Brand Spanking New (episode #1487)

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.

Every year about this time, I put together my words of the year.

Oh, yes.

I can’t wait.

So I’ve got a couple for you today.

They kind of represent 2017, but I’ve done something different this year.

I decided to ignore the political words.

Thank you.

Well, I feel like they’re getting all the press and attention they need in other quarters.

So I picked two out that I think still represent 2017, but they’re not politically related.

Great.

The first of these, you probably remember, Path of Totality.

Oh my gosh, how could I forget?

So not only does it sound like an Ursula Le Guin novel, something really exciting, but it also sounds mysterious, like celestial bodies are controlling you, right?

Path of Totality.

But what it means is the part of the Earth that was completely covered in shadow when the moon blocked the sun in August, and we had this nice eclipse.

Yeah.

So the Path of Totality.

Nice memory.

Right?

It was a good time.

People came together.

All these science.

Everybody turned into a science nerd.

We all showed up and enjoyed this rare event together and learned a little about the solar system that we live in.

The other one is stranger, a little more esoteric.

It all stems from a tweet by a guy named Ben Ward.

He’s an Australian who has the handle pixelated boat.

Now, in 2016, he tweeted, “The whole Internet loves milkshake duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes.”

Five seconds later, we regret to inform you that the duck is racist.

So from that single tweet in 2016, milkshake duck became a thing.

And what it means is it’s when you learn of somebody and they’re awesome and they’re great and good and you love the things they do.

But just a little bit later, you learn that there’s something bad about them.

Right. That there’s there are allegations or untruths or sordid details.

So besides perfectly representing so much of what happened in 2017, were these people who we thought were good people.

It turned out that they had these terrible histories that had been hidden from us.

But it also kind of represents, milkshake duck represents the speed at which we now find things out.

The speed of social media, the speed at which someone can rise and become a phenomenon, but the speed at which they can also fall.

Yeah, it gives you whiplash, doesn’t it?

It gives you whiplash, yeah.

So that’s milkshake duck and pathototality.

Those are my two words of the year for 2017.

By the way, the guy who came up with the term milkshake duck, his name is Ben Ward.

He has a cool comic at OneGiantHand.com.

So what are the Velcro words and phrases in your life, the ones that you’ve come across this year and just can’t seem to shake?

Call us about them, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have a way with the words.

Hi, Grant. This is Nina from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

We are naming a mascot for a local college, and I’m on a committee for this.

And we’d start looking at the names that students have sent in.

But the one that came up that was a little controversial because we couldn’t decide if it could be used or not was the name Steel Knights.

Of course, Pittsburgh Steel Knights would be popular. S-P-E-E-L Knights.

And so my immediate reaction was, yeah, but we have sports teams, and they’re male and female.

And isn’t that a gendered term?

And there were actual people there who said they didn’t see what it was or that it wasn’t really relevant in any way.

And I was sort of surprised.

Somebody actually said, could there be female knight?

Oh, yeah.

But I just wondered what I asked you.

Nina, when you’re saying the word knight, you’re saying it spelled with a K, right?

Yes.

So suits of armor and the round table and swords and horses.

Yeah.

And maybe the first mistake was naming a committee to come up with this.

You know what? That’s a good, that’s a very good call on your part.

So the Steel Knights on first blush isn’t bad, but your question is, there was some debate over what part of it?

The word knights.

And is that a gendered word?

And can you name a mascot with a gender if you have females on some of your teams?

Right.

And what’s your thought about the word knight specifically, Nina?

I think that knights are male.

Other people said, oh, no, knights could be women.

And I’m like, yeah, but, you know, Judi Dench is not Sir Judi Dench.

She’s named Judi Dench.

Right.

So I’m confused.

I really don’t even know how to make the call.

I think it’s gendered.

Were there any women who argued that it wasn’t gendered?

No, just me.

Okay.

It was a mostly male group.

Okay.

And deans and stuff.

Okay.

So do you think it’s a gendered word, number one?

And number two, is it okay to have a gendered word as a mascot?

K-N-I-G-H-T, knight.

I would say it is.

I would say it’s still one of those words where you would say female knight if you were going to say anything to qualify.

Yeah, like the Lady Knights.

Yeah, Lady Knights.

Yeah, I’m wondering, too, if this was a suggestion by students.

I wonder if they’re being exposed to more female knights on programs like Game of Thrones.

Brienne of Tarth, right?

That is exactly what someone talked about.

I am in your camp, Nina.

I think it’s got such a long history.

And, you know, if it doesn’t matter, if it’s not gendered, then why not use the word dame?

Why not be the fighting dames?

Perfect.

Right.

Oh, yeah.

And they’ll never agree to that.

Yeah.

Or here’s another thought that sort of speaks to your second question.

Could you or should you have a gendered mascot?

And my other suggestion would be call them the knights, but have every single image be a female in armor.

I can imagine like Athena, right?

Yeah.

That would be amazing.

