Burn Bag (episode #1429)

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

When I think of the term Victorian England, I often think prim and proper,

But boy, they had some great slang back in those days.

I’ve been going through a 1909 volume called Passing English of the Victorian Era,

A dictionary of heterodox English, slang, and phrase.

And there’s such great slang in here.

For example, do you know what mind the grease means?

Mind the grease.

Mind the grease.

Don’t know.

It’s what you might say when you’re in a crowd and you’re trying to get by.

Mind of the grease.

Oh, weird.

Or how about this one, butter upon bacon?

Butter upon bacon.

Oh, this is one good thing after another?

Well, it’s sort of like extravagance.

I’ve seen it in a lot of books from that period, meaning just something that’s too extravagant.

It’s butter upon bacon.

And I guess today it would be somebody wearing too much makeup or their prose is too flowery.

It’s just too, too much.

And I love this one, too.

To walk in everlasting shoes.

I have no idea what that means.

To die?

No, that’s a great guess.

And to be buried standing?

I don’t know.

What is it?

No, to walk in everlasting shoes is to go barefoot.

There’s something so poetic about that.

So I have some more of these.

I’ll share them later in the show.

Groovy.

And the book is what again?

The book is Passing English of the Victorian Era,

A dictionary of heterodox English slang and phrase.

And we can find that online, I bet.

You can find it online.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your questions and comments and thoughts about words and language and everything related to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, is this Martha?

This is Martha. Who’s this?

This is Sarah. Actually, I happen to be in Philadelphia at the moment, but I live in Santa Fe.

Oh, okay.

You just happen to be in Philadelphia, okay.

Let’s get you all worked up, Sarah.

So I have a kind of a new boss, and she was asking me to relate an incident with my fellow employee.

And my fellow employee basically stood up and said, I’m not going to listen to you, and I’ll let you do the work and then present me with a presentation later.

And I was like, okay.

And so when I related the story, I actually related it and used his accent.

And I didn’t even realize that I was doing it, and she got a little bit upset and said I was making fun of my coworker.

And I said, no, I’m not doing that at all.

And I even called my former boss, and he said, oh, yeah, that’s just one of your, you know, weird habits that you have.

And I said, so it’s pretty normal then?

And he said, well, I’ve learned to realize that it’s not much of anything and that you do when you say things verbatim.

I mean, I was a county director at a welfare office for 10 years, so I would have to repeat conversations as best I could.

And I would always do that, apparently.

So why do I do that?

But apparently it’s a problem.

So it’s getting you in trouble.

Do people think that you’re making fun of the people that you’re imitating?

My fairly young boss, who lacks humor because she’s not been a boss for very long, she doesn’t understand management.

Oh, now, don’t be ageist.

She may have less humor as time goes on.

Let’s focus on you for a minute, though, and focus on the accent of the man that you were imitating.

What is his accent?

Where is he from?

He’s from Nigeria.

Okay.

-huh.

So to zero in on this question here, so Martha already kind of picked out the one thing that I was going to pay attention to, which is you’re getting in trouble for this.

And in the boss-employee relationship, if the boss says something is a problem, it’s a problem.

Yes.

So just on that pure kind of human dynamics alone, you need to look at this.

Now, something that goes on your credit side of your ledger, really, is that everyone does this to a degree.

This is the way we form group cohesion.

We do a certain kind of assimilation and mimicry, not just of accents and voices and tone, but the body posture as well and facial expressions.

I was going to say, gestures.

Yeah, the way we tilt our heads, the way we move our hands.

Yeah, we mimic people.

We mimic. But if it’s done to an extreme, it can be seen as condescending and even offensive, particularly if the person is very different from you.

Or it can even be seen as co-opting.

Yeah, I was going to say.

Borrowing culture that you’re not entitled to.

Would you be comfortable doing it if that guy were in the room?

I probably would do it. See, that’s how much I don’t realize I do it.

Oh. And my boyfriend is, my boyfriend’s from Mexico, so my son gets very upset with me because he can always tell me, he says, oh, I guess your boyfriend was over recently. And I’m like, why do you say that? And he said, because your syntax is horrible right now.

You know, clearly I pick up and mimic other people.

And if I was talking to my boyfriend at Lens, I’ll end up, I guess, being sympathetic to his understanding of English.

And I probably should really force myself to speak better English, though.

He learns better English, but sometimes just easier and faster and more expedient to do it his way.

What you’re looking at here is a really interesting workplace dynamic.

The age of your boss doesn’t matter here.

The way that you are being perceived matters the most.

And one of the things that Martha and I often come down to is like, if what you’re doing is getting in the way of good communication, then you need to look at it and fix it.

And it sounds like that’s what’s happening here.

Right. And I’ve really made an effort.

Like when I when I related it to you, I didn’t use the accent.

I’m not going to continue to do that because I’m going to try to really consciously try not to do that as much as I can.

I’ve got a couple of strategies for you that I think might help.

One is don’t repeat their words verbatim.

Oh, that’s a good idea.

Just paraphrase, really.

Summarize.

Just come up with the nut.

And then you won’t naturally as easily fall into the tendency to imitate their cadence and so forth.

