Bean Counting (episode #1657)

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

My name is Grant Barrett.

And my name is Martha Barnette.

And we heard from Jane McDonald, who lives in Reno, Nevada.

Jane is a big crossword puzzle enthusiast, and she shared her favorite crossword clue of all time.

Grant, I know you want to hear this.

Oh, yes, please.

Okay.

The clue is bread machine, and the answer has three letters.

Bread machine.

Pan? Because that means bread.

Oh, that’s very good, right? Bread in Latin and other romance languages.

No. No, right? That’s not it?

No, it’s not pan.

All right. I could drag this out for hours. I don’t know. Tell me what it is. So bread machine? What’s the answer?

The three-letter answer is ATM.

Oh, because that’s where you get your bread.

But you also get your dough there.

Well, that’s true.

It could be a dough machine.

Oh, that’s nice.

Crosser people are so clever, right?

They are.

And if you meet them, they have the driest humor.

They will just drop these little jokes and walk away, and it’ll take you a second.

And you want to chase after them and go, you are the funniest person.

Yeah, I think it was that brilliant constructor Merle Regal who was talking to somebody as they went past Dunkin’ Donuts.

And he said, you know, you can just move the D from Dunkin’ to the end of the word and then you have unkind donuts.

Well, we’d love to be kind to you.

Call us with your language staff, 877-929-9673.

Or share your favorite crossword clues.

We love the goofy ones.

We love the hard ones.

You can send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dan.

I’m calling from Cincinnati, Ohio.

And I’m concerned.

My background is accounting, and oftentimes we are referred to as bean counters.

And I’d be interested in learning where the term came from or what the history is.

Dan, do you take offense as an accountant when people call you a bean counter?

I guess not really.

No?

No, not really.

What about pencil pusher?

Oh, pencil pusher.

That’s true.

Yeah, that’s a favorite.

Is that offensive?

No, not really.

Oh, I hear it.

It’s a little bit offensive.

I’ve called a lot of offensive things in my life.

Oh, I see. Gotcha.

All right. If somebody calls you a bean counter, what are they saying to you? How do you interpret that?

Oh, I think the implication a little bit is sort of a mundane task.

There’s nothing analytical about it.

You know, you just you get to 10 and you go on to 11 and 12.

So, you know, it tends to maybe minimize the role of the accountant.

I always took it that they were saying that you were overly picky, like overly precise or doing a job in an overly complicated way.

True. Sometimes we get called pests.

Pests.

Until they get the big refund and then they’re happy.

Yeah, Dan, that’s my image too, is somebody who’s just kind of ridiculously precise and doing this really mundane task.

But so precise that, for example, if you’re at the state fair and they have a big jar of jelly beans, you know, and you’re supposed to guess how many beans are in the jar, you’re not going to tell them how many pounds are in the jar.

You’re going to tell them exactly how many beans, right?

942 or whatever.

It’s super, super exact.

Yes.

Is that fair?

Yeah.

And I think it also has sort of a derisive tone because counting beans historically has been this kind of childish form of counting.

I mean, as you said, it’s kind of mundane and exact and you just, you know, go from 10 to 11.

I hadn’t thought of that, Martha.

So you’re saying when we learn addition to subtraction, we often use objects like coins or beans to do it physically on a table or a desk.

So bean counters suggest that that’s what they’re doing with their time.

Right.

Physically moving beans back and forth to do their work.

Exactly.

I’m looking at an article from 1918 that’s headlined, Bean Counters Ridiculed by Fighting Men, because they’re talking about how, you know, the fighting men are out there when the bean counters are back there in the office, as Grant said, pushing pencils and just, you know, metaphorically moving beans around.

So it’s been around for a while, and I think of it as kind of, I don’t know, mildly disparaging.

Yeah, I’m surprised to learn that maybe even that you’ve identified it going back that early, like early to me, but, you know, early 1917 kind of thing.

So, yeah, that’s interesting.

I like to think of more so that the Easter Bunny had accountants who kept track of the jelly bean inventory and maybe the Easter Bunny term, that word, bean counters.

Well, I really, I got to say, I said all that stuff about it being a slightly disparaging term,

But I have a world of respect for accountants.

You all have saved me more times than I can tell because that is not my strong suit at all.

That’s probably because you got a refund on your taxes.

Well, sometimes I did.