I like that.

I like that idea.

I love that, too.

And the truth of the matter is, that was one of the front runners, but there’s a whole bunch of other ones in there.

So I don’t know if that one’s going to happen, but if it does, that is a great idea.

Well, something you said a moment ago, it kind of gave me kind of a shiver of revulsion.

And you said something about the Lady Knights, and I think that’s what you’re trying to avoid.

Yeah.

Even if we agreed that knights wasn’t gendered and could equally apply to women and men, you just know that there’s going to be a newscaster or sports writer or somebody in the administration who’s going to take up the habit of calling them the lady knights.

Because that tends to be the default.

I grew up in the small towns in Missouri where I grew up.

It was always, even though it was the Trojans, then you had the lady Trojans.

By default, they were male.

Or you had the lady Tigers.

By default, the tiger was male.

I’m like, you just know.

So you’re trying to avoid that, too, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, so I think we’re with you.

You have to let us know what the committee decides, okay?

I am definitely going to let you know what happens.

But it’s been a really interesting experience naming a mascot, let me tell you.

I bet.

Never done it before.

I vote for the camels.

But let us know how that goes.

Yeah.

Okay, sure.

Thanks, Nina.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

But I would be very curious to know if younger listeners think that we’re making a mistake, that we’re looking too closely at the history.

Yeah, that’s a good question.

Right.

Do they think, if you saw night, would you just say, I want to know if that’s a man or a woman, or would you just assume it was masculine?

Yeah, yeah.

What about folks who play lots of video games?

That’s true, yeah.

Those female nights.

Well, let us know.

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

A century or so ago when cities were getting built up, sometimes small streams would just be in the way.

And civil engineers would find ways to either route the water into pipes or even pave over a stream so that it’s underground.

But there’s been a movement in recent years to liberate those streams, to bring them back.

And the term for that, I learned recently, is daylighting.

Oh, daylighting. That makes a lot of sense.

Daylighting a river or daylighting a stream.

They’ve done this in Yonkers, New York.

They’ve also had spectacular results with one in Seoul, South Korea.

Daylighting. That’s cool.

Share the words you’ve discovered in your reading, 877-929-9673, or tell us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Jack. I’m calling from San Diego.

Hi, Jack. How are you doing?

Good. Great.

We’re glad to have you. What’s going on?

Well, I was just wondering where the term bullseye came from.

Bullseye.

And what’s making you wonder about the term bullseye?

Where have you heard it?

Well, I’ve heard it in many movies, action movies.

And I was just wondering.

I was thinking about it.

I thought maybe they shot bullseye.

Oh.

I wanted to learn more.

Good attitude.

Yes, we’re really glad you called.

And what would you think if I told you that it had to do with the fact that a bull’s eye is round and so is a traditional target?

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, you know like the target symbol for like the department store Target with the red and white circles?

Yeah, yeah.

That’s a bull’s eye, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

What do you think about it?

Yeah, very abstract.

With a circle in the middle.

Like when you’re shooting arrows in archery, right?

You see that kind of target?

Yeah, yeah.

So did they shoot it?

How big did it get?

Like big enough so they can shoot it right in the pupil?

Well, no, it’s just something that looks like a bull’s eye.

They didn’t really use it, an actual bull’s eye.

No, as far as we know, they didn’t shoot bulls in the eye.

No, because bulls are valuable animals.

You wouldn’t want to just practice shooting on an animal that was worth a lot, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, since the early 19th century, several different things that were round were sometimes compared to a bull’s eye.

Because if you think about it, I mean, what’s the biggest animal that you see in this country?

I mean, besides elephants in the zoo, but naturally occurring animals on a day-to-day.

Yeah.

It’s a bull.

A bull is one of the bigger animals.

And so the term bullseye was actually used to describe round windows.

Oh, yeah.

There’s a French term for that.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, and a kind of coin.

Oye de bouffe.

Right.

And so the idea all along is pretty much what Grant was saying, that if you think about just drawing a bullseye, it’s going to look pretty much like the bullseye on Target.

Yeah, the actual animal eyeball.

Wow.

Yeah, you know, humans do that.

We take things in the real world and we do similes and metaphors to say, that’s a lot like that.

I’m just going to go ahead and call it that name.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

I didn’t think to hear that answer.

Oh, we’re glad to help.

Yeah, glad to delight you, little guy.

Jack, I got to tell you, you got energy and spirit and I like it.

Thank you.

My heart is beating fast right now.

Hey, you’re a superstar.

You’re doing great.

All right.

Yeah.

And we’re really happy you called us.

All right.

You call us again sometime, Jack?

Yeah, definitely.

All right.

Okay, great.

Cheers.

All right. Good luck.

Thank you.

Bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

I’m such a sucker for anagrams.

Did you know that you can anagram the name Britney Spears to become the name of a certain religious group?

You can? What is it? I don’t know.

Presbyterians.

Oh, interesting. Nice.

