Blow a Gasket

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.

You may know that you can now follow Pope Francis on Twitter. In fact, he tweets in several languages, including English, Spanish, and Arabic. But he’s also tweeting, believe it or not, in Latin.

Are there a lot of people following him in Latin? Yes. Well, there are at least 213,000 people who read the Pope’s Latin Twitter feed.

Nice! Isn’t that great? It’s interesting to me because Latin is such an efficient language. It’s an inflected language, which means that there’s a whole lot of meaning packed into one word, which is probably really handy if you only have 140 characters.

But the other thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is the fact that there’s the challenge of bringing an ancient language into the 21st century. I mean, how in the heck in Latin do you say email or hot dog or something like that?

Yeah, I don’t even know. Lots of this stuff just doesn’t translate.

Exactly. Or it didn’t. Now it does.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there are people at the Vatican whose job it is to come up with those words. And it seems to me that it’s sort of the problem that dictionary editors run into when they’re trying to define a word.

Yeah, it’s hard, particularly if you have something really dense like a nuclear term where you have to describe physics in a simple way that the average person can understand. How do you simplify something so complex in such a tiny amount of space?

Yeah, it’s literally the problem. We’ll talk a little bit more about new Latin coinages later in the show. But for now, if you have a question about any aspect of language, you can give us a call at 877-929-9673 or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Douglas. I’m calling from Thomasville, Georgia.

Hi, Douglas. Welcome. What’s up?

Well, I lay claim to having the world’s largest privately held collection of photos of relatives on camels.

Wait a second. The largest privately held collection of relatives on camels.

Correct. There must be a story here.

Just a guess. That’s how it kind of goes on into it. Well, it just started with one of my children being deployed in the Middle East, and then other cousins and nephews and nieces and people traveled over there, and I just wound up with a pretty good collection of them.

Okay. It’s a first. I’ve got to tell you, Douglas, it’s a first. Never heard of it, but congratulations on your collection.

I was visiting my brother recently, and one of his granddaughters, my great niece, knew of my collection. And so she presented me with a photo of her riding on a camel that she had taken in Morocco while she was over there on foreign studies.

All right. So on my drive home, I got to thinking, and I said, well, she really is a great niece. But then I got to thinking, I said, if that’s my brother’s granddaughter, why isn’t she my grandniece as opposed to greatniece? So what I’d like to know is, where did that come about?

All right. I’m going to answer your first question. The where is not nearly as interesting as the why and the what. It turns out that both of those words can be used for a relative in that position.

Both can? Yeah, both grandniece and greatniece are acceptable by most authorities. Now, you will get sticklers in the genealogy business who will assist for clarity that one or the other be used, but they’re the exception.

So she is both your greatniece and your grandniece. This is your brother’s granddaughter, right?

That’s correct. Yes, that’s your grandniece or your greatniece. Either one works.

Or my greatniece.

Yeah. I will start referring to them as grandnieces then. And let’s not start doing the once-removed stuff, because I have no idea.

So what you’re telling me is they’ve both been used in the past and are still correct to use now?

Yes, sir. Exactly right.

Well, good. Yeah, so you’re good to go. And you know what? If any part of this camel collection is online, we’d love to see it.

I think I can put it together and send it to you.

No, you don’t go to a lot of trouble. But if you’ve got one of you at least, if you’ve got one of you on a camel, that’s the one we want to see the most.

I’m the missing link there. We’ve got to work on that.

Well, you’ve got to take care of that. I’m imagining a giant, you know, four-by-four picture of you in the middle with the whole satellite family around you.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Oh, Douglas. Well, I’ll see if I can’t work on that. Thank you for your call, Douglas.

Well, thank you. Take care now.

Thanks. Camel spit. Watch out.

Bye-bye. We’ll accept your photos of you astride, say, a wild boar, but we’ll also take your language questions, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

I was hoping not to have to talk about this word, but I’ve got to.

Yeah, I’ve added it to my words of the year candidate list for 2014.

Oh, man. The word is surfboard.

Surfboard. S-U-R-F-B-O-R-T. Surfboard.

Is that when you decide not to go surfing?

No, this is when you’re Beyonce and you have an amazing album, but you pronounce the word surfboard like surfboard. So what happens, she’s got this great song. It’s called Drunken Love. It’s a great song. The whole album’s amazing. She’s amazing.

Oh, yeah, the video. And there’s a line in there that I filled the tub up halfway then write it with my surfboard, surfboard, surfboard. But she doesn’t sound like she’s saying surfboard. She sounds like she’s saying surfbort. And so immediately everyone caught on to this. And now surfboard is kind of like just this word that you throw into a tweet or a Facebook post just for a laugh and a giggle for whimsy.

Oh, that’s good. It doesn’t have any real meaning except you’re kind of teasing Beyonce about her pronunciation of surfboard.

Surfbort. Oh, gee. And there’s whole Twitter accounts that are set up only with surfboard jokes.

Oh, yeah. It’s a thing. Oh, should we change the name of the show to Away With Warts?

Away With Warts. Anyway, Beyonce, I love your album. And go forth with your pronunciation of surfboard. You’re totally fine. But anyway, surfboard is going to be on my word of the year list for 2014.

Excellent. And Beyonce, you love language. Call us, 877-929-9673, or just drop us a line and email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, Martha and Grant. My name’s Karen, and I live in Richmond, Virginia. And I have a question for you about the use of the word dashboard.