The other thing is, and I’ve talked about this in the show before, try the rubber band trick.

Put a rubber band on your wrist.

And when you find yourself doing this, snap that rubber band.

And it stings just enough that it will distract you from your behavior and remind you, oh, yeah, the rubber band says I’m not supposed to do this.

That’s excellent.

I’m going to do it.

It’s a small, dumb thing.

It can work for a variety of personal tics and behaviors.

Yeah, I find that really interesting because I think we’re talking about the difference between imitating somebody and, as you said, telling a story about paraphrasing it.

I think that’s a really good way to approach it is just paraphrase without trying to render the situation in real time.

Right.

It’s not a performance.

Exactly.

It’s a report.

Exactly.

But you’re saying you absorb some of the tics anyway.

I will cry hard not to do that.

I will really, you know, I don’t want to be in trouble at work.

It’s just not, you know, five years from retirement, that’s not worth it.

No, Sarah, it sounds like you’re in a really good mood about this, which I love.

And it sounds like you know what’s up.

And it sounds like when you call us again in the future, you’re going to have something new to report.

And she’ll probably sound like us.

Sarah.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

Our pleasure.

Thanks a lot.

Glad to have you on the show.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Sarah.

Bye-bye.

If you want more information about this, everyone, I’m talking to the listeners, Google communication accommodation theory.

And it’s a fancy word for basically we as humans, because we’re a gregarious species, tend to try to sound like the rest of the group.

This is a really natural thing that she’s doing, but she’s taking it almost to like the actor’s level of imitation, it sounds like.

Yeah.

I mean, I’m sure it’s a gift in some ways.

Right.

Maybe she’s a great like party mimic, like when she does like the funny grandpa jokes or whatever.

Maybe it comes out and it’s wonderful.

But it sounds like in the workplace, it’s not really the place.

That’s a very good distinction.

Yeah.

We’d love to hear your question about language.

So call us 877-929-9673 or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Another wonderful bit of Victorian slang, a collie shangles.

A collie shangles.

Yes.

A mess?

Close, close.

It’s a quarrel.

A quarrel.

Queen Victoria herself wrote this in her diary.

A collie shangles.

A collie shangles.

It’s apparently a Scottish term that has to do with literally a fight between dogs, between collies.

Oh, interesting.

I’ll have to look it up in the Scottish news.

We have a collie shangles.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

You can find us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Well, hello.

This is Rena Peterson.

I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hey, Rena.

Welcome to the show.

Hi there.

How’s everything?

Well, I have an odd question, and I hope it doesn’t sound prurient.

It really isn’t.

I was wondering the origin of the term going commando.

My heavens.

I’ve seen it referenced on some sitcoms and in reference to the infamous scene with Sharon Stone and Basic Instinct.

But the reason I really wanted to know was I was doing some research on a project about Burma

And the Office of Strategic Services battles there in Burma and the information about Merrill’s Marauders.

And I was just curious.

I saw it in reference to that, in particular, the Merrill’s Marauders.

They started out with 3,000 soldiers in the unit, and because they had to battle not only the Japanese,

They battled typhus and malaria and dysentery.

That they often just had to cut a slit in the back of their uniform so they could just keep on fighting.

And I wonder, well, was that the origin of the phrase going commando, or did it come from somewhere else?

Oh, that’s a story.

That’s new information.

You know, we have talked about this on the show before.

I think it was in 2008.

And when we aired that episode, we got a really nice, I think it was a call from a listener who I believe had fought in Vietnam

And said to us, the thing about going commando isn’t that it shows that you’re a badass.

It’s just simply more comfortable because the GI issued underpants weren’t all that comfortable.

Right. And so that was his proposal.

And we had a few other people kind of chime in and say, yeah, that sounds about right.

I don’t know about the Merrill Marauder’s connections to this.

The earliest use that we have in print is from 1974, but it’s probably older than that.

And, yeah, that’s going to surprise a lot of people that Go Commando has got like a solid 40 years of history.

-huh.

But not as far back as what you’re talking about.

Well, Meryl’s Marauders, what year are we talking about?

What is that?

Well, that would be World War II, 43 to 45.

43 to 45, yeah.

We don’t have the evidence in the printed record, but that is new evidence.

I haven’t heard that before about intentionally having a slit in the back of the pants to better handle the disease, the dysentery, that sort of thing.

It makes sense.

It does make sense, but it’s a little different than actually just going without underpants.

But it is an interesting phrase.

You see it come up mostly in sitcoms now, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

The famous one is an episode of Friends where Joey puts on all of Chandler’s clothes and does, like, lunges and says that he’s going commando in his roommate’s clothes.

I haven’t heard of that one.

1996.

It seems like the kind of thing you’d show up on Seinfeld or something.

Yeah, 1996.

And a lot of people think that that Friends episode popularized the term, but it did exist at least 20 years before that.

Oh, is that right?

Well, that’s really interesting.

Thank you so much.

It makes sense that probably it came to the public attention after Vietnam or doing Vietnam.

All right.

Thank you very much for your call.

Thanks for sharing that story.

Well, no, thank you.

I love the show.

