come up a couple times.

I think that one was started by a few teachers that had said a student was trying to describe that they would come into school if they had, you know, done a little too much drinking or, you know, some other things they shouldn’t do and came into class.

And a student described them as looking beige but mispronounced the word.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, so they’re pale because they’re like sick or hungover, right?

Yes, exactly.

And that’s what I saw, you know.

There’s so many of these terms.

I remember once, a long time ago, we took a call where there was somebody where, it sounds like a very similar type of person, they called them Hessians.

Am I remembering this correctly, Martha?

Yeah, Hessians and Heshers.

Hessians and Heshers.

And I think that actually was more widely used than one school.

And of course, a lot of people just use metalheads or gearheads or just whatever, like the particular kind of group was.

It’s just so funny because it definitely is so specific that anybody, you know, who graduated around the time I did, you know, obviously there seems to be about a 15 year span or so, just knows that word.

And then when they’ve used it and, you know, nobody else knows what they’re talking about.

I just love the fact that, you know, it’s unique, obviously, it seems to our high school.

And it’s just it brought up a lot of conversation, which I love.

It’s fun.

Yeah.

And you just broadcast big to the entire world.

You never know, man.

It’s gone way beyond your high school now.

At least they’re hearing it if they don’t use it.

All right.

Thank you so much for sharing your memories with us, Lisa.

And I’m sure this is going to start a great conversation with everyone else’s local terms for their particular cliques and groups.

Thank you so much for having me on.

Our pleasure.

Rock on.

Take care.

Okay.

Yep.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Well, Martha and I do want to hear about your high school cliques or your college cliques and what you call them.

What was the name for all those special groups, the kids who listened to this music or played that sport or went to this particular class or played in band or did theater or belonged to that club or were from this neighborhood or were on the outside or were on the inside?

We love all that stuff. We’re really interested.

And we also want to hear your high school slang.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

I came across some excellent advice the other day.

Don’t let your alligator mouth overload your hummingbird butt.

In other words, don’t write a check with your mouth that your butt can’t cash.

In other words, yes.

Yes, another version of that is don’t let your alligator mouth overload your mosquito butt.

And as you can imagine, there are lots of other colorful variants of that.

Oh, yes.

Very colorful words for your derriere.

That’s right.

And, of course, alligator mouth refers to the mouth of somebody who is boastful.

Right.

Yeah, braggarts.

But I like that.

Don’t let your alligator mouth overload your mosquito butt.

Good advice for the ages.

877-929-9673.

Hey there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

I have A Way with Words.

My name is Max, and I work on an ambulance.

I’m from Dallas, Texas.

Max, we’re glad to have you.

Hi, Max.

So you’re an EMT?

Thank you.

I’m a paramedic, and my word that I wanted to bring up is some medical slang that we use.

It’s a verb we say, snowed.

And it’s when a patient reaches a high level of drug intoxication, where their level of consciousness is altered to the point where they’re usually only aware of themselves.

They’re snowed.

Okay, yeah, that’s interesting.

So you’ve known this as long as you’ve been in the profession?

Yes. I don’t know where it comes from.

There’s a couple ideas behind that one.

One is that it just might be related to the idea that the patient now has blizzard-like perceptions.

They’re snowed.

It’s like all their senses are dulled to nothing, as if they’re in a whiteout from a blizzard.

But there’s another possible origin, and this involves a legendary figure in the world of anesthesiology.

Have you ever heard of the British doctor John Snow?

No, I haven’t. I’ve never heard John Snow.

Not the Game of Thrones character, although maybe he’s named after him. I don’t know.

So we’re talking 1800s.

He spent a lot of time researching anesthetics and anesthesiology, especially after the death of a 15-year-old girl who had been given too much chloroform for a surgical resection of a toenail, basically a minor surgery.

And the way they administered the chloroform is they just put a bunch of it on a cloth and held it up to her mouth.

There was no measurement.

There was no machinery for it.

They just kind of just plopped it onto her face and she died from it.

And so he spent some time looking into what other people were doing and developed machinery for administering measured doses of chloroform so that it could be used during surgery.

And because they’re going to be safely used so you could estimate based upon just like we do the weight and the amount of chloroform so that you could reduce the risk of death or other trauma from the anesthetic.

And he also was known for administering chloroform to Queen Victoria for the birth of two of her children.

