College Slang Party

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

I’ve never been to an ABC party, but you know, Grant, I’m tempted to throw one just to see what everybody would wear.

ABC party?

Yeah. You know what I’m talking about?

I don’t actually know what that is.

This is a term, ABC party, which means anything but clothes.

So you go to the party and you wear anything but clothes.

So maybe duct tape or, I don’t know, Monopoly money, candy bar wrappers.

Wouldn’t it be great to throw an ABC party?

Yeah, maybe, as long as it wasn’t all Saran wrap.

Who uses this language?

Apparently college kids.

Really?

I was just reading online.

There’s an article by Emily Greer.

She’s a sophomore at Penn State University.

And she was just collecting some college slang from her peers for incoming freshmen.

And one of the terms is ABC party, where you wear anything but clothes.

Oh, cool.

And apparently there are a lot of different kinds of parties in college slang.

Yes, there are.

Who would have thought?

I know that was a long time ago, Martha.

But yes, they still party in college.

Well, in my day, they didn’t have tight and bright parties.

I hesitate to ask.

Well, you just have to wear clothes that are really bright and really tight.

Oh.

And she says that apparently in lieu of toga parties, which was more my era, now you have highlighter parties.

And those are when you wear clothes that would show up really well under a black light.

And you can take highlighters and write on each other’s clothes.

And it’s just, you know, a good time is had by all.

Sounds great.

Lots of party language.

Lots of party language.

And another one that I was really interested in was the term sexiled.

But that’s not party language.

Well, it’s a party for two.

Yeah.

Being sexiled means that you’re not able to stay in your dorm room because your roommate is entertaining for a bit.

Oh, I see.

You remember those days?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, just a little glimpse into college, and probably that’s the sound of parents shuddering across the nation.

And so that’s an article by Emily Greer on HerCampus.com.

We’ll link to that on the website.

Yeah.

Call us with all your questions about language, slang, or whatever, 877-929-9673,

Or share your stories about words and language in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carol from San Diego.

Hi, Carol. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Carol.

Okay, so as an English professor, I was a little bit surprised that I use a phrase that I’ve used all my life.

It sounds weird to other people, and I guess I should tell you I grew up in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee, we don’t pronounce the L.

And a friend of mine was visiting me in San Diego from Milwaukee, and she was describing an upcoming trip,

And I said, oh, can I come with?

And her companion, sort of, he’s not from Milwaukee, he rolled his eyes and said, come with what?

Come with a jar of pickles?

Come with a bouquet of roses?

All good, yes and yes.

And it’s so funny because I knew that was a colloquialism.

I would never put it in writing, but I didn’t know that it sounded weird to other people.

It must be regional, I’m assuming.

Yeah, where is he from?

He was from North Carolina.

Oh, yeah, they don’t use that at all there.

Carol, it does sound weird to us.

I’m telling you, to say do you want to come with sounds to us like dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.

Jar of pickles.

Right, right, exactly.

A bouquet of roses, yeah.

So he thinks you’re weird.

You’ll never talk to him again, and then what?

No.

I will have to hang my head in shame in front of my students.

Oh, as an English professor.

I know.

As an English professor, what did you say back to this guy?

You’re like equipped to handle this argument, right?

Oh, yes.

Well, I knew that it was colloquial.

I didn’t know it was regional.

But then it got me to thinking where, how it originated.

I’m thinking maybe in Milwaukee, they have a very large German population.

So maybe it has to do with the German.

You say, common mit.

Or even in French, you say, je peux venir avec.

You know, you can use that phrase in French colloquially.

Yeah, very good.

Yeah, in German, you have those verbs mit gehen and mit kommen.

That literally mean come with or go with, right?

And there are similar verbs in Scandinavian languages like Norwegian and Swedish,

Which also settled the area all around the Great Lakes, far down in Chicago and all up through Wisconsin.

And heck, even over into Minnesota, this is incredibly common in Minnesota as well.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So, Carol, the guy should have been thanking you for the history lesson.

He’s from North Carolina.

He’s got a whole batch of his own things that he says that you don’t.

But here’s the thing.

Come With is very regional.

It’s said with a bit of pride, actually, by people from that part of the country

Because they recognize that it’s something they’ve got going on in their English

And the rest of us don’t.

And sometimes I think they use it just to kind of tweak the rest of us.

Well, one person’s pride is another person’s.

But Carol’s got it exactly right, doesn’t she?

Yes.

The Germanic influence.

Yes.

It’s great.

It’s really interesting to see something sustain itself across the centuries,

Or at least the century, right?