Take care now.

Bye.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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

Listener Jack Price wrote us with a word he’d like to popularize, amberbivalence.

Amberbivalence? What’s that?

Any guess what that is? Amberbivalence?

I don’t know.

It’s the hesitation you experience while approaching a yellow light while driving, right?

I see. Can I make it?

Yeah, exactly.

Will he make it? Betty don’t.

Exactly, yeah.

And remember when we had that conversation about stale green lights?

Yeah.

Stale green light is a light that’s just about to change.

Stale green light, right?

And you’re like, do you gun it or do you break it?

Exactly.

That’s the question.

So you have amber bivalence.

Amber bivalence.

I like that.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And the Twitter handle is W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Your questions, our answers.

It’s all about learning how to listen to language.

Stay with us.

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 on the line is the magical man from New York City,

Our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

How are you guys today?

You do do magic, right?

A couple tricks, cards, things?

I do.

I have a couple of things in my pocket

That I keep around just in case.

Like a quiz, maybe?

Like a quiz?

Like this quiz could be magic.

Who knows?

Let’s find out.

Sure it will be.

Yeah.

Segway.

This is called Best Emails.

Now, my email is Chaneski at AOL.com.

Anyway, it’s served me well for many, many years.

Obviously, it’s an AOL address.

But I’ve always wondered who owns john at AOL.com.

You know, it seems to me that that guy, he got in right at the gate.

Probably works for AOL or something, I guess.

Now, it occurred to me that there are lots of savvy people out there, and I bet lots of them have some really apt emails.

For example, I’m sure there’s a short-order cook out there who snagged the email eatatjoes.com.

Oh.

That would be pretty good, right?

So I’ll give you a clue to a person and their email.

Basically, we’re looking for a phrase that contains at.

In fact, if you write down blank, at blank, that might help you in solving this.

All right.

All right.

Here we go.

I’d feel pretty good about my legal representation if he or she was savvy enough to snag this email.

Attorneyatlaw.com.

Yes, attorneyatlaw.com.

Very good.

Probably somebody has it.

You never know.

These people will be getting emails probably.

Sorry.

Perhaps you work in video editing for a television news show.

This would be a very cool email for you.

Liveatfive.com?

Oh, that’s good.

Filmat11.com?

Filmat11.com is what I was going for.

Live at Fire is perfectly fine, yeah.

Now, famous people, they’re sharp.

They probably acquired or would have acquired some perfect emails.

Isaac Newton would have picked an email that illustrates the subject of his first law of motion.

Objects at rest?

Yeah, objects at rest.

Yes, objects at rest.com.

Johnny Mathis, the great singer of standards, was quick enough to grab an email that echoes the first line of his most famous hit.

Oh, Lord.

Poor chances are my composions.

Well, one of his most famous hits.

This is, if you’re as helpless as a kitten up a tree, you might, if you don’t know it.

Look at me?

Look at me.com.

Yeah, of course, that’s an Apple address.

Yeah.

If Martin Luther King were alive today, he might reserve this email that calls forth the ending of his famous I Have a Dream speech.

The content of the character.

The ending?

Right.

Oh, hello.

Free at last.

Oh.

Yes.

Free at last.com.

Lord, I’m mercy.

Free at last.com, of course.

Dot com.

Last.com, yeah.

Truman Capote would probably have to clear this email,

Inspired by one of his novels, with a famous jewelry store.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Dot com.

Dot com.

Oh, I totally have to go email that one.

That one seems like it’s really likely that it exists already, right?

Somebody’s got that.

Yeah.

Somebody inside of Tiffany’s just has a little autoresponder that says, you know, sends back a little coupon or something.

We’re glad you like the book.

We’re glad you like the movie.

Come visit the store sometime.

Finally, President Andrew Jackson was so dual crazy, he participated in anywhere from 13 to hundreds of them, depending on what source you check with.

He probably would have wanted an email reflecting that.

Don at 20paces.com?

No.

The Don part.

I like to have the Don part in here.

Handbags at Don.

Handbags?

Have you heard that expression?

Handbags at dawn?

No.

What do people usually use at a duel instead of handbags?

Pistols.

Pistols.

Yes.

Pistols at dawn?

Pistols at dawn.com.

Pistols at dawn.com.

Very good.

I don’t know.

So, now how can we reach you guys?

What’s your email?

Night at the opera.com.

That’s how you can reach friends.

Night at the museum.

words@waywordradio.org.

That’s the one you need to remember.

That’s the one I’m going to write to and tell you guys how great you did at this quiz.

John, thank you so much.

Thanks, buddy.

Thank you, Mark.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Grant.

This is a show about words and language and how we use them.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Find us at the Twitter handle WayWord.

That’s W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

And we’re on Facebook.

We’ve got a really lively community there.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

How are you?

My name’s Eric.

I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Great.

And I’m having a little bit of a word crisis that I was hoping you guys could help me out with.

Oh, no.

A crisis.

We’ll send the word EMTs right over.

What’s up?

I grew up in a very small town where it’s not unusual to hear things like warsh and y’all

And, you know, all these kind of little backwater terms.

