The Bee’s Knees

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You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. In his Joy of Yiddish, Leo Rosten tells a story about a mother who calls her son Bobola. This is a Yiddish word. Do you know this one? Bobola?

Yeah, it means grandmother, right? Yeah, but sometimes you call children that because you’re suggesting that they have a future in which they themselves will be a grandmother or a grandfather. Oh, really? Also, it’s kind of like baby. It’s got the same kind of sounds, right? Yeah. And he tells this anecdote here, which I wanted to share with you.

There’s a young boy. He’s going off to school for the first time. His mother, of course, is very nervous. And she’s like, Bobola, do you have your lunchbox? Bubbola, do you know your class assignments? Bubbola, do you know where to get the bus? Bubbola, are you nervous? Bubbola, do you love your mama? Take a little sweater. Take a little sweater, Bubbola. Are you okay? Here’s a little extra money for lunch, Bubbola. And so the boy goes off to school and comes back at the end of the day. And his mother says, Bubbola, how are you? How was your first day? What did you learn today, Bubbola? And he goes, I learned my name was Irving.

And what I’m getting at here is we have these pet names for each other. I don’t call my wife Sarah necessarily. I call her sweet names that I’m not going to share here. I call my son a bunch of sweet names. Some things like kitty cat or puppy dog or sweetest boy and monkey butt. Monkey butt. Nice. I also call him sweet tater man. But we have these names and they have backstories and histories. And it occurs to me that this mother is no different from any other parent, right? You want to express your affection, and you do it, of course, through language.

Yeah. So we have these terms of endearment for our family, and I just kind of wanted to throw it out there and see what do you call your sweetie or your kids or anybody else that you love and have affection for, something besides their real name or their nickname, just this term of affection. I’m struck, by the way, how many of these have to do with food, so I’m really looking forward to this. You know how we are about food.

Yeah. Sweet pea and sugar pie and a honey bunch and all this stuff. Well, in our house, it’s fofinha, which is a Portuguese word that means a fat little cuddly baby. So fofinha or fofi. I’m imagining a little Cupid with rosy cheeks and little crisp lips. That’s sweet. Just soft and smells good. What are the sweet terms that you use in your house? Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Linda calling from Solana Beach, California.

Hello, Linda, lovely Solana Beach. Well, about a month ago, my daughter Katie was home from college from the University of Michigan, and she was telling me a story about one of her friends, and she happened to mention that this girl was the bee’s knees. And I hesitated for a moment and wasn’t sure what she was referring to, so I said, well, what does that mean? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And she proceeded to tell me that it means she’s like all that or really cool or awesome.

So as I was thinking about it, I was thinking you might be the two sources that would tell me where this phrase comes from because I’ve never heard it before. My daughter claims it’s a very old expression, but I was just wondering why being a bee’s knees would be something great. And the fact that she’s at a Midwestern school, I thought, well, maybe it’s a Midwestern phrase. Do her friends use it?

You know, she seemed to think it was a pretty common phrase. And like I said, I’ve never heard it before. So I’m thinking they must. She wasn’t sure where she first heard it.

Oh, that’s too bad. That was my next question.

Yeah. And so what school is she attending?

The University of Michigan.

Michigan. Okay. Really interesting stuff. It’s so funny that this term should skip a couple generations. This probably comes from her grandparents’ era, the 1920s.

Yeah. I’m kind of shocked to hear that a young person is using it unironically to mean what it meant 90 years ago. And telling her mom about it.

Yeah. That’s crazy. That’s great. And telling her mom about it. And her mom didn’t know. That’s really…

Yeah. It’s so rare to see a slang term come back into vogue genuinely, not being used with any kind of facetiousness or irony.

Oh, I hope it is. I use it all the time. So this was something that came out of the flapper era. I don’t know if it was originally used in a kind of show-offy way, but it definitely became prominent. It’s listed in all the slang guides ever since. It does not drop out of slang books. But to get to the bottom of the bee’s knees, why are we talking about something good in relationship to bee’s knees? There’s an old meaning of the word cute, C-U-T-E, which meant small and nicely formed. And bees’ knees are small and nicely formed, and they are perfect in that way. And you could talk about the bees’ knees as being the epitome of insect knees, and therefore they became generalized to mean excellent or great or good. Right? See how this goes? And it rhymes. It’s evocative, easy to say, easy to remember. It has all the hallmarks of a successful phrase.

Your daughter is plugged into a large stream of slang that dates back 90 years.

That’s right. She is hip and cool. And she is introducing you to her grandparents or even her great-grandparents’ generation. I don’t know how old she is, but there you go.

Actually, she’s quite young, 19, so I’m surprised to hear it’s an old expression.

Yeah. You both are the bees and knees, and I so appreciate you taking my call today.

Oh, thank you.

Well, it’s our pleasure. Anytime we get a chance to goof off with people from Solana Beach, we take it.

