Chicken Scratches and Creaky Voice

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

So, how’s your penmanship?

Are you proud when other people see it?

If you’re like me, the answer is ehhh, not so much.

And I was thinking about this recently because there’s a new book out called Script and Scribble by Kitty Burns Flory.

And it’s about the history of handwriting.

And one of the surprising things I read in there was that in 2006, Grant, there were only 15% of students taking the SAT who actually wrote out the essay portion in cursive handwriting.

15% Grant.

How did the rest of them write?

With block letters. Printing, yeah.

Yeah, I was surprised at that, but then I guess it makes sense because fewer and fewer people are bothering to have beautiful penmanship or penmanship that actually is fluent.

I’m interested in the fact that my mother’s generation, she’s in her 50s, she shares a handwriting in common with my mother-in-law.

They’re roughly the same age.

And when I look at their handwriting, they both have the Palmer method down cold.

You can just see it.

They must have both had endless drills year after year to get their handwriting down well, right?

Yeah, my mother’s was the same way.

But it’s so interesting, isn’t it, to think about things that are handwritten?

I mean, you and I corresponded for about three years by e-mail, and just a few months ago, I got something in postal mail from you that you sent to me, and it was kind of this—you know, I kind of caught my breath because handwriting is as personal as a voice, and I realized I had never seen that sight of you.

Were you terrified?

I was—no.

I just thought I’d seen you with just your undershirt on or something.

I don’t know.

Well, I have to tell you, I have terrible handwriting.

I have great cards from the third grade.

So a long time ago, they’d give me very poor marks for my penmanship.

You know who has really nice handwriting, actually?

It’s Barack Obama.

Oh, does he now?

Yeah, you remember the story about when he wrote out a prayer and stuck it in the wailing wall, and somebody pulled it out of there?

They printed that in one of the papers in Israel, and he has pretty darn nice handwriting, I have to say.

So maybe he’ll be ushering in a new era of penmanship.

Okay, I doubt it, but— Yeah, I doubt it, too.

The keyboard has taken over.

Well, how’s your handwriting?

Do you think penmanship’s important these days?

If you want to talk about that or any other aspect of language, word origins, grammar, slang, or good writing, you can call us.

The number’s 1-877-9299673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or you can send an e-mail in whatever font you like, we don’t care, to words@waywordradio.org.

Bring on the Comic Sans.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Patricia.

I’m calling from Encinitas, California.

Well, hello, Patricia.

What’s going on?

Well, I have a question about a word from my youth.

I grew up in New England in the east side of Massachusetts, and when we wanted something, rather than saying, “I have dibs on it,” we would say, “I hosy that one.”

Yes, dibs.

I call it.

That’s mine, right?

Yes.

You’re reserving it for yourself.

That’s super-duper.

Yeah, well, if you hadn’t told us, I would have asked you if you were from Massachusetts.

Really?

Oh, yes.

Okay, because my question, too, is I thought, “Oh, well, this is a regional thing,” but I talked to my brother-in-law, who grew up in Southern California, and he’s kind of a geezer like me, almost a geezer, and he grew up with that word, too, in Redlands, California.

In Redlands, California.

So that threw my whole theory off.

Wow.

Well…

Where are his people from, though?

From that area, though.

Oh, really?

I just think that he must have run into some kind of New England influence, because it’s really strongly associated with Massachusetts and a little bit in Maine, too.

-huh.

For sure, yeah.

And where did it come from?

Well, that’s a great question.

We’re not so sure about that one, but, you know, little kids have all kinds of cute little words for saying “dibs” or “hosy,” don’t they?

-huh.

Sure, yeah.

Who knows where they pick that stuff up?

A lot of it is just, there’s a whole kid culture.

Some language is passed from kid to kid and kind of forgotten when you become an adult.

Yeah, yeah, some kids say “shoddy.”

Shoddy?

Shoddy, yeah.

How do you spell that?

S-H-O-D-D-Y, because what they’re doing is they want to ride shotgun in the car.

Oh, sure, sure.

You know?

And, you know, when I was growing up, we used to, just specifically for where you were sitting, we would freeze our seats.

Like, if you were watching television and you were going to get up to go to the kitchen or the bathroom and I’d freeze my seat, and it was law that nobody could sit in your seat as long as it was frozen.

Because you’d hosied it by freezing it.

I froze it.

I froze my seat, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we see “hoosy” and “honey” and “honsy” and “hornsy,” and I’ve seen a couple of different theories about it.

The most likely, I think, is that it’s a variation of “hold” and “holdsy” and sort of a kiddie way of saying “holdsy.”

Well, because you might say “for keeps” or “for keepsies,” and so you might say “hold” and “holdsies,” and then it becomes “hosy” after a while because children corrupt things, right?

Just think the way that nursery rhymes vary in all the English-speaking countries of the world because they’re passed along from child to child, and they don’t always get the words right, and some new words kind of take their place because they sound about the same and they don’t know exactly what they’re saying.

