Bump and Grind (episode #1365)

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.

Remember when Amazon released its first Kindle? It was November 2007, five years ago.

And remember what that was like, Grant? They were big and bulky, and Oprah had one, and they were sort of an excuse to start a conversation, because if you saw somebody reading one in public, right, you would go over and have a look over their shoulder, right?

Well, at the time, some people fretted that printed books would soon go the way of the quill pen, and some people were even predicting that, say, by 2015, traditional books would be gone forever.

But what research is showing is that hardcover books are surprisingly resilient. And only 16 percent of Americans have actually purchased an e-book, and almost 60 percent say they have no interest at all in buying one.

So it sounds like the reports of the death of the book are greatly exaggerated.

Right. It sounds like, from what I’ve seen, that readers are just reading more, right?

Yes.

It’s easier for you and me, people like us who read a lot, to read anywhere we are. So it’s a great enabler.

Yeah, that’s a good word for it. And it’s like a different flavor of book. It’s just an adjunct, you know?

Yes, exactly. Just one more medium that can contain text.

You know, I went and bought a Kindle, and I was really excited about it. And I find that the real thing I use it for now, though, is just if I want to get a book really quickly.

I mean, I’ll read a classic on a Kindle like Moby Dick or whatever. But it’s really more of a function of getting quick access to something I don’t really necessarily prefer it anymore.

That’s really revealing, actually, right?

You think?

What, then I’m really impatient?

You probably are like a lot of other people. The expediency is important.

Oh, definitely. You have such a desire to read that it has to happen right now.

God, I haven’t.

But you have that, too, with your phone. I mean, you’re reading in the post office, right, on your phone.

And I have a new phone with a bigger screen. It actually looks like a coffee table without legs. And it’s easier still.

And I have the Kindle app and the Google Play app, and I have a third-party e-reader program. And so they all have their different formats of books.

And, yeah, I’m totally reading books on it.

Yeah.

But you’re also reading hardback books as well, right?

Of course, yes.

So call off the funeral, right?

Yeah, exactly. And call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673, or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Teresa calling from San Diego.

Hi, Teresa. Welcome.

Hey there. So, I’m actually from Texas. I lived in Houston and Austin most of my life.

And I was staying with a roommate there. And I said a phrase that my mom uses often when she has to begrudgingly go back to work, which is, well, I guess it’s back to the old bump and grind.

Oh, my. What does your mother do?

My mom’s a nurse.

Oh, she’s a nurse. Really a nurse or a nurse in, like, air quotes?

No, no. She doesn’t do like singing Telegram kind of nurse stuff.

With a costume?

No, no, she’s a nurse. She’s a nurse in a psych hospital.

Okay.

Oh, okay. Okay. All right.

Yeah. Yeah, when I said this phrase, my friend looked at me and started laughing. And she said, what did you say? And I said, back to the bump and grind. And she goes, those are lyrics from an R. Kelly song. That’s an R&B song. That’s not a phrase that people use. And my mom doesn’t listen to R&B. So I don’t know. What do you guys think? Am I valid in using that phrase?

So you’re worried because your mom says she’s back to the bump and grind, and you think that sounds like she’s a pole dancer.

Well, I just, so, I mean.

She’s an IV pole dancer.

Oh, there you go.

Right, right. No, you know, she would say the phrase, and I just, it sounded normal to me, and I started using the phrase myself. I didn’t think there was anything funny about the phrase until my friends started laughing at me.

And what do you do for a living?

I’ve done a few things. I mainly counsel students on study abroad.

Okay. We can figure it out, Teresa. For most people, bump and grind denotes and connotes kind of a pelvic thrusting dance that a stripper might do or a pole dancer might do or high schoolers might do when the parents and the chaperones aren’t looking, you know, the kind of like freaky dancing stuff that people do.

It involves tassels, usually.

Well, no. It doesn’t have to, but yeah, one kind of it. Ideally. It’s Elvis-style pelvic thrusting. It’s suggestive and sexual and very erotic, it tends to be. For most people, that’s what bump and grind is.

However, since about the 90s, some people have taken older terms that refer to, say, putting your nose to the grindstone or the daily grind or grinding out a lot of work. All of these refer to kind of this repetitious, boring, dry, day after day stuff.

Some people have used that to refer to bump and grind to refer to that as well. And I don’t know if it’s that they missed the connotation there or they did it with a wink and a nudge or it’s just kind of a natural thing and they don’t live such pure, innocent lives. They don’t know about the kind of erotic dancing bump and grind.

Let’s assume that one.

Yeah, something like that. But there’s an interesting kind of overlap there because sometimes bump and grind, you know, when it refers to work, it’s kind of been used to show, to refer to the crush and jostle and slog of everyday life. That kind of slow wearing away of your best intentions, your best effort and the best possible you.

You know what I’m saying?

Yeah.

Adulthood. Because you start the day noble and valorous with the best intentions. And by the end of the day, you’ve sold out every one of your morals and principles.

Right? And that’s a kind of…

A normal day.

