Charismatic Megafauna (episode #1466)

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.

We had a call a few weeks ago from Casey in Dallas who was talking about the fact that

There was a co-worker who kept showing up late for work and would continually apologize,

But that apology wasn’t really that useful, right?

It was more like an excuse.

Right.

And so Casey wanted to know how to deal with that.

We got a lot of great responses from listeners, and one of them came from Kat.

She works as a receptionist in a hair salon, and she says,

A big part of my job is to make sure that all the appointments run as smoothly as possible.

Many times this goal is hindered by clients being tardy for their appointments.

Management stylists and the front desk team are constantly trying to devise creative and non-offensive ways to tell the client they’re late

And kindly suggest they show up on time for their next appointment.

Some have worked better than others, but my favorite so far has been what the owner of our salon and a stylist of more than 40 years always says to her clients when they’re late and they apologize for the dozenth time.

She says, okay, well, we’ve got a lot of work to do, so let’s get started.

But she’s not really saying you’re late.

You’re stopping everything.

No.

Why is she saying only that?

She’s saying we’ve got a lot of work to do because you don’t look so good.

Oh, see, I did not get that at all.

So it’s the little jab.

It’s the little sugar-coated snark.

Right.

But apparently it works.

You look like hell.

Let’s get to work.

I need lots of time.

Right.

You being late means you’re not going to look that great.

I know.

So I’m not going to be late to Anthony today.

I promise, Anthony, if you say that.

We’re still taking your comments about what to say to people who are late that will hopefully make them not be late again.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or call us and talk to us about anything related

To language or slang or new words or a fight you had about usage or something like that.

You can also talk to us on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tom Donovan from Dallas, Texas. Hi, Tom. Welcome to the show.

Well, I had a word that has been in my family for years and years. My grandmother used to say it,

And it’s basically bless your heart.

And she had many, many applications for it.

Generally speaking, it was for sympathy, I thought.

But then I come to find out sometimes it was about, well, you should have known that.

I was wondering if you’d ever heard that before.

Have we heard it before?

So bless your heart.

So set up the situation for us.

What’s going on when that comes up?

Well, I’d tell my grandmother that I had a problem at school or something,

And she would say, well, bless your heart.

And then go into sort of how to address it.

But it was always sort of a message, I thought, of sympathy.

But the older I got, I come to find out, I think she thought maybe I was a little slow.

Oh, yeah. I love that one.

I grew up saying that myself.

In fact, I think of it as sort of the Southern Bell Swiss Army knife.

There are so many different ways that you can use it.

And, in fact, during the most recent presidential primary,

You might have seen an exchange where Donald Trump was criticizing the governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, on Twitter.

He said, the people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley.

And she just responded, bless your heart.

Well, that was very effective use. That’s right.

Yeah. It’s so common now that it’s widely discussed even outside the South as one of those markers of Southern speech that you’ve got to look for because it sounds polite at first, but there’s maybe a second or third layer underneath.

Well, thank you very much for that.

Well, sure.

We’re glad to help.

Thanks for calling, Tom.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, and have a great day.

You too.

Take care.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

I get what he’s saying.

Probably his grandma meant his sympathy, though, right?

He had a tough day.

He was telling her about it.

Yeah.

She’s like, oh, bless your heart.

Yeah.

I mean, it really is like a Swiss Army knife.

There’s so many different uses.

But the other one, the cutting one, the knife-edged one, that one is where you’re like,

I’ve lost the car in the mall parking lot, and it’s been three days, and I can’t find it.

And someone says to you, bless your heart, which just means you’re as dumb as a stump.

Right. It’s sort of like, whose fault is that?

Yeah.

Yeah, there’s the knife version and the nail file version. Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sharon. I’m calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hi, Sharon. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

Hi, thank you.

Well, I hope you can tell me what’s up.

I am calling to learn a little bit about a phrase that my grandfather always says,

And he says, loose lips sink ship.

Everyone uses it, not just my grandfather.

In our family, whenever there’s a secret or something that no one wants anyone else to know about,

They just kind of say, all right, don’t worry about it.

Don’t be a loose lip.

I don’t want to sink ship.

So it’s just a way of keeping a secret.

Yeah, or just letting people know, hey, don’t pass this on.

And it’s kind of a funny joke where if you want to share something, for instance, we just bought a house and we wanted to share with everyone ourselves.

And so I called and let my grandpa know.

And he said, you don’t have to worry about any loose lips over here.

Right.

And I’ve asked him before when I was much younger, hey, what does that mean or where is it from?

And he said, well, I can’t tell you because I don’t have loose lips.

That’s unfair.

I’m hoping you can tell me.

Yes, we can indeed.

So the saying loose lips sink ships goes back to World War II.

There’s actually a famous propaganda poster, propaganda in the positive sense because it was targeted at Americans, that says loose lips might sink ships.

And the whole idea was you didn’t know who was listening to you in a bar or out in public or church or wherever who might hear you say, yeah, I’m shipping out tomorrow.

Or who might hear you say, I’m going to be stationed in Okinawa or wherever.