So do you still use it today?

Well, with my sister I do, but nobody understands me here.

That’s okay.

Secret language is good.

Yeah, that’s great.

Thanks for the answer to my question.

All right, Patricia.

Of course.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, Grant, another great word I’ve seen like that is “bony.”

I wonder if I’m pronouncing it correctly.

I’ve only ever seen it in print.

I bony it?

Yeah, I bony it, and apparently it’s closely associated with Wisconsin, and I know we have a lot of Wisconsin listeners, so maybe they can tell me how to say it.

Boom!

There goes the phone system.

Tell us how to say it, how to pronounce it.

Is it bony?

I bony that seed?

Do you bony or hosie?

Let us know.

I freeze and I dip.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD, or pop us an e-mail, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Linda calling from Dallas.

Well, hi, Linda.

What’s going on?

Grant?

Yes, this is Grant.

Hi, Linda.

It’s Martha.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

How are you doing?

Super-duper.

Great.

We appreciate your calling.

Glad to have you.

What’s on your mind, Linda?

Well, you know, I always get confused on when to use “I” or “me” in a statement or in correspondence, and I was wondering if you might have a trick that I could use, ask myself before I send something out, correspondence or talk to somebody, and I send it out incorrectly.

I like to say, “My husband and I,” or should I be saying, “Me and my husband,” and I always get that scene backwards.

Linda, I’m so glad you asked for a trick about this little problem because there is one.

I can give you a secret that will help you.

I could bore you with grammatical jargon, but I’m not going to do that.

A trick would be great.

Okay.

How about this?

Linda, I want you to think of yourself as a prize fighter, okay?

Can you do that?

Well, I think so.

Okay, the gloves, the silk shorts, cute little top.

Okay?

You got it?

Love it.

Love it.

Linda, I want you to think of yourself as a prize fighter, and I want you to score a knockout.

What I want you to do is every time you come across this problem, just knock out the other person.

In this case, your husband, if you’re talking about my husband and I or my husband and me.

Okay?

Let me give you an example.

I’ll give you two versions of the same sentence, and I want you to knock out your husband each time, okay?

Should the sentence be, “Give the book to my husband and I,” or should the sentence be, “Give the book to my husband and me?”

Now, let’s knock out your husband.

I thought it would be a “me.”

Right.

So, “Give the book to I” sounds wrong, right?

Of course, yeah.

Exactly.

That’s perfect.

You want to try another one?

Okay, one more would be good.

How about from these two sentences, “My husband and I want you to come to dinner,” or “My husband and me want you to come to dinner.”

Now, just knock your husband out of there.

Is it, “I want you to come to dinner,” or is it, “Me want you to come to dinner”?

It would be “I.”

Exactly.

That’s all you have to know.

If you’re Elmo, I won’t — Sesame Street character.

No, actually, Elmo doesn’t say “me.”

He always says “Elmo.”

So, that’s clever, Martha.

The knockout.

Just take the other person out of the equation, leave yourself in the sentence, and you’ll automatically know intuitively whether or not it’s going to work, right?

Yeah.

How’s that, Linda?

That’s great.

That’s a wonderful little trick.

Thank you so much.

Well, you are more than welcome.

All right.

You guys have a good day.

Thank you for calling, Linda.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

It works.

Martha, that’s great.

It does work.

That’s a great trick.

And you learned that — you came up with that on your own, or you learned that from somebody?

I sort of came up with it on my own, but, yeah, I mean, just knock the other person out.

It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

I’ve got to say that the relief there that I’m feeling is that you and I could get into the wonky jargon of this and talk about objects and subjects and all that kind of stuff, but sometimes, as native speakers of English, our intuition is just as efficient as really getting into the grammar of it, right?

Exactly.

That’s a great way to put it.

If you’d like an answer to your questions about language, call Grant and me at 1-877-929-9673, or you can e-mail us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or you can call her and myself.

You had to do that, didn’t you?

Oh, there’s a 10-year-old boy in me somewhere.

He always likes to do the wrong things.

Very close to the surface.

Very close to the surface.

All right.

[Music] Martha, Sasha in San Diego wrote to share a little slang with us.

Sasha is a Canadian who, with her fellow, with her man, runs an audio and lighting company.

And one of the terms that she wanted to share with us was the term “rinse.”

R-I-N-S-E.

Apparently, when a DJ plays a great set, you might say, “They rinsed it.”

That is, you’re up there, you’re DJing, the whole crowd is dancing, everybody loves what you’re doing.

You rinsed it, which I think is great.

And doing a little digging on this term, I found that, as Sasha says, that it probably did come from the United Kingdom, and probably from the more modern dance clubs.

I don’t think there’s a lot of history behind this term, although it could have come out of Jamaica.

And it might be related to an older meaning of “rinse,” to go all out, to party, to have a good time.