That’s right. Grant’s the three knees on the left, and I’m the three knees on the right.

Thanks a lot, Linda. Thanks for calling, Linda. Thank you. Take care. Take care. Bye-bye.

Give us a call about something strange that your children say. It’s an everyday occurrence in my house. 877-929-9673. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is William Chappell from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, William.

Hi, William. How are you doing?

I’m doing all right this afternoon. How can we help you today?

Well, I’m in the restaurant and bar business. And I know you guys are always looking for quirky terms for names for things.

Oh, yeah, sure. And we’ve got what we hold the ice in to make the drinks out of. It’s an ice well, and it’s called a jockey box. And I have no idea, just always what it’s been called since I’ve been in the business for about seven or eight years now.

Jockey box, you said it’s an ice well. What does that mean? How does it come into play? If I ask you for a drink, what do you do with the jockey box?

Okay, if you order a vodka tonic, I scoop the ice out of the jockey box, put it in the glass, and then pour the vodka and the tonic into it, put a straw in it, and serve it to you.

And that’s it? There’s nothing else but ice in your jockey box?

Well, it also, you attach the speed rails to the front of it. Speed rail holds the liquor bottles to make it real easy access for pouring.

Speed rail. I’m trying to picture this.

Speed rail. It’s a long metallic sort of framework that the bottles slide into. It’s got to be nice so it’s easy to clean because it gets real sticky back there. So the bottle goes in the speed rail, and you pour the bottle from the speed rail into the glass with the ice from the jockey box. So the jockey box is the thing that contains the ice.

Correct.

Okay, interesting.

Huh.

Well, we know a jockey box. Some places in the country use that to refer to the glove box, right? Right, the glove compartment in a car. But this is different. In the West, more like Utah. Oh. In Utah, places like that, I think they call it the jockey box. In more than one of the dictionaries of Western language, they talk about an old term for a box on the side of the chuck wagon that had a variety of things in it. Not like food, but it would have maybe a little grain for your draft animals. I’m reading from one of the dictionaries here. It might have water. It might have a toolbox. Just supplies that you might need while the wagons are moving. And it seems like a really good match to the way that you’re using jockey boxes. It’s kind of a place for some essentials, right?

Yeah, I think it’s right beside the driver or right under the driver. I think that’s the idea of jockey there. Well, I think Martha hit upon the thing here. Here we are talking about the bartender who’s basically the master of this situation. In the same way that if you’re driving in the car, if you’re in the front seat, okay, maybe the glove box is on the right. But still, if you’re in the front, you are somehow responsible for what’s happening in that car, maybe outside of driving. Just the same way as if you are responsible for the chuck wagon, you’ve got this box of essential supplies here, you’re in charge of something. You’re like the master of the situation, the commander, so to speak. And so you are the jockey. You are driving that figurative horse.

Okay. I mean, that’s just, it’s a theory. We can’t really prove that. Like a lot of the older language, it’s hard to really get at the true origins. But it’s logical, and it fits the patterns that we know that language tends to take. Yeah, yeah, that you go from something really specific, and then it gets applied to a lot of different situations. Tends to generalize. That would make sense.

So, William, what’s the weirdest drink you’ve ever been asked to mix, or the one with the most interesting drink? Oh, the weirdest one would probably be what’s called a Matt Shot. It’s also known as a Matt Dillon. And it’s basically the rubber bar mats that you have below your serving station where you’re pouring all your liquor. Anything that spills over the glass goes onto that rubber mat. And I’ve actually had customers come in and order a mat shot and drink it. What? And then obviously you’re not charging them for anything. And it’s also a prank to play on your friend if somebody’s not very familiar.

Wait, you don’t even charge them for the ambulance they’ll need? Oh, God, that’s awesome. No, this one’s on the house. I mean, how much liquor are we getting out of a mat? Is this a shot or a pint or a half? It depends on, you know, that’s so funny. It’s probably a function of, you know, what time it is in the night, how steady-handed the bartender is, or how much the bartender has had to drink. Genius. I’m never ordering that for myself. Never. But maybe for somebody else. Stay away from a Matt Dillon. Stay away from that. Fantastic. Stay away from a Matt Dillon. I love it. I hope we’ve helped you get to the truth about Jockey Box, William.

Yeah, it sounds good, guys. Y’all have a good afternoon. I’ll be listening to your show. Best of luck. Poor Steady. Yes, sir. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye.

What’s the crazy language in your business? We’d love to talk to you about your work and the language that you use in your job. 877-929-9673. Or, heck, just send us any question about language, slang, grammar, how to speak and write well. Send it to words@waywordradio.org. We got a great email from Edward in Romania. And the problem that he had to share with us is that he learned how to speak English well in the American state of Georgia. Back home in Romania, he studied British English for eight years. Then he landed in Georgia. And the language was very different. And now that he spent some time in Georgia, his own language is still different. And now he’s going back. And the problem that he has is all the work that he did to be understood in the state of Georgia now has to be undone to be understood back in Romania.

