Big as a Breadbox (episode #1667)

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And in our part of the world right now, it’s pretty hot, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah, it sure is.

In Fahrenheit, it’s in the 80s.

Yeah, it’s way up there lately.

And this has me thinking about expressions involving sweat.

Do you have a favorite?

Well, I’ve always thought that saying that women glow, they don’t sweat, was always nice.

And Yiddish Shvitz, you know, which even sounds like it’s almost onomatopoeic.

But, you know, we were at a campground the other day in the beautiful country of San Diego County, and we were talking about this weather, and I was saying, well, at least the humidity’s low, because I perspire a lot, and they all laughed.

I was like, what? Perspire? It’s a word.

But, you know, I guess it’s just a little too fancy for some people.

Oh, perspire. I perspire. It’s called perspiration.

Yeah, yeah. It’s a little elevated, I guess.

You don’t put on an anti-sweat roll that you buy at a drugstore, right?

It’s an anti-perspiration roll.

Well, of course, there’s also, you know, I’m sweating buckets or I’m sweating like a sinner in church.

But Spanish speakers have a great expression.

It’s sudar como un pollo, which, of course, means sweat like a chicken.

Wait, do chickens sweat under all those feathers?

Well, no, and they don’t perspire either, I don’t think.

But if you picture a chicken on a rotisserie, you know, a rotisserie chicken.

That’s right.

When they’re spinning, they are definitely schvitzing.

Yeah.

The fat is coming through the skin.

Right.

Those juices.

Yeah.

But I also like a couple of terms in Dutch.

There’s one that translates as, I’m sweating like an otter, which is kind of cute, you know, because usually when you see otters.

Yeah, when they come up, all that hair, it’s still covered with water.

They look like they’ve been working hard.

And they have been because they’re busy little guys.

Right.

They’re shiny.

But I think my favorite is a Dutch expression that translates as, I’m sweating little carrots.

Oh, little carrots.

That sounds painful.

Well, funny you should mention painful because the Dutch word for little carrots is paintjes, which sounds sort of like the Dutch word for pints.

And so it may be that those two words got, you know, combined.

Right. A little bit of wordplay.

Sweating pints makes sense.

Sweating carrots does not.

But sweating carrots is funny.

Yeah. It sounds painful.

Well, what do they say when you’re perspiring or glowing or sweating or schvitzing out your way?

Let us know.

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Text or call.

In the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

And if you’re somewhere else in the world, you can find lots of ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name is Eden Braun.

I’m from Havertown, Pennsylvania.

Havertown.

We’re outside of Philly.

Outside of Philadelphia.

Right on the main line.

Gotcha.

Welcome to the show, Eden.

What can we do for you?

So I had a question.

My mother, Joyce Brock, used to use an expression, fair to Midland.

And I’ve often wondered about that.

It goes something like, how are you doing? And my mom would say, fair to Midland.

So I guess my question is, where’s Midland?

What does it mean to be fair to Midland?

Is that good or bad or so-so?

Was she from the Philadelphia area originally?

No.

So my mom, born and raised in kind of the Illinois area, and then met my father and then started the family out on the West Coast in Oregon.

Gotcha.

Was she from Southern Illinois?

I think it’s south of Chicago.

Oh, south of Chicago. Gotcha. Okay.

Yep.

All right. Oh, fair to Midland, Martha.

Yeah, and Eden, I’m wondering, do you have any idea how she might have spelled that last word?

Funny you should ask.

So my husband, Jim, and I debate, is it Midland or my ears poor and is it Midling?

Well, yeah, your ears are just fine because people say this both ways.

And it’s so interesting to me that this is a question that comes up again and again and again.

People want to know, why does fair to middling mean, you know, pretty good?

You might say, hey, how are you doing? Fair to middling?

And it goes back to the 15th century in Scotland.

The term middling, M-I-D-D-L-I-N-G, meant average or acceptable, you know, not too great, not too terrible, just right in the middle, middling.

And over time, this term middling has just come to mean exactly that.

And there was an old system of grading agricultural products.

You know, you might describe them as fine or fair or middling.

And we’re talking about rice or cotton or livestock.

There were different ways of talking about the quality of those items.

And so people would use the term fair to middling to refer to those qualities.

And, you know, what’s also interesting is the Midland part, M-I-D-L-A-N-D, Midland being a place in West Texas, has gotten adopted by a lot of people just kind of jokingly in Texas, you know, talking about fair to Midland, meaning something that’s also kind of, you know, so-so, average.