And so, it’s just an interesting slang word that I was glad she shared with me, because I didn’t know it.

Yeah, I like it.

So what’s the “it”?

What got rinsed?

Is it the act of performing all the music, or playing all the music?

Yeah, your set, your act, your show.

Because you’re a DJ, you’re just not like this guy behind a pane of glass.

You’re a performer.

It’s everything that you do up there.

And you might also say, “We had a rinsing good time at the club last night.”

Oh, nice, nice.

So we rinsed that show, that episode of A Way with Words.

If you’ve got slang you’d like to share with us, we’d like to see it.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Stay tuned for a word puzzle and more of your calls.

A Way with Words continues. [music] You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and we are joined once again by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Hiya, Greg.

Hi, Martha.

Hello, Greg.

Good afternoon, Grant.

Well, Greg, you big nerd, what do you have for us?

This is in honor of the historic election that we’ve just had.

It’s a quiz that I’m calling “Glama Obama.”

G-L-O-M-A.

Like, “Glama, glama Obama.”

We’re going to make two-word phrases by glomming on to our 44th president’s last name.

So the first word in the phrase will end in “ama,” A-M-A, and the second word will be “Obama.”

For example, when Barack vacations in Nassau, he’s known as the “Bahama Obama.”

Exactly.

Okay, I see where this is going.

Yeah, you got it.

So here’s your first one.

When he comes to bed at night, he is…

“Kama Obama.”

When he comes to bed at night, he is… Tired.

Oh, I know, I know, I know.

Insomnia Obama.

Yes.

Miss Barnette.

He’s “Pajama Obama.”

Exactly.

If he had been an Andean quadruped, he would be…

A “Lama Obama.”

“Lama Obama.”

Because “Alpaca” doesn’t rhyme.

Yeah, it would be “Alpaca Chewbacca,” a different character.

Actually, they’re practically the same thing, Chewbacca and an alpaca.

If he had been born in Japan’s second largest metropolis, he would be…

Second largest.

So not “Tokyo Obama.”

No.

Oh, how embarrassing.

Yeah, very.

Well, it rhymes with “Obama.”

I’m thinking about it.

It’s not far from Tokyo.

“Gama.”

It’s something “Gama.”

No.

No?

No?

It starts with a “Y.”

Oh, “Yokohama Obama.”

“Yokohama Obama.”

“Yokohama Obama.”

Exactly.

If he had been the first person to reach India from Europe by sea, he would be… Famous…

“Basco de Gama.”

“Basco de Gama Obama.”

Exactly.

When he made a dinosaur model in a shoebox in second grade, he was…

“Diorama Obama.”

“Diorama Obama.”

I think he probably made a Lincoln Log one.

Oh, very good.

Okay, here’s one.

If he succeeded Tenzin Gyatso in Tibet, he would be…

“Lama Obama.”

Yeah, the “Dali Lama Obama.”

“Dali Lama Obama,” yeah.

And if his head were carved on Mount Rushmore and you could stand on it, you would view…

“Panorama Obama.”

“Panorama Obama,” exactly.

The images you’re conjuring here, Greg, are really something.

Good, that’s my job.

Here’s a tough one for you.

Pure poetry.

Here’s a tough one.

If he’d been elected the King of Bahrain, he would be…

Very wealthy.

“King of Bahrain.”

I don’t know.

Is there a special title that goes with that job?

No, there’s a special city in which he would sit.

The capital city of Bahrain.

All the eighth grade geography students are screaming at the radio right now.

I don’t know.

“Manama.”

“Manama Obama.”

Okay.

So, a fitting conclusion to this silliness.

The First Lady would be…

“Mama Obama.”

Exactly, very good.

I wonder if the kids call her that.

“Mama Obama.”

Probably not.

Probably not.

Well, thanks.

It was great fun, Greg.

It’s a pleasure as always.

Thanks, Greg.

Would you like to talk about grammar, slang, punctuation, or words and how we use them?

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Carrie Kustel.

Hi, Carrie.

Where are you calling from?

From St.

Louis, Missouri.

What’s on your mind, Carrie?

Well, I was curious about a word that we used in my family, but that I didn’t hear…

Well, when I used it again, other people didn’t recognize it.

And it was “handrunning.”

Handrunning?

And it means, like, one after another.

Like, the buttons in the shirt went handrunning up the front of the shirt.

Oh, that’s interesting.

One right next to each other.

Mm—

Mm—

Like the tickets on a fence.

So it’s a series of things?

How else would you use it?

Can you say that you did something handrunning?

Yes, or problems came at you handrunning, one after another.

And you heard this from whom?

Both my parents used it.

My mother was from Alabama, but I grew up in western Oklahoma.

But both of them used it, and my sister knows it.

But I had used it around some friends in St.

Louis, and they kidded me about, “Where did you get that phrase?”

Mm—

Mm—

Yeah, it’s a weird one, and I have a hard time saying it.

I always want to take the hand out, you know?

