Chocolate Gravy

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.

And this is the time of year when we recommend books that we’ve loved to read and to give to other people. And I have a favorite this year. It’s called Lingo, and it’s subtitled Around the World in 60 Languages. So, you know, it’s already exciting, right? It’s by Gaston Doran, who’s a Dutch guy. He’s a linguist, and not only a linguist and a polyglot, he speaks five or six languages and reads several others, but he’s also a journalist, which means that he takes you on this whirlwind tour of 60 different languages in Europe, and he’s talking about syntax and grammar and vocabulary and usage, but as a journalist, he has this wonderful gift for metaphor and simile and storytelling. And along the way, you pick up great little words from other languages, like the fact that in Dutch, there’s a word uitvijen, which means to relax by visiting a windy place. Outvijen. Who knew? Yeah. It means literally to walk in the wind. But to go to maybe a place that’s windy or rainy and just vacation there, relax, take a walk in the rain. That sounds thats nice, actually.

Isn’t that nice?

Yeah.

Yeah, I also learned from reading this book that Latvian not only has a word for the day before yesterday, but it has a word for the day before the day before yesterday.

How cool is that?

Very specific people.

So all these great little tidbits and some really cool, chewy stuff about language. It’s called Lingo by Gaston Doran. We’ll be recommending more books later in the show. If you’ve got one to recommend, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kate Scott calling from Indianapolis.

Hi, Kate, how are you doing?

I’m doing well. How are you?

Okay.

What are you thinking about, Kate?

I’m hoping you can help me find a word for something that is like an anachronism, but spatial. Like when something shows up in a place that you don’t expect it and it doesn’t quite make sense. It just isn’t supposed to be there.

So the first time I thought about this was about 10 or 12 years ago. I was taking a walk around the block and all of a sudden I see my uncle who lives 100 miles away from me riding his bike down the street like he lives there. And I thought, well, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in Kentucky? It turned out he was just visiting, and I didn’t know it, but this has happened several times since then, including last weekend when I was hiking in this beautiful state park in western Indiana, and standing on the side of the trail was a girl about 13 or 14 in a lacy hot pink dress and strappy white heels in the middle of the forest. Her friends were all in hiking gear. Nobody was taking pictures. So it just, the location didn’t make any sense at all.

Do you have a word for this?

She came dressed for a rave, but it was a hike instead?

Yes.

Oh, that’s hilarious.

And you never found out what was going on, huh?

I have no idea.

I’m so curious.

I might have to try that outfit next time I go hiking.

Pictures.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the person or the thing is out of context, basically, but it doesn’t have to do with time. It has to do with place, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

I always have that when I had a dog and I would go to the dog park, you know, I would see dog park people outside of that context and it would be the weirdest thing. You know, it would be like, oh.

Oh, it’s like seeing your teacher outside of school when you’re a kid.

Mm—

Yes.

So something that’s out of context, and yes, there is a word for that, I’m happy to tell you. And it’s like anachronism, which comes from Greek words having to do with time. But this one comes from a Greek word having to do with place, and it is anatopism.

Anatopism.

Anatopism.

A-N-A-T-O-P-I-S-M.

It comes from the Greek word tapos, which means place, like dystopia is a place that’s bad or utopia. It comes from a word that originally meant no place. Anatopism is something that’s out of place, but spatially speaking.

And I have a second word that is very similar.

What?

And anachorism, which also means out of place.

Oh, how cool.

So A-N-A-C-H-O-R-I-S-M.

Unfortunately, it sounds a lot like anachronism, so people will think you’re making a mispronunciation, but it’s anachorism.

I never knew that.

And it’s a geographical misplacement, something that’s in an incongruous position.

No kidding.

Also from Greek, I’m thinking.

Yeah, oh, absolutely.

Wow.

So the ana is the knot and the kouros is place.

No kidding.

Well, lovely.

Now I have several choices, which will then cause people to say, what is that?

Yeah, that’s the problem when you introduce a new word like this in your vocabulary. You’re the evangelist for it. You’ve got to spread it. Otherwise, you’re just going to be misunderstood.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

It was a lot of fun.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Take care, Kate.

Bye-bye.

You too.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, how’s it going?

Going well.

Who’s this and where are you?

This is Nate Wallace. I am in Denton, Texas. I’m an eighth grade U.S. History teacher.

Wonderful.

Welcome to the show, Nate. How can we help you?

Yeah, so I was teaching my kids about the 13 colonies, and we were kind of systematically going through each colony and kind of the background of who started it and why. And as we were reading through the book, a kid, this is actually a question that a student of mine had, he raised his hand and said, why is it that sometimes when we’re talking about how a colony got started, it says this colony was founded, and then other times it says this colony was established? And I kind of looked at him with a blank look on my face and said, you know, I don’t know. I think that was a Friday. And the next morning I was listening to you guys show and I thought, I need to call in and get an answer. It may just be a simple case of synonyms and just pick the one that they wanted, you know. But I really want to know if there’s something kind of deeper going on behind that word that might help me as I kind of teach the history of these colonies.