Britney Spears is just a mixed-up Presbyterian, I guess.

That’s interesting.

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

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us on the line from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hey, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hi.

This week, I have an interesting little puzzle for you.

I got to say, I don’t think it’s very hard.

I think it’s really more of a celebration of how words are used, which we like to do.

But it’s still a little bit of a quiz.

Okay.

Okay.

When you’ve got to name something, anything, you want to make it memorable, of course.

Well, I hope you’ve been paying attention to band names and short stories.

As I read the following list, you must tell me if each item is either a band or the title of a famous short story.

Oh, my.

Relatively famous short story.

Now, by the way, every band on this list merits their own Wikipedia page and garners a substantial number of search engine hits.

Now, I’ve also not chosen any bands that took their name from the titles of short stories because that would be cruel.

Okay.

All right, here we go.

This is band or short story.

Here’s the first one.

My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult.

Band.

It sounds like a band.

Yeah, I know that band.

They are an electronic industrial rock band from Chicago.

They’re really good.

All right.

How about shadowy men on a shadowy planet?

Band.

Story.

Band.

Do you know those?

No, it’s a band.

It’s a band?

Yes, they are.

Okay.

Do you know anything about shadowy men on a shadowy planet?

No, I don’t, but I think there are a couple albums from other bands named after that band.

It’s five women.

No.

They are a Canadian instrumental rock band.

They perform the theme to the sketch comedy show The Kids in the Hall.

Oh, that’s probably how I know that.

You’ve probably seen those words on your TV screen.

Okay.

How about The Number 12 Looks Like You?

Short story.

Short story.

No, that’s a hardcore punk band from Bergen County, New Jersey.

What?

Yeah, yeah.

The Number 12 Looks Like You.

They took their name from an episode of The Twilight Zone, which you might remember.

Okay.

No.

Okay.

Let’s try Hills Like White Elephants.

I think that’s a short story as well.

I’m going with a short story.

Is that a Hemingway story or something?

It is a short story by Ernest Hemingway.

Yes.

Good knowing.

Yeah.

Good knowing.

How about when people were shorter and lived near the water?

That’s a short story.

I’m going with this story.

They are an experimental psychedelic band from New York City.

No, they’re not.

Yes, they are.

Where people were shorter and lived near the water?

Exactly right.

How about Young Zaphad Plays It Safe?

That’s a short story.

Douglas Adams.

It is a short story about Douglas Adams, yes.

How about The Dinner Is Ruined?

Oh, The Dinner Is Ruined.

I think that’s a short story.

I think I read it in The New Yorker.

I wouldn’t be surprised something like that would be in The New Yorker.

It sounds like a New Yorker short story, but I’m going with a band.

It’s a Canadian indie blues rock band.

Yes, The Dinner Is Ruined.

Isn’t there a story about somebody who brought the wrong wine and the whole evening went to heck because of…

I think there are a lot of stories like that in The New Yorker.

Right.

How about The Diamond As Big As the Ritz?

Story.

Yeah, I guess that’s a story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, maybe?

It is an F. Scott Fitzgerald story.

Well done.

Yes.

How about this one?

The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower.

Experimental French bands from Algeria.

I don’t know.

They are a four-piece punk noise band from San Diego.

Oh.

What?

Really?

I’ve never heard of them.

Get out there.

Look for flyers and get out there.

All right, next time they play The Cowsball, I’ll go see them.

Okay.

The plot to blow up the Eiffel Tower.

Just the band name, not a plan.

That’s right.

John, thank you.

That was a very different kind of quiz than usual.

Yeah, sure.

I look forward to more like that.

Well, thanks for playing, guys.

Bye, John.

Yeah, thanks, John.

Give our best to your family.

Take care.

You too.

Bye-bye.

All right.

We put this out all the time.

We say, you’ve got a quiz for us.

You’ve got a puzzle.

There’s a thing that you want to stump us with.

Now’s your time.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

See if you can stump us.

Talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Katya.

I’m calling from San Diego.

Welcome.

What’s going on, Katya?

What can we do for you?

My question is about a word that my father used to use.

He is, or was, rather, one of the most intelligent people I ever knew.

And he would always help me with my essays.

And we would spend hours arguing over commas and words.

And one of the things he used to say was that words are not fungible.

And we’d get into a discussion about, you know, which words to use in an essay.

And that word fungible has always kind of confused me.

And I spent many, many years trying to prove to him that there are certain words that are fungible,

And I could never find a pair.

So I’m calling to ask you guys, what do you think about if words are fungible?

I know that fungible means, like, interchangeable, as far as I know.

And is that really true, that words are not fungible?

Fungible, F-U-N-G-I-B-L-E, fungible, right?

Right. Yeah, from the Latin for to perform or enjoy.

Yeah, or to be in place or something.

Yeah, function. Yeah, it’s related to function.

Yeah, so are words fungible? Are there shades of…

Can words be perfect synonyms in other words?

