Brass Tacks (episode #1666)

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, as you know, one of my favorite things to do is to find old dictionaries and just dig through them.

Yeah, dictionary diving, Martha.

Yes, yes.

Not necessarily the mainstream ones. But for example, I was looking at a dictionary of the Sussex dialect. That’s from down there on the southeastern coast of England, right there on the English Channel, a dictionary of the Sussex dialect by Reverend W.D. Parrish. This was from 1875.

And what I love about looking at dictionaries like this is that they give you a little peek at daily life from back in the day, you know, whether it’s about food and drink or beliefs and superstitions or opinions or gossip. I mean, one of the words that I came across almost immediately under the B’s was the word beaver, B-E-E-V-E-R, which means an 11 o’clock luncheon.

I just love that, you know, come over for a beaver. Oh, nice. It’s because you eat some of the beaves.

Exactly. I was thinking, does this have to do with drinking? But no, I’m pretty sure that you’re right. It’s plural beef.

Yes, yes, I think you’re right. Let me share one more with you that just, I don’t know, it just set my imagination off. There’s a term in the dictionary, Bishop Barnaby.

Bishop Barnaby. So not a real person, but…

Correct. Is this just like the name for the head goat in the herd? I don’t know. The bellwether.

No, in parts of Sussex, the ladybug, the insect is called a bishop barnaby and it goes on to say that in other parts it’s called the fly golding or get this god’s almighty cow and it describes how children set the insect on their finger and sing bishop bishop barnaby tell me when my wedding shall be if it be tomorrow day ope your wings and fly away.

Aww, I love it!

There are lots of rhymes around ladybugs. There’s something mysterious about a ladybug with the bright colors and the speckles and their little round bodies.

Right, and I can just see you standing there, you know, with a little bug on your finger, just hoping it’s going to fly away and indicate that, you know, it’s not that they love you not, it’s that they love you.

We will share more from this Sussex Dialect Dictionary later in the show, and we’ll link to it on our website.

And in the meantime, you can talk to us about language. Call or text toll-free in the United States or Canada, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Ian. I’m calling from Philadelphia.

Hi, Ian in Philadelphia. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

Great, thanks.

So I had a question about an unusual word that was used in my family growing up that to my experience has been kind of enigmatic. I’ve never heard anybody else, which is that we would always go to the beach every year, Wildwood, New Jersey.

And the term that we would use is schmutz. And the term schmutz was used as a verb in my family. And the verb meant to put sunscreen on. So for instance, you’d say, make sure you schmutz the kids before they go to the beach or, you know, okay, now you’re dried off coming out of the ocean, make sure you schmutz again.

And I was just wondering if you had ever heard that before. My family, that side of the family is from the Lehigh Valley, from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. But I don’t, I’ve never heard anybody else in Bethlehem use that either.

Yeah, yeah, that’s really cool. Martha, what do you know about schmutz as a verb?

Well, I’m picturing a tube of sunscreen that says schmutz on it, like a brand name.

What a great friend.

Yeah, I can imagine.

Oh, man, that’s wild.

Well, does your family use schmutz, S-C-H-M-U-T-Z, as a noun?

Yes, we would use it like that as well.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I think that what’s happening here is a process of what linguists call denominalization, where you take a noun and you turn it into a verb, you know, like Google, which has become a verb or texted. Text becomes a verb. And I think the same thing, because I have not seen schmutz. I’ve certainly seen schmutz in the sense that Grant was talking about. You’ve got some schmutz on the corner of your mouth or on your beard, meaning just a little smudge of something or dirt or grease or grime or goo. And that word schmutz goes back to

Yiddish and German from a middle high German word that means to soil or to damage. I mean, it makes sense to me the way that you’re using it, but most people, the vast, vast majority of people are going to use schmutz, S-C-H-M-U-T-Z, as a noun. But yeah, I could see schmutzing the kids with sunscreen for sure.

Yeah, and every family develops its own nexicon, so I could see this being an amusing remark that somebody made once, and they just hung on to it because it was funny.

Yeah, to me it has a little bit of onomatopoeia to it, because it kind of sounds like the sound when you squeeze the sunscreen out of the tube. I didn’t think of that, but it totally does, that squishy noise.

Sure. Okay. Yeah. Ian, we’re spreading schmutz as a verb. We’re going to schmutz the kids at the beach this week. My dog’s schmutzing the car window with his slobber.

