Burrito Baby

Even though you’re listening to this on podcast and not on the air, you can still call our toll-free number 877-929-9673.

And you can still send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

And you can still find us online at waywordradio.org.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

We’re long past the point where there’s any humor left in making fun of the spell check on programs like Microsoft Word, right?

Oh, I still titter over it.

But I think there’s still some humor left in the cell phone auto-corrections.

Oh, those, yeah.

There was a great story a number of weeks ago in the New York Times by my friend and colleague Ben Zimmer,

who now writes the On Language column for the New York Times, and he wrote about auto-incorrections.

These are the crazy things where, well, you mean to type one thing, but something else comes out of the phone,

and you look a little silly on the other end because you send the text message without realizing it, right?

Right.

So we put the word out, you and I did, on Facebook and on Twitter, asking our listeners, you,

if you had something to tell us about some auto-incorrection that your phone made.

And we got a couple of great ones.

Liz told us that her friend Lorna’s name is often changed to porno, which I thought was great.

Poor Lorna.

Yeah.

But the user Agonist, that’s his Twitter nickname, told us that his BlackBerry changed C-S-E-E to R-A-R-E.

So he kept saying things like, I are what you mean.

That’s not quite right.

But I think the winner and my all-time favorite so far came from Erling Mork in Norway,

who reports that his iPhone changed where the wild things are to where the wild thongs are.

I don’t think it’s in Norway.

I don’t need that.

Oh, technology.

What folly.

Oh, sometimes those smartphones just aren’t so smart, right?

They learn, though.

And that’s the thing that Microsoft Word still doesn’t do.

You can add words to its dictionary, but it’s not automatically looking at your language and picking up on the words that you use and then suggesting them.

I mean, there’s this great market, at least on the Android operating system, for keyboards that are more in tune to you.

They’ll analyze your text messages, figure out which words you use most commonly, and they’ll suggest those first.

It’s wonderful.

It’s freaky.

But it takes a while, right?

It takes a while for it to kick in.

So here’s your assignment.

Send us your auto-end corrections.

What is your phone doing to your language?

How’s it messing it up?

Send them to words@waywordradio.org.

Post them on our Facebook page at Wayword Radio.

Send them to us on Twitter at the username Wayword or call us 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is William in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Hi, William. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What can we do you for?

Well, I’m calling to inquire about words of surprise.

Really?

Yes, really.

Oh, my gosh!

I like to watch the Antique Roadshow in part because people have interesting ways to express surprise

when they find out the junk in Uncle Ned’s garage is worth thousands of dollars.

And usually they say, you know, you’re kidding or wow or really.

But recently a woman says, I’m absolutely gobshmacked.

And she repeated it later saying she was totally gobshmacked.

And I’ve certainly never heard the word gobshmacked before.

When I first heard it, I thought she said gobshmacked, which I think would be a good word.

And if it isn’t one, we ought to nominate it.

But what she said was gobsmacked.

You know, occasionally you hear flabbergasted and astounded, but I’ve never heard gobsmacked.

Wait, she said schmacked with a schmack?

G-O-B-S-M-A-C-K.

Oh, tell us about this woman.

How interesting.

She brought something to the road show.

She brought something to the antiques road show.

She found out that it was worth $12,000.

Wow.

And she said, oh, I’m absolutely gobsmacked.

And what was she like?

Was she old or young?

Was she American?

I would guess from her accent she may have been English.

Okay.

And I would guess that maybe she was 45, 50.

I don’t know.

Okay.

And she was surprised.

And she was surprised.

Okay.

As we’ve talked about on the show before, when people are surprised, their most natural language comes out.

Yes.

You know, the thing that defeats schooling and education.

Yes.

That thing you say when you stub your toe in the middle of the night.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We won’t put that one on the radio.

No, no, no.

And where did this Antiques Roadshow episode?

This was Miami Beach.

Gobschmacked in Miami.

Schmacked.

Really?

Gob we can be tidy about and just kind of take care of really quickly, but the schmacked.

That’s really interesting.

Schmacked, like hit.

But you’re saying with the sh sound, an sh sound at the beginning.

Well, maybe it’s just my pronunciation, but I think it’s gobschmacked.

Well, gobsmacked is a word that I use all the time, and I think I just picked it up from a well-traveled friend or something.

I don’t think it’s really local to the United States.

No, it’s not native to our vocabulary, no.

Right.

But the gob there may come from an Irish or Gaelic word meaning mouth.

Or beak.

Or beak.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, there’s a kind of candy that I grew up calling a jawbreaker, but other people call it a gobstopper.

Yeah, I knew that.

I think there’s a brand name gobstopper.

Yeah, there is.

It’s like candy that you suck on you.

It’s got colored layers and a little fire inside.

Yes, and you stick that in the little kid’s gob and it stops him up for a while, right?

Yeah, I only knew that as a jawbreaker.

Okay.

Yeah, so they’re gobstoppers and then gobsmacked is the idea that you’re sort of dumbstruck.

You’re dazed or surprised as if.

But literally when you’re surprised, you throw your hand up to your mouth.

You smack yourself in the gob.

