Bless Your Heart

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

I got a really big kick recently from an online discussion. This was at the site AskMetafilter.com, where people were talking about socially acceptable ways to express negative opinions to people.

I’m talking about those backhanded phrases like, oh, how nice for you. Or, let me know how that turns out.

You know, growing up as a child of the South, I used to hear all the time and used to use all the time sort of the mother of all backhanded phrases, which, as you know, Grant, is bless her heart, bless your heart.

I mean, you can get away with saying anything if you just add bless your heart to it. You know, she’s gained so much weight since that last baby, bless her heart.

And almost all of these expressions have something in them where they could be read both ways. So if you don’t want to believe that the other person met you ill will, you can just let yourself go along merrily, right?

Oh, exactly. I might say, isn’t that interesting?

Yeah, that’s a good one. And you might believe that I actually think it’s interesting rather than just like passing you off.

Right, right. So it’s sort of this social contract almost. How nice for you.

Yeah, I love that one. And the other one I learned when I was a teenage babysitter was, oh, yes, Mrs. Jones, your children were as good as they could be.

I have a colleague who I won’t mention who has the bare minimum of politeness in a single expression. And she’ll go, huh.

That’s a good one. That’s it. There’s no language there, really. I’ve got to assume that that was just an expression of interest, right? I don’t know.

Yeah, well, we should link to this on our website because, I don’t know, I was just laughing the whole way through, partly because I’ve been on either side of it. I’ve used those expressions and I’ve been the recipient of them.

So do you have a favorite socially acceptable way to express a negative opinion? Let us know, or call us about any kind of language, sayings and idioms, slang and dialects, or speaking and writing well.

That number is 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is David in Glen Arbor, Michigan. I have a question for you.

All right. My secretary was fixing to go on vacation a few weeks ago, and there were a couple projects we needed to get done.

So I asked her as she was packing everything up if I just had free reign to do whatever I wanted to do vis-a-vis digging around in her desk. And she, of course, said no. She’d kill me if I touched her desk.

But we began to wonder about the phrase free reign. And if she had been willing to grant me free reign, what she would have granted? Like R-E-I-N that you’d give a horse? Or R-E-I-G-N that an emperor would take?

He’d be the king of the desk, huh?

Yeah, you know. Somebody else said they really actually thought it was R-A-I-N, referring they thought it was from out in the Dakotas or the Great Plains or someplace, referring to just, you know, rain falling.

Oh, wow, that’s creative. And there was one other suggestion, which was from sort of a corruption of free range with a G, and somewhere the G dropped out of it.

We vetoed that. We didn’t think that was a very good suggestion. But nevertheless, if she had, in fact, been willing to grant me free reign, what would she have given me?

It sounds like you work in a really fun place.

Yeah, well, we’re nuts. But obviously, we survived her vacation and nobody touched her desk.

Good, good. Business is still operating as usual.

You’ve got the right answer in there somewhere, and it’s the first one, isn’t it, Martha?

Yeah, yeah, free reign as in horses. It’s horses.

Yeah. Because if you give them free reign, you’re letting go, and you’re letting the horse have its head and do what it wants and go where it goes at the speed that it wants.

Aha. Yeah, so that’s R-E-I-N. And David, have you guys heard around your office the story of the king and the wild animals?

Can I tell this one really quickly if you haven’t?

Oh, well, I have not.

Okay. So there was this king, and he loved wild animals. He loved all kinds of game, deer, pheasant, little wild bunnies. And he collected them and collected them and collected them.

And for a while his subjects tolerated this, but it got really smelly in the castle because he kept collecting all these wild animals.

Okay. Do you see where I’m going here? And so his loyal subjects finally became disloyal, and they forced the king to abdicate because of all these animals.

And this was the first time in history that the rain was called on account of game.

Oh, terrible. Terrible. Seriously, that’s bad. I thought maybe you wanted to tell that around the office.

But it fits.

Right, it fits. It would be the second choice. That’d be the one with the G.

I think this is the first time I ever broke a rib from groaning. I don’t know. They sounded like the kind of colleagues who would enjoy that kind of story.

They probably, they no doubt will.

Yeah, maybe not. So anyway, free reign has to do with horses and not with kings and emperors.

There you go.

Okay. Now we know.

All right. Bye-bye.

Good luck.

Yeah, but that’s how a lot of questions come to us, right? You say something, it comes out of your mouth, and you’re like, whoa, wait a second. I’ve never really thought about what’s coming out of my mouth.

What really does that mean? Where does it come from? Is it okay to say it? And what’s the history behind that?

Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it? You got a big stumper, a question, a puzzle, something about language that just mystifies you? Just a, I’ve always wanted to know kind of question?

Let us know, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

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

Well, welcome to the program, Megan. How can we help you?

I have a question. My father always used to say, if he had to park his car really far away from the destination that he was going to, he would say, I had to park the car in the back 40. And I was wondering what the back 40 meant. Where does that come from?

Was it the back 40 parking places or what?

Yeah, I’m just curious. Where does that come from?

Got some ideas for you.

