Bingo Fuel

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.

Lawrence Peter Barra, otherwise known as Yogi Barra, is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history.

But he’s also famous for coming up with all kinds of quips and goofy statements that make you stop and think.

Like, for example, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Or this great advice, never answer an anonymous letter.

Or, of course, famously, it’s deja vu all over again.

These statements are so closely associated with him that they’re sometimes called yogi-isms.

But was Yogi the first guy to ever say them?

Probably not.

Probably not.

And a great place to investigate those kinds of claims is the website, quoteinvestigator.com.

It’s run by linguist Garcin O’Toole, who tries to chase down the origins of these kinds of quotes.

And so often he finds that there’s really nothing new under the sun.

I mean, the ones that I mentioned, the when you come to a fork in the road, take it, and never answer an anonymous letter, both of those were around in the 1800s.

Yeah, I’m not surprised.

I find that again and again, the misattribution is far more common than the correct attribution, right?

And not only that, but sometimes it’s not the exact wording that was around.

It was the idea that was around.

And maybe it just finally got sharpened to the perfect form.

Yes.

Well, sort of like in Shakespeare, you know, he gets credited for a lot more words than he actually coined himself.

Right.

Yeah.

He may have been the first one to significantly use them.

And he may have been the popularizer, but he probably wasn’t the coiner of all those terms.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, the good thing is that Yogi himself understood all this.

The subtitle of his book, which I think is called The Yogi Book, the subtitle is, I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said.

That’s outstanding.

Yeah, that leads me to one of the aphorisms they’ve got in the quotation world, the quotation industry in the reference publishing, which is, when in doubt, just say Twain said it.

That’s true, right?

If not Twain, then Lincoln.

I was going to say Lincoln is the other one, right?

Yeah.

Well, we want to talk with you about language, all its forms, so call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Mac Barfield. Who is this?

Who is this? This is Martha Barnette.

And this is Grant Barrett. How are you doing, buddy?

Hey, Martha and Grant, I’m fine. How are y’all today? I’ve got a question for you.

I listened last month to your show and you were talking about John Brown.

And I thought it was so great.

So my question is, who is Cooter Brown?

Cooter Brown?

Who is Cooter Brown?

I’ve heard all my life, who is Cooter Brown?

You’re drunk as Cooter Brown.

Where’d you hear it?

Where part of the country?

Down here in Jefferson County.

I live in Monticello, just outside of the capital here in Tallahassee.

Outside, we’re in Florida.

We’re about 26 miles east of the capital.

Okay.

And we’ve always heard it all my life.

So me and the wife, I told her about the show with John Brown,

And I told her about Cooter Brown.

And she says, well, let’s look it up.

So we out with our search engine and looked it up.

And it said that Cuda Brown lived on the Mason-Dixon line before the Civil War.

And he had family on the north and the south.

And he did not want to fight against each other or against his family.

So when it was time to join up and they come around to get him, he was always drunk.

So he was drunk as Cuda Brown.

Oh, yeah.

So he was really drunk, huh?

He was really drunk.

He stayed inebriated the whole time.

Is there any truth to that, or do you know the story?

No, it’s probably 100% hogwash, unfortunately.

Oh, man, but it sounds so good, though.

Actually, when we looked it up, there’s a place in Louisiana, a restaurant or a bar,

And they call it Cooter Brown, and that’s where I got that news from.

In New Orleans, right?

Yes, sir. That’s exactly where we found it.

No, it’s probably related to an older expression, as drunk as a cooter.

Cooter meaning a box turtle.

The idea is that he’s swimming around in his own drink, you know?

I got you.

I got you.

Well, we’re going to keep saying drunk is Cooter Brown down here in Florida.

Oh, yeah.

He’s mythical at this point, right?

All kinds of legends pop up around him.

The one I love best is from a newspaper in 1936 talking about a black widow spider. Her venom will knock a man colder than Cooter Brown.

He’s very good.

I like that one.

That’s very good.

But it’s not as good as, oh, man, you’re drunk is Cooter Brown.

We really like that one.

That was good.

I really appreciate y’all having me on.

Oh, it’s our pleasure.

Thanks for calling.

I really appreciate it, Mac.

Good deal.

Y’all have a good day.

Take care now.

Bye, Mac.

-huh.

Bye-bye.

You ever heard drunk is an autumn wasp?

An autumn wasp?

Yeah.

No.

Not quite sure.

Do they fly around crazily or something?

I could see them getting into stuff.

You know, they’re attracted to sweet stuff.

And they’re kind of looking for a place to lay their eggs before they themselves die, right?

So they’re frantic in their final days.

It’s a great life, right?

You drink a lot and lay your eggs.

Drunk is dancing pigs.

Ever heard that one?

No.

Never heard that.

I love the image, though, right?

Little piggies on their trotters prancing around.

Doing the can-can.

Oh, this is a classic one.

Drunk like wedding guest.

Yes, indeed.

Been there, seen that.

877-929-9673 is our phone number, or you can email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Another yogi-ism for you, it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

My predictions about the past aren’t all that accurate either.