Sure.

Sure, and it’s really weird to go to another part of the country and say that and have people look at you.

And I didn’t realize that it was regional, so that’s why it took me by surprise.

Well, I’m not going to stop using it.

Good, good, yeah.

Part of your linguistic heritage.

God forbid we should all sound alike.

How boring would that be?

Exactly.

Really boring.

Thanks for calling, Carol.

Thank you, guys.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Great stuff.

Well, we love talking about regional dialects, regional accents, that kind of thing.

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

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I came across a great proverb translated from Arabic the other day.

Would you like to hear it?

Yes, please.

Okay.

It goes, if what you’re going to say isn’t more beautiful than silence, don’t say it.

We’ve collected a bunch of the international proverbs before.

Drop us a line, words@waywordradio.org, or tell us about it in voicemail, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Emily in Dallas.

Hey there, Emily.

What’s up?

Well, I am a proud word nerd, and so I know I’m in good company here.

Yeah, that’s three of us.

I’ve got one that’s got me stumped.

Okay.

All right.

It’s a word my mother used when I was a little girl,

And she tells me that her mother used it when she was a little girl.

And the word is, well, it’s two words.

It’s the Molly Cobb Wobbles.

Molly like a name, cob like a salad, and wobble like I’m wobbling.

Molly Cobb Wobbles.

And what does it mean?

How would she use it?

And the Molly Cobb Wobbles are an affliction.

It’s something that happens to you when you can’t sleep at night.

And you toss and you turn and you still can’t sleep.

And I think there’s something with movement involved, like you’re moving around.

And so if you wake up and you’ve had a bad night and you haven’t slept and you’ve talked and you’ve turned, you’ve had the Molly Cobb Wobbles.

The Molly Cobb Wobbles.

Sounds terrible.

It does.

I’m going to start a ribbon campaign.

What color is your ribbon going to be?

Zebra stripes.

Molly Cobb Wobbles.

And you use it and your mother used it.

And who else used it?

My grandmother, my mother’s mother used it.

The same exact way, huh? There’s no variation?

No, there’s no variation.

And I talked to my grandmother recently and asked her where she picked it up, and she has no clue.

And you and your people are all from Dallas?

My parents, my mother’s Topeka, Kansas, and her mother grew up in Wichita, Kansas.

We have an answer, but what we’re marveling at here is that this is a form of this that we’ve never heard before.

Okay.

Yeah, it seems like two words that we know Frankenstein together, if that’s what you’re thinking.

I am, yeah.

A portmanteau of sorts.

A portmanteau of sorts.

You are a word nerd.

I know it.

I know it.

Let’s see if she can do the secret handshake.

Excellent.

Well done, Emily.

It’s the miming of opening a dictionary.

But actually, this one is a little bit of a stopper for you, I bet, because when you Googled this, you were like, huh?

And you came up with almost nothing, right?

Right, almost nothing.

I got mollywobbles, but I didn’t really get much for that either.

Did you find mollygrub and collywobbles?

No, I didn’t.

That is the more standard form of it.

It’s two words, mollygrubs, M-U-L-L-I-G-R-U-B-S, and collywobbles, C-O-L-L-Y-W-O-B-B-L-E-S.

Mollygrubs and collywobbles.

Wow.

This is kind of like the jitters or the shakes and maybe a little bit of the heebie-jeebies thrown in there.

A little bit of the yips even, right?

Just kind of like nervousness or it could be upset stomach.

Yeah, that’s what I think.

A rumbly stomach.

Perfect example.

Before your first day of school for the new year.

It’s like, what is my new class going to be like?

Will I like my teacher?

All my friends are going to be there?

It’s that kind of nervousness.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah.

How they got put together.

Yeah.

Mully grubs I think of as more of a state of depression or low spirits.

And collywobbles, I heard my Aunt Maiso use that in North Carolina, and it meant an upset stomach, sort of like colic.

Yeah, or butterflies in the stomach even.

There’s a lot of variations.

Both of these kind of together involve just you aren’t yourself.

You’ve got an unsettled feeling.

You’re not really sick, but you feel queasy or nervous or just kind of eh.

You’re not feeling strong at that moment.

Yeah, you don’t have a firm diagnosis.

Yeah, yeah.

Sort of self-diagnosis.

A little bit of malaise, maybe.

Wow.

So separately, these two words, now that we know the two component parts, that you Frankenstein together into one,

Collywobbles dates at least back to the 1800s.