Yeah, I like it. There you go. Okay, well, thank you so much. Like I said, I always had just understood it to be enigmatic to my immediate family, so it sounds like that is the situation. Outstanding. Well, congratulations. Thanks, Ian. Call us again sometime. That’s a great word. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Bye. You can find all of our past episodes and more than a dozen ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

That 1875 dictionary of the Sussex dialect that I mentioned earlier has so many great entries. Here’s another one, desic, D-E-Z-Z-I-C-K. It means a day’s work.

So the illustrative sentence they have in this dictionary is, I ain’t done a desic for the last six months.

Oh, that’s a wonderful word. Too bad it’s not allowed in Scrabble, the double Z, man.

Right? That’s a winner.

That would be. 877-929-9673 is toll free in the United States and Canada.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elisa. I’m calling from Memphis, Tennessee.

Well, welcome, Elisa. What’s on your mind?

My mom, who is in her 80s, and she’s a very vibrant octogenarian, but she unfortunately had a fall back in May and had a traumatic brain injury, but she’s doing okay. But at the time, she was in the hospital and she was basically sedated and not speaking for about two and a half days and we didn’t know what to expect.

And she was, I was sitting next to her and all of a sudden on the third day, she kind of squeezed my hand and I realized she was going to say something. And the first words out of her mouth were, let’s get down to brass tacks.

Wow.

And I really, I’ve heard it, but not from her and not recently. And that was the first thing that came out of her brain after a brain injury. And I just realized that I don’t even know really where it’s from or why.

Wow.

So nothing like, where am I? And who are you?

Yeah.

Who are you?

She sounds great.

Let’s get down to brass tacks.

So B-R-A-S-S-T-A-C-K-S, brass tacks.

Yes.

I actually honestly thought it was T-A-X. And then I thought about it. I was like, no.

No, no, no.

It’s the little piece of metal that you use to hold down paper or carpet, that sort of thing.

Or there’s a theory I’m going to share with you that might… Well, there’s this fellow named Patrick Traeger. He’s French, and he has a great website called wordhistories.net.

And he has a theory based on an old newspaper article that he found that it has to do with brass-studded coffins. Patrick’s idea is that because the expression originally was to come down to the brass without the tax, without T-A-C-K-S, not long after it became brass tax, that it’s the idea of something being so fundamental as death, basically.

Wow.

It’s about stripping away all the pretense of the nonsense of life, you know. Death takes the fakery and artifice away from all of us.

Wow.

Yeah, so that’s his theory, and I like it, but the evidence is pretty thin right now.

But the expression goes back to the mid-1800s.

It’s just always been this idea that we’re throwing away the nonsense and the rubbish and getting right down to the essentials.

There are other ideas that float around, like it has to do with brass tax on upholstery versus less valuable tax or something like that.

But it’s pretty much a mystery.

But what’s a mystery to me is what did she mean by that?

What was her next statement?

What did she want to talk about?

You know, I really don’t know.

And my dad was there and he does not remember.

I said, this is what she said.

And then I guess in that moment, I felt she was just asking me, like, what is going on?

Where am I?

Cut to the chase.

We’ve got business to do.

Well, Lisa, I hope she’s doing better.

Give her a squeeze from us, if you would.

And thank you for calling.

Oh, thank you.

Thanks so much.

All right.

Take care.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Bye.

Toll free in the United States and Canada.

Call or text 877-929-9673.

I just learned a portmanteau word that is new to me.

That word is spreadge.

Do you know this one?

Spreadge.

S-P-R-E-D-G-E.

Spreadge.

Yeah, spreadge.

Like hedge, but it’s a spreadge.

Hedge, but it’s a spreadge.

I don’t know what this is.

Is this when you make a tent out of blankets and the couch cushions?

I don’t know what this is.

Yeah, you spread the blankets out.

Right, yeah.

No, it’s a portmanteau, meaning a blend of two words.

And in this case, spreadge is a portmanteau of the words sprayed and edges.

And it refers to the decorative spraying of the edges of book pages, which is now this really popular trend in book design.

If you go into a bookstore now, you’re going to see a lot of books that have along the edge, you know, where you open it up.

You’re going to see things like dragons and flowers, maybe a city skyline or an image of a bookcase filled with books.

And what’s super interesting about this is that in the 16th century, this was a common practice.