I actually went through an audit years ago, and I was really, really, really grateful for my brilliant accountant.

Dan, you can imagine what her receipt box looks like.

Well, I appreciate that kind of thing.

It’s a grocery bag. It’s not even a box.

Yeah, there might be squirrels in it.

Yeah, what I’m saying is it takes all kinds, and I have a great appreciation for the kind of work you do.

Yeah, me too. I appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Wonderful show. I just really enjoy it.

And very enjoyable chatting with you. Have a nice day.

All right. Take care. I hope all your numbers work out.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

Speaking of numbers.

Speaking of numbers, our number, the magic number, this miraculous number, 1-877-929-9673.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Well, hello. I’m Homer Markham. I’m in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Well, we’re glad to have you. What’s on your mind today?

I have often wondered what my father meant when he used the word swarp.

My brother and I, when we were in high school, would go out together in a family car,

And the curfew was at 11 o’clock.

If we came home a little after that, my father might say,

You boys have been out swarping, haven’t you?

And we took that to mean that he thought we were into mischief.

And we might have been, but it was only minor mischief.

Well, Homer, if we’re talking about minor mischief, let’s define that first.

Well, that might mean a beer on a Saturday night.

Okay.

Without their permission.

And spell SWARP for us, as far as you know.

S-W-A-R-P, SWARP.

S-W-A-R-P, SWARP.

And it’s just a beer? That’s swarping?

I always thought swarping was just a little more than that.

Maybe driving around, doing loops around downtown.

We didn’t have a car that would do loops.

It wasn’t a fancy car. It was a family car.

But yeah, we were out scoping out girls and might have had a beer or two.

We lived on the West Virginia border, and West Virginia was only a half mile away.

Over there, they sold beer, but not in Kentucky.

Yeah.

We would go over there and buy their 3.2% beer, and you couldn’t get in much trouble doing that.

Either that or spending all your time in the bathroom.

And work for it.

But you could

SWARP, apparently.

Well, let’s talk about SWARP.

So, SWARPing sounds like

Having a little party, a little good time,

But you’re not drop-down

Drunk or anything

Like that. You’re not breaking the law

So much as, well, not the kind of

Law-breaking that would get you in jail.

We weren’t anywhere near that, but I think

That’s probably what he meant by that.

He was a

World War II veteran

Marine. And I suppose a lot of mischief by his sons would have been called swarping. He cut us

A short leash. Yeah, but he also knew to expect from young men, I imagine. Yeah, I imagine he

Probably was speaking from experience. It’s got an interesting history. It relates to a variety of dialect words from Northern England and Scotland that have to do with swapping and swiping and maybe warping, and they all have to do with this notion of sweeping or a swinging motion or a striking, moving erratically.

So just think about like you swipe at something, you’re moving back and forth, or maybe if you swap, it’s an exchange.

The reason it becomes swarp is because it’s a dialect pronunciation where people insert that R sound because of the way their mouths are shaped, and it doesn’t necessarily belong there.

So swipe or swap becomes swarp. Sometimes you’ll see it spelled S-W-O-R-P instead of S-W-A-R-P.

Also, people can be swarpy, which means prone to having fun or getting into trouble. Or they can talk about swarping, which means having fun or getting in trouble.

But also we can just talk about things like a dress being swarpy, meaning swinging from side to side or taking a swap with a rake, which means taking a rake and swarping up the leaves and the rubbish in the yard, things like that.

So it’s an extension of this whole idea of moving from side to side, and that has to do with when you have a little party, maybe you dance a little bit, maybe you’re a little tipsy, maybe you’re unsteady on your feet. Maybe there’s just a lot of horseplay, right, a lot of boisterous roughhousing.

I’m sure that’s what he meant, but we weren’t guilty. Oh, no, absolutely not. Saints in training, no doubt.

Right. Well, Homer, thank you for sharing your memories, and that’s what we know about SWARP.

Well, thanks a lot for your show. I have a lot of fun listening to it, and I learn a lot.

Oh, yeah, sure. Our pleasure. Call us again sometime. Take care now.

Yes, sir. You too. Goodbye.

877-929-9673

Grant, here is one of my favorite crossword clues of all time. You ready?

Okay. John Turingo. That’s John comma Turingo. J-O-H-N comma T-U-R-I-N-G-O. Like Ringo Starr as in the drummer of the Beatles.

Correct. It’s three letters. The answer is three letters.