That’s what these people do on the road show.

The hand just instinctively goes up to their lips.

They cover their mouths.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I always had this mental picture of you being as dazed as if somebody smacked you in the mouth.

That works.

You think it’s smacking your hand to me?

I think it’s literally because when you are genuinely surprised as these people often are,

because I’ve seen the show, and sometimes it looks like they already knew it was worth a lot.

But, yeah, their hand goes right up to their mouths.

Oh, really?

They’re literally gobsmacked.

They are smacking themselves in the gob.

They’re smacking themselves in the mouth.

How weird.

Well, that’s a pretty good word.

We ought to hear that more often.

We should.

It’s a great one.

Most Americans don’t use it.

They probably know it from British music and television shows.

There’s a lot more of that kind of cross-Atlantic migration of entertainment coming our way rather than the other way.

So maybe more people will start to use it, but it’s not that common here.

It’s such a strong, powerful word.

But I sure never thought of it as putting my own hand to my mouth.

That’s interesting.

You know, there’s also, you can be gobstruck as well.

Gobstruck, yeah.

Gobstruck, yeah.

Which, again, I think feels like being punched in the mouth when you’re not expecting it.

I like yours.

It’s more powerful.

I like the song that somebody’s just like throwing their arms back as if they’ve just been sucker punched or plucked.

So, William, you’re picking that one up.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, good.

But I’m still nominating gushmacked as a new word.

It Googles a little bit.

You can find one or two people using it on the Internet.

You can form a support group online.

Yeah, there’s a Facebook group for everything.

Well, thank you so much for calling, William.

Thank you. I’m amazed at what you know.

All right. Take care.

Are you gobsmacked, though?

Yes, I certainly am.

Okay. Bye-bye.

Take care.

You know, it’s strange when you consume a lot of media,

you come across words and things that you’ve never heard before,

and you make lists.

Well, call us and share those words with us, 877-929-9673,

or send what you’ve found to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. My name is Kelly.

I’m from Potsdam, New York.

What can we do for you today?

Well, I observed in a high school a bathroom that was labeled boys’ room, B-O-Y apostrophe S.

And it struck me as, hey, I don’t think it should be punctuated that way.

So I brought it up with several friends, and I have my opinion, which I think is right.

So I don’t even think it’s an opinion.

I think it’s a fact.

I think it should be B-O-Y-S apostrophe, if you’re going to put an apostrophe.

I got mixed results on people’s opinions on whether or not the way it was labeled was correct.

I did.

Whom did you consult? Teachers and professors and scholars?

Boys?

Scholars? Boys? Girls?

Well, I put it on Facebook, and I let my friends reply, and they are of mostly very educated backgrounds.

So I was surprised that there would be differences of opinion.

So you’re hanging out with a lower class of person than you first thought.

Is that what you’re saying?

You have a way with reading minds.

So, okay, so this is a standard bathroom in a high school, grade school, middle school?

A high school.

High school.

And it’s labeled boys’ room with an apostrophe, B-O-Y apostrophe S.

Correct.

That’s odd in the first place.

Let’s just forget the apostrophe for a second.

Are there couches in there, like pinball tables?

Why is it the boys’ room?

Why is it just bathroom?

If it’s anything like the girls’ room, it’s just stalls in a sink.

Okay.

You haven’t gone in there to explore.

Right, right.

I think you still have some research to do.

Oh, no, I probably should go back.

Well, Kelly, does it say boys’ room or just boys?

I believe it says boys’ room.

It’s been a while since I went there, but as I recall, boys’ room.

And your argument that the apostrophe should come after the S to indicate that there’s more than one boy and the room belongs to all of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

B-O-Y-S apostrophe room.

That’s what you’re saying.

It should be.

I’d say you’re right, Kelly.

The best thing that should be up there is B-O-Y-S apostrophe room, boy’s room.

There’s more than one boy.

It belongs to all of them or they all can use it.

And it’s clear.

Not that there’s any confusion the other way, right?

It’s not that people are actually thinking, well, which boy is it?

Can I actually go in there?

I don’t think they designated me.

Is it my turn today?

Well, it sounds like you have some Facebook friends to defriend.

Or at least start a new group with them.

Grammar is really awesome and you should learn it.

Yeah.

Well, you certainly made it crystal clear that I was right,

Which was my goal in calling.

Are you going to go fix the sign?

Are you going to get your white out and your Sharpie and do a little fixing?

I’m not sure.

Never thought beyond getting a definite answer.

Oh yeah, well, Kelly, you’re right.

I’m glad that you got an answer that you liked.

Oh, I appreciate it really so much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Kelly.

Take care.

Bye bye.

If you have a dispute in your workplace

About grammar or language,

Call us 877-929-9673

Or you can email us

Words@waywordradio.org.

Once or twice a year, I get a list of slang from Connie Ebley,

Who is in the English department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

And she sent me another one. This is good stuff.

She collects these words from her students.

The list doesn’t change all that much from year to year, which is kind of surprising.

The best slang tends to be the best slang.

It just lasts and lasts.

But there were a few terms on here that,

While they might not be particularly new,

I thought were worth calling attention to.