Exactly. And then that kind of leads to the question, you know, what is a synonym?

Does that exist? Are words equal or are they just similar?

My dad’s perspective was that words can be similar,

But they’re never exactly the same, that they have a different feeling to it.

And I always thought that was really interesting.

Words seem very kind of logical, left brain.

But he says that each word has its own feeling in the body and emotion,

And so that’s what makes them different.

This is the way that linguists think, exactly like your father.

Most linguists today generally agree that there’s no such thing as a perfect synonym.

And that word perfect is important.

And I know before all the armchair linguists start hammering their queries into Google,

We’re talking about synonymy that is overall for most people most of the time.

Because we can always come up with these two-word pairs that work in a single sentence.

But what you need those two words to do is work in all sentences, in all situations.

And in all contexts and other things.

So what a linguist will look at is implicit meaning versus explicit meaning.

So the explicit meaning, let’s say, is what you see in the dictionary, the definition.

The implicit meaning is the meaning that it gets,

And this is what touches on what your father was saying,

By the company that it keeps, how it appears in a sentence.

It’s colligations and collocations, the other words that it travels with

And the circumstances in which it appears.

For example, we might be able to say that butt and derriere are synonyms, B-U-T-T and derriere.

But they have a different feel to them.

Derriere is a little less crass, right?

It’s something you might say in a little more refined situation.

It might even be a little more joking where butt is a little more childish, a little more crass.

And these contexts, these pragmatics, aren’t necessarily indicated in a dictionary.

Dictionaries usually don’t tell you those kinds of things.

You just pick them up as a native speaker.

So those characteristics are what make butt and derriere synonyms, but not perfect synonyms.

Wow.

You know, I’ve been on a journey trying to find these two words for years, words that are fungible.

And I’d always come to him with a pair, and he would explain it kind of like you just did.

And it sounds like my search is futile.

That words truly are not fungible in terms of being perfectly interchangeable.

That is the overall consensus among linguists today.

When I was part of an editorial team putting together the first writer’s thesaurus for Oxford University Press,

One of the things we came up with were word spectrums, where we took a bunch of related words,

Say words meaning pretty or beautiful, or words meaning ugly, or words meaning derriere,

And we put them on a spectrum from left to right.

Say, the spectrum on the left might be most useful to least useful,

Or most crass to least crass, or most refined to least refined,

Or some spectrum of that sort, or most common to least common.

In that way, you can compare a whole group of words instead of just two

And maybe start to see, as you’re moving things back and forth along this continuum,

The gradations of meaning, of sentiment in each of these words

Are really kind of astonishing that you know this.

And yet, if you were pressed to put it in print,

You would have a really difficult time.

Yeah, wow.

Yeah, thank you so much.

I love that idea of the spectrum.

Thanks, Katya.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

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

We have a very active Facebook group,

And you can find us on Twitter at Wayword.

We heard from Larry Moby in Suttons Bay, Michigan, and he’s a winemaker there.

And he says that in his work, the letters MT are an abbreviation to mark a tank or barrel that is empty.

He says, this is quick to write, easy to read, and conveys the meaning.

Pronouncing the letters MT sounds out the word being abbreviated.

Is there a term for such abbreviations, and are there others?

So MT standing for E-M-P-T-Y.

Yes.

Isn’t that cool?

That is cool.

Yeah.

It makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would love to see a picture of that.

And do you have an answer?

Is there a term?

Well, there is a term for these things.

They’re called gramograms.

You know, like X-S.

It spells out X-S.

Sure.

But I’m not sure what other professions might use an initial like that.

Is it standard throughout the industry or just at his vineyard and winery?

That’s a great question.

I don’t know.

But I can see why you would do that.

I mean, you save writing to a couple of letters, right?

Right.

You’re busy.

You’re a busy person.

You’ve got a ton of work to do.

Yeah.

The only other thing that I could think of that might be used in a profession is maybe

FX for effects, like sound effects.

I’ve actually seen that.

Have you?

Yeah.

Have you?

But I’m wondering if there are other professions out there that use gramograms that we haven’t thought about.

Oh, that’s good.

So two letters that kind of sound…

Or more.

Yeah, a few letters that sound like a much longer word, but they’re not actually an abbreviation, really.

Yeah, like the letters M-T.

I thought that was really cool.

Give us a call.

Let us know.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Jonah calling from Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Hi, Jonah.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, Jonah.

So I’m originally from North Carolina.

And my wife is from North Dakota,

So we have a little bit different words that we use in our vocabulary.

So what happened was I was in an antique store with her a while back,

And there was an old-fashioned washing machine,

And it looks like an upside-down cone on a little three- or four-foot broomstick.

And what you do is you run it up and down in a wash tub,

And it had little holes that acted as jets to wash the clothes.

And I was describing this action to her as you would just sound it up and down

To get the clothes clean.

And she looked at me like I was crazy and said,

That’s not a word.

