At First Blush (episode #1529)

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.

Benjamin Dreyer is vice president, executive managing editor, and copy chief for Random House.

And now he is the author of a highly opinionated book about language called Dreyer’s English, an utterly correct guide to clarity and style, which kind of gives you a sense of the tone right there.

He’s being ironic, right?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. And one of the things he does is to challenge readers to go a whole week without writing the following words: very, rather, really, quite, actually, surely, just in the sense of merely, so in the sense of extremely, and pretty, as in pretty pedantic.

And he also throws in the phrases, of course, and in fact, and that said.

And he says, if you can purge from your prose what he calls these wand intensifiers and throat clearers, then you will at the end of that week be a considerably better writer than you were at the beginning.

So I thought, you know, I’ve heard that kind of advice before, but he was so emphatic about it that I thought, well, I’m going to try that with my own writing.

How long do you last?

An hour?

Very good question, because it was rough.

And so what I decided to do was every time I caught myself using a just or an actually.

These wan intensifiers, what a great way to put it.

Yes.

I made a promise to myself that any time I used one of those, I would get up from my desk and do a couple of squats.

Because, you know, they say that squats are one of the best exercises you can do, especially as you grow older.

So I have Benjamin Dreyer to thank for having really strong thighs.

You’re joining the American national rugby team.

And he was right.

It was kind of painful to start excising those because I use them all the time.

We sure do, don’t we?

But boy, it really makes a difference.

I’ve got a few that I’ve worked on actually because it tends to preface things where you’re correcting someone.

Right.

Well, actually.

And even when you use it in a way that’s not correcting someone, they can take it that way.

Right.

So you’ve got to disempower it and just remove it.

Right.

Right.

And so he’s not too tough on people in speech, but in writing, it really makes a difference.

So Benjamin Dreyer, as a copy editor and language expert working for Random House, kind of has put 30 years of expertise in the single book.

What is it called again?

It’s called Dreyer’s English, an utterly correct guide to clarity and style.

And yes, he’s distilled almost 30 years of copy editing experience, but he’s also distilled his own personality.

I think that’s what really makes that.

That’s the only way to do it, right?

Nobody wants some finger-wagging supposed expert, right?

Right, right.

So there’s a lot of snark and a lot of shade and a lot of verb.

It’s just a really fun book if you love language, as we do.

Snark and shade and verb.

So what do you say we share some more book recommendations later in the show?

Well, you know, I got piles of them.

I know you do.

I’ll pick out a couple.

We’ll see what we can do.

Okay.

And in the meantime, we’d love to hear from you about your favorite books, language or not, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words at waywardreader.org, and we will try to share them on future shows.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Mindy from Dallas, Texas, and I have a question regarding apologies versus saying I’m sorry.

Oh, yes, please.

A little while back, I got into a very small spat with a friend of mine, and I called them out on it.

And they immediately set to correct the issue by saying, oh, I apologize.

And that took me aback because I felt like saying I apologize versus I’m sorry was a bit dismissive and maybe not necessarily felt as genuine as it maybe could have.

So when I said that to my friend, they came back with saying something along the lines of saying, I’m sorry, is what you do when you bump into somebody’s cart at the grocery store versus saying, I apologize, is when you actually mean it.

I’d never heard that before, so I’m wondering if one of us is correct or not or what the deal is.

And did your friend add anything besides I apologize?

No.

And did they add anything later? Did they elaborate on why they were apologizing at any time?

I forget the exact thing that caused the thing, but what got me to be like, hey, this isn’t right, call them out on it.

They had said settle down to me, and I was like, okay, well, that didn’t feel good.

So that’s what started and kicked off this whole thing.

The I apologize came, and then I was like, okay, well, that felt dismissive.

Why didn’t you just say you’re sorry?

Because when you say you’re sorry, at least in my world, that is a more genuine feeling and contains the amount of remorse, I guess, for lack of better terms.

I think you’ve hit on something important that we need to break down here, and it’s the in my world part of this.

There’s no one universal format for apologies that is always received the same way by everyone, not even in a particular family for that matter, but definitely not across the larger culture, even in larger communities.

So really what Martha was getting at with her question, and it’s the same question I was going to ask right away, which was, did they say anything else after I apologize?

Because I apologize isn’t the whole statement that’s required.

It’s the introduction to where you’re going to take responsibility for having done something to offend or hurt the other person.

It’s the start of a conversation, not the end of the conversation.

I see.

And it’s the same for I’m sorry.

I’m sorry alone doesn’t do the job.

When you’re in the grocery store anyway, I don’t know about you, but in my grocery store, you just say sorry.

Right.

It’s kind of upbeat and friendly, and it’s just that one word, and you move on.

Right.

You don’t say, I apologize.

Yeah.

Well, this is a very good friend and, you know, completely forgotten about and forgiven.

So chances are they probably did.

I just can’t remember and I don’t want to put words in their mouth.

Okay, but you didn’t make them apologize for saying, I apologize.

No, not at all.

There’s a very good book about apologies and language of apologies by Edwin Battistella.