Okay. Have you ever heard it used in the expression 40 acres in a mule?

No, I’ve never heard that.

Aha. Because the 40 is 40 acres. And I’m looking here at an entry from the Dictionary of American Regional English, and there’s a couple different senses.

And this one, I think, is pretty close to what you’re talking about here. A remote, large, but often erred or barren piece of land. But it’s figurative, meaning it might be more or less than 40 acres, but you use 40 as kind of like an approximation of the size of it.

Okay. So the back 40, it’s like the other acreage, like behind the house or behind the main lot or behind the main road or something like that.

Why 40? Because 40 acres was a common division of land, a quarter of a quarter section or 16 hectares.

And so a lot of times when you would just divvy up a big old chunk of land, let’s say in the 1800s when the American West was still being settled, you might just like draw the line so there are 40-acre lots, one after the other.

And you might buy one or two or three or four of these, you know. And a lot of times you’d get them situated on a major river or other water course so that you’d have water for your crops and your cattle, right?

And so you would literally have one lot that was kind of like the front lot and the other one was the back lot and that’s your back 40.

Wow. Does that make sense?

Okay.

So it’s just sort of a figurative expression that’s been handed down from an old unit of measurement.

Wow.

Cool.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thanks for calling with that question.

Thanks for having me on.

Okay, take care.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, the 40 acres in a mule grant was the compensation that was supposed to be awarded to freed African-American slaves, right, after the Civil War.

That’s right.

And it sort of became emblematic of failures in Reconstruction, right, because not everybody got 40 acres in a mule.

Yeah, yeah, there was no way to really enforce that.

It was one of those things that sounded great, but to get somebody to pay off on that, it took a lot of effort and maybe more gumption than people had.

If somebody says something that leaves you puzzled, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sam calling from San Diego.

Hi, Sam.

You’re calling from San Diego and not Mars?

You sound like you’re in a space capsule.

I’m in a semi.

You’re in a semi.

All right.

So you’re battling white line fever by thinking about language.

And what would you like to talk with us about?

Well, a few weeks ago, I heard you mention that nobody really knows where the middle finger insult came from.

And I have thought that it was related to the British two finger insult.

And I was curious if you had any words on that.

The British two-finger insult meaning the peace sign turned backwards, right?

Basically, yeah.

There’s a story that it started with the English archers insulting the French because supposedly the French would chop off the English archers’ fingers during the Hundred Years’ War.

Mm—

And where did you hear that story?

I first heard it on a historical novel by Bernard Cornwell.

And then I’ve done some research and found out it’s a very common myth, but no one’s been able to prove it.

Aha.

Yeah, myth being the operative word here, right?

That’s what I read.

There’s a great debunking of that story at Snopes.com, S-N-O-P-E-S.com.

Snopes is the long-running site on the Internet where every little bit of nonsense that the world produces is either proven or disproven.

And they’ve done a really good job of taking the story apart, basically saying there’s no reason they would ever take the fingers off of archers because they would want to ransom those archers.

And you can’t, you’ll never get ransom money for an archer that you’ve captured if you’re taking off his bow fingers.

But weren’t most archers peasants and then therefore unransomable?

There’s no historical record of it.

The historical record of…

Right, that I did find out.

That’s the thing is there’s no historical record of widespread, you know, defingering of bowmen and archers in order to somehow punish them or stop them from fighting again.

It just there’s no record of it at all.

And besides which, there’s another thing happening here.

The middle finger extended looks like the male genitals.

And that’s what’s happening in there.

You’re basically it’s the same as like flashing your bits to somebody as a way of offending them.

I mean, I don’t know how to put that any more delicately.

It’s just, you know, it’s the physical resemblance of one part of the body to a particularly male part of the body, you know.

And nobody wants to see that except your special ones.

Right.

That’s very interesting because I’ve often heard that the British two finger, they will often insert the thumb between the two fingers.

Oh, possible?

That’s creating the same effect.

Well, that’s the fig in medieval Italian literature.

Dante talks about that gesture, people making that gesture.

I wouldn’t know. I’m not often on the receiving end of any of them.

Well, Sam, I guess you don’t cut people off in traffic and get that, do you?

I do my best not to, but unfortunately I have been given it once or twice.

Oh, I see.

So it’s hard to trace the history of gestures, but I think we can cross the Archer story off the list.

Yeah, the Archer story. Forget about the Archer story.

That whole Archer thing, forget the whole thing.

It’s not the origin of anything except a lot of radio time that’s needed to debunk it.

That’s all.

All right. Well, thank you.

But thank you so much for giving us a ring, sir.

Yeah, keep your hands on the wheel.

Thank you.

All right, Sam. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, gestures are kind of a language, aren’t they?

A little bit of semiotics there on the radio.

If you’ve got something you want to ask us about, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Next on A Way with Words, it’s a word puzzle.

And more of your questions about language.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And joining us now from New York City is our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

How are you guys?

Hi, John.

Doing well.

What’s cooking with you, man?

I think it’s never too early to start researching schools for the kinder.

So Jenny and I have been looking at high schools for Max and Jesse.