Mully grubs, depends on whose etymology to trust, could go back as far as the 1400s is another word called magrims,

Which means a headache or a migraine and plus a dozen other things.

But in general, both of these words as a pair go back a good 150 years.

Well, I think the family has roots going back to England at some point.

So maybe it came across there, but I’m not sure.

It could have.

But somewhere along the way, those words got married in your family.

They got married in my family.

Well, I’ve been known to make up words myself, so maybe I get it.

Maybe I get it from somewhere.

So just to refresh.

Linguistic inbreeding there.

Right.

Own it, you know.

I will.

Work it.

I’ll fly my nerd word flag high.

Yeah, thanks, Emily, for calling.

That’s right.

I miss you guys so much.

Give our best to your mother and grandmother, who must also be big word nerds.

Exactly.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bring us your linguistic heirlooms, 877-929-9673,

Or send them to words@waywordradio.org,

And come over and talk to us on Facebook.

For some reason, Martha, I’ve been coming across a lot of terms for containers.

You have?

Yeah, but there’s some interesting language here.

Like, do you know what a carboy is?

Carboy, sure I do.

It’s a jug for brewing beer.

Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

I used to do that.

It’s a glass jug, right?

Yeah.

Carboy, but it’s a strange term.

Yeah, I’m forgetting the etymology.

I’m not sure either.

I think it might come from a Persian word.

Oh, really?

Probably through French, though.

To English through French, from Persian.

All right.

And then the other one is, let me ask you if you know what a punnet is.

P-U-N-N-E-T.

Punnet.

Like a punnet square?

Isn’t that in genetics or something?

Oh, I don’t know.

I think that’s from a name.

I don’t think this is from a name.

Okay.

Then, no, I don’t know what a punnet is.

You know those little baskets that blueberries and strawberries are sold in?

That’s a punnet.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

It’s a cool word, right?

Oh, now I like that.

So you might have a punnet of strawberries.

Oh.

Who knew that words for containers were so cool?

Give us a call with the strange words that you’ve encountered, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

A word puzzle and more hot chat about your language.

Stay tuned.

Support for A Way with Words comes from the University of San Diego, whose mission since 1949 has been to prepare students for the world as well as to change it.

More about the college and five schools of this independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and it’s time to be stumped by Quizmaster Greg Pliska.

Hello, Greg.

Hi, Grant. I’m Martha.

Are you going to twist our brains today?

I’m going to stump your brains and twist your livers.

Okay, so you got some puzzles there, or are you just going to speak backward?

I’m going to addle your gizzards. Yes, I do have puzzles.

I have a puzzle for you, which is – well, this week it’s a look at the society pages with a puzzle that I’m calling odd couples.

Okay.

All right.

I’ve invented some strange celebrity pairings matching up famous people, real or fictional, with the same last name.

So I’ll give you a clue to the couple and you tell me who they are.

Okay.

All right.

Because she was a divorcee, their marriage forced him to abdicate his position at the Springfield nuclear power plant.

The Simpsons.

Yes.

Homer and Wallace Warfield Simpson.

An unlikely couple if there ever was one.

How about this pair?

I have a dream, he famously said, that one day my wife will defeat Bobby Riggs and win the Battle of the Sexes.

The Kings.

Billie Jean King and Martin Luther King.

Dr. Martin Luther King.

Exactly.

It could have happened.

You never know.

Don’t discount it.

All right.

Here’s another one.

Anyone?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Bueller is Bueller is Bueller is Bueller.

Is this about Ben Stein?

I was going to say Gertrude.

Ben and Gertrude.

Ben and Gertrude Stein.

Ben Stein, the economist better known for his appearance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

And Gertrude Stein famously said, rose is rose is rose is rose, right?

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

And there’s no there there in Oakland.

Yeah, exactly.

I think Alice might be jealous, though.

I’m sure she is.

They are grooming their firstborn to be the first British Labor Party prime minister who can turn his head 360 degrees and projectile vomit.

The Camerons?

Linda and Tony Blair.

Exactly.

Linda Blair, star of The Exorcist, and Tony Blair.

Here’s another one for you.

Thanks to their partnership, she’s helped more couples hit home runs in the bedroom.

Thanks to their partnership, she’s helped more couples.

Oh, Babe Ruth and Dr. Ruth.

Babe and Dr. Ruth.

That’s a little bit of a cheat because her real name is Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

Yeah, but still.

Couldn’t resist.

It was too much fun.

These two met when she helped him erase 18 and a half minutes of phone messages to Rachel Uchitel.

Tiger and Rosemary Woods.

Very good.