One of my favorites is to call the fifth year

That you are enrolled at university your victory lap.

Is that what I did?

Okay, I did not know that.

A victory lap.

That’s terrific.

Yeah, you’re not an older student.

It’s your victory lap.

You’re winning.

And another one that’s really interesting, and I’m not surprised to see it here because I’ve heard it come up in other speech.

More Americans are using the word ginger to describe people with red hair.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is a classic British term that we’ve almost never used until the Harry Potter books and the Harry Potter movies.

Oh, sure.

And I think those have the main responsibility for making it ginger common now, or at least common enough to remark upon in American English.

The Harry Potter generation is entering college now, right?

Yeah, I’m far past college age.

So if you are at university or in college, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Tell us what the slang is on your campus.

You can send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

A quiz is coming up.

That’s next year on A Way with Words.

Stick around.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and we’re joined now by John Chaneski, who happens to be our quiz guy.

Are you still our quiz guy, John?

Yes, for the time being.

Yes, no, I’m still the quiz guy, and I’ll always be the quiz guy as long as you’ll have me.

Mr. Gray.

That’s me. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

He writes it in Sharpie on the band of his underwear. Quiz guy.

Nothing ever gets lost at the cleaners.

I have a quiz for you today that is a little more straightforward than most.

No tricks or jokes.

It’s a quiz about one of my favorite kinds of words, demonyms.

You’re familiar, I’m sure, with demonyms?

D-E-M-O.

N-Y-M-S.

N-Y-M, yeah.

Do either of you want to explain what a demonym is?

Sure.

It’s a place name more or less, right?

It’s actually the thing that you call the people who are from a place.

Right.

So American is a demonym for people from the United States of America.

That’s right.

For example, you both live in San Diego, so you are both?

San Diegans, yes.

San Diegans, right.

I live in Brooklyn, New York, so I am both?

A Brooklonian in Paul?

A Brooklinite.

A Brooklinite or a Brookliner.

Brookliner, yeah.

And also a New Yorker, right.

I’m going to see how much you know about denominations for people from different countries and cities.

We’ll primarily look at forms that are irregular constructions.

For example, someone from Boston is a Bostonian.

That’s a common construction.

Sure.

But the people who live in nearby Cambridge are known as what?

Cantabrigians?

Cantabrigians, right.

And the ones in the English Cambridge share that same name, right?

First, we’ll try some irregular demonyms that are very common and somewhat well-known.

If you’re from Dublin, you’re a Dubliner.

But if you’re from Glasgow?

Glaswegian.

Glaswegian, right.

Now, the U.S. Government printing office recommends the official demonym Indianan for someone from Indiana.

But Indiana residents prefer what?

Hoosier.

Go big red.

Go big red.

Nice.

If you’re from the island nation of Dominica, you’re Dominican.

But if you’re from the island nation of Cyprus, what are you?

Cypriot.

Cypriot, right.

If you’re from Iceland, you’re an Icelander.

But if you’re from the Netherlands?

Oh, you’re Dutch.

You’re Dutch, right.

I was afraid you were going to do something with Reykjavik or that volcano,

And I thought we were going to be in big trouble.

Like I said, these are irregular, but they’re sort of well-known.

You would think with the land in there would be the Netherlander.

I’ve heard that sometimes, but Dutch, Dutch.

Now let’s try some that are a little more uncommon.

What about people who live in Munich?

Not Munchkins.

You’re not far off.

Is it Munchkins?

No, it’s Munchners.

Munchners.

Munchners, yes.

Now these two, I think you get.

Martha, you have relatives in South America.

Yes.

So you should know what the people in Rio de Janeiro are called.

Carioca.

Carioca, yes.

Right.

Yes, well done.

What are people from the nation of Kosovo called?

Kosovars.

Kosovars.

Yes.

Very good.

People from the United Arab Emirates have their own demonym.

What is it?

Emirates?

Oh.

I don’t know.

Close.

Emirates?

Close.

It’s Emiratis.

Emiratis.

E-M-I-R-A-T-I-S.

Emiratis.

Very good.

Right.

Now, here are a few that to me are rather unusual.

Let’s try them out.

Okay.

Now these are the unusual ones?

Yeah, these are the unusual ones.

All right.

From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, where you will find what people?

I don’t know.

I’ll tell you this one.

It’ll help you get the next one.

It’s Tripolitans.

Really?

Hello?

Yes, yes.

Tripolitans.

Tripolitans.

Now, here’s the last one.

This last one.

That one will help you get this one.

Similarly, if you’re from Minneapolis or Indianapolis, what can you be called?

Indianapolitans?

Yeah, Indianapolitan or?

Minneapolis.

Minneapolis, of course.

You can be called that if you can somehow manage to get it out of your mouth.

Wow.

Yeah.

You guys did very well.

Wow.

That was a lot of fun.

Thanks for having me here.

Thank you, John.

Thanks for the quiz, John, as always.

If you’ve got a question about wordplay, grammar, puzzles, a thing that you think you can stump us with, call us 877-929-9673 or send it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Paige from Lawrence, Kansas.

Hi, Paige.