So I, of course,

I went to Google right off the bat to try and prove myself right.

I couldn’t find anything.

I tried several different spellings and had no luck.

So I was wondering if you guys could help me out.

So I imagine a stick with a cone on the end,

You’ve got a tub full of water and clothes and laundry soap,

And you’re just like,

It’s like churning butter,

Only you’re washing clothes?

Exactly.

Okay.

And you’re souging it.

S-O-U—

Soug it up and down.

S-O-U-G-I-N-G?

I would do S-O-W-G-E or J-E.

Okay.

S-O-W-G-E.

Souging, okay.

Souging.

Well, you’re not crazy.

We can tell you you’re not crazy.

Not about this.

Yeah, so soug is a word that you hear in the South.

You more commonly hear the word souse,

And it means exactly what you’re talking about,

To plunge something in water or another kind of liquid abruptly.

And usually it’s souse.

Sometimes you talk about somebody being soused, meaning they drank a whole lot.

Because they’re soaked in liquid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It apparently goes back to an old French word that means pickle, like the kind of brine.

That you put in things into pickle.

Oh, I see.

So the old French, you pickle something by soaking it in a particular liquid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You dump it in that liquid. Being soused or to be a sous means you’re soaked in alcohol, which is a kind of liquid.

Right.

And then sousing something is washing something in a lot of liquid. You’re drenching it.

Yeah.

People refer jokingly to baptism that way.

Of soudging someone?

Yeah, you soudge the convert.

All right, so it does have to do with water.

Yeah.

Yeah, or some kind of liquid.

Yeah, or washing, because, you know, in the Navy, it’s not as widely used as some terms, but in the Navy, they talk about soudging something, meaning to clean it.

You might be assigned soudging duties, which means you’ve got to really thoroughly, you know, do a place up so that it passes inspection.

Soudging.

Okay, and so we’re spelling that S-O-U-G-E or S-O-U-G-E?

Yeah, I would say the verb is, right, S-O-U-G-E. But your spelling is probably just fine, Jonah, because it seems to be mostly orally transmitted, which means the spelling is really loose.

Yeah, yeah.

So the more common one is souse, but you’re perfectly within your rights to say souse.

Yeah, so souse and souse with a zh and souse.

So they’re all kind of on a spectrum of pronunciations, that last consonant.

Does it have any ties to motion? Because I was talking to my dad, and he was saying my granddad would talk about, for example, working on a carburetor, and he needed you to hit the throttle, open it up fast, he would say, south down on it.

Yeah, so I could see, you know, sort of pouring on the gas.

Yeah, I could see that.

You’re flooding it. You’re literally soaking it in liquid, but it’s gasoline.

Okay.

Excellent.

How about that?

All right.

Thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Call us again sometime, Jonah.

All right.

Thanks.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

I was caught off guard the other day when I was pumping gas, and the gas pump said to me, your word of the day.

Oh, yeah, I had the same thing.

Have you had this experience?

I’ve had this, yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

I was shocked. I thought, how do they know I’m here?

Maybe it was just you and I.

Yeah, maybe that’s what it was.

Maybe nobody else gets that.

Maybe the people who follow sports get sports scores.

I mean, and what was really crazy is that the word was serendipity.

Oh, I saw the same thing.

Did you?

Well, I have to say, you know, the word was serendipity, and it did not have the etymology, which I was not happy about.

And that’s the best story there, the Serendip Island, right?

Right, right.

It was a word coined by Horace Walpole in one of his books.

The writer, right.

It was based on the three princes of Serendip, Serendip being an old word for Sri Lanka.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, and these princes were always making discoveries, and that’s where we get the word serendipity.

So they could have added that.

Right.

I mean, I would have filled the tank. I had enough time for that.

Yeah, exactly.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is David from Wyoming.

Hi, David from Wyoming.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

I was wondering about brand spanking new.

What is new in your life that made you think of that?

Nothing. I was just wondering because I’ve heard it before.

All right.

Any theories about brand spanking new?

Because I know there’s one thing that people think of when they think about something that’s new and involves spanking.

Yeah, I think of a baby.

Yeah, most of us, we think of that like the Warner Brothers cartoons with the baby being born and getting smacked on the bum, right?

And squalling.

It’s not related to the origin of brand spanking new, though, interestingly enough.

It turns out that spanking used as an adjective to mean good or great or big or fine or amazing goes back to the late 1600s and probably has nothing to do with spanking, like smacking on the bottom at all. It probably is related to a similar words in Danish, spanka, which means to strut, S-P-A-N-K-E, which is cool. But we find over the history of the word, it went from meaning very good or big or fine just to being used as an emphasizer, throw it in front of another adjective and it will just make it more of itself. So brand spanking new means very new or spanking new or spanking big I’ve seen as well means very big.

So spanking in that sense originally meant to strut?