Something like, “Carrie’s had the same weird dream three nights running.”

What’s the hand doing in there?

Well, we talked about it in my family, and we wondered if it was either running your hands along the picket fence or measuring horses.

Like, you know how you measure horses with hands?

Mm-one after another.

Yeah, yeah.

Those aren’t bad guesses, because it does mean consecutively or in a row.

And I have to say that, as far as I know, the origins of this expression are a mystery.

You’re right that you see it a lot in the South, and the South Midlands, parts of Arkansas, parts of Missouri, as a matter of fact.

They’ve documented this expression.

But as far as the origin, we’re just not sure.

Oh, so it really is a mystery.

Well, you will find that it dates back to the early 1800s in parts of the United Kingdom around Leeds and West Yorkshire and a few other places.

You can find it in some old glossaries that were collected about that time.

So we do know that it was a term from the British Isles before it was an American term.

Oh, it was?

Okay.

And the fact that the term appears in the South jibes really well with some of the historical migration patterns.

So there’s kind of a connecting path there.

Yeah, because one side of my family I know is from around Yorkshire and Durham.

Well, that would make a lot of sense then.

Well, this one remains a mystery, and I hope we find out more about it.

Very interesting.

All right, well, thank you for calling, Kerry.

Thank you, Kerry.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Handrunning, how about that?

There’s no end to this stuff, the language that kind of just lingers for a while and pops out, and you’re like, “Wait a second, I’ve never heard that one before.”

Yeah, and it was perfectly natural to her, but don’t you have a hard time saying it?

I do, because I kind of want to drop the D off there, handrunning, because there’s like a pause that’s forced in there between that D and the R sound.

Handrunning.

I wonder if people, when they pronounce it, if they just don’t leave the D off.

We’ll have to do a little more digging on this and post whatever we find on the website.

Sounds great.

And maybe they leave off the G, too.

Handrunning.

Handrunning.

If you know anything about it, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-9299673.

Or if you have any kind of question about language, email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chip Moll in Granbury, Texas.

Hi, Chip.

Hello, Chip.

What’s going on?

Well, I had a question about a speech trait that I’m not sure if anyone else has even noticed it or not.

I know there’s certain terms for the way words are said, like if you’re from the South, there’s a thing called a diphthong.

And the only way I can reference it is — I think it was derived from valley girl speak — is — and I’ve heard it from females, never from males, and only in the U.S. In English.

But at the end of the sentence, the voice kind of trails off and gets lower and lower, and as it gets to the end of the sentence, they sort of begin to sort of crackle at the end of it.

And I was just curious if anyone else had noticed that.

My wife thinks I’m obsessed with it, and I’m the only one that hears it.

You know, when you think you’ve seen a ghost and nobody else sees it, it’s kind of frustrating, right?

I would know.

Other people have seen this ghost, Jip.

There’s a term for this.

Actually, there’s a bunch of terms for this.

It’s called creaky voice.

C-R-E-A-K-Y.

Creaky voice.

It’s not derived from valley girl speak, which is not really a phenomenon that any linguist or lexicographer would recognize.

There’s no such thing as valley girl speak.

There are certain trends in youth speak and certain trends in regional language, but there’s no such thing as valley girl speak.

It exists only in that album.

There were Moon Unit, Zappa, did that various language.

But what we do find is that there’s some language and some language habits that are associated with gender, with class, with education, and with location in terms of where they live in the country.

And so this is kind of what you’re noticing here.

And in the United States, women do tend to use creaky voice more than men.

Men use it to do things like enhance the masculinity of whatever they’re saying or whatever they’re doing.

Kind of lower their voice a little bit and make it sound, you know, it’s just an obvious way.

The women don’t do that necessarily to make themselves seem masculine, although there was one study that studied young Latina women in gangs where the researcher, how shall I put this, suggested it might be possible that in order to attain or keep some kind of status within the gang they were lowering their voices and talking kind of creaky.

But what you generally find that when they do this, it kind of is balanced out on the other side by falsetto.

You have these two different ranges of kind of your tone, the high and the low, that you use in given situations to kind of reinforce a point that you want to make.

And now this point can vary.

It’s all contextual.

But is any of this kind of ringing a bell?

Do you find that when you hear young women using this that they are kind of stressing a particular kind of content or a particular kind of statement?

Not exactly.

And I’ve noticed or I’ve tried to notice whether it’s for emphasis or not.

And I’ve not really picked up on that.

Well, Chip, can you give us an example of what kind of context you’d hear this in?

Well, there was an interview with the Olsen twins, Mary Kay and Ashley.

And Ashley doesn’t do it, but very, very seldom.

Mary Kay, on the other hand, does it almost all the time.

Really?

Yes.

And you have several announcers on public radio that the announcers do it.

Really?

Like I say, it’s at the end of the sentence and it trails off and gets to the variant that goes, like you say, creaky.