One of which I have heard consistently my whole life is, well, the word is cavalry,

Which I know we don’t really use in everyday language or everyday, you know, conversation.

Right.

But we use the phrase, here comes the cavalry, a lot for just little, you know, little things.

Right.

Except that’s not what I hear.

Around here, it’s Calvary.

Here comes the Calvary.

Oh, nice.

Oh, dear.

Yes.

Even when I was little, like I’m, you know, a seven-year-old kid going, oh, that’s not right.

That’s not correct.

I love that.

I said, oh, yeah, because I was excited about the linguistic thing that was happening.

And Martha was like, oh, dear, because all she could hear was the solacism.

Well, great.

Well, but then, you know, I moved to a larger town for college.

Here comes the Calvary.

Then I moved to the biggest city in the entire state.

Where were you?

Here comes the Calvary, Indiana.

And it has driven me nuts my entire life.

So now I’m just calling for help.

Wait, Eric, before we go any further, I need to stick up for all of the American South

And say that when you say that y’all is a backwater term, you got some explaining to do.

No, hey, I say it.

I say y’all every day of my life.

I don’t know if that gets you off the hook.

Good.

All right, so you are calling for the linguistic cavalry, right?

Yeah, I believe so.

Yeah, yeah, the linguistic people mounted on horseback coming to the rescue, right?

And what you’re hearing is people saying here comes the Calvary.

-huh.

Yeah, and those of us who grew up in the church in particular always heard Calvary as a religious term, correct?

Sure, absolutely.

So you have to spell these because they sound amazingly alike.

Yeah, they do.

And L’s and R’s are so tricky in language anyway.

And then metathesis, right?

Is that what happens?

Yeah.

So C-A-L-V-A-R-Y with the L is the mountain that Jesus was crucified on, right?

Yes.

And C-A-V-A-L-R-Y is the military horse brigade or whatever you call it.

Yes.

Soldiers on horses.

Yes.

Or soldiers on tanks.

Yes.

And I think it is really easy to confuse those just when you’re talking really quickly.

But the way that I remember the difference is that cavalry has to do with all these horse-related words.

It goes back to caballarius in Latin.

A caballero in Spanish.

Caballero in Spanish is a gentleman who rides the caballo, correct.

And cavalry is also related to the English word cavalcade, which, you know, is originally a parade of horses.

The Calvary was the hill on which Jesus was crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem.

That’s related to the Latin word calvarium, which means skull.

And that’s a Latinized version of the term for that hill in Aramaic, which came into English as Golgotha or Golgotha.

Either way, because the hill on which Jesus was crucified is in the shape of a skull.

Wow.

Yeah.

And church lady bringing it.

But wait, there’s more.

There’s more.

And here’s what’s so cool about that.

That comes from the Latin word for skull, calvarium.

That finds its way, the same root finds its way into the English name Calvin, which means literally bald-headed, and the Spanish word calvo, which means bald.

How about that?

Yeah, all sorts of stuff I didn’t know. How about that?

That’s how I remember the difference between cavalry and calvary.

Of course you do.

Although it’s really hard when, you know, to mix them up.

Or in the short version, the LV version is Jesus’ place of death.

The VAL version is the horses.

Right.

So if I hear somebody say, here comes the Calvary, I’m totally allowed to correct them now.

Like, for real.

Oh, well, now that’s a different question, isn’t it?

Who are you talking with?

You could say, hey, this is really cool.

Did you know Calvary comes from the Latin for skull?

Or you can just, you know, have a warm glow inside remembering this conversation that you had with Martha.

And Grant about the marvels of etymology

And the way words are connected.

Thank you very, very much.

Yeah, sure.

You’re more than welcome.

Bye, Eric.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Find us on the Twitter handle, W-A-Y-W-R-D.

And we’ve got a super lively Facebook group

That you are welcome to join.

Grant, do you know what a knowledge box is?

Your noggin?

How did you know?

I don’t know.

That’s very good.

Yes, yes.

The earliest reference I’ve heard to knowledge box being slang for head is back in 1755 when somebody wrote about fighters and one of them gives him a damn drive in the bread basket and almost cracked his knowledge box.

Sports writers, man.

They’ve always used colorful language.

That could work today almost, right?

That could.

That could.

We’d love to put more in your knowledge box, so call us 877-929-9673,

Or send your questions about language to words@waywordradio.org,

And find our very active group on Facebook.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Katie in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hi, Katie. How are you doing?

I’m very well. How are you guys?

Doing well. What’s going on in Balmer?

You’ve got the accent right.

Thank you.

I’m a subscriber to an online newsletter called Introvert Deer.

I’m a self-described introvert, and I kind of take interest in the culture surrounding that.

And recently I came across an article on Introvert Deer regarding Google’s definition of an introvert.

And the contributing writer was saying how much it bugged her.

And I have to say, when I read the definition, it also bugged me too.

And so she had set up a petition asking Google to change that definition.

And with all your expertise and, of course, Grant’s experience as a dictionary writer and editor and lexicographer,

I was wondering what you guys thought about that and the possible success of the petition and how that might go.

They want to change the definition?

And what do they want to change it to?