Dashboard. Dashboard. I was eating with friends recently, and we were eating pizza. I finished my slice, and I didn’t want to eat the crust, and I referred to it as the dashboard.

The leftover crust is the dashboard?

Yes, but only of a piece of pizza, just one piece. It wouldn’t be the whole crust of a pizza.

Okay. Yeah, I would use the same word to refer to the crust that’s leftover after you eat the good part of a piece of pie.

Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. So my friends in Richmond, Virginia looked at me like I was crazy. They had never heard the word before, and I thought, well, it must be something from Wisconsin, because that’s where I’m from originally. And there’s often words that pop up like that. And then I checked with my family. Nope, they’ve never heard of it either. I think I might have made it up. I’m not sure.

It makes sort of intuitive sense to me, but.

Yeah, it makes sense to me, too. It’s a great visual. I mean, if you said the dashboard of a pizza to me and I never heard the expression.

Well, actually, I haven’t, but.

Well, I haven’t heard it either.

Yeah, but it makes sense. It makes sense historically to me because the dashboard in a car comes from the dashboard in a wagon or a carriage. And it had, think of the dashboard on a sleigh. It’s got that particular curved shape that looks amazingly like the crust of a pizza. Sticking up and kind of folded over, right? Rolled over at the top?

No. The old one.

Exactly. But, yeah, it’s right there in front of your face, too, as you’re eating the pizza. I’ve never heard anybody say this.

No, me neither.

So you’re just weird, Karen.

Well, I guess my question then is, is there a word for when you make up a word but think you’ve heard it before?

Don’t get out much?

Excessive drug use? I don’t know.

No, but now we have a word for this.

You did it. You’ve coined it.

It’s here. We’re sharing it with hundreds of thousands of people in one go.

We’ll see if it sticks. How about that?

Perfect. Although, you know, I have heard a few other terms for this.

In this language. Yes, and Italian as well.

Okay. I know lots of people who call it the pizza bones.

Oh, yes, I’ve heard that.

Yeah, I have heard that.

Maybe leave a pile of them. I don’t know. Do you eat yours or not?

It depends on how good it is.

-huh.

If it’s, you know, delicious pizza, then it’s going to have an awesome crust.

Right.

If it’s, you know, frozen pizza from the grocery store, there’s no point needing it.

Exactly.

So you like the big poofy kind then?

I do.

Or, you know, like wood-fired pizza, that crust is so delicious.

And it’s like the best, you know, Italian bread that you would eat.

And what’s really interesting is that, you know, Italians distinguish between that part of the pizza, the raised rim and the crust that’s on the bottom.

Those are two different things in Italian.

Wait, are they made from the same dough?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, but, you know, it’s a different formation because of that rim.

They call it the cornicione.

Oh, so like the cornice.

Yes, exactly, like the ledge on the top of a building.

Specialists always have special words for special things.

Right, right.

Karen Dashboard for the crust that’s left over from a pizza.

We’re talking about the hard end that kind of sticks up.

The handle.

Yeah, the handle.

Some people call it the handle.

Nice, very good.

The pizza handle.

I have heard it called the bones because sometimes it is really hard to eat.

It’s hard.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, particularly day-old pizza.

Yeah, but I like calling it the dashboard.

There’s something weird about it.

It just makes sense.

Yep.

It translates, right?

We are endorsing your cornage.

Perfect.

Sounds good.

Karen, thank you so much for calling us, all right?

Yeah, spread it around Virginia.

And you know what?

We’re going to get a ton of calls and emails about this.

I’m sure other people have words, and we’ll share those on a future show, okay?

Sounds great.

I love the show.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot, Karen.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I have mixed feelings about that part of the pizza, I have to say.

Are you not a true American who really likes her pizza?

I love pizza.

Are you kidding?

I absolutely love it.

Are you like, is the carb thing too much bread?

No, no, no.

It depends on the quality, the quality of the dashboard.

It’s hard to nail that, right?

Yeah.

I like a fat, thick, doughy crust, and not everyone does.

All the way across the…

I like it to be bready.

I like it maybe even gooey.

No kidding.

But no cheese.

Don’t put cheese inside of it.

Don’t put hot dogs in it.

Don’t do any of that nonsense.

Pineapple.

No.

No, no.

But I like the really thin, almost crispy, almost cracker crispy crust and then poofy around the edges.

Oh, interesting.

That’s my preference.

Yeah, I didn’t know that you didn’t like real pizza.

All right, we want to hear from you.

What do you think?

877-929-9673 is the number to call with your pizza opinions.

Or you can email them to words@waywordradio.org.

We got an email from Sarah in San Diego who says she recently learned of the phrase, write it on the ice.

Write it on the ice.

Yeah.

Right. Okay.

Yeah.

And she thinks it means not to take a promise seriously or that something heard can’t be counted on.

And she’s never heard the phrase, wonders where it might have come from.

You know, I’ve seen this pop up in Middle Eastern context.

And actually, I can find it in text from 1878 where the English were in Afghanistan.

And the emir of Afghanistan at the time, writing in a letter, talks about the English, how their words were written on ice, meaning that they would melt away and there’d be nothing left.

Oh, wow.

So it talked about the impermanence of promises, really.