It’s called Sorry About That.

And while a focus is mostly on the apologies of public figures, it still has a lot for the private individual.

And one of the things that he talks about there, and actually in another book, too, I Was Wrong by Nick Smith says the same thing.

They talk about apologies as a way of taking practical responsibility.

You’re owning what happened.

You’re not making excuses, which is where apologies often go wrong.

You’re not blaming someone else.

You’re not blaming the fact that you’re sick.

You’re not blaming the fact that you’re busy.

You’re not blaming the fact that you’re tired.

You’re owning it all.

And so even for small offenses, shouldering this responsibility with our words goes the right way towards making an apology feel genuine and to be effective.

I’m definitely going to check out those books for sure.

Mindy, I would also recommend a website called SorryWatch.com.

They also have a Twitter feed, and it’s a couple of writers, Susan McCarthy and Marjorie Engel.

And they sort of monitor apologies in the public sphere.

So a politician who apologizes for this or that or some corporate executive.

And they break it down and kind of criticize it.

It’s sort of like, I don’t know, TV tropes for apologies or something like that.

Yeah, there we go.

Oh, wow.

This might be more than you wanted, Mindy, but you called me that, so here you go.

Sorry.

It’s great living in the future.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate you taking the time.

It’s been amazing, and I love the show.

Thank you.

Call again sometime.

Thanks, Mindy.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye-bye.

I want to mention those books real quickly.

Again, it is Sorry About That by Edwin Battistella.

That’s B-A-T-T-I-S-T-E-L-L-A.

And I Was Wrong by Nick Smith.

And Nick Smith’s book in particular is about philosophy.

It’s the philosophy of relationships and the philosophy of the language.

And the Battistella book is more about the language of apologies.

So between the two of them, you really get to the heart of it.

And actually, they’re kind of eye-opening for you as a reader because you’re like, oh, yeah, I do those half-hearted apologies all the time.

I really need to stop that.

Right.

You realize that’s what that sounds like?

Yeah.

Oh.

877-929-9673.

Alexander Chee has written about growing up with books as a youngster.

And he says, I read now for the same reasons I read then, to feel less alone.

But I read for more than that.

Reading teaches me the answers to problems I haven’t had yet, or to problems I didn’t even know how to describe.

And when I feel less alone with what troubles me, it is easier to find solutions.

A book to me is like a friend, a shelter, advice, an argument with someone who cares enough to argue with me for a better answer than the one we both already have.

Books aren’t just a door to another world.

Each book is part of a door to the whole world, a door that always has more behind it, which is why I still can’t think of anything I’d rather do more than read.

I love the part where he says something about another answer as opposed to the one that we both already have.

Right, right. An argument.

An argument, because that’s what I do when I read.

I’m always looking for to prove myself wrong, typically.

Like, I want to come in and I want you to upturn or overturn my thoughts and my ideas.

I want you to compel me to think differently and have something new at the end of this book.

Yeah, I really like that description.

And that passage again was by Alexander Chee in the book A Velocity of Being.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Harry Evans from Charlotte, Vermont.

Hi, Harry.

Hi.

So the other day I was cleaning my room and my dad said I want it as clean as a whistle.

I thought about that phrase a little bit.

I was like, wouldn’t a whistle be sort of like gross almost from like people blowing into it and like all the shit building up in it?

Yeah, like the spit from a trombone, right?

Yeah.

I was just curious about the origin of it.

So, Harry, you’re in Charlotte, Vermont, which we talked about on the show, and we know it’s pronounced that way.

And you’re how old?

I’m 14.

So that puts you in high school?

Eighth grade.

Eighth grade, almost.

I graduate tomorrow.

Graduate tomorrow?

Well, congratulations.

That’s a big deal.

Thank you.

And do you keep your room as clean as a whistle?

No, not at all.

What do you get from Dad if you do make it clean as a whistle?

Probably video games.

Okay, that’s not bad.

So you’re like, this is gross.

It’s covered in spit.

Why would I want my room like that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Excellent question.

Harry, the answer is that the kind of whistle that we’re talking about in this phrase isn’t the kind of physical whistle that you might buy in a store, like a slide whistle or the kind of whistle that your PE teacher might wear around his neck.

It’s the sound of the whistle itself.

You know, when you whistle and it’s just so clear and pure?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess that sort of makes sense.

Yeah, it’s that kind of whistle.

And the clean is a little bit different, too.

It’s not so much the idea of something that’s not dirty.

But you know how sometimes you use the word clean to mean completely, like cut clean through a piece of wood or something like that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it’s a little bit different sense for both of those words.

But clean as a whistle is just as pure as the whistle of a bird.

So the sharp sound that you make rather than the little thing that you blow into.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when it first shows up in the 19th century in English, it’s used interchangeably with clear as a whistle.

Sometimes you say clear as a whistle rather than clean as a whistle.

Cool.

That’s interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, we think so too.

Harry, thanks for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Congratulations on finishing eighth grade.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye, Harry.