I think you said something about synonyms, and I think that’s a pretty good guess for some of these. It sounds like that they just chose establish and found as synonyms. If you look at usage, however, these two words, you sometimes do see a difference where if something is founded, it tends to be a more formal act, perhaps with a proclamation or a charter or a set of rules at the outset, that sort of thing. Whereas establishing something is often a series of acts that result in a founding or result in a creation of an organization or enterprise. But it’s not necessarily they don’t step onto dry land and go, I established this state or anything like that.

Okay.

That would go along with it when we’re talking about the founding of Rhode Island and Connecticut. There’s all these documents that are going along with it, like you’re saying, like the fundamental laws of Connecticut or whatever that are really setting all this stuff up. But then, yeah, with the other stuff, it’s more kind of like a slow build, I guess is what you’re saying.

That’s right.

And it’s not always that way, but generally. That seems to be a separating characteristics of the two.

Yeah, yeah.

My sense of founding has to do with foundation, you know, just laying the bottom, literally.

Okay, interesting.

Cool.

Well, I will probably give this kid an answer that he asked to a question about four weeks ago, and he’ll probably forget that he asked the question four weeks ago and be really confused. But I appreciate the answer so I can explain it better in the coming years.

Hey, it’s still a teachable moment, Nate.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, thanks for your call.

Yeah, no problem. Thank you, guys.

Take care. Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

How about this little exchange? The officer says, you can’t park there, lady. Can’t you read? And the woman says, sure.

The sign says, fine for parking.

Oh, that old chestnut.

I can relate to that.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kelly calling from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Hey, Kelly.

Hi, Kelly.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I was calling because growing up, my family had this word that was in our vocabulary that I thought was a word that was in everyone’s vocabulary.

And when I got to college and I used it in a sentence one day, one of my friends said, what are you talking about?

And it kind of blew my mind that we had this word that not everyone knew about.

And the word is pitch.

And to us, it kind of had two different meanings.

In one context, it means just a little bit.

And in the other context, it means to tear something out, like something that has perforations.

When you tear that out, we would say that you would be titching that out.

I was just wondering if you had any insight to maybe how we got to know about that or if anyone else in the world uses this word.

So, Kelly, how are you spelling this word?

I would spell it T-I-T-C-H.

T as in Thomas, I-T-C-H.

So, titch.

Correct.

So I just want to titch more milk in my coffee, something like that.

Yeah.

Yep.

Let’s dismiss with the second definition.

I’ve never heard of it, and it is in none of my dictionaries, meaning to tear out.

So that may actually be a family word for you guys.

We’ll know soon because our callers will let us know.

That’s right.

But I wish I had a word for that when you’re pulling something that’s perforated.

Yeah.

That sort of satisfies me.

Well, now you do.

Yeah.

That’s a nice feeling, right, when the perf goes perfectly well.

Yeah, it’s perfectly the perf.

But the first one, a titch, a titch of something meaning a small amount, here’s a strange and interesting, well, some odd things are going on with that.

One of them is most of the dictionaries that you consult on this word, I believe, are wrong.

And I say those with, like, very high confidence.

They suggest that it’s related to a performer of very small stature.

Perhaps he was a little person who took the name of Little Titch, which is short for a lord who was the last name of Titchborn, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, he imitated somebody very wealthy on stage and was his schtick, and they called him Little Titch for short.

However, Titch for a small person was very, very rare, even in the United Kingdom, even in the height of its heyday, which was prior to the 1880s.

So then we have this giant gap, a giant gap, where a titch of something, meaning a small amount, doesn’t really start to pop up, at least in the newspapers, until the 1960s at the earliest, and then it starts in Canada, not in the United Kingdom.

And the strongest evidence that we have is titch is just a dialect pronunciation of touch.

And you probably have heard something similar.

Can I have just a touch more of sugar?

Can I have, can you just, I need a touch more time to finish this project, blah, blah, blah.

A touch just meaning just a bare small amount.

Okay.

I mean, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you’re not the only person who uses this.

No, not at all.

Your family.

No, we’ve got it continuously rising in popularity from the 1960s well into the 1980s, crosses over into the United States not long after that, and then it starts to pop up in the United Kingdom.

But a titch of something still is not that common.

And as a matter of fact, it doesn’t appear in this particular usage in this way in a lot of dictionaries.

That’s how unusual it is.

Yeah, and I don’t remember the context of which way I had used it when I was in school and somebody looked at me and said, I don’t know what word that is.

But none of them had heard it in either context.

So, yeah, I think it’s a dialect pronunciation of touch, and it does not come from the little person who was a stage performer in the United Kingdom, despite what some dictionaries suggest.

Makes sense.

Cool?

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for the history.

I appreciate it.

Thanks, Kelly.

Thanks, Kelly.

Yep.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye.

Well, we hear these kinds of stories all the time where somebody moves across the country and uses a term, and everybody looks at them like they have two heads.

What was your word like that?

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

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 we’re joined by our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

Hi, John.

What is up?