Yeah, that’s kind of…

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I imagine that some of the people who do bump and grind dancing for a living didn’t intend to end up there.

Oh. I mean, it’s kind of, you know, you start the life with the best of intentions and somehow you end up in a place you didn’t expect. And here I am.

Oh, this is deep, Grant.

That’s my theory. Bottom line, I would avoid using bump and grind to refer to work unless you actually are an erotic dancer.

I would.

Oh, man. Unless you just want to be seen that way.

Well, I think it’s charming. I think you’ll make lots of friends that way. You know, it’s a great conversation starter.

The wrong kind of friends.

People have lots of ones.

Look, she met us.

Yeah.

Right?

It’s true.

It’s true.

Yes. Well, I’m going to continue to use it and just have fun with it.

Okay, that’s fair. Have fun with that bump and grind. As long as you go in there knowing what you’re doing, Teresa.

Okay, sounds good. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

I’m Alan from beautiful Austin, Texas.

Beautiful Austin, Texas.

Hi, Alan.

Indeed. Welcome to the show. How are you guys doing?

All right. What can we help with today?

Here in Texas, we have several slang words, one of them where we abbreviate you all. And several of my friends and I have an urge to abbreviate it YA apostrophe LL. And I understand that, like, grammatically this seems incorrect, but still, I don’t know why I have this urge.

And sometimes it gets corrected, and sometimes it doesn’t, depending on, like, the computer medium that I’m using.

So you’re a little bothered by the fact that your instinct says one thing, but good style says something else.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I’m wondering if there’s two ways to abbreviate it, maybe, or if it’s even a word at all.

Yeah, I find myself getting corrected all the time when I type it on my iPhone.

Do you have an iPhone?

Yes, ma’am.

Yeah, that’s exactly where it starts correcting it.

But then I put it on Gmail, and it doesn’t correct it.

Oh, interesting.

Y-A apostrophe L-L is fine.

Interesting.

Yeah, I wonder why you have this urge to put the apostrophe before the L-L.

There’s a theory, and Brian Garner, who we talk about on the show all the time, he actually lives in Texas and is a great language expert.

His theory is, and I love it, is that we’re trying to make it match other contractions like heel and sheel and we’ll.

Like we’ll go to the store or he’ll be here soon or she’ll be back, you know.

And that is like apostrophe LL at the end, and maybe that’s what we’re trying to do with y’all.

That makes sense.

Yeah, and there’s more contractions like that in English.

But I think Martha and I are in agreement on this.

The apostrophe should be after the Y.

You’re abbreviating the word Y-O-U.

The apostrophe takes the place of the O-U.

So it’s Y apostrophe A-L-L rather than Y-A apostrophe L-L.

Okay, but yeah, I want to because I’m thinking of words like shill and will.

I think that’s it.

Yeah.

And I think that’s a fair instinct.

I mean, unfortunately, it’s a misleading instinct, but I think that’s a pretty logical thing.

And one of the ways that English kind of misleads us is that the patterns don’t always hold true.

And, Alan, your friends do this as well.

Your friends do what you do.

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

We all kind of share the same instinct.

And then at some point, because we’ve had iPhones for a while, and then at some point they just started auto-correcting it to put the apostrophe after the Y when they didn’t at first.

And then, like I said, in other mediums it still doesn’t.

Yeah, they might have updated the dictionary on the later versions of the iOS.

This dialect word, by the way, is common throughout the South.

You probably know that it’s not just from Texas.

But the spelling that you want to use, the Y-A apostrophe L-L, shows up about 10% of the time when we look at texts of casual speech.

So you’re not alone in that.

But you’re a minority.

You’re a minority.

If you are writing a formal document, you’re probably avoiding y’all altogether anyway.

But if it is okay to use it, you should spell it with the apostrophe right after the Y.

Okay. Awesome.

Cool. Thanks for calling. Much appreciated.

Yeah, hey, I appreciate it. Love your show.

Take care now.

Thanks, Alan. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You have y’all as in a part of your dialect, right?

I sure do.

In fact, I was going to tell you that if you’ve ever driven out of Cincinnati into northern Kentucky, there’s this giant water tower that says Florence Y’all on it.

Have you ever seen that?

What does that mean?

Well, it used to be the Florence Mall, but because the water tower is this civic structure, they couldn’t have the advertising.

There were other legal problems.

So instead of just taking off all the lettering, they just changed Florence Mall to Florence Y’all.

So Y apostrophe A-L-L?

Yeah, it’s spelled that way.

Just meaning Florence Y’all, like y’all come now?

Yeah, and there’s a mall now at the foot of it.

That is very odd.

This is outside Cincinnati?

Yes, yes, northern Kentucky.

Okay, right.

Right on the edge of that dialect region, actually, right?

Right, exactly.

It’s kind of like welcome to the southern way of speaking.

That’s right.

It’s a monument to a dialect.

877-929-9673.

Or words@waywordradio.org.

I don’t know how this happened, but on Twitter, you know, our Twitter handle is Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Yes.

On Twitter, we started talking about what you call the drink in bars that’s made from the overflow found in bar mats.