877-929-9673.

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 we’re joined by our quiz guy, that funny guy, John Chaneski.

Thank you, Grant.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Funny looking.

Hi.

Oh, funny looking.

That’s true.

I’ll take it.

I’ll take anything.

You know, today’s quiz is something we have done before.

We’ll try it again.

It’s called common bonds.

I’ll give you three things.

You tell me what they have in common.

For example, if I said a report card, USDA inspected beef, and an incline, you would say…

Grades.

Grades.

Grades.

Exactly.

That one we’ve used.

Yeah.

So here we go.

What do these three things have in common?

Dirt, heed, television.

Pay?

Pay, yes.

How do they have that in common, pay?

Pay dirt, pay heed, and pay television.

Yes, very good.

All right, how about this one?

Pierce, Grant, Ford.

They’re all presidential names.

They’re all presidential names, and they’re also…

Well, they’re all verbs. Pierce.

They’re all verbs. That’s it.

Okay.

They’re all presidents and verbs.

There are very few presidents we have that were verbs.

How about wing, wheel, deck?

Wing, wheel, all parts of an airplane.

That’s pretty good, but I’m looking for something else.

Oh, chairs.

Chairs, yes.

How about this one?

Beacon, Benny, bunker.

Hill.

Hill, yes. Beacon, hill.

Benny, hill. Bunker, hill.

How about tennis, monarchs, the legal system?

Tennis, monarchs, the courts.

Courts, yes, things with courts.

How about parade, pod, murder?

Oh, they’re all collective nouns for animals.

Yes, collective nouns for a parade is a group of…

I don’t know, actually, I just guessed.

Peacocks?

There are so many of them.

Elephants.

Elephants are a parade.

A pod.

Dolphins.

And everybody, or dolphins.

Does everybody know, of course, everybody knows a murder is a group of crows.

Of murderers.

That’s right.

Okay.

How about Fortnite, Fallout, Portal?

All video games.

All video games, yes.

However, not spelled.

If you heard the word Fortnite, it’s not spelled like it’s usually spelled.

How about Starbucks coffee, Baltimore Ravens, Yahoo?

Literary.

Oh, yes.

Literary references.

Starbucks coffee is from?

Moby Dick.

Moby Dick.

Baltimore Ravens?

From Edgar Allan Poe’s poem.

Edgar Allan Poe.

And Yahoo is from?

Swift.

Jonathan Swift.

Gulliver’s Travels.

That’s right.

The Yahoo’s.

Okay.

How about this one?

Corn versus lateral.

Uni.

Uni.

Unicorn.

Universe.

Unilateral.

Okay, you guys.

You did a really great job.

Congratulations on getting your common bonds down pat.

Outstanding, John.

Thank you so much.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Talk to you then.

Bye.

Adios.

This show’s about language and everything related to it.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

This is Rachel from San Diego.

Hi, Rachel.

Welcome.

What can we do for you?

So my grandfather is originally from West Virginia, and he used to randomly respond with saying, wet ducks don’t fly at night.

And no one knows what it means.

And when we would ask him what it meant, he would just say, think about it.

And he’d primarily give this answer to my dad.

And my dad would ask his mom, you know, what is dad talking about?

And she would just kind of shake her head and say, you know, I have no idea.

You know, good Lord only knows.

And I have no idea.

And I just thought I’d ask.

Okay.

And so he would just throw this randomly into conversation or at a particular point in the conversation?

Sometimes he would just kind of, my dad said he’d walk up to him and go, Kenneth, wet ducks don’t fly at night.

And my dad would be like, okay.

And then other times it would be like my dad would ask him a question.

And this was, you know, throughout my father’s entire life.

He’d ask him a question, and the response sometimes would be, wet ducks don’t fly at night.

And so it’s kind of this family inside, I wouldn’t say joke, but it’s just kind of sometimes we just kind of laugh and go, well, wet ducks don’t fly at night.

He’s probably thinking of the phrase, wet birds don’t fly at night, or wet bird never flies at night, which was associated with a comedian back in the 1960s.

60s, there was a guy named Jackie Vernon who would appear on stage in a suit and tie, and he kind of had this lovable loser shtick. And in fact, he’s the guy apparently who popularized the term, you had to be there, the phrase you had to be there. If you, you know, you tell a joke and it’s not that funny and you just kind of add you had to be there. He had this one story where he talks about a seeker of truth who wants to find the meaning of life. And so this guy goes to Tibet and he climbs this very, very difficult mountain, and he gets to the top.

And of course, just like in the cartoons, there’s this guru there at the top of the mountain. And the guy gets there to the top, and he asks, what’s the secret of life? And the guru responds, a wet bird never flies at night. And the guy who’s done all this climbing and gone through all of this stuff to get there gets really upset with this answer that’s completely useless. And the guru says, you mean wet birds do fly at night?

Rachel, you had to be there, I guess.

I think so.

I’m a little confused, though, because my dad was born in 1945. And as it’s been explained to me that my grandfather was saying this way before 1960. Like, it was this ongoing thing when my dad was a little guy.