So either of those expressions is correct.

And it’s pretty darn widespread, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah, I’m surprised to hear you say that the Midland version, the place name version is correct.

Because the ferret of Midland is far more common by like 10 to 1 and is the source.

Centuries of use of that before the place name Midland even starts to be used even jokingly in the expression.

Yeah, well, I was going to say people do use it jokingly in Texas.

And I think there was a band named ferret of Midland.

Oh, interesting.

But Eden, I want to reiterate here that what we’re talking about, like you can open newspapers.

Newspapers from the 1800s, and there’ll be long lists of goods for sale, usually raw materials.

With fair to Midland is one of the options for grading it, so people would know what they were going to buy when they went down to the auction house or went down to the whatever place it was where they traded money for merchandise.

Oh, that’s fascinating. My mom would love that.

Thank you so much for your time, Eden. We really appreciate it. Call us again sometime.

Thanks for sharing your stories about your mom.

Can’t wait to listen to all the shows.

Bye.

Yay.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

You can call us and leave a message any old time, 877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant.

Thanks for having me on.

My name is Kate Berrettini, and I’m from Folly Beach, South Carolina.

South Carolina.

Welcome to the show, Kate.

Glad to have you.

What’s up?

Well, I had a wonderful trip to the Big Island of Hawaii a few years ago.

And my friend and just even prior to that, people had always talked about like the Aloha spirit.

And, you know, I was sure it was probably a cool thing.

But after being there, I realized that it is definitely a thing.

And the whole time I was like trying to figure out what it was.

And I kind of came away with feeling like it is a deep respect between humans and land, or really every living thing, or I guess every living and nonliving thing.

And a friend of mine who I was staying with told me that aloha actually means like literally everything breathing.

And so I feel like that kind of goes with the respect part of everything.

And I’ve always been curious if there are other words throughout history and other languages, just anywhere in the world, that had a similar meaning and feeling.

Yeah, I like this. It’s kind of a great example of the best of human thinking, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Martha, what do we know first about aloha?

Well, I’m really glad you asked this question.

And of course, what would be ideal is if we had native islanders who could speak for themselves.

But my understanding of it is that, first of all, there are forms of this word in various Polynesian languages.

But in Hawaii, it’s taken on a special meaning, much like what you described, you know, sustaining harmony in a multicultural community and honoring connections that extend beyond generations, beyond boundaries, and like you said, you know, beyond humans and their environment, kind of a shared life force.

And what really interests me about this term is that there was actually a definition of it written into Hawaii state law a few years ago that describes it as

A coordination of mind and heart within each person. And this passage in Hawaiian state law says that it’s more than a word of greeting or farewell or a salutation. Aloha means mutual regard and affection and extends warmth and caring with no obligation in return, that it’s the essence of relationships in which each person is important to every other person for collective existence. And I just think that that’s such a lovely thing to put into your law, that that’s what it goes on to say, that when government officials are exercising their power on behalf of the people, that they need to contemplate and reside with the life force and give consideration to the aloha spirit.

I think that’s so lovely because I think, you know, I think for some of us the word has been a bit diluted, you know. You think about aloha shirts, those Hawaiian shirts, and you go to Hawaii and everybody says it’s hello and goodbye, but it’s so much more than that, right?

Oh, yeah.

Was that your experience there?

Yeah, it is for sure.

Oh, it’s interesting to have such an emotional, warm feeling for something like aloha and aloha spirit. And yet we’re citing Hawaii revised statutes five through seven and a half.

Right? Yeah.

I want to go back to a couple linguistic things on this. One is, Kate, although the idea that it’s from two words meaning face and breath is really common, it’s a folk etymology. And actually, it’s a single, indivisible word, and it is not made of the words for face and breath. And we know this because of what Martha said, that there are all these similar words in other Polynesian languages, such as Maori and Samoan and Tahitian and a bunch of others throughout the Pacific.

I don’t know if you were aware that many of the Polynesian languages are related and can be proven to be related, which shows great travels in ancient days across the big ocean. So that said, it doesn’t take anything away from Aloha and the idea.

I want to go back also to you mentioned who else has this. Well, it is incredibly common for the great thinkers of many cultures to come up with an idea of unity and respect for each other and respect for the earth and respect for all life. But I think the most similar to me, Martha, would be in Hebrew and Arabic, the shalom and salam, both of them meaning peace, basically, and used for hello and goodbye, like aloha.