Yes.

I remember that conversation.

And it really stuck with me, so I wanted to share some of these on the air.

Okay.

So most people know this is a suicide, right?

This is so a little bit of rum spilled in the mat, a little bit of beer, a little bit of whiskey, whatever is in the mat.

You roll it up and pour it into a glass.

Right.

Or a Matt Dillon.

Yeah.

Some people call it a Matt Dillon.

Somebody told us on Twitter it’s called the Jersey Turnpike.

Somebody else said it’s called an alligator shot.

Somebody said it’s called the gorilla fart.

Somebody said it’s called the buffalo tongue.

Oh.

But people order this and pay for it and then do it.

They pay for it?

Yes.

They actually pay for it?

I think they do.

Well, more ways than one.

Yeah.

If you’ve got some terms for what you know that drink to be, the drink that’s made from the effluent in the bar mat, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or tell us an email at words@waywordradio.org.

Stay with us as the Word Parade continues.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we are joined once again by the master of quiz, John Chaneski.

Master of quiz, that’s me.

Hi, guys.

Hi, what’s up, buddy?

Hi, John.

Now, you guys know I live in New York, of course.

I specifically live in Brooklyn, right?

Specifically, yes.

Brooklyn.

And Brooklyn is famous for a lot of things.

And one of them is the Brooklyn accent.

Sometimes people will say Ds, Dems, and Dos.

You’ve heard of that?

Sometimes when you hear a Brooklyner say a word, you might think it’s another word.

Okay.

For example, I’ll describe a word that might sound like a different word if said in Brooklynese.

For example, this word is facts and information used to make decisions or calculations, but it’s also the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet in Brooklyn.

Data.

Data.

That’s right. Alpha, beta, gamma.

I know. I’m sitting here counting on my fingers. What?

I came at it from the data side.

I know.

Very good.

Theta, you’re saying?

I had too much data.

Theta could be data, right.

All right.

Let’s see how this goes.

Now, of course, I love Brooklyn. Love living there. We’re not making fun. This is just—

We’ll give you a dress out at the end. We’ll find out how much fun they’re having.

Some of my best friends used to live in Brooklyn.

Here we go.

Diss is a couple often married with two jobs who have no children or to ponder in Brooklyn.

Dink.

Double income, no kids.

That’s correct.

I’ll think about that.

Diss is to take a nap or the plural of that in Brooklyn.

Those.

Those.

Not that.

I’ll take some of those.

I don’t know.

I can’t even do the Brooklyn accent anymore.

It’s been too long.

I’ve got to come back.

I know.

Yeah, seriously.

For a visit just to recharge your accent.

Now, not all of these begin with D.

Sometimes the th will just lose its H, for example.

This is to pull something along, like a boat on a rope, or a brutal ruffian or assassin in Brooklyn.

A tug.

Tug. Don’t be like the tug.

This is a piece of heavy artillery, or what you give on a Thursday in November in Brooklyn.

Tanks.

Tanks. You’re welcome.

This is absolutely verifiable, or a preposition meaning in one side and out the other, in Brooklyn.

It’s true.

True.

Go all the way, true.

Now, not all of them begin with a changed sound either.

Some of them end.

Try this one.

This is Ernie’s pal on Sesame Street, also the process by which a person comes into the world in Brooklyn.

Bert.

Bert.

Yeah, Bert.

Bert?

Wait, comes into the world?

Yeah, Bert.

What’s the day of your Bert?

From Bert to Debt.

From Bert to Debt.

I’m in debt right now.

Happy Bert Day.

Put your day of Bert on the form.

This is a place where you might find soldiers or one of the first few ordinal numbers in Brooklyn.

Fort.

Fort.

That’s right.

First, second, toy, fort.

They might be in a tree.

They could be in a tree fort.

All right, guys, that’s all the Brooklynese I have for you today.

You did very well.

I forget about it.

It’s all right.

So I do need to get back to Brooklyn.

John, we’ll come see you sometime.

We’ll just sit around your house doing quizzes, right?

Let’s do it.

Let’s do it.

Thanks so much, buddy.

Bye, guys.

We’ll talk to you more later.

Bye.

If you’d like to talk about wordplay, grammar, slang, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org and find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, how are you?

Good, who is this?

This is Temple from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Temple, welcome to the show.

Hi, Temple.

Thank you, thank you for taking my call.

Sure, what can we help with?

Well, I’m wondering, I’ve heard a phrase most of my life, and I’m just wondering where it came from, jet black, whether it refers to hair or another object that’s black. Where did the term jet black come from?

Well, Temple, what piqued your curiosity about this?

Well, I come from a family of toeheads, and one of my nieces married into a family of Italian and Israeli descent, and she recently had a baby, and it was described to me as she has jet black hair. So now that it’s close to home, I’d like to know where that came from.

What do your instincts tell you? Got any guesses?

Well, no, I really don’t. I thought I had two black roommates when I was in college, and they would read the Jet magazine. And, of course, I thought Jet Black, but I doubt that’s it. But that’s the closest I could come up with.