It’s kind of the opposite of carved in stone.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, that reminds me of the phrase, charge it to the dust and let the rain settle it.

Ooh, yeah.

Did we talk about this on the show before?

I think we did.

Like, I’m the proprietor and you come in and you want to buy something and it doesn’t cost very much.

And I just say, I’ll charge it to the dust and let the rain settle it.

In other words, you can have it for free.

Right.

Okay.

But the write it on ice is something where you’re not making a contract.

You’re just kind of like it’s a temporary thing.

Whether you like it or not, it’s a temporary agreement that we’ve had.

Right.

Right.

That’s what they do back east here in San Diego.

We write it on the sand.

Exactly.

Right below the tidelines.

Exactly.

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

Or like Sarah, you can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Stay tuned as we reveal the mysteries of language.

Support for Way With Words comes from the Ken Blanchard Companies, whose purpose is to make a leadership difference among executives, managers, and individuals in organizations everywhere.

More about Ken Blanchard’s leadership training programs at kenblanchard.com slash leadership.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined once again by our quiz master, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, John.

I think that as you get older, the world gets funnier because you can’t see things as well and your mind inserts surreal substitutes.

Right.

I thought it was just because you forgot old jokes and all the old jokes seem new again.

That’s right.

Well, here’s an example, though.

I was scanning some headlines, and I saw one that said, Times reporter faces expulsion from chain.

And I thought, what? He’s off the snow day list?

Nobody calls this guy?

No.

Obviously, it was Times reporter faces expulsion from China.

Oh.

So, yeah.

Okay.

And that was all I needed to make this quiz.

Let’s see if you can fix these headlines that have just one word transposed, the letter transposed, okay?

These are, for the most part, actual headlines from a variety of different sources and newspaper sections.

Okay?

Okay.

Good. Here we go.

Top shops in Denver open door to millions of sales.

Pot shops.

Yes, pot shops in Denver open door to millions in sales.

Divorces lead to Dasher parenting.

I have no idea what that is, Dasher parenting.

Shared parenting.

Yes, shared parenting. Very good.

Iran, unclear deal to take effect January 20.

Nuclear instead of unclear.

Oh, very good.

Very nice.

That was actually a common transposition.

Yes, we see that a lot.

Every once in a while, I’ll love a softball.

It’s okay.

This is actually the headline that inspired this quiz.

Okay.

Tarantino uses popular news and gossip website.

Suze.

Yes, Tarantino suze popular news and gossip website.

Apparently, Gawker published a script.

No, they linked to it.

Oh, they linked to it, right.

Yeah, they didn’t publish it.

Oh, but they also had a bounty for $10,000 for the person who could publish that.

Oh, wow.

I literally just glanced at the screen, and I’m like, it says, San Tarantino uses popular business.

So what?

So do I.

Is this a news story?

Here’s the next one.

Amazon offers linked with ads.

Offers linked?

Linked must be the word.

Unless it’s sad.

Linked with sad.

Kindle.

Oh, good, Grant.

Yes, Amazon offers Kindle with ads.

Very good.

Nice.

New Deal and Honeybee deaths.

Lead.

New Deal?

Yes, New Lead and Honeybee deaths.

Here’s one from local New York news.

Motions indeed in Yonkers’ corruption case.

Motions?

Denied?

Yes, motions denied in Yonkers’ corruption case.

Well done.

And here’s the last one.

This was from a sports section.

Tens give up chance to close Gap on Raptors.

Tens?

Yeah.

Nets.

Yes.

Nets give up chance to close gap on raptors.

That was a gem, though, John.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, John.

Give the family a hug for us, will you?

Will do.

You too, guys.

Bye-bye.

See you next week.

Take care.

Well, if a question has your brain scrambled, if it has to do with language, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

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

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

Hi.

You have A Way with Words.

My name is Linda Vallier.

I am calling you from Ishpeming, Michigan, in the beautiful Upper Peninsula.

And so everything’s well there, and you’ve got a language question for us.

Yes, I certainly do.

I actually, I’m of Finnish heritage.

All of my grandparents came here from Finland, and the Finns kind of have a term for a characteristic.

It’s called sisu.

Sisu.

Yeah, and I understand that to mean guts, determination, fortitude, situativeness, all of the following.

My question, I guess, is are there other terms that people of other heritages have to describe their own characteristics?

So you’re talking about people who’ve come to the New World, brought some of their culture with them, and when they think about that old culture in the old world, they’ve got kind of this one term for it.

Yeah, exactly.

I don’t know.

I think of the British as the stiff upper lip.

That’s what I think.

You know, and what else occurs to me, Linda, I’m thinking of the Japanese business principle of Kaizen, which is about gradual self-improvement of business and personal practices.

But I don’t know.

That’s so businessy, though.

That’s not really personal.

Maybe it’s more about, I don’t know.

It’s a good question.

There are also words that are so associated with another culture but don’t necessarily characterize the entire culture.

I’m thinking of saudaji in Portuguese.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s a vaguely like sadness, but not quite really sadness, right?

Yeah, it’s got lots and lots of layers.

Melancholy nostalgia, something like that.

Yeah, missing somebody or someplace and probably knowing they’re never coming back or you’re never going to see that place.

I mean, it’s really, really rich.

But you’re thinking of that word for the Portuguese because it’s so striking and so much, it’s so hard to define without the Portuguese culture, right?