And you just didn’t know what kind of details the enemy could put together because the American government knew there were spies.

We knew that there were Germans in the United States who were gathering information and sending it back.

And the Japanese internment camps came out of that fear as well.

There was a ton of propaganda.

If you Google this phrase, I mean, the posters are all cool.

They’re definitely from another era.

Beautiful watercolor things.

And I don’t even know what all.

Idle gossips sink ships was another variation.

That’s interesting.

Talk chum, chew tops gum.

So different advertisers got into it as well.

Okay.

So I could even maybe order one of the older posters for my grandfather.

Yeah, you can.

Oh, you should.

What a good idea.

You can download the high-res versions, I believe, from the Library of Congress,

And they’re quite beautiful, and they print really nicely on an 11 by 17 page.

We won’t tell them about it.

One of the things that I read was a guy who was talking about his boot camp days

During World War II when he was inducted and all that go through.

And he talks about this hour-long ceremony almost or this really strange session

Where the whole session is some commanding officer in the front of a group of these newbies,

These green recruits.

The whole thing basically is him saying over and over in a lot of different ways,

Do not talk.

Do not tell people where you’re going.

Don’t tell people what’s happening.

Do not write letters to home that say anything except I am fine.

It’s just the whole thing is about like every little thing that you let slip

Is a piece of evidence that the enemy now has.

That makes a lot of sense.

I mean, my grandfather was about 10 or 11 during World War II.

He might have seen the posters or seen the movie reels or something like that.

Okay.

Yeah, thank you.

That’s very helpful.

Thanks, Sharon.

Yeah, order him a poster.

That sounds good.

Yeah, it’s going to be a really good gift.

All right, take care now.

Thanks for calling, Sharon.

Thanks so much.

I appreciate it.

All righty, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

War Advertising Council was the governmental organization that put those posters together.

And you probably can think of, they always had like shady looking enemies.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very evocative.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Tom Furtell. I’m calling you from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hi, Tom.

Hi there. And I have a question about a term I heard some 60 or so years ago, and I’ve not seen it since.

And I wonder if you can help me. The term is Irish pennant, as in flag.

And it was used when I was in the Marine Corps about 60 years ago.

If the drill instructor found a loose thread on your uniform where you had perhaps re-sewn a button or mended a tear,

And you still had a loose thread on there, it was called an Irish pennant.

Oh, and this was a terrible sin. This was awful.

I’ve never seen that term used anywhere.

And I wondered if you had some idea of where it came from.

So it’s Irish, I-R-I-S-H, pennant.

Yeah, as in Ireland.

Pennant, P-E-N-N-A-N-T, like a flag.

Yeah, like a flag.

Okay.

This belongs to a category of words you could call ethnophalisms, P-H-A-U-L-S-I-M.

These are derogatory terms that have to do with the characteristics of a certain type of people,

A certain group, an ethnic group or a racial group or a religious group.

And there’s this whole category of these ethnophalisms that basically are about the Irish

And about the Irish experience in the United States

And have to do with a kind of slightly comical

But slightly derogatory view of the world

As if the Irish were something less than the people around them.

Is that right?

Yeah, so there’s things like the Irish ambulance

Or the Irish baby buggy is a wheelbarrow.

Do you know this one?

I know. I had an idea.

Or an Irish screwdriver is a hammer

Or an Irish football is a potato.

-huh.

Or the Irish funnies or the Irish sports pages

Are the obituary columns of the newspaper.

Oh my goodness, I had no idea.

And I’m Irish.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, you’re Irish.

I’m like three-fifths Irish myself or something like that.

But the thing is, so this is a whole period,

And certainly in the late 1800s and early 1900s,

Where the Irish were a newish incoming immigrant group,

And a lot of the reaction to the people who had been here for a while

Was to come up with these ways to characterize them

And diminish them and be derogatory towards them,

And this was one of those ways.

Not to say that the Irish don’t do this to themselves because there is a long tradition of busting each other’s chops in Irish culture.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if these were and maybe are widely used in Irish communities.

Perhaps, yes.

But in the military group, we do find that the Irish pennant, meaning a hanging thread or a bit of cloth, a rope end that isn’t tied up properly, or even the hem of a woman’s slip, like sticking out below her skirt.

We do find Irish pennant used for all of these in a military context.

It kind of burst onto the scene in 1940s.

But we also find it in naval jargon in the 1840s.

So it had been around in the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy

And among sailors and people at sea for 100 years

Before it ever showed up in World War II soldiers’ mouths,

And it continues to be used to this day.

I’ll be darned.

This is most interesting.

This has just been an eye-opener for me.

Thanks so much.

For me too, Tom.

Take care now.

Thanks a lot.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What word have you heard that’s caught your ear?

Call us about it, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

You know that expression to bat one’s eyes?

Yeah, something you might do to be attractive.

Right.

Alluring.

Yeah, alluring, right.

And you’re sort of fluttering your eyelids.

Yeah.

Do you ever wonder where that came from?

Is it bat wings?

No.

Is it like swinging?

I know, right?

I don’t know.

You start thinking about it and you just think, what in the heck is that about?

It’s a term from falconry.