Yeah, for years I thought it had to do with jet planes, you know, jet exhaust or the skid marks they leave on the runway like that black.

Right, right.

There is a pretty clear explanation for this. Jet is a material that’s a kind of coal. And its name goes back all the way back to ancient Greek. It comes to us via French, but it goes back to ancient Greek to the name of an area of Syria where it was very plentiful in antiquity. So it’s a kind of material.

Yeah, it was treated as a semi-precious material that you could carve and polish. You might say make chess pieces or jewelry out of it. And it’s one of a small set of words that we use for like we talk about ruby red or we talk about heart as a diamond. And there are a few little expressions or idioms that we have in English that are connected to stones. And that’s one of them.

But in modern English, we know the jet plane far more than we know the jet the rock. And it’s spelled the same.

Yep, spelled the same, but two completely different roots.

Right, yeah, it comes to us through French and through Latin and from a term from Asia Minor.

Well, very interesting. I’m glad to know that. And as I understand it, the Jet Magazine is named for Jet Black. And it comes from a period in American history where the Black Pride movement was strong and Black is Beautiful. And they took the name to not only indicate the color black, but the modernness and the forward-thinkingness and the kind of a progressive attitude that they wanted to take and demonstrate to their readers.

Well, that’s, yeah, so I was kind of on the right trail, but I didn’t go back far enough, I guess.

Exactly. And Temple, you said that you’re a towhead?

I come from a family of towheads. I’m not towhead anymore. It’s more gray. But, yeah, all my brothers and sisters were born very blonde.

Yeah, that’s an interesting one, too. Toehead. Do you know the origin of that?

I sure do not.

Well, you know, sometimes people write us and they spell it T-O-E, toehead. But you don’t look like that.

No, no.

Gnarly, little nubbins on the top of your head or anything.

Yeah.

But toe is an old word for flax. So it’s like flaxen-haired and coal-haired.

Oh, flaxen-haired. We mean yellow or blonde or almost a blonde white, right?

Yeah.

Okay, very good.

Okay, very interesting.

Thanks for calling the temple.

Thank you very much.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The other jet, by the way, as to jet engine or to jettison something comes from the French word to throw.

Right, right.

So very different etymologies.

Right, farther back all the way to Latin and all those words like interject and trajectory and all those throwing words. This is one of the reasons English is confusing is because we have words that sound the same and look the same, but have completely different histories. It’s like, you know, two people named Susan. They’re not from the same family at all, right?

That’s a great example. Yeah, yeah.

877-929-9673.

Dan Henderson of Northern California sent us a cartoon grant that I enjoyed. I think he will too. It’s these two guys sitting at a bar. One of them turns to the other and says, explain to me how comparing apples and oranges is fruitless.

Your bad puns.

I liked it.

Send them to Martha. Martha at waywordradio.org. Or call us 877-929-9673. Press 1 for Martha.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi.

This is James Cowan calling me Scattle.

James?

Hi, James. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

Welcome. What’s going on?

I am a trivia host, like a pub quiz night host here in Seattle. And I’ve been doing that for a while. And I was thinking the other day about the word quiz master, which is kind of the default term a lot of people use for the person who, especially both writes and hosts the quiz or just hosts the quiz. And it occurred to me at one point, you know, the assumption behind quiz master, at least when I hear the word, is that that’s a guy most of the time, because in part, because I think statistically, it’s probably heavily slanted that way. But also because the word master is itself, you know, a fairly male gendered word. And I was thinking, you know, well, is there a good gender neutral or at least, you know, not so heavily slanted term for that? And I couldn’t really come up with one. And then I was also, you know, doing a little poking around. And, of course, there are parallel words like grandmaster for chess or other games where they’ve apparently like that has, I don’t know if it’s officially become gender neutral, but the women who are, you know, of that rank are just called grandmasters and not something else. Or even, you know, it’s kind of going out of both the term webmaster again. But anyway, with all of those, my question is, if you look up the word master or any of those, I even looked at, like, we have, our public library has access to the Oxford English Dictionary, which does have, as one of the tertiary definitions, you know, kind of a gender neutral, you know, master can be someone of either sex that is, you know, really good at what they do. But there’s not really, you know, a good gender neutral, it seems to me, term. So my question is really, you know, is that going the way of becoming the gender neutral term and my sticking on it is just, you know, old fashioned or, you know, going out of vogue? Is that cause, I guess, for looking for a better term?

Well, James, I’ll tell you my opinion. I think it’s fine. I think you’re talking about the difference between the term itself and the reality. You pointed out that the majority are men. And I think that that’s a matter of reality and not the word itself. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

And the other thing about quiz master, I think it would be fine applying to a man or woman because that is the trend overall in English across the world. More and more of these gendered terms where the term applies to a specific role and the only difference is the gender. They’re disappearing. We’re not likely to say postmistress, for example, or aviatrix. Terms like that, they’re gone. It’s now postmaster and aviator. In Hollywood, we’ve almost completed the transition to actor completely for men and women who act in movies and television. There are a few little places where this is not happening. But in general, the term is, it’s not that the women are adopting the male term. The male term is losing its gender completely.