Tiger Woods, of course, allegedly had a marriage ending affair with Rachel Uchitel.

And Rosemary Woods, who allegedly, actually she testified that she accidentally erased a certain portion of the Watergate tapes.

I think I’ve got time for one more.

Their offspring might have to face the ultimate nemesis, Voldemort McGregor.

Somebody Potter?

Potter?

Yeah, yep.

I don’t know of another Potter.

The Potters?

It’s not the Potters.

Yeah, it’s the Potters.

What’s the other Potter?

Mr. McGregor is your clue?

Oh, Beatrice.

Beatrix.

Beatrix Potter.

Harry and Beatrix Potter.

Voldemort, the Harry Potter nemesis, and Mr. McGregor, the Peter Rabbit nemesis.

Thanks, Greg.

Thank you.

If you’ve got a question about language, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, slang, you name it,

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Lauren from Waco, Texas.

Hey, Lauren.

Hi, Lauren, welcome to the program.

Thanks a lot.

What can we help you with today?

Okay, well, I’m originally from Houston.

I’m a fifth-generation Houstonian.

They don’t make those anymore.

But I grew up on the north side, and my grandmother was kind of a, let’s say, a colorful lady.

And one of the things that she used to say, and it would just rattle off her tongue,

She would use it for something that she thought was great, that was just wonderful for lots of things,

Something like WD-40 or like vinegar for household uses or anything like that.

And she would say, it curls your hair, cleans your teeth, and makes childbirth a pleasure.

And that was a phrase that she would just rattle off or something like that.

And I have used it myself and think it’s funny and quirky and hilarious,

But have no idea where it might have come from.

It curls your hair, cleans your teeth, and makes childbirth a pleasure.

That’s it.

I’ll tell you what my secret is when I research these terms.

I go to two places that are online and pretty free, mostly free.

Google Books and Google News Archive have immense archives of texts.

And if you search in both of those right now, you’re going to come up with,

Now look for just small parts of your phrase.

Don’t look for the whole thing.

Look for, for example, just makes childbirth a pleasure.

Just look for it curls your hair or something like that.

And you’ll come up with a lot of variation.

I mean, dozens if not hundreds of variations on this phrase, all right?

And you’re right.

So what you’re going to find there is this being used again and again and again in a lot of variations.

Here’s one.

Cleans your teeth, curls your hair, and makes you feel like a millionaire.

That one rhymes.

Cures moles, colds, sore holes, and makes childbirth a pleasure.

Here’s one from Esquire magazine in 1960.

Tequila cleans the teeth, perfumes the breath, does not bind in the crotch, and makes childbirth a pleasure.

My goodness.

And then my favorite is from a 1963 article in the L.A. Times about hypnosis.

Now, most of the time, this expression and all of its variations are used to talk about alcohol or liquids or some kinds of, just like you said, potions of some kind, right?

Right.

This one is about hypnosis.

Cures hives, aids digestion, eases pain, rejuvenates the aging sex glands, fine for neurosis, pitches arm, boxes morale, short stops legs, will stop the smoking habit, overindulgence in food and spirits, ends fingernail biting, makes childbirth a pleasure.

And so there’s a ton of these, and it’s clear that the writers of these things have had a ball in inventing all kinds of new variations.

Well, I don’t think any of these would probably pass FDA approval.

No.

No, they would not.

But I’ll tell you, as far as the origin of this, I’m almost 100% certain that you are 100% right,

Which is it probably came from an ad that was on the radio or in the magazines that was just, you know,

Pounded into the eyes of readers or the ears of listeners.

A probably legitimate real ad maybe with a little bit of tongue in cheek.

And that’s where she picked it up.

I would not be surprised.

Sort of like a jingle.

Yeah, sort of like a jingle.

The earliest use of this in any form that I can find actually isn’t ironic or humorous.

It seems like they genuinely met it.

It’s from a book called Exits from the Pearly Gates from 1919 by a woman named Lucretia Graves.

And in there, among a whole ton of other things, is a list of Japanese remedies.

And there’s one of the remedies that’s called Mother’s Friend.

And they do not tell you what the ingredients are.

They simply list the name.

And the description of this remedy, Mother’s Friend, is makes childbirth a pleasure and drives fear from the mother’s soul.

Some of these things might actually be really used.

Somebody actually believed that it would make childbirth a pleasure.

I suspect this remedy, like many of the others, probably is a form of opium.

Well, I think anything that would make childbirth a pleasure would probably be likely to sell like hotcakes.

Don’t you imagine?

Yeah.