Wow, that is so beautiful. Holy smokes. But, you know, even a variety of African languages and Sanskrit and a bunch of Native American languages often have many ideas about unity and family and mutual respect. And it’s, you know, all the great thinkers of the world and every culture have eventually come to the same conclusion. And sometimes it’s expressed easily and sometimes it’s more complex.

Thank you both so much.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Your language questions are always welcome. Toll-free, 24 hours a day in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673. Or if you want to find another way to reach us, go to our website at waywordradio.org.

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. My name is Grant Barrett.

And my name is Martha Barnette. And stepping off his hovercraft full of eels is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Welcome, John.

Well, you know, the only way to power, correctly power a hovercraft is eel power, by the way. So here I am, unfortunately. Now I smell like eels, but that’s fine. You guys can’t tell anyway.

My latest side gig is writing anthems. I was delighted to find it’s a pretty wide open field. Not a lot of people out there writing anthems. And I happen to cross a whole bunch of nations that don’t have anthems. For example, I wrote this one.

In mathematics, it’s an arrangement of elements into various groups without regard to their order in the group. Or in chess, it’s a relatively long sequence of moves. That’s one I wrote for the Combi Nation.

Combi Nation.

Oh, got it.

Yeah, the Nation of Combi.

Okay, Combi.

You got it now, huh?

Yeah.

Okay. Now, you will have to listen to me sing several anthems. Here we go. Let’s hear a few more.

Oh, boy. The act or process of testing pupils, candidates, et cetera, as by questions or a doctor’s look at your medical history and your body. Examination.

The exama.

The examination.

Yes, the nation of exama.

Okay. These end in nation.

Okay, I get it now.

They do?

I guess they do, yeah.

Got it, got it, got it. Nicely spotted.

Okay. The intensity of light falling at a given place on a lighted surface. Or the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. It includes the use of artificial sources like lamps or natural sources like the sun. It’s no wonder that the country of Illuma doesn’t sing that very often, John.

They love it in Illuma.

Illumination.

Illumination, indeed. Syllables, oh syllables, what would we do without this? The line would go on longer and longer and longer and longer. Were it not for this useful process of punctuation, it adds just a little dash to your writing.

Termi, the termination?

How about the Haifa?

Haifa, yes. I just got back from Haifa.

The nation of Haifa, the Haifa nation.

That’s very good.

Right. Not the coastal city of Haifa, but the nation.

No, no, no. This is the whole nation of Haifa, yeah.

Finally. Welcome to our kingdom where everyone’s a king. Like once a day we celebrate by putting on a ring and picking up a scepter and putting on a crown. Now you’re the queen, now I’m the queen. We take turns bowing down.

Yes, queen, it’s the nation of Korona.

Koro, Koro nation, yes. Everybody gets to be king or queen or something else, whatever they want to be in Koronation.

Nicely done, everybody. Coordination. Well, you’re royalty to us, John. Thank you for another lovely quiz, and tell the family hello, all right? You too, guys. I’ll see you next week.

Yep, see you next week. And if you’re listening to all this, we know that you are a part of Word Nerd Nation, and you can participate by calling us anytime, toll-free in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dale Hutchins, and I’m calling from Huntsville, Alabama.

Well, hello, Dale. Nice to talk to you.

And you as well. I’m calling with a phrase that I found really fun and really funny, and I thought I would share it with you. A little bit of background. I’m retired, but professionally, I was an egghead research chemist. And I worked for a big company that had research groups of other egghead chemists in several places, one in Minnesota, Alabama, where I am, one in Germany, and one in Belgium.

And so we’d get all the research people on the phone, on telephone conferences, very often. So there’s people from all kinds of cultures and all kinds of languages. So you heard all kinds of accents on these. One day on one of these, I was describing a product that I had made in my lab, and I described it as having the viscosity of pancake syrup.

And a voice came on the telephone conference, what? And I recognized it as the voice of one of the team members who was originally from Quebec City, but has moved to the Minnesota group. So he was French-Canadian and he asked me what I had said several times. And I repeated it, you know, slower and louder every time. And finally, he said, we call and it was with a heavy French accent that I won’t try to duplicate. But he said, we call that lamppost syrup.