Okay.

Batting or to bat is, according to a 1614 text,

When a hawk fluttereth with her wings, either from the perch or the man’s fist,

Striving as if it were to fly away.

Striving as if to fly away.

Yeah, you know, I mean, it’s that same kind of thing.

So it means to flutter.

Yeah.

So it comes from it or it’s related to it?

No, that was the original sense of to bat and then to bat one’s eyes is to move your eyelids like wings.

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

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 here he is, that tall, handsome man, John Chinesky, our quiz guy from New York City.

Hi, John.

Oh, thank you, you guys. Thank you, Grant. Thank you, Martha. How are you guys doing?

Super duper.

Not as tall as you.

I’m a little frightened of what kind of quiz you might have because sometimes they’re easy and sometimes they’re hard.

That’s right.

Right. Well, you know, it’s a grab bag. You never know. We have to mix things up.

And speaking of mixing things up, now language is an art, but it’s also a science.

And that science is chemistry.

If you add certain elements to one word, you’ll find another word.

It’s like magic, but it’s not magic.

It’s science.

Science.

For example, and by elements, I mean actual elements.

Okay?

Okay, great.

For example, if you take the hat from a baseball fan and you add some helium to it, it becomes very inexpensive.

That’s because if you take a cap and add helium or H-E, you get cheap.

Yes.

Okay, got it.

Now you know the premise.

Okay.

Boy, I don’t know my elements as well as you think I do, but okay.

Well, together I think the two of you can, I’ll give hints, of course.

Take a chicken, a female chicken, add a little sodium,

And you get a plant that provides a dye used to make temporary skin decoration.

Henna.

Henna.

Henna, right.

Very good.

Yes.

Take an evergreen coniferous tree, add some beryllium,

And you get a food element derived from plants that might help keep you regular.

Prune?

Well, okay, so the coniculus is a pine.

That kind of works, but the I is missing.

The pine and then beryllium is…

No, it’s a specific evergreen tree.

Oh, specific one.

Add some beryllium.

No, the symbol for beryllium is B-E, right?

Yes, it is.

Oh, fiber.

Fiber.

Yes.

Add B-E to fur.

Oh, fiber plus B-E, okay.

Yes, nicely done.

Take some flashy, ostentatious jewelry, add some silicon, and you get a brother or a sister.

Sibling.

Yes.

Plus SI, nice.

Silicon and bling gets you your brother or your sister.

Take your fancy high school dance, add some platinum, and you’ll be on time.

Prompt?

Prompt, yes.

Prompt, P-R-E-M plus P-T.

Take a person entitled to inherit, add some iron, and you’ll get a cow.

Heifer.

Heifer.

So air, H-E-I-R plus F-E.

That’s right, very good.

Take segments of the circumference of a circle, add some helium, and strangely, you’ll get symmetrical curved structures used to support a bridge or a wall.

You will?

Yeah, you will.

Arches.

Yes.

How do you get that, Grant?

I just guessed because your last clip.

So H-E from helium, then arcs, A-R-C-S.

Yes, very good.

Arcs and helium get you arches.

Take a thickened, rough patch of skin, add some copper, and you’ll get a branch of mathematics.

Calculus?

Yes.

How do you get that?

I don’t know.

It’s a branch of mathematics.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, calculus?

Yes.

And then…

And the symbol for copper is?

It must be CU.

It is CU.

It is.

Cuprium, originally.

Yes.

Take any cat, any member of the cat family, add some lithium, and you will get thrown a rope to save someone from drowning.

Lifeline.

Lifeline, yeah.

Feline plus L-I.

I was going to say Fellini, but that’s not right.

Finally, just take some calcium and add some iron, and you’ll find yourself in a small restaurant.

A cafe.

I’ll have double espresso, please.

There you go.

So I’ll have some steamed milk and maybe biscotti.

Oh, that was fun.

Really appreciate it, John.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Take care now.

See you then. Bye-bye.

Bye, John.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Daniel Mowry from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hi, Daniel. Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

I have an interesting question.

What did they use instead of light bulbs in those old cartoon strips when they had an idea?

You mean before they started using light bulbs, how did they show that a character came up with a bright idea?

Yeah.

Oh, that’s a great question. I never thought about that.

What should they use? What do you think they ought to use, Daniel?

I have no idea. My mom was thinking an exclamation point.

Oh, that’s probably a good one. That’s really good.

Maybe a candle.

Probably.

We do know that the light bulb was, as a bright idea, was popularized by the cartoon Felix the Cat.

Do you know this cartoon? It’s old. It’s from the silent film era, like the 1920s.

I remember seeing a couple of his cartoons, but I don’t remember in grave detail like all the others.

There’s an interesting story to that light bulb if you want to hear it.

It all goes back to this search for a light bulb that would last.

You probably know the story of Thomas Edison

And how he tried all these different things to put inside a vacuum

That would continue to burn without burning out really fast.

And finally, in 1879 or so, he came up with a carbon filament

That meant that we could make light bulbs and have light bulbs and electricity everywhere

Instead of using candles or gas lamps or gas in the house.