I don’t know, Martha. What is it? The answer is loo, L-O-O.

Oh, of course, because Ringo’s British, and British people call the bathroom the loo, and John is what other people call the bathroom.

Oh, I see. You’re so funny. Send your favorite crossword clues to Martha at waywordradio.org.

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 walking down the aisle, it’s our, well, who is this guy? He’s wearing a sailor’s uniform and eating caramel corn and peanuts.

Well, what’s our prize today, John? Well, your prize is a quiz, and here it is.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Locations, occupations, physical traits. It’s common knowledge that the origins of many family names are derived from those and a few other sources, but those are the three.

Locations, occupations, physical traits. For example, entertainer Jane Krakowski likely had ancestors from Krakow. Model Rachel Hunter probably had an actual hunter in her lineage somewhere back there.

And my friend Chris Tallman for sure had some impressively large great, great, great, greats. He’s over six foot four himself.

This inspired me to suggest some creative ancestry. Take a famous person and surmise what their ancestors were like, even if it may or may not be true.

For example, many people have farmers in their ancestry, but this Lord of the Rings actor sounds like his likely grew flowers. And that would be anyone? Any guess?

Oh, let’s see. It’s just the example. I’ll let you know. It’s Orlando Bloom.

Oh, of course. Orlando Bloom. Yeah. That’s probably where that came from. Probably. Yeah.

Okay. Now, many of these are just phonetic, by the way. And we want everyone to know we highly respect the actual journey that everyone’s family name took to get to them. But we’re just having some fun. All right?

Gotcha. Okay. Good. All right. Here we go. Now, this one’s pretty easy. We’ll start off pretty easy.

He’s royalty at the bookstore, but what are the chances this author of amazing fiction is actually descended from royalty? Stephen King.

Stephen King. Yeah, what kind of chutzpah does it take to say, Orton, our family name is King. We’re kings.

There you go. Now, we know he comes from a showbiz family, but might this Iron Man also be heir to a fabric softener dynasty? Robert Downey Jr. And Sr., I guess.

That’s him and Sr., sure. Robert the Downey’s, yeah, come from the Downey’s. Now, not really an occupation, but is there a chance this very prolific deer hunter actor had a had peripatetic relatives in his family tree?

Was it Christopher Walken around? Christopher Walken, their family walking all over the place. And they walked to Hollywood eventually.

She was an amazing jazz singer. And perhaps she had English ancestors who were a little preoccupied with going on vacations. What’s wrong with that? Billie Holiday.

Billie Holiday, yes. He founded a top-notch chicken restaurant chain. But did anyone ever appreciate his ancestors who were working at smoothing out rough wood? Colonel Sanders.

Harlan Sanders, yes. From the famous Sanders carpentry firm or something. Yes.

All right, guys. Those are my quiz questions in names, words. So there you go.

Well, Martha is going to be hanging out in her little barn, and I’ll be eating bears. And we’ll see you next week, John. I’ll see you guys next week.

How am I getting out of here again? Oh, yes, I’m sailing out of my sailor outfit eating my Cracker Jacks. Yum, yum, yum. Handing out prizes to everyone.

Thank you, John. Take care now. You get a tattoo. You get a tattoo. You get a sticker. All right. Bye-bye.

Thanks, John. Bye-bye. And we’d love to team up with you to talk about any aspect of language whatsoever.

You can give us a call or text us at 877-929-9673 any time of the day or night. And you can also email us words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, it’s Thomas Pagonis calling from Huntsville, Alabama.

So the other day I was in my apartment and it’s mostly hardwood floor with carpet in the bedroom. That’s going to become important here in a second.

My girlfriend, now fiance, looks at me and says, I’m going to do some sweeping. And I said, okay, thanks. And I’m sitting there in the bedroom.

And a few minutes later, she comes in, and there’s this loud noise behind me, and I turn around, and she’s vacuuming. And I think, well, that’s not really sweeping. It’s vacuuming.

So I asked her, what are you doing? And I thought you were going to clean my living room and sweep the dust away. And she goes, well, this is sweeping.

And I said, well, no, it’s not. And she looked at me and with a straight face said, this is a sweeper and it sweeps. And I said, that is not a sweeper. It does not sweep. It’s a vacuum cleaner and it vacuums.

So that was sort of the genesis of this question. So I’ve been teasing her for, I mean, this is a couple of years ago. I’ve been teasing her for years about it.