And, you know, when I obviously didn’t know what he was talking about, he explained that that syrup was not like real maple syrup as they had in Quebec. And so it was so bad that it was like it was tapped from lampposts instead of trees. So anyway, it was really fun. I expect it’s fairly regional, but I just wanted to share it with you.

Yeah, that’s wonderful, Dale. And I’m interested that he said lamppost and not like telephone pole or utility pole, sir. He said lamppost, huh?

Oh, he said lamp post syrup. How interesting, because there is an expression that is used in Quebec, which means pole syrup, and it refers to telephone poles or utility poles that are made of wood.

And instead of tapping a maple tree, you tap one of these wooden utility poles to get this icky syrup.

That’s just a pale imitation of the real thing.

Yes.

Well, maybe he simplified it for us Americans.

Maybe so.

Maybe so.

But that’s very picturesque and very disdainful too, right?

I mean, you know, that diluted corn syrup or that diluted maple syrup is nothing like the real thing.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah, they actually have, just like they do with the different laws about champagne in France.

And in Quebec, they have different laws about what qualifies as maple syrup.

It’s like it’s constant law that has to meet these certain criteria because they don’t want any of this caro syrup nonsense.

I want to leave you, Dale, before we go with one other French term, which I really love, that this reminds me of.

When European French people talk about bad coffee, they will call it jus de chaussette, sock juice.

Like it’s made from dirty socks.

Yes.

That’s good.

Well, thanks for your time.

Our pleasure, Dale.

It was real nice talking to you.

Take care of yourself, all right?

Thanks so much for calling, Dale.

Y’all as well.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye.

Take care.

How do they make fun of food out your way?

We’d love to hear your idioms and slang.

877-929-9673.

We got a message from Linda Vincelli, who lives in Stewart, Florida.

And she was telling us about a friend from Argentina who introduced us to a wonderful Spanish phrase for somebody who’s a little too full of themselves.

The phrase is, la ultima Coca-Cola del desierto.

They think that they’re the last Coca-Cola in the desert. That’s perfect.

How wonderful. Somebody who is just too big for their britches.

I noticed that you said full of themselves, which is its idiom on its own.

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

And I was digging around and I found some other Spanish expressions that convey the same idea.

And they translate as, he thinks he’s the last beer in the stadium or the last suck of a mango.

And then my favorite was, se cree la mama de Tarzan.

Here she thinks they’re Tarzan’s mom.

What a put down.

Isn’t that great?

Yeah, Mexican President Vicente Fox used that expression when talking about another government.

They think they’re Tarzan’s mom.

Well, swing over on your hind to the nearest payphone in the jungle and give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Tanya.

Hi, Tanya. Where are you?

Well, I’m actually calling right now from Xiamen, China, but I’m from Marshall, Michigan.

China. What are you doing there?

Yeah, I’m here on a work trip.

Okay. Well, that’s really cool.

Well, I’m glad you took some time out to talk to us.

What’s on your mind?

That’s quite a commute.

Yeah.

The other day, it was funny.

My brother, he’s 24, and he picked me up, and I was kind of taking my time.

And he said, you know, stop dilly-dallying.

And I was shocked because I thought it was such an older expression that a young person would never say.

And I remembered, actually, I kind of giggled and I said, well, dilly-dallying is one of my favorite things.

And I realized that the word had kind of came out of fashion.

And I just kind of wanted to get a little bit of background about dilly-dallying because it’s such a fun word and I really love doing it.

Yeah. What were you doing to dilly-dally? Were you just taking forever to get dressed?

Oh, you know, I was looking at myself in the mirror, probably searching for my keys, looking for my headphones, you know, all the stuff you do before you leave the house.

Well, it’s an example of what we call reduplication, which is when all or part of a word is repeated, sometimes with a slight sound change.

And in this case, the word that got a little bit altered is the word dally, which goes way back to an Anglo-French term, dally, which means to chat.

And then this term to chat took on different meanings over time.

It sort of came to mean acting playfully and often flirtatiously.

And we get the word dalliance from that.

Dalliance is related to dilly-dally.

You know, you have a dalliance, just, you know, something that you don’t take too seriously.

And then dally came to mean to trifle with or to spend time frivolously, I guess, looking in the mirror and things like that.

It was elaborated on in the form of dilly-dally, which is just a little bit more, I don’t know, a little bit more sarcastic, a little more intense.