Hello, Paige.

Hi.

I’m a lawyer, and I’m calling to ask about a non-legal phrase that I read in a recent legal opinion.

This was a Kansas Supreme Court opinion issued a few weeks ago, and in the opinion, the court said that one of the litigants in the case had overstated or gone too far with an argument.

But the way the court put it was to say that the litigant had over-egged the pudding.

The court put it that way?

The judge?

The judge who wrote the opinion said that the party over-eggs the pudding when it discusses such and such statute.

Is this an American judge?

Yes, yes, although I believe that her husband is English.

The clues, they tell me something.

Oh, yes. I first had never seen the phrase anywhere in a judicial opinion or otherwise, and I read a lot of judicial opinions, so I’m always grateful when I come across a bit of lively judicial writing.

And I could see how that might have been.

Yeah, yeah, that qualifies.

So I was curious about both the history of the phrase and whether it really does mean adding too many eggs to the pudding or whether it means overmixing the pudding.

I had read somewhere that it might be the sense of when you egg somebody on, you agitate them, and so it might be overmixing the pudding.

That kind of egg.

You got it exactly right when you described it as overstating the case.

It’s like saying more than you have to to prove your point.

After you’ve already won, you throw on some more evidence in your favor.

It’s just saying, maybe even to the point of making people then doubt you, even though they already agreed with you.

And it’s a Britishism, which is why I asked.

It’s not usually heard among Americans except if they watch a lot of British television or know a lot of British folks.

And it literally means putting too many eggs in the recipe for a pudding.

And you can find it back as far as the 1830s.

It shows up first, I believe, as a Yorkshire phrase.

Yorkshire pudding phrase?

Actually, yes.

Yorkshire pudding and a variety of different other puddings, bread and butter pudding.

And there’s a cookbook out there.

Actually, it’s not really a cookbook so much.

It’s about the spirit of cooking by Gina Mallet, M-A-L-L-E-T.

And she talks about what happens when you add too many eggs to a recipe.

Eggs aren’t as forgiving as other ingredients.

And if you add too many eggs, you ruin a dish.

Like it won’t gel properly or it’ll taste overly eggy or the color will be wrong or the consistency will go one way or the other.

It gets really rubbery.

Yeah.

It’s got proteins.

It’s got fats in it.

Certain chemical things happen when it’s combined with salt and other kinds of chemicals that you use to cook with.

Because you might think, oh, I’ll just add another egg in there.

It’ll be even better.

It’s just not the case.

It’s too much of a good thing.

Too much of a good thing.

Exactly.

How interesting that the judge used that expression.

I love it.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if she picked it up from her husband.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

So is it a common phrase in England?

It’s common enough where it shows up in newspaper headlines and in reviews of books or in reviews of theater productions and that sort of thing.

And it shows up unremarked upon.

Like the British writers never feel obligated to explain it to their readers.

Yeah, Nigella Lawson uses it.

Yeah.

Well, I’m definitely going to start using it.

Because who doesn’t like pudding?

Who doesn’t like pudding? Right.

A good caramel pudding with some raisins in them.

And not too many eggs.

Thank you for sharing this.

I’m glad to hear that legal writing sometimes can be lively because I didn’t know that.

Yeah, that’s a newsflash for us.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Okay, take care.

Bye-bye.

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

Grant, Alex from San Diego just sent us an email with a great Chinese idiom.

It translates to ride the cow, look for the horse.

So does that mean work with what you have and maybe try to get something better later?

Exactly.

Take what you can get now, but look for something better.

Alex says, my mom always tells me this, and especially so after I graduated and started looking for jobs.

I like that.

Ride the cow, look for the horse.

Fantastic.

Send your idioms or clever sayings or things that your mother told you to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Doing well. Who’s this?

This is Sam from San Diego.

Sam from San Diego?

Yeah, originally from New York.

Well, how can we help you today?

Well, actually, it has to do with California, New York type speaking, if you will.

I’m from New York. Both my parents are from New York.

And I went up to college in Rochester, New York.

And I met my future wife, who’s from San Diego.

Her name is Erin, E-R-I-N.

And we had a lot of friends. One of them was named Erin, A-A-R-O-N.

And everyone used to, you know, they would call, oh, hey, Erin, hey, Erin.

And both of them would answer.

And me and my other friends would say, why are both of you answering?

You know, your name is Aaron, A-A-R-O-N, and your name is Aaron, E-R-I-N.

And they couldn’t tell the difference between how we were saying their names.

So this led into arguments about how to say their own names.

And we just decided that we weren’t going to bring it up anymore.

We came out to California, and my wife’s parents, when they heard about the argument, they said, I know exactly what I named my daughter.

It’s the same name as your friend Aaron.

And I pretty much just got fed up with it, and I said, you guys need to answer, where is the distinction?

I did some research, and I found out that it’s just a different dialect, and people in Great Britain and in Australia, they can tell the difference between the words, and people in the United States can’t, and they pronounce them the same.

But then how come I’m from New York City and how come I can understand the difference between the words?

Clearly, you are a superior human being.

Oh, of course. Of course. I mean, that’s what I always thought.