And this was in contradiction to the medical profession at the time and the religious establishment, who all said that this should not be done for the safety and the religious belief that the mother and child should not go through this.

But Queen Victoria insisted and he went through with it.

And because of that, it became standard to allow anesthetic to be administered to birthing mothers.

So he’s responsible.

But the more important thing that he’s known for is he developed a theory about the transmission of cholera.

He determined that it was spread by contaminated drinking water and not by foul air, which had been the hypothesis up to the time.

So anyway, the idea of being snowed, being kind of almost completely under an anesthetic so that you’re oblivious to the world may come from British Dr. John Snow.

I didn’t know that.

I could see the blizzard part, but that makes more sense because it’s that fine line.

You want to know the patient so they’re in a good spot, but you don’t want to give them so much you kill them accidentally.

Well, Max, we hope you’ll call us again sometime and share some more medical jargon.

We really dig that stuff.

Hey, thank you.

And I’ll spread the word to John Snow.

Yeah, John Snow.

Look him up.

He’s fascinating.

Just Google John Snow anesthesiology and you’ll find fascinating biographies of this man.

Well, you guys keep up the good work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Take care.

Be safe out there.

You too.

And thank you for your good work.

There are lots of ways to contact us.

Go to waywordradio.org/contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Susan from Charlotte.

Hi, Susan. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Susan.

I have a phrase that I’m curious about.

It’s a phrase that my mother used when I came home a little unexpectedly late one night as a teenager.

She greeted me at the door and she said, I have been on my ear all night.

And I knew what that meant because of her tone of voice in the situation, but I don’t know where that phrase comes from.

And I even used it in a short story once describing a similar situation.

No one in my writer’s group had a clue what I meant.

Yeah, I’m kind of surprised that folks in your writer’s group didn’t know that expression because it’s been around for quite a while.

To be up on your ear means to be angry or agitated or embarrassed.

Or you might say to somebody, if they’re upset with you, now don’t get up on your ear.

You know, don’t be angry or indignant.

And versions of this have been around since at least the 1860s in this country.

To spin around on your ear means to get violently angry or to go off on your ear means to go away angry or to slide out on your ear means to leave a place angry.

Or you can tell somebody to go to hell by saying, walk off on your ear.

And you’ll appreciate this, Susie.

We even have letters that a young Harry Truman wrote to his future wife, Bess, in 1913.

And in one of those, he uses the expression describing how he failed to show up one day for his dad.

His dad was waiting on him and was not happy that Harry was keeping him waiting.

And he wrote to Bess, Mama says he was on his ear in proper fashion when I wasn’t there to meet him.

Oh, my.

Okay.

So I guess you’re wondering why ear?

Because it’s a weird expression, right?

It’s a very weird expression.

And I’m wondering, because we’re from the South, does it have anything to do with the South or is it from elsewhere?

I don’t think it’s particularly limited to the South.

And we’re not entirely sure why that expression arose.

I mean, to my mind, if you’re on your ear, then something’s very wrong.

You’re not standing upright or, you know, your nose is out of joint.

Your body parts aren’t where they’re supposed to be.

But there’s another line of thinking that maybe because early, early expressions had to do with walking off on one’s ear or waltzing off on one’s ear, that it might have to do with having an attitude of anger or smugness, and you sort of cock your head to one side.

So we really don’t know the origin of it.

It is an Americanism, though, right?

It was never used in the U.K.

Yeah, not that we know of.

Not in this way.

There are other expressions that have to do with being on one’s ear, but they don’t mean this, and they’re not used in this way.

Well, that’s very enlightening. Thank you.

Well, we’re glad to help.

Thank you so much, Susan.

We appreciate your time.

Yes, thank you.

I appreciate the information.

Y’all have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Let us know what’s on your mind.

877-929-9673 is a toll-free number 24 hours a day in the United States and Canada.

And you can also call us on WhatsApp from anywhere in the world.

Find that number on our website at waywordradio.org/contact.

Here’s a very handy word that was used in the 16th and 17th centuries, but seems to have died out.

It’s pepper-nosed.

And pepper-nosed means to be touchy or easily angered, quick to take offense, even if something isn’t offensive.

Oh, okay.

Pepper-nosed with the idea being that you’re irritated?

Yeah, yeah.

If you take pepper in the nose, you get irritated.

If you have pepper in the nose, you behave superciliously or contemptuously.

Right.