If you dilly-dally, then you’re kind of wasting time, right?

You’re just kind of taking your time and not getting where you need to be.

So it’s an example of reduplication.

Or if you want to be really specific about it, it’s an example of ablout reduplication, which is where the two halves of the word differ only in their vowel sound, like zigzag and riffraff.

And dilly-dally is another example of that.

Oh, yeah.

I think that’s really interesting.

I never heard of that before.

I just thought it was a really fun thing to say, and I hadn’t heard it in such a long time.

All right.

Well, have fun in China and enjoy your time there.

All right.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Call us again sometime, Tanya.

Okay.

Bye.

Bye.

If you’re wondering about a word, we’d love to chit-chat with you about it.

So don’t dilly-dally.

Call us, 877-929-9673.

We take calls from all over the world, and you can find out how to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org/contact.

Hi.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name is Don.

I’m calling from San Mateo, Florida.

Hey, Don.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Okay, so growing up, whenever Christmas or a birthday was approaching, I would ask my mom, what did she get me for Christmas?

And she would reply, I got you a pasteris.

And after pressing, she would say that it’s bigger than a bread box and smaller than an elephant.

Wait, pasteris, can you give us your best spelling for that?

The best spelling I’ve come up with is F-A-S-T-A-R-E-U-S.

Festeros.

And it’s bigger than a bread box and smaller than an elephant.

That limits it.

That is so unhelpful.

Yeah.

Parents are always unwilling to give a precise answer to some nosy children.

Did you find out more about Festeros?

And did anyone else in your family use it?

My mom heard it from her mom, and then my grandma said that she heard it from her dad, and her dad would use it in everyday instances.

Like, the car is broke down, the Festeros is broken.

So, like, do hickey or thingamajig.

Right, exactly.

So, like, a generic replacement noun.

Okay.

The weird thing about Festeros is it reminds me of an Irish word that shows up in English, not that common in dialects in the UK.

But the verb in English is fooster, and you can also have foostering, or the noun foosterins, which means fuss or bustle or fluster.

And they’re all about fussing or fidgeting or, you know, doing purposeless idle actions, fumbling about.

And I just wonder if that’s what the word originally meant, if maybe it did come from Irish, you know, Irish Gaelic and meant, you know, we’re not doing much of anything.

But I’m going to give you a complicated word that sounds like Latin.

Right, right.

But the bigger than a breadbox and smaller than an elephant, now that one’s got quite a pedigree.

It comes from a famous television show and television show host.

The show is What’s My Line?

And the host was Steve Allen.

And in his autobiography, he talks about the day he first used the phrase, January 18th, 1953.

He’s the guy who coined it, apparently, and he’s the guy who popularized it.

And it was like one of his calling card expressions, because after he said, you know, when he was trying to narrow down a bunch of particulars, after he asked somebody, you know, is it bigger than a bread box?

People were so tickled by the expression and began to tease him about it.

And it became this kind of pat-set phrase for a generation, so that when you played 20 questions with your friends or family, you wouldn’t start with, is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?

You would say, is it bigger than a bread box?

Oh, okay.

And so the last part about, and smaller than an elephant, I think is an innovation.

A new add-on, but it makes it so much even better, I think.

Bigger than a bread box and smaller than an elephant.

That’s only 10 or 15 billion things.

Exactly.

Yeah, Don, did your family have a bread box?

Ours didn’t.

We just put the rainbow bread on the ground.

No, we did not.

And do you know what one is?

Do you know what a bread box is?

Oh, yeah.

I know what a bread box is for sure.

All right.

So just tell us, for those who don’t, because we’ve got all generations and all ages on the line.

Bread box is a little bit bigger than a loaf of bread, has a door or a slide that opens up, keeps your bread from your critters.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you don’t want the mice or ants in there.

It also keeps it fresh.

But that’s what we know about those expressions.

I hope it was helpful, Don.

Absolutely.

That was awesome.

I love the show.

I listen to it all the time.

Oh, it’s our pleasure.

Yeah, call us again sometime.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

My grandmouse Evie is almost five, and the other day she and her grandma were talking about my nephew and his boyfriend who live in New York, but who had been visiting me here in California.

So Evie’s grandma is telling her that those guys had a really good time here, but they’d gone back to New York, at which point little Evie pipes up and says, no, I think they’re still in Unicornia.

Yeah, California is something of a unicorn.