When people first started putting bound books on shelves, the title would be on the end of the pages, you know, the part that’s opposite the spine.

But then later, bookbinders started gilding the titles on the spines of books and people started displaying them the other way.

Wait, so when we talk about spread, we’re talking about art on the ends of the press pages that you see when you look at the opposite side of the spine.

Yes.

When it’s closed.

Yeah, so it’s not when you have the book open, you see it when you have the book closed.

Yeah.

Isn’t that interesting?

I had no idea.

It is.

And I’ve seen some clever examples where if you spread it just a little bit, you get two different images.

Almost like a lenticular image where look at it one way, it’s a summer scene.

Look at it the other way, it’s the same vista, but a winter scene.

Yeah, I don’t know how long this trend will last, but I’m starting to watch for spreadges when I go to bookstores.

I think it’s anything that will sell books, people will do, right?

But also books as art is a wonderful thing.

They’re gorgeous when they’re done well.

Toll free in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673.

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 way up high, getting ready to dive in a Speedo and with a wave to the crowd,

It’s our stunt performer and quiz master, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, guys. Watch it. Here I come.

Whoa!

Splash.

Let me towel off and get to this quiz.

Here we go.

If every word in English only had one meaning, I would be out of a job. Luckily, many words have several meanings, as illustrated by the term autumn rear.

It doesn’t sound like it means anything. Autumn rear.

Oh, fall back.

Yeah, or fall behind.

Yeah, either way. But if you place each word with a similar meaning word, you get it right.

Fall behind or fall back.

Now, this is a common game, but I’m a movie fan. Let’s do it with classic movie titles.

I’ll give you a two-word movie title in which I’ve replaced each word with a synonym. You tell me the original.

For example, vulgar valor would be… Something velvet.

Blue velvet.

Oh, blue velvet. That’s a word for vulgar talk.

Blue velvet.

Now, none of these titles have definite or indefinite articles. They’re just two words, and for no good reason whatsoever, they are all alliterative.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

Not the answers, though.

All the clues are alliterative.

Oh, okay.

Here we go.

Gotcha.

Let’s begin with catastrophe currently.

Apocalypse now.

Yes.

Apocalypse now.

You got that right now.

Apocalypse now.

Great film.

Great film.

Currently.

Very good.

Yeah.

Dwelling deserted.

Home Alone?

Home Alone.

Home Alone.

That’s right.

Operative offspring.

Spy Kid.

Yes, Spy Kids.

Oh, kids plural, yeah.

Kids plural, that’s fine.

Also a great film.

Yeah, sure.

Average avenues.

Oh, Mean Streets.

Yes, Mean Streets.

Very good.

I think we’ve got into Grant’s wheelhouse here.

Headliner hostilities.

Headliner main war?

Main bat?

No.

Headliner.

So a headliner is somebody who is the key performer at a show.

How about Star Wars?

Yes.

Star Wars.

Very good.

Plaything parable.

He said.

Toy story.

Toy Story, indeed.

Very good.

Posterior porthole.

Rear window.

Yes, rear window.

Foul flea.

Flea, F-L-E-E?

Yes, F-L-E-E.

Foul flea.

Chicken run.

Yes, chicken run.

Finally, a classic.

Velocipede villains.

Bicycle thief?

Thief.

Bicycle Thieves.

Yes, the movie is Bicycle Thieves, classic Italian film.

Very good.

Well done, guys.

Let’s go to the movies.

All right, rock and roll.

You’ve got a friend in us, John.

John will be back next week with another quiz.

You can call me and Martha, though, to get on the show.

Toll free in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marianne.

I am calling from Charlottesville, Virginia.

Lovely.

Well, what’s on your mind today, Marianne?

So I was born and raised in South America.

So Spanish is my first language.

And I am a trained social worker and currently a PhD student.

And so I have a fascination with languages.

And I love the fact that a lot of words come into different languages when the concept of construct doesn’t exist.

For example, canoe or hurricane didn’t exist until we came to the Americas, and those were indigenous words we took from Central American indigenous people.

What I don’t understand is why it compels people to take words in, for example, English that already exist in Spanish and instead of using the original Spanish word, use the new English word, but make it in Spanish.

For example, in Spanish, for your bills, we say cuentas.

But everywhere around, my clients all call them biles.

Or, for example, a truck in Spanish is a camión.

But why do we now call it a troca?

And lunch, we have a word, I always have, it’s called almuerzo.