But, you know, don’t tell my wife.

I bet that goes over well with her family, huh?

So here’s the thing in a nutshell.

E-R-I-N and A-A-R-O-N are pronounced by some people as the same word.

And then when they are pronounced differently, there’s a whole bunch of people who hear them the same anyway.

Okay.

Right?

That’s what you’re saying.

And it’s absolutely true.

We have this.

Let me ask you a question.

Okay.

Say the name D-O-N.

Don.

Say the name.

My uncle, actually.

Okay.

Say the name D-A-W-N.

Don.

Okay.

Say them next to each other, side by side.

Don and Don.

Okay.

There are whole parts of this country where there is no difference whatsoever in the pronunciation of Don and Don.

And it’s the same with Aaron and Aaron.

Right?

Is there a reason for it?

Yes, you nailed it.

You did your homework.

You came to us with both the problem and the solution.

What, he’s a superior human being?

I grew up calling them the same thing.

Oh, he went to school in Rochester.

How could he be wrong?

Exactly.

Now, wait a minute.

Exactly.

Well, here’s the thing.

Dialects have this thing where we all speak generally like one another when we’re from a particular region.

I mean, not exactly, and you can find obvious examples where people are different, but in the aggregate, we tend to speak alike.

And there are whole parts of this country, particularly in the West, where there’s things called vowel mergers, where two vowels that used to sound different now sound the same.

You can find this in other words like pen, P-E-N, and pin, P-I-N.

There are people who cannot hear the difference and do not speak a difference when they say those two words.

And so you, I can hear it in your voice.

You are saying Aaron differently than you’re saying Aaron.

Right.

And other people don’t do that.

It’s a function of dialect.

I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to educate whole parts of the country to say them differently nor to hear them differently.

I think I started pronouncing it differently after I moved from Kentucky to upstate New York for a few years.

And I thought Aaron and Aaron sounded the same, the boy’s name and the girl’s name.

And then I heard other people saying Aaron.

And I started adopting that because it was so much more useful for distinguishing between the two.

Thanks for calling us, Sam.

No problem.

Thanks for answering my question.

All right.

Rock on.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

I constantly mention that there are Facebook groups for everything.

Of course, there’s one called Erin and Erin are different names Facebook group.

And then there was a great discussion on the straight dope message boards.

And we’ll link to that for a lot more back and forth about whether or not and how and how wrong or right people may or may not be.

People get worked up about their own names, don’t they?

They do, Grant.

What’s the crazy thing about your name?

Do they get it right?

Do they get it wrong?

And why?

Call us, 877-929-9673.

Or tell us your story in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, here’s an email in our box from Chris Kinnick.

He writes, sometimes when I’m reading, the author will quote another author who’s misspelled a word.

The quote will have the letters S-I-C after the misspelled word.

What does that word mean and where does it come from?

Why are they putting sick in the middle of a sentence, Grant?

Not very good.

Why is that?

S-I-C in Latin means thus.

And so if you put it in the sentence, you’re showing that you really know how it’s spelled, but this person spelled it incorrectly.

And the word sick also figured in what John Wilkes Booth said after he shot Abraham Lincoln.

He leapt to the floor of Ford’s Theater stage and said, sick semper tyrannis, thus always to tyrants.

So if you see sick, that’s what that means.

We welcome your questions about language.

You can do like Chris did and email us, words@waywordradio.org, or give us a call.

The number is 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Super. Who’s this?

This is Angie from Arlington, Texas.

Hi, Angie. Welcome to the program.

Hi. Okay, so my word is macadam.

I grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and it’s a word we always use for blacktop asphalt.

And nobody down here knows it, and I was just wondering what’s up with my word.

So this was part of your everyday speech?

You would say, go follow the macadam down two miles and turn off on the gravel road?

No, it was more like, we’re going to play on the macadam playground today.

Or we just got a new macadam parking lot.

Yeah, I guess every day we used it instead of asphalt.

Very interesting. Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Yeah. Now, is Carlisle in the southwest? Where is it?

Yeah, kind of south central. It’s really close to Harrisburg.

Very interesting. And how did you spell it?

Oh, my goodness. I think it was like M-E-C-A-D-E-M, I think.

Yep, yep. Well, we can help you with that.

Originally, macadam referred to a kind of paving, a kind of paved road.

And the name goes back to a guy named, guess what, John Macadam.

He was a Scotsman in the early 1800s.

And Angie, it’s kind of hard to imagine a time without asphalt, isn’t it?

The pre-asphalt period.

But there was such a time, as we know, sort of between dirt roads and asphalt.

There was this period of time where people were trying to figure out different ways to pave roads for all these new vehicles.

And this guy, John McAdam from Scotland, figured out a way to do it using gravel.

And so he developed this special kind of surface, and people started adopting that as they were paving new roads.

And there were a couple of macadam roads in the United States before asphalt was invented.

And they were famous roads in both Maryland and then along the Cumberland Road.

And that’s the reason I asked about southwestern Pennsylvania, because the Cumberland Road goes right across southwestern Pennsylvania.

And the term macadam is stuck around, especially in that area, when people are talking about a kind of surface, a kind of road surface.