Well, the Google definition, I can read it to you.

It’s actually so terrible.

It is a shy, reticent person, a person predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things.

And number one, that sounds very selfish to me.

So I kind of take umbrage to that as an introvert.

And so what she proposed was a definition as follows.

Someone who has a preference for minimally stimulating environments due to a difference in the way sensory input is processed in the brain.

And I think that’s certainly much more accurate.

So your difficulty with the original definition is shy.

Selfish.

Selfish, yeah.

Selfish.

Well, it doesn’t say selfish.

But that’s just one definition.

Now, Google gets that definition from another dictionary.

They didn’t write that themselves.

Right.

I imagine not.

And she also mentioned the Cambridge Dictionary Online definition, which says someone who is shy, quiet, and unable to make friends easily.

Ooh, now that’s kind of…

Yeah, which is even worse.

I sure have seen a lot of introvert pride online lately.

A lot of people on Facebook posting things about, this is how introverts really are, you don’t understand us, that kind of thing.

The internet is made for introverts, though, right?

I don’t have to be social unless I want to be social.

That is a very good point.

It’s sort of like I once read that those cat videos are sort of like introverts versions of dog parks.

That’s funny. I love that.

I have a thousand things to say, but I think the first one is here, just to kind of cut this off a little bit,

Because we could go on for an hour about this.

Sure.

Is I’m not sure that addressing the dictionary definitions is the way to go about changing people’s understanding of what an introvert is.

Because the dictionaries aren’t really great tools for changing common perception.

I know a lot of people think that.

I see tons of campaigns to change this dictionary or that dictionary or fix this part of a definition or that part of a definition.

And really, to be utterly honest about it, the people that you need to talk to aren’t the lexicographers.

It’s editors and copy editors of periodicals and other publications.

These are the people whose work can really turn around the public’s view of what it means to be an introvert.

They can flag misconceptions about introversion in writers’ work and make sure that it’s proper in there.

And so if I were running a campaign, I think I would talk to the style guide writers and not the dictionary writers.

Well, that’s so interesting.

I think I would campaign more on Facebook, actually.

I think I’ve come to understand introverts probably more in the last year than I have.

How would you do it on Facebook?

Just funny images or a page?

I mean, I don’t know if you see these, Katie, but I see lots and lots of articles about this is how I really am.

This is how to treat me.

You don’t need to treat me.

And posters and that kind of thing.

But I think Grant and I are both making the same point, which is that the dictionary definition is not what’s going to change people’s perception.

I’ve got to say, it’s really interesting how different the dictionary definitions are for introvert and introversion.

And what’s really interesting to me, I actually worked on some of the Cambridge dictionaries.

So the definition that you cite is from a learner’s dictionary.

And those are by necessity really brief.

And because they have a limited vocabulary, they can’t get very technical.

They tend to be really general, and they can’t get specific.

So the proposed definition that you’ve got here wouldn’t fly in any dictionary that I’ve ever edited.

The main difficulty is that last part where it says,

Due to a difference in the way sensory input is processed in an introvert’s brain.

That’s encyclopedic.

That’s not a thing that a dictionary is ever going to include.

But the first part, I think, is really solid.

An introvert is someone who has a preference for minimally stimulating environments.

And what it does really effectively leaves out judgment.

And it doesn’t have anything to do with their motives or their intentions.

Or their brains.

Yeah, I agree.

And I think even some scientists might argue with the part of the proposed definition about the way sensory input is processed.

Processed itself.

That word has a lot of problems and probably would be avoided.

Agreed. It’s a bit vague and overbroad.

But again, so if you want to go back to this website, to this community of people that you found,

Really speak to your introversion, I would counter propose that they start working in

Different avenues that have nothing to do with the dictionary. I mean, there’s a nice thing about

Getting a dictionary company to listen to you. You feel heard, right? They recognize your status as a

Group. You feel like, oh, yeah, I do have a voice. They sent me a response. But I got to tell you,

Dictionaries, they get bombarded all the time by giant companies with huge squads of lawyers

Who have no effects.

None.

You know, they almost never, ever give in to any of these campaigns

Because all that the dictionary makers look at is the evidence.

How does the world use the word introvert?

And that’s what they’re writing a definition for.

Go back to your community and propose that they work on this campaign,

Only just not target the dictionary editors because it’s kind of a lost cause.

Well, I think that’s a great idea.

Okay.

Katie, I think introverts all over are thanking you right now.

They’re high-fiving you.

Well, I’m so glad.

Yeah, we’re united separately in our own homes.

Exactly, united separately in your own homes.

Thank you so much for calling.

Take care now.

Well, thank you for having me.

I really appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye now.

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

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

We’ve heard about man caves.

Do you have a man cave, Grant?

I’ve got a tiny spot in the garage that’s mostly storage.

Yeah, your office.

Yeah, kind of.

Yeah, man cave is a place that the guy retreats in the house.

Somehow I think the yoga ball makes it not a man cave.

But okay.

That’s good.

Well, another term I’m tracking these days is the female equivalent.

She shed.

She shed.

Have you heard that one?

No.

She shed.

I mean, ideally something outside the house.