Right? She’s not wrong.

Not wrong at all. A little fantastical, a little unbelievable. Very exceptional.

Proud residents of Unicornia.

Well, you can reach me and great auntie Martha on the telephone at 877-929-9673.

More stories about what we say and why we say it. Stay tuned.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. And Grant, I have learned a new term and I wonder if you know it. The term is lemur ball.

Lemur ball like fancy gowns and tie and tails and swing in the cane and I don’t know, being announced at the door by a footman?

That’s exactly what I was picturing. But actually, well, let me share from this book that I want to talk about. There’s a description of a lemur ball in here. When ring-tailed lemurs are cold or frightened or when they want to bond, they group together in a furry mass known as a lemur ball.

Forming a black and white sphere that ranges in size from a football to a bicycle wheel.

They intertwine their tails and paws and press against one another’s walnut-sized, swiftly beating hearts.

Isn’t that beautiful?

Yeah, it’s a cuddle puddle. It’s a puppy pile.

It is, and you can find pictures of lemur balls if you just search for that on the internet.

Oh boy, a new life goal.

Right? A new thing to do when you need cheering up. They’re really, really cute.

Where did you learn about this, Martha?

I’m glad you asked, Grant. I learned about it in a new book called Vanishing Treasures, A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures. It’s by Katherine Rundle. And you may recall that Rundle is a fellow at Oxford University, and we’ve talked before about her other book, Super Infinite, which is about the life of the poet John Donne. And that book emphasizes Donne’s imperative to realize that life itself is an astonishment, and it behooves us to be amazed.

And in this new book, she takes that idea even further in 23 short essays, each about a particular animal and what’s so astonishing about that animal. And then she assembles them into a kind of cabinet of curiosities. She calls attention to remarkable facts about raccoons, pangolins, hedgehogs, wombats, and narwhals, to name just a few. And she marvels at the Greenland shark, which I didn’t realize lives for hundreds of years. And she celebrates what she calls the off-kilter beauty of some animals, like the hermit crab that has shocking emerald eyes on stalks that are striped like a barber’s pole in red and white.

So this is a beautiful little book, and it has poetic passages like that and tasteful illustrations.

But there’s also an undercurrent of sadness and urgency, because all of these species or their subspecies are endangered.

So this book is not just a lyrical invitation to wonder at the beauty and complexity of the living world. It’s also an urgent call to recognize its fragility.

And I just really appreciated it.

And the book again?

Vanishing Treasures, A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures.

And it’s by Katherine Rundle.

We’ll have Katherine Rundle’s book on our website so you can find out more about it.

And you can find out more about the show and how to talk to us on our website at waywordradio.org or call right now toll free in the United States and Canada.

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Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Joseph from North Carolina.

We’re glad to have you. What’s up?

Yes, so the word that I’m wanting to find some information on is the word jasm.

This was a word that was used in my family. I don’t know if it’s a real word. I don’t know if it’s just something that we, our family made up.

But it was mainly used by my grandmother, which is we called Meemaw, which was my dad’s mother.

And basically, in the phrase that was used was, you know, you better eat your jasm. Like it was in the context of eating and food.

So basically, if whatever food that you did not eat, whatever you didn’t clear your plate from, that’s what you had to eat for breakfast the next day.

So if you didn’t clean your plate, you had to eat your jasmine, which was what you had to eat the next day for breakfast.

If you spelled that, how would it go?

Oh, gosh.

If I had to spell it, I would say J-A-S-O-M-E or J-A-S-U-M.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think we can help you here, partly because there’s an entry in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

It only has two citations, but there’s a related spelling, and I’ll get to the spelling predicament in a minute.

There’s a related spelling that can mean gravy or sauce or even the juice from a rotten apple.

And the spelling is interesting for a couple reasons.

It’s often spelled J-A-S-S-U-M or J-A-S-M or J-A-Z-M.

All the S’s replace the Z’s.

And get this, this is probably the same word that is the source of the word jazz as in the musical form, J-A-Z-Z.

And it all goes back to this idea of vigor, energy, pep, or a person’s vital force.

And this idea of it being your vital force connects to this idea of food, right? Where do you get your vital force from? From eating.

It’s your fuel. It’s literally your fuel.

And this is what made it become the word for jazz the music form because it was about your essential nature as a performer, right? So all of these are all connected to this really complicated family of spelling and meanings, but all of them have this idea about your vitality.