And he became famous for that. Thomas Edison was the wizard of Menlo Park. People knew that the light bulb was associated with some kind of genius. And it wasn’t long after that where it started to be used, where light bulbs became pervasive.

And light bulbs, by the time Felix the Cat came along, there were all these conventions of written cartoons.

Like, how do you show that a character is looking at a thing in a cartoon?

Well, you draw a dotted line from their eyes to the thing.

And even the growlixes, as they became known, the little squiggles that meant naughty words that a character was saying.

All these conventions.

And one of the conventions was a light bulb representing a bright idea popping up over the top of someone’s head.

But what’s really interesting, the idea of a bright idea goes back well like 200 years, maybe even more.

We find bright ideas as far back as the 1700s.

Jonathan Swift actually uses it, and it referred to a clever idea or an inspiration.

So there was these two separate paths of culture meeting.

One is we already had this idea that a good idea was one that was bright,

And we had the idea of a wizard who made a light bulb that we could all use in our houses now,

And then they all merged together in Felix the Cat, which is an incredibly common comic strip.

Huh. What made them decide to change from what they used to do?

I don’t know that they did change. I don’t know how they represented that.

I have a couple of books on the history of comics in my house,

And I don’t remember any of these books talking at length about this particular idea.

So that’s why Martha and I, our eyes went up when you asked your question,

Because we were like, ooh, this is a good one, because it’s not a question that we’ve heard before.

I’m glad I could call up and ask you guys.

We are, too.

We love a puzzle just like anyone.

Thank you for taking my call.

I really do appreciate that.

We’re glad to help.

Our pleasure, Daniel.

Give us another call sometime, all right?

I will.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, my mother was an English teacher, and she described many, many times teaching

A class and something clicks, and then, you know, you describe it as seeing a light bulb

Go on over the kid’s head.

Yeah.

But we have a notion in English of illumination literally casting light on something way back, like 1600s easily.

And so it was kind of natural that the light bulb should continue to embody this idea of creativity and genius and intelligence and the eureka moment.

Right, the eureka moment.

And now when I type the word idea on my iPhone, a little light bulb pops up.

Oh, because that’s the emoji that it wants to suggest for you?

Yeah.

That’s awesome.

Isn’t that interesting?

And we’re continuing that still.

I know.

What a long trail.

By the way, Felix the Cat was one of the, if not the first, but one of the first things transmitted on television.

A little rotating figurine.

Is that right?

Yeah.

I remember Felix.

Yeah.

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

Here’s another response from a listener about our call about the co-worker who was habitually late to work and always apologizing.

But the apologies weren’t really apologies.

You know, they were more like excuses.

We heard from Muriel Vasconcelos, who’s a translator here in San Diego with a background in sociolinguistics.

And I liked her response so much.

I just wanted to read the whole thing, talking about how to relate to people in the workplace under those circumstances.

She says, candor can be highly effective.

People always want to know what others think about them.

The late woman’s repeated apologies are an effort to get feedback.

She wants an answer, especially the answer she wants to hear, and candor instills respect.

In the office, the first rule of radical candor is that it has to become part of the workplace climate.

Otherwise, a single comment will stand out as hurtful.

The boss is responsible for establishing this climate and for correcting the woman who’s out of line.

The second rule is that a criticism should be tempered with compliments, with a ratio of more compliments to criticism.

Always start with a compliment.

In the meantime, your co-worker might say,

You know, it’s hard on the rest of us when you come in late.

Is there something we could do to make it easier for you to get here on time?

Or just the last sentence by itself, even though it might not be realistic.

It shifts the burden of the attack away from the offender, and also asking questions helps to break up bad habits.

I thought all of that advice was really terrific.

That’s wonderful.

Yeah.

She’s really summarized a lot of human interaction books that I’ve read about how to get things out of people without making them feel like you’re attacking them.

Yeah.

Certainly the compliments.

But I think the one that stood out most for me was the setting the office culture as a place of candor.

Right.

It can’t just be that one time.

It’s got to be consistent.

So they know that they’re not being singled out.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Consistency.

That’s a great point.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Colin from Sheridan, Wyoming.

Colin, welcome to the show. What’s up?

At my old job, my boss and I would kind of have a circular discussion about this particular phrase,

And the phrase is, in like Flynn.

So whenever we would win a project, I would say, great, we’re in like Flynn.

And my boss would look at me and say, Flint, as in we are in like Flint,

Which was a version of a phrase I had never heard.

And oftentimes he would confer with a woman who worked in our office who is of similar age,

And she would agree with him that the correct phrase is in like Flint.

So I have three questions.

Which is the correct phrase, if there is a correct one, or are they both correct?

And if the latter is the case, which phrase is earlier,

And is there a generational variation thing going on here?

Interesting that you asked about the generational variation,

Because I was going to ask when you said they were of similar age, what does that mean?

I was in my 30s at the time, and I think both my boss and the other woman were about in their 50s or so.

Interesting. I would have expected it to go the other way, actually.

Well, there was a film in 1967 called In Like Flint. It was a kind of spy spoof.

And so they might be thinking of that, but the phrase In Like Flint is much older than that.