And we were, you know, I was in the midst of doing it one day. And I said, you know who can settle this? You know who can tell me more about this? A Way with Words. So that’s how we got here.

Thomas, remind us where each of you is from. So I was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. And Rebecca, my fiancee, is from Ohio, from the Midwest, which I know they have all sorts of lingo there.

Okay. Okay. Well, this makes a whole lot of sense to me. I had a very similar experience back when I shared a home with somebody from Fort Wayne, Indiana, because she said, would you mind getting out the sweeper?

And so I went to the closet and all I saw was a vacuum cleaner. And so I said, I don’t see one. And she said, the sweeper is right there.

So it’s not just you two. This actually is something of a regional thing. Some people call them sweepers and some people call them vacuum cleaners, which has to do with the history of this device.

Because, you know, back in the 1870s or so, people used carpet sweepers. This was the non-electric device that, you know, had little rollers. Maybe you have it. Do you have that kind of device in your home?

No, it’s like what you would think of, like a plug-in-the-wall electric vacuum cleaner.

So, Martha, you’re talking about the ones you might see in a restaurant where they’re like quietly pushing them around so as not to disturb the patrons, right?

To pick up the debris on the floor.

Right, exactly. They have wheels and brushes to pick up the dirt, but they can do it quietly, as Grant said. People were using those back in the late 1800s, but in the early 1900s, people started producing lots of versions of electric cleaners that used some kind of vacuum.

And they went by lots of different names like domestic cyclone and that kind of thing.

In 1907, there was a department store janitor in Canton, Ohio.

His name was James Spangler.

And he invented one of the first versions of this.

I think it was the first portable electric vacuum cleaner, which he called the electric suction sweeper.

That’s how he patented it, as the electric suction sweeper.

And he eventually sold that patent to a guy named William Hoover, which might ring a bell because some people call those vacuum cleaners Hoovers.

And so the terms sweeper and carpet sweeper stuck around and they were in advertisements.

Some people called them vacuum sweepers.

But the term sweeper for this suction device stuck around primarily in northern Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio primarily.

And so that makes perfect sense.

So how were you introduced to it in the newspapers and in the stores?

That’s what your community came to know it as.

OK. All right. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it.

Yeah. Take care.

Take care.

Bye bye.

Take care. Bye.

As soon as you’re done running the sweeper or the vacuum and you can hear yourself, give us a call on the toll-free line, 877-929-9673.

That’s toll-free, 24 hours a day in the United States and Canada.

Grant, as you can imagine, I have had the best time going through a book called The Best of Texas Folk and Folklore, 1916 to 1954.

Do you know this book?

I know some of it.

The Texas Folklore Society has some amazing publications over the many decades that they’ve been around.

And it is rich and deep with songs and stories.

Good stuff.

Yeah, and a lot of sayings and proverbs.

And there’s one saying that sounds so much like my father.

I just cherish it.

It goes, you can’t hear your ears in this place.

I have been to so many restaurants in San Diego where you can’t hear your ears in that place.

Because there is so much noise going on, so much talking and music and television.

Yes, restaurants are so loud these days.

Well, I am definitely borrowing that one.

You can’t hear your ears in this place.

That’s a really good one.

Drop us a line.

What do they say out your way that just tickles your pink?

Tell us on social media.

We’ve got the handles.

We’ve got the nicknames.

Find them all on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jennifer.

I’m calling from Charlotte, North Carolina.

I actually have sort of an observation first and then followed by a question.

I’ve recently noticed in the news a surge in people wanting to cut out or reduce their alcohol intake.

And I don’t know whether it started from dry January and then kind of went to mocktails with mocktail bars starting to open up and or just wanting a healthier lifestyle.

But I do want to point out that there still is a stigma of being an alcoholic versus just wanting to stop drinking.

So my question is this. Why are there so many beverage labels and menu options now all starting to say, or maybe have been saying, but I’ve just noticed it recently, non-alcoholic instead of alcohol-free or contains no alcohol?

I know an alcoholic can be used as a noun or an adjective, but drinking an alcohol-free beverage does not necessarily make you a non-alcoholic.

And then one last thing, just to kind of recap, I’ve bent over for 29 years, so I could be more sensitive to these labels, but I’m curious whether it’s just actually grammatically correct.

That’s amazing.