And curl your hair.

And curl.

Well, my wife always says that our son is the cure for the very problems he causes.

Lauren, this is great.

Thank you so much for calling with this.

And I’m just so glad for your sake that your grandmother didn’t memorize that really long one that Grant mentioned.

Well, thank you so much.

And I’ll use the Google Books from now on.

And I also like your tip about searching just a piece of it because that was also an error I made.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s helpful.

Yeah, you’ll find all kinds of wonderful stuff on this.

Thanks for calling, Lauren.

Okay, thank you.

Take care now.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, what’s the linguistic heirloom that has been passed down to you from the previous generations?

Come and tell us about it.

877-929-9673, or tell us about it in an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Eric.

Hello, Eric.

Where are you calling from?

Dallas, Texas.

All right.

Hey.

What’s going on?

So I actually just listened to your program for the first time a couple weeks ago,

And it was fortuitous timing because my wife and I have been having an on-and-off battle

About my use of a particular word for many years now

And wanted to see if you guys could tell me,

Am I off the grammatical reservation,

Or is this just an acceptable use of the word?

So you want to know if you’re wrong.

Well, actually, here’s the problem.

It’s a word that I picked up because my mother uses it,

And my wife thinks it’s a terrible word.

It doesn’t make any sense.

So is there any way they could both be right and I can be wrong?

Ooh, let us see.

That would be wonderful for you.

So the word is a past participle version of the verb to buy.

And the word is boughten.

So I guess B-O-U-G-H-T-E-N.

And the way that I would use it or heard it used would be,

Are you ready for the party?

Yes, I’ve boughten all the supplies.

Or are you ready for Christmas?

Yes, I’ve boughten presents for all the members of my family.

And the first time I used that word in front of my then-girlfriend, now-wife,

She kind of gave me a look like there was grass coming out of my ears.

So I wanted to know if you guys have heard this version of the word before,

Where it came from, who uses it, and how wrong am I to use it.

Is that the only meaning of the word that you have?

Boughten just means that you’ve bought it?

Yeah, that you’ve bought it.

I guess you’ve purchased something and you did it in the past,

And that’s always how I heard it used.

So, Eric, if I baked a loaf of bread and I said this is homemade, it’s not…

I haven’t ever remember it being used as sort of an analogy for purchased.

Okay.

It’s more only used in a verb tense.

Very good.

I asked, and I think that’s what Martha was getting at too,

For me, botten, when I’ve heard it, has meant the opposite of homemade.

Right, store botten.

Yeah, store botten.

Yeah, and you might even say store-boughton.

This is bought and this isn’t homemade.

Yeah.

Interesting.

But it exists.

It’s a feature of American English.

Let me ask you some questions about where you’re from, though.

They don’t tend to use it that much in Dallas.

Well, I’m not from Dallas.

Okay.

I’m from rural southeastern Washington state.

Okay.

I heard a key word in there.

Rural?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And your wife?

She’s from Texas.

Texas.

She’s from Dallas.

Okay.

From Dallas.

So she’s a big city girl.

And you’re a rural guy.

Yeah, and we met when we were in school in Boston.

So this is just one of the lovely eccentricities of mine that she got to see.

Lucky her, huh?

Yeah, my red state patois is probably the least of my transgressions.

Nice, the red state patois.

I like that.

Here’s the thing about Botan.

It’s got a long history in English.

There have been places historically in the U.K. Where it’s been used.

There are still small pockets and places in the UK where you can still find it as part of people’s day-to-day speech.

In the United States, the same thing is true.

It has tended to persist, and it’s been relegated mostly to the Ohio River Valley.

And it’s not very common in the South.

It’s a legitimate dialect feature that probably should be avoided.

And day-to-day conversation at home, nobody should ever be calling you on it.

It should be totally fine.

But if you’re writing a formal document or a book or speaking on the radio, you should try to use bot instead because it’s just going to call a lot of attention to your speech.

Yeah, I’ve seen it described as old-fashioned and quaint, and it was in the 1920s when people really started to see prohibitions against it.

So it’s not a word that you made up yourself, probably.

You probably legitimately inherited from your mother who inherited it from her family.

And it’s just a long line of people who continued to use botan when the rest of the English-speaking world said, eh, and started using bot all the time.

Okay.

Well, that’s good to know.

I think now that I’ve officially been proven wrong, I will continue to use it just to annoy my better half.

I’m trying to be a little more nuanced here.

I wouldn’t say that you’re wrong so much.

I’d say it’s fair to use it in the home and in informal situations.