Yeah, I’m not bothered by having a bachelor’s degree.

Yeah, there we go, exactly like that. And then master’s degree as well, you know. So Quizmaster is totally fine. And part of the reason you’re kind of stuck with quiz master, as you pointed out with web master and other terms, is that mistress is so marked to mean something.

Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s got all this kind of baggage referring to the other woman or referring to a dominant woman in a dominant submissive relationship or all this stuff here.

There’s kind of been a pejoration of some of the female terms over the years and a natural shift to the male term, which tends to be a little more value neutral and now also becoming gender neutral.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, the other thing that had occurred to me, the other similarity are words like firefighter instead of fireman or police officer instead of policeman, where, you know, that’s an area where it seems to me, at least in my experience, those are staying, I mean, policemen and firemen are staying fairly gendered and that they’re looking for.

But there’s also a good, you know, gender neutral alternative there that doesn’t really have any baggage or cost anything to use.

Exactly.

It’s not confusing. It’s not anything else.

You had a question that I really want to make sure that I answer.

You were asking if it was just you or that you were catching on these words because you’re old-fashioned or for some other reason.

And the reason that you’re catching on this kind of little difficulty in English is because the transition is not yet complete.

And this tends to be the case.

And this applies to all of our listeners.

When you find yourself catching on something, it’s like, wait, wait.

It’s like you put your brakes on for a moment.

There’s kind of a mental pause.

You’re like, is that right?

It’s usually because you’ve identified a change in transition that’s not yet complete.

Once it’s complete, you’ll stop remarking upon it and never notice it.

There’s a great book to recommend on this.

If you want to get a little wonky, Ann Curzan at the University of Michigan has written a book called Gender Shifts in the History of English.

It is exactly about this topic.

Oh, cool.

That sounds very good.

We’ll link to that on the website.

Maybe you can put in one of your quizzes.

You never know.

You never know when we’ll end up turning up something good.

Thanks, James.

Cool. Thanks very much, you guys.

Good talking with you. Bye-bye.

When you catch on something, when you get a pause in your brain and you can’t figure out what caused it,

We’re the ones who can help you figure that out.

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

Grant, how about a mini quiz?

Okay.

These are all names for the same thing.

Stop me when you’ve got the answer, okay?

Damp fling,

Diluted dip, aqueous

Slant, wet wipe,

Dewy thrust,

Perspiration pellet,

Saliva toss. Any ideas?

No.

It’s a spitball. A spitball?

Who uses those?

Well, baseball players.

Oh, that kind of spitball. I was thinking

Of little wads of paper

And a glass and a straw. I wasn’t thinking

On the mound. Yeah, I suppose that could be a

Perspiration pellet.

Perspiration pellet, yeah.

But no, I was looking at an old collection of baseball slang from 1900,

And there were a lot of those in there.

Here’s some other examples.

Soggy delivery, brown spitter, country sinker, and eel ball.

Eel ball, nice.

You’ve got a wet eel under your hat, right?

Right.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Timmy Martin from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Timmy. Welcome.

What’s up?

All right. So I am an automotive technology teacher down here in Dallas, and I’ve got some students.

Most of my students have used it at some point or another.

And just to give you a for instance, if I’ve got a student that walks in late,

Just to make a point of why you should show up early,

I’ll ask them a question about what we’re going over.

And they’ll say, but Mr. Timmy, I just barely got here.

I don’t know the answer to that question.

And it’s always sort of bothered me that they insert barely as this extra word.

I would simply say, I just arrived, or I just got here, I don’t know.

But I’ve never really understood why they insert barely.

As that extra little word.

And, Timmy, do they speak English as their first language?

I would say it’s more of a Spanglish.

Their parents probably either don’t speak any English

Or English is definitely not their first language.

Well, that actually makes a lot of sense because in Chicano English,

The word barely can mean both something that almost didn’t happen

And something that just happened recently.

Like I barely got out of the hospital.

So that’s apenas?

Yeah.

Yes, the word apenas in Spanish, which can mean either one of those.

And so I could see it being applying in English as well.

So it’s kind of what we call a calc, where you take the pattern of a language, language A, and apply it to language B.

Similar to the way that I think nouns and the way that you switch the descriptive word in Spanish as well.

The adjective.

The adjective is often placed in a different way, right?

Can you give us an example of that?

Taco Bueno.

It would be said it’s the good taco, but instead the title of the restaurant is Taco Bueno.

Oh, really?

Right, where in English we usually put the adjective before the noun.

Exactly.

Not always.

And same for Spanish.

Usually it’s after the noun, but not always.

Well, thank you very much.

Can you tell me the word one more time when you transfer patterns from one language to another?

It’s calc.

C-A-L-Q-U-E.

Yeah, and it’s really revealing if you Google it because you come across all these interesting places where people who learn a second language make do.

They use what they know in their first language and try to make that second language fit because it’s easier for them to get into the second language that way.

Cool.

Thanks for calling, Timmy.

Yeah, no problem.