And so now, all of a sudden, we’re saying lonche.

And so my interest is, A, why does that happen? And B, what down the line impact does that have on the language?

Oh, wow. What a huge question. Let me ask you, where in South America are you from?

Argentina.

Argentina. Okay. And the only reason I ask is some of what you’re talking about is about the more immediate, I should say, contacts between dialects of Spanish and English.

So Puerto Rico, for example, is this wonderful mixing area of English and Spanish.

Or along the Mexico-U.S. border, all of those states have varieties of what’s often called Spanglish or Espanglish.

That are not the same, but mix in similar ways.

And I think it’s really important to talk about the why, as you asked it.

It’s partly before efficiency.

People maybe reach for that other word more quickly.

And also in a bilingual environment, having those words barring troca or lonche might make a little more sense because their coworkers may understand not enough Spanish, but if they use a similar word, they’re going to get it.

Particularly environments where it’s not all first-generation speakers.

So you’re going to get people who are second generation and third generation whose Spanish is less well-developed.

And so you get some increased understanding when there’s these borrowings.

But also some of it is identity marking, where people who maybe aren’t fluent in Spanish will borrow or will use anglophone words as a way of saying, look, I straddle both cultures.

Maybe not consciously they’re saying it, but I’m a part of both.

I have pride in both of my heritages, you know, both the anglophone heritage and hispanophone heritage.

So there’s a lot of different reasons.

But one thing I want to stress here, none of this is monolithic.

So all of these borrowings are fairly inconsistent, and it’s not really a language.

There’s not a common core that is used by all speakers, these borrowings.

And, you know, the other side happens as well.

Anglophones borrow Spanish words.

Of course, obviously, it’s often food words.

But there is this basic level of what you might call junk Spanish that most Americans know.

Arnold Schwarzenegger said, hasta la vista, baby, in a movie.

You know, a great example of it being a classic line that straddles both languages.

Yeah, I love that.

I hadn’t stopped to think about that.

I was just more like, come on, folks, you know the language.

But it makes total sense.

Don’t forget, Marianne, that people are incredibly playful with language.

They love to mess around with it.

They love to dip their mouths and ears in different pools of language and just try it out.

And sometimes it sticks.

Well, thank you.

You have a fabulous program.

And I drive back and forth between Richmond and Charlottesville.

My favorite thing is to tune in.

So thank you.

Oh, Marianne, thank you so much.

And thank you for calling.

And as they say, llámanos para atrás, which is the Spanish equivalent of call us back.

Yep, there’s a Puerto Rican one for you.

Llámame para atrás.

Got it.

Understood.

Bye-bye.

Have a great day, guys.

Un abrazo enorme.

Thank you.

Bye.

Okay, chao.

Chao.

Chao.

Whether your first language is Spanish or another language, we would love to hear your insights about English.

Call us, 877-929-9673.

After our conversation with Jacob in Indiana about the expression, good enough for who it’s for, you know, when you’re doing something and it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for who it’s for.

We heard from Rick Bramer, who lives in Clarinda, Iowa, and he said that he works in construction.

And there he and his friends always say, close enough for this old shack.

I could see borrowing that.

That’s true, because if you’re doing something for yourself or for your own people, you know, there’s a certain amount of forgiveness, right?

Exactly.

If there’s not an invoice at the end of it, you can, you know, just kind of slap it together.

Right.

Close enough for this old shack.

Well, call us in our little recording shack, 877-929-9673.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dina and I’m calling from New Jersey.

Well, we’re glad to have you, Dina.

What’s up today in terms of language with you?

I have a question about a term that came up the other day when my partner and I were watching a tennis tournament.

And I said to her, I wonder if this tournament will go chalk.

And she did not know what that expression meant.

And I realized that I’d only ever heard it in reference to NCAA women’s basketball tournament or the men’s tournament.

And I started to wonder where it came from.

I kind of assume it has something to do with the seedings being written on a chalkboard maybe originally.

And were you wondering if the tournament was going to go chalk or a player was going to go chalk?

When I originally used it, I think I was talking about a specific player going chalk.

What did you mean by that?

Going chalk, as I understand it and as I use it, it means that the competition will proceed according to the seedings so that the higher seed will always win and will end up going exactly as it was ranked, which rarely happens.

Do you bet on matches?

Bet on games?

No, no, I don’t.

The reason I ask is that you’re right.