Interesting.

That makes a lot of sense.

I mean, I lived in Cumberland County, so…

Well, there you go.

Okay, so it is completely different than asphalt, though.

Yeah, yeah.

In fact, macadam was sort of a rocky gravel kind of surface.

And get this, if your friends are giving you a hard time about macadam, you can ask them, well, do you know where the term tarmac comes from?

You know, on the surface at an airport?

Yeah.

That’s short for tar-bound macadam.

They used to use that gravelly surface and then mix it in with tar.

That was sort of a new type of surface.

And it was called tar-bound macadam and then later shortened to the trademark named tarmac.

And so, you know, you hear about the president’s plane stopping on the tarmac now.

So tarmac is connected to the word that you’ve been using, macadam.

Very nice.

Thank you very much.

I told my mom about me calling in, and she’s going to be very excited to hear where it came from, actually.

She’s going to be excited to hear that you’re not crazy.

Well, you know, she’s still out on that question.

Thanks, Angie.

Well, we hope this helps.

Take care.

Yes, it does.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

More conversation about language coming up as A Way with Words continues.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

A while back we asked you for idioms that you love in other languages.

We talked about a bunch of them on the show, Grant.

Remember like the one for you’re crazy in Spanish that translates as your bow tie is whistling?

Remember that one?

Just imagining it spinning.

Yeah, I love that one.

That inspired Zach Wagner to write in.

He lived in Israel for a while.

And there your bow tie doesn’t spin.

You have a cockroach in your head.

Bats in the belfry.

Yeah, a geranium in your cranium, right?

And Pete Lagas from here in San Diego wrote in and said that he was trying to learn Japanese a while back.

And he came across a phrase that means to take credit for someone’s hard work.

You know, somebody else does all the work and you try to get the credit.

I’m not going to tempt the Japanese, but it translates as doing sumo in someone else’s underwear.

I love that.

I love that.

You know, I mean, they deserve that.

If they’re going to try to take credit for what I did, they can wrestle in someone else’s underwear.

And then finally, Sister Martha Bourne wrote us.

She’s one of the Mary Knoll sisters in Ossining, New York.

And she wrote in with a favorite expression from the Cantonese-Chinese spoken in Hong Kong.

You use it when you meet somebody and they say, how are you?

The translation of it is no holes, no worn places.

I love that to mean that you’re okay.

You say no holes, no worn places.

And Sister Martha Bourne says, I appreciate this response more with each birthday I celebrate.

I do too.

Send us your favorite idioms, words@waywordradio.org, or call us to talk about any aspect of language.

That number is 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Alberta from Winona, Minnesota.

Hi, Alberta. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have a question about the phrase, the worm turns.

My husband used it, and he said, I’ve always wanted to use this phrase.

And the context was, in essence, so you didn’t want kissing.

And now you do.

Aha, the worm turns.

And I said, I understand it means a switch in position.

I thought that’s an odd phrase because it seems a fairly strong phrase.

But worms turning?

Where did that come from?

That’s my question.

Okay.

The roots of this expression are in an old proverb that goes, tread on a worm and it will turn.

I see.

And the idea is that even the lowest creature will turn on you and defend itself if you attack it.

Which is tough for a worm.

Right, which is tough for a worm.

And that confused me for a long time until I looked it up.

And it turns out that the word worm has been used to mean a snake or a dragon.

Or a dragon. I did know that.

Right, or a serpent back in the old days.

And that’s probably why Shakespeare used it in Henry VI when he said the smallest worm will turn being trodden on and doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.

That even these tiny little defenseless creatures or low creatures will defend themselves if push comes to shove.

And over time, it’s come to expand a little bit and to mean the loser will become the victor.

Things will turn on their head, that kind of thing.

But the traditional meaning has to do with much abused patients, right?

Even the most patient person, if you continue to challenge their patients or abuse their patients, will eventually lose that patience and then just give you the what for.

Oh, I see. I didn’t know that aspect of it.

Yeah.

All right.

So that makes sense?

Yes, it certainly does.

Thank you for calling, Alberta.

Thank you. I really enjoy your program.

Okay. Thanks, Alberta. Bye-bye.

Is there an expression that’s been bothering you?

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

And if you just can’t wait to talk with fellow word lovers, you can always find us on Facebook at Wayword Radio.

I’m looking at Connie Ebley’s slang list from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

She does this. She collects these words from her students every year.

And there are a couple on here that I know, but I think they’re worth talking about.

You know, when I was growing up a long time ago, not that long ago, but in the 70s and 80s, actually the 80s and the 90s, rents was the shorthand way to refer to your parents.

Right.

Joking slings.

Apostrophe, yeah.

And here, and I’ve seen other evidence of this, they’re calling them parentals.

So my parentals are coming to pick me up and take me home.

Do you know what you call that feeling of having a very full belly after you eat a gigantic burrito?

It’s called your burrito baby.

I’ve heard them called food babies in general when you have this big, fat, poochie belly from eating a lot of food.

And in my house, at least, I call big, fat burritos baby heads because they’re about as big as a baby head.