It’s just that, I mean, if you’re talking about groceries or making dinner or family get-togethers, it’s totally fine.

Yeah, it is one of those linguistic heirlooms, right?

Yeah, well, maybe she’ll let me get away with this one.

She doesn’t serve me dinner if I refuse to use the subjunctive, so I’ve had to cave on that one.

Well, I thank you guys for your insights, and I’m duly chastised.

All right.

Thanks for calling, Eric.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

We can settle your marriage disputes, as long as they have to do with language, 877-929-9673,

Or send the sordid details in email to words@waywordradio.org.

I have another great example of college slang for you. Do you know what a darty is?

I do not know what a darty is. It sounds like an Irish word.

Something you’d play in a pub?

I don’t know what it is. What is it?

It’s a party that happens during the day.

A darty. It’s a portmanteau word.

I see. Dark party?

No, during the day.

Day party. I see.

Or day-long party.

What do they do in college these days?

I was in the library all the time.

Call us with the slang you’ve heard, 877-929-9673,

Or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Karen calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hi, Karen. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Karen.

Hi, thank you. My question is about ending a sentence with a preposition.

Okay.

I got an email from a friend of mine congratulating me on a nice sentence structure for not ending a sentence with a preposition one time.

And he included a quote from Churchill that said, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

And I had heard that before, but I also remember hearing something maybe on NPR or reading an article that lots of authors have done it in literature like Shakespeare and Yeats and Shelley and that it is okay.

So I just wondered what the answer is.

And what form would you like your answer in?

No, Karen, the short answer is you are absolutely right.

It’s perfectly legitimate to end a sentence with a preposition.

And that is an old rule that grew up when people were trying to apply the rules of Latin to English,

And they don’t always work.

And the other thing to tell your friend is that he has the Churchill quote wrong.

Churchill did not say that.

Oh, really?

No, he didn’t.

Yeah.

Well, I think he got it from a website.

And not only that, the point of the quote is that it was somebody’s response to a pedant, right?

It was somebody complaining.

The first person was complaining about the preposition at the end of the sentence,

And the second person, to make a joke and point out how ridiculous that statement was,

Then supposedly made that statement about it’s something up with which I will not put.

Oh, I see.

So doubly wrong.

So it’s fine to end a sentence with a preposition.

Churchill didn’t say that, and the quote is supposed to be making fun of the supposed rule rather than embracing it.

The quote has been attributed to Churchill.

If you look at Fred Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations, it’s in there attributed to him.

But as Grant said, he says, this is the kind of pedantic nonsense up with which I will not put.

So it’s different.

It’s not just about the prepositions at the end.

OK, well, thank you very much.

So congratulations.

You’re fine.

Totally fine.

Take care.

Bye bye.

And let me just say for those of you who want to call and protest this claim about prepositions,

The email address is words at waywardrader.org or call us on the phone, 877-929-9673.

This is one of those things that the experts do not disagree about at all, right?

Right.

Even the most conservative language commentators refuse to accept the rule about not ending sentence preposition.

We are unanimous on both ends of the language spectrum.

But the problem is that there have been all these teachers who have wrapped all these knuckles about that.

Yeah, I know.

But you don’t have to twist yourself in knots to avoid a preposition at the end of the sentence.

Again, that number is 877-929-9673 or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s a great term I came across recently.

Okay.

A Monroe piercing.

Do you know what this is?

Monroe piercings.

Does it have to do with James Monroe, our fifth president?

No, Marilyn Monroe.

Oh, different.

Not a president.

Different.

Monroe piercing.

It’s when you get an off-center piercing on your upper lip, kind of like in the same position as her mole.

Oh, that’s a Monroe piercing.

A Monroe piercing.

All right.

How about that?

Okay.

Interesting term, right?

Why not?

Call us with your strange language, 877-929-9673, or tell us about it in an email, words@waywordradio.org.

More of your calls as A Way with Words continues.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University,

Where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

One of the fun things about English, and fun is in air quotes there,

One of the fun things about English is that the spelling is so odd.

And that’s the reason that we can have spelling bees, right?

Yeah.

Because there’s 19 different ways to spell something,

It means it’s a little bit of a challenge to get spelling right, as we all know.

Yeah, you’re not saying that spelling bees are fun.

Oh, spelling bees are fun.

I mean, if you’re not in them, they’re fun to watch.

If you’re not traumatized by them.

Somebody else is a disaster, frankly, right?

That’s true.

How do you spell schadenfreude?

They have spelling bees in Spanish, too.