Instead of sniffing snuff, you’re just like pepper.

Yeah, but I really like that for, you know, to describe somebody who’s pepper nose, who’s just ready to take offense at anything you say, no matter what it is.

I think we all have a few of those in our life.

Yes, we do.

877-929-9673.

That’s toll free in the United States and Canada.

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.

When it comes to talking about siblings, speakers of English choose from one of two terms.

You say either brother or sister.

But as it turns out, most languages have even more specific terms for referring to siblings.

In Japanese, for example, there’s a different word to specify each of four types of siblings.

There’s a single word for older brother, a different one for younger brother, a word for older sister, and another one for younger sister.

And there’s a new database that lets you explore the global diversity of family terms.

It was compiled by an international team led by anthropologist Sam Passmore, who’s at the Australian National University.

And this database is freely available online, and it’s providing researchers with a lot of new insights into kinship terms around the world.

For example, you may have heard that most languages have a word for mother that starts with M, like mama.

And people have guessed for a long time that this is related to a baby’s babbling or that kind of mmm sound that babies make while they’re breastfeeding.

But when researchers looked at terms for parents in more than 1,200 languages, most of those from New Guinea or Australia, they found that more than 40% of the parental words starting with an initial M referred not to the mother, but to the father.

And so that upends assumptions that we’ve had about that initial M sound being near universal when it comes to words for mothers.

And you know, Grant, the 1,200 or so languages that are represented in that database constitute just 15% or so of the world’s languages.

So the project has plenty of room to grow, but it’s off to a very cool start.

It’s a fantastic start. I’m particularly interested in what it has to say about the Polynesian languages.

I already know, for example, that they’re related, that they have a shared history.

You can see this in some of the words that they have in common.

And of course, the kinship terms are in common.

And I’m also interested in what they have to say about the way those terms are spread now.

There is the term uso, that’s U-S-O, which comes into English from Samoan.

And in Samoan, it is used to refer to your same gender, sibling, or cousin.

For example, I would call my brother or my male cousin uso, but not my sister or my female cousin.

And you can also use it to mean your non-literal sister or brother.

Just as in English or Spanish, you might call your sister or brother or cuz or hermana or mono, prima, primo, if you feel a great friendship towards them but don’t have actual kinship.

But again, it’s only between people of the same gender.

And in the United States, uso shows up in English wherever Samoans have settled, such as in California.

And so you’ll see it even in Oceanside here in San Diego County.

And it’s even had a semantic shift to mean a person of Samoan descent.

So you might say the usos love to eat at that restaurant, meaning Samoans love to eat at that restaurant.

And it’s shortened to oose, to rhyme with moose or goose.

And not just in the United States, but in Australia and New Zealand as well.

There was a hit show, a comedy drama called Bump, I think it’s still airing in Australia.

It started in 2021, where there’s a character of the actor is of Samoan heritage.

And he has brought some of that language into the show.

And it’s kind of spread from there.

And it also shows up in New Zealand in prison slang.

You might be 100% uso, which means you’re totally loyal or supportive.

And so it’s just really interesting to see these kinship terms exist in a language.

They have this long shared heritage of millennia with these other Polynesian languages.

But also have a new history spreading it to other languages in the modern day.

Well, that database is called KinBank, and we will link to it on our website, as well as to the journal article that the researchers wrote about it.

You can find that at waywordradio.org, and you can always call us 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, Grant. Hey, Martha. This is Will calling from Boston.

What’s on your mind?

So I’m calling about a phrase. Funnily enough is the phrase. It’s one that I say pretty regularly and always feel somewhat kind of strange after I say it. Like, is that a real word, funnily? Did I say it right? You know, it just feels strange.

And I was listening to a podcast probably a couple weeks ago, and just a different podcast, and the host said the phrase, funnily enough. And I was like, oh, like actual other people use this phrase. I knew it was common, but I wonder if other people feel the same way about it, the way it sounds as I do.

And yeah, I’d love to know how it became a phrase and why it sounds funny, especially compared to something like happily, which is like the same grammatical form of the word. But that doesn’t sound strange, but funnily just sounds so strange.

So anyways, I’d love to hear what you guys had to say about it.

It’s perfectly legitimate. Let me ask you this, Will. Would you feel weird if you said strangely enough or oddly enough or curiously enough?