Can you believe it?

Now, wait a minute.

How old are they?

Three and five.

Okay.

Now, there are arts high schools and technical high schools.

But, you know, I’ve got to say, in this age of specialization, it’s weird to see all the niche high schools out there.

For example, there’s a school out there for kids who are just interested in pumping gasoline.

It’s called – can you guess what it’s called?

Ethyl High?

No, it’s called Octane High.

Oh.

Okay.

You can perhaps tell me what sort of school focuses on the study of millinery?

High hat. Hat high.

Hat high, that’s right.

They study fedoras and stuff.

And they have a heck of a band.

You should see the drummer go.

Very good.

All of these have two ways of looking at them, all these schools.

That’s why we go on the tours.

Now, here’s descriptions of a few more high schools.

Here’s the first.

There’s one high school that’s similar to octane high, but the only thing they teach is how to change a car tire.

Wow.

Come on, Grant.

You drive a car now.

All the examples were easy.

Right.

Well, there are very few things having to do with changing a car tire.

Maybe you can think of the main one.

Oh, hijack.

Jack high.

Jack high, right.

Jack high.

Yeah, try to give it blank high for the first thing.

I think it sounds funnier.

But that’s just me.

Here’s the next one.

I’m sure you two are familiar with this high school that turns out most of the nation’s lexicographers.

I don’t know.

Gee, high.

You’d think I’d know.

This is like tailored to me.

Probability high?

Your alma mater.

Really?

Well, what thing?

Let’s see.

I’ll tell you one thing about this.

How about falutin high?

Falutin?

I’ll tell you one special thing about the school.

They have a really good AV club.

What words can you think of having to do with words, especially dictionaries?

What is wrong with us, Grant?

I have no idea.

Lexicon high.

Entry high.

What do you think of when you think of—

High gloss?

Gloss high?

No.

What do you think of when you think of dictionaries?

Gloss.

Paycheck?

Those little thumb things.

You guys got to come around the other end of the dictionary sometime and just read the thing, for crying out loud.

I’m looking for definition high.

Oh, definition high.

Definition high.

That has to do with words?

Oh, terrible.

AV club.

Never mind.

Okay.

Oh, my gosh.

Here, I’ve got this one.

How about the school whose core curriculum is mostly about gardening?

Yield high.

Oh, that’s good.

No, that’s pretty good, but not what I was looking for.

Gardening.

Think of tools to do with gardening.

Oh, ho-high.

Ho-high, yes.

I think they have a disproportionate amount of dwarves in ho-high.

I don’t know.

Very good, yes.

I immediately ruled out this one high school located in a spooky haunted mansion.

They study phantoms, ghosts, and apparitions.

So we said no thanks.

Ooh, I don’t know.

This is a tough one.

Phantoms, ghosts, and apparitions.

Oh, spirits high.

Spirits high, yes, very good.

Their pep rallies are amazing.

Yeah, their policies regarding alcohol are pretty lax though.

That’s why the pep rallies are so fun.

That’s right.

Another school we rejected has only one famous graduate, Benedict Arnold.

Treason High?

Treason High, yes.

Very good.

Very good.

Nice.

Good.

I have to say, though, that I wouldn’t mind Jesse someday attending this school that teaches kids about investing and other monetary matters.

You high.

Oh, return high.

That’s good.

Though I would have said that that was a school about recidivists.

Okay, so high return or, I mean, return high or yield high?

No.

No?

No, much more broadly, money matters.

Finance high?

Oh, finance high.

Finance high.

Yeah.

I wouldn’t mind if Jesse attended this school.

The focus is on oceanography, specifically the changing depths of marine and estuarine and currents.

Tide high?

Tide high.

Tide high.

Very good.

Another school among the more useful ones, this school churns out future electricians.

Voltage high.

Voltage high, very good.

That actually might be a really good school.

Yes, exactly.

The rest of these, I don’t know, but that one, yeah.

Not so much, yeah.

But, you know, I think we’ve got a winner here.

This is a super exclusive school.

There’s only one teacher, but she’s the best in the world.

They only have two students in the whole place, and they only attend class for one day.

It seems they are not interested in quantity.

Instead, they are…

Concentration high?

Quality high?

Quality high.

Quality high, right.

I thought you were going to say homeschooling.

No.

Mom plus two kids.

They’ll be the best poet philosophers you ever met.

That’s right.

And they’ll know something about puzzles, I hope.

This might not be any indication of my teaching skills at puzzles and quizzes.

This was fun.

Actually, it was a good mix of stumpers and easy ones.

Good.

I’m glad you liked it.

I liked it, too.

Thanks, guys.

John, thanks for coming.

Thanks, John.

Thanks for entertaining us.

My pleasure.

If you want to talk about words and how we use them, by all means, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good afternoon.

This is Moya phoning from Vermont.

Hello, Moya.

Welcome.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

Well, I have a question.

This is in relation to wedding invitations.

When my parents issued my wedding invitation, granted 38 years ago, it read, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter, Frances Moyer, with Lutzius Dominic.