Well, is this like Bill Clinton telling me he feels my pain?

Right.

And you kind of hit on one of the things there that this is a generalization that perhaps with later study might not be borne out.

But one of the things that has been proposed is that creaky voice is a little more common in situations where you want to indicate some kind of familiarity, some kind of intimacy, some kind of friendship in a kind of non-imperative way.

That is, you don’t want to force this kind of mood upon somebody else, but you want to just let them know that’s how you’re feeling.

That’s the way I perceived it, yes.

You cased it exactly right.

Wow.

Well, who knew, Chip, this is going to be like when I hear a new word for the first time and then I hear it everywhere?

Creaky voice.

Yeah, I’m going to start hearing creaky voice everywhere.

And maybe I’m going to hear the Olsen twins every day or something.

I don’t know.

Well, it is one of those things, once you’re aware of this, where somebody’s kind of talking and they go like this and talk like that, you’re going to start hearing it.

You’re going to hear it everywhere.

Thanks a lot, Chip.

Thank you.

I feel vindicated.

You’ve got a great ear for language, buddy.

Thank you very much.

All right, congrats.

All right, bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

Good day.

Bye-bye.

Creaky voice, some of the best papers I’ve ever seen where all of the linguists and lexicographers in the room kind of sat up straight in their chair at these language conferences were about creaky voice.

Oh, my God.

There’s tons of stuff about language that’s relatively unexplored, and this is one of those things where some work has been done, but not a great deal.

Bring on your questions.

Call us at 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Janet from San Diego, California.

Hi, Janet.

Hello, Janet.

What’s going on in San Diego?

Oh, three kids that are about to descend upon me, so I’m hoping this works.

Oh, my, how old are they?

They’re five, seven, and ten.

Okay.

All right.

Well, what’s on your mind today?

Well, it’s my birthday, and I’m having a red letter day, and I looked up red letter day. I’ve always wanted to know what a red letter day is, and I looked it up, and it just says a special day, but I wondered what the reference was. Why a red letter day?

-huh.

Well, happy birthday, by the way.

Oh, thanks.

Is this one of the ones with the zero on the end?

No, that’s next year.

Oh, all right.

Well, congratulations. So it’s 20 and three kids. That’s amazing. Wow. I’m the caregiver.

Oh, I see.

Oh, you’re the caregiver. Okay. But I started when I was 52, which is a little nuts.

Well, do you have a guess about why there might be a red letter day?

This is one of the ones I can’t even fathom. I can’t even figure out at all.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Okay, well, the answer is pretty simple. You know, sometimes red ink is a bad thing, but in the Middle Ages, people noted on calendars the special days of the year, the saints’ days in the church festivals, those calendars came printed with red.

Really?

Yeah, for those particular special days.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, so red ink in that case was an occasion for saying yippee or, you know, whatever they said in medieval Europe when they were excited about a special day.

See, I never knew that. I never would have ever thought of that.

In a million years?

Oh, and I haven’t been able to look it up or, you know, all the dictionaries and things.

You have to go through it again.

Yeah, those darn dictionaries. I thought it’d be more fun to talk to you guys.

Well, is it?

Of course.

All right. Go take care of those kids. The house might burn down.

Well, they need to have a different kind of red letter day. Red bottom day.

Yes, really.

Red bottom day.

Thanks.

Okay, Janet, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Easy enough, and it’s funny. The calendars still tend to do that for holidays, don’t they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah, this has been a practice for centuries in ancient Rome. They use red at the top of laws, recorded laws.

I might go to Google Calendar, which I use, and change my holidays to red.

To red. They’re all brown, just, you know, as a way of continuing a millennial, you know, millennium-long tradition.

That’s beautiful.

I love that.

Yeah, why not? If you’ve got a question that’s been bugging you, and the dictionaries are just too much trouble, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, and the email address is words@waywordradio.org.

I’m sorry, just outsource your etymology. Every once in a while, Martha, we do a show about family words. We talk about the kind of language that you use in your house. You’ve never heard anyone else use it before.

Oh, yeah.

Bob in Allen, Texas, was one of many who wrote with some of his family language. He said that when he and his wife were expecting a child, they called it wo-hube, or wo-hube. I’m not sure how to pronounce it, but he spelled it w-o-h-u-b-e, and it’s a blend of the words “wonderful human being.” And he says they now have two wo-hubes or wo-hubes.

And so this is interesting because this goes on a list that I’ve been keeping, lists of names for unborn children. You’ve heard me say this before, nom de fetus, like nom de plume or nom de guerre. Not at nom de womb. Nom de womb works, but nom de fetus is something I picked up along the way, somebody else uses it.

A lot of people use things like bump or peanut. Those are pretty predictable. In my house, we subscribe to the Baby Center newsletter, and what they do is if you tell them the due date of the baby, they’ll send you email along the way saying, “Well, your baby is about here in the development stage.” And they compare its size to food. So they’ll say it’s the size of a sesame seed or a plum.