Thanks y’all.

All right.

Thank you, sir.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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

We talk from time to time about sign language,

And I was reminded of this the other day when I came across a quotation from Helen Keller

That was about sign language and also about just the gift of language itself.

She said,

Once I knew only darkness and stillness.

My life was without past or future.

But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness,

And my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

Beautiful.

Share your memorable lines at 877-929-9673 or email them to words@waywordradio.org.

More Verbalicious questions and answers on A Way with Words.

Stay tuned.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

We heard the other day from listener Jeff Sanchez.

He was visiting the orchid house at the San Diego Zoo here,

And he came across a word that tickled his fancy,

And that word is fugacious.

Fugacious.

Yeah, do you know this word, Grant?

I didn’t know it.

It’s spelled f-u-g-a-c-i-o-u-s fugacious and botanists use the word fugacious to mean blooming

Only briefly or blooming just for a day and so you might also say that someone’s mood is fugacious.

You know you have a toddler who’s screaming and upset and then he’s completely captivated by a new

Toy his mood was fugacious and what’s so exciting to me is that this word just unfolds and explains

Itself as soon as you see the latin root because fugacious comes from the latin fugere meaning to

Flee. And so it’s related to the person who flees. Fugitive. Fugitive. The place to which you go

Fleeing back. Refuge. And it’s also kin to the musical term fugue, which literally means fleeing

Or a flight. And the reason is that a fugue starts with one or two voices or instruments

Doing a theme, and then they’re followed by other ones in the musical work. And so it’s as if they’re

In effect being chased by all the other instruments or voices.

So the word is fugacious, appearing only briefly.

Who knew?

Now we all do.

Thank you, Jeff.

If there’s something you want to know, give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or ask your question in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Finney Phillip.

Finney Phillip.

And Finney, where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Dallas.

Oh, okay, great.

What’s up?

I have a friend who’s a coffee sommelier, and he was reading something I’d written about espresso,

And I defined espresso to mean express in Italian.

And he said that that was wrong and that espresso really means to pull.

And this sort of stemmed from the idea that the original espresso machines were like a manual pull

And that you pull a shot.

And then I went around for a while, and it just kind of died down.

We had this sort of gentlemanly exchange and decided to agree to disagree.

And then I went to two Italian friends and asked them what it means.

And they thought it was pretty preposterous that it would mean to pull.

And so I went back and talked to him, and he went to a few etymology things

And told me that it means to pull.

So now we’re sort of at this impasse, and I think we both have about an equal amount of resources saying it’s one or the other.

So I decided to appeal to the Supreme Court of Etymology, you guys.

The Supreme Court of Etymology.

You should see us in black. We look great.

And my powder wig itches, though.

Grant, your little collar, it’s got a stain on it. It’s got a coffee stain on it.

Oh, yes.

So, Finny, my question for you is what do you mean when you say that it means express?

Well, an espresso shot should only take 30 seconds or under 30 seconds,

Whereas most coffee brewing methods, you’re looking at at least four minutes.

And so it’s supposed to be fast.

The whole idea of espresso is just to get in and out, and that’s why it was created,

Is just to get you some fast coffee.

All right. So let’s get to the bottom of this. You’re both wrong.

The Supreme Court Chief Justice has spoken.

So he owes you coffee and you’ve got to write a nice biography of him or something. I don’t know what.

All right.

Espresso in English comes is a shortened form of cafe espresso, which means literally pressed out coffee.

Yeah.

It’s literally being pressed out of the machine, whether it’s under high pressure or this lever or what have you, it’s being pressed out of the machine.

Express can mean pressed out in English, which is why I wanted clarification from you when you said that it means express, because you can express air, say, from an inner tube in English, or any breastfeeding mother will talk about expressing milk from her breast, right?

It’s the same thing, forcing out something from another thing.

But it’s not a very common use of express in English.

In any case, espresso, the coffee, does not come from and does not have anything to do with speed.

And it’s a common misconception, and it partly feeds into why people misspell it as Expresso-E-X, which is wrong.

And in fact, express, interestingly enough, is older than the coffee in English, and it comes from railroads.

Because we have another express still in English, and this express is, tell me if this line is familiar to you.

Any rebroadcast, reproduction, or other use of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited.

We’ve all heard that so many times.

And that express is about a stipulated or specified or said directly.

Right.

It’s like something expressly forbidden.

Right.

Well, expressly for a purpose, right?

Yeah.

And so when you had an express train originally, it wasn’t that it was fast.

It did it skipped all the stops.

It went direct.

It was specifically for a single destination.

And then because it is faster than the local, the idea of speed or being hurried kind of overtook this idea that it was for a single destination.

And express took on this meaning to say, now it’s about speed.

And that’s how we think of express today.

All express basically today just means, oh, you know, it’s going to be faster than the other alternative.

And there are advantages to taking the express that are about speed and time.

Right. And it would be understandable that you would think that an espresso coffee is so named.

It’s faster, but the name doesn’t have anything to do with that speed.

Right.

All right?

All right.