I guess those would be post-dictions. I never thought about that.

877-929-9673. Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Corby. I’m calling from San Diego, California.

California.

Super duper. Welcome to the show. How can we help?

Thank you. I have a question about a certain word, a military slang word that makes not a lot of sense to me.

I grew up out here in San Diego, and when I was a kid, my dad was a Navy fighter pilot.

And I don’t know if you know any fighter pilots, but they’ve got some pretty amazing stories to tell.

And I just pick his brain. I’m like, tell me stories, tell me stories.

And he tells all these great stories.

However, when he tells them, he uses all the military slang.

So thankfully my mom is nearby and she can do the translation.

And most of it makes perfect sense.

So he will bang off the cat.

So that means he’s getting taken off from the aircraft carrier, aided by the catapult.

Yeah, cat’s worth the catapult, right?

Oh, bang off the cat, did you say?

Bang off the cat.

So that means you’re taking off from the aircraft carrier.

And you’ve got to get this very heavy jet off the 500-foot runway.

And you don’t have time to just, like, speed up and, you know, ascend.

So they use a catapult.

When they come in to land, getting on the deck is really hard.

So a pitching deck, so let’s say it’s really stormy, and that deck is going up and down, and you’re trying to get this jet back on deck.

So there’s a thing called a meatball, and the meatball is this lighting system.

When you’re looking for the amber light, and it lines up with the green lights, and you see the meatball.

So that means it’s going to help you land.

Cool.

So this is all making sense.

To coming in and they dropped the tail hook.

The pilots dropped the tail hook, and they actually put the plane into full afterburner because what they had to try to do is trap one of these four wires that are on the deck.

And if they miss a wire, they’ve got to be able to get that jet off the aircraft carrier.

So this is really hairy stuff, right?

Yeah.

So one time he was telling me this story.

He was carrier-calling.

That means the pilots are out trying to – they’re qualifying to take off and land on aircraft carriers.

And he boltered.

So he comes into land. He doesn’t trap one of the wires, right? So he’s got to go up and come around again and try to get back on.

He tries again. He bolters again.

And then he says, oh, I had bingo fuel. And I’ve got to go to land. I’ve got to go to the divert fuel. I’m like, what? Bingo?

He’s like, yeah, bingo fuel. Look at mom. She says, that means there’s a minimum amount of fuel, and he’s got just enough fuel to get back to land and land on a pre-designated runway, right?

Yeah, exactly. And I look at my dad, and I shrug. I’m like, bingo? What? Why bingo?

And he pauses for a moment, and he’s like, I don’t know. It just means you’re on a field. You’ve got to go to the left.

And I’m like, well, why isn’t it like, you know, Red Zone or like Hot Picado or like something scary, you know? Monopoly.

I know. I’m just thinking of like senior citizens at the community center on Saturday night, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or B-I-N-G-O-B-I. Like, it’s a fun thing, you know? It’s a stress situation for a pilot. I mean, especially if you don’t have a divert fuel and you’re at war and you’ve got bingo fuel. I mean, you’ve got to get on that aircraft carrier.

Anyway, so I thought I’d call you guys and see if you knew. I am highly entertained by you, Corby. Outstanding.

I don’t know either. Oh, no. And I have a dumb look on my face. Oh, no.

Actually, if you go back, you can find uses of this as far back as the 1950s. It pops up here and there in collections of Navy slang. Actually, even in the New York Times in a list of jet talk, I think they call it.

And nobody anywhere even bothers to try to figure out the origin of it. But the best theory that I’ve seen, and this was derived in the modern age, say in the last 20 years or so, is it simply means your number came up.

And by that I mean before you go out, apparently, this is what I understand, your dad can tell you for sure. Before you go out on a run of sortie, you have to do the calculations to figure out how much time you’ve got for your mission or for whatever you’re supposed to be doing until you’re at the bingo fuel level where you have just enough fuel to either get back to your point of origin or to the nearest diversion, right?

The nearest base where you can land instead of your point of origin. And that’s a number that you are very conscious of. You know that number. It is a number practically tattooed in your brain until you get back.

And so when you hit bingo fuel, it’s literally your number came up and you’re shouting bingo because bingo fuel, I got to go back. Yeah. This aircraft is bingo, I’m headed back.

Yeah, I would think it’s like the end of the game, you know, you win the bingo game. Yeah, you’re done. Somebody yells bingo. You’re out of there. You’re finished.

A couple of the descriptions I’ve seen suggest that it’s bingo plus some reserves. But other people are claiming that it’s bingo plus, and there’s no reserves. There’s nothing else. It’s only the fuel to get back.

And then the other thing you’ll see if you Google this, which is really funny, is the kind of polite arguing about bingo fuel and what it means between the military flyers and the non-military flyers. Because the non-military flyers hate to see the military jargon kind of creep into the regular aviation. It’s pretty funny.

Really? You should never use that because people won’t understand you. Yeah, I saw that. I did Google that. And I got some of those results that you got.

But I like your idea of, like, bingo, like, okay, your number’s up. Except that when you get bingo, it’s, like, a really good thing, you know, in the game.