Well, you know, people are always talking about, you know, the difference between athletic people and people who like puzzles and games.

And I think there’s a straight analogy between exercising your mind and exercising your body.

So I think you have to exercise your brain, which is why I’ve come up with this quiz.

This game is sort of an Olympic event.

I’ll start you off with a one-syllable word, and you each have to write down a couple of synonyms.

The idea being that the more syllables, the better.

Sort of like the long jump.

The further you go, the better you score, okay?

Okay.

For example, if I start you with dumb, D-U-M-B, think about it a second.

To come up with the longest word you can that’s synonymous with dumb.

Now, vacuous is only three syllables, but it’s still an improvement.

Now, the best I have, can you think of one maybe?

Well, it depends on the meanings of dumb, but ridiculous maybe, or…

It’s four. That’s pretty good. Idiotic.

Yeah.

That’s another four. Very good. I have unintelligent.

Unintelligent.

That’s five.

Yeah. Plus, you know, that plus vacuous gets you like eight. That’s a nice score.

Is pretty good.

Okay, so that’s what we’re going to do.

We’re just going to add syllables up and see how far you guys go.

Okay.

Okay.

Here we go.

The first word is appropriately start.

So begin is two.

Beginning, if you use it as a noun.

Oh, yeah, that’s fine.

As a noun, there we go.

So then you could do commencement.

Commencement is three.

Very good.

Very good.

Initiation.

Initiation is five.

Nice.

Want to go for another one?

Is there another one?

Well, there’s a couple, but let’s say that’s…

You did pretty well.

That’s with the three and three and five.

We got like 11 there.

That’s good.

Initialization.

Ooh, good.

That’s a good six.

Okay.

Embarkation, inauguration with the…

Well, with what’s going on now.

Yeah, inauguration’s coming up.

Okay, let’s do another one.

Here we go.

The word is great.

Stupendous.

That’s three.

Terrific.

Understanding.

Another three.

Most of the ones I have listed here are at least four, just so you know.

Fantastic.

Great.

Extraordinary.

Extraordinary, five.

Well, depending on how you say it, yes, but I’ll give it a five.

I said it, five.

Extraordinary.

Very good.

That’s a good 11 right there.

Let’s see, I have considerable, illustrious.

Here’s another one about the word same.

Same, S-A-M-E.

Right, two things are the same.

They can be said to be.

Similar.

That’s three.

Identical.

Identical, yeah.

Four.

Mirroring images.

Sure, mirroring.

If you hyphenate it, I’ll give it to you, sure.

Homogeneous, sort of.

That’s pretty good.

Five.

That’s a good, let’s see.

Seven and five minutes to go to 12.

That’s nice.

I have interchangeable, indistinguishable, and undifferentiated.

Oh, nice.

Now, if you’re listening out there and you got that, good on you.

Here’s another one.

The word change, from same to change.

Well, we can do the mathematical delta, right, or the scientific delta, which is the change.

Let’s go for syllables.

Transformation.

I’m working my way up.

Good.

Transformation is four.

Substantiations.

Oh, nice.

Transmogrification.

Transmogrification.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Transmogrification.

Oh, that’s a six, too.

That’s 12 and four.

That’s like 16.

Metamorphosis for a good five.

Of course, yeah.

All right.

Okay, you guys did fantastic on your Olympics.

I’d say you should get a gold medal for that.

Thanks, John.

Thank you, Martha.

Thank you, Grant.

Bye, buddy.

See you later.

This is a show about short words and long words and a lot of goofing off in between.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk with us on the air, or you can email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, welcome to A Way with Words.

This is Shelly from San Antonio.

Hi, Shelly. How are you doing?

I’m doing great. I was calling to talk to you about chocolate gravy.

Oh, yes, please. Tell me more about chocolate gravy.

I grew up in southwestern Missouri, and it seems to be mostly in that regional area of those four states, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, and the Ozarks. And it’s kind of a chocolate pudding you put over bread for breakfast.

My dad used to eat it with bacon, and oh, what a wonderful combination. And I’m wondering if you know anything about it or if you’d like to hear more about it.

I’ve never heard of it.

I have probably 50% of my body weight comes from what we called cocoa gravy in my house.

Really?

Yes.

My father’s people are from southeast Missouri, which is not far from where you’re talking about. And I believe that my mother learned the recipe from my father’s mother, so from my grandmother. And I have eaten cocoa gravy with biscuits so many times I could not even tell you. It is the best thing ever.

And it’s more liquid in our house. It’s hot, steaming, poured over the top of fresh buttered biscuits. It’s so good and so bad for you. We ate it more with yeast bread and a little bit thicker than a liquid.

And my great-grandmother was literally on the covered wagon coming over from the east, and she told me that she and her family would eat it on their trip because cocoa doesn’t go rancid. The rats won’t eat it. And typically when they arrived at their settlement home, it was one of the few staples they had left.

Huh, interesting.

But what about the sugar that you need to make it work? Wouldn’t that spoil or get eaten?