Right, right.

But yeah, women are making their she-sheds.

Do you have one?

Your whole house?

Every place you live?

My whole domicile is a she-shed.

It’s been referred to as the lair.

The lair.

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

Stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Way with Words,

The show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Grant, you and I both enjoy reading advice about writing from other writers.

And I had some that I wanted to share with you.

This is from the book by Ann Patchett called This is the Story of a Happy Marriage.

And it’s part memoir, part advice.

Came out a couple of years ago.

And she has some really good observations about what it takes to make a good writer.

If you want to write, practice writing.

Practice it for hours a day.

Not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well.

Because there’s something that you alone can say.

Does this sound like a lot of work without any guarantee of success?

Well, yes, but it also calls into question our definition of success.

Playing the cello, we’re more likely to realize that the pleasure is the practice,

The ability to create this beautiful sound, not to do it as well as yo-yo ma,

But still to touch the hem of the gown that is art itself.

I got better at closing the gap between my hand and my head by clocking in the hours, stacking up the pages.

Somewhere in all my years of practice, I don’t know where exactly, I arrived at the art.

And then she circles back to an idea that she’s mentioned before, which is the notion that you can have this great work of art in your head,

But whatever you end up writing never turns out to be as good.

You know, it’s just a pale, flawed imitation.

But I really love the way that she puts it. She says, I never learned how to take the beautiful

Thing in my imagination and put it on paper without feeling I killed it along the way.

I did, however, learn how to weather the death and I learned how to forgive myself for it.

And then she goes on, forgiveness, the ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths

And think about this because it is the key to making art and very possibly the key to finding

Any semblance of happiness in life. Great. What book was that again? The book is called This is

The Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. There’s an interesting thing that you said at the

Top that I wanted to talk about. We like writing advice. And I think of writing advice as being

Like prayer. You don’t just do it once, right? You have to keep practicing, keep absorbing the

Ideas of other people constantly. There’s no one great idea that’s going to set you off. You’re

Constantly getting input from other better writers on how to be better as a writer yourself.

Or as I always say, my dad used to say, milk all the cows you can and then churn your own butter.

That’s it. That’s it. We’d love to hear your favorite passages of writers giving advice,

The stuff that motivates you, or a new book that really turned you on and changed your mind about

Some things that you were doing well or doing poorly.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant and Martha.

This is Nicole Spalbitt calling from sublime and sunny Portland, Oregon.

Oh, sublime and sunny.

Nice.

Nice.

Hello, Nicole.

You work for the Tourism Bureau, right?

No.

No.

My question regards is saying that my great Aunt Helen, Annie Honey, as we lovingly referred

To her. She deserves that nickname in every way. She was my nana, my grandmother’s sister,

And a cryptographer in the Korean War, actually. The term she often used, well, she had many terms,

Is biz bag. And for some context, when she was moving to a retirement home,

My mom was helping her clean out her closet and asked her to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down

To keep things or to get rid of them.

And to keep, it was fine,

But she said bizbag for anything in the discard pile.

I have no idea how to spell this,

And I’m wondering if there’s actually any definition for this term

Or where she would have picked it up.

Bizbag, so B-I-Z-B-A-G?

That’s how I’m spelling it, but we don’t really know.

Okay.

And she’s no longer with you to ask?

She’s not, no, unfortunately.

But this is something that my mom and I still talk about, sort of the Annie Honey-isms.

So, you know, and it’s one of those things where I’m really curious because I’d like to sort of keep it alive

And some of the things that, you know, my family has said.

No, I can tell you I used to use that term all the time, put it in the biz bag.

You did?

Yes.

And you know why?

Because it comes from a commercial in the 1970s.

Are you serious?

Yeah, yeah.

For biz stain and odor eliminator.

In fact, you can go online.

You should do this, Nicole.

You and your mom should go online because there are videos of some of those commercials

Where they talk about putting stuff in the biz bag.

They’re sorting through clothing and they’re really, really badly stained.

So the stuff with the grass stains or blood or something goes in the biz bag.

Yeah, that goes in the biz bag.

And I can remember when I was quite young,

I don’t know if there was another commercial that made us do this, but if we wanted to reject any idea or anything, my friends and I would all say, eh, Biz Bag.

And I think that might have been an imitation of another commercial, but I’ve never been able to find it, this buzzer sound.

There are probably people listening right now who are remembering this.

So Biz is a stain-removing detergent, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I think you can still buy it.

I think you can, yeah.

Wow.

That’s okay.

You were hoping for something more exciting, right?

That’s sort of the last thing that I would think of when I think of Annie Honey.

It’s like watching TV or remembering commercials.

It must have been really effective.

She’s a woman who loved puzzles and haiku and reading.

I don’t ever associate her with, like, watching TV.

Well, maybe she picked it up from somebody else who watched television.

Yeah, it just has to do with sorting laundry.

Nice.

Okay.

Well, I will tell my mom that.

Okay.

And, yeah, then my dad does the laundry in the house, so he will put things in the biz bag.

There we go.

Okay.

Very good.

Very good.

Thanks, Nicole.