You know, the gigantic ones.

It’s like a four-foot diameter.

It’s gigantic.

Burrow-sized, right?

Burrow-sized, that’s right.

Yeah, not just a little burrito, but the full burrow, right.

Call us with your slang, whether it’s college-oriented or high school or what, 877-929-9673, or send it to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

This is Vera Miller in San Diego.

Hi, Vera.

Welcome to the program.

What can we do for you, Vera?

Well, my family and I at Thanksgiving were discussing, I don’t know why this came up, but the phrase coup de grace, we were finding that we were unclear on the proper use of it now.

We know it originated, I don’t know where from, but a mercy killing.

And then we were discussing how to properly pronounce it.

Is it coup de grace or coup de grace?

So we’d love to hear your side of this.

All right.

Well, there’s one side to it, right?

Right, there’s one side.

And the correct pronunciation is coup de grace.

Yes.

Right.

And it’s literally stroke of mercy in French.

And it originally referred to mercy killing, the doing in of a mortally wounded person or creature.

I said for many years growing up coup de gras because I think we get a little – if we don’t know French, then we get a little nervous around it.

And I always said coup de gras.

And then I realized that gras, G-R-A-S in French –

It’s fat.

It means fat.

So I was saying stroke of –

Well, maybe that did have something to do with your Thanksgiving dinner, right?

When you stroke your rolls of fat, they jiggle.

Right, right.

Gras in French is fat like Mardi Gras is Fat Tuesday, right?

And there’s some influence there probably, right?

Froid de Gras.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, foie de Gras, exactly.

Yes, it originally meant mercy killing.

And then it came to develop a sense of sort of the final finishing touch of something, you know, a decisive event.

Negative or positive, right?

Right, right.

Because originally it was the final stroke of death.

You were killing or finishing off something, right?

Right, right.

And now it can be either positive or negative.

You could say that this latest film is the coup de grace on an already successful career.

That’s interesting, Grant, because that is what I had kind of heard it used that way.

And yet when we talked about it and then looking it up, like you say, it was meant to be a negative.

I guess.

But it sort of has sort of evolved both ways.

There was a funny term I’d never heard of either in looking this up, and it said, coup de gras is called a hyper-foreignism, and I’d never heard of that term.

I saw that.

Yeah, that would make sense.

Yeah, where we say it, we over-exaggerate the foreignness of a word in order to make it sound more foreign.

Okay.

And we end up sounding silly to people in the know.

Right.

So the pronunciation is coup de grace.

And I guess is it proper to use it then for both ways for a final success, ultimate success?

Well, that’s up to you.

Probably if you’re writing in a formal way for something business-related or a high-level form of speech, you probably want to stick to just the oldest meaning.

I find that most dictionaries have not caught up with the newer version, which can be positive or negative, and they’re decades behind in that.

They simply just have not updated their entries.

But you will find tons of the best writers who use coup de grace to mean a finishing touch in a positive way.

Interesting.

Very good, very good.

Wow, this is interesting, and thank you very, very much.

Vera, thank you for calling.

Thanks.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, then.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

I guess we should say that coup de grace isn’t fully adopted into English, which is why the pronunciation still follows the French rules and the pluralization still follows the French rules.

Good point.

Right?

Because some words we’ve borrowed so far into English that they’ve just lost their, you know, they follow English rules for plurals or English rules for pronunciation.

Right.

And this isn’t one of those yet.

Right.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or we’d love to hear from you by email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John from Orangeburg, South Carolina, way down in the south.

How are you guys today?

Oh, we’re super. Thanks for calling, John.

What can we do for you?

I was calling in response to a call you had on your January 17th show who was asking about a simple mnemonic for who and whom, the chiropractor from San Diego.

I had an English teacher when I was in ninth grade, a long time ago, who had a little exercise that she made us do.

It was sort of a chant, and I’ve never forgotten it, and I can be fairly confident that none of my classmates have ever forgotten it.

And it’s very simple.

It was a two-part chant.

The first part, I’ll just do the whole thing, and then you can see what you think.

Okay, great.

Okay.

Himma, humma.

Hee, hoo.

She would have the entire class chant that over and over.

And if you ever do that in a group of people, you will never, ever forget it.

And the idea behind it is that whom could be safely used anywhere where you could substitute him in the sentence, and who would be used anywhere you would substitute he as the subject and object.

Shall we all do it together?

So everybody at home, let’s do it together.

One, two, three.

Him, ma, whom, he, who.

Fantastic.

Or not.

And what was your teacher’s name?

Her name was Celeste Daniel.

She was a very tiny little lady, and when she would do the him-ma-hooma part, she would sort of hunch over, and it was almost as if she were dancing around a bonfire, him-ma-hooma.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, and then for the he-who, she would go into a falsetto.

That’s brilliant.

And it works for you still?

It does.

As a matter of fact, I said to my brother the other day, him-ma-hooma, and he responded with he-who.

Nice.

That’s beautiful.

Perfect, John.

Thanks.

That’s beautiful.

So to illustrate that, to use him and whom in a sentence, like if you go on Twitter and it says who to follow, is that correct or incorrect?