And so we would often call my son before he was born a sesame seed or a plum or a lentil. Now he’s a watermelon. Well, he was born before we could get up to the watermelon size. Thank goodness.

Anyway, I was glad to have from Bob and Alan, Texas, this one more term to add to my list of noms de fetus. Wohube.

I believe wohube sounds better, doesn’t it?

W-O-H-U-B-E.

It does.

It sounds like it’s from some exotic language.

We’d love to hear about your exotic family language, the things you say to your mother and your father and your children, but nowhere else.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or put it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Ready to puzzle out the meaning of some slang terms?

That’s next on A Way with Words.

Stay with us.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National Geographic Books, publisher of I’m Not Hanging Noodles From Your Ears, a collection of intriguing idioms from around the world by Jack Bala.

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[Music] You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and it’s time for our weekly slang challenge where we try to stump a member of the National Puzzlers League.

Today’s contestant is Laura Block from San Francisco.

Hello, Laura.

Hello, Grant.

How are you doing?

Good.

What do you do in San Francisco?

I am responsible for an OB/GYN residency training program at UCSF.

That sounds complicated and like a lot of work.

It is a lot of work, but I have fabulous doctors that I work with and the residents are amazing.

I bet you pick up lots of slang in your work.

Do you have a slang word for us from your work or from life?

Well, I do have work slang words, but the one that my favorite one is actually a familial one.

Oh, let’s hear it.

And it is the muffin game.

The muffin game.

Have you ever heard of the muffin game?

No, I don’t know the muffin game.

What it is, is it basically, it is at the end of a sport season when two teams are playing and the outcome has no bearing on the standings or who’s going to make the playoffs.

And it’s basically a throwaway game that nobody cares about.

And our family, we call it a muffin game.

Because?

A couple years ago, I asked my brothers, “Why is this called a muffin game? I’ve never known.”

And apparently, I’m the youngest of the family, apparently when one of my brothers was much younger, my father said to him, “Oh, no, it’s a nothing game.”

“It’s a nothing game. Don’t care about it.”

And he heard “muffin game.”

That’s funny.

Nice.

Love those misunderstood words, misheard words.

Exactly.

Well, are you ready to play a slang quiz?

Absolutely.

All right, I’m going to give you the rules. They’re pretty easy. The only thing that you have to do is figure out which of the two things that I’m describing is the correct one. I’ll give you a clue that describes them and you pick one, all right?

All right, sounds good.

If you need some help, just ask Martha. She’s very chatty.

Excellent.

All right, here we go with the first clue. You can get the willies, the heebie-jeebies, and the screaming memies, but what other kind of nervous freakout can you have if you speak British English? Is it A, the belching withers, or B, the screaming abdabs?

Wow, those are fabulous.

Thank you, I wrote one of them myself.

Excellent.

The one that’s not the correct answer, I take it.

That’s right.

That’s really the fun part of the job.

Okay, Martha, you know Grant much better than I do, so…

Laura, I’m thinking the abdababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababab.

Laura, I’m thinking the abdababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababab.

So you’re picking the belching withers?

That’s what I was trying to do, but I didn’t do it very well.

Yeah, it’s a pretty good transition.

All right, let’s try the next one.

Are you ready?

Laura, here it is.

Some people call Americans Yanks, some call them Gringos, but what do Australians call them?

Is it A, Septics, or B, Songbirds, S-O-N-G-B-I-R-D-S?

Oh, Songbirds, clearly.

Oh, it is?

Why would that be?

Maybe compared to the Down Under, where voices are so clear and have that fabulous American accent, we’ve clearly Songbirds.

Millions of Australians unsubscribe to our podcast as we speak.

What?

Come on, it has to be Songbirds.

Come on.

Oh, does it?

Well, it’s sort of like Snowbirds, only we talk a lot.

I don’t know.

It’s actually Septics.

And it’s rhyming slang.

Septic is from septic tank, which rhymes with yank.

Oh my gosh.

You’ll even find it in the titles of books and newspaper columns and thrown around freely in public.

It’s not particularly pejorative, although there’s a little bit of a negative mark there simply because it is about a septic tank.

And you know that I’m going to hear about it.

I’m going to see it all over the place now whenever I read the newspaper.

Yes, it’s definitely one of those terms.

You’ll be watching Kath and Kim, the original Australian version, and it’ll come up every other scene.

Yeah, you and I both.

We’re both going to be wincing every time we hear the word septic.

Exactly.

Well, Laura, I’ve got to tell you though, it’s always fun to play with somebody who has your energy.

It’s really nice.

Excellent.

This is fun.

Thank you for playing with us today.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Laura.

All right.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question for us about words or language or grammar or slang, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jane.

Hi, Jane.

Where are you calling from?

Hello, Jane.

Hi, I’m from Dallas, Texas.

All right.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I have a very interesting conundrum.