Everything you’ve said is absolutely right.

It does come from writing teams in the seed order on a chalkboard, but it goes back to gambling with horses a long time ago.

And there’s a huge number of ways to use the noun and the verb chalk, C-H-A-L-K, in sports.

But for sports that have rankings for favorites, it usually refers to, yeah, the favorites or the order of the favorites.

So you can have, you can pick chalk, which means to choose your favorites, or you can be chalky or a chalk player, which means you pretty much always bet on favorites.

You don’t do your own kind of order and your own betting.

You just go with the ones that the bookies have put up there.

What’s the earliest recorded use of it?

Do you know?

That’s a really good question.

For horse racing, 1800s, but it’s widely used in a variety of ways in other sports.

Just a ton.

Anything that involves gambling or bookmakers is going to have some variation on chalk referring to the favorites.

Well, I’m interested to see that it’s hung on even as we have moved on to other forms.

Like, you know, you don’t talk about some magic markering or magnetic signaging.

Chalk still sticks around.

I do the free bracket that they do at the college tournaments, and they have a selection.

You can fill in your own or you can follow the experts or you can go chalk.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, pick all favorites, right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

That’s really interesting.

As always, you guys are always very interesting.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening, Dina.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

I love your show.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling, Dina.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Chris calling from Missouri.

I’ve worked in the outdoor experiential field, outdoor leadership, and I was reminded recently of this ongoing debate we’ve had.

Often when trying to inform participants about safety matters, we always want them to be wearing safe footwear.

So this question comes up about closed-toed shoes, or is it closed-toe shoes?

And it’s one of these things that I don’t think anybody I’ve met feels like they have a right answer.

We’ve Googled and searched and you see all sorts of different answers.

But all the professionals I’ve worked with have their own clear professional opinion.

But it keeps coming up any time you have to put it on a website or put it in an email to people or put it on a document.

It always sparks the debate again.

And I’ve always been curious if there is a more proper way to describe that.

So just to clarify, because it can be hard to hear in audio, but we’re talking about closed-toe shoes.

So the D is on close.

Or we’re talking about closed-toed shoes where the D is on toed.

Correct.

And I’ve usually seen, in either case, I’ve usually seen it hyphenated.

Yeah.

Clearly, you know, that kind of that two-word adjective, if you will.

But we’ve just wrangled about this for years.

Ken in San Diego wrote us about this a while back, and he said he sees four variations where people might put the D on clothes or toed.

So either, you know, one of them gets it or both of them get it or none of them get it.

And which one do you vote for?

I usually am on the clothes, toed shoes side of the argument, the D on the toe.

Oh, interesting.

And I don’t have any good justification for that.

It just feels more correct to me.

Yeah, closed toe is the most common version of this.

C-L-O-S-E-D hyphen toe.

And you’ll find that in style guides, like the Associated Press style guide prefers that version.

Martha and Chris, I’m looking in my inbox, and so I have a ton of personal email.

And so in various newsletters about things like canyon hikes or advice for school field trips, both of those versions are used.

And these are clearly edited pieces by careful writers.

Well, and that’s why it just seems to consistently come up.

Anytime we go to print or any group or any program I’ve been a part of, somebody always articulates the question.

Everybody has an opinion and no definitive answer.

And then we just pick one and go with it.

Well, that’s probably a good way to do it if you’re just being consistent.

So nobody says close toe, correct?

C-L-O-S-E hyphen toe?

I’ve not heard it without any D.

Nor have I found many folks who prefer a D on both.

So it’s usually a debate on where the D goes.

The argument is sometimes made that closed-toed with the D on the toe is a compound adjective, but that only works if we’re saying close-toed and not close-toed.

But, you know, Martha, we have other examples.

We have closed-door meetings.

We have closed-circuit television.

We are closed-mouthed if we don’t speak.

Yeah, that’s a good point.

Of course, closed-circuit television is a little bit of an exception because there’s the same debate about that.

Some people leave the D off of closed and say close circuit television as if it’s about the camera zooming in on a specific spot.

But it isn’t why it’s called that. It’s called that because it’s not broadcast. It’s private.

So it’s a closed circuit, meaning nobody else can see it except those who are meant to.

Yeah, one other interesting thing about this is that closed toe or closed toed comes much later than open toed.

I found that really interesting that, you know, if you’re talking about open toed shoes, there were references to open toed shoes back in the 1880s.