Well, I’m thinking maybe it is logical. I mean, think about when you’re playing bingo and you’ve got your head over all those cards and you’re following along and maybe you just need one more number. And then someplace else in the room you hear somebody yell, bingo, and everybody goes, wah.

I mean, that makes logical sense to me, but I’m not a fighter. It’s a half-cocked theory anyway. The truth is most slang is, unless it’s really obvious, most slang is lost. You know, we don’t know the origins of it.

There’s some stuff in this New York Times list, for example, that’s kind of obvious. They call propeller aircraft spam cans. Oh, you kind of get the joke that it’s just a piece of metal up in the air. Somebody who’s got the clanks is nervous. Maybe you’ve heard that one before.

Brain bucket is your crash helmet. Some of these are really obvious, but bingo is not obvious at all, you know? Well, I hope nobody minds if it creeps into my vocabulary because I think I’m going to start using that in my car.

Or at the end of the night when you’re tired and you want to go home and everyone else is still partying. You go, oh, I got bingo for you. I got bingo for you.

Well, yeah, yeah, personally, too. That works. Corby, this is a lot of fun. We appreciate your calling about all this.

Well, thanks. It was fun to talk to you guys. Yeah, thank you very much. I learned a bunch from you. I did. Sure did, yeah.

Take care now, all right? Give her best to your dad. All right. Okay, I will. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye.

We want to hear your workplace jargon no matter where you work. Call us, 877-929-9673, or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

For your amusement, our musings on language. Stay with us. 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 on the line with us now from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John. Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. Hi, John. Listen, I’ve got good news. Okay. I’ve developed a machine that can turn back time.

Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, I call it a rejuvenator. Well, it doesn’t work perfectly. Okay. I point it at an object, and I press the button. The machine finds a word hidden in the name of the object, and it turns back time so that word becomes a younger version of itself.

Whoa. Do you have an example? Well, for example, I have here a wooden framework that’s used to support lumber while it’s being cut. I used the machine on it. Let me just get the machine ready.

Well, yeah, the sawhorse is now a saw foal. Now, don’t ask me what a saw foal is. It’s a younger version of a saw foal. Oh, I see. Gotcha.

Okay. Okay. I’m going to rejuvenate a few items. You tell me what the items were before I rejuvenated them and then what they became after I rejuvenated them. Now, I’ve got to warn you, many of the rejuvenated words are animals, but not all. So bear that in mind.

Okay. Okay, here’s the first one. I have here a long, thick coat without sleeves that fastens around the neck. Here we go. Now what is it?

A long, thick coat. Is it a poncho or a cape? No. Think Harry Potter. Cloak. Cloak. Claycorn. Claycorn, yeah. A cloak is now a claycorn.

Very good. All right, that’s terrible, but okay. I got news for you. It’s horrible. They’re all terrible. Oh, no. They get worse?

I’ll be sitting over here. I don’t know about worse, but about the same level of badness. Wake me when you’re done. I have here a large white vegetable that’s related to the cabbage. Cauliflower? Caul of sprouts? Caul of seed? Caul of bud? Caul of bud, yes, I’ll take it. The cauliflower is now a caul of bud.

Nice. Hey, you know what? I got an idea. A city. I’ll zap an entire city. The capital of Russia. Here we go. Moscav. It’s now Moscav, yes.

Oh, I have here a small faucet for drawing liquid from a barrel or cask. A tap? A spigot? Yeah. Is it spigot? Spig-kid. A pig. Oh, a pig spiglitot. A spiglitot. Yes, very good. I have here an emblem that indicates that this taxi cab is registered. Medallion. Oh. A baby seal. Medall cub. Medall cub is right.

I was thinking of a stallion, medall foal or something like that, but that doesn’t really work.

I have here a flying disc toy.

The frizz larvae.

Frizz larvae.

Larva.

Frizz larvae, yes.

It’s good.

It was a frizz bee.

Oh, okay.

I have here a large oblong tropical fruit with yellowish red skin.

Yellowish red oblong.

Was it a boigo?

It was a mango.

Now it’s a boigo.

Yes, very good.

Hang on one second.

You know what?

I’m having a little trouble with this.

Oh, man.

Oh. Looks like I made a big mistake.

This is not good.

Oh, well. I’ll just have to find a way to fix it, I guess.

Goodbye, Martha. Goodbye, Grant.

I’ll have another puzzle for you again next week.

Oh, my goodness. He turned it on himself.

John!

That’s terrible.

Bye, John. Thanks, bud.

Bye.

We’ll see you next week.

Oh, man. He’s young.

Well, maybe he’ll be back to himself next week.

Goodbye.

Bye.

Oh, John.

Well, if you want to talk with us about language, call us 877-929-9673.

You can send your emails to words@waywordradio.org,

And you can find us on Twitter at the handle Wayword and on Facebook.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Jo, and I’m calling from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Hi, Jo, how you doing?

Hey, Jo.

Hi.

How are you, Grant and Martha?

Excellent.

Finer than frogs hair, what can we do for you?