Yeah, well, she was also one of those people who could use things out of the garden and in the forest. And she would find elderberry leaves and she would crush those into a sweetener. So I would assume that perhaps if they were out of sugar, she might be able to make the chocolate gravy with it. Figure it out, right? Add some sugar somehow.

Yeah, exactly.

One of my favorite things growing up, my mother always made good biscuits. Both my parents do great, good Midwestern cooking. But big piles of steamy biscuits and a cocoa gravy in a pot, and oh, so good. And my mother’s made it for you. I have never made it for my son. I’m not sure he would eat it.

Are you kidding? My son is 11, and any special occasion, like his birthday or a Thursday, he will ask me to make it, and any time we have company. It’s like a family tradition that makes you just feel like you’re really bonded together by all that chocolate in the morning.

Oh, nice.

You really do need to make it for your little one.

I’m going to do it. I frequently make biscuits on the weekend, and I will do cocoa gravy the very next time.

Hey, y’all, I feel deprived here because I never had that growing up, and gravy, to me, was something completely different. I mean, I’m interested in the use of, yeah, yeah, gravy was always meat-based when I was growing up, either red-eye gravy or just gravy with flour in it.

Yeah.

I think the reason we call it gravy is only because you serve it over, pour it over the bread like a gravy, but it’s really more like a pudding. Would you like me to give you a quick recipe?

Oh, yes, please.

It’s four simple ingredients. It’s a cup of sugar, a third cup of flour, a third cup of cocoa. You put those three in the bottom of a pot and you mix them up with a wooden spoon. And that crunchy, gravelly sound of those mixing together is part of the experience. It’s a Pavlovian experience, actually. It makes all the kids come running because they know what’s coming.

Then you throw in two cups of milk and you stir it on the stove. And you can’t quit stirring once it gets started. And as soon as it barely gets to a boiling stage, you take it off and let it cool. And here are the directions my great-grandmother wrote down. She said, you pour in the milk and simmer, vanilla to taste, a pinch of salt on a rainy day. A pinch of salt on a rainy day.

Very similar to my mother’s recipe. I really love the linguistic component of this as well as the food component. The linguistic component of it was, how is this a gravy? But the food component is like, yum. According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, gravy is a term for sweet sauce used as topping, chiefly in the Northeast.

Oh, interesting.

So it’s more widespread, maybe. I bet we’ll hear from all over about people who have cocoa gravy or chocolate gravy. Really interesting.

Right.

Thank you so very much, Shelly.

Yeah, thank you guys for your time. Take care now.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So I’m going to put my mom’s recipe for cocoa gravy on the website.

Nice.

And everybody can try this out.

Nice.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, do you know the term overview effect?

No, I don’t think I do. Business?

No, it’s bigger than that. It’s more cosmic than that.

Philosophy.

Yes, it’s part of philosophy. It’s the cognitive shift in awareness that astronauts experience when they go out into space and they look at the Earth and see the Earth as a whole. It was coined in 1987 by a science writer named Frank White. And it’s gotten some traction.

But the reason I bring it up is because there is a gorgeous new book out called Overview. It’s by Benjamin Grant. And what he does in the book is stitch together numerous high-resolution satellite photographs of Earth, just like zeroing in on crop circles or features of geography that are just gorgeous. I mean, it’s a beautiful, artistically presented book of satellite photographs that will change the way you look at the Earth and how we’re all connected.

That sounds really nice.

It’s beautiful. So the overview effect is that feeling of what that we’re all together in this lifeboat called Earth, or it’s the feeling of like your small problems don’t matter against this, the big sky, the big universe, and the universe’s tiny pinpoint in it.

Yeah, I think that’s the effect of getting more than a 30,000-foot view or 28,000-foot view, getting a zillion-foot view.

Right.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Yeah, hello. This is Larry Ogden in White Thorn, California.

Hi, Larry, how you doing?

Doing good. What are you thinking about?

Oh, my question was about the difference between the pronunciation of Caribbean and Caribbean. And it seems like most of the radio announcers say Caribbean, but I say Caribbean. And why do you say Caribbean?

Oh, that’s just the way I’ve always heard it. And I was wondering if maybe people are saying Caribbean because it’s like for the Caribbean Indian or the natives there.

Mm—

Well, there is a connection.

Yeah, there’s totally connections. There’s a tangly, messy, and in places, ugly connection. So your question is about the pronunciations Caribbean versus Caribbean, right?

Right.

And you say Caribbean.

Right. That pronunciation tends to be the preferred one when people have an opinion. In North America, both pronunciations are very common, but Caribbean is used widely in the Caribbean. Most of the English-speaking people there will say Caribbean. And for what that’s worth, if you want to think that the locals’ own name for their place or own pronunciation for their place is probably the most correct one, Caribbean is the best choice. And it’s also historically the most consistent choice.

Somewhere in this last hundred years or so, Caribbean just pops up out of the blue, and we’re not quite sure why or how.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, I’ve heard that people there said Caribbean, so I was wondering why. It seems like the radio announcers almost all say Caribbean, so I was wondering if that’s something they were being taught.