Well, call us some time with some more Annie Honey-isms.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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Email words@waywordradio.org.

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Here’s a bit of slang from the 19th century that I don’t know would work today.

It’s nantynarking.

Nantynarking. Nanty, I don’t know. Complaining about nothing?

That’s pretty good. It’s not exactly it.

What is it? Tell me.

Well, nantynarking is great fun. Oh, that was nantynarking.

And you can spell it N-A-N-T-Y or N-A-N-T-E.

So my definition wasn’t anything like that.

Why did you say?

Well, no, because lexicographer Jonathan Green has done some research on this

And found that this is probably an old sense of narc, meaning to annoy.

And the nanti, as you suggested, is nothing like Italian niente.

And also in French.

Yeah, you’re right.

So it’s nothing annoying.

It’s, you know, which means great fun.

No, I see the absence of annoying things.

Exactly.

Exactly. This show is nanty-narking.

Send us your emails to words@waywordradio.org and talk to us on Twitter at WayWord.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Hillary calling from Cleveland, Ohio, and I had a question about a word.

Well, great, Hillary. Bring it.

Shoot. What you got?

So the word is yuppie, and my husband and I were talking because he had read an article about a new word that was trying to get created, which was yucky.

And they said that they came up with this word because of the original word, which was yuppie, which came from young urban professionals.

And that just sounded interesting to me that young urban professionals was translated into yuppie.

So I had a question if that’s where it really came from.

And what’s a yucky?

A young urban creative.

So they’re saying that that’s a new word that they want to sort of create because people aren’t young urban professionals anymore, but they’re young urban creatives.

Okay.

Okay, and does that include you and your husband?

I mean, I guess so.

They’re trying to do away with the word hipster.

So they’re trying to bring in this new culture of we’re young and professional, but we’re still creative.

So I guess that’s kind of a word.

Yeah, because yucky doesn’t sound negative at all.

Right, I know.

I wouldn’t want to be called a yucky, but that’s just me.

Right, professional but creative.

I don’t know about that word.

Yeah, yucky is from young and professional.

The first use that we have in print is from 1980.

There was a writer for Chicago Magazine named Dan Rottenberg.

And I’ve actually talked to him about the word yuppie.

And he’s always really honest to say, I did not invent this word.

It was floating in the air.

I don’t know who I got it from.

But he is so far the first use that we found of yuppie in print.

Straight up from the beginning in 1980, it’s used the same way that we use it today,

Which is young people who’ve got jobs.

Maybe they haven’t started a family yet.

They’re really focused on a household.

They’re really focused on great living quarters and a great living environment.

Building their careers.

I remember when that was a brand new

Shiny word and everybody

Was using it, but now?

I mean, really, do people still…

I thought yuppies grew up

And became old, you know,

Curmudgeonly, you know,

People closer to our age.

What are you saying about me?

I was talking with my mom about it, and she said that

It was really popular in the 90s

With another word also, which was dink.

Double income, no kids.

Right, or dual income, no kids.

Yeah, also used, still used.

But it really just depends what field you’re in.

Like if you’re in marketing, these terms are everywhere.

So you think that generation, we’re going to have generation after generation of yuppies?

I thought maybe it would sort of go the way of…

I don’t know.

No, but it’s a great identity.

It’s that particular period post-college when you’re building a career and you haven’t yet started a family.

And you really have all of this money that you’re putting into a household.

Or that you’re putting into savings or you’re putting into buying nice things like the really nice espresso machine.

That sort of stuff.

That particular time of your life.

But now they’re Malpies.

Malpies.

Malpies.

They’re middle-aged urban professionals.

Yeah, well, I don’t know.

Or maybe they’re suburban.

I don’t know.

Do you think it’s kind of moved away because we kind of live in a culture now where students

Aren’t getting jobs right out of college and things like that?

And they aren’t making all that money right away?

There’s a question.

Well, some aren’t.

Our engineer is high-fiving us.

Some aren’t, but many are.

The thing is, yuppie is still used.

It still refers to a particular type of person.

And it spawned a lot of derivative terms, and most of them have failed to catch on.

I’m surprised you don’t hear dink more, because I feel like nowadays it’s more accepted that people are double income, no kids.

Yep, I agree with you there, Hillary.

And so that’s surprising to me.

Yeah, I agree.

I think that seems to have more.

Well, Hillary, thanks for the call.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

It was great talking to you guys.

I’ve added yucky to my word file list just to keep track of it.

All right.

Thanks, Hillary.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Twitter handle is Wayword, and you can find us on Facebook.

I was thinking about Nicole from Portland’s call about bizbag and her aunts who used that term.

And I think I got caught up on the cryptographic term and thought about burnbag.

Burnbag.

That’s when you burn the clothes?

Well, no.

In the secret world, supposedly, at least what I’ve read, a burn bag is where you put important papers that literally go in the incinerator so that the enemy doesn’t get them.

You can’t put them out with the recycling or in the trash.

So there’s got this security officer whose job is to go around for everybody’s small burn bags and put them in the big burn bag and the whole thing goes in the incinerator.

There’s all kinds of check sheets to sign off on and evidence and proof and stuff and even like scraping through the ashes to make sure everything burned up.