Oh, boy. He’s taken the American, the Southern American English accent back with him. And it sounds interestingly odd, right? I’ll bet. I met this lovely French woman once who spoke English with an Irish accent because that’s where she learned it. What a mix that was. So, Edward, we just want to tell you, keep with it, guy. You’re going to do fine. We understand your predicament. And, hey, there are a lot of laughs in it. Just tell everyone that that’s how Americans speak and you’re doing it right and they’re doing it wrong. That’s right. And he probably doesn’t have any R’s at the ends of words anyway, right? That works.

What’s the predicament that you find yourself in when it comes to language? 877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org. A word puzzle in your observations about language. Stay tuned. Support for A Way with Words comes from the University of San Diego, whose mission since 1949 has been to prepare students for the world as well as to change it. More about the college and five schools of this independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette. And now joining us is our quiz guy, Greg Pliska. Hi, Greg. Hello, Greg. Hello, Martha. Hello, Grant. Well, quiz us. Well, this is a quiz I call centricity, with the emphasis on the city part of it. I’ve brought you a number of sentences, each of which has a blank. And your job is to fill in that blank with the name of a well-known U.S. City so that the sentence makes sense phonetically.

Oh, okay. For example, if I said, if you eat your frozen waffle on the beach, you’ll end up with a blank. Belgian? No. A sandwich. No, something about a burn. Now, Martha’s on the right track. I am? Yeah, you’re on the beach, so it’s going to be sandy. And what’s a well-known? San Diego. Okay, all right. All of San Diego is going, we’ve heard that before. We got to play a little loose with the fanatics here and there.

Okay, here’s your first one. Mickey ate all the fruit, leaving blank. Mini-opolis. No, mini— Mini-apples. I don’t know. You’re so close. Mini-apples. Say the whole name of the city. Minneapolis. Minnie Apples. Oh, Apples. Apples. Oh, Apples. I see. Apples. She is without apples. Oh. All right. Here’s another one. King Lear had to decide how to blank among his three daughters. Divide? Sheraton? No. It’s actually one of those words that means both to split or to stick together.

Oh, Cleveland. Cleveland. Cleveland. Oh, boy. He needed how to cleave land. Yes, Cleveland. Here’s another. It’s not easy for a barber blank tangled mop of hair without hurting the customer. Two. It’s a city in. Yep, two. And what is he going to do to the tangled mop? Tease it? Comb it? That hurts. Tacoma. Tacoma. Tacoma. It’s not easy for a barber to coma tangled mop of hair. All right. To speak with dead philosophers remotely, you will need a John Stewart blank talkie. Milwaukee. Milwaukee talkie. A John Stewart Milwaukee talkie. Nice.

Will a stormy blank the brains of a cruise ship’s passengers? It’s a city in the northwest. Seattle. Will a stormy sea addle the brains of a cruise ship’s passengers? Boy, you addle legs. Do you addle brains? I guess you do. Yeah. Sure. Addle brained is a great term. Sure. Okay. Very good. All right. A couple more here. Said George H.W. Bush to George W. Bush, you can be president blank. When I’m done, son. Yes. When I’m done, Wisconsin, that famous town. Mason. It’s a city in the southwest. We don’t really pronounce it. Toosons. Yes. You can be president too, son. We really say Tucson. Oh, my goodness. Close enough for rock and roll.

Here’s one more. You should always look your best on a first date. Blank dresser is more attractive than a sloppy one. It’s a city in Ohio. Oh, in Ohio. Yep. You should always look your best on a first date. Blank dresser is more attractive. Since a natty dresser, that’s great.

Is more attractive than a sloppy one.

Cincinnati.

Yeah, Ohio gave it away there.

Well, there you go.

You found your way across the country.

Thanks, Greg.

Saw you a little slow today.

We’re here to talk with you about language, so call us 877-929-9673 or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello there.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Vicki calling from Greenwood, Indiana.

Hi, Vicki. Welcome to the program.

Hello.

Thank you.

What can we help you with?

Well, a few years, I’m retired now, but a few years ago when I was employed, there was a phrase that went around at work, and it was called, let’s get the moose on the table.

And I may have known at the time where it came from, but if I did, I’ve since forgotten.

And I kind of wondered if you knew where that came from.

Where did you work, if I could ask?

Sure.

I worked at a large Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company.

Okay.

Mm—

Would that happen to be Eli Lilly?

It would be.

And so lay the situation out for us.

Where would you hear this?

Is this something you would hear in a job review or in a meeting or an annual report?

It was when we would be holding a meeting, maybe a staff meeting with a manager and department heads.

And in fact, the manager, I remember the manager who started using the term, she even, when she would say the term, she would even bring out a little stuffed moose and sit it right in the center of the table.