Oh, great.

It has to do with the use of the word “talk” and the word “speak.”

When you talk with someone, are you speaking to them?

Are you speaking with them?

Are you talking to them?

Are you talking with them?

I can never get this straight.

I want to say, “Thank you for speaking with me,” or, “It was great talking to you.”

So I just never know exactly what to use.

Oh, that requires a little bit of teasing out, so a little bit of unpuzzling there, or a little bit of puzzling, I guess.

Yeah, yeah.

Why have you been puzzling over this, Jane?

Actually, her Terry Gross, when I listen to her, she’ll say to her guest, “Thank you. It was great talking to you.”

And I often thought, “Well, isn’t it speaking with those people? I just can’t quite figure that one out.”

That’s a really good example of where we’ve got a kind of discontinuity in there.

You would expect Terry to say “speaking with,” right?

I would think so.

Because our intuition as English speakers is that if you’re speaking with somebody, both parties are kind of having an equal say, right?

It’s a conversation.

It’s a dialogue.

And if you’re speaking to somebody, it’s more of a one-way traffic.

So say somebody speaking to an auditorium, or in Terry’s case, speaking to a microphone, I’m not surprised to hear that she used “to” instead of “with,” because a lot of times in radio, you’re very conscious of the fact that there’s a huge audience out there listening to you, so it’s kind of more speaking to rather than with most of your audience, even if the whole conversation was with somebody else in one other studio far away.

Is “speak” and “talk” interchangeable?

Is that your question?

That’s part A, and part B is the “to” and “with.”

Well, the “to” and the “with” I think we’re good on, and so “talk” versus “speak.”

They are, for the most part, interchangeable, at least as far as definition goes, or meaning, the semantics of it, right?

But what you’ll find, if you look at the usage patterns of these words, is that people make a distinction, whether they know it or not.

You talk to somebody if they are a friend, a confidant, somebody that you know personally.

If there’s some kind of intimacy there, not necessarily romantic intimacy, but a one-to-one relationship.

But you’ll find, if you look at the usage patterns for “speak,” that it’s usually a more formal situation.

For example, you speak to a crowd, you speak to a lawyer, you speak to a manager, whereas you talk to a friend or a doctor or a mom or a counselor.

Do you see the difference there?

Yes, that’s interesting.

So you’ll often find, again, whether people know it or not, you’ll often find that people make these distinctions when two words appear to be synonymous.

One of the things that they talk about when you take beginning linguistics classes is that there’s actually no such thing as a perfect synonym.

And part of the reason they say that is because even if two words start out the same as English speakers, we often make a difference later.

We often decide, unconsciously or consciously, to differentiate two words that otherwise appear the same.

Very interesting.

Thank you.

Great show.

Thank you for calling.

Thank you for letting me get a little wonky on you, Jane.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

I mean, you speak the speech and you talk the talk.

It’s a little more elevated if you’re talking about speaking.

And the reason that you think that it’s elevated is because of your experience with the word.

Other people’s use of the word “speak” or “speech” or different forms of them have informed your own understanding.

There’s like these invisible flags attached to these words that tell you when they’re best used.

And this is one of the places, Martha, and I could go on and on about this, but this is one of the places where I like to point out that dictionaries are woefully incomplete.

They do not contain any kind of indication that reflects the natural intuition that you and I have.

They don’t.

This stuff is almost completely absent from dictionaries.

Some of the learners’ dictionaries have it, but very little of it, and most of them don’t.

Well, I’m glad we could speak to that.

Well, if you’d like to talk with us or speak to us, the number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

Mandy, Mandy McKee.

Where are you calling from, Mandy?

Plano, Texas.

Plano, Texas.

How are things in Plano?

Well, I called in to share a saying with you that I’ve used all my life that, as far as I know, most Americans don’t use, except for all of my American friends now use the same saying.

So you’ve influenced them.

I take it you’re not from this country originally.

No, and that’s why they, nobody, Americans generally haven’t heard of the saying.

Oh, okay.

I say I have to go and spend a penny, which means that I have to go to use the restroom or the bathroom.

And so now all my friends, when they need to go to the bathroom, they say, “Well, I have to spend a penny.”

Ha, so you’ve influenced them all, huh?

Oh, yeah, I think so.

Quite a few people, actually, because I’ve lived here for 70 years.

Ha.

Do you know how it came about?

Oh, sure.

This is pretty easy, fortunately, that the locks on the doors of the loo used to require coins.

And of course you would put a penny in and then turn the knob and then the door would open and then you could use the bathroom.

That’s the way they paid for the public facilities to be cleaned and maintained.

That’s correct.

Yeah.

You knew already.

I knew what it meant.

Stomp the radio host.

When I was a young child or a teenager growing up, I had to use a penny all the time.

Ha.

And there are still plenty of restrooms in the UK that require something similar to that, right?