Even though its spelling is more regular because they have a lot of foreignisms, for example.

They have a few words with silent P’s at the beginning.

Borrowed words like whiskey, you know, the W.

Stuff that kind of throw a kid.

Sure.

They had a spelling bee earlier this year in New Mexico.

A kid won.

It was pretty interesting and fun.

But it occurs to me this is primarily an English-speaking phenomenon because our language is so messed up.

And so these young people work their tails off.

Like the story of the spelling bee winner almost always begins,

I get up every morning at 5 and study for three hours before I go to school,

And then I study three more hours at night before going to bed.

And they memorize these words.

But the thing is, there was a great series in Time magazine in 2007

Where they tracked down some of the former winners.

There was a really nice quote from a winner named John Pennington.

He won in 1986, the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

And they asked him, they said,

Well, what’s the deal with former spelling bee winners?

And he said, there aren’t any living under bridges or cracking under the pressure, which is, right, to be expected.

These people go on to be lawyers and doctors and inventors and professionals.

They are highly skilled adults the same way that they were highly disciplined children.

And it’s interesting to me that this quirk of English, that it’s kind of messed up because of all these historical accidents.

We borrowed all these words from all these places and all these points in history.

Creates this batch of kids who show off this prowess that gives an indicator to how well they’ll do for the rest of their lives.

If you are a spelling bee champ, there’s a really great chance that you’re going to be professionally successful for the rest of your life.

And it’s not so much the words and letters themselves.

I think it’s the discipline.

Yeah, the discipline.

I can’t help but feeling that they brought some natural intelligence and memory to the party.

But the practice required day in and day out to study this was something that also added to their skill set later in life.

They brought the raw materials and then practicing for this spelling bee refined them.

Anyway, we’ll link to all those articles about spelling bees and spelling bee champions.

And you know what, Martha?

I’d love to hear some stories from people about when they were in a spelling bee.

What was the word that you went out on?

No, don’t bring it up.

Me, fourth grade, kindergarten.

I spelled it wrong.

I love that. Grant misspells kindergarten. I misspelled city.

I saw the letters. I spelled it S-I-T-Y and was flabbergasted when they told me to sit down.

Oh!

When they told me to C-I-T down.

What’s the story about your experience in a spelling bee?

Send it in email to words@waywordradio.org or make a phone call 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. My name is Kanai and I’m calling from Youngstown, Ohio.

Kanai! What an interesting name. What kind of name is that?

Well, I’m Japanese, so it’s a Japanese name.

Very nice. Well, welcome to the program.

Thanks for taking the call.

What can we help you with?

I have two kids. They’re in middle school age.

And you know how they have the special lingos all the time?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And one of the things that really caught my attention was this.

They use this as an exclamation.

They say, mathematical.

Mathematical?

Yes. And another word is, you know, they can also say, that’s math. That’s totally math.

To mean what, exactly?

Well, I found out, and of course, I’m consulting with my experts here, my children.

They’re 13 and 12.

And they said that it’s, you know, it’s like an exclamation.

So my take is that, you know, some years ago, maybe 10, 15 years ago, the kids were saying radical or rad.

Right.

Or maybe in our time or your time, it used to be groovy.

Mm—

Right?

Yeah.

As an exclamation and something to describe totally cool, awesome, out-of-the-world sort of way,

But it has nothing to do with numbers.

So it just means groovy or cool.

Yeah.

And they’re 12 and 13.

Do their friends do this?

Is this some kind of joke between the two of them?

Well, apparently their friends do this.

And then according to my experts, my children, it started out with this cartoon show that they were showing.

It’s called Adventure Time.

And in that show, they have a lot of, you know, dark humor, sarcasm, and special lingos.

But one of those things they were saying was mathematical.

So, you know, if I say, kids, we’re having sushi for tonight’s dinner, and they’ll go, that’s mathematical, Mom.

Or adventure time.

It’s more geometrical.

Yeah.

Or they say, well, dude, did you see Stevie’s bike?

That’s so math.

Had they been doing this for a while or is this something new?

It is relatively new.

However, I’m finding out that in the kids’ timelines these days, everything goes so quickly.

And my older one, my daughter, told me that, oh, mom, that is so January.

Apparently, by the time parents are catching on, it’s past the prime.

Yeah, that’s absolutely true.

As soon as they know that you’re onto it, it’s done.

That’s great.

It’s done.

And on top of that, it’s okay for them to say that, but if their mom says it, it’s like, I killed the moment.

Yeah, don’t do that, mom.