And she’d say, okay, it’s time to get the moose on the table.

That’s nice.

That’s nice.

So it was a matter of discussing something that everybody was avoiding discussing?

Yes, it could have been that, or people were holding back in the discussion, or it was a controversial issue, or something nobody really wanted to talk about.

And how did that work?

Did it work well?

It worked pretty, yes, it did work well.

As I remember, it seemed like once that phrase was said, everybody just kind of relaxed and opened up, and discussion was freer.

-huh.

Very good.

-huh.

So a big, hairy icebreaker, in other words.

Yes.

Kind of like the elephant in the room, right?

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of.

Yes, very similar to that.

Yeah.

I know it goes back to at least the early 1990s.

I’m not sure that we have a specific origin for it besides the fact that it’s a great image to picture everybody around a table with a giant moose on it.

And they’re sort of moving the hoof out of the way to reach their blackberry.

Right, right.

But it basically says you have to acknowledge the things and the problems that are in front of you, right?

Yeah, correct.

You can’t just avoid them.

Yeah.

Pretty interesting stuff.

The reason I guess that you worked for Eli Lilly is that a lot of times this is credited to Randall Tobias, who ran Eli early in the 1990s.

That’s correct. He did.

Right. And he’s used this in at least one of his books.

It may even have that same title.

And it’s possible that he’s the one who originated it.

Now, it’s hard to say for sure.

It’s been used so many times in different management books and management courses and advice that people are giving in seminars.

There’s a book in 2003 by Jim Clemmer called Moose on the Table, and he uses the term throughout the book.

About that.

I didn’t realize it had been around so long.

I was going to guess that it had been maybe 10 or 12 years since I had heard it.

So it’s been around longer than that.

Well, have you heard one of the stories about its purported origin?

No, I haven’t.

This is the one that Klimmer tells in his book, and it’s possible that he made it up, but it’s pretty colorful.

He said they speculate that it originated in an actual thing that happened in Maine on a hot summer day.

According to the story, a baby moose crawled under a buffet table that had like a skirt on it or a tablecloth and died.

It created a horrid stench.

But nobody knew what it was, and because they were all worried about embarrassing somebody else and it was a formal reception, nobody mentioned it.

And so everyone just tried to act as if there wasn’t a problem.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Now, the moose was under the table and not on the table, and there’s some problems with the story, but this is the story that Clemmer tells in his book.

Well, isn’t that interesting? I’ve never heard that before.

Well, thanks for sharing that one with us.

Oh, you’re welcome, and thanks for taking my call.

Thanks for putting that moose on the table.

Okay.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your workplace jargon, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name is Paul.

I’m calling from Duluth, Minnesota.

Welcome to the program, Paul.

Well, I’m happy to be on.

I’ve got to give you a little bit of background.

I’ve got a question about a phrase.

I’m kind of a political junkie.

The other day they were talking about some of the Republican candidates for the presidency, and they were talking about Mitt Romney and the whole health care deal that he managed to get through in Massachusetts.

The speaker, the pundit, I guess, referring to that said that, it’s funny, he said that Romney backing the health care bill in Massachusetts would be an Alcatraz around his neck.

An Alcatraz?

Yeah.

And that reminded me of the phrase, an albatross around his neck, which is what I’m sure he meant to say.

Oh, yeah, most definitely.

I almost fell out of my chair. I was laughing so hard.

But then it reminded me of the Monty Python skit from way back, where this guy is just running around on a stage shouting, albatross!

Anyway, I want to know, where does the term albatross around his neck come from?

I know what an albatross is. It’s a large seabird.

How does it get around your neck and where does that come from?

Yay, Paul.

I’m delighted you asked this question because this is an etymological question that we can definitely answer.

It has a very, very clear etymology.

Do you ever read Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

Oh, back in high school, I think I did.

It will come back to you, I promise.

Yeah.

This is the story of a sailor who’s condemned to walk the earth and tell everybody his terrible tale from going to sea when he killed an albatross.

It’s a long story, but basically he killed an albatross and that sort of cursed the ship.

And all the other sailors were angry with him, so angry with him because bad things started happening on the ship.

And the ship was just stuck there in sea, no wind.

They were just stuck there, and so they were so angry, they tied this big old albatross around his neck.

And as you said, an albatross is a really big bird.

It’s got a huge wingspan.

So you’re talking something that’s heavy and stinky, and it was—

And it reminds you of what you did if it’s around his neck.

Right, right.

Now it all comes back to me now.

Now, Martha, do you—

You don’t hear that phrase an awful lot anymore.

I think it’s current enough.

Well, I guess having Alcatraz run under your neck.

Well, there’s a question that Martha is probably thinking, because she’s a better Spanish speaker than I am.

Was the person who said that a Spanish speaker?

No, it was the current governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick.

Interesting.

He’s African-American, and he was the one who said it.