Now, the invitations I’ve received since from Europe or Australia are still mainly with the preposition with.

But I have noticed also the preposition to.

And I was wondering, is one correct and one incorrect?

Or are both equally acceptable.

I see.

And why do you want to know?

Are you getting married again?

No, I’m not.

My son is.

Your son is.

So have these invitations been printed yet?

No, they haven’t.

And if I find out that the future wife’s parents have already printed them, and they are not as I think they should be, I will keep my mouth shut.

Good start there.

But if they haven’t been printed, then I will suggest one over the other.

Or leave it up to them if both are equally acceptable.

I see, Moya.

Okay, and is the bride’s family from this country?

Yes, and so is my son.

He’s a genuine Yankee.

I see, and you are British of some sort, yes.

Well, I was born in England and grew up in Sydney, Australia.

Okay.

I see.

Well, I would have to say that in this country, I’ve always seen it as the marriage to or the wedding to.

Grant, what about you?

Yeah, same here.

I’m doing some looking around online just now while you were chatting.

I find that consistently the case, even in etiquette guides as far back as 100 years ago, that was the recommended wording in the U.S.

Okay, well, perhaps then it’s a European influence.

Well, yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

I mean, it sounds like Spanish.

It sounds like a literal translation of Spanish or French.

No, because I also have a dear friend who married the chief of protocol.

They’re now retired.

And she’s English.

He’s German.

But when their daughter got married about five years ago, the wedding invitation, because I looked it up, also had with.

Oh, really?

They do find it in etiquette guides for Indians, South Asians, and they tend to prefer the with as well.

Oh, how interesting.

So that might suggest that there’s a nice little linguistic division that you’ve discovered there between the North American usage and the rest of the, let’s say, the Commonwealth countries, perhaps.

Because this also happens a lot, you know, in everyday English here.

I mean, with pronunciation and with also the use of adverbs, I’ve noticed that you more and more leave the L-Y of an adverb, unfortunately.

You know, and they sort of say, he did it beautiful instead of beautifully.

Right, think different.

Yes.

Anyway, well, thank you very much.

So as far as you’re concerned, it is basically in America, the preposition to is more commonly used.

Yes, but here’s the thing. If you wanted to go ahead and use with, I think you would be fine. You might get some people to argue with you, but I think either one works. There’s a question here that you ask yourself, who is doing what to whom or who is doing what with whom?

If it sounds like Jane is more important than Joe or Joe is more important than Jane, somehow the with to me kind of makes it sound like they’re equal partners in this.

Whereas if you say the marriage of their daughter Jane to Joe, it sounds as if he’s the passive participant and she’s the active participant.

Well, you agree with my other son’s PhD girlfriend who said that the word with, in her opinion, is more egalitarian.

Yeah, I could hear that.

Yes.

So, well, anyway, I’ve taken enough of your time.

Thank you very much.

Well, it was our pleasure, for sure.

Okay, bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kenny from Brookings, Oregon.

I was wondering if you could tell me the origin of the term graveyard shift.

This is the overnight shift, like the third shift, right?

Yes.

So why are you asking?

Well, I work for a mortuary out here.

Wait, what are the chances? Really?

Really, yes.

You work for a mortuary on the graveyard shift?

Well, I was originally hired for graveyard shift 7 at night to 7 in the morning, and it only took a few days, and I was on call 24-7.

Kenny, I have to take the opportunity here because we don’t get to talk with somebody every day who does the graveyard shift at a mortuary.

What do you do?

Well, I started out actually doing just removals from accident scenes, natural causes, whatnot.

And it moved into cremation work, very little clerical work, working funerals, memorial services.

So back to the original topic, you’re asking about graveyard shift.

You just kind of want to know why it’s called that, right?

Yes. I mean, I can only speculate where it first came from, but I’m not really sure.

Yeah, well, I think it’s just the idea of those still dark hours when everybody else is asleep as people are in a cemetery, figuratively.

Yeah, it’s basically those hours of the night when it’s just you and the dead and the seemingly dead, right?

It’s the darkest time of the 24-hour clock.

It’s not that it started in cemeteries or mortuaries.

It didn’t start with grave diggers or anything like that.

It started out as figurative from the very beginning.

You can find it more than 100 years ago, so the expression’s been around for a while.

Miners used it in the 1890s, I know, but probably earlier than that still.

Yeah, see, I figured it was probably something to do with maybe the grave diggers used to do all their work at night so they wouldn’t disturb other people, or I don’t know.

No, no, it’s more to do with the darkness and the quiet of the time.

So a graveyard is kind of a dark, quiet place, or can be at night, right?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I’m thinking about the origin of the word cemeteries from Greek, meaning to put to sleep.

I think it’s related to words having to do with beds.

Mm—

So I think that’s the idea.

Just everybody else is there still as people in a cemetery.

Will that do you, Kenny?

That’ll do me, yeah.

Thanks, Kenny.

All right.

Thank you for your help.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

The question is, you spooked? Call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, I have a riddle for you.

Okay, bring it on.

This is from a Scotts etymological dictionary.

They have riddles?