Possible. It’s related to a Danish word to strut. So that’s a cognate on the side, but not necessarily the origin of it. It is basically origin unknown, but we do find it as early as 1600 spanking, meaning very fine, good, big, or great.

Not what I thought it was.

Yeah, you know, me neither.

I can’t believe that I didn’t already know this before I dug into the term.

Because we have all these other terms that you may know where we use to emphasize or to stress or…

Yeah, that have to do with striking, like larapin.

Have you heard that one, being there in Wyoming?

That’s a larapin good pie.

Yeah.

It comes from a Dutch word that means to beat or strike.

What about, we had a thumpin’ good time.

I’ve heard that.

Yeah.

Not used very often.

Or just striking.

Yeah, or striking or whopping.

There’s a few, whacking.

We have all these terms that seem to be related to hitting something, but they’re actually just used to emphasize.

How about that, David?

Cool.

That answers my question.

All right.

That’s what we’re after.

Thanks for calling.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, what word has caught your ear lately?

We’d love to hear about it.

877-929-9673, or send your questions and stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

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.

Grant, you remember the call we had from Nina and her fifth grade class in Connecticut.

They were looking for a word that means both nervous and excited.

Oh, yeah, sure.

The reason I know that is because of all the emails we got.

We got so many emails.

And phone calls.

Yes.

Yes, Nina was looking for a word that means both nervous and excited.

For example, she was nervous about talking with us, but she was also excited.

And a lot of people wrote us to suggest, what about a flutter or a twitter?

Oh, nice. A flutter. I love it.

Those are good.

Yeah.

But I was amazed at the number of suggestions we got that were portmanteaus, pushing together a couple of different words.

We heard from Bob Zena in Louisville, Kentucky, who suggested antrepidation, like anticipation and trepidation.

Okay, very good.

Antrepidation. I like that.

We also heard from the principal of Earl Wooster High School in Reno, Nevada.

Go Colts.

Her name is Leah, and she suggested the word apprehensive.

Happrehensive. I like that one.

That’s really good, too, right?

And we also heard from Petra Byrami, who is here in San Diego.

And she wrote, a few years ago when my son Ryan was five years old and had just started kindergarten, his class was going to perform for the first time in front of all the parents.

And they were going to recite a poem.

My son took me aside and said, Mommy, I am very nervous-sighted.

Nervous-sighted. Perfect.

Yeah, and Petra says, I’d never heard that word, so I asked him what he meant.

And he explained to me he meant nervous and excited at the same time.

Since we speak only Farsi at home, I was pretty sure he had learned that word at school.

What do you think?

That’s a good one.

Nervous-cited.

And we had a ton of these.

I don’t know which one is going to catch on, if any of them, but I plan to come back from the dead in about 100 years and look into it.

You’re making me nervous-cited right now.

We’re going to find out.

We’ll know.

The language will know.

Well, call us with your stories about language, 877-929-9673, and we always welcome email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Luis Hernandez, and I’m calling from Corpus Christi, Texas.

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

My name is, of course, Luis, but they always call me Luis, like not my name.

Or when they’re spelling it, they’re always spelling it like L-U-Y-S-L-O-U-I.

Sometimes they do like the Lewis and Clark one, like L-E-W-I-S.

And I’m not sure if I’m always supposed to correct them, but it’s my name.

I don’t know if the etiquette to do is, you know, actually correct them or not.

So your name is Luis, L-U-I-S.

Yes, Luis.

The Spanish pronunciation and the Spanish spelling.

Yeah, like you see, like in that case, you being an English speaker, it’ll be Luis.

There’s an emphasis on the U, and Spanish is just Luis.

Luis.

Luis.

Very good.

And you mentioned your last name.

Are you pronouncing that with an H or not?

Hernandez.

Hernandez.

You really don’t sound the H.

But you anglicized the pronunciation when you told us a few minutes ago, right?

Yeah, because that’s how a lot of people can naturally like, oh, okay, that’s how that name is said.

Luis, I got to tell you, the thing that you have owned the longest besides your own body is your name.

And I think, boy, I’m going to get some email for this.

I think if you were in the right situation, maybe not a boss or a police officer or a judge or anybody like that, but other situations, I would correct them.

I really would find a firm line, a brief way to say it that you can practice in advance and say, it’s Luis, please.

Or I prefer Luis.

Yeah, or call me Luis.

Yeah, call me Luis.

And yeah, call me Luis.

That’s kinder.

That’s a gentler way to do it.

And just get that down so it’s reflexive.

I have known people in your circumstance and actually knew a guy when he started his job.

He was introduced to the staff as Luis.

And then he had to spend like months correcting everyone to tell them it was Luis.

And so he had exactly the same first name as you, and it was difficult, and he was just so aggravated that the boss said his name wrong on that very first day in front of the staff.

Do you know why they always do Louis?

I mean, for me, when I hear Louis, I’m like, there’s no O in my name.

Do you know where they kind of get the O from sometimes?

Now, are they reading your name on paper?