Really?

It’s possible that joking is making the rounds. Certainly Jackie Vernon was doing this joke on stage in the 1950s. But it didn’t come to national attention until he started to appear on the Jack Parr show and the Ed Sullivan show. And he put out an album called, in 1964, called A Wet Bird Never Flies at Night. But you can find listings for Jackie Vernon newspapers in the early 1950s. And I’m sure this was part of it. He was still doing this joke, by the way, in the 1970s. So it was part of his standard repertoire.

Okay.

How about that?

I think I’m going to leave it as my granddaddy was sharing the secret of life. He was the guru.

Beautiful, yeah.

He’s the guru.

All right.

Wow, this is great.

Thank you.

Well, we’re glad you called, Rachel. Thanks so much.

Thanks.

All right.

Take care.

Yeah, Jackie Vernon, I mean, some of his humor is really dated, but it’s worth looking up some of his routines on YouTube. He used to open for Dean Martin and Judy Garland, and he was generous in his later life, too. He hired Bette Midler to open for him back when she was not a household name. And he also, if you love the celebrity roast they do on TV now, he used to be a standard at these celebrity roasts in the early 1970s and mid-1970s. And really just got up there and did his routine and didn’t really roast the person being roasted. But he was great. And he’s kind of Stephen Wright, if you like his comedy, was kind of the same, kind of modeled on that. This dry fellow who you don’t expect them to be funny, and yet you find yourself laughing at their self-deprecation.

Yeah, I was thinking of him as sort of the Tig Notaro of his day.

Right.

That same kind of deadpan humor. And we forgot one other bit of trivia about him.

Please.

He was the voice of?

Oh, Frosty the Snowman in the Rankin Bass Christmas special.

Yeah.

Happy birthday.

It sounds just like him, too.

A wet bird never flies at night.

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

On our Facebook group, Jamie Morby asks, you’re sitting around a campfire and the wind shifts, blowing smoke right in your face. What do you say?

I grew up saying simply, I hate rabbits, though I’ve heard other people say, I hate little white bunny rabbits. Any other versions? Any thoughts on the derivation?

No, we didn’t say that in my house. We just said, well, then you should move.

Oh, really?

I remember the first time I heard that, I think, our family was sitting around the grill in the backyard, and smoke started coming my way, and my mother said, smoke follows beauty. And at first I was flattered, and then I realized it was a saying.

Yeah.

Smoke follows beauty. And another one that one of our listeners contributed was, smoke follows the tenderfoot.

Oh, interesting.

Or smoke follows beauty, but beauty was a horse. And the white rabbits, the only explanation I’ve seen is that maybe it refers to when you’re around a campfire and those ashes sort of kick up.

Oh, sure.

Maybe it’s like little rabbits, but who knows? Do you have another phrase for explaining why smoke comes your way?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Good morning, Martha.

Hello.

Who’s this? And where are you?

Hi.

My name’s Cody Winchester, and I’m calling from Honolulu, Hawaii.

Oh, welcome.

Well, I’m calling today about a phrase that’s been in my family for a long time. So growing up, my family’s favorite thing to do is to go for drives. We would go on big family vacations across the country. And on the weekends, we would just jump into the car and go for a Sunday road trip. And whenever we would get the car loaded up and everything was ready to go and we were buckled in and leaving the driveway, my dad would always shout out, we’re off like a jug handle. And I had no idea what this ever meant. He had always said this. I’ve heard him say it a hundred times. And finally, one day I asked him, I said, what does it mean to be off like a jug handle? And he just smiled and said that he had no idea that it was something that his great-grandfather had used to always say. And he never knew what it meant himself.

Oh, wow.

So I wonder if you can help me out with that today.

We sure can. We can absolutely help you out with that. Where did you look when you looked for answers?

You know, I’ve just done a quick search on the Internet, but I haven’t come up with a whole lot. The reason I ask is because if you look in slang and dialect dictionaries, pretty much all of them have an entry for jug handle or jug handled. And a lot of them talk about things that look like a jug handle. They’re like people with big ears are said to be jug handled. Or you might say somebody in politics for a long time to say someone was jug handled mean that they were very partisan because a jug handle, we’re talking about, think of a liquor jug with this one big kind of handle on the side that you hold. Not two, not like Mickey Mouse ears, but a single one. So if somebody was all to one side, it meant they were completely partisan for whatever party they were in favor of. Like very much a Whig or very much a Democrat or what have you, right? So all to one side, jug handled.

But the interesting thing is none of the dictionaries that I have, and I have a lot of them, seem to really, in my opinion, do the justice to the term off like a jug handle, which is a little different, but it’s still about the shape of the jug handle. The shape of a juggle handle is what? A U, right?

Right. It’s a U shape.