They have riddles.

I’m not going to read it in a Scott’s accent, but here it goes, okay?

Okay.

Bonnie, Kitty, Brawny, she stands at the wall.

Give her milk, give her a little, she licks up it all.

Give her stones, she’ll not eat them, and water, she’ll die.

Come tell me now, that Bonnie riddle.

What is the answer?

What am I talking about?

Okay, well, if it dies with water, then maybe it’s flame.

Is it burning?

Yes, it’s fire.

Exactly right.

The answer to the riddle is fire.

But kitty?

Bonnie, kitty, brawn?

Brawn is strong.

Brawny means strong.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, Bonnie, kitty.

But kitty?

Bonnie means pretty and kitty.

That’s the riddle.

Because, you know, in a riddle you say one thing is something it’s not.

Well, I figured it was either fire or the wicked witch of the West.

No, it’s older than that.

Okay.

That’s nice.

I always love those Scottish etymological riddles that you bring to me.

Share your Scots etymological riddles with us.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Lou Jane. I’m from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you. I have a question about the phrase, brown as a berry.

It’s a phrase that my grandmother used a lot when I was growing up in Colorado.

And then when I used it once with my husband when I was in Milwaukee, he kind of looked at me funny because I said he had never heard the expression.

And then we were listening to the radio sometime later, and it was when we were back in Colorado, and there was a song that used the phrase, brown is a berry.

So I quickly pointed it out to him that it wasn’t just my grandmother.

But I didn’t get the name of the song, and so I was just wondering if it’s regional, if it’s old, or if it’s still in use, anything.

Well, your second hypothesis there is accurate. It’s really old, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah, yeah. It goes back to at least 1400 or so. You can find it in the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer.

And he used it pretty much the same way that we use it today to mean that somebody is dark or dusky or tan.

We often use it in reference to people, interestingly enough, and not so much anything else.

We always talk about the skin or appearance of somebody.

Sometimes you might use it to mean somebody who is dark-complected overall is brown as a berry.

It’s old. It’s widespread. It’s used throughout the English-speaking world.

As a matter of fact, Lou Jane, it’s so common.

It’s in lists of clichés to avoid in a lot of different writing manuals.

There’s this whole class of book that says that you should avoid using it in your writing because it’s trite and overused.

That’s interesting.

The question that usually comes up, and you didn’t ask it, but I think I’m going to ask it for you and answer it, is why brown?

Most berries aren’t brown, are they?

Right.

Yeah, I think of red and blue.

We think of fresh berries, but what about a dried berry?

They’re brownish, right?

And even more than that, the grain of wheat and barley has sometimes been known as the berry.

And there was a time when you might call a potato a berry.

So, of course, potatoes are brown.

So there are a lot of things that have been called berries that aren’t the raspberries or strawberries or blueberries that we might think of today, that certain class of brightly colorful, very sweet fruit.

Yeah, it’s interesting.

You don’t usually hear red as a berry or blue as a berry.

Well, you know, William Sapphire, may he rest in peace, William Sapphire in one of his books wrote that he thinks that the reason that brown as a berry has survived is simply because of alliteration because you’ve got the B and the B.

It’s just easy to say and it comes off the tongue very easily.

What do you think about that, Lou Jane?

Oh, I think that you’ve answered the question wonderfully.

Well, Grant usually does.

High marks all around. Thank you so much, Lou Jane.

You’re welcome.

Okay, thanks for calling.

All right, bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Call us if you have a question about language, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Or if you just can’t wait to chat with fellow word lovers, stop by our discussion forum.

You’ll find that at waywordradio.org/discussion.

He’s brown as a berry, fell right in the prairie, and he sings when old Western grows.

Coming up on A Way with Words, sure, Ken Jennings is a Jeopardy! Champion.

But the real question is, how will he do on our slang quiz?

Stick around.

Support for A Way with Words comes from Park Manor Suites, San Diego’s historic, old-world-style hotel next to beautiful Balboa Park.

Park Manor Suites, in the center of it all.

ParkMannerSuites.com

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And who better to play the A Way with Words slang game than our contestant today?

I mean, really, this guy’s been dubbed the Michael Jordan of trivia, the Seabiscuit of geekdom.

And in 2004, his six-month run on the TV quiz show Jeopardy set all kinds of records.

He continues his puzzling today on the Game Show Network.

Ken Jennings, welcome to A Way with Words.

Thanks for having me.

It’s great to have you here.

Ken, you’re the most celebrated champion that Jeopardy’s ever had.

But what makes you think you’re going to do well on the A Way with Words slang quiz?

Frankly, I think I will do terribly.

I do this kind of thing to stay humble.

Excellent, excellent.

Well, Ken, I’d like you to meet Grant.

He’s a real humble guy.

Oh, sure, yeah.

Sure I am.

I’m very humble.

Ken, nice to meet you, buddy.

Hi, Grant.

And before we get started, Ken, I always have to ask, do you have a favorite slang term you’d like to share with us?

I had to think a lot about this.

My least favorite slang term is cougar.

But my favorite took a lot more work.