And you don’t see it a whole lot.

But then in the 1930s, when sandals became more popular and women started using the little luxury of toenail polish, you heard more about open-toed and closed-toed.

And that’s good to bring up, Martha, because the opposite of open isn’t close and it isn’t close.

It’s closed with a D.

And that’s what we’re talking about here is opposites.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate the insights on this.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for sharing. Take care.

Thanks for sharing. Keep those toes safe.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

And if you want to talk about language with us, if you want to stick your toe in the water,

Call us 877-929-9673 or send those questions an email 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.

A while back, we had a conversation about thin places.

Those are the places where beauty or stillness just overwhelm you.

They feel unreal or otherworldly, like maybe you’re in a cathedral or you’re on top of a mountain

where you feel like the sky is just this scrim you could poke your hand right through.

You remember that, Grant?

I do, yeah.

It’s when something bigger than yourself seems to be poking through to the everyday.

Exactly.

That’s a great way to put it.

And we got a wonderful email in response from Rebecca Moore, who lives in Kirkland, Washington.

And it’s just such a great email.

I can’t read the whole thing, but I wanted to share some of it with you.

She describes thin places as the places where the walls between this world and other worlds or the past seem thinner than usual.

In terms of places, I’ve only felt that in one place.

The Custer Battlefield in Montana. A friend and I were driving across the country, spending a lot

of time on the interstate with all its reminders of modernity. When we stopped to see the battlefield,

we found the land still as it had been at the time period of the battle. No reminders of modernity,

just endless blowing grass and silence but for the wind. It was eerie despite the broad daylight.

You could almost hear the ghosts from across the years.

Not a comfortable silence at all.

And then she goes on to write about how many songs can also trigger that sense of connection to something old or ancient or otherworldly.

And she writes about how in some it feels like a connection to the way people thought in a time when their belief in magic was as unquestionable as our belief in gravity.

And then she lists several examples of songs that do this for her, especially old songs.

And she comes back to the point that it’s the words.

It’s always the words that carry our history in every syllable that open the path to us when the music catches them and shines a light right through them down the centuries.

My thin places are always conjured from words and notes.

And I thought that was such a beautiful description of so many different things, Grant.

I mean, just how a song from the past, you know, an old folk song or something, just whisks you away centuries ago.

That is a lovely letter from Rebecca Moore.

We must put some of that on the website, Martha.

Yes, let’s do that.

And in fact, you can find all of our past episodes at waywordradio.org.

A lot of you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Grace.

I’m calling from Abilene, Texas.

Hi, Grace. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

Thanks so much. Yeah, my question is about a word that my grandma and actually my great-grandma used to say.

It’s mooksy. And she would say it if we were being pouty and maybe sticking out our lips.

She would say, don’t be so mooksy. A little bird’s going to go poo-poo on your lips.

And so I would say that word to my friends and they never knew what it meant.

So I thought, well, where does this word come from?

Well, you got to tell us about your grandmother and great-grandmother. Where were they from? Where did they live?

Yeah, definitely. So we live in Texas now, but originally they were from Germany.

And so I thought maybe it’s a derivative of a German word, but I couldn’t really find anything.

Were they direct from Germany or did they live in the German-speaking parts of Texas? Because those exist.

Yes, German-speaking parts of Texas. So like Henrietta, Wichita Falls, Windthorst, those kinds of areas.

Yeah, Texas Hill Country, right? There’s still a few speakers of Texas German there. But your instincts are right on, Grace, because that term, and you said muxi?

Muxi, yeah. I don’t even know how to spell it.

Well, it likely comes from a German dialectal term, Mucksch, which is spelled M-U-C-K-S-C-H.

And it’s related to Muckisch, which both means like sulky or grumpy or moody or annoyed.

Or if you want to talk about a fuss, that’s Muckschin.

And so I suspect that that’s where they come from.

Did you call them Oma? Did you call your grandmother Oma?

You know, I didn’t. They didn’t speak German as much once they came over here.

But I know there are people who do.

Yeah. Well, I was just going to ask if she ever talked about a Schippchen.

No, I haven’t heard that.

Okay. Well, when you mentioned the thing that she said about don’t be so mooksy because a bird might poop on your lip,

I was thinking about the German word Schippchen, which means little shovel.

And that’s the term that they use in German to refer to that pouty little lip, you know, the way it sticks out.