But what’s going to blow your mind is that even though we have all these different meanings of express,

They all come the same original Latin.

They just came to us by different paths.

So some came through railroading, some came from French food service,

Some came from legal documents, just different kind of domains,

And they each brought their own strength to their own particular meaning of the word express.

Yeah, and the earliest Latin word means to press out.

To press out.

You know what? I’m actually going to have to give it to my friend because he did bring up that argument once to press something out.

Oh, he did.

I don’t understand why he got the pull from it.

I don’t even know of any source that has pulled.

Well, I guess it was the action, the original action of pulling the shot, pulling the piston down, creating pressure.

So is he a good coffee maker?

Does he do a good coffee?

Absolutely.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Well, that’s a plus.

So you can sit down and have a latte and talk about this like a gentleman, not an espresso.

All right.

A double Americano or something.

Just stay away from the espresso.

Too much caffeine in your diet probably led to this argument in the first place.

Yeah, yeah.

Then you’re really expressing, right?

It gets you talking.

Thanks for calling.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks a lot, Kenny.

All right, bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call,

Or you can email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Donald Kasperson from Concord, North Carolina, sent us this riddle.

He says that he used to give it to his science students a few years ago.

Thought you’d enjoy it, Grant.

I never think, though I have a head.

I never sleep, though I have a bed.

I always run, though I cannot walk.

I’ve got a big mouth, though I never talk.

When I take a course, I always pass.

No test, no quiz, no homework, no class.

I am…

A river.

Oh, you got it.

How did you get it?

Because I read riddle books to my son.

Did you have Mr. Cass person for science?

I read riddle books to my son.

A version of this came from one of our riddle books.

Oh, really?

He’s five going on six, and he’s just at the age where he’s starting to get some of these, and they make him giggle.

Okay.

You’ve got to send me another one for Grant, Donald, okay?

You can send your riddles to words@waywordradio.org or call us 877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary. I’m calling from Royal Oak, Michigan.

Okay, welcome to the show, Mary.

Hi, Mary. Welcome.

Thank you. Glad to be on.

What can we help you with?

Well, I had an incident happen while I was shoveling snow,

Just right around Christmas with my sister and with my partner,

Who are from different parts of the country.

And we had two shovels and four people.

And when the time came where I didn’t have a shovel and I wanted one,

I went up to my partner and I said,

Can I spell you?

And she said, What?

And then I went up to my sister just because I was curious, and I said, do you want me to spell you?

And she just handed me the shovel.

And so I was curious to the meaning of to spell, the meaning to relieve someone or to take a turn,

Whether that was a regional thing in the U.S. Or what the issue was on that.

So spell, I can tell you it’s not related to the spell where you put letters together, like Y-O-U.

And it’s not related to the kind of spell that you cast onto somebody.

No witches involved.

Yeah, no witches involved, no wizards, and it’s spelled the same way as those other spells, S-B-E-L-L,

But it comes from an entirely different root, an old English word that sounds like spalian,

And it means, as you said, to take the place of someone for a period of time,

And that’s also why you have the term spell like set a spell.

Do you use that, Mary?

I know what it means, but I don’t actively use it.

Oh, yeah. I guess I’ve watched too many episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies at the end of that.

You know, they say, set a spell, take your shoes off.

But yeah, it’s a different spell from those other spells.

But yeah, it’s a perfectly legitimate term.

So this goes back to Old English to mean to fill in for somebody or substitute, take a work shift, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Interesting.

And it’s funny that it should exist in its own little island in language.

Do we have any other related words? I can’t think of any.

There’s some really old ones.

But not modern stuff that might come up once in a while.

Interesting.

It’s not regional.

It’s fairly widespread.

Not that common, maybe.

Yeah.

So I’m surprised you didn’t know.

Apparently not common enough.

Yeah.

Well, when I did look it up in the dictionary, they said it was an archaic usage.

Oh, really?

Really?

Which dictionary was this?

I think Merriam-Webster.

No kidding.

I’ll have to get on them.

I know a bunch of the editors there.

I’m going to chastise them, make them fix it.

Yeah.

Because it’s not archaic.

I use it, you use it.

Yeah, let me spell you for a while.

Maybe I’m older than I think I am.

Yeah, well, the good thing is that you were offering, right?

Mm-right.

We know what you meant, Mary.

Well, that’s good to know, and I will continue to use it.

I had it up on my Facebook page for a while, and I got a wide variety of yeses and nos.

Oh, really? Oh, interesting.

It must just be whether your family used it or whether the people around you used it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, good that you were asking.

You could also put that on our Facebook page.

Yeah, I’d be interested to see what our audience would think about that.

Yeah.

Maybe we’ll do that ourselves.

Yeah, drop by.

Thanks, Mary.

Thanks a lot.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Enjoy your show.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, so not regional necessarily?

No, not at all.

No.

Just not that common.

Yeah.

Words don’t all have to be at the top of the winner’s list.

Are people not offering to help each other out?

I don’t get it.

They do, but can I do that for you?

Can I take a turn?

There’s other ways.

Like spell.