Well, it’s interesting because also the mayor of Boston, Tom Menino, who’s known for doing a lot of malapropisms.

Oh, wait. You know what? You’re right. I’m looking at my note here.

Oh, yeah?

And it was the governor of Massachusetts quoting the mayor of Boston.

Okay. Okay. Because I know that he said that in relation to Boston’s lack of parking.

He said it’s an Alcatraz around my neck.

Oh.

Which is hilarious, but what Grant is getting at is that the word albatross may come from the Spanish and Portuguese word alcatraz, which means pelican or gannet or birds like that.

It’s another type of seabird.

Yes.

So I don’t know if this was completely a mistake on his part or if maybe he was influenced by some Spanish or Portuguese.

Because Alcatraz means a big seagoing bird.

Fascinating.

Well, Paul, thank you so much for calling.

Thank you.

Take care, Paul.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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

And if some language question is in Alcatraz around your neck, email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name’s Elaine, and I was calling about, I heard that you guys were talking about slang the other day.

That kids use that adults have no idea what it means.

Oh, yeah, sure, every day.

And I work at a fifth and sixth grade intermediate school in Indianapolis,

And one of my students kept using the word beast,

As in that is so beast, that song was beast, that BMX trick was beast,

And I had never heard of such a word before.

Beast, B-E-A-S-T?

Indeed, yes.

Very good.

I’m surprised to hear it from a 10 or 11-year-old.

I thought it was like a college-age term.

Well, these kids have older siblings.

Oh, very good.

That would explain it.

And television, with television and Internet, stuff travels between age groups with no problem these days.

So did you talk with your student about this?

Well, yes.

And I asked him because he was using it in a way that other students that I’d heard hadn’t used because he was saying,

I beasted that.

I was totally beasting that.

And other students had used it as basically a synonym for awesome or cool.

And he was using it in more verb form.

And actually, just recently I asked him again, so do you still say it like that?

And he said, well, no, people said I was saying it wrong.

So it was actually more used as a synonym for cool or awesome.

Very good.

Yeah, he got corrected by his peers.

That’s how slang comes to be definite.

It starts out vague and indefinite, and that’s how it becomes precise,

Because your peers mock you for getting it wrong.

That was the impression I got.

It doesn’t take long, does it?

But beast is definitely part of the current slang of the younger generation.

I’m 40. I’m not young enough to fully qualify for that at all.

At this point, I’m just a poser trying to keep up.

And I’m only 33, so I didn’t realize I was old already.

Well, you know, but you’re within a slingshot’s distance of it, right?

You’re like, you know, you’re all right.

I thought I was close, but apparently I’m not.

Plus, you have kids in your class all day long, so you’re closer than we are.

All I have is Martha.

She doesn’t act like a child very often.

Yeah, I’m not beast.

You two are beast.

I’m not.

Neither am I.

I also work at a high school, and I hadn’t heard it there.

Oh, really?

I hear it with the younger kids, the fifth and sixth graders, and I haven’t been hearing it at the high school.

All right, let’s see if we can do this with some simplicity.

I know that this term exists among college students.

There are some collections of slang, including some from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

That have included this term beast to mean to do well on a test, like I beasted that exam, for about six or seven years.

And I know that I can find uses of it on the Internet in very much the same way, probably 10 or 15 years earlier than that.

It’s always hard with slang.

It’s hard to search for this stuff.

And what’s really interesting is that it looks like this might have come out of sports.

For example, if you’re on the basketball court and you’re just driving really hard with no finesse whatsoever, you might be said to be beasting your way down the court.

You beasted the ball into the hoop, right?

It’s like doing it like an animal.

Like absolutely.

It’s without like any of the kind of refinements that you would expect from like a seasoned player.

And this is so interesting because you see something similar in Spanish.

Que bestia.

What a beast.

Or he played like a bestia peluda, a hairy beast.

And so you’ll find a lot of people using beast as a verb in school talking about their work.

Like I beasted my way through that paper, meaning originally it kind of meant I just tore my way through it and did like a single draft and turned it in.

And then it modified just a little bit to mean not that I did it without refinement, without any kind of real concentration, but that I did it well.

And so there’s a little bit of a transition there.

And now it’s more of an adjective?

Yeah, the adjective has kind of existed for a while.

I would call it kind of a surface noise on slang because it’s really vague.

There are so many terms in slang that mean good or great or cool.

And it’s existed.

I can find numerous examples of it.

But it’s never been that popular.

It’s never really risen to the fore and been like, it’s not like a wicked, you know,

That kind of like has a place and a time where you can say wicked belong to these people in this era.

Beast has just kind of been floating out there for several decades without kind of much attention being paid to it.

But your kids, keep an ear out because that will keep you young, I promise.

Yeah, call us with more.

Thank you, I will.

I enjoy your show very much.

Elaine, you have an advantage the rest of us don’t have.

You get to change young minds at the same time you learn from them.