Right, right.

Or Brazilian.

It’s like they own that word, but I don’t know that it necessarily describes the people.

Well, this is a really good question.

I think, Martha, we have to toss this to the listeners.

Let’s do it.

And everybody on the website and Facebook and Twitter and say, if there was one word that could describe you or the culture you come from, what would it be?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org, or drop it into Facebook and Twitter and let the whole world know.

Linda, thanks so much for calling.

Well, thank you.

Until your afternoon.

Stay warm.

All right.

You too.

Take care now.

Okay.

We will.

Bye-bye.

I learned a new word recently, Grant.

What’s that?

Slap sauce.

Ooh.

What’s that?

It’s from the 16th and 17th century.

A slap sauce is somebody who is fond of good eating or a greedy or gluttonous person.

A slap sauce.

Yeah.

Because they’ll just slap sauce on anything and gorge on it.

Yeah.

Nice.

I love that.

I could see foodies all over the country.

I could see that being a restaurant chain name.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Martha Slapsauce Inn.

Or not.

But you know how wine aficionados call themselves winos and that kind of thing?

Why not a slap sauce?

Instead of gourmand, which always sounds stuffy to me.

I’m a slap sauce and proud of it.

777-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language.

Or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, good afternoon.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Julio Tierno.

I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Welcome to the program, Julio.

Hi, Julio.

Thank you, Martha.

Thank you, Grant.

You have an extraordinary accent.

Can you tell us where you’re from?

Originally, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It’s so…

There’s something fantastic. I’m loving the sound of you, Julio. Talk some more.

Thank you.

Well, short ago I was listening to one of the episodes of the TV series, Downtown Abbey on PBS.

Sure.

And one of the characters, Robert Lord Granton, uses the expression, blow a gasket, meaning becoming raged or be angry or upset.

Now, for all I understand, the action takes place around 1922.

So my question is, was the expression used in that sense as early as that?

You mean metaphorically, not an actual gasket then?

Exactly. That is correct.

Probably it did exist for engines at the time.

Right.

I personally think of blowing a gasket in reference to a car engine.

But then gaskets are used in many, if not all, compression engines.

Maybe the expression is prior to the appearance of the automobile.

And I also have a side question.

Did that expression originate in the United States or in Great Britain?

Oh, that’s a good question.

I think you’ve busted them, though.

I think the metaphorical sense of blow a gasket didn’t start showing up until the 1940s, World War II.

The Downton Abbey folks are pretty careful, but they’re not doing a linguistic history show, so they don’t have to be exactly right.

But you’re right. It’s an anachronism.

All the authorities show it doesn’t show up in print until the 1940s.

And this answers maybe your second question.

It probably came out of the linguistic cauldron known as World War II,

When all these English speakers from around the world were working together and kind of co-mingling their languages.

Okay, so this is what I thought.

Anachronism is the word you just used, Grant, and I think it was correct.

I’m glad what I had in mind, I said, I don’t think that was a common expression at that time.

Well, a lot of people like you have fun playing gotcha with Downton Abbey.

There are a lot of examples of that online.

But, you know, I have to say that the breaches of history that they’ve got where clearly there was an accident with a time machine are kind of rare.

They really nail some stuff very well.

They get the mood of the era, I think, perfectly.

I think just the spirit of people’s attitudes and all the differing opinions of what was happening on the international stage, they just got it exactly right.

The tone is just perfect.

And the language helps.

Yeah, the language does help, yeah.

So if they have to use an anachronism to further the plot, I’m kind of fine with that, as long as it’s not too crazy.

Okay, so we’re not going to put any blame on them.

As long as the Dowager’s not wielding an iPhone, I think we’re fine.

Okay.

Julio, thank you so much for calling. It’s nice to hear from you.

Thank you, Martha. Thank you, Grant. It’s been great talking with you.

Ciao, Julio.

You have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The earliest use that I can find of blow a gasket used metaphorically is 1944.

Do you remember the humorist H. Alan Smith?

He wrote a book called Lost in Horse Latitudes about his eight months writing.

He wrote for eight months.

He worked for Paramount Pictures as a screenplay writer and apparently it was a giant debacle.

And even today it holds up remarkably well.

And he talks about an actress blowing a gasket when she found that she wasn’t mentioned in a will.

But, you know, Hulu had something else to say.

Talking about compression engines.

It’s true. In the 1880s, you could talk about a steam engine blowing a gasket.

Right, right.

But you probably said that the gasket blew out.

Right, on steamships, yeah.

Yeah.

Call us with your language question. 877-929-9673 is the number.

Or you can email us. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

I picked up a phrase from the snowboarding competition at the Winter Olympics this year, winding down the windows.

What is that?

That’s when you’re on the snowboard and your arms are flailing to keep your balance.

Nice.

It’s called winding down the windows, which is really interesting, right?

Because who winds down windows anymore?

Nobody.

But that gesture is so, there’s nothing else that you do that’s like that except ride a snowboard.

Yeah.

And so I started looking into that because I was thinking, who says wind down the windows?

Well, the Brits do.

Oh.

Because we say roll down the windows here if we say anything, right?

So there’s some cross-cultural contamination there.

Yeah.

Nice.

But I like that.

Also, there’s something about keeping your balance.

It literally works, right?

Yes.

Yes.

Huh.

Winding down the windows.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language.