A curve shape. And so the idea of off like a jug handle is you’re doing a U-turn and heading out. You’re in a place, you’re looping back around, you’re turning around and heading out the exit. And the reason I think that this is the origin of it, it’s the shape of it, is in the earliest uses that I can find in old newspapers in the 1860s and later, you’ll find people in difficult situations where they want something from somebody and they’re not going to get it. And they’re like, well, I’m off like a jug handle. And they take off and they go out. And so it’s just about turning around and heading out. So your father’s use wasn’t true necessarily to the early uses, but it still means heading out, right?

Oh, that’s great.

Yeah, it’s basic.

That’s a fun use. You know, I’ve been wanting to know for a long time.

The earliest use that I know in print is interesting.

And I want to share this with you.

This is by the guy who took the pen name Artemis Ward.

Now, his real name was Charles Farrar Brown, and he was a famous humorist.

And what he did under the name of Artemis Ward was wrote these dialect pieces, written like a kind of semi-literate wise guy.

He just had a lot of country sense, a lot of horse sense, but not a lot of book learning.

So he’d intentionally misspell words and things like that.

And in 1860, he wrote this fictitious piece about going to visit the then president-elect Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois.

And so he has his character of Artemis Ward in the room with Lincoln saying, like, basically, if you won’t talk to me, then I’m off like a jug handle.

I mean, I’m going to head out.

I’m taken off here.

And so I believe these Artemis Ward pieces were so common.

Even in the UK, they were collected in the books.

They were widely reprinted.

They became things that he would do on stage in character as Artemis Ward.

I believe that even if he didn’t coin the phrase off like a jug handle, he is probably the one who popularized it.

Oh, that’s really fascinating.

I wonder if my great-great-grandfather had ever read Artemis.

It’s possible.

You can still occasionally find his collected works in used bookstores.

Great.

I always imagined maybe it had something to do with the jug of filling up your car before you left the driveway

Or maybe making sure you brought a handle of moonshine with you for the road.

But that makes a lot more sense.

So thanks for doing the research for me.

That’s a nice connection, by the way, the handle of moonshine.

That is very much the kind of jug I’m thinking of, the old two-tone ceramic jug with the three X’s on the side

And the cork stopper, you know, and the single handholds, you know,

The single affordance there to grab it by.

Oh, that’s super.

Well, thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for calling.

Thanks for calling.

Mahalo.

Take care.

Aloha.

And happy Father’s Day.

Bye-bye.

Take care, Cody.

Bye-bye.

You know, speaking of jug handles, I’m reminded of the Latin word testa,

Which means pot or jug, and it’s the root of the French word tet,

Meaning a head.

I didn’t know that.

You lose the S with the little circumflex in tet.

-huh.

Yeah, that’s right.

And that’s from Latin testa, meaning pot or jug, because you look like a jug.

Yeah, that’s right, with your ears sticking out.

Yeah.

And so French does have a lot of those words with the little hat over the vowel,

Which always indicates that etymologically there used to be an S after that vowel.

Exactly.

Like chateau.

Right.

Or est et et etre, to be ester.

Well, call us with your language question, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Jean Brooks from Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.

Jean, welcome. What can we do for you?

Well, I don’t understand the phrase at first blush,

And I understand kind of what it seems to mean at first glance or something,

But why at first blush?

Where did you run across this that made you think of it and think to call us?

Well, it’s annoyed me for years because you do find it now and then, but it seems like this past few weeks, I mean, one day I thought in three different things I was reading.

And I thought, what is this? Is this coming back?

And so you’re just saying, why are we using the word blush?

Yeah. How does that make any sense for, if it does mean at first glance, is kind of what I take it for.

Yeah, that’s exactly it.

How does that work?

Gene, you’re exactly right. It means at first glance because an old meaning of blush, and actually earlier than the blush that we use today, was glance or look or glimpse or something like that.

The idiom itself dates to the 1350s or so. It’s now mainly American, but it has been used here and there throughout the English-speaking world.

It isn’t really about embarrassments at all. It’s just about looking at someone.

The older meaning of blush, we don’t have anymore anywhere else in English, except if you look in the historical dictionary or old books, you’ll find that blush often was used in the old days just to mean a look or appearing at someone, you know, where you’re like through a window or partition or around the corner or through a door or something like that.

And so at some point it got flipped.

So instead of being the act of looking, it flipped to the reaction that you might have when you are looked at and you blush.

Right?

That’s it.

So very, very old.

So the blush that we have now where it means your face turns red out of embarrassment or shyness is the same word.

It’s just the meaning changed.

Yeah.

Except in the phrase first blush.

I think it’s time to drop that original meaning because it doesn’t mean that anymore.

You know, it’s idiomized.

And so it shouldn’t be broken down into its parts and overanalyzed.

But there are some language commentators over the decades who have repeatedly kind of said that journalists at least should strike this from their language.

It’s a little bit of a journalese.

It’s something that journalists really love, but everyday people don’t usually say or write.

And it probably vexes people who are learning English as a second, third, or fourth language.

Blush, what?

English doesn’t need any more difficult idioms.

Yeah.

Jean, thank you so much for calling.

Yeah, thank you for helping me out.

All right, take care.

Call again sometime.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

I did not know until this week the word daddle, D-A-D-D-L-E.