Well, when I was in high school many years ago, I was a senior, and my best friend was dating the foreign exchange students from Spain.

And so since we were taking Spanish, we would often converse with him in Spanish, and he wanted to learn more about using English correctly.

And one day, my friend said something like, oh, well, you know, two heads are better than one.

And he got this quizzical look on his face and said, well, what does that mean?

And so, of course, we explained.

And he said, well, they didn’t have anything like that in Spanish, but they did have four eyes are better than two, which we thought was quite humorous.

So over the years, I’ve just wondered if other cultures and other languages have idioms like that, and do they always refer to body parts, or do they use other equivalents?

It’s interesting that you frame it in terms of body parts, because there are so many of those in different languages.

You said he was from Spain?

Yeah, he was from Barcelona, and they did speak Catalan there.

Well, yeah, I was going to say, because I’ve come across a Catalan expression before that goes,

Two heads think better than just one, but five are just many of them.

I kind of like that.

Five are just many of them?

Yeah, it’s like two heads are better than one, but I think the idea is five is just too many.

Too many, gotcha, right?

Yeah.

That’s like too many fingers in the pot or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But you do see variations of the two heads are better than one or two heads think better than one.

I think there’s another Spanish expression that uses the verb for think.

And in Portuguese, same thing, the verb for think rather than just are.

And then in Hungarian, there’s a phrase that goes, more eyes can see more, which is the same idea.

Oh, yes.

And then there’s one in Turkish that also uses different body parts.

It goes, one hand has nothing, two hands have sound.

Oh nice nice I like that yeah I like that that’s kind of very zen like very zen like exactly.

Turkish I like that well i I did a little research too and I found that the French and

The Italians have a lot of things that don’t relate to one thing being more better than another.

But I found the French say instead of to cost an arm and a leg they say to cost the eyes from

Your head. Oh, ouch. I know. And then the Italians have one, they say, to have one’s

Eyes lined with ham. To have one’s eyes lined with ham? Is that when your eyes are bigger

Than your stomach? No, it’s when you can’t see what’s clearly in front of you. Oh. Oh,

Yeah. I found a website that had some lovely, just really hilarious one. Yeah, I think there’s

A German expression like that that translates something like you have tomatoes on your eyes

Or something like that.

Did you come across that?

No, I didn’t find that one.

—

Yeah.

Well, language is written on the body.

Sure.

It is.

I guess so.

Yeah.

Helps us with metaphors.

I found lots with references to body parts, to food, and animals.

Mm—

Things we all share, part of the human experience everywhere, right?

Yeah.

I guess so.

Yeah.

I guess so.

Well, cool.

Thank you so much, Jo.

Really appreciate you thinking about this and sharing it with us.

Well, thanks for taking my call.

Yeah, our pleasure.

Take care now.

Okay.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about idioms or any other aspect of language.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha. This is Ross in San Antonio.

Hey, Ross. Welcome to the show.

How you doing, buddy? What’s up?

Thanks for having me on.

Hey, Grant. How’s it going?

All right.

I guess this constitutes a piece of workplace jargon,

And I’ve been looking forward to getting a definitive answer on the correct usage of the word premise versus premises

When it comes to computing resources that may be on or off-site at your location.

Can you explain what those terms are?

Well, sure. I work in the cloud computing industry,

And sometimes you have compute resources that can be at your location in a data center at your business place,

Or it could be contracted with a third party that has those compute resources off-site.

And I’m often hearing people use premise and premises kind of interchangeably.

And so sometimes people will say it’s off-premise, which to me sounds wrong.

It sounds like it’s off-topic.

So they might say this software package is hosted off-premise.

We’re going to do something else.

Exactly.

And they’re meaning it’s not on site.

Correct.

Okay.

Now, I’ve also heard it shortened down to on-prem and off-prem.

Oh, really?

On-prem and off-prem, sure.

That might be just the shorthand, but in today’s busy world, who’s got time for the extra two syllables?

So what’s bothering you sounds like premises as a singular doesn’t really work the way they think it works, right?

Right, because anyone who’s tried to drink a beer on a 7-Eleven property knows that consumption of alcohol is not allowed on this premises.

Right, exactly.

Oh, there’s a couple really confusing things happening here.

I’m going to drive toward an answer as fast as I can, all right?

Let’s see how it goes.

Premises has, since the 1600s, has met a location or a site.

It comes from legal jargon related to the ownership of property.

And along the way, we allow in English premises to be used with singular and plural verb forms.

So you can say these are our premises or this is a premises where we don’t permit that.

It’s really interesting.

And so when cloud computing came along, we had a strange thing happen, what we call in

Linguistics a back formation, where now that we had intense computing happening off-site,

We needed a term for the computing that was happening on-site.

So people came up with the on-premises computing.

Unfortunately, as you note, they decided that premises no longer needed to be plural and have the ES because there was only one site.

And by comparison to the term on-site, they decided to make it singular.

So you could have an on-premise computing.

Now, the difficulty with this is there’s a couple of really strange things happening here.

The one thing I think is worth pointing out is I think that they did it incorrectly and they misunderstood English on the way to that.