Well, it might be a little bit of a hyper-correction where they feel like it sounds a little more sophisticated than Caribbean. It does have a vaguely British air to it.

Yeah, I’m wondering, too, if it has to do with the spelling, because that word is one that has bedeviled me for years. I’ve often made the mistake of putting in two R’s when it’s actually two B’s.

Yeah, one B and two R. Yeah, it’s messy, right?

Yeah.

I want to go back, Larry.

You mentioned about the Native Americans who gave their name to the region, the Caribs.

Do you know the story behind that name?

No, I don’t.

When Columbus came to the New World, he found on these islands, I believe it was on Hispaniola, this tribe that he called the Canibs, C-A-N-I-B.

And that word came to be used in two different ways.

One was corrupted to be Carib, to refer to the people themselves, and then later to be Caribbean, to the region.

But also it’s the root of the word cannibal.

Because one of the things that he brought back from the New World was these utterly invented tales of how the locals, how the natives were savages and that they had dog tails and they ate each other and they were savages.

And the reason he did this, he went back to the New World so that he could then have evidence that they were not civilized and could be turned into slaves.

And so it was kind of this really cynical effort to describe them in such a derogatory way that he would be permitted to have them work on the cane fields or to dig for gold.

And that’s how it turned out.

Okay, yeah, that’s really interesting.

It’s where we get the word cannibal.

All right, well, that’s great.

Yeah, so you’ve been using the preferred pronunciation all along, Caribbean.

Right.

Yeah, Caribbean’s fine, but Caribbean is generally more widely accepted.

Yeah, that’s what Johnny Depp uses.

There we go.

Right.

All right. Well, thank you so much for calling, Larry.

All right. Well, thanks for taking my call.

Okay. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, I’ve pronounced it both ways through my life. Caribbean, Caribbean.

Sometimes in music, they’ll use whichever pronunciation works best in the song.

Oh, that makes sense.

Right. Caribbean queen. Does that work?

Oh, yeah. There you go.

Because if you said Caribbean queen, no, it doesn’t really quite work, right?

Right. 877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk with us about language.

You can email us. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

And find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Karen Anderson calling from Traverse City, Michigan.

Hi, Karen. Welcome to the program.

Hello, Karen.

What’s up?

Hi, Martha and Grant.

Hey there.

So, I have a question.

Okay, let’s hear it.

In the last couple of weeks, in two different opinion pieces in my local paper, I noticed the word, the phrase, a sea change.

I think it was in a different context each time, maybe once related to the electorate, maybe once related to the media landscape.

But it called attention to itself because I saw it twice rather soon, and I started wondering where it came from.

And in what sense did they use it? What did it mean?

Something major, like far-reaching, significant.

Yeah, it has to do with a change that’s just complete, total, right?

Just sort of going in there and rearranging all the molecules, basically, right?

Yeah.

A sea change being something really, really profound.

And as far as we know, the first use of sea change is in Shakespeare.

Ooh, neat. Where?

Yeah, in The Tempest.

Oh, well, that makes sense.

Yeah, Ariel sings to Ferdinand, whose father has drowned, and it goes, full fathom five thy father lies.

Of his bones are coral made.

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.

Oh, that’s wonderful to know because full fathom five is so familiar, but I didn’t know the rest of it all the way to sea change.

Right, but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.

So it’s this complete, total change.

Well, that’s wonderful to know. Shakespeare’s a good source. Thank you for that.

So now you’ll have a whole new appreciation for the phrase, right?

Oh, absolutely. Somebody could use it, too.

I was thinking as a political slogan and just change it to S-E-E.

C-Change?

That’ll be for next time.

Right. We had hope, now change, right?

Thanks, Karen.

All right. Thank you, guys.

Yeah.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

An interesting thing about sea change, as old as that is, hundreds of years old, we don’t really start to see it show up in political commentary until the late 1970s or early 1980s.

And if you look at a chart of its usage, it keeps zooming up and up and up.

This is a phrase that has not grown completely tired yet, although it has certainly come to a lot of people’s attention.

Right. And I would say that it’s also been watered down, so to speak.

It’s not necessarily something so profound.

Almost like wind, you know, almost like wind on the sea.

It’s kind of what happened to supermodel, where all models became supermodels.

Right?

And now all changes have become sea changes.

Exactly.

Even the most minor, oh, they put two USB ports on the computer.

It’s a sea change.

It’s a sea change.

Okay.

Yeah, rather than rethinking the whole thing.

877-929-9673.

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And hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

In Italian, the word ponte means bridge, like the ponte vecchio, the old bridge.

But I didn’t know this until I was reading Gaston Doran’s book, Lingo, that ponte in Italian, literally bridge, also means a Monday or Friday taken off so as to connect a public holiday to a weekend.

Oh, I think I’ve actually heard of that in English.

Really? A bridge day?

A bridge day. I don’t know how widespread it is, but I believe that I’ve heard of this.

Might as well toss in another day there.

Toss in another day. Particular people are just going to skip out anyway.

Right.

877-929-9673. On Twitter, @wayword.

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. And we have some more book recommendations for you.