29 years.

Bravo.

That’s a hell of an achievement.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

And I appreciate that sensitivity to the word alcoholic because people just throw that around, don’t they?

Yeah.

And people get upset when they find out you don’t drink.

They take it personally.

It’s like, why is this on me to defend my not drinking to you?

That’s not right.

Exactly.

And you kind of see that word alcoholic, non-alcoholic, and labor.

You’re like, what do you mean by this?

What are you saying to me?

You’re an alcoholic.

You’re an alcoholic.

Yeah, yeah.

There’s a thing, though, with that word alcoholic, it has multiple meanings.

And so that’s the problem here.

Like so many English words, the multiple meanings catch us up.

They kind of confuse us.

And so we got the one that means if you’re talking about a person, it’s a person who is addicted to alcohol.

And then if we’re talking about a substance, it means has alcohol in it.

And this is the confusion here.

But we also have the confusion is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has its own definitions for non-alcoholic and alcohol-free.

And it specifically says in its official documents that alcohol-free and non-alcoholic are not the same.

And so that’s why you will see drinks that say non-alcoholic instead of alcohol-free.

Yeah, they might actually contain micro amounts of alcohol, but not enough to actually do any damage.

Not enough to trigger you or anything.

So that’s the problem here.

So it does have tiny micro bits of alcohol in it, but it’s not alcohol free.

And I think part of the issue, too, is that the term alcoholic has been lodged in the language as an adjective describing things in chemistry and biology.

Longer than it has been applied as a noun to people.

So it’s, you know, there’s so many times, aren’t there, Grant,

When a word gets lodged in the English language and it just doesn’t, nobody can push it out.

Yeah, yeah. But also in the scientific field, we might talk about non-alcohol devices,

Meaning there’s no alcohol in them, or non-alcohol containers,

Meaning that there’s no alcohol in them or non-alcohol, you know, I don’t know, cloths.

There’s no alcohol in them.

So even in the scientific fields, they use non-alcohol and stuff, non-alcoholic.

So it’s not even consistent there.

So English colon, a messed up language.

I think here that just blame the government.

The government has decided that there is a particular meaning of non-alcoholic,

And it doesn’t necessarily make street sense, if you understand what I mean.

It makes legal sense, but not street sense.

Okay.

Well, that clears that up.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you for taking my question.

I appreciate it.

Yeah.

Sure.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Bill Hanrahan from Madison, Wisconsin.

So I have a friend who, he lives in China.

We knew each other in college, so a long time ago.

We were both big readers. We write letter form emails to each other. And in his last one, he used the phrase, hove into view, H-O-V-E, into view, about a guy we hadn’t seen in a while.

So this guy, hove into view. And I remember that phrase from somewhere, I’m sure a novel. I looked it up on the Internet. There was, you know, different opinions about what the verb was and how it was used. So I wondered, do you know?

Yeah. Let me ask you a question, though. In my mind, people don’t often do that. Boats usually hove into view, not people. So that’s interesting to me. Is he a big guy?

He’s tall. He may have come over the horizon. I don’t know.

I mean, to hove into view has to do with with slowly coming into sight.

That’s why Grant’s talking about. I was picturing somebody opening a door really slowly or something because you don’t usually hear it in terms of people.

And you mentioned, Bill, something appearing on the horizon or like he was coming up beyond the horizon. Right.

They ran into each other on a street in China somewhere.

So, you know, he may have been making reference to that.

How interesting.

Well, yeah, it’s hove interview is a variant of heave interview, H-E-A-V-E.

And heave is a super interesting word because it’s had many, many, many meanings over the centuries.

In its earliest sense, it meant to lift or raise or to heave meant to exalt.

And in fact, in the 13th century, you could refer to specifically lifting a baby from a baptismal font.

You heave the baby.

Oh, wow.

That sounds unnecessary.

What did the baby ever do?

Right?

Yeah.

Is it crying?

Is that why you’re heaving it?

Yeah.

Stop it.

No, I don’t think it’s because they’re crying.

Oh, that’s funny.

Heave has been used a whole lot in terms of nautical language.

You know, you think of the heave-ho of the rhythmic cry of sailors who are working to lift the anchor in rhythm.

And the nautical term heave-to means to bring the ship to a standstill.

So it’s really kind of a, heave is kind of a Swiss army knife of words.