Yeah.

Can I spell you?

Do it for a spell.

Call us, 877-929-9673.

We had an email recently, Grant, from Bill Watkins of Tallahassee, Florida,

Who is proposing a word to be added to the lexicon, and I really like it.

Here’s what Bill says.

When I’ve put a dish of food into the electronically powered device near my stove for reheating,

And I stand torn between using three minutes at power level four versus four minutes at power level three.

Now moved in one of those directions, then inclined the other way, repeatedly reversing my intention.

What word describes that behavior?

He’s got one.

He’s got one.

What is it?

Microwavering.

I love that because I have this experience, you know, which should I put it on?

And the other thing that I think we need a word for is, I don’t know if you do this, Grant,

But I always turn off the microwave right before the bell rings.

Beep, beep, beep.

Yeah.

I know.

I know.

Especially early in the morning when the microwave.

There’s no sensitivity to it.

At least mobile phones usually have this function where you can say,

After 9 o’clock, dull the sound or turn it all the way off or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What about microwaves that buzzed?

That’d be nice.

They do it on cell phones.

Or just glowed.

Or glowed.

Yeah.

It flashed or something.

Or just played music.

Or nothing.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sally Jarvis.

I’m calling from Federal Way, Washington.

Hi, Sally. Welcome.

How you doing?

Well, I was talking to my son not long ago,

And I mentioned this thing that I used to do as a child.

I’ll call it a game, for lack of a better word.

And we would hold our hands out.

One would be palms up and the other would be palms down, and we’d hook our fingers together,

Kind of put our feet close together and lean back and go around in a circle as fast as we could

Until we got so dizzy we couldn’t stand up.

And we call that going to Texas, and I don’t know why.

And you were how far from Texas? You were in Washington State then?

Oh, no, actually, I grew up in Arkansas.

Going to the state next door then.

Right, the big magnet next door.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was actually more in eastern Arkansas than I was in Texas, but, you know, still next door.

I’m not sure if that was some sort of a, we’re getting so dizzy we can’t stand up, and we thought Texans were dizzy.

I have no idea where it came from.

It’s just what we called it.

I was wondering if you have any idea of the origin of that or if you had heard it or heard it called other things.

I have not heard that.

It sounds like you would get really, really dizzy, though, right?

Yeah, that was kind of the idea, believe it or not.

I don’t know.

I’m not sure if we thought that was fun, but apparently we did.

Oh, very much so.

I don’t know anything about the term going to Texas, but watching kids spin around getting dizzy, yes.

But the holding the hands, the particular configuration of two people holding hands, I’ve seen that.

But I don’t know of a name for it.

No, and I don’t think of it as a real pastime that would actually have a name.

You know, it might happen spontaneously while you’re out on a picnic,

But I can’t imagine having a name like that.

Did you do that when you were young?

Well, yeah, but just spontaneously.

It wasn’t like, oh, let’s go outside and play going to Texas.

No, I mean, usually we were outside and, you know, we’d just be bored

And we’d be looking for something to do and somebody would say,

Oh, let’s go to Texas and we’d, you know, do that.

Maybe you heard the other kids, you know, the older ones driving across the border to buy beer or something.

I don’t know.

How close were you?

In northeast or southeast Arkansas?

Not real north, but, you know.

Well, I bet we three aren’t the only three to do that.

And I bet other people, maybe they did have names.

We could put this out to our listeners and see what they have to say.

Sure, yeah.

If you’ve got a name for the Getting Dizzy game, other than Getting Dizzy, 877-929-9673.

Or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

It does remind me of a game we played called Swinging Statue,

Where the older kids would swing the younger ones around and then let go of you.

Oh, right.

And however you landed, you had to freeze like that.

Right. We called that frozen statues.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah.

Well, Sally, thank you so much for calling.

We’re going to get some answers about this, I’m sure, so keep listening, all right?

Take care of yourself now, all right?

Okay.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Jennifer wrote us from San Diego to say,

I absolutely giggle every time I hear someone use the term per se in sentences.

It all started when South Park, the TV show,

Had an episode where a character used that term all the time in his conversations.

My boyfriend and I couldn’t stop laughing

Because it’s such an odd term that’s used in so many situations,

And I’m not sure accurately.

I hear people use it in conversations out and about pretty often,

And I’d love to know how it came about.

Well, it turns out that some people try spelling it P-E-R-S-A-Y, but that’s not the origin of it.

That’s where the confusion lies.

Se, S-E, in Latin means itself.

And so per se simply means in itself or in and of itself.

So you’d say money per se isn’t evil.

It’s the love of money that causes evil, that kind of thing.

So it’s directly from Latin, P-E-R space S-E, per se.

Right.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty path.

That’s the end of this week’s show.

For more A Way with Words, including hundreds of episodes, a blog, a newsletter, a dictionary,

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Just as we do, they believe in lifelong learning, better human communication, and the value of a thing well said or well written.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. So long.

Bye-bye.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

You like potato and I like potato.

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.

And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.

So if you like pajamas and I like pajamas, I’ll wear you.