And you’re completely right, Ross.

They did the wrong thing.

But when I say they, I am talking about thousands of people who use it this way now and have since at least 2005.

So we’re talking about a 10-year usage that, unfortunately, we’re never going to be able to stomp out until the next new cloud computing or on-premises buzzword comes along and replaces it.

I like prim.

On-prem works.

I like on-prem.

That solves the problem really easily.

Don’t you think, Ross, that on-prem kind of solves it because you’ve got a nice little bit of tidy jargon that is so distanced from its roots it doesn’t matter that they got it wrong in between?

Well, great.

That’s some vindication there, and thanks for keeping this conversation on premise.

Yeah.

I guess it is.

Yeah, it’s strange, right, though?

It’s really interesting.

We see this a few times happen in English.

My favorite one happens in gaming, which is going on for like 20 or 30 years, where people misunderstood the word versus as the conjugation of a verb to verse somebody, meaning to contest or to challenge or to play against.

And I think a similar thing is happening here.

People mis-parsed premises and said, oh, of course, we’ll just make that singular.

We got just one.

Yeah, it’s got an S.

Without really thinking about all the other times that they encountered the word premises, they didn’t ever realize, wait, wait a second.

I never hear this in the singular form.

Never, ever.

Not in that way, no.

Not to refer to a location or property or a site, no.

Anyway, yeah, but you’re in a jargon-rich industry, right, Ross?

I sure am.

Yeah, it’s like you’ve got to shovel it out from under your desk every day.

Oh, recycle it.

Come on, recycle it.

You’ve got to muck out the jargon stalls.

But, yes, we invent new words every day.

But that’s why I think that—

I’m a technical writer and a content strategist.

I’m on the front lines.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you have to call us again then with some more of those.

Yeah, do please.

Because I’ll be interested in what replaces this slang or this jargon, because it always happens.

I’d be happy to keep an ongoing conversation with you guys.

Yeah.

Sounds good, Ross.

Thanks, Ross.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And find us on Twitter @wayword.

Here’s a phrase you might have used recently if you were thinking about paying for your kid’s college or maybe a wedding.

The phrase, foot the bill.

Foot the bill.

Why foot?

Good question. I bet you have an answer.

I do. I was asking the question myself, and so I went and looked it up.

It turns out that foot the bill refers to an account ledger.

If you’re totaling up the column of figures, the income and the outgo, and adding the result to the bottom of the column, then you’re footing up.

It’s the thing on the bottom of the whole list, right?

Yeah, yes. There’s the phrase to foot up to, which means to count.

Like I counted the pile of bills, and it turned out to be $45 or something.

Is that an old-fashioned phrase, to foot up?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I think so.

But to foot the bill is to pay that number down at the bottom.

To foot the bill because it’s the bottom.

The foot of the ledger.

It’s like the foot is the bottom of your leg.

Yeah, how cool is that?

I never thought about that.

I didn’t either.

I thought it was like kicking the responsibility or something.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

My name is Tara Ardenbaugh.

I’m calling from Burlington, Vermont.

Yeah, welcome to the show, Tara.

How can we help you?

Great.

Yeah, I was actually talking to my friend the other day, and I used the phrase, it’s all downhill from here.

And it was funny because we got in a dispute.

We were wondering if, well, I guess this was used in a negative way, in a positive way.

We were kind of wondering, you know, where this originated from and whatnot.

What were you talking about?

We were going into our final exam.

You just graduated from college on Sunday.

Oh, congratulations.

What’s your degree in?

Dietetics and nutrition and food science.

Okay.

Yeah, and we had our final exam in biochemistry, and this was our last exam that we would be taking.

And I said, you know, Brett, after this exam, it’s all downhill from here.

Your life is over now.

I was using it, and it’s a positive thing.

Like, you know, we’re at the top of the hill, and it’s all downhill.

It’s an easy ride from here.

And we thought she was confused by this.

That’s interesting.

It’s a very context-dependent word, and I can understand the confusion and the circumstance where you used it.

But in most cases, it’s pretty clear whether or not it’s positive or negative.

And in all cases that I know of, there is kind of an overall meaning here when we use downhill in this way to describe a movement towards an inevitable end, whether that end be good or bad.

So it’s an inexorable kind of steady approach towards the finish.

And sometimes that finish is awful and sometimes it’s wonderful.

In your case, it sounds wonderful.

It really could go either way.

I’m thinking about hiking.

I do a lot of hiking at 10,000, 11,000 feet.

It’s easier going downhill.

Well, if you’re walking downhill, it’s preferable to rolling down the hill, right, Martha?

Yeah, yeah.

But uphill and downhill are great when you’re hiking.

I’m thinking of the business uses, though, where you might have a big whiteboard showing the decline in the company’s sales, and it’s a downhill slope on that.

And that’s pretty negative.

But it’s a different use.

When we talk about it’s all downhill from here, it’s pretty idiomatic.

I mean, we have to make sure that we pay attention to the context of the word company that downhill is keeping.

And we’re almost always going to understand the positive or negative influence here.

But it’s funny because you found one of the cases where the context wasn’t clear.