But I finally realized what I really like is like diner waitress slang of the 1930s.

Nice.

So like saying Adam and Eve on a raft instead of poached eggs on toast or something.

Like that is my kind of slang.

Very nice.

Lots of color, right?

Well, Ken, let’s see how you do on our slang quiz.

What I’m going to do is give you a clue that uses an unusual word or expression.

And then I’ll give you three possible meanings for that word.

Only one of them, of course, is correct.

And not that you’ll need help, but if you do, Martha will be standing by, and the two of you can try to puzzle it through, all right?

I’m really humbled, too.

I will probably need the help. That sounds great.

Okay, here we go.

I doubt it.

A few years ago, William Buckley wrote in the New York Sun that the Brumagem moral fanfare imposed on the controversy reminds one of the desperation with which losers will attempt to cope with disappointment at the polls.

What does Brumagem mean? B-R-U-M-M-A-G-E-M.

And again, that sentence is the Brummagem moral fanfare.

Is it A, rustic country or rural?

Is it B, worthless, fake or sham?

Or is it C, repellent, sickening or repulsive?

Brummagem is the word.

B-R-U-M-M-A-G-E-M.

See, this is tough.

I mean, I like that I don’t have to answer in the form of a question, but I don’t like that I’ve never heard this word before.

Oh, my gosh.

Let me see.

Brummagem.

I like the sound of it.

I’m starting to think it has rummage in the middle, you know?

Like, it has rummage sort of hidden in it.

Sure it does.

It also has mage hidden in the middle, so give all your 20-sided dice and guess.

But just based on the sound of it, sort of the rummagey sound of it, I’m sort of leaning B here.

What was that, a fake or junkie?

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, worthless fake or a sham.

Should I not take a guess or should I guess?

Guessing is totally fine.

We’re not Sherlock Holmes.

We won’t chastise you for guessing.

I am no expert on your game.

Okay, I will guess B.

How about that?

Yeah, it’s great.

It’s exactly right.

Brumagem means worthless, fictitious, sham.

It’s probably a corruption of Birmingham, as in England.

Where it is said that many cheap trinkets and jewelry used to be made.

So Brumagem, it’s an interesting word.

And you’ll still find Brumagem used today in newspapers kind of as a joking way to refer to Birmingham and the people who live there.

I am going to start using Brumagem on a daily basis.

That’s a good one.

It’s a good one.

To work it into my vocabulary.

All right.

Try this one.

This one you may already know, but we’ll see.

We’ll see.

18th century farmer Randall Burroughs, who died in 1799, includes this passage about men he hired to work his fields.

He wrote,

They seem to make slow progress.

At night, they refuse to eat the pluck of the pig,

Alleging it did not agree with them.

This I considered an idle excuse

And resolved to consider it an unreasonable daintiness.

Why, my question for you, Ken, is

Why would Burroughs think it an unreasonable daintiness

To not eat the pluck of the pig?

What is the pluck of the pig?

A, is it the heart, liver, and lungs?

Is it B, the feet and ankles?

Or is it C, the boiled whiskers off its hide?

Wow, that’s great.

I think I am definitely eating at the wrong Southeast Asian restaurant.

I have never been offered the pluck of a pig.

I think it might be more a southern restaurant, but okay.

Just as a non-pluck eater, as a layman, I’m sort of leaning C,

Because it seems like you might pluck off the whiskers.

But then again, that’s crazy talk because you can’t eat a pig’s whiskers.

Even I know that.

It’s just hair.

It’s kind of like fairy dust, right?

Exactly.

It doesn’t really exist.

Well, I mean, even if they exist, I don’t really know if we ever eat animal hair in any form, do we?

I can’t think of an example.

So the choices again are A, the heart, liver, and lungs, B, the feet and ankles, or C, the boiled whiskers off a pig’s hide.

Which of these is the pluck of a pig?

Well, look, I’ve gotten like hundreds of questions wrong on national TV,

So I have no ego about looking like an idiot.

Okay, okay.

I’m just going to guess feet.

How about that?

B, feet.

Unfortunately, the pluck of the pig is the heart, liver, and lungs.

And here, listen to this.

Listen to this.

If I said that you had pluck, I would say that you’ve got a lot of guts,

That you have the stomach for whatever we’re about to undertake, right?

That is where we get plucky from.

Oh.

Yeah.

So I don’t know why it’s called the pluck.

My only theory is that it all comes out at once when you’re gutting an animal.

I have no idea.

But we do use pluck in a way that’s very disconnected from this incredibly biological sense, don’t we?

He’s got a lot of pluck.

He’s got a heck of a liver and lungs.

You’ve got a great set of lungs.

I guess that’s sort of trouble if people understand that literally.

Yeah.

All right.

So you’re one for two here.

Let’s see how you do on number three.

Are you ready?

Okay.

I’m going to pull this out.

I’ve got faith.

You’re going to pluck it out.

I think this one might be easier, but we’ll see.

English abounds with multiple meanings for many of its words.

Which of these is another meaning for daylight?

Is it A, the space left in a wine glass between the liquor and the brim?