No, I don’t think so. I’ve been thinking about this for a while because I didn’t hear someone say strangely enough. And I was like, oh, well, that’s the same meaning or oddly enough. And yeah, it just doesn’t sound the same.

But why? Like, why does it feel weird? You know?

Yeah, well, part of the reason is that if you add an ly to form an adverb that’s derived from an adjective that ends in y, it is going to feel weird. I mean, take the word silly, you know, that becomes sillily or jollily, you know, jollily enough or ugly or friendlily.

But you know what? Those words have been used since the 1500s.

They’re not necessarily used very much, but you’ll still find some of those in dictionaries today.

Friendly, for example.

But it sounds weird, and it’s because of that final Y.

And, you know, I think the N’s in funnily enough.

Yeah, and sticking that L in there, it does feel weird.

I agree with you, although I heard myself say it last week.

You know, another reason that I think it might feel a bit uncomfortable is because traditionally people have insisted that fun is a noun and not an adjective.

And in fact, somebody who listened to me took it upon themselves to write in and criticize me for saying that something was fun or it was I think I was talking about a fun word or something.

And they wrote in and said fun is a noun.

You know, you can’t use it as an adjective.

Which is incorrect, just to be clear.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you look at reference works, they’ll tell you that increasingly fun is used as an adjective.

And even the comparative and superlative forms, funner and funnest.

I know that sets some people’s teeth on edge.

That’s a little cringy.

That’s a little cringy.

Well, that is the trend, and those are still regarded as less formal and more casual, but yeah, funnily enough, they’re becoming more common.

So you can use funnily enough in good health, and think of us every time you do.

I definitely will, for sure.

Thank you so much for your call, Will. We really appreciate it.

Awesome. Thank you, guys.

Take care now.

Marth and I would be groovily delighted if you would reach out to us from our website at waywordradio.org contact.

There are phone numbers for Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

And you can reach out to us from anywhere in the world via text message or WhatsApp.

Emiliano Somoza Jr. is from Miami, Florida, and he shared with us some kangaroo words.

Now, kangaroo words are words that contain all of the letters of one of their synonyms, and they’re arranged in the same order in both words.

So, for example, the word regulate, if you look at that word regulate, it has inside it the word rule.

So you can regulate somebody or you can rule over that person.

And another example is the word masculine.

Any guesses about what’s inside that one that’s a synonym?

Well, male is in there?

Male, yeah, M-A-L-E.

And blossom has the word bloom in it.

But he sent a couple that were surprising to me.

I don’t know.

For some reason, I had a hard time with it.

One of them is precipitation.

Oh, I need a pen and paper, which I do not have in front of me.

Rain isn’t in there.

Yes.

It is?

There’s an end in there?

Oh, yeah, there is.

It’s at the end.

Doy.

Kangaroo words, they’re a lot of fun.

But we have to say why they’re called kangaroo words, because the little kangaroo is in the pocket of the big kangaroo.

You’re absolutely right.

And those are called joeys.

And sometimes people actually call these words joey words.

Well, if you come up with some kangaroo words, share them with us.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Anastasia and I’m calling from Marquette, Michigan.

Welcome to the show, Anastasia. What can we do for you?

So I’ve recently been reading a lot of Russian fiction literature from the late 19th century, early 20th century.

And I noticed when I’ve been reading, they introduce characters, obviously, throughout the book.

And then suddenly they’ll be called something else.

Or, you know, family members will seemingly go by different names.

So my question is, can you maybe shine some light on the Russian naming culture and structure?

So when I’m reading, I can kind of follow along.

Can you give us an example?

Yeah, what are you reading?

What are some of the names?

So in the book, Dr. Zhivago, you know, they introduce one of the main characters.

His full name is Viktor Iapolovich Komoroski.

And, you know, sometimes in the book, he’ll be introduced just as Komoroski.

And then other times, he’ll go by Victor Iapolovic.

And, you know, in Crime and Punishment is another one where I noticed the main character there,

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, I think I’m saying it right.

You know, sometimes he’ll go by just his last name.

And then his sister will, you know, be called something else.

So I’m just wondering if you know, you know, anything about their naming culture or maybe why it’s structured like that.

Yeah, it’s different. It can be confusing.

The Russian names are a delicious mystery, frankly.

Okay, this is complicated, so let me see if I can get this right.

First, the surname is different for men and women.

So a husband and a wife will have a different last name.

For example, let’s use Fyodor Dostoevsky.