It’s a little shovel.

So, yeah, I can see being warned against a bird pooping on your little shovel.

And I bet that made you stop pouting, huh?

It did, yeah.

It still makes me laugh even now.

Yeah, it makes me laugh too.

So just to spell those, muktsik is M-U-C-K-S-I-G, and it gave us the form muksh, which is M-U-C-K-S-E-H.

And then there’s the related verb mukshen, which is M-U-C-K-S-H-E-N.

And all of these have to do with being sullen or sulky or moody or grumpy or defiant or pouting.

Wow. Yeah, that’s so helpful because I was thinking the closest word I could think of was moxie, but it really isn’t the same meaning at all.

No relation.

No, no relation.

As a matter of fact, this isn’t even, this is, like Martha said, this is a dialect term from Low German and Central German dialects, maybe around Hamburg and Saxony or Brandenburg, other places.

And there’s an expression, which I love, which uses one of these, a form of this word, and it translates as, as unhelpful as a postal clerk.

As moody or as sullen as a postal clerk.

Oh, wow.

Moks wie ein Postwinter.

Well, that’s funny because my grandma was a post office woman.

She would love it.

She would deliver the mail.

So maybe she wouldn’t like that phrase.

That’s so helpful.

Yeah, don’t be Moksy, Grace. You’re quite lovely.

You weren’t Moksy with us at all.

Oh, good.

I’m excited to share this with my family.

They’re excited to hear it too.

All right, take care now.

Thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got another language in your life, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

That’s toll-free in the United States and Canada.

Or you can email words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s another of my favorite terms from that 1875 dictionary of the Sussex dialect, January butter.

Snow? No, not snow.

The dirty grime that you track in the house on your books?

Yes.

January butter is mud, and the book says it is considered lucky to bring mud into the house in January.

I can’t imagine that.

I guess if you’re upright, you’re lucky.

Instead of being down with the sads, right?

The seasonal depression.

I hadn’t thought about that.

I was thinking of the person who has to clean it up.

I don’t think.

Right.

Yeah, they’re not lucky.

I wouldn’t make them feel lucky.

But maybe it’s luck because you’ve brought in wild game or food from the barn or something.

Oh, that’s true.

Or maybe the snow’s starting to melt.

I don’t know.

Anyway, I love that term January butter for mud.

January butter.

That’s fantastic.

We love to hear the words and phrases that you’ve come across in your reading.

You can send them to us toll-free by text message to 877-929-9673.

Hello there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

How are you?

I’m John Spalding.

I’m a poet in Tucson, Arizona.

Super cool.

A poet from Tucson.

Well, we’re glad to have you, John.

What’s up?

Well, I was calling about my grandfather, who is long gone, but he grew up in a small town in Vermont, Sharon, Vermont, actually.

And he had some peculiar ways of talking.

And one of the things that I remember him talking about, it was when he said, instead of his and her, he said his and her and your and our.

Like there’s an N on the end of the word instead of like an S might be.

And I never thought anything about it.

But as I’m remembering him, I remembered that.

And I just thought it was kind of peculiar.

I think if anybody else in my family had used those words, we would have probably thought him or her a hick from the sticks.

But because he was my grandfather, nobody challenged him on things.

Not that he was that dominant or anything, but he was, you know, well-loved.

And anyway, I was just interested in whether you could enlighten me about where he might have picked that up.

It’s like a possessive of a pronoun that is, you know, maybe at one time it was popular.

But even when I was growing up, I can’t remember anybody else saying those words.

So, for an example, he might say, those cattle are his’n, or that house is her’n.

Yeah, exactly. Just like you would say his’ and hers’, but not the S on it.

You’ll get in older usage manuals people making negative judgments about this.

But in modern usage manuals and in modern linguistics texts, it’s very clear that we’ve come to discover what these are is archaic forms that have somehow held on in pockets of the United States and Canada and the UK.

Because you will find places in all three regions where these pronouns are used, and we know why they’re used, and we know where they came from.

They originated in Middle English, so 400 or 500 years ago.

I wondered about that, yeah.

By analogy with mine and thine, that house is mine and that car is thine, something like that.

Oh, it’s weird to talk about a car and use thine.

That wagon is thine.

They themselves come from Old English.

They were used in what’s called the absolute position.

And possessive forms in the absolute position stand on their own as a noun phrase, and they don’t need to be followed by a noun.