Let’s say you’re calling the bank for help or something like that, and so they’re not hearing you say it at first?

Okay, when they’re reading it, they say Louis.

And I’m like, where do you see the O when you’re reading my name?

I’ve done research on my name many times out of curiosity.

And apparently my name comes from like a Germanic Anglo name.

How you want to pronounce it, that is how it’s pronounced.

The history of your name isn’t what matters.

It’s what you, as the person that name belongs to, you control its pronunciation.

And you, I don’t want to say being a jerk about it, but you can be firm about it.

I think Martha’s idea of saying, please call me Luis, I think when somebody mispronounces it, I think that’s a really nice way to correct them.

Yeah, or just shrug and say, it’s Luis.

I mean, personally, I would want to call the person what that person wants to be called.

I have to question people’s motivations if they keep calling you Luis.

If they can’t make the minimal effort after you correct them, then it’s on them and they’re just difficult to deal with.

Some people don’t try very hard, do they?

Yeah, don’t you think it’s a matter of respect?

Yeah.

Generally, I think Martha and I are agreeing with you that people should try hard to pronounce your name.

It’s not that hard.

I will say one tiny thing that kind of defends the people who mispronounce it at first, not the ones who continue to mispronounce even after you correct them.

When I watch British television and they’re pronouncing Spanish names, place names, people names,

They don’t have the same culture of like Spanish being taught in the schools consistently as we do here in the United States.

They don’t have like whole huge states like Texas and California and Florida and New York that have giant Spanish speaking populations.

So you encounter Spanish on the radio and newspapers and street signs and so forth.

So they mispronounce Spanish names all the time and it aggravates me.

But I kind of get that.

If you weren’t exposed in any real meaningful way to the proper way to pronounce those vowels,

I could see how you might say, yeah, it looks like Louis.

I guess I’m going to say Louis because it’s close to Louis.

But again, once you correct them or once you gently say, I prefer Luis,

Then they’ve got to do their best to go along and get that right.

Yeah, or ask if you don’t know how to pronounce a name that you’re looking at.

So we’re with you.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

And have a great day.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Names are difficult.

We know you’ve got a name thing happening in your life.

They got it wrong.

They got it right.

You can’t think of one.

Call us.

We’ll help out.

877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

You know, now that I think about it, another term that burst onto the scene this year is the term fidget spinner.

I sure hadn’t heard that before last year.

Yeah, fidget spinner.

One day my son came home from fourth grade and he was talking about wanting a fidget spinner.

I’m like, excuse me?

What is that?

And then they were everywhere and now they seem to be declining.

Yes.

Like the fad may have passed?

Well, except with cats.

I’ve found that they are very effective for cats who are bored.

It grew so big so fast that you could find kiosks at malls that sold only fidget spinners.

And you could go to these woodworking shops, say, in old town, the downtown that’s kind of been made to look like the old West era.

And they’ll have wooden versions of these that don’t actually spin, but they’re the right shape, which is interesting.

Oh, interesting.

Is it still a fidget spinner if it doesn’t spin?

I thought it had to have a little ball bearing and you just put it on your finger and spun it to give yourself something to do with your hands.

Fidget spinner, definitely a term of the year, for sure.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Pat Green.

I’m calling from San Diego.

And my question is, do you all have any resources or recommendations for dictionaries or something like that, encyclopedias even, for sports?

Sports.

I am one of the volunteer readers for KPBS’s radio reading service.

Good to you.

We read the paper to blind and visually impaired listeners.

And the section of the paper I have the most difficulty with is the sports section.

Because I am just not an avid sports page reader, so I thought I’d call and ask.

And, Pat, I’m curious about the challenge that you face.

You’re trying to read a story about a game that’s occurred,

And you’re having trouble knowing what to accent or emphasize or what?

Yeah, sort of.

We have a group of volunteers who read both papers,

The L.A. Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune, daily,

And each paper has about a two-hour time slot on the program to be read,

And we do our best to read all the major sections of the paper.

There are two of us who read each time,

And I find the sports section for me just hard to make it sound like I know what I’m talking about.

Oh, interesting.

Are there sports that pose a particular challenge, like baseball?

Or is it cricket?

Are you reading the bridge column?

Well, what does?

Of course, sports are seasonal, so that’s one problem right there.

Because you don’t have year-round access.

You know, and I know, like the World Series and the major sporting events,

And especially when they happen here in San Diego,

But many of the columnists also include statistics about the athletes who are in the particular sport.

You know, sometimes there’s even a little gossip about some of the athletes.

But anyway, it’s the statistics and just terminology.

You know, I know what a home run is.

I know what a touchdown is, those kinds of things.

Well, certainly for baseball, you want Paul Dixon’s baseball dictionary.

That’s right.

Dixon’s baseball dictionary is huge and wonderful.

It’s fantastic.

And it’s loaded with just everyday slang terms, but also rare slang terms.