He had two wives, Maria and Anna.

His first wife was Maria Dmitrievna Dostoevsky, not Dostoevsky.

Her last name was different even when she was married to him.

Right.

And his second wife was Anna Grigoryevna Dostoevsky.

So you also have the same last name.

So the two wives had the same last name, but they didn’t share the exact same last name as their husband.

Because the women take a feminine suffix, either an A or a Skaya, depending on what the husband’s name ends with.

So that’s why it ends with their name, the Dostoevsky becomes Dostoevsky.

The other thing that happens is around the age of 16, children are given what’s known as a patronymic, which is based upon their mother or father’s name, usually the father’s name.

And so this patronymic is incredibly important and often becomes far more important than their surname, that is their family name.

And so this is a combination of the father’s name plus, if they’re a man, Ovich or Evich.

And if they’re a woman, the father’s name plus ovna or evna, again, depending on the ending.

Sometimes the ovit or evish is just itch.

So we know from Maria Dmitrievna Dostoevskaia that her father’s name was Dmitri because her middle name is Dmitrievna.

So it’s Dmitri plus the suffix evna.

Her patronymic is Dmitrievna.

So her familiar people who knew her well might just call her Maria Dmitrievna.

And rarely use her last name except in very formal situations.

And the other wife of Fyodor Dostoevsky, we know her father was Grigori,

Because her middle name, her patronymic, is Grigoryevna.

Grigori with the suffix evna.

Is this all making sense?

Yeah, you know, that actually shines a lot of light,

Because I noticed that in the different situations,

Depending on their familiarity with the character or situation,

They would use those, it seemed like, the more formal names versus the more intimate names.

So that actually makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, the patronymic is really powerfully important.

It’s just a level of familiarity.

It’s about the relationship between two people.

So if you use somebody’s last name, like their surname,

That suggests a distance between you and that person.

You know, like either like a political distance or a business distance or a social distance.

And it says something about who you are not.

You know, there’s a really funny thing that can happen, though.

For example, if the same first name is given to a father and that then to his son.

And then that son has a daughter.

And the daughter is the now the granddaughter of that first father, that first person.

Then you can end up with names like Georgie Georgievich Georgievna or Tadanya Donovich Donovna.

Yes, I have seen that.

Yeah.

Okay.

And those are fun.

I think that’s really fun names.

And then, to complicate it all, you have nicknames.

Just like in English where John can become Jack and they don’t seem really related, but Jack is indeed a nickname for John.

In Russian, nicknames can seem very different than the name that they’re based on.

So Slava is a nickname for Vassislav, and Vanusha is a nickname for Ivan, and Lyosha is a nickname for Alexei, even though Lyosha doesn’t sound anything like Alexei.

Not even close.

It really does seem like that when you’re reading through, because they don’t give the context, obviously, because the Russian author is very familiar, obviously.

With their language. So it seems like that character will all of a sudden pop up and

Me as, you know, an English speaker, I’m like, hey, where did you come from?

Yeah. So it’s really, I mean, it’s delightful to get into. I mean, naming systems in general

Are really fun when you get to explore wherever you are in the world, because there’s so much

Culture and history wrapped up into them. And you learn so much more about a people and a place and

Stuff. But I mean, it can be frustrating when you’re reading and you don’t have that background.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That does make a lot of sense.

I kind of gleaned that their naming system really does give a light to the status symbol of the character or the person itself.

So thanks for clearing that up.

Thanks for raising the question. I think that’s going to help a lot of people.

Yeah. And there are a bunch of places online.

You know, a surprisingly good place to learn about naming is in some of the Dungeons and Dragons books.

Because there’s so much of D&D culture, which is about naming your character.

And so they explore a lot of different naming systems around the world.

And they do a pretty good job of explaining it in simple terms

So that if you’re naming your characters or, heck, a whole village,

You can use some stuff borrowed from real-life naming cultures in the real world.

Well, I would have never thought to look there.

So, Anastasia, we’ll let you get back to your reading.

It sounds like you have a ways to go.

Oh, I have a lot.

Yes, I do.

And then you have to start at the beginning when you finish.

You’re right.

Now that you know all this stuff.

Oh, well, thank you so much, guys.

Take care.

Well, you can call Grant Leovitch and Martha Henleovna at 877-929-9673.

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And quiz guide John Chaneski.

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Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting,

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Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.