It’s not related to dandel, like dandling a baby on a knee?

It may be.

We don’t know the origin of daddle.

Oh, look, ambiguity in English.

Imagine that.

Yeah.

So what does daddle mean?

Daddle is a term in England for hand.

And so you might say, if you want like a child to shake hands, you might say, tip us your daddle.

Tip us your daddle, okay.

Or tip us your dad.

Where’d you learn that?

Dictionary diving, just, you know, nobody asked me to tip my daddle.

It’s only slightly classier than dumpster diving.

Dictionary diving?

A little bit.

It’s a lot of fun.

What have you found when you’ve been reading?

Let us know, 877-929-9673.

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.

If you have a young reader in your life, or maybe you’re a young reader yourself,

I recommend a book called A Velocity of Being, Letters to a Young Reader.

It’s a collection of 121 original letters to the children of today and tomorrow about why we read and what books do for us.

And it’s not only a testament to the power of literature, it’s a visual feast.

And the letters were put together by Maria Popova of BrainPickings.org and the independent picture book publisher, Claudia Bedrick.

And it includes 121 letters from some of the most interesting people around.

Rebecca Solnit, Diane Ackerman, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Alexander, Adam Gopnik, Daniel Handler.

It includes letters from Yo-Yo Ma and David Byrne and Amanda Palmer and other artists like that.

And a few people you’ve probably never heard of, including a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor

Who writes this incredibly moving letter about how smuggled books were a lifeline for her and others.

And each letter is illustrated by some of the most accomplished illustrators around,

Like John Classen and Oliver Jeffers and Christian Robinson and Lisa Brown and Carson Ellis.

It’s just a gorgeous book.

And the other thing that’s wonderful about this book is that every one of those participants donated their labor,

As did Popova and Bedrick, and all of the proceeds go to the New York Public Library system.

That’s cool.

I love it.

And the book again is what?

It’s called A Velocity of Being, Letters to a Young Reader.

A Velocity of Being is a wonderful title as well, right?

I know.

And it’s just a beautiful, beautiful tome.

I guess I know what a middle schooler in my house is going to get for Christmas this year.

I think he would love it.

Speaking of middle schoolers, I have a tradition of when I recommend books on the show,

Recommending books for kids.

And typically they’re kind of, you know, aged towards my son’s age.

He’s now in middle school.

But this time I’m going to recommend a young adult novel that I read for myself.

And that’s because it was a novel written in Spanish by Isabella Allende.

I’ve been working on my Spanish, trying to get better at it.

I haven’t really studied it in some decades.

And reading on a Kindle where you can look stuff up easily, find definitions or translate a passage that you don’t understand, is a wonderful way to learn a language.

She has a trilogy of books for young adults.

And the first one is The City of the Beast.

It’s about a teenage boy from Northern California who goes to the Amazon with his hard-as-nails grandmother.

And she’s a world traveler to boot.

There he has this spiritual and otherworldly encounter with a variety of different things, and I don’t want to give anything away here.

And it kind of pushes him on his journey from being a teen towards being a man, towards being an adult.

He goes from being concerned mostly with petty things towards seeing himself as part of a larger universe.

And as the book puts it, he learns how to listen with his heart.

And I don’t want you to get the wrong idea that this is a very woo-woo and awkwardly spiritual book.

It’s a fun romp. It’s a kid’s book. They have fun in the Amazon.

There’s very interesting action, and there’s a lot of interplay between relationships, and there’s bad guys and good guys.

And his grandmother is a character I’ve never seen before.

She’s not the cuddly, cookie-baking grandmother.

She’s the kick-ass, boots-wearing grandmother.

She pushed him into the deep end of the pool to teach him how to swim when he was four.

That kind of grandmother.

Oh, cool.

So she’s good.

And my Spanish got better to boot, but I found this book in English and French and other languages.

And so that’s The City of the Beast by Isabel Allende, the Chilean author, who, of course, writes wonderful adult novels, too.

The second book I want to recommend is, of course, more towards my other interest.

And it’s called The Dictionary Wars, and it’s by Peter Martin.

Martin writes this lively, not quite academic book about how Noah Webster became the name we associate with American dictionaries.

But the story is more interesting than that because he talks about the bitter rivalries between publishers and lexicographers.

He talks about how had history gone another way, we might be telling people to go look it up in your Worcester.

Your Worcester.

W-O-R-C-E-S-T-E-R.

Joseph Emerson Worcester was, with Webster, the most successful dictionary publisher of the 1800s.

He was fantastic.

It was widely regarded, and many people preferred his books over Webster’s.

And yet the rivalry there, I don’t know how to describe this except to say it’s worse than The Devil Wears Prada.

It is some bitter, outrageous fighting.

These are some cranky men.

And they are battling over these interesting stakes.

Who will become the dictionary that is the American dictionary?

Who will become the Samuel Johnson of this country?

And so the book is about that.

And it’s written so that anyone can read it.

You don’t have to be a specialist in dictionaries or lexicography to really appreciate it.