She maybe thought that you were like.

Like, we’re graduating.

The best years of your life are over now.

You’re graduating from college.

I hope not.

Well, congratulations on the degree, and thank you for the call.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, and have a great day.

Your best years are ahead.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Here’s another yogi-ism that I really love.

He was talking about a restaurant one time, and he said, nobody goes there anymore.

It’s too crowded.

Yeah.

And did he actually say that one?

He actually said it, but it was around much longer than that.

Like back in the 1880s, people were making that joke.

You know, it reminds me of Twitter, where there are these accounts where people, all that they do is steal jokes and one-liners from other people who are less famous.

And so this Twitter account will have 21 million followers, and they’re stealing stuff from people with just a few thousand followers.

It reminds me very much of that, and they do it without credit.

But Yogi didn’t do it with any other intent.

No, no, no, no.

It was in the ether, and sometimes you don’t even know that you weren’t the first, right?

Exactly.

Yeah, you’re right.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Or go on our website, waywordradio.org, where you’ll find a discussion forum and all of our past shows.

More conversation about what people say and how they say it.

Stay tuned.

Hi, this is Martha.

As you know, we make this program available to everybody, totally free of charge.

But producing it? Now that takes money.

Studio costs, post-production, and staffing are just some of the things we have to pay for.

So I’d like to ask you to do me a favor.

Go to waywordradio.org, click on where it says Donate, and give what you can to help out.

Thanks.

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.

Here’s some great writing advice from Gary Provost.

He’s the author of such books as Make Your Words Work.

And I think you’ll appreciate this, Grant.

This sentence has five words.

Here are five more words.

Five-word sentences are fine, but several together become monotonous.

Listen to what is happening.

The writing is getting boring.

The sound of it drones.

It’s like a stuck record.

The ear demands some variety.

Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony.

I use short sentences, and I use sentences of medium length.

And sometimes when I’m certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of drums, the crash of cymbals, sounds that say, listen to this, it is important.

Oh, that’s nice.

Isn’t that great?

It’s true.

It’s really true.

And I find that when I read my son’s books and I try to figure out what it is about some books that make them easy to read aloud and some books makes them very difficult to read aloud, it’s exactly what Gary says.

It’s sentence length.

It’s word length.

The person who seems to have a limited idea of the sounds of English is the one that I can’t read aloud.

Right, right.

It is about music and rhythm.

Yeah, and they’re missing the joy.

I think that’s what the other thing is.

It comes naturally to you to write in that musical way if you really enjoy language.

Right.

If you enjoy speaking, too.

If you enjoy speaking, yeah.

It’s more natural that way.

What’s his website again?

His website is garyprovost.com.

And he’s got a ton of books about writing and writing well.

Yes.

He’s passed on, but his advice lives on.

Excellent.

Online.

That’s what we all hope for.

Thanks, Gary.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. This is Bonnie Benitez in San Diego.

Hi, Bonnie. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Bonnie. What’s up?

Well, I have a question about the origins of the words kind and nice and how you all see the difference in their history, their use, their definitions.

What brings us on? Where does this interest come from?

The interest comes from a conversation that I had with my coworkers a few weeks ago in which I was reflecting upon an interview I had seen with Oprah Winfrey, where her best friend, Gail, had told her that you’re not a nice person.

What?

That you’re kind and you’re generous and you’re all of these things, but you’re not nice.

And when I heard that, I actually thought of myself, because I’m like, people I don’t think would describe me as a nice person, but I do aspire to be kind and to be generous.

But it’s not a word that I felt like I needed to have a connection with.

And that’s what prompted a conversation about what really is the difference between the two words.

Because in some ways, we use them interchangeably.

Yeah, Bonnie, we could talk about the origins, but I think that might be a mistake because we don’t need to be bound to the histories of these words.

And I think you really pitched us a topic that doesn’t involve etymology at all.

It’s more about…

Although the etymology of nice is pretty interesting.

Yeah, it is. It’s really strange.

But we’re kind of talking about the difference between demeanor and behavior.

I mean, if I can bring it down to two other words, how you present yourself versus what you do.

I don’t know.

I think of nice as being overall the way that you appear to be, your visual and social qualities.

And I think of kind as being what you do for others.

Your actions.

Your actions, how you interact with them, how you enable them to be good and do well for themselves.

I don’t know.

It’s hard to do.

What we say is, you know, we don’t say typically be kind.

We often say be nice as a behavior.

What I’m really curious about is what are the motivations, right?

So we started looking into this and having this conversation, and it seems like the motivation for niceness is, if that’s a word, external, that you’re being nice to please somebody else, to meet social conventions, to be seen in a certain way.

And that kindness has some sort of internal quality.

Like, you know, we don’t say nice-hearted, we say kind-hearted, right, in terms of the characteristic as opposed to a behavior that’s externally motivated.

Yeah, that’s really interesting.

I think what you’re saying maybe is that kindness is sort of a meatier word.

I feel like kind has to do with compassion and nice is more of an external cosmetic thing.

I mean, I think we do have to talk about the etymology of nice just because it’s really interesting.