Yeah, it’s like it’s kind of interesting that you’re saying it’s kind of a term used for like vigor and energy, but the way it was kind of mostly used and I guess the way we used it was almost more like a punishment.

Yeah.

If you didn’t finish your dinner, then you actually had to eat your jasmine the next day.

Yeah, the semantic shift of meaning your essence or the essence of food into food remains, it’s kind of a logical path.

So I could see it.

My confidence level of all this is not high, however.

I’d say maybe 60%, 70%.

But that’s the best information that I have to try to help you narrow this down.

It sounds believable to me.

Thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it, Joseph.

Thank you for having me.

All right.

Take care now.

Take care, Joseph.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Well, what’s the word or phrase that’s been floating around your family for years and you all just can’t figure out its origin or whether other people use it?

You can call us to talk about it, 877-929-9673, or send it an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Heterological nouns are nouns that sort of don’t sound like what they are.

Heterological meaning other word or other symbol.

Yeah, yeah.

So here’s one that I don’t know if it counts, but the word is cackermander.

Do you know this term?

No, but it reminds me of kind of slaky dialect terms for being left-handed, cack-handed.

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, or cackermander, like related to a salamander.

But it’s actually a term in England, a dialectal term that means friend.

And I just, you know, hey, cackermander.

It doesn’t work for me.

No, is this archaic?

Obsolete?

I can’t imagine this is being used, you know, in greetings in Parliament, you know, to MPs at the start of the day.

I think probably it’s one of those terms that’s fading out or has faded out.

But you can find it in dialect dictionaries, and it just sort of makes me stop and think.

Well, in a world of parasocial relationships, we consider you, our listener, our cacamander.

So give us a call, cacamander, 877-929-9673,

Or find all of our past episodes and a lot of ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jeff. I’m from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

I was calling because me and my partner were driving, and we were having a discussion in the car regarding different phrases that are used to kind of describe situations.

When you go traveling long distances, they say you tend to suffer from jet lag, or when you go out and have a night on the town, you tend to have a hangover.

But we were kind of wondering, when it comes to situations like after you have a lot of exertion for a lot of physical activity or you’re doing a conference somewhere or anything,

We couldn’t come up with any kind of a phrase or term in relation to that kind of a status that you might find yourself in.

I didn’t know if you had any insights as far as what that would be called.

So just to clarify, we’re talking about a more generic situation.

For example, you spend the day moving all your belongings to a new home.

Besides ordinary words like exhausted, you’re looking for something a little more colorful.

A little more colorful, correct.

Okay, gotcha.

English is loaded, Martha, I think, with a ton of these.

Well, yeah, the one that I really like is for swunk.

Do you know this term?

Oh, yeah, that’s used by all the kids today.

Well, yeah, the verb to swink is an old word that means to work really hard.

And so if you’re for swunk, then you’ve just totally worked all day.

And in Britain, you might say, I’m knackered.

You know, I’m really tired from doing something all day.

But I’m also thinking of, like, if you think of extreme sports, you know, people will talk about bonking, meaning sort of to hit a wall.

I think there’s some kind of…

Yeah, both of those.

Bonking in particular with cycling, right?

Yeah.

But I tell you what, the term that I really like is from French.

It’s coup de pompe, which is aviation slang that’s been around since the 1920s.

And it refers to the sudden descent of a plane when it’s sucked into an air pocket, you know, and that sudden drop that you feel in a plane.

That’s what I feel about eight o’clock every night.

You know, I tell people that my bottom fell out.

I think of like carrying a cardboard box that’s got a lot of books in it and it’s a little wet on the bottom and all of a sudden the bottom falls out.

I don’t know.

That’s what I use.

What’s the French phrase again?

Coup de pomme.

It’s, you know, like a blow of the pump.

Gotcha.

So, Martha, I was wondering if in your Southern heritage you have plum tuckered out in there anywhere.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

Plum tuckered out.

Or dog tired.

-huh.

Yeah.

Both of those.

Yeah, for sure.

There are so many of these, Jeff.

I mean, which direction do you want to go?

Yeah.

I know.

I honestly love the first one, the four swunk.

I’m looking forward to tell people that I’m just four swunk after moving stuff around my house or something.

I can’t do anything.

I’m four swunk from work yesterday.

We don’t get many calls from Victorians, Jeff, but I’m glad you’re here.