And that’s The Dictionary Wars by Peter Martin.

Did they ever come to blows?

They never. Oh, but they came to blows in ink.

There are a lot of bitter letters written by these men.

Oh, just bitter, bitter letters.

And the fact that Webster won, I think, is an accident of history.

It could have easily gone the other way.

Oh, that’s really interesting.

That’s the Dictionary Wars by Peter Martin.

We’d love to know what you’re reading.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your thoughts about any aspect of language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nisi calling from Laramie, Wyoming.

Hi, Nisi. Welcome to the show.

Hi. I was walking with a co-worker the other day.

I work on the campus of the University of Wyoming, but I work for the state of Wyoming.

And he was talking about a groundbreaking event that was happening there, and they had sectioned off a bunch of parking.

And we were kind of talking about that, and my co-worker says, yeah, that’s the parking for the mucky mucks.

And I have used that word.

I don’t remember the first time I heard the word.

For some reason, it just struck me kind of like, huh, that’s funny.

And I wonder what the origin is and if there are different variations.

Is it something only specific to the West?

So mucky muck.

And so you took that to mean that the parking spaces belong to what, the administration or the head people?

Yeah, like the higher up.

Higher-ups.

And so the term that you both use is mucky-muck?

Right.

Mucky-muck.

Yeah, because there are a lot of different variations of it, like muck-a-muck or muck-muck.

And it’s a term with a lot of history behind it.

As far as we know, it goes back to the Chinook jargon of the Pacific Northwest.

So interesting that you’re out sort of that way.

And the Chinook jargon, it’s like a pigeon language, a language of the business.

That’s a combination of Chinook and Salishan and Nutka, and also the English and French of people who were coming to that area to do business.

And in that language, muckamuck means food or provisions.

It also means to eat.

And so you’ll find, particularly in the Northwest, that muckamuck is used to mean food.

Yeah, not commonly, but it’s there here and there.

And then there was another term in the Chinook jargon that sounded like hayo or hayu, and it meant plenty.

And apparently the term that sounded like hayomakamak was used in that jargon, meaning literally plenty to eat.

But it referred to people who were particularly important or wealthy or also pompous, which is sort of at least the important part is what you’re talking about there.

Right, right.

I quickly looked up the word muck.

Yeah.

In the, I guess, the modern English dictionary, muck is referring to what happens on the bottom of a horse stall.

Yeah.

No, these are unrelated.

Yeah, that’s just a sound alike.

But muckamuck, I know it is muckety muck, by the way.

That’s the one.

So you mentioned something about pompousness.

That was my understanding, but a lot of times when people use it, it’s a little derogatory.

You’re describing people who are very self-important, kind of full of themselves.

Did you get that sense, Lucy?

That’s sort of the connotation that I guess maybe I have used.

You just kind of refer to them, oh, the higher-ups who think they’re so much better than us.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

It is a little derogatory, but that is very, very fascinating.

Yeah, isn’t that great?

So high muckamuck came to be used as a term for those kinds of people.

And the fact that high, the English word high, meaning up above everybody else, is a word that just simply sounds like the Chinook.

The word that means a lot.

Yeah, the word in Chinook jargon.

That is not at all what I had expected.

You were expecting us to get down in the muck, right?

And 1830s it enters English, right?

Roughly, right?

Yeah.

About then?

Yeah.

Great.

Thanks a lot.

My pleasure.

Martha and Grant.

I really appreciate your time today, and I really love the show.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for calling.

Call us again sometime, Nisi.

Okay, yeah.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

You know, in English, if something really great happens and then something extra great happens on top of that, you might describe it as the cherry on top of the sundae or something.

Yeah, or the gravy.

Yeah, or icing on the cake.

In Icelandic, the term is the raisin at the end of the sausage.

Or that’s the translation of it anyway.

Oh, that’s nice.

So it’s a fruity sausage, though.

Yeah, where you put some dried fruit in there.

Yeah, a little surprise at the end.

The raisin at the end of the sausage.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John Tribuna calling from Brattleboro, Vermont.

How are you today?

Doing well, John. How are you?

Very good.

What’s going on?

I have a question about borrowed words.

I know all languages do it.

English, of course, loves to borrow from other languages.

My question is, what have you looked into in terms of words specifically that have completely changed their meaning, or phrases, that is, as well, that go from one language to another?

A very common one would be, for example, in Germany, if they’re talking about a public viewing, using the English phrase public viewing, they’re not talking about viewing a body at an open casket. They’re talking about going to a live sports event.

Oh, interesting. So they’ve just borrowed the English phrase wholesale, right?

Yeah, they’ve completely changed the context of it.

Where did you run across that?

A friend of mine is living in Germany now, and she and I were talking the other day, and she had just sort of mentioned this phrase, and I said, wait a minute, you’re going to a wake? She said, oh, no, no, I’m going to a sports game.

Yeah, public viewing definitely sounds like a wake.

Exactly, exactly.