Or you can email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hi.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Lori.

Hi, Lori.

Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from North Augusta, South Carolina.

All right.

Well, welcome to the show.

How can we help you?

Let me just give you a little back history.

I’m originally from Levittown, Long Island, and I moved to South Carolina when I was 14 years old.

I’ve since become an English teacher.

And one of the things that I just always seem to stress with is when I’m teaching the children about pronunciation and phonetics, we seem to not always be on the same page.

And the big question that I had was, for instance, the word pin and pen, P-I-N and P-E-N, most of the Southerners say it the same way, pin and pen.

However, you have the words pit and pet, and they say those differently.

So I’m just wondering where does that come from and what explanation can I give the kids other than it’s a dictionary?

Okay.

Wow.

This is a big issue.

How many hours do you have?

Let me see if I can bring this to simple terms for you and give you a few things that you can search for on your own that will fill out the details.

Okay?

Okay.

The first thing that we’re talking about here, just to put a name to it, is what’s called a vowel merger.

This is where two words that are pronounced differently in some parts of the English-speaking world and some other smaller parts are pronounced the same.

And the example you gave of P-E-N and P-I-N, that’s the classic example of a vowel merger.

In fact, almost every time we talk about vowel mergers, like when Martha and I do speeches and Q&As, that’s what we talk about first.

It’s called the pen-pin merger.

And you also are on top of something else here, Laurie, which is important.

You said that all the Southerners that you know say that, and it’s true.

It is one of the dominant characteristics of Southern American speech that they pronounce those words the same.

I mean, we can talk about the words that they use.

We can talk about how they pronounce R’s differently.

We can talk about the speed of their speech.

But that vowel merger is an incredible characteristic that if I hear that in your speech, there’s probably like a 90% chance that you’re from the South.

And then you said pet and pit, P-E-T and P-I-T, right?

Well, these vowel mergers are far more common when there’s a vowel followed by an N.

So this is why when you get a vowel followed by a T, you don’t necessarily get the sounds colliding like that and turning into one homophonic representation of two different words.

Right, right.

So it’s really astonishing here is how consistent it’s been.

And the rise of this vowel merger since basically the middle of the 1900s has been so dominant.

And it’s the most well-studied feature of American dialects, as far as I can tell, because it’s so common and it’s increasing.

Yeah, and when I say pen, they almost say it like pan.

They just think that I’m saying it so, you know, that it’s so crazy.

And so, yeah, it’s just I’ve never been able to give them an answer.

I mean, I know you only have a certain amount of time, but is there a reason why that happens?

Is it something in the language in the South?

There’s two things possible here.

One is the South was settled by a kind of different English speaker than the North was settled.

So the South was settled by a lot of Scots-Irish and some plain old Irish, and they brought linguistic traditions to the New World that were different than the kinds of people who, say, settled in the Northeast or settled in the Great Lakes region and so forth.

So from the very start, the kind of Englishes that were spoken, these two parts of the country were very different.

But the second thing that happens, and this is harder to pin down, and we’ve talked about this before, there are changes that happen because of shifting influences.

I mean literal influence, cultural, social, political, financial, socioeconomic, educational.

These happen where, let’s say that Martha and I are the only two people that live in a town, and she gets my respect.

I’m going to start speaking like her, even though I may not consciously be aware of it.

And over time, more people are going to start speaking like Martha because we all owe her our respect.

And she becomes, she’s important to us.

She’s the mayor or maybe she’s the grandmother of a very large family.

And in this way, when this happens repeatedly over a long period of time, all this influence trickles down to new generations.

And it branches out in the friend network and the family network and the working relationship.

And before you know it, you’ve got a dialect change.

Okay, okay. Well, that kind of explains it, and I might be able to tell the kids what’s going on because they just look at me like I’m crazy.

Yeah, that would be difficult, wouldn’t it, to know what to teach them exactly?

Well, there’s another thing happening here, and I wanted to talk to you about, and this is important to teach the kids.

They’re not wrong if the dictionary doesn’t have their pronunciation in it.

There are millions of people in the United States whose pronunciations are legitimate and are not in the dictionaries.

They simply don’t exist in there.

They might have a note in the front that says, oh, in the American South, when you see the following pronunciation given in this dictionary, then you should automatically assume blah, blah, blah.

But that’s not the same as actually having it on the page with the entry.

And I don’t know that there’s a way to fix that.

I mean, online there is, but in paper form, it’s just not enough space for that.

But that said, so make sure your kids understand they’re not wrong.

It’s just a non-prestige dialect.

There are more people who pronounce it the other way.

Therefore, the other way is the one that gets put in print.

Okay.

All right.

Lori, thank you so much for your call.

Thanks for hanging on.

And thanks for teaching those kids.

You’re making the world a better place.

Yeah, hang in there.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Thank you so much, Fran.

And thank you, Martha.

And keep up with the show.

I absolutely love it.

Terrific.

That’s great to hear, Lori.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Well, we know that you have language encounters wherever you go.

We know that questions come up.

Make a note.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

If you’re on a strict diet, Grant, you can always order a honeymoon salad.

What is that?

Lettuce alone.

That’s terrible.

I thought you’d think so.

I know everyone thinks that I laugh because I like puns, but it’s out of embarrassment.

Because I’m poking him in the stomach with my pen.

877-99-9673.

More stories about what we say and how we say it.