Well, yeah, I like your notion, too, of after a conference or after a day at a conference.

It’s so stimulating but also so exhausting.

There’s also like when you’re almost there, almost worn out, like running on fumes is one I love.

Or just out of gas is another one.

Yeah.

Speaking of aviation, I was just reminded of what flight attendants say, you know, when they have had a long day and they go to their hotel room and they just want to slam click.

They just want to slam the door, click it locked, and not talk to anybody, not see anybody, not serve any drinks, nothing.

Just slam click.

As a mostly introvert, I get that.

I totally get that.

Right, exactly.

That’s kind of my general term after work.

I’m like, nope, done with peopling right now.

I’m going to slam quick for the day, I guess.

Well, Jeff, I hope we haven’t worn you out.

Or shattered you.

Yeah.

He’s wrung out like a sponge, Martha.

Jeff, that’s a little bit of what we know on the topic,

But I’m sure our listeners will chime in with their.

Favorites. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye, John. Take care. Bye.

877-929-9673. Leave a message or go to our website and find out all about us and all of our past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Jiffy from Atlanta, Georgia. My husband and I go with our two dogs to Maine for part of the summer. It was 10:30 the night before we were leaving to drive back home to Atlanta. And I had the dogs out to do their business. And I was cleaning up business from dog one. And dog two comes running from the corner of the yard in the dark. And it’s rubbing her face on the grass. And this is not normal behavior for her. And then, oh my gosh, y’all, I was enveloped is the only word for it in this gasoline smell. And I was like, what have you gotten into? And she is not happy. And all of a sudden I thought, oh my gosh, you have gotten sprayed by skunk. Yes, we are leaving at 8:30 the following morning. We are packed up. We’re going to drive and be on the road for two hours. Two hours, no, for two nights. With the stinkiest dog on the planet.

Stinkiest dog on the planet, in the car with this said dog, and then how are we going to bring her into a hotel room?

Oh, no.

Anyway, I was recounting this story to a friend, and I told her about the dog’s name is Moxie, about Moxie getting skunked. And I thought, as soon as it was out of my mouth, I thought, you know what? I haven’t used that word in so long. When did I? I know this phrase. And then it hit me, like the stench, you know, it hit me that the last time I used, you know, I’ve been skunked, getting skunked, being skunked, was when I was playing cribbage with my dad.

Let’s talk about being skunked, but not just in cribbage.

And many sports, including cribbage and table tennis and horseshoes and backgammon and dominoes and others, being skunked is kind of related to the idea of the mercy rule.

That is, there is a big enough point gap or scoring gap that the game is called for whoever’s winning or whoever’s leading, even if there’s still time on the clock or if other rules for ending the match aren’t even met.

So it’s just this whole idea of there’s a stink on the game, so to speak, and you just got to quit it.

And that’s really where the figurative uses of skunked come about.

You’ll find in the 1840s in newspapers, people talk about one politician or one political party or another being skunked, meaning even though you couldn’t quite put your finger on it, whatever had happened in the past had kind of ruined their reputation or had ruined their prospects, their skunks.

And even in linguistics, Brian Garner, who’s a well-known lexicographer and has the Garner’s Usage Manual, a respected book, he talks about language being skunked, which is words that are so disputed in their origin or meaning that you just can’t use them, like hopefully or decimate.

They’re skunked.

So you should just stay away from them so you don’t even open up that argument every time you pop the word out.

Well, it has been a pleasure.

And I really, I get this now.

Okay.

Yeah, in a visceral way, clearly.

In a very visceral way.

All right.

You take care of yourself.

Give us another call sometime, all right?

All right.

Well, y’all take good care.

All right.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

It’s such a distinctive smell that no wonder it generated so much language over the years.

And it’s a phenomenon that you don’t get in every part of the world where the skunk or skunk-like creatures that prey just don’t exist.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

877-929-9673.

A Way with Words senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

Tim Felten is our engineer and editor.

And John Chaneski is our quiz master.

Go to waywordradio.org for all of our past episodes, podcast links, and ways to reach us.

If you have a language thought or question, the toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada.

1-877-929-9673.

A Wayword Words is an independent nonprofit production of Wayword, Inc.

It’s supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Although we’re not a part of NPR, we thank NPR stations throughout the United States that carry the show.

And special thanks to our nonprofit’s volunteer board.

Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Merrill Perlman, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

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

So long.