A lot of people associate it with Errol Flynn, the Hollywood actor who was sort of famous for his drug taking and drinking and sexual exploits.

And to the point where he was tried for statutory rape in the 1940s.

But, but, but, but, that is not the origin of it because the expression was around longer than that.

Yeah, the expression was around before he had the rape trial, which he was absolved of.

He was acquitted.

Also interesting is the sexual connotations of In Like Flint didn’t appear until the 1970s.

It sounds like you’re using it in a non-sexual way, but that’s just worth noting.

So he may have popularized the term, his legal case, and he was a big star.

Right.

Australian, I believe.

Right, Australian.

He was a big star, and his trial certainly may have brought the term to mind and to the fore, but it existed in print.

We have citations before the whole thing happened of it being used.

But the In Like Flint thing, I think I’m with you, Martha.

The film from 1967 with James Coburn, that was probably what popularized In Like Flint.

But it’s never been that common at all.

It’s still really rare compared to In Like Flint.

So In Like Flint goes back to at least the early 40s.

And some people have speculated that maybe it’s just sort of rhyming slang.

And the researcher Barry Poppick found it from 1942 in a newspaper article where somebody wrote,

Answer these questions correctly, and your name is Flynn, meaning you’re in,

Providing you have two left feet and the written consent of your parents.

So it’s been around for a while.

But, no, you can rest assured that you are correct.

Oh, cool. Well, thank you.

Thanks, Colin. Really appreciate it.

Thanks, Colin. Bye-bye.

So just to be clear, because I know we’re going to get a ton of phone calls and emails about this.

We believe, as do everyone who’s looked into the term, every etymologist that we know,

Every word researcher, every word historian,

That in like Flynn does not originate with Errol Flynn.

No.

Although his rape trial may have popularized it.

Yes, probably did popularize it.

Probably did popularize it because he was a big star.

But it existed before his rape trial,

And it was just that convenient rhyming slang.

Correct.

Great.

So you can stop writing that email you’re composing.

Right, but call us about other things.

877-929-9673 or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

And you can also talk with us on our Facebook group.

Would you say that you and I are five minutes of 11?

Does it mean we’re drunk?

No.

No, no.

It’s my new favorite expression.

We’re five minutes of 11.

Five minutes of 11, so close together?

Yes, yes.

We’re very friendly, very intimate.

Isn’t that great?

Because the two hands and the clock overlap at five minutes to 11.

Yes, and I guess we have to explain that to the younger generation who didn’t grow up with analog clocks.

They do teach it in schools.

My son learns it, yeah.

And we have numerous analog clocks in the house, so we make sure he knows.

Oh, okay.

He also knows how to tie his shoes.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Elias from Plano, Texas.

How are you doing?

Hey, I’m doing well.

How are you doing, Elias?

Doing well, thank you.

How can we help?

I got a quick question about TV series and how they name their first episodes in a series.

I began to notice that a lot of shows refer to their very first episode in their series as their pilot episode.

And in some cases, the first episode is literally titled pilot.

And I was wondering where that term came from, why it’s used, and when that practice began.

Yeah, this goes back to at least the 1950s in TV.

And I believe that it also happened in radio before then.

Radio had decades before TV came along, a very similar setup of seasonal shows with kind of a story arc over the course of the season and a cast of recurring characters and that sort of thing.

But what we’re really looking at here is that idea of pilot is something that guides.

So a pilot of a plane or a pilot of a ship is someone who guides the ship.

And so we have this first episode where we’re laying down the first foundation for the characters and the situation and the things that are going to unfold over the coming season or seasons.

What’s really interesting to me, and you didn’t quite mention it, but some of the things that I’m seeing now marked as pilots are simply episode one, where traditionally a pilot has been this episode that was bought a single episode, paid for by the production company or paid for by the distributing organization just to see if the show worked.

And then if they like the pilot episode, then they pay for the whole rest of the season or pay for more episodes.

But now I’m seeing what you’re seeing, and I’m finding, like, this doesn’t look like an episode that they just kind of created out of just to see if it would have worked.

This looks like they planned the whole season and shot the whole season, like, kind of straight through.

So you’re saying that if a TV series is already set on starting the series, they’re pretty sure on it, they’ll still continue to use the term pilot as the name of the first episode.

Some shows do.

Is that what you think?

Yeah, some shows do.

It might just be, like, a bow or a hat tip to tradition more than anything else.

And ultimately, the word, I’m looking at my chief etymologist here.

Her name is Martha Barnette.

Martha, ultimately, it goes back to a Greek word having something to do with a rudder of a boat, right?

Oh, sure. Yeah.

And so it’s continuously through Greek and Latin and French and now into English.

We have this idea of a pilot as a guide, of course, or the thing that’s steering you through the waters.

Gotcha. That’s pretty cool. Thank you.

Yeah, sure. No problem.

Thanks for calling. Really appreciate it, Lais.

Thank you, guys. Bye-bye.

Okay. Bye-bye.

That’s interesting, right? Not a standalone episode, really.