Stay tuned.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Earlier in the show, we were talking about the Pope’s Twitter feed that’s in Latin.

And we were talking about the challenge of coming up with new Latin terms for modernity, you know, for things like email and that kind of thing.

The Vatican has compiled a whole lot of new terms.

And I was looking at several of them the other day and translating them into English.

And I wonder, Grant, if you can guess what some of these are.

Oh.

I’m not a Latin scholar at all, but let’s go.

Well, no, no, you don’t have to be.

But for example, umbrella descensoria.

So I hear umbrella there, which means shadow something.

Descensoria means something like to fall or to sleep or something like that.

That’s pretty close.

It’s like a sleeper spy, right?

Yeah.

I mean, if you were translating it, literally it would be something like descending umbrella, which would be…

Parachute.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So I have some more of these.

Of course, they didn’t have umbrellas in ancient Rome.

That’s a later Latin term.

But I have some other examples of these, and I wonder if you can guess what these translations of the Latin term mean, the new Latin term.

Okay.

Yeah, sure.

Double telescope.

Binoculars.

Exactly.

Oval-shaped playing ball inflated with wind.

American football?

No, not American.

Oh, rugby ball?

Exactly.

Oh, okay.

Exactly.

Ludus folus ovati.

Ooh, nice.

Say it again.

Ludus Fallus Ovati.

I’d like that on my pizza, please.

Investigator of the human spirit.

Ooh, investigator of the human psychotherapist.

The psychologist.

Something like that.

Yes, yes, very good.

Oh, nice.

Anyway, you did very well, Gareth.

Thank you very much.

That was a great quiz.

I’ve got to get you on Chaneski’s track.

Well, we’d love to take your questions.

We like puzzles and games and goofing around.

877-929-9673 or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And don’t forget that you can find us on Facebook and Twitter, and you can get the show for free on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

I’m Joan from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

What’s cooking there in Eau Claire?

Well, I have a question, and it’s about a word that’s used a thousand miles away, though, in northeastern Pennsylvania, where I grew up.

And the word is Haina.

Haina.

And it’s Haina, and it’s used to mean something like, isn’t it?

Sort of like a tag question.

Yep, exactly.

How do you spell it?

So when you were back in Pennsylvania, how would this come up in conversation?

Well, it’s kind of a fun word.

I remember it always being positive.

So, you know, for example, we might say something like, he’s a pretty good polka dancer, Hina.

Or as a reply to somebody, you know, something like, these pierogi are really good.

Somebody would say, yeah, Hina.

That’s how we use it.

Okay, I get this.

And Martha had asked how you spell it.

How do you spell it?

Well, it’s in the spoken language.

I don’t know.

I’ve seen it written a couple different ways.

H-A-I-N-A, H-A-Y-N-A, but I spell it H-E-Y-N-A, like K-N-A.

Yeah, I think I’ve counted seven different possible spellings of this.

You’re right.

You said exactly the right thing.

This is orally transmitted.

Sounds like a disease, but we’re talking about language.

So the spellings tend to be highly variable when a word doesn’t appear often in print.

All right, so let’s lay this down here.

There’s some really basic stuff.

First of all, we think the origin of this probably comes from ain’t it.

I realize that’s not grammatical, but there you go.

So it’s literally, as you said, you used the linguistic jargon, so I suspect you’ve been Googling this.

So bravo.

It is a tag question.

And lots of languages have these tag questions where you basically make a statement, and then you say, oh, wait a second, that was supposed to be a question.

And you add something to the end of the sentence that turns it into a question.

And so Martha’s hair looks pretty great today, hein?

It means doesn’t it?

Doesn’t it?

And so this occurs in a variety of languages all across the world.

For example, in the UK, in it.

A-I-N-N-I-T, which is a corruption of isn’t it or ain’t it, is what they might say.

That’s a lower register of English.

In French, n’est-ce pas would work.

I know there’s one in Spanish, but it’s not coming to me right now.

In German, nicht wahr, right?

And the other suspicion is that because of the heavy concentration of German speakers in the history of Pennsylvania, that there was some influence of the nitwari at the end of a phrase that combined with the ain’t it to create the heina.

So heina is a corruption, a sound corruption of the original ain’t it with some influence there.

That’s that.

What’s really interesting, really interesting, I did not uncover this because I don’t speak a lick of Hindi or Urdu, but in Hindi and Urdu, there is a Haina, which is a tag question that occurs at the end exactly the same way as it does in Pennsylvania English.

Wow.

But it’s just an utter coincidence.

It’s totally a coincidence.

They are unrelated.

One did not cause the other.

Anyway, so there you go, Joan.

That’s what we know about Haina.

And it’s still heavily used today.

If you want to find out a little bit more about this, Google the spelling H-I-N-A.

Or even better, Google the word Hainabonics for a fun video.

H-E-Y-N-A-B-O-N-I-C-S.

And it’s been around for like 10 years or something.

And it’s super fun.

It’s from some PA folk kind of poking fun at the way that they talk and talking the way you would talk if you were truly a local.

Mm—

Okay.

Okay, great.

Yeah, sure.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks for the information and for a great show.

Oh, our pleasure always.

Call us again sometime, Joan.

Thanks.

Bye.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What’s the weird way they talk out your way?

