Ian in Jacksonville, Florida, wonders about why musicians use the word clam to mean “a mistake” or “an egregious musical error,” as in There are a lot of clams in there or We need to practice where the clams are regarding a musical passage that needs work. Occasionally, it’s used as a verb, as in You clammed. In the 1950s, the term clambake meant a jam with bad vibes. In the 1930s, a clambake was actually a good jam session, but the term went from a positive sense to a negative one, a process that linguists refer to pejoration. It’s possible that the term became skunked, which describes a term so widely used by the general public that the cool people came to disdain it. Robert S. Gold’s A Jazz Lexicon (Amazon) is a helpful resource for the language of jazz. This is part of a complete episode.
In Newfoundland the word bridge, also spelled brudge, can mean “a deck” or “a porch,” while the word porch refers to an additional room, usually attached at the back of a house, and used as a storage space or mud room. If a Newfoundlander says it’s...
Jennifer teaches yoga on the beach on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and she and her students have been collecting synonyms for derrière, such as dump truck, rear end, and badonkadonk. The last of these has been around for at least 25 years, and was...
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