Well, I’m a speech therapist, so hopefully I can teach them some new words, too.

Oh, doubly great.

Well, thank you for your work.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

You too.

What slang are you hearing?

We want to talk with you about us.

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Bring on the worditude.

More of your calls about language as A Way with Words continues.

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You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Recently, we had a call from Lee who wanted to talk about the emperor’s new clothes.

Now, you remember that story.

It’s about the emperor who walks around in the buff after some shady tailors convince him

That he’s wearing this regal finery when actually he’s not wearing anything.

And Lee had told us that his mother used to read him this story

From this lavishly illustrated children’s book.

And, of course, because it was a children’s book,

Every page had a drawing of the emperor but with the naughty bits obscured strategically.

So Lee was looking for the term for that that his mother had used

To describe covering up the naughty bits.

And I thought that the term he was looking for was antipudic, which is an obscure term that refers to a fig leaf or something like that, that’s strategically placed.

It comes from the Latin word for shame, pudor.

Well, we heard from lots of listeners who told me for shame.

They said, Martha, the word that the guy was looking for was boldlerize.

It’s the verb B-O-W-D-L-E-R-I-Z-E, which comes from the name of an English physician, Thomas Baudler, who in 1818 published a Baudlerized version of Shakespeare.

That is, he took out all the naughty parts.

So, for example, Lady Macbeth, instead of saying out damned spot, says out crimson spot.

Oh, no, this doesn’t work.

It’s Baudlerized and it’s boring.

And just imagine all the other parts that ended up on the cutting room floor.

So maybe the word that he was looking for was bolderize.

Yeah, maybe. We’ll have to talk to Lee and find out.

Yeah. But I want to tell you one other thing.

What a lot of people don’t know is that although Thomas Boldler’s name is associated with that process,

He’s not really the one who edited that edition of Shakespeare, the family Shakespeare.

You know who did?

Who?

His sister.

Oh.

Harriet Boldler.

But, of course, she couldn’t be credited with that word because it would be scandalous for a woman to acknowledge

That she actually understood which naughty parts you had to cut out.

So yet another woman who didn’t get credit for what she did.

I’m so glad we’re past that.

Right.

Call us with the words you want to talk about, 877-929-9673,

Or send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Daryl from San Diego.

Hi, Daryl. Welcome.

Thank you. I had a question for you.

All right.

Why is it when I walk into a department store, say Old Navy, for example, I look at the clothing sections and they’re titled men’s, women’s, kids, juniors, missus, and baby?

Why is it baby?

What should it be then? Babies?

Infant?

Infant?

I would think it seems like all the other ones are plural.

Right.

You know, that’s a really interesting question, Daryl.

I never really thought about it, but…

How many places have you seen that?

I think in recent history, I think Gap, Walmart, Old Navy, definitely in the Old Navy commercials.

They seem to say it a lot.

Huh.

You know, this is really interesting.

I’m looking at the Target.com site, and they have all those categories, too.

And then Baby.

You’re right.

Baby.

How weird is that?

It’s almost like baby is its own little category, you know, like the platonic essence of baby.

Yes.

You know?

So you don’t pluralize it.

No.

Why?

Why wouldn’t you?

Is it just tradition?

Oh, Daryl, what are we going to do?

I think we have to go shopping.

Well, I have a theory.

Oh, yeah.

Is that your solution?

Go shopping?

Bring me back some snow tires.

Oh, you weren’t thinking like that.

I see.

So I have a theory, and I think it’s just tradition.

Seriously.

I mean, this is a retail is a long, long business.

I mean, this business has been around for, I mean, in this form for 100 plus years, right?

Right.

Department stores and organizing stuff and knowing that people want to get stuff for a certain kind of person in a certain way.

Like, what’s the reason you go into the store and they have all the perfumes in the front?

So maybe somewhere along the way, somebody figured out that the word baby was more effective instead of infants.

Like, is infants too clinical?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Does babies suggest that somehow that you don’t have any kind of self-control and you’re breeding like rabbits?

I bet our listeners have thoughts about this.

Well, if you work in the retail business, we’d love to hear about it.

We know we have callers all over the place.

Probably somebody’s in purchasing somewhere, right?

Let us know.

Do you know the history and the reason why stores tend to do it this way?

877-929-9673.

Or give us the full details and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Darrell, we’ll see what we can do.

Great. I’ll be waiting to answer.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Lois in Poway, California sent us an interesting email.

She’s talking to us about the problem of her name.

Her name is Lois, but people just don’t get it right.

She says that growing up in New York, people would call her Laura, Lori, Doris, and Leslie.

And a couple of Japanese friends, of course, couldn’t pronounce the L’s at all, and it was a big problem.

Then she moved to San Diego, and now people also call her Luis, Luisa, Rosa, and Lola because of the Spanish-speaking population here.

Lois, we hear you.

We’re sorry about that.

I hope I got your name right.

