If your friend says she’s coming to town Sunday week, exactly when should you expect to see her? What do you call those typographical symbols cartoonists use in place of profanity? Plus grass widows, the linguistic phenomenon called creaky voice, the difference between insure and ensure, the roots of the term jingoism and what it means if someone says “You don’t believe fatmeat is greasy.” Also, is it okay to make a noun out of a verb? This episode first aired January 21, 2012.
Comic and Cartoon Lexicon Symbols
Researchers have found that stress is a leading cause of plewds — you know, those drops of sweat popping off the foreheads of nervous cartoon characters. That’s one of several cartooning terms coined by Mort Walker, creator of the Beetle Bailey comic strip. Martha and Grant discuss this and other coinages from The Lexicon of Comicana.
Sunday week
If someone’s coming to town Sunday week, when exactly should you expect them? This Scots-Irish term means “a week after the coming day mentioned.”
Comic Cursing Symbols
What are those symbols cartoonists use in place of profanity? They’re called grawlixes — good to know for the next time you play a game we just invented called “Comic Strip Jargon or Pokemon?”
Verbing Nouns
Is it okay to make a verb out of a noun? Yes! It’s estimated that twenty percent of English verbs started as nouns. Just think of the head-to-toe mnemonic: you can head off a problem, face a situation, nose around, shoulder responsibility, elbow your way into something, stomach a problem, foot the bill, or toe the line. Verbing weirds language.
Dizzy Comic Characters
Squeans are the little starbursts or circles surrounding a cartoon character’s head to signify intoxication or dizziness.
What’s in Common? Word Game
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle called “Categories”. The challenge is to find the common thread that unites seemingly unrelated things. For example, Mary-Kate and Ashley, Jack Sparrow’s crew, and cherubim all fall into which category? The answer: Twins, Pirates, and Angels are all baseball teams!
Grass Widow
What’s a grass widow? In the 1500s,this term applied to a woman with loose sexual morals. Over time, it came to mean a woman who’s been separated from her husband, or a divorcée.
By Jingo
If someone’s jingoistic, they’re extremely patriotic, often belligerently so. The term comes from a British song written in 1870 that uses the phrase by jingo! to conjure up enthusiasm for a British naval action.
Comic Strip Motion Lines
The curved lines that follow the moving limbs of cartoon characters? Those are called blurgits or swalloops.
Don’t Believe Fatmeat is Greasy
The admonition “you don’t believe fatmeat is greasy” is found almost exclusively among African-Americans. The idea is apparently that if you don’t believe fatmeat is greasy, you’re someone who misses the obvious.
Ensure vs. Insure
What’s the difference between the words insure and ensure? To ensure means to make certain. Insure means to protect someone or something from risk, and should be used exclusively in a financial sense.
Creaky Voice
For some time now, linguists have been studying a style of speaking known as creaky voice. In the United States, it’s heard particularly heard among young white women in urban areas. New research about this phenomenon, also known as vocal fry, has been making the rounds on the internet.
Voilà vs. Walla
Voilà (not spelled wallah or vwala or walla) is a good example of a borrowed word. Though French for “there it is,” Americans often use it as a simple utterance, akin to presto or ta-da.
Hoosegow
Lock the bad guys up in the hoosegow! This slang term for a jail comes from the Spanish juzgado, meaning tribunal. It’s an etymological relative of the English words judge and judicial.
Roly-Poly Isopods
Did you know roly-polies, or pill bugs, aren’t even bugs? They’re isopods, meaning they have equal feet, and they’re technically crustaceans.
Homophonic Errors
Autocorrect mistakes abound, but have you ever made the errors yourself, such as typing the word buy when you meant by? Studies in Computer Mediated Communications have linked this phenomenon to the way we process words phonetically before typing them out.
Solrads
Solrads are those lines radiating from the sun or a lightbulb in a comic strip, while dites are the diagonal lines on a smooth mirror.
Photo by Erich Ferdinand. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Book Mentioned in the Episode
Music Used in the Episode
| Title | Artist | Album | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number One | Francis Lai | Le Corps De Mon Ennemi (Soundtrack) | WIP Records |
| Un Homme Est Morte | Michel Legrand | Un Homme Est Morte 45rpm | Vadim Music |
| Angelic Streams | David Durrah | Angelic Streams | P-Vine |
| The Rat Cage | Beastie Boys | The Mix Up | Capitol Records |
| Oh By Jingo | Jeeves and Wooster | Jeeves and Wooster | Unreleased |
| Laying The Trap | Charles Bernstein | Gator | MGM Music |
| Groove Along | Tony and Reality | Tony and Reality | Regime |
| Dramastically Different | Beastie Boys | The Mix Up | Capitol Records |
| Alto Glide | Brian Bennett and Alan Hawkshaw | The KPM 1000 Series: Synthesis | KPM Music, Ltd |
| Get Down | Freedom Express | Get Down 45rpm | Soul Cal |
| Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off | Ella Fitzgerald | Ella Fitzgerald Sings The George and Ira Gershwin Song Book | Verve |
The “By Jingo” video is great (I love Wooster & Jeeves), but the correct song referred to in this podcast can be found at http://youtu.be/sHqanal52Gk.