But before it was used in TV as a pilot, you might have a pilot experiment as far back as the 1890s and probably earlier.

Or you might have a pilot machine, like you would build a one-off or a model, a working model.

And that was your pilot device.

So TV borrowed from other industries where it was just about putting together this first iteration, this first real attempt to make the thing that you were envisioning in your mind.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s a quotation I like from Charles John Darling, who was a lawyer and politician in the early part of the 20th century.

A timid question will always receive a confident answer.

I think that’s true.

It is true.

Sometimes you give somebody too much room and they’ll take it.

Yeah, exactly.

877-929-9673.

More conversation coming up about what we say, how we say it, and why.

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.

Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography here in San Diego

And the Western Australian Museum announced a fantastic discovery recently off the coast of Western Australia.

It was the ruby sea dragon.

Have you seen these videos?

No. What is a sea dragon?

You’ve got to Google this.

It’s a big, weird-looking red seahorse, and they were the first people to spot it in the wild.

And Josephine Stiller, who is a graduate marine biology student at Scripps, called it this amazing moment.

And she said, quote,

The discovery shows us that we can still find big, charismatic, bright red fish that no one has ever seen before.

And that jumped out at me, the word charismatic.

I love that use in conservation and biology, charismatic species.

Well, yeah, they talk about charismatic megafauna, right?

Yes.

So this would be your giraffes and elephants and rhinos and things like that.

Right, right.

And these are the animals that are really appealing, like pandas are absolutely adorable.

As someone said, it’s not like you’re going to wear a T-shirt that says,

Save the glandular bush crickets, right, or the purple pig-nosed frogs.

Now I will.

Now you would.

You would because you’re such a contrarian.

We’ve got to get you a T-shirt that says that.

Well, no, but my wife loves banana slugs and would literally wear a shirt that had a banana slug on it.

Bless her heart.

Because she just thinks they’re amazing.

They’re cool.

Yeah, they are.

They are cool.

But I doubt a banana slug would be, well, maybe it is.

It’s not charismatic megafauna.

It might be charismatic fauna.

Right.

I don’t know how mega it is, though.

Microfauna, yeah.

But there are other interesting terms for that as well.

Sometimes they’re called not charismatic species, but they’re called glamour animals or heroic species or flagship species.

Well, the heroic species is interesting because that use of heroic echoes the word hero that is used in advertising and film,

Where they talk about the hero shot.

And it’s not a shot of the main protagonist.

It’s actually a really beautiful shot of the product.

Or it’s a really beautiful shot that kind of sets up the psychological moment that you need the viewer to have.

In advertising?

In advertising.

The hero shot is like, let’s talk about the hamburger with the steam coming off of it.

Or the ice cream with that perfect twist being formed as they put it on the cone.

That’s the hero shot.

No kidding.

So we have heroic, not necessarily meaning someone who saves the day, but somebody looking or something looking really great.

Oh my gosh, like Febreze or something right there in the middle of the frame.

That’s fascinating.

I don’t know how you make a hero shot of Febreze.

Maybe it’s the mist coming out of the nozzle, Ozzy, right?

Like slow-mo mists.

Fascinating.

Beautiful people in the background.

I don’t know what that shot is.

Well, I always love dipping into these other fields of inquiry, like marine biology or advertising, whatever, and encountering their slang and jargon.

Charismatic language is something we want to discuss with you.

Anything that’s happening having to do with language, 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Betty Jo.

I’m calling from Burlington, Vermont.

Oh, well, welcome to the show.

How can we help?

I’d like your comments or thoughts about questions that are not really requests for information

But have a hidden agenda, perhaps a criticism or complaint.

I’ll give you the most obvious example.

I think everybody’s heard this one is, where did you buy this fish?

You know, the person is not actually asking, where do you grocery shop?

You know, it’s like there’s something wrong with the fish.

But some other questions there, a little more subtle, like, you know, why do you like that kind of music?

Or what took you so long?

You know, something, it’s a little more subtle, and it puts people in a corner.

How can you, you know, there’s no right answer.

What got you to thinking about that?

Well, I’m a psychotherapist, and so often the anger conflict between people is hidden,

And it comes out in these questions that aren’t really questions.

So these are loaded questions.

Yep.

And they have presumptions in them that are kind of hard to untangle because it is presented as a question.

There’s judgment and there’s a hidden critique.

Yeah, so it sounds like that’s what you counsel couples to do, to pay more attention to that then.

Yes. And, you know, again, some techniques I’ve sought up, you know, are to say, you know, or I’ll have to think about that or just echo the question, you know.

Why didn’t I wash the dishes right away?

You know, just to echo it back.

But, you know, ways not to engage in a pointless argument.

Yeah, I mean, I think the bottom line is we just have to listen to more than the words.

Pay attention to the context, right?

When you do pay attention to the context, one of my strategies, at least at home with my family,

Is to be the bomb-sniffing dog.

But the bomb-sniffing dog, all that he does is he finds the bomb and he alerts people to it.

But he doesn’t do anything else.

He doesn’t try to diffuse it.

He doesn’t throw bombs back.

He doesn’t have any other method except just to point out, like, when you ask that question that way, that sounds like an accusation.