And in the 18th century, the term heave in sight, to heave in sight meant to rise into view or become visible.

Sort of like you see a ship coming, seeming to come up over the horizon.

So I wonder if he just has a lot of nautical influence.

He read a lot of nautical novels or something.

But I could see that being the case if the streets have a little bit of hilliness to them, right?

Somebody, like, first you see the tousled hair, and then the face appears, and then suddenly the person is, they’ve heaved into view.

It’s like they’re rising from the street as they approach you.

Yeah, I could see that.

Well, that’s great.

I’m glad to know about heave.

Like, I didn’t know that it was such a Swiss army knife, as you say.

Those literary terms are even archaic when sometimes they’ve got their place, you know.

Bill, that was a really interesting question.

I’m glad we got to talk about it.

And if you ever want to send us a letter form email, we wouldn’t say no.

Okay.

All right.

I just might.

Oh, look.

His email is he being interviewed.

That’s right.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Be well out there.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Stay put.

We’ll be right back to untangle the web of English.

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

I think I’m Grant Barrett.

I know you’re Grant Barrett, and I’m Martha Barnette.

In the 1920s, Americans were warned of a new phenomenon that was sweeping across the country.

It was described as a national menace, a sinful waste, something that harmed people’s health, ruined their minds, and threatened their marriages.

I know the Internet’s not that old.

No, it’s not. No, there was another culprit here. It was the crossword puzzle.

Wow!

I know. I know. It’s weird to think back to that time.

But the first modern crossword puzzle was published in 1913, and those puzzles soon took off.

And one newspaper described the craze this way.

Everywhere at any hour of the day, people can be seen quite shamelessly poring over the checkerboard diagrams,

Cudgling their brains for a four-letter word meaning molten rock or a six-letter word meaning idler or whatnot.

In trains and trams or omnibuses, in subways, in factories and homes, and even, although as yet rarely, with hymnals for camouflage in church.

I can imagine that.

Imagine the pastor and the lectern in front of the congregation.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, bow your heads for about the seven minutes it takes me to complete this crossword.

Right.

But, you know, it was regarded as scandalous by some people.

But on the other hand, some train companies added dictionaries to their railroad cars.

And hotels considered placing a dictionary next to the Gideon Bible.

Well, that’s a net good, right?

That’s a net positive.

Yeah, yeah.

Distributing dictionaries.

But on the other hand, in the UK, the Wimbledon Public Library reportedly removed dictionaries from their reading room because of all the wear and tear from people coming in to use them to solve crosswords.

They had, as one newspaper columnist said, a bad case of clumonia.

No, dictionaries are consumables.

Like, they’re there to be used, people.

Use them.

And if they wear out, replace them.

That’s how it works.

Yeah, I don’t know how much of this was breathless hyperbole written to sell newspapers,

But it really is fascinating to me that there really was this fair bit of hand-wringing about this new form of entertainment,

Whether you used a dictionary or not.

One writer said, young people who want to increase their vocabulary should not deceive themselves with crosswords.

Let them read Shakespeare.

Is there any innovation? Is there any new entertainment?

Is there anything that is invented that appeals to group A that isn’t excoriated by group B?

And valued by group A because of that, right?

Right, right.

I’ll praise it all the more because you just like it.

Well, and it’s interesting, too, now that people say do crosswords.

It’s good for your brain as you get older.

But also, it is a calming entertainment that you can do solo, but you can also do it together with a loved one.

And I would love to hear from our listeners about favorite crossword puzzle clues or how you do crossword puzzles, your strategies, or just how you feel about them in general.

On every page of our website at waywordradio.org, at the bottom of the page, there are more than a dozen ways to reach us, including a big fat contact form where you can type in all your heart’s thoughts.

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Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rich calling from Jackson, Wyoming.

Well, I have been in search of a word for a little while.

I am a freelance writer, and I had an idea for an article here in Jackson, and I’m sure lots of other places.

People, you know, we go out, we wander around the woods, and we stumble upon a cool rock.

You know, that’s an interesting shape or, of course, antlers and animal bones or even an interesting shaped stick.

And we bring these things home and we use them in our homes to, you know, as kind of part of our decor or it might be outside.

And I just thought this was kind of an interesting phenomenon.

I have never really read anything about people doing this, but I know a lot of people do it.

And so, but my first task in sort of reporting the article was, was to figure out what the heck you would call that, you know, like finding natural items, something in nature and bringing it back home, you know, unchanged.