It comes from Latin words that originally meant not to know.

And so there was this early sense of it being somebody who was stupid or ignorant.

And over time, yeah, it came to have the modern meaning it has today.

So for me, it seems a little bit more insubstantial than being kind.

But again, I just want to emphasize it’s not bound to its early histories at all.

I’m down to it. I just think it’s really interesting.

You know what we’re going to do, Bonnie?

I know that we have a lot of thoughtful listeners, including many people in theology and philosophy who listen to the show, and I’m sure they’ll all have comments from their own discipline about kindness versus niceness.

And we welcome those to 877-929-9673 or email them to words@waywordradio.org.

Bonnie, I want to thank you for your call.

This is a really interesting question.

Thank you so much. And listen, be kind.

Will do. We do our best.

All right.

All right.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Take care, Bonnie.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s a quotation I like that was sent to us from Donald Kasperson of Concord, North Carolina.

Yes, English can be weird.

It can be understood through tough, thorough thought, though.

Now, that might not sound so weird, but if you look at it, if you look at those words all next to each other, they’re really confusing.

I had trouble reading it.

It can be understood through tough, thorough thought, though.

That just makes me sympathize even more with people learning English as a second, third, or fourth language.

We’re here to help, though.

We are.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org and find us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Andrew Parker.

Hi, Andrew Parker. Where are you calling from?

I am calling from Noblesville, Indiana.

Welcome to the show, Andrew. How can we help?

The question I have is here at work, we’re going through a restructuring process.

So we have new titles being created, things like that.

I don’t know if I’m just being too sensitive to this or not, but one of the things I’m trying to do is make sure our titles are consistent in using specifically what my question is about is the word of and for across, you know, the org chart, but also wondering are there certain positions that make sense for more or not.

And so here’s kind of an example, when to use the word of and when to use the word for in a job title.

So should it be a dean of student conduct or dean for student conduct or a vice president of business affairs or vice president for business affairs?

I checked with our HR department.

They said kind of 50-50, pick one.

But I didn’t know if there was, you know, some guidance on which one is maybe more appropriate.

So that’s the question I have.

Yeah, there is some guidance.

Andrew, I take it you work at a college or university then, if you’re talking about deans and student conduct and that kind of thing?

Yes, I work in higher ed.

Okay, because I can give you some answers about higher ed.

Okay.

The first thing to know is that none of what I’m going to tell you has to do with legal rules or regulations.

So we’re just talking about tradition and the most common way of doing things.

And so whatever you choose, you’re not going to get into trouble, okay?

Okay.

I’m just going to give you some guidelines about how it’s usually done.

And it’s interesting, more interesting than you might think, because basically choosing between of and for has to do with organizational authority and responsibility and thinking about them in an orderly way.

Now, in the case of the word for, you use that in situations that connote responsibility that’s delegated from a higher up, a situation where a subordinate takes on part of the superior’s overall responsibility.

So, for example, your president has this long list of responsibilities, but then your president delegates part of those responsibilities to various vice presidents.

Right.

So the president is sharing that authority with immediate subordinates.

And so in that case, the tradition is that you use the word for.

So like you have a vice president for academic affairs.

And you want to use of in a situation where the person has responsibility for a particular area and it’s not something that’s shared with a higher up like a dean, a dean of a school.

You see what I mean?

So in that case, you would use of.

Okay.

Would that alternate if you had like a vice president for an area? That supervise various deans, and those deans supervise either associate deans or directors? Would it alternate of and for? It can, yeah. Sometimes you might have like a vice provost for undergraduate studies and dean of students, somebody who fills that entire role. And it would be different words, for and of, depending, again, on that kind of structure.

But my point is, as soon as I say all this, there are going to be all these people who say, oh, we do it differently. And a lot of times that’s their tradition. But I’m saying if you want to get your tradition off on the right foot, it would be Dean of Student Conduct and Vice President for Business Affairs. And as I said, a lot of it’s tradition. And sometimes when people realize these guidelines, they think about changing their own nomenclature, but then they realize it would be too expensive.

Yeah. But the bigger picture of this is that ultimately that it doesn’t matter because the job is the same regardless of the title. Yes. Yeah. And as long as you’re consistent, I think you’ll be fine. That’s very helpful. I appreciate it. I hope so. Thanks, Andrew. Really appreciate it. Thanks for calling. All right. Thank you. Have a good day, y’all. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye.

877-929-9673. We talked a few weeks ago about that moment when you get back into your car after you’ve been out of it for a while and you start looking at your phone and you’re looking down and then maybe you’re in the parking lot and you look up and all these other people are looking down at their phones and we wanted a word for that.

And we talked about petite voyage for that, the little voyage before your trip. But I really like the suggestion we got from Karen Walters in upstate New York. She wrote us to say that she already refers to that as her media moment. Media moments. I think that has legs. I think that could work, you know?

I think I might call it the parking space hogging. Well, yeah, you don’t want to hog the parking space. You’re still using the space, I guess, but, you know. Yeah. The moment you’re pulling down and going down an aisle, spaces are rare. Somebody’s climbing into their car and you’re like, oh, they’re going to leave in a minute. I’m just going to wait here. And a minute passes.