So I was wondering if maybe that’s why she thought it came from the cryptographic years, right?

Yeah, it could be.

Because Biz Back sounds a little like Burn Back.

Right.

What is it?

Burn after reading?

What’s that expression?

Something like that.

I don’t know.

Mission Impossible, right?

Yeah, right.

This stuff goes up in flames as soon as you hear it.

Yeah, right.

The little tape recorder with the reels.

Yeah.

That’s how it really is, I’m sure.

Really.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi.

How are you?

Doing well.

Who’s this?

Hi, this is Jonathan. I’m calling from Santa Monica, California.

Hey, Jonathan. Welcome.

Welcome. How are you doing?

I’m doing great. How are you doing today?

Doing well. Are you out on the pier?

I wish. No, I’m actually at the office. I live in the valley, but I work in beautiful, sunny Santa Monica.

Oh, okay. All right. Well, what’s on your mind?

One of the questions that I had, which I had posted on your Facebook page, and it got quite a bit of action, was the word mouth.

Originally, I spelled it M-A-U, but I gave in to the crowd, and it’s M-O-W, but spelled like Mo, but pronounced Mao, Ronda Cow.

And the context where this word came into play, I’ve been using this word as if I didn’t really think of it as a slang word or a regional word, but I’ve been using it my whole life.

It came into play a couple months ago.

I was at a board game conference, and we were eating dinner, and there was a tournament that was going to start.

So my friend says, oh, we have to hurry.

So I told her, go ahead, save my place.

I’m going to mouth this down real quick, and I’ll be right with you.

And she looked at me like I had three heads.

So my curiosity on that was, you know, and I do not want to just – I love to look things up and do my homework on it.

So I did some research on it.

I found some things in the Urban Dictionary.

And one of the entries had exactly the definition that I know, which is to eat something down real quick with great fervor.

And it said that it’s regionally from the Northeast.

So I was curious about that.

And I had people replying from all over the country using that word.

Some people said it was only used by younger people under 30.

And not to give away my age, but I’ve been using this since the 80s.

But you’re not from California, right?

I’m not originally from California.

I grew up in Long Island, New York.

Yeah, we heard that.

You can hear the accent.

A little bit, yeah.

Yeah.

So that’s really, I don’t have this.

I don’t have Mao.

Now, I might say, I might understand you saying I’m going to mow this food down, meaning like eat it really fast like a mower would take down grass.

But I, no, Mao.

It reminds me of housing.

Yeah.

I’m going to house this hamburger.

I mean, I have Hay Mao, which is the place where you store hay in the barn, but I don’t.

Huh.

You don’t think it’s just onomatopoetic?

Mao, Mao, Mao, Mao.

Maybe.

Like nom, nom, nom, nom.

That’s not that.

That’s not that.

I mean, I’ve also thought of maw being a giant.

Yeah.

But, you know, and some of the people had replied back using the word scarf.

And I’ve heard of scarfing down.

Usually it’s maw as in maw down.

I never say I’d maw this.

But I’d say, yeah, let me maw this down real quick.

It would be the way I would use it.

I saw that discussion on the Facebook group.

And what was really interesting to me is I’m pretty sure that everyone who spells it M-O-W,

They wouldn’t mouth the grass in the yard, but they would mouth food, right?

Right.

Exactly.

So they have these two pronunciations for the same spelling.

Well, English is famous for that.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, English is a mess.

We’re here to sort it out.

Jonathan, I’ve got to say, I think somebody just tossed this out for responses to the listeners

And to see who has mouth, like you would mouth some food, I mean, to eat really fast.

And who doesn’t?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us about it, words@waywordradio.org.

Try us on Twitter, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

We’ll see what kind of response we get.

We’ll just elaborate on that conversation from the Facebook group, all right?

Oh, yeah.

So let me ask you, what word would you use for that same situation?

Chow.

I mean, I think this came up in the discussion.

I would chow down, just meaning to really just put my head down and just shoveling it in,

Like feeding coal to a fire.

Eat noisily and things sort of flying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I might scarf food.

Chow down.

This scarf.

Shovel it in, right?

Shovel it in.

Yeah.

But we’ll see what other listeners say and follow up on it.

Thanks for your call.

Really appreciate it.

See you on the Facebook group.

Thank you so much.

You have a wonderful day.

You too.

I love your show.

I’d love to keep hearing it.

Thanks a lot.

I’ll be getting more supporters.

Bye-bye.

Bon appétit.

Take care.

So let’s do this for Jonathan.

Do you say mow down if you mean to eat a lot of food really fast?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Or email words@waywordradio.org.

I like this little term from the 1909 volume,

Passing English of the Victorian Era.

It’s fly rink.

Fly rink.

Where would flies fly down and skate around?

Your head?

A polished, bald head.

A bald head, a fly rink.

Yes.

Okay.

Some of my best friends have fly rings.

Yes, yes, I know that guy very well.

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This program would not be possible without you.

Martha 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 Colin Tedeschi, and editor Tim Felten in San Diego.

In New York, we thank production wizard James Ramsey, 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 Track Recording Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

So long.