Yes, we do. Every year at this time, Martha and I dig through the piles of books that we’ve bought or received.

And we pick one or two that we think you might want to buy for yourself or for a friend or a family member.

And the one at the top of my list, actually, it’s three books.

They’re by Trenton Lee Stewart, and they’re called The Mysterious Benedict Society.

And as you might guess, these are books that my son has been enjoying.

Either he reads them to himself or we read them at bedtime.

And it’s about a bunch of kids who take a test to prove that they’re worthy to go on an adventure to solve a big mystery.

And obviously the four kids, the four protagonists pass the test.

They go on to solve the mystery.

They fight the bad guys and they solve the mysteries.

And there’s a ton of puzzles.

And I asked my son, Guthrie, who is now nine, why he enjoyed these books.

And what he said to me was really striking.

He said, you know when you’re baking and the recipe says to use a certain amount of one thing, but you use a different amount and somehow it mixes well and tastes good with another ingredient and tastes better than it would usually be?

It’s like that.

And what he meant was it’s free of cliches and these writing tropes.

Like he’s nine and he’s already tired of little white boy has adventures, right?

He’s already tired of like, oh, I found something in grandma’s attic and it made me curious and I had to find out.

It’s magic.

Yeah, he’s tired of like, oh, just a magician appears and takes me to faraway lands.

He wants a little more than that.

And the mysterious Benedict Society books have given him that.

There’s three of them.

They’re all by Trenton Lee Stewart.

You can find them online anywhere books are sold.

Great, fun stuff.

Great for bedtime reading.

Cool.

Well, the book I want to recommend is an amazing book that I keep giving again and again this year as a birthday present.

And everybody’s been really happy with it.

And the book is called Vittles.

Vittles.

Yes.

Now, that’s not spelled like what you might think, right?

Because it’s V-I-C-T-U-A-L-S.

Vittles, which means food, right?

And the reason that Vittles is spelled the way it is is that it came to us through Old French, and it didn’t have a C in it at the time, but later grammarians who were influenced by Latin added the C because the Latin word victus means food.

Okay, so this book is called Vittles, V-I-C-T-U-A-L-S.

It’s by Ronnie Lundy, and I would read anything that Ronnie Lundy has ever written.

Anytime I see her byline, I read it because she’s such a wonderful writer.

And this book is basically a love letter to the food and the culture and the history of Appalachia.

And there are wonderful recipes in this book, like buttermilk cabbage soup with black walnut pesto, tomato gravy, buttermilk cucumber salad, and kill lettuce, which is salad greens dressed in hot bacon dressing.

Oh, I’ve had that.

Have you? It’s good stuff, right? Sweet and savory banana pudding. Gorgeous photos, but it’s just a wonderful book that talks not only about the food itself, but the folklore and the history of Appalachia. So check out Vittles.

And the author is Ronnie?

Ronnie Lundy.

Ronnie Lundy. Look for her book anywhere books are sold, right?

Right.

If you’ve got a book to recommend to us or our listeners, we’d love to hear about it.

877-929-9673.

Or send your book recommendations to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kevin calling from San Antonio, Texas.

Hey, Kevin, welcome.

How you doing?

Hey, good to talk with y’all.

Well, let’s see.

I have a strange window in my living room.

And growing up, we called it a grum hole.

And it was to suck out the evil spirits in the house.

And I’m trying to figure out the origin of this word, if that’s even what this small window is called.

And I haven’t had any luck with any research myself.

How do you know it’s called a grum hole?

That is just what my cousin and myself were told what it was by my grandfather.

He’s the one who built this house in about 1950.

And so I don’t even know that that’s an accurate description of this little window.

Interesting.

So it’s an actual hole that like lets out into the air?

Or is it a window covered in glass?

It’s up where the roof, the ceiling and the wall meet.

It’s about eight feet up, and it’s just about one foot by one foot.

And it’s about 18 inches deep.

And so if you go outside and look, it sticks out from the exterior wall a bit,

And it almost looks like a little tunnel.

My grandfather was from Finland.

He grew up there, and he came over when he was about eight years old.

And so I don’t know if it was something from Finnish folklore or if it was something different altogether.

He called it a grumhole, G-R-U-M?

Yeah, I’m not sure if it would be one M or two M, but that’s my understanding of the spelling.

Grum.

I’ve tried numerous variations of that, and I haven’t come up with anything.

It makes me think of grim, G-R-I-M, which as a noun can refer to a creature of the night, a dark beast, something demonic or some evil spirit, that sort of thing.

And I do know that in some, I don’t know very much about this, but in some cultures, there is a tradition of leaving a hole high in the roof for spirits.

Again, I don’t know very much about that.

I think it comes up in some Native American cultures.

I think I’ve seen it in Indonesia.

And one reference to it in ancient megalithic structures in Germany.

So that’s the best that I can do.

But they tended to be for, yeah, so spirits wouldn’t be trapped in the house.

Inconveniently happening in the same place where the smoke needed to escape.

Yeah, or maybe ancestors could return, I think.