Well, I think it’s one of the classic examples in the English language is talking about getting a dessert a la mode. I mentioned this phrase to a friend of mine from Quebec, and he just looked at me like I had three heads. And he said, well, what do you mean? You want a fashionable dessert? I’m like, no, no, I want a scoop of ice cream on top.

You want some mode on that slice of pie, right?

Yeah, you’re right. In English, a la mode typically means with ice cream. There are other uses, but if it’s related to food, it’s about ice cream.

Right, right. One phrase that I encountered in Japan that I thought was really interesting is the Japanese have this term, this concept. It’s very core to their culture called the gambaru spirits. And in the phrase, if you hear it all the time at sports events, you hear them say gambate, gambate, which means don’t give up, do your best, basically never surrender. You can’t really translate it directly into English.

But somewhere along the lines, they decided that the English word fight or fight-to means the same thing. So you’ll hear them at sports events yelling fight-to, fight-to, where they could just be using the Japanese phrase, but use the English instead. But the fight-to isn’t completely an alteration of the English meaning. We still say that at sporting events, say at a high school basketball game, might fight.

True, and I think that’s the origin.

Yeah.

But they brought it into their language with the meaning of gambate or gambaru. So, I mean, you can see in a lot of these, you can see where there was a historical or contextual reason for them making this connection.

Right.

So, for example, in post-World War II movies that were flooding into Japan, the men who were very often in the movies were very thin compared to Americans today. And the phrase smart-dressed man came to be smato in Japanese, meaning a thin man.

Oh, interesting.

So they took just the one meaning of smart, as in a smart dresser, and then they further narrowed it down instead of meaning snappy dresser or nice dresser. That just meant that you’re slim and nice to look at.

Exactly.

Cool.

John, thank you for sharing your linguistic experiences. This is really interesting. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. Really appreciate your time. All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Again, if you want to find out more about the stuff that John was mentioning, just look for pseudo-anglicisms or look for loanwords, and you’ll find lists and lists of these because they can be really fun. They’re a little alienating almost in some way because you’re like, wait a second, that has a meaning. You can’t do that. But of course, that’s how language changes.

877-929-9673. Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lexi. I’m calling from Denver, Colorado.

Well, hello, Lexi. What can we help you with?

I’m calling about a question actually from my grandpa who lives in Fremont, Ohio. And he, every time I see him and then I leave, his wisdom, his parting wisdom for me is don’t let nobody give you a snow job. And so I’m wondering where on earth that comes from, if he just made it up or if it’s been said before or what it actually means.

So snow job is in the white flakes that come falling down in the winter or high in the mountains.

Okay.

Snow job. And what does he mean by this? Don’t let nobody give you a snow job. What does that mean?

My interpretation is he means don’t let anyone pull one over on you.

Yeah, that’s right. Don’t take any wooden nickels, right?

When I ask, he doesn’t really give me a straight answer.

Yeah, that’s grandpa’s for you.

Yeah, exactly. Figure it out. It’s basically a way of saying don’t take any wooden nickels. Don’t be a sucker, right?

-huh.

But it’s old. I don’t know how old your grandpa is, but this term has got some legs. It really came to the fore in English during World War II, although it’s probably a few years older than that. And at the time, it was so new that it was defined in the Army Times. This is the Army newspaper in 1943. And I’ll read this paragraph to you.

The Army Times said, snowjobbing is getting off a smooth line, like talking yourself out of a hole, or managing to pull five bucks from a buddy, or talking the sergeant out of a term of KP duty. If you made the five buck loan after being told what a great guy you are, then you’ve been snow jobbed.

So it’s when you encounter these people who just have got this art of the flim flam and the flap doodle and the nonsense and the rigmarole, the song and dance, or they hand you a line, they’ve got this pattern. Those are people who do the snow job. And you fall for it.

And you fall for it.

Yeah.

So it’s been around and it relates to two concepts related to snow. One is typically, obviously, you snowed in. There’s so much snow you can’t get out of your house or your car or whatever and you can’t go anywhere. But there’s also the idea that snow is blinding if the sun is bright and there’s plenty of it. And you just can’t see clearly. You don’t know where you’re going or what you’re doing. And it’s also snow blindness and the idea that a blizzard can mean that you can’t see where you’re going. So there’s all these ideas that snow is an inconvenience and it can cause you not to behave logically.

Okay.

So it blocks your vision either way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It blocks your vision. It stops you from doing what you want to do.

Very cool. I think you’ll be excited to hear that it’s a World War II term.

Yeah.

I don’t know how old he is, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s turning 80 soon.

Okay.

Oh, cool. So just right there on the edge of maybe having been a part of it?

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, I bet he has lots of good advice, huh?

Yeah, that’s a great one, though. That’s another job.

Thank you so much for your call, Lexi.

All right, well, thank you so much.

All right, take care.

Take care.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673, or send them to us in email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director Colin Tedeschi, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Tamara Wittenberg. You can send us a message, subscribe to the podcast, get the newsletter, or catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673. Or send us your thoughts to words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

We’re coming to you from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California. Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

Thank you.