But don’t you always do that when you get back in the car? You just have the phone glued to your hands. I don’t know. Yeah, maybe. I probably do. Yeah, they’ve got to give me a moment. There’s a radio to adjust, air conditioning, seatbelts, lights. Well, there’s that, but now there’s that extra media moment.

Yeah. I’m always doing that. I’d like to do less of it. Media moments. We have a lot of them. Give us one of yours, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. And, you know, we have a huge Facebook group called A Way with Words where you can talk about language with other people.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello. Hi, who’s this? This is Charles calling from Dallas. Hi, Charles. How are you doing? I have a phrase that my mother used when I was about 12 years old. She told me she would give me a Yankee dime if I helped her, if I dried the dishes after she washed.

And so I was, you know, didn’t get an allowance, so I was ready, you know, to help. And so after we got through with the dishes and I dried them and she reached over and kissed me on the cheek. And that was my Yankee dime. I’ve never heard anyone else use this term, but I felt really cheated. I wanted money.

Yeah. You wanted some cool Civil War relic, right? Something shiny and silver. Yeah, kisses from your mom. Those are a dime a dozen, bud. Yeah. Yeah. And, Charles, where was she from? She was from Louisiana. Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. That’s pretty well established throughout the South, especially in Alabama. So I’m not surprised that Louisiana would also. But you’ll find it in the Carolinas and Texas and Arkansas and wherever else, too. But it’s always a perfunctory kiss. It’s a kiss in lieu of what’s a kiss when you expected something else.

Yeah. When you expected passion, you just get, like, the dry lips. Or when you expected money, you just get a smooch. Yeah, it’s always a disappointment. It’s often a trick played on kids. Yeah, yeah. And the reference is, it’s partly to the whole notion of Yankee thrift. You know, those New Englanders are kind of known for being, well, a Southerner might say stingy.

Tight-fisted. Yeah, tight-fisted. And it goes back, it’s very well documented back as far as the 1840s or so. Okay, I guess I thought it might have been something that came out of the Civil War as being cheated by a Yankee. That’s what I thought.

Well, I think it’s got some of that flavor, but it definitely goes back at least to the 1840s, well before the Civil War. Hey, do you know what Yankee cotton is? No. Snow. That’s another term in the South. Yankee cotton is snow or Yankee rain.

All right. Thanks, Charles, for your call. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I love your show. Take care. Oh, thank you so much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. A Yankee dime. There’s also Dutch nickel or Dutch quarter, which is a hug.

And then a Quaker fip, which is really interesting. Fip being a short form of a much older word for a coin worth about six cents. We no longer have. But a Quaker fip was a kiss. Right, right. So something from somebody else, a different group, right?

Yeah, we’re always making fun of the other groups, aren’t we? Yeah, Yankee dime. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Find us on Twitter under the handle Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

We talked on an earlier show about a counterpart to the word avuncular. Remember that? Yeah, avuncular means like an uncle, right? Right, right. Comes from the Latin. And there is a rare word marturtural, which means like an ant. And always comes up when we talk about this.

Yeah, but whoever uses it. Except in a program like this, nobody. Even I don’t use it. What does that mean? And I’m an aunt. Even I? Even I don’t use it. I mean, I like those rare, weird words, but even I don’t talk about things. It’s hard to say besides being rare.

I know, right? You’re always like, yeah, puckering. But we got some better suggestions, I think, from some of our listeners. Jim Lamport suggested Antly, A-N-T-L-Y. Antly. Antly things. Maybe. I’m trying to fulfill my Antly duties.

With the movie Ant-Man coming out, I think maybe that might be confusing. Maybe not. And both Wendy Berrelson from Laramie, Wyoming, and Deb Revasia from Spokane, Washington, suggested Avantular. Avantular. And that actually sounds like a positive.

I think that works, right? There’s something positive and uplifting with that. Yes. What is the Vance? Maybe that’s it. It’s like Advantage. Yeah. Yeah, Advantage. Advanced. Avantular. Avantular. Or I guess if you pronounce it aunt, then it would be Avantular.

Avantular. I like Avantular. Avantular sounds pretentious. Evantular sounds very American. Right, right. So I’m going to go fulfill my evantular duties. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

And talk to us on Twitter @wayword. Things have come to a pretty path. That’s all for today’s broadcast. But don’t wait until next week to chat with us. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, or SoundCloud. Check out our website, too, at waywordradio.org, where you’ll find a dictionary, a newsletter, mobile apps, and a discussion forum.

And you can listen to hundreds of past episodes for free. You can also leave us a message anytime, day or night, at 877-929-9673. Share your family’s stories about language. Or ask us to resolve language disputes at work, home, or in school. You can also email us. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine. The show is directed and edited this week by Tim Felten. We have production help from James Ramsey and Tamar Wittenberg. A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning and better human communication.

The show’s coming to you from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California. Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye-bye. So long. I like tomato, potato, potato, tomato, tomato. Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must…