Let us know, 877-929-9673, or email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

And if you just can’t wait, find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Grant, I accidentally made up a word the other day, and I think it might have legs.

It’s here.

Okay.

I was talking with a friend, and I was talking about how I wanted to take a siesta, and I wanted some me time, and it came out miesta.

Oh, nice.

Isn’t that—I think that might work.

I think there are parents all across the country who are ready for a miesta right now.

I’m ready for one.

Where’s my hammock?

Does this studio have a hammock room?

What do you think?

Does that term have legs?

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have a way with the words.

Hello, this is Sam calling from Burlington, Vermont.

Hello, Sam. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Sam. What can we do for you?

I have a frot question.

Oh, dear.

My sensitive ears have picked up a changing use in the word frot, F-R-A-U-G-H-T.

All my career, it’s been used in a phrase as an adjective, meaning a lot of, say, fraught with peril or fraught with worry.

Lately, I’ve begun to hear it used as a standalone adjective, as in the process is fraught or the parents are fraught.

Now, perhaps I’m hearing some slack usage or I’m mistaken about the proper usage or could be the word is changing.

So when somebody says the situation is fraught, then you’re sitting on the edge of your chair, right, waiting for them to say with something, right?

That’s been my experience.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can relate.

I’ve had the same experience.

But apparently since about the 1960s or so, that usage has become more and more common.

It used to be exactly what you’re saying, that you would say a situation is fraught with.

It’s related to freight.

It has to do with literally, in the past, it had to do with loading a ship, loading a vessel.

So now we’re talking about a situation that’s loaded with worry or loaded with tenseness or loaded with a lot of potential negative outcomes.

Right, right.

It used to be sort of neutral.

You could say fraught with blessings or something like that.

But over time, it came to be more negative.

And then for some people, it started dropping off.

Yeah.

Ben Zimmer, who writes about language for The Wall Street Journal and a bunch of other newspapers, has written about fraud.

And he found really concrete evidence that this started to take off in the 2000s.

And by 2005, fraud without the prepositional clause was incredibly common in major newspapers and in the speeches of major figures on the national scene.

But as Martha notes, it’s got a longer history than that.

We can find what looked like proto-examples from the 20s and 30s.

By the 60s, it’s fully entrenched as a thing that’s just started to be noted by language experts and grammarians and the people who write style guides.

It’s so common by the 2000s that to see it in a New York Times headline is completely ordinary.

Is there any guidance on preferred usage, or am I just an old-fashioned language curmudgeon?

Well, I think the nice thing about this case, I don’t know that we’re stuck in an either-or.

I think both of these uses can continue to prosper and do their particular jobs without too much worry.

I mean, like Martha’s saying, you are kind of waiting for the dun-da-da-da-da, and it never comes.

The two bits never comes.

But I love the use of fraud.

It’s fraught.

I mean, it’s loaded with negative portents, basically, is what you’re saying when you say something is fraught.

I mean, even if we say that it started being really popular in the 2000s, in the language world, that’s considered very new.

So you did find something that is happening.

You did correctly identify a trend.

And, Sam, I’ve seen at least one dictionary that has said that fraught without the with is a little bit more informal.

I’ve got to get up with the times.

Yeah, and, Sam, nobody’s going to make you use it that way, but maybe every time you hear somebody use it, you can think of us.

There we go.

I will always think of you.

All right.

Thanks, Sam, for calling.

All right.

Bye-bye.

My pleasure.

Take care.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Goodbye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send them an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

I had a great experience recently helping a lost dog find its owner and then find a new foster home.

Yeah.

It was really good.

Good for you.

Yeah, lots of people came together to make this happen.

He’s doing well, as far as I know, in his new home.

But I learned a new word because of this.

So he is a pit bull mix, P-I-T-B-U-L-L.

Okay.

But one of the ways that the pit bull loving community has kind of tried to shift the negative opinion of pit bulls and the pit bull mixes is to call them pibbles.

Pibbles.

Yeah, P-I-B-B-L-E-S.

Because it kind of sounds like pit bull, and it’s kind of a cutesy way of saying pit bull.

So I’ve got a pibble at home instead of a pit bull at home.

A pibble.

A Pibble, Pibble sounds cuter and safer than Pitbull.

It sounds a lot cuter.

And I got to say that he, this dog Jet, is one of the sweetest dogs that I’ve ever met.

He was adorable and cute and wonderful to be a part of this whole process of getting back to his people.

But anyway, Pibble, how about that?

That’s wonderful.

I like that very much.

Pitbulls used to be very, very popular in this country.

I mean, Buster Brown’s dog was a Pitbull.

I’m of the opinion, as many people are, that Pitbulls are only dangerous if they’re taught to be dangerous, just like any dog.

Yep, yep.

They can be wonderful pets.

But what do you call your dog?

What do you call your breed?

What’s the affectionate term that you have for the pooch in your life?

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elizabeth.

I’m calling from Dallas.

Welcome, Elizabeth.

Hello there.

What can we do for you?

Yeah.

So a couple weeks ago, I remember listening to a gentleman who was talking about the differences between guests and customers and labeling things.

And in my experience, as I said, my name’s Elizabeth, and my experience is with nicknames.

And I always find that so fascinating.

I have a thousand nicknames.

I have five brothers, which probably contributes to that.

But a nickname that is not used for me is Liz.

So have you had somebody call you Liz and you didn’t like it?

Yes.