You may even just drop some coins in a basket to an attendant, but…

Well, I’ll tell you, if you ever go into Harrods, they charge, I think, about two shillings now, or like 20p. 20p?

To use the restroom.

So now do you say I have to go 20p?

That sounds more appropriate.

No.

No.

I grew up in the age where it just cost a penny, and I guess I keep hoping it will go back to costing a penny one day.

So if there’s a phone in the bathroom, what you do is you spend a penny to drop a dime.

Actually, it would be a shilling.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

And I noticed that you said restroom and toilet.

You don’t say loo anymore?

Well, my friends in England say loo, but my mother would slap my hand if I said that when I was a child.

Oh, really?

What?

Is that kind of crass, is it, to say loo?

Well, it’s sort of…

I don’t know.

I just know that my mother would never have allowed me to say that.

Martha, we’ve talked about this before.

There are some incredibly ingenious but also crass ways of saying I have to go to the bathroom.

Yeah, I think my favorite, Mandy, is I have to go visit Miss White.

Now, what does that derive from?

Oh, the toilet paper?

I hadn’t thought about the paper.

I was thinking about the porcelain.

Okay.

I have never heard that.

And my favorite, which comes in a number of variations, is I need to drop some friends off at the lake.

That could mean anything.

The next time we find there’s a budding missing, we’ll come and look for you, Grant.

Well, no.

I mean, if it wasn’t a joke, if you dropped friends off at the lake, it simply means you’re taking somebody out for a swim.

Well, Mandy, I have to go pluck a rose now.

Okay.

It’s nice talking to both of you and I enjoy the show and I love NPR.

Oh, it was a pleasure to take your call, Mandy.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

Okay, goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Well, what do you say when you have to go to the bathroom?

Give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is David in Indianapolis.

Thanks for having me on.

Hello, David.

You’re welcome.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I’ve been curious for a number of years.

I moved to Indianapolis about 13 years ago and have been struck by the practice of taking a company, specifically at Eli Lilly, and referring to it in the possessive form as Lilly’s in the way you might.

There is a business like Macy’s or McDonald’s that has the possessive form, but with a company like Lilly that doesn’t.

Recently, when I was in Chicago, I was talking to a friend who pointed out to me the new Cook County Hospital, which is named for John Stroger.

He mentioned that it’s referred to now as Stroger’s Hospital, again with the possessive.

So I wonder whether this was a Midwestern phenomenon or I thought with Lilly maybe it was something dating back many years and just an artifact from history, but apparently not given the example from Stroger Hospital in Chicago.

What an interesting question.

David, it’s definitely widespread throughout the Midwest.

This is a question that comes up with some frequencies.

I’ve done some backgrounding on this before, and what’s interesting is I think that much of America would be surprised to find that the store is actually JCPenny and not JCPenny’s.

My mother, I know, calls it Penny’s.

She goes to Penny’s.

Oh, yeah, I do too.

She does not go to JCPenny.

She doesn’t go to Penny’s.

She goes to Penny’s.

It’s not Penny’s?

It’s not Penny’s, but you’ll find where I grew up in Missouri, we did this with Walmart and Kroger and Kmart.

It’s a regional grocery chain, Kroger’s and Walmart’s and Kmart’s.

There are some stores that you would never do that to.

Nobody ever said Target’s, as far as I know, and nobody ever said Sears’s because Sears already has the S on it.

One of the theories that linguists and lexicographers have about this is that it’s kind of a modeling off of the small stores that are owned by an individual.

What they call the kind of application of degenerative case, which means they’re making it sound like it’s possessive.

So, because McDonald’s, for example, and Macy’s, the two examples that you gave, those are actually possessive.

And there are many examples in any kind of decently sized town of store names that are possessive, so and so’s, whatever, you know, Joe’s Crab Shack, whatever it is.

And so by that model, people are putting it on there.

But the other thing is we also have the family model.

If you go over to somebody’s house, a family’s house, you say, “I’m going over to the Rogers’s house,” or “I’m going over to the Smith’s house,” “I’m going over to the Smith’s,” we just abbreviate, “I’m going over to the Heath’s house,” whatever it is, right?

And so there’s that model as well.

So we kind of have these examples that maybe we’re overgeneralizing, implying to these places that don’t need the possessive.

They don’t actually need to take it, but we do it anyway.

It’s a really great example of colloquial speech, and it’s so common that people call it out and notice it all the time, and half of them are interested in the phenomenon and half of them are annoyed by it.

That’s interesting that you said that it even carries over to the companies that aren’t named for a person like Walmart or Kmart.

That’s right.

It’s one of those places that’s begging for a little more exploration.

I appreciate your help on this.

Well, thank you for your call.

Thanks, David.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

If you say a business name that way, call us, email us, tell us why.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, and the email address is words@waywordradio.org.

That’s our show for this week.

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Kurt Konan produced it.

We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdasian and Josette Hurdell.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And from the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett.

Ciao luego.

Bye-bye.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.