Why do auctioneers talk so fast? Martha and Grant discuss the rapid-fire speech of auctioneers, and how it gets you to bid higher. Also, why so many books have ridiculously long titles, where you’d have sonker for dessert, and an appreciation of that children’s classic, The Phantom Tollbooth. Plus, “different from” vs. “different than,” the origin of suss out, words that apparently entered English in 1937, and the many names for those little gray bugs that roll up into a ball.
What do you call those little gray bugs that roll up into a ball? They go by lots of names: roly poly bugs, potato bugs, sow bugs, chiggypigs, dillo seeds, basketball bugs, bowling-ball bugs, and wood lice, to name a few.
If you’re wondering why we capitalize the letter “I” when we don’t capitalize the first letters of other pronouns, the answer’s simple. It’s easier to read. Martha recommends a book offering a detailed history of every letter of the alphabet. It’s Language Visible: Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z, by David Sacks.
Why do auctioneers talk so fast? The hosts say it’s partly to put you into a trance, partly to increase the sense of urgency, and partly to sell off lots of items in a short amount of time. More details in an article in Slate magazine. You can learn some of the basics of auctioneering from videos on YouTube.
Why are some book titles so incredibly long? A caller complains about book-title inflation, usually consisting of a shorter title followed by a colon and a longer subtitle that seems to sound important and ends with the words “and What To Do About It.” Grant explains that such extra-long book titles have long been a form of search optimization by publishers and marketing departments. The more searchable keywords in the title, the more copies sold.
A caller in Hamburg, Germany, wants to know where we got the term laundry list. Grant explains that it derives from a time when people of a certain class sent their laundry out to be cleaned. It’s usually associated with a collection of things that are routine or involve drudgery or something negative. Funny how no one ever offers a laundry list of compliments.
The Phantom Tollbooth, the beloved children’s book by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer, turns 50 this year. There are two new 50th anniversary editions of the book. As Adam Gopnik notes in a New Yorker magazine article, the book is the closest thing American literature has to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Martha shares her favorite passage from the book, a description of various kinds of silence.
Care for another helping of sonker? That’s another name for deep-dish cobbler. There’s a Sonker Festival each year in Surry County, North Carolina, one of the few places where you’ll hear this regional term.
What does the term suss out mean? It’s often heard in police and journalistic jargon, and means to “take a forensic approach to finding out an answer.” It probably derives from the verb “suspect.”
In the movie Avatar, the characters battle over a rare and valuable mineral called unobtanium. A mechanical engineer says he had a hard time getting into the movie because in his world, the word unobtanium means something different.
An anadrome is a word that forms a whole new word when you spell it backwards. For example, the word “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts.” Some people’s first names are anadromes. There’s the girl named Noel...
A flashlight emits a steady beam of light. So what’s the flash part of that word about? Also, if you’re a nervous Nellie, you’re skittish and indecisive—both characteristics of an American politician who earned that nickname in the...
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What do you call those little gray bugs that roll up into a ball? They go by lots of names: roly poly bugs, potato bugs, sow bugs, chiggypigs, dillo seeds, basketball bugs, bowling-ball bugs, and wood lice, to name a few.