Typically speaking, it was when somebody came into my office and they’re trying to sell me product or service.

And, you know, introducing myself, I always say, hi, I’m Elizabeth.

Nice to meet you, et cetera.

And then when they got in kind to their pitch of sorts, then they would always say, well, you know, Liz.

And it always kind of struck me funny because I never said, my name’s Elizabeth, call me Liz.

And to me, it was kind of like they’re trying to create some sort of air of familiarity, hence the nickname.

And I’ve talked to my friends about it, too.

I’m like, it’s really kind of off-putting.

You know, I would never, if someone said, hi, my name’s Robert, I would never say Bob or Bobby.

That’s not what they said.

Right.

You know, I feel like that’s pretty impolite.

How do you handle it when people call you Liz?

Do you correct them?

I usually don’t.

No, I usually don’t say anything.

I don’t really want to dwell on it.

But it’s an irritant, right?

Yeah, I find it that way.

I mean, I just don’t find it very professional for one.

I don’t find it very polite.

And I don’t find that it helps me or helps our relationship in any way.

And I don’t know why they, maybe I’m just, again, projecting things.

I feel like that’s kind of their assumption when they try to get familiar with me.

That they’re trying to project something that’s not there.

I don’t feel like it helps in any way.

Right, and they probably think it does.

I don’t know where people got that idea from.

Yeah.

But Americans are noted for having an aversion to excessive formality, and I wonder if that’s part of it as well.

They’re adopting the national culture, which is to find a way not to take things so seriously.

We default to Bob instead of Robert and Liz instead of Elizabeth, or at least Beth instead of Elizabeth.

That’s the thing is I think Beth is the more likely first abbreviation and not Liz, but what do I know?

Well, I think the point is that we shouldn’t make assumptions about what people want to be called, whether it’s Debbie versus Deborah or whatever.

I think that’s presumptuous.

I love it, the scenes in the British movies, like the upstairs-downstairs sort of thing where somebody becomes excessively familiar and gets put in their place.

It’s not a thing that we have often here in America, but this is one of those times.

Yeah, and we don’t have the do versus dig.

Yeah, yeah.

Do versus see.

Yeah, we don’t do the tutoyer and veu-voyer.

Right.

We don’t have the formal you.

That is true we don’t.

But every commentator who’s visited the United States since the founding of this country from somewhere else, usually Europe, has noted that Americans have this rush to informality.

And I’m not going to excuse the people who call you Liz.

They should call you what you want to be called.

I agree.

But I can give them just a little bit of benefit of the doubt.

What do you think about that, Elizabeth?

Well, it’s easy to call you Liz.

I’m sorry.

I just had Liz on the brain.

Like I said, I’m not going to correct someone.

I’m not going to say, don’t ever call me that.

You’re just not going to buy their product.

And usually when I’m with friends, I just say, hey, my name’s Bethy.

Like, I don’t even say Elizabeth.

Oh, really?

Elizabeth, your name is sort of the Swiss Army knife of proper names, I think.

You know?

It’s like the buffalo on the prairie who use every part of the name to make something new.

Yes.

Well, Elizabeth, I bet we’re going to hear from a lot of people who share your name or share your nicknames and want to keep the name that they were given and not the one that somebody wants to put upon them.

Right.

Well, thanks a lot for calling.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for your time.

I appreciate it.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

All right, a little bit of jargon for you from the automobile world.

They’re talking about automobiles communicating with each other.

So your car would tell mine that I’m about to break.

So mine would start to break before I even knew it needed to.

Oh, wow.

And they call that V to V communication, vehicle to vehicle.

V to V.

V to V, yeah.

Is it with the number two?

No, T-O.

But V for vehicle, T-O, V.

So vehicle to vehicle communication.

It echoes things like B2B, which is business to business, or B2C, which is business to consumer.

Anyway, as cars become smarter and they have computers inside of them that are doing a lot more of the thinking for the driver, I think we’re going to see a lot more of this kind of language come out.

I think our cars are going to fall in love.

Do you?

Yeah.

It’ll be Herbie the love bug, right?

That’s right.

They’ll have little baby tricycles.

877-929-9673.

Things have come to a pretty path.

That’s all for today’s broadcast, but don’t wait till next week.

You can join us on Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, or SoundCloud.

And check out our website, waywordradio.org.

You’ll find a dictionary, a newsletter, mobile apps, and a discussion forum.

You can also listen to hundreds of past episodes free of charge.

Leave us a message anytime at 877-929-9673.

Share your family’s stories about language, or ask us to resolve language disputes at work, home, or school.

You can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

The show is directed this week by Mark Kirchner and edited by Tim Felten.

We have production help from James Ramsey.

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.

We’re coming to you this week from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Take care.

Sayonara.

You like tomato and 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 part.

Support for A Way with Words comes from the Ken Blanchard Companies, whose purpose is to make a leadership difference among executives, managers, and individuals in organizations everywhere.

More about Ken Blanchard’s leadership training programs at KenBlanchard.com slash leadership.

Hey there, podcast listeners.

Just want to let you know that although we give you the show free and we give it free to stations, it does cost something to send these episodes out to hundreds of thousands of listeners across the planet.

Help support our educational mission by going to the website and clicking the donate link.

Ten bucks? A little more? How about as much as you think it’s worth?

Thanks in any case for helping us keep shop.