On Metafilter, which is a site that I love, it’s a discussion forum, they often talk about ask culture versus guess culture.

And I think that comes into play here where the ask culture literally is asking what they want.

They’re saying, like, where’s the lemonade?

Because I’m going to pour myself some.

And the guest culture says, this would be a great day for lemonade.

Yeah, exactly.

They expect you to guess, right?

Metafilter?

Metafilter, yeah.

But Google ask culture versus guest culture, because that’s going to get you a whole bunch of stuff that’s been written about this topic, even outside of Metafilter.

But there was a great article in The Guardian about it, for example, just this idea that some people are direct and some people are indirect.

And lots of conflicts in relationships come from these two cultures’ butting heads.

That’s fascinating, and I appreciate the references.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, maybe you can share that with your clients.

Yeah, check it out.

All right. Thanks so much for asking.

You’re welcome.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, my name is Patrick. I’m calling from Palm Desert, California.

Hi, Patrick. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Patrick.

Thank you. When do you use the word the and the word the, T-H-E? And I had always been taught that you use the word the with a word that begins with a vowel, like the earth, the art show. And you would use the word the with a word that begins with a consonant like the car, the house, the party. That was what I wanted to talk about.

And so, Patrick, you were taught that. Did that sink in for you? Do you use the and the in those ways?

Sometimes I catch myself not doing the the, the art show, the earth.

Right. So a long E before a vowel, right?

Yes.

Is what you’re saying. You know, a lot of people were taught that way. I was not taught that way.

I wasn’t either. I didn’t learn it until I was in my 30s.

Oh, really?

And even then, I don’t believe it.

Yeah, I don’t believe it either.

I think some elocutionists got together and decided that having what we call an unreduced E in front of a vowel, as opposed to a reduced one, which would be the, is somehow superior.

But neither Grant nor I learned this until late in life.

I didn’t learn it until I was doing this show.

And some guy called a few years ago and said, Martha, you do this incorrectly.

And the thing about that is most Americans don’t differentiate and do not follow that rule.

Yes.

Or most North Americans, I should say, because Canadians have the same thing.

Most of us will do the schwa sound almost always, or we will drop the schwa and put that unvoiced TH,

Kind of alight it with the following word that begins with the vowel sound.

So it would be vapple or thirth.

I’m kind of exaggerating for a fact.

Instead of the apple, it would be the apple.

Right.

And you said exaggerating, and that’s another thing.

I mean, for emphasis, I might say Grant Barrett is the handsomest radio host you will ever see.

She has very limited experience with the world.

She hasn’t met Kyra’s doll.

I don’t get out much.

But, yeah, you’ll sometimes use those for emphasis.

And I hear it a lot more from politicians, too, you know, especially people in presidential positions.

Yeah, I’d imagine it’s the kind of thing that you are taught once you become a public speaker.

It doesn’t actually, I looked in some pronunciation guides.

I don’t even see this mentioned in some of the more modern pronunciation guides.

It’s mentioned as an artifact of history more than it is a thing that you must do in order to be understood as a good speaker or an educated person.

But most Americans at home don’t differentiate.

It’s almost always the schwa, the.

Right.

Nobody needs to feel bad about that.

No, not at all.

That’s right.

So, Patrick, did you get the answer you were hoping to get?

I certainly did. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thanks so much for calling.

It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you.

It’s a pleasure. Take care.

All right. Bye-bye.

This is a show about words and language and the things we say to each other.

Give us a call. We’ll talk about yours, 877-929-9673,

Or email your questions and comments to words@waywordradio.org.

For my next vacation, I’m considering champing.

Something, some kind of camping.

Mm-exactly.

It’s not glamping, which is glamour camping.

Yes.

Is it cheer camping?

You’re going to go to cheerleader camp?

Cheerleader camp?

No.

What is champing?

It’s camping in churches.

Really?

That’s a thing?

In the UK, it is a thing.

Really?

There are 350 churches as part of the Church’s Conservation Trust.

It’s the organization that looks after hundreds of what they call redundant churches.

And a redundant church is a church building that’s no longer used for public worship

And is used mostly to refer to former Anglican buildings in the United Kingdom.

And so there’s this whole organization that will let you spend the night in their churches.

You bring your own bedding and you sleep in a church.

So they move aside the pews or take them out altogether,

And there you are with a bunch of other people sleeping in a church.

No, I mean, you can book it for your own family or something.

Oh, the whole thing. Oh, I see. Okay.

Yeah.

I was imagining more of a hostile situation.

No, no, no. It looks like it’s actually quite comfortable, and they don’t let you burn real candles.

Sure.

They have sort of fake candles.

But they raise money for preservation.

Sure. And they’re trying to popularize this term, champing. I haven’t seen it in any other context.

I’ve been reading up on it, and another term I learned from that, they promise a slap-up breakfast.

That’s just a quick down and dirty one.

That’s what I thought, or, you know, slapping together a couple pieces of toast.

Oh, I see. It’s a really great breakfast.

It’s a really great breakfast.