But that’s the best that I can hope for.

I don’t know anything about a grim hole.

I’ve never heard of it.

I’d be really interested if he built that house, did he build other houses and add the same feature?

No, this was the only house he built.

He lived in it until he died.

And then I bought it and have lived in it for the past 13 or 14 years.

And it’s always just been a neat little feature there.

My father also grew up in this house.

And he, it’s funny you mentioned Native American, he mentioned that the architect, who was a San Antonio native, that maybe the influence could have come from the architect and not have been from my grandfather at all.

And did you say that it’s covered in glass or is it an open hole?

Well, it has a kind of a dark yellow textured glass window in the back of it.

And so if you look at it, you kind of see this yellow tint coming from kind of the tunnel that’s about 18 inches deep.

So it is a little window.

It does have that glass in the back.

Well, Kevin, I’ve got to tell you, that’s the most that I can offer you on Grumhole.

We obviously will pass along anything that we hear from our listeners, okay?

Hey, fantastic.

It’s been great to talk with you all.

I love the show.

Yeah, you too.

Take care.

Great talking with you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you know something about the grum hole that’s high on the wall in Kevin’s house,

Or if you know something about spirit holes in general, give us a call or send us an email,

877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dan Hersey calling in.

Hi, Dan. Where are you calling us from?

Traverse City, Michigan.

Welcome to the show. How can we help you, Dan?

Me and my girlfriend were having a discussion the other day,

And the phrase, I’m just joshing you, came up.

And, well, we have absolutely no idea where that came from.

Were you bantering, perhaps, or teasing each other?

Oh, of course, yeah.

We tease each other from time to time, of course.

Okay.

So joshing, as in J-O-S-H?

Honestly, it’s a phrase we’ve used here in northern Michigan for years.

And I’m guessing that’s how it is spelled.

Okay.

So I’m just kidding you.

I’m just teasing you, right?

Correct.

Okay.

And you had just, why do we use this guy’s name to talk about teasing people?

Correct.

I mean, is every guy named Josh untrustworthy, or what’s the deal?

It’s true.

Every guy named Josh is untrustworthy.

Sorry, Josh.

No, there’s an interesting story here.

There’s one etymology that a lot of people give, one origin, which is fun but probably not true,

And that’s that it comes from the guy who went by the pen name of Josh Billings,

Who by the 1850s became a really, really well-known humorist in the United States.

He did newspaper columns that were widely published.

He did books. He would do speaking tours.

His real name was Henry Shaw Wheeler, but everyone knew him as Josh or Josh Billings.

And this is probably at the earliest.

It was 1850 before he became popular.

Before that, he did a wide variety of other things and was not known at all as a writer anywhere.

So that’s our problem.

We have a timing issue because Josh is older than Josh Billings.

The verb to Josh has got a life.

It used to mean to shout excitedly, to greet somebody with exuberance, that sort of thing,

And then kind of slowly became to tease or to banter or to goof around verbally.

And so I think what we could probably say is though Josh is really origin unknown,

Probably there’s some reinforcement happening because of the humorous Josh Billings,

Where his widespread popularity lent a lot more life to the verb that was already running around.

Wow, that is so interesting.

Yeah. Well, it’s funny, if you Google him, Josh Billings, all of his writings, since they’re so old out there,

They’re a little hokey in places and a little trite in places,

But he did one of these things that was really kind of the hallmark of the era.

He didn’t become popular until he started misspelling words on purpose.

It’s kind of this fake illiteracy where he just pretended to be a folksy, kind of miseducated or maleducated individual who just kind of had wisdom from deep in the earth despite his lack of education.

And that was the way he succeeded.

That’s the way he became well-known.

And people just responded amazingly well to that, including Abraham Lincoln, who loved him.

Is that right?

Yeah.

No kidding.

Well, who knew there was so much history packed into one word?

Yes, you guys really cleared that up.

I can’t believe you dug in so deep to figure that out.

That’s what we do.

Dan, thank you so much for your call, and best to your girlfriend.

Oh, thank you very much.

You guys have a good afternoon.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

I wonder if it’s reinforced, too, by jostle.

I’ve always associated Josh with jostle.

Everybody trying to get a word in edgewise means you’re kind of jostling for your place in the dialogue.

Yeah, or you’re, you know, you’re joshing somebody.

I mean, when I think of joshing, I think of sticking my elbow out.

Yeah, kind of jostling.

That’s funny, right?

Yeah, right, right?

I don’t know.

Maybe.

I don’t know.

I always hate it when the fun theory is probably not correct.

Which is most of the time.

Most of the time.

Usually it’s origin unknown or something really boring, and the fun theory was tacked on later just to give it some color in life.

I kind of like the fun theory about everybody named Josh is untrustworthy.

But I know it’s not true.

Don’t call us.

I mean, do call us.

Watch it.

There’s going to be a spike in arrests of guys named Josh.

Either that or an increase in eggings of my house.

877-929-9673.

I just learned this term this week, snot otter.

Oh, no.

Do I want to know what this is?