You’re not carving it or changing it in any way, but just using that natural item in your home as a, as decoration.

That’s interesting.

And did you come up with anything for that?

I really have not.

My first thought was, well, the Japanese have to have a word for this because they have a word for all sorts of great things.

But I didn’t stumble upon anything.

And then I thought the Germans have a great talent for mushing words together to form a new word.

And the closest I came was when I Googled nature, nature, German for nature, and Kunst, art.

I’m sure that’s right.

And I did get hits, but they were like interior design companies.

They were like the names of interior design companies that kind of had like a nature theme to the sort of stuff that they did, which wasn’t, it’s not a bad word, but it’s, but I didn’t, I don’t know if it’s like,

Like a commercial, you know, it’s just something that a business glommed onto.

I also found a French phrase that…

Was it objet tuve?

That’s right. That’s right. That’s it exactly.

Yeah, that’s found art or found object.

And that’s what I was going to suggest.

Found object art or found art is very common

And has been used for at least 60 or 70 years.

This idea that you use everyday objects that represent beauty in unexpected places,

And you use them to bring that beauty to your own designs and your own workspace or living space.

But it doesn’t quite capture the nature that you were talking about,

The thing about skits and rocks and antlers, which is another design aesthetic,

Which is a biophilic design, which is this…

Oh, that’s a good one.

Yeah, which is obviously the love of the nature, bio, representing nature.

But usually that has more to do with architecture, which is the structure of the space.

The structure and the light and the patterns, the views of the space.

The viewshed, as they call it in architecture.

What you see when you look through the windows and apertures of the space.

It’s funny that you should mention Japanese and German because there are two words in those languages.

You looked up the German word for nature, but did you look up the Japanese word for nature?

I did not, no.

So the Japanese word for nature, one of the words is shizen, and it means nature or naturalness.

Translated into English, it’s roughly about the unforced organic quality of something.

How you might place, say, those rocks or sticks in an intuitive way, in a design or a space.

Not feng shui, but more like, all right, I just know in my heart that this is where and how these need to go in my house.

In order for them to work, you know, as an artist, these rocks need to go here.

This is how I feel as an artist, right?

So that’s shizen.

Spelled in English, S-H-I-Z-E-N.

But the Japanese wood.

And then in German, and this doesn’t quite match because in English, the concept is cabinets of curiosities.

And it’s about collections of rare and unusual objects.

You’ll often see them represented literally as a cabinet with lots of cute tiny drawers.

Something like a, say, a pharmacist’s wooden cabinet.

But in German, it’s Wundenkammer.

Wundenkammer means cabinet of curiosities.

It’s a curated display of artifacts.

And in this case, they’d be natural artifacts.

So you might have feathers and shells and you might have crystals.

But Wunderkammer is spelled W-U-N-D-E-R-K-A-M-M-E-R.

Yeah, that’s a good one. I like that.

And, Rich, I’m reminded this isn’t exactly relevant, but it’s sort of germane to this discussion.

I keep thinking about the term leverite. Do you know this term?

Oh, yeah.

I was telling a friend about this just the other day, and he came up with leverite.

Yeah, it’s a great term, leverite.

L-E-A-V-E-R-I-T-E, leverite, which is used by geologists when it’s a rock that’s not interesting enough to take with you.

Leverite there.

Leverite there, yeah.

Yeah, so maybe there’s some term that you could form out of leverite, you know, like unleverite or something.

I also want to spell the French term we mentioned earlier, objet trouvé.

It’s O-B-J-E-T space T-R-O-U-V-E with an acute accent on the E.

Mm—

Objet trouvé.

I mean, it just means found object.

Objet trouvé.

Yeah, yeah.

Great, great.

Those are some awesome suggestions.

Yeah, I hope it works out for you.

And if you come up with something that you’re proud of, send it to us, all right?

I sure will.

I sure will.

Thanks, Rich.

We really appreciate you bringing this cool topic to us.

Thanks for your time. Great to talk to you all.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye, Rich.

Bye-bye.

Horace Mann was an educational reformer and abolitionist, and he also served for a while as president of Antioch College in Ohio.

But he’s probably best known for being a staunch proponent of public education.

And that’s why there’s so many schools that are named Horace Mann Elementary or Horace Mann Junior High.