But I’ve eaten British breakfast, and it’s usually some really kind of weak, limp sausages and a runny pool of beans.

And toast in Iraq.

Yeah, toast. It was toasted yesterday in Iraq.

Although, yeah, I think British food has gotten better than its reputation.

Okay, this is within 10 years.

Especially with more diversity there.

But isn’t that cool, a slap-up breakfast?

Slap-up breakfast, sure.

A great one, a good one, a solid one.

Yeah, slap-up means very or unmistakably good or fine of superior quality.

Anyway, think about champing.

It might be fun and creepy, too, in the right kind of old church.

That’s why I want to do it.

Imagine something from the 1600s, right?

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is David.

And I’m from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, David.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

I have a quick question about a word that my great aunt uses.

And I’m not sure if it’s a family word or a Carolina word, because her family’s from Carolina, or the Carolinas, I guess.

And my family just thinks it’s a family word, but I think it’s got some sort of origin.

And the word is gradu.

And it’s kind of when you’ve got a piece of dirt or food something,

It’s kind of grimy, you know?

Kind of similar to schmutz, if you’ve got a little schmutz on you.

Southern schmutz.

You’ve got a little gradu on you or a little gradu on the counter.

And I was wondering if this had any sort of way back origins

Or if it’s just something my Aunt Betty made up.

And how are you spelling it?

Yeah, how do you spell that?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen it spelled.

I would say G-R-A-D-O-O.

Yeah, I think that’s what most English speakers would do, probably.

I have seen it as G-R-A-D-U, gradu.

It’s not your Aunt Betty.

She’s not alone on this.

This is fairly common in the United States, particularly in the South,

Although not common enough to make it even into most slang dictionaries

Or the Dictionary of American Regional English.

And every usage that I find has it mentioned as crud or gunk or grime or dirt.

Occasionally it’s a little more expansive than that.

Like a pile of trash could be gradu.

But usually it’s just like a mark or a blemish or some kind of like small little unacceptable griminess.

Yeah, schmutz, like you said.

Schmutz, yeah, schmutz.

Yeah.

So the thing is there’s one entry for this in Paul Dixon’s Book of Family Words,

Which is funny because you mentioned that you thought it might be a family word,

But he specifically says in this entry he has enough people reporting this from around the country

That it can’t really be one that exists only for a single family.

A lot of people say it.

That’s so interesting.

It’s really handy, too.

I mean, it sort of sounds like what it is.

Gradeau.

So the last time we talked about this in the show, and it has been a while.

What was that?

Seven years ago or six years, seven years ago?

I had a kind of half-cocked theory that had to do with corruption of the French grado,

Which would kind of mean greasy water or fat water.

I like that theory.

Water that has stuff in it.

So it’s G-R-A-S space D apostrophe E-A-U.

And it’s not a bad theory,

Particularly as the entry in Paul Dixon’s Family Words book

Mentions that it could be wastewater or the dishwater, right?

Or dirty snow or runoff or that sort of thing.

But the thing is, the more I think about that,

I don’t have the etymological proof.

I don’t have the citation record that shows that that’s the origin of it.

In the meantime, I found a French word which is very similar, which also means dirty.

And it is cradot.

And so it’s C-R-A-D-O.

And it’s a corruption of a word which is cradangue, or C-R-A-D-I-N-G-U-E.

And they’re both kind of ultimately corruptions of a word meaning filth or filthy.

That word I know has existed in French as slang since the 1960s.

It’s possible that it was transmitted to the United States, although I don’t know how,

Because French stopped donating new words to anything except the fashion industry in English a long time ago.

So I don’t know how it would have gotten here.

But in any case, it’s on Aunt Betty alone, and it is fairly widespread.

I find evidence in Mississippi, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, a couple people in Virginia.

Unless Aunt Betty really got around.

Unless Aunt Betty, yeah, unless she’s on a speaking tour teaching people the word.

That is so interesting.

I really like the Frenchness of that, like you said.

That’s very cool.

Well, David, thank you so much for calling.

Thank you all.

I appreciate you all a lot.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Have a good one.

Bye.

If you know the word gradutamine, grime or schmutz or crud, let us know, 877-929-9673,

Or tell us the whole story and where you’re from in email to words@waywordradio.org.

We were talking the other day about the fact that the world of horses has given us so many terms.

We were talking specifically about the term free reign.

And giving someone free reign means you sort of loosen your grip on the reins, give them a little more freedom.

And I was thinking about the fact that just horse hair has also given us terms.

The term curtail comes from the idea of horses with docked tails.

And it comes to us from Latin originally via French.

And then the other word that I was thinking of that has to do with horse hair and tails is, of course, our word bangs.

Oh.

The kind of bangs that come down.

Yeah, or the British word called the fringe.

The fringe, yes.

Yes, that hair that is a common cut, originally referred to a horse’s tail cut bang across.

Bang across, like slash or just sharp edge.

Yeah, so the bangs on your head are an echo of a horse that had a tail cut short.

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Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org or find the show on any podcast app or on iTunes.

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This program would not be possible without you.

Grant 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 Stephanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felton,

Director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chinesky,

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 Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.