Do people get your name wrong?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Steve Smith.

I’m calling from Winchester, Massachusetts.

Great to have you, Steve. What’s up?

Hi, Steve.

I wanted to call and ask about a particular word, see if you know what the derivation of the word vet is, V-E-T.

I’ve often wondered about this word, and I’ve heard it a lot over the years, certainly during election cycle and stuff like that.

Asked people where they think it comes from, different word people.

And the explanation I’ve gotten has never really been satisfactory to me.

Usually it’s something along the lines of having a veteran dig into somebody’s background.

But it doesn’t seem like it’s quite enough.

It seems like there’s more to it than that or there should be.

And I wondered what you guys thought.

Good instincts there.

Veteran is not the root of that.

Veterinarian?

Isn’t the story about a veterinarian, somebody who has to look at the horses before a race in order to check them out, make sure they haven’t been doped or make sure something else untoward isn’t happening, make sure they’re even just plain healthy because you don’t want to run.

It’s not humane to run a sick horse.

Yeah, yeah, and you want to check them.

They come from a veterinarian?

Yes, yes, definitely.

That’s great.

Yeah.

I had no idea.

Because they go over horses so thoroughly.

You know, you want to check every part.

That’s the same idea with vetting a candidate, for example.

And it’s funny because we talk—

Before they enter the horse race.

Yeah, before they enter the horse race, exactly.

That is great.

So when did that first come about?

When did they start using it like that?

It’s not that long ago.

I want to say—I’m sorry, I don’t have the exact data in front of it.

I think it’s 40 or 50 years.

It starts showing up in John le Carre novels.

He starts using it in his political thrillers.

And he kind of institutionalizes.

I think a lot of people borrowed it from him.

He was the popularizer of the term.

And kind of made the leap in that way.

Wow, that’s really great.

Yeah, it’s cool because if you’re not inside horse racing, you probably don’t know how strict and rigorous the rules can be about everything, including birth dates and names and sizes and all the lineages being tracked and exact precision on everything, including the health of the animals.

And you’ve got to make sure those horses don’t have any illegal immigrants hiring as gardeners or anything like that.

Or a nanny problem.

Or a nitty problem.

Or a nitty problem.

A nitty problem?

A whinny problem.

And there have been recent stories about diseases infecting horses at horse shows around the country, which I understood is exactly what we’re talking about.

This is why the importance of the veterinarian at a racetrack cannot be understated.

And it’s why this would come to mind if you were in a position to make sure that a person checked out.

You might immediately be called to remember veterinarians on the racetrack.

That’s great.

Glad to help, sir.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for all the show.

Bye-bye.

Okay, take care.

Bye-bye.

We were talking a while back about wind pudding and air sauce, which is one of those sort of dismissive things.

You know, you ask Mom what’s for dinner, and she says, wind pudding and air sauce.

All right, get out of my hair.

Go away.

Yeah, yeah, just something insubstantial.

We got a great email from David Lintier, and he says, here in Wisconsin, wind pudding is old lager speak for baked beans.

I get it. I see.

He says, near where I live is Wind Pudding Lake, named after an old logging camp whose owners fed their help beans so often that the camp became Wind Pudding Camp, and the lake nearby was memorialized as well.

Okay, sure.

I’m not sure I want a vacation at Wind Pudding Lake, but if you have, let us know how it was, 877-929-9673, or tell us about it in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Charlotte from Duluth, Minnesota.

Hi, Charlotte.

Welcome.

Hi, Charlotte.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What’s going on?

Well, I have been seeing this word in print a lot, and it’s spelled B-I-O-P-I-C.

And I’ve been wondering how it’s pronounced.

And then actually I was listening to a podcast recently and I heard one of the hosts say biopic and another host say biopic in the same episode.

And they didn’t seem to disagree about it.

But like I need to know.

So you say biopic, I say biopic?

Exactly.

And to me they both sound wrong.

So I don’t know.

Oh, really?

What is the word?

Is there a third option?

No.

What does the word mean?

Yeah, what does it mean?

Where did you hear this?

What was the podcast?

The podcast was Stuff You Should Know.

I didn’t remember what the podcast was about.

They’re on a tangent.

But, well, I mean, it’s a biography, but it’s a film.

And to me, like, biopic sounds like it should be hyphenated.

It’s, like, a little awkward.

And biopic rolls off the tongue better, but it sounds like it has to do with, like, having two eyes.

Yeah, they don’t see well far away, right?

They’re nearsighted.

I like that.

I think you’re right that a hyphen would really help this term.

It’s one of those portmanteau words of a couple of words shoved together, right?

Biographical picture.

So these are movies that just basically tell a person’s life, right?

Right.

Okay, so a biopic makes sense.

It’s a biographical picture.

Very good.

But none of the dictionaries I’m looking at here, none of the major dictionaries have a hyphen.

I wonder if it used to have it.