Is it B, a coconut that is not yet ripe enough to fall to the ground?

Or is it C, in the Orkney Islands, the 12 days between Christmas and Three Kings Day?

Wow.

It seems to me like the wine thing would make more sense,

Because there actually would be some space in the glass

For light to shine through between the wine and the brim.

And also it would be more like the colloquial thing where we say,

Oh, he’s got a little daylight here, he’s got a room to maneuver,

You know, like a football running back.

Right, about NASCAR drivers or football.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

That would be my guess.

You’re right on it.

You’re right on it.

I just want to say it’s A, the space left in a wine glass between the liquor and the brim.

There was an old toast that I found in an old book that goes like this.

When people were drinking bumpers, bumper is a cup or glass that’s brimming with alcohol, like right to the top.

The toastmaster would call out, are the glasses full?

No daylights, no heel taps, tops and bottoms.

Not so much as would blind a midge’s eye is to be left.

In other words, he wanted to make sure that people were going to have full glasses to start with and then drink it all.

A heel tap is a small amount of alcohol that’s left in the bottom of a glass after drinking, which is another expression.

You got two out of three.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much for playing with us, Ken.

That was great fun.

It was a real pleasure.

Thanks for teaching me something I didn’t know.

That’s always a nice way to study it.

You know what?

I’m going to have to be even harder about it next time.

I thought I was really going to pull these all out, but you did really well there.

Thank you so much.

It was a pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks for playing, Ken.

You can find out more about Ken Jennings and his new book at ken-jennings.com.

And if you want to try to stump us with a question about any aspect of language, email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lori from Connecticut.

Hiya, Lori. What’s going on?

Hi. I’m so excited to be talking to you.

I’ve been waiting for October, holding on to this question since I discovered your program last spring.

Okay. Wow.

So you want to ask about Columbus Day or what?

Actually, about Halloween.

Okay.

Well, it’s actually the night before Halloween.

You know, when kids usually run through the neighborhood,

Tee-peeing trees and putting shaving cream on your windows,

Tee-peeing over trash cans.

Never done any of that, no.

No, no, of course not.

Well, the kids in my neighborhood always called it Goosey Night,

And it wasn’t until I went off to college that I knew people called it Mischief Night.

So I’m just sort of wondering if that’s a regional thing for where I grew up.

Goosey night.

Goosey night.

I know.

It sounds very odd now that I think about it.

And what did you do on Goosey night?

I mean, what was…

What did the other kids do on Goosey night?

What did the other kids do on Goosey night?

Did they go around and goose each other?

No, there’s no connection to goose or geese that I remember.

You know, it was just you’d run around sort of, you know, creating mischief, you know, throwing toilet paper, you know, ringing doorbells and running away, that sort of thing.

Yeah. Well, you’re right. I mean, this is a puzzle. It’s a really, really localized term, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah, it is. Although there’s one little exception I’ll talk about in just a minute.

Okay.

Well, I’m looking at the Dictionary of American Regional English, which mentions Passaic County and portions of Bergen, Morris, and Essex County, and not much more than that.

Not much more than central northern New Jersey.

Yep, Bergen County. That’s where I grew up.

Aha. So the mystery here is why is it called Goosey Night?

And I don’t know that anybody knows, but I will tell you that there have been so many different names for this kind of mischief.

I mean, this kind of mischief is not limited to New Jersey.

I’ve seen Cabbage Night is another one that I’ve seen where people would leave skunk cabbages on people’s doorsteps.

And those are really stinky if you cut them open.

What else is there, Grant? Mischief Night?

Well, Devil’s Night.

In Detroit, yeah.

I knew some guy who used to put a thumbtack on his doorbell covered with tape on Devil’s Night.

Yeah, because these kids would always be ringing in the doorbell.

Well, here’s another name for it.

And this is from Yorkshire in the United Kingdom or in England and known as Miggy Night, M-I-G-G-Y, Miggy.

But also, according to a book by Tom Holman called A Yorkshire Miscellany, they also called it Goosey Night in Yorkshire.

Ooh.

So there’s a little bit of a clue there.

It’s the only other use of Goosey Knight that I can find outside of anything attributed to New Jersey.

I’ll be darned.

Yeah.

Do you think those arose independently, or do you think there’s a connection?

There’s got to be a connection there, and I don’t know what it would be.

What’s really interesting is this term just seems to pop up in the 70s, right?

Oh, yeah.

We don’t find a lot of use of it before then.

So you’re pretty young.

Yes, I was an infant when I used this term.

Oh, I see.

You were talking at a very early age, right?

No, it’s probably older than that, but it’s hard to find it in the printed record.

Well, it’s such an odd night because I’m looking again online and there’s Beggars’ Night, Corn Night, Mystery Night, Picket Night, Tic Tac Night.

And I guess people need names for mischief, huh?

Yeah, because it’s part of the holiday, right?

Halloween itself has become a little sterile, and so you want something.

If you can’t find real spooks, be the spook yourself, right?

Well, Lori, thanks for this.

Maybe we’ll hear from other people who participate in Goosey Nights.