You would follow him, so it would be whom to follow.

Exactly.

Whom to follow.

Darn you, Twitter.

You’re right.

You’re right.

That’s a great formula.

And we didn’t mention that in the call with the chiropractor who was looking for a formula.

So that’s great.

When in doubt, see if you can use him instead of whom and he instead of who.

Super.

John, thank you for the tip and the song.

You’re welcome.

I enjoy your show.

Okay.

Our pleasure.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

I love it when English teachers give you some kind of mnemonic like that, and you see somebody from your class 20 years later, and you say that, him-a-who-ma-hee-who.

And it works.

You don’t forget it.

Celeste Daniels, we all thank you.

Yes.

And teachers like you.

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

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Quite a while ago, we took a call from somebody asking about the word kamsha, which has a lot of meanings.

But in one context in the military, it refers to the guy or gal who is really good at, shall we say, procuring stuff, right?

That is, they find stuff that’s not nailed down and bring it back to their unit so it can be used there.

Basically, stealing from the government for the government’s purposes, right?

Right.

Come shop, right?

Just the guy who’s pretty clever.

He’s a fixer and a finder and can solve your problems.

He knows, you know, he’s got answers, right?

Yeah, the guy you want to know.

Well, you know, I was reading, and I’m not quite sure where I came across this, but I wrote it down in my note file.

But there’s a great quote that perfectly describes this, which says that there is only one thief in the army.

Everyone else is just trying to get their stuff back.

And I thought that was wonderful.

The military is just rich with this kind of humor.

Send your jokes and stuff about the military to words@waywordradio.org or tell us on the phone, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Joni.

I’m calling from Juneau, Alaska.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Well, I listened to your show, and I thought I would ask this question.

If there is not a word in the English language for this, I think there should be, and it has to do with I’m a massage therapist, and I have asked my clients if they could help me with this.

Finding a term for that feeling of, you could express as, it feels so good.

That feeling when you’re getting a massage and someone gets in there and says, right there, oh, that’s it.

What is a term for that feeling?

So is it the relief or is it the pleasure that kind of follows the pain of a massage?

Which one is it?

Both? A little bit of all of it?

I think of it as, I can tell you the word that I came up with.

Okay.

Go ahead.

And that it’s more of the term for the sensation itself, and I call it sense anguish.

Sense anguish.

So a little bit of pain and a little bit of sensuality, is that what we’re talking about here?

I guess the sense part just has to do with the fact that it is a feeling.

I see.

But it’s kind of, it hurts so good.

Actually, I can tell you that one of my massage clients did come up with something that she has used over the last couple of years.

And she calls it a hootsugu.

She turned it into a noun and said, oh, that’s a hootsugu, which is short for hurt so good.

Hootsugu.

I like that.

It sounds like something you’d find in Alaska, too.

Yeah, it sounds like a hootsugu.

A little furry mammal, right, that’s very nice to cuddle with.

Hootsugu.

Well, I can go with that.

Interesting.

I like them both.

Hoots of Goose got a particular kind of cute flavor to it.

And most people that I ask, they always say, they make some kind of a grunting sound.

You know, I’m looking for something we can spell and maybe even look up in the dictionary one day.

Okay.

What is the name for that?

You’d think there would be a combination of Greek words like hedonalgia or something.

Yeah, that’s what I would expect.

Hedonism and then algae, hedonalgia.

For pleasure and pain put together.

You know, Joni, I think your words are as good as any.

Hootsy goo and sinsanguish.

We might have to ask all of our listeners who either get body work or are massage therapists themselves.

Maybe they have a term for this besides just a groan of pleasure or a joan of pleasure.

So this is the feeling that you get, the relief that you get from having just the right perfect spot massaged.

Or identified.

Or identified.

Yes, thank you very much.

I appreciate hearing what people come up with.

Okay.

Thanks, Joni.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Take care.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your ideas for Joni to words@waywordradio.org.

Boy, Martha, Tom Swift, these are the gifts that keeps on giving.

That’s one way to put it.

We’ve talked about them a few times on the show, and pretty much every week a couple more pop up in the inbox, and I thought I’d share a few with you.

Okay.

Here’s one from a fellow, Aaron Schmookler in Washington State.

He says, aw, shucks, I dropped the toothpaste.

Tom said, crestfallen.

See, because crest is a brand of toothpaste.

I’ve seen that one before, but I love it.

Cold game following work, yeah.

Another one comes from Zach in Norwich, Connecticut.

He says, I’ve located the experts, Tom said profoundly.

I like that.

Nice, right?

I like that.

He called us.

He dialed 877-929-9673.

Or maybe he sent an email.

Maybe he did.

Where would he have sent that?

To words@waywordradio.org.

Send your Tom Swifties.

We’ll take them all.

That’s our show for this week.

Don’t forget, you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

Call us 877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Stay in touch with us all week on Facebook.

Look for us there under WayWord Radio.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also chooses our music.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell and Jennifer Powell.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by WayWord Inc., a nonprofit organization.

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

Thank you for listening.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Either, neither, neither, let’s call the whole thing off.

Yes, you like potato, and I like potato.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

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