Change One Letter Olympic Event Word Games

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And walking in slowly with a metal detector, a magnifying glass, and a compass, it’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski, looking for a clue.

I hope you wait a minute.

Yes, while I put all these things down, there’s hardly any space in here with all the dictionaries.

People always ask me, how did the modern Olympics come about?

Why? I don’t know.

Well, the surprising answer is that the events evolve by changing letters in their names.

For example, when the Olympics took place in a more rural setting, there used to be an event where athletes would take turns jumping over small, lemming-like rodents.

One year, they just changed the letter, and the modern pole vault came out of the early vol vault.

Oh, boy.

Oh, goodness.

Get ready for it. Here it comes.

So I just watched the Olympics, so it’s time for talk about early summer Olympic sports.

Here we go.

People were once very afraid of getting into the water, but they were quite practiced at throwing stones across it.

You know, at a level of simultaneity, and what sport was that?

So.

Yeah, so you’re skimming rocks, right?

Right.

Mm—

And you changed the K to a W?

Well, yes, exactly.

They changed this K to a W and it became synchronized swimming instead of.

Right.

Instead of.

Synchronized skimming.

Synchronized skimming, yes.

Oh, okay.

I added the simultaneity just because I enjoy the word simultaneity.

I never get a chance to say it, so there we go.

And it’s a nice image, you know.

It is.

Synchronized skimming, I like that.

Yeah, two people throwing rocks.

Or reading books really quickly.

Exactly.

Have you ever been to the theater and marveled at all the different ways the actors take a curtain call?

Some of them dip real low and some of them curtsy.

And there’s a real art to it, which is why medals were once awarded in what sport?

Bowing instead of rowing.

Exactly. Bowing instead of rowing.

I think one of the reasons people were afraid of the swimming may have been the incident that occurred when they tried to mix aquatics and spring-driven bouncing equipment.

They figured if you can bounce up and down on land, why not in a pool?

Things didn’t work out so well in what sport?

Oh, shoot.

Water pogo.

Water pogo, not a success.

Water pogo.

I think I found the one I can meddle in.

Yeah.

Going for the gold in the water pogo.

That I’d like to see.

Back in the day, people would create a sport using whatever was on hand or whatever was on foot.

Personally, I think I could earn at least the bronze in tossing my Nikes as far as possible in what sport?

The shoe put.

The shoe put, yes, that’s right, which eventually became the shot put.

They said, let’s not use shoes.

Let’s walk on them instead, and we’ll use this shot that we have lying around.

So those are our Summer Olympics change-a-letter questions, and you guys were fantastic.

Really, really good job.

Oh, thank you so much, John.

And if you want more bogus etymologies, you can call John.

But if you want to find out some real word origins or talk about any other aspect of language whatsoever, you can give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your thoughts about language to words@waywordradio.org.