And it touches on what’s known as sabermetrics, which is this complicated way of looking at all the different statistics in baseball to truly measure a player’s performance.

S-A-B-R.

I think it’s E-M-E-T-R-I-C-S, sabermetrics.

But overall, for other sports, there’s two books that I would recommend that might help you get there.

One of them is The Dictionary of Sports and Games Terminology.

It’s by Adrian Room.

It’s published in 2010.

You can find that on Amazon and probably in some bookstores.

So that’s The Dictionary of Sports and Games Terminology.

And the other one is The Dictionary of Sports Studies by Oxford University Press, also 2010.

That one’s more about the science and big picture of games or sporting games.

And so it’s less about the mundane details and mundane items.

But it might be things like, this is how cricket is played, or this is what curling is, or this is what Gaelic football is, that sort of thing.

Yeah. Oh, great. Okay.

Which could also help.

But the other thing is, don’t discount your general unabridged dictionary.

Like Merriam-Webster’s unabridged is going to have a huge number of sporting terms in it.

Okay. But you need to have each particular.

And often when I’m reading, I’ll come across a term that I don’t know the meaning of because we don’t have terribly much time to skim the articles ahead before we go on live on the radio.

There’s a site called One Look, O-N-E-L-L-O-K, onelook.com, and it lets you search a bunch of dictionaries, including the Merriam-Webster Collegiate, the American Heritage Dictionary, a few others, and pretty much almost anything I’ve ever looked for that was even remotely mainstream, like even barely mainstream, was in there.

Like the truly rare stuff is not going to be in there, but you’re not going to find much of that, I’m pretty sure.

And the good thing is that you can use that really quickly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s what I’m looking for, something quick and easy to access.

Well, Pat, thank you on behalf of all the people that you are helping by volunteering to be a reader for the reading service.

Well, it’s an honor for me to do that.

I do that in memory of an aunt who had macular degeneration but didn’t let it stop her one bit and managed to live until she was 96 alone.

Good for her and for you.

Thank you so much, Pat.

You’re very welcome.

Take care.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Pat.

By the way, if you’re a giant radio nerd like I am, then you probably already know what I’m about to tell you.

But if you don’t, this is news.

You can listen to a ton of these radio reading services on apps like TuneIn, which consolidates all these online signals, including reading services from Australia.

So it’s pretty cool to hear people reading Australian newspapers in the Australian accent.

Oh, that is cool.

And I don’t know a thing about cricket, but it’s really delightful.

Need a dictionary for that.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Sonny Reagan.

I’m calling from Enterprise, Alabama.

How are you?

Hey, doing well, Sonny.

It’s great to hear from you.

What can we do for you?

I live, obviously, in South Alabama, home of the Bowieville Monument, the only monument to an insect.

We have an interesting culture, but when I was growing up as a young child, my grandfather would have a saying.

And when there would be, for example, a big thunderstorm that was approaching or some bad weather, he would say, it’s going to come up a Joe Moore.

And I have never heard that before, so he always referred to bad weather as a Joe Moore.

And I didn’t know who in the world Joe Moore was or if it was a reference to some historical figure or if he just made it up.

Oh, boy. I have an answer for you if you’re interested, or we could just end it here.

I’m extremely interested.

All right. I’m going to throw a bit of linguistic jargon at you on the way to explaining this.

Well, we’ll figure it all out, all right?

Joe Moore is actually a term that’s been recorded as if it were a person’s name, J-O-E-M-O-O-R-E, Joe Moore.

And what it turns out to be is the word mojo, M-O-J-O, transformed by a process known as metathesis, where the syllables get rearranged.

And what you were hearing was when he was talking about bad weather, he was talking about a spell, bad weather being a spell of weather that was kind of like bad mojo coming down the line, right?

Coming over the hills.

And we have Joe Moore and Joe Mo, J-O-M-O, recorded in Georgia and Florida and North Carolina and a few other places in the South as a way of referring to mojo.

Interesting, right?

That’s great.

Yeah.

So my grandfather had some mojo himself, I suppose.

He did, yeah.

So it’s the word mojo kind of transformed by Metaphysis into Jomo and kind of misunderstood as Joe Moore.

Well, I’m finally glad to have an answer to the question that I can share with my family.

After all these years, we’ve been wondering what in the world a Joe Moore actually was.

And now it’s just mojo.

And I love that you’ve got a field report here for us from a part of the country where using the word Joe Moore in that way makes a lot of sense.

It fits perfectly into what we already know about the term.

Well, you’ve been most helpful, and I love your show, and I listen to it all the time, and I really appreciate your answering the question.

It was our pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for calling.

Thank you, Sonny.

You’re welcome. Have a good day.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye.

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

Want more A Way with Words? Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org or find the show in any podcast app or on iTunes.

Our toll-free line is always open, so leave us a message at 877-929-9673 and we’ll take a listen.

We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter @wayword and look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten, director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guy John Chaneski and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Guitar solo.

You.