Oh, thank you.

Okay, sure thing.

All right, super duper.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, what did you call that kind of mischief in your part of the country?

Call us or call us about something else, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Tony Pillow.

I am calling from Linden, Wisconsin today.

All right.

Well, what’s on your mind?

I had a question, I guess, as refers to a phrase that I’ve heard, actually a couple of phrases,

But I’m really wondering what the underlying meaning is.

The phrase I’m referring to is when you refer to someone or ask someone or tell someone, actually,

That they have a large head or a swollen head or they’re getting a big head.

But in addition to that phrase, I have a very close friend of mine who is a French native,

And she has a similar term.

She said to me once, you’re getting awful thick ankles or awful large ankles.

So I’m thinking, you know, to myself, I’m wondering there’s almost got to be a connection

Between these two phrases, and neither one of them really makes sense from a vocabulary sense to me.

And I was wondering if maybe you could shed some light on what this phrase might refer to.

Okay, so Tony, sometimes you’re being told that you have a big head,

And sometimes you’re being told that you have swollen ankles?

That is correct, yes. I have been accused of that.

Did she accuse you in French or in English of having swollen ankles?

It was in English, yes. When she’s really mad, I don’t understand a word she says.

That’s why we get along so well.

Well, let’s take these one at a time.

And to have a big head really is kind of just a literal expression to mean that you’re full of yourself.

Your head is swollen because you think that you’re so important.

It’s this whole idea that you have this brain, the seat of your personality and your character and everything that you are is engorged with pride or engorged with, right?

I mean, that’s kind of what we’re talking about here.

Engorged with pride.

No, the idea, I mean, it’s a pretty literal metaphor, idiom.

And you’ll find that we have a number of different expressions in English which say the same thing.

You are too big for your britches.

Or you might say that you’re too big for your boots.

It’s all the same sentiments.

The idea that you believe that you’re beyond the size or the abilities of normal people.

Somehow you’re more important.

You’re larger than them.

And, of course, it works the same way in French.

The French expression is something like avoir les chevilles qui enflans, which is to have ankles that are swollen.

But why ankles?

I think that’s Tony’s question, right?

Well, it’s kind of the same.

Well, it’s an idiom, you know, and I say this again and again, but idioms, if you start breaking idioms down and look for some kind of truth to them, you’re almost always going to come up defeated because they tend to be opaque.

The idea here is that you’re just big in a place that you shouldn’t be big.

Oh, well, that makes sense.

But these idioms are great.

I mean, you know, all hat and no cattle talking about somebody who’s…

It’s kind of like that, yeah.

You have a swollen head or a swelled head, right?

And the French have the same thing.

They also talk about having a swollen head,

Avoir la grosse tête or avoir la tête enfle.

It’s the same story here.

They even have the ankle thing is so embedded idiomatically in French

That you don’t even have to say the full form of it.

You could just say something like,

Ça va, laissez-vous?

When somebody says something that sounds really self-important,

You say, ça va, les civilles?

Like, how are the ankles going?

You know, how are your ankles doing?

Did she say that to you too?

That one I haven’t heard yet.

What’s really interesting here about all of this is that I don’t think it’s the body part that matters so much.

It’s just the idea that you somehow, some way, you’re puffed up, you know.

Sure.

You’re inflated.

In any case, thanks so much for giving us a call, Tony.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it, guys.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye now.

Do you have a close friend who speaks another language and you need someone to mediate?

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

I know what you’re going to say, Martha, when I tell you that I was reading a Scottish etymological dictionary.

But I found a word in there I didn’t know, and I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s a quirkulum.

Guess what a quirkulum is.

Q-U-I-R-K-L-U-M.

Quirkulum.

Quirkulum.

Oh, I love it.

Whatever it is.

It’s the cousin to a riddlum.

Well, a riddlum is just a riddle.

And a quirkulum is kind of a riddle, but it’s more of those puzzles, those word puzzles where you have to pay attention because the answer is in the wording.

You know?

So here’s one.

Here’s a typical quirkulum.

At the ball yesterday, there were three score and three fiddlers, and each fiddler had 20 dancers.

How many dancers were there?

Oh, wow.

This means I have to do math on the radio?

What’s the answer?

No, because it’s three score.

Because the answer is right there.

And what people start to do is they do the math, and they multiply the fiddlers times the three score,

And they come up with a number that’s way too large.

And as the answer in this dictionary has it,

Nay, put a wee stop after three score.

That’s the worst Scots accent in the history of the world.

Thank you.

I thought it was pretty good.

I like that.

Anyway, that’s a quirkulum.

Quirkulum.

I love it.

Share your quirkulums with us.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

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That’s our show for this week.

If you didn’t get it on the air today, you can leave us a message anytime.

Call 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or drop by A Way with Words online.

You can chat with fellow word lovers by going to waywordradio.org/discussion.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

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

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And from San Francisco, I’m Grant Barrett.

Thanks to Howard Gelman for engineering our show from the studios of KQED Radio.

Happy trails.

Adios.

Hi, Martha here.

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