I don’t know if I want to know what this is.

Yeah, you want to know what it is.

Okay, what is it?

Of course you want to know what it is.

You’re insatiably curious.

A snot otter is a term for a salamander.

Oh, okay.

Also known as a hellbender and a devil dog and a mud dog or an Allegheny alligator.

I know most of those, not the last one or the first one.

Oh, yeah?

But the snot otter makes sense.

Yeah, doesn’t it?

Because they’re mucousy.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that’s also the reason they call it a hellbender, because it’s got that kind of slimy skin that kind of undulates as it moves.

Oh, really?

Yeah, snot otter.

I just thought they had mystical powers ascribed to them.

That too.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, how are you?

Excellent.

Who is this?

Diane from Wisconsin.

Hi, Diane.

Where are you?

I am in Bonita Springs, Florida on vacation.

Whoa.

Hey, hello.

Nice.

A little better than your home this time of year, right?

Oh, yeah.

On the white sandy beaches, you can’t beat it.

Ooh, nice.

And so you’re thinking about language.

I’ll give Grant and Martha a call.

So my aunt, Aunt Jane Bergettis, I have to put her whole name out there.

She has been after me for years and years and years to tell me where the phrase is.

You’re the cat’s pajamas and cute as a bug’s ear comes from.

I’ve called everywhere, Google.

I’ve gone to the oldest librarians in the world.

Nobody can help me find it.

I’m hoping that you can articulate a little bit more for her.

Well, you know, there’s a lot to say about this.

There was this whole period in the 1920s where strange things started happening to American slang.

Strange things.

Yes.

And it became quite a fad.

There was this whole fad in the 1920s of saying that something was really excellent or the best of its kind by taking the name of an animal and adding some part of the anatomy, like the bee’s knees or the cat’s pajamas.

Well, pajamas is different.

A thing that doesn’t exist, though, for sure, right?

Like the sardine’s whiskers.

Sardine’s whiskers, the eel’s ankle.

Yeah, the elephant’s adenoids.

What else?

The leopard stripes and the tiger spots.

You’re the tiger spots.

You know, you didn’t hear that much.

But it was kind of this, it was almost like a slang game, you know, where people would one-up each other with more variations of this.

But I know Cat’s Meow seems to predate Cat’s Pajamas a little bit.

You know, you’re the Cat’s Meow, which is like pretty much the essence of a cat, I guess.

And then we have pajamas and bee’s knees.

Most of those fell away, and then we kept the bee’s knees in the cat’s pajamas.

We kind of ironically kept them, right?

We all know that they’re dated.

Yeah.

I love it, though.

I love it.

And it always brings a smile when you hear something like that, you know, that is not so—

That’s more untraditional, I guess, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you mentioned cute as a bug’s ear.

That’s, you know, a bug is small to begin with and an ear is even smaller.

So it’s, you know, kind of cute and tiny.

It reminds me again of the bee’s knees because the expression bee’s knee goes all the way back to at least the 1790s.

Something is as small as a bee’s knee.

And so I think in the same way, cute as a bug’s ear, something’s really, really small and really, really cute.

Because that is an older meaning of cute as well, which is small and intricately or ornately made, right?

Well, I don’t want to put her age on it, but I’m pretty sure we’re in the same era.

Okay.

And she’s going to so enjoy this.

You have no idea.

You have no idea.

It will just probably make her year finding out the information.

Oh, that’s delightful.

We’re really glad to help.

Thanks, Diane.

Thank you.

Love you, Aunt Jean.

Take care, dude.

We do too, Aunt Jean.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

It’s this youthful exuberance between the wars, basically, right?

That’s a great way to put it, yeah.

So fashion and language and even finance, as we found out later when the stock market crashed, right?

All of these things were going gangbusters, and some of it kind of stuck around.

But it was a period of liberation for women as well, where they could break out of some of the traditional roles.

Got the right to vote, finally.

Could smoke in public without being scorned.

Right.

Things like that.

Yeah, I think of flappers and doing the Charleston.

I mean, this was sort of the linguistic version of that, I guess.

877-929-9673.

Grant, you live with cats.

Yep.

And so I’m sure that you’ve had the experience where you’re just standing there minding your own business, and all of a sudden there’s this whoosh going past your ankles, right?

Just a blur of fur.

Do you call that anything?

No, they just zoom around, get nuts.

Funny that you say zoom, because a lot of people call that zoomies or the zoomies.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I did see that recently.

Yeah, but there is a technical term for those movements among cats and dogs, and that is FRAP.

F-R-A-P?

Yes, that is an acronym for Phrenetic Random Activity Periods, and that’s what trainers and behaviorists and veterinarians use to describe that phenomenon.

It’s not the zoomies.

Zoomies is better.

Zoomies.

Zoomies is cute, right?

The acronym is okay, but the longer form is meh.

877-929-9673.

Want more A Way with Words?

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

Our toll-free line is always open.

So leave us a message at 877-929-9673 and we’ll take a listen.

We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter @wayword and look for us on Facebook.

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 Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten, director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chaneski 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.