It strikes me as a variety word.

It is.

Like variety, the publication would use this word.

That is the earliest reference that I’ve seen to it.

Oh, very good.

And it didn’t have a hyphen then.

It was just those two words smushed together like that, biopic.

It does sound very much like the language of that Hollywood publication.

But I agree with you.

This is one of those words that, for me, you know, you see them in print, and they completely mess you up.

When I hear biopic, it sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

It sounds like biographical picture, but I look at it and it’s like, yeah, it looks like myopic.

And I also heard, it’s funny that you heard it on a podcast because just last week on local radio here,

I heard somebody who speaks Spanish as a first language say biopic.

So it’s very confusing.

Do you know what it reminds me of?

It’s the people who read the word M-I-S-L-E-D as mizzled.

This is something people have told me misled.

Really?

Yeah, before they heard the word, they didn’t connect the pronunciation with the spelling.

Right, right.

It looked like a mizzle, but it’s actually misled.

It reminds me of that.

You don’t know about the division of a word sometimes until you hear it or, ta-da, look at the etymology.

That’s something that etymologies are good for.

Right.

Well, that is the epitome of an example of that kind of thing.

Yeah, that one always stops me short.

Biopic.

So, yeah, biopic is the correct pronunciation, just to be clear.

Biopic isn’t really cutting it. Charlotte, thank you so much for calling.

Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.

If you come across a word and it makes you say,

Huh, call us 877-929-9673

Or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi. Hi, who’s this? This is Frank Spitzer from Coronado, California.

Frank, how you been?

Excellent. I’ve been looking forward to finding this out.

Yeah?

Bailiwick.

This is not my bailiwick.

This is not what, I’m not strong-suited, something to that effect or expertise.

Right.

It’s not your bag.

It’s not your thing.

It’s not my thing, exactly.

And the funny thing about it, it was an attorney that told me that word.

And he said, well, that’s not my bailiwick.

Mm—

And I wanted to find out, well, that’s a curious statement.

In and of itself, and then what is the history?

How did that come to being?

You know, for the longest time when I was growing up,

I thought bailiwick was just one of those words like thingamajig

Or billy-doo or something like that.

It has an interesting history.

Bailiwick is a combination of a couple of different words

In their older senses, one of which was bailiff

And one of which was wick.

You know, when you think of a bailiff today,

You think of somebody working in a courtroom, right?

The guy with the uniform.

But it used to be in Middle English that title was a little bit more lofty and it referred to the public minister of a district, you know, somebody working for the king.

So you have bailiff in the first part of the word.

And then the second part of the word, wick, is also really interesting because it comes from an old term that refers to a kind of place like a farm or a village.

You see this word in a lot of places like Gatwick in England.

Gatwick Airport.

Yeah, yeah, the place where the airport is, its name literally means goat farm, Gatwick.

And Greenwich, you know, is spelled with W-I-C-H at the end.

And that was literally Green Village.

So the wick part refers to a place.

And so if you put those two together, the bailiff and the wick, back in the old days,

You got the county in which an English sheriff or bailiff exercises jurisdiction.

Over a goat farm?

Over the people or anything.

Gatwick alone means goat farm,

But bailiwick in general just is a place of jurisdiction.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

So in a succinct manner, these days,

How did it get transferred from those two descriptions

To what is normally where the word’s used in today’s language?

It became generic, basically.

It’s basically the way you say, that’s not my jurisdiction.

On cop shows, for example, it’s like the FBI and the sheriff and the city police are always arguing about who gets to control the crime scene at a murder if it happens on some questionable territory, right?

They are deciding whose bailiwick or whose domain it is, right?

There you go.

So it’s just legally – the legal term became generalized, entered into language, and here we are.

That was pretty succinct.

I love it.

Jurisdiction of a goat farm.

Something like that, Frank.

There you go.

Great. Thanks for calling, buddy.

Take that back to your turn.

Thank you.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your questions about words and language.

Martha knows everything I know a little bit.

877-929-9673 or words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I was reading one of those profiles of people in the San Diego Business Journal, you know, the kind where they just have a lot of different things, like somebody’s best recent moment, worst recent moment, their favorite quote.

And this person had a favorite quote that I really loved.

It’s from her grandmother.

And the quote is, is that funny hee hee or funny ha ha?

And I love that because what she says is her words question whether I was laughing at someone or with someone.

I never thought about that.

Funny hee hee versus funny ha ha.

Interesting. So he is making fun of someone and ha-ha is enjoying the humor that they’ve brought.

Yeah, I never thought about that, but I like it.

If your grandmother said something cool, call us 877-929-9673 or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

That’s our show for this week.

Don’t forget, you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send us email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also chooses our music.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell, Jennifer Powell, and James Ramsey.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by WayWord, Inc., a non-profit organization.

The show’s recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. So long.

Toodaloo.

Neither, neither, neither, neither. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University,

Where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.