But Harlan Messenger, who listens to us in Washington, D.C., pointed out that the Horace Mann Elementary School in Washington, D.C., has as its mascot a centaur.

Oh, you got it right away. It took me forever.

All right. You have to say, if you didn’t get it, you have to say this kind of fast. Horseman.

Exactly.

Horseman.

Exactly.

So a centaur is a kind of horse man, horse man.

Yes.

It’s a man horse. Horse man.

And I thought this wasn’t real. Harlan thought it wasn’t real, but we checked.

And apparently some students suggested that it should be horse man.

And their art teacher there designed the mascot. You can go to their website.

That’s lovely. A little bit of a ridiculous wordplay.

We like little bits of goofy wordplay like that, historical or modern.

Send them along. words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Tracy Hewley calling from Beaufort, North Carolina.

Hey, Tracy, we’re glad to have you. What’s up?

Well, I just wanted to know about, well, actually two words that were always used together.

When I was growing up, and I don’t know whether they’re just family words or whether they’re real words or whatever.

And they were used when there was a group of people or just two people, and somebody was starting to get a little upset or bossy or whatever, and the other person would say,

Well, don’t get asperious.

You might debubiate.

Wouldn’t want that.

All right, say that again for us.

Don’t get as caparious.

You might de-boobiate.

That’s outstanding.

I love it.

All right, explain to us what you think that means.

Well, I think it was just calm down or you’re just going to blow up.

I don’t know.

So, I mean, yes, and that definitely was the effect that it had because people would laugh after it, except for one of my relatives who was the one getting asked to period and she would just have to leave and go for a walk.

Who would say this?

My grandmother, my other aunts or uncles.

Of course, the kids would say to each other later when they were playing.

So, yeah.

Nice.

And what do you know? Have you ever heard anyone else use it? Seen it anywhere else?

Not really.

Not really, no.

What’s the earliest that you remember hearing it?

Oh, gosh.

Probably when I was, I don’t know, five, six, seven, eight, you know.

What decade would that be?

That would be in the 50s.

Okay, 50s.

Yeah, definitely in the 50s, yeah.

Well, if you Google this and you got the spelling right, Astor Perius is fairly Google-able, I think.

A-S-T-O-R-P-E-R-I-O-U-S.

And you’d come up with the—it shows up here and there.

But in the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance writer, and it just basically means snobby or haughty or stuck up.

And it shows up in Harlem Renaissance slang from as early as the 1920s.

And a bunch of sources claim that it’s a combination of Aster, as in the rich family of Astors, A-S-T-O-R, and imperious.

Like you’re acting like you’re rich and snobby and imperious, like the Astor family.

But I suspect that it may also or may completely be a humorous form of the word obstreperous, O-B-S-T-R-E-P-E-R-O-U-S, which means aggressive, loud, clamorous, stubbornly defiant is how one dictionary defines it.

Aggressively boisterous is how another one defines it.

So, astroparius and obstreperous just sound too much alike.

And there’s a long history in this country of humorously mispronouncing words just to be, you know, ornery.

Humorous.

Humorous, yeah.

Just to be estroparius.

Dabubi, it’s the harder one.

Because that one, I have looked high and low in every reference work that I have access to, online and often.

I have a vast library in both places.

And I have only found it in one other place.

And I’ve looked in dozens of different spellings and combinations.

And that other place is from another listener.

A few years ago, Maria in Indiana called us to tell us that her grandfather from Puerto Rico, who spent time in Pennsylvania and then moved to Indiana, used to boobie to mean to leave.

As in, it’s time to boobie.

But that’s all I know about it.

It’s the only other use of it I’ve ever found.

But I suspect it, too, might be a humorous blend, perhaps, of debilitate and evacuate or debark, debark and evacuate or depart and evacuate.

I don’t know. It sounds like discombobulate, you know?

It does a bit, doesn’t it? Deboobiate.

Yeah.

Well, Tracy, are you carrying on this tradition or are you around a lot of Ashton Purdy people?

Oh, you are?

Are you one yourself?

Every now and a long time, we’ll have a perfect time to use it, yes.

So, yeah.

And do people understand what you mean?

Well, my children certainly do.

Tracy, that’s all we know.

But if you find out anything further, you let us know, all right?

I will.

If you find anything further, we’ll let everyone know.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

You take care now.

I really appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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And John Chaneski is our quiz master.

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Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

So long.