So the books are mine.

So I don’t have to say mine books, you know.

But to be more specific about this, they developed from Old English.

They developed into Middle English.

And there were spellings for a time of hisen, H-I-S-E-N, or ouren, O-U-R-E-N, youren, theiren even, heren.

And all of these were done by analogy to be more consistent with mine and thine.

Because my and thy were used before a noun, and mine and thine were used without one.

So just people do this.

They regularize language and create new forms based on models of consistencies that they see elsewhere in the language.

Really? Wow. I wondered if it was kind of a throwback or something like that.

But wow, it goes all the way back to old English, right?

Yeah, yeah. But strongly in Middle English.

And again, so these pockets last.

And when somebody calls you a hick for speaking like this, what they’re really saying is that you just have a dialect form.

They’re just saying that you have a way of speaking that isn’t mainstream.

And it’s not about lack of education. It’s not about ignorance.

It’s not about being illiterate.

It just simply means that you have hung on to an older form that most people have dropped.

Right.

Yeah, I know.

And people judge, or at least when I was growing up, people judged people on the basis of language so much.

They, you know, put people in categories that they don’t belong in anymore.

I hope we’re more enlightened than that.

I mean, nobody criticized him, but I think it was because of, you know, he was a patriarch in our family.

John, thank you so much for an interesting question.

Oh, it’s been great talking to you.

All right, call us again sometime then, all right?

Sure, thanks again.

All right, bye-bye.

Thanks, John.

Bye-bye.

Call us, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Dennis, and I’m calling from Tropical Ratcliffe, Kentucky.

You’re near Fort Knox.

You can’t fool me.

Correct.

What’s on your mind today?

The one thing that I would like to talk about is the expression running the traps.

How do you use run the traps?

I’m assuming you’re talking about a figurative use and not the literal one, or maybe both?

I guess the best way that I can explain it is to tell the story of what made me think about it.

I’m a soldier in the military.

I’m a non-commissioned officer.

And I was in a room with two officers and we were discussing something like a tasking that the higher ranking officer, the colonel, was talking to a major and myself, and the colonel asked the major did everything go well on this trip blah blah blah.

The major said with air quotes yes sir, we ran the traps, whatever that means.

The colonel responded with I don’t know if anybody knows what that means.

And they both kind of laughed.

And I’m like, I actually do think I know what that means.

And for me, I think it means running a trap line that somebody has put out normally in the wintertime, which it’s my understanding the expression means to do your due diligence.

And that comes from running the trap line physically is kind of a difficult thing to do because it takes about a month of Sundays.

Because it normally covers about two and a half to three miles of area.

It’s normally done in a cold environment.

And it’s like the prudent thing to do is to run all the traps on the trap line to make sure you got nothing in there and there’s no struggling animals and whatnot.

But that got me thinking because I’m like, this is my understanding of the expression.

Maybe these people can figure it out, you know?

Yeah, that’s all clicking. That’s exactly right.

I had an entry for this in my 2006 book.

And many of the uses that it came up with were from government and politics, where the definition you give is exactly right, doing due diligence.

But it could also be checking with everybody who might have an opinion.

It might also be about sounding out possible public support or opposition or just investigating every possible angle.

But yeah, it comes from hunting and fishing.

Fishing, you run the traps. You check all your traps and you rebate them if you need to or repair them or replace them if you need to.

I did it as a kid for my uncle and grandpa.

It was always a pretty tall order for a 9-10 year old.

That’s why you’re remembering that it was very difficult in the cold winter, right?

Yeah.

So yeah, that’s exactly what it is.

And I’m not surprised to hear that it’s used in the military, but I am surprised that your senior officers didn’t know it because it’s been going for a good 50 years in government and presumably the military as a bit of jargon.

Well, the military goes like it’s got trending language that it uses.

It tries to model itself off, you know, like business speak for the most part.

So I can see how it get introduced and taken away.

Yeah.

And business folks like to adopt military terms as well, right?

Like blockbuster and things like that.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Well, that’s it, Dennis. Thank you so much for sharing. Appreciate it.

Yeah, appreciate it. You guys take it easy.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Stay cool.

We have a lot of listeners out there in the military who run into interesting language every day,

And we would love to hear about that.

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

A Way with Words senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

Tim Felten is our engineer and editor, and John Chaneski is our quiz master.

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

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

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

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

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

So long.

Thank you.

You