It’s almost like you have to have a license to use these words, and licenses are only given to under 16.

Oh, yeah.

Very good way to put it.

That’s very cool.

I’ve never heard of math and mathematical used quite like this.

There’s something known as math rock, which is rock and roll for brainiacs.

Right.

Yeah, I thought that maybe that was a way to promote math,

Because a lot of kids don’t like math.

And maybe that’s the idea.

I don’t know.

Maybe the producers of that cartoon show are trying to promote math,

Because I’ve also heard algebraic.

Algebraic.

Oh, wow.

And I think it’s just crazy.

So I’m waiting for them to say, you know, what’s the next one?

It’s linguistical?

It should be.

It’s way wordier.

Right, right.

Geometrical.

I’m waiting for linguistic.

But, you know, I thought about a lot of times those young people’s culture are the ones that really drives the change in the language.

That goes to, I speak Japanese, too.

That seems to go in any language.

But slang moves fast.

It’s mostly in the possession of young people because they are still exploring language.

They are still learning about it.

And it’s become a tool where they start to realize that they’ve got this immense power because they are given this toolbox called language.

It’s one of the things that is mostly not forbidden for them to use.

There are a few parts of it.

We say don’t touch that part.

But, you know, that tool is not for you.

But they have a license, as she said.

They do. They have a license to use most of English, and they use it to the utmost because it’s wonderful.

It’s fun. Wordplay is a natural part of exploring language, and coming up with new words is part of wordplay.

That is so true. I totally agree with you. It is fun.

That’s cool, Kanai. Thanks for sharing all this stuff with us.

Well, thank you so much, guys.

It’s our pleasure.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

Well, what are the kids saying out your way? What’s the stumpers that the kids have for their parents?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Drop us a line in email to words@waywordradio.org.

I saw a great turn of praise that I thought you would want to hear.

Great.

Patrice Evans writing for Grantland, which is a sports site started by Bill Simmons.

It’s a great news site with a lot of long-form journalism.

He described the actor Tracy Morgan, who is on 30 Rock.

It says, Tracy Morgan’s balloon has lost its string.

It’s a way of saying that he’s unusual or odd or even crazy.

Yeah, that he’s come unmoored.

Yes, exactly.

Which I think is kind of true with that last rant.

Yeah, yeah.

His Hindenburg is floating free.

Is there a word or phrase that’s caught your eye?

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John Plewis from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hi, John.

Hey, John, what’s up?

Well, I was just calling in with a phrase that my mother had used for years and years.

Mother was an English professor in college, loved Shakespeare, and had for years used a phrase, many phrases from Shakespeare, but used this one.

She would say, he thinks he’s a wit and he’s half right.

And when I would question her about the origin of the phrase, she said, oh, well, you know, it’s Shakespeare.

Well, all of the other Shakespearean phrases and quotes that she used, I could find.

But I’ve never been able to find this one.

So do you have an idea?

You’re doing full text searches or looking in the concordances and the glossaries and all this.

I mean, there’s more literature about Shakespeare than there is stuff written by Shakespeare himself.

And no luck there, huh?

No luck.

If you look in the Shakespeare concordances, those are the collection of works that show all of the uses of every single word in Shakespeare.

You look up the word, if it was in there, wit, and it would say, well, it’s in these five plays and these three acts, right?

And it would show you the words around it.

If you look in those concordances, you don’t really see anything quite like this.

I mean, wit and half wit are used in a variety of places, but I just don’t see the answer there.

What I do find outside of Shakespeare is that this was the sort of witticism or bromide that was included in newspapers in the 30s and 40s and 50s to kind of fill out short columns.

You know, they just put it down at the bottom with a little star above it and just a little jokey thing.

But I can’t find it much earlier than 1933.

That’s the best that I can do on that.

It reminds me of the quote, though, about I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

I might say that quote.

Yes, it’s more than that.

Well, the dating of the phrase that you gave would certainly coincide with my mother.

She was born in 1924.

So when she was teaching, it was in the 40s.

So that would certainly fit.

I thank you very much for that.

I’m just glad to know that it wasn’t my failure to find it in Shakespeare.

Thanks for calling, John.

Thanks, John. Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye.

There are a lot of those quotations that people think are from Shakespeare, but that aren’t really.

You know, it occurs to me there have been so many parodies of this.

I mean, it’s the kind of thing that the Marx Brothers might have worked into some of the parody material that they did.

It sounds like Groucho, doesn’t it? He thinks he’s a wit and he’s half-right.

And vaudeville material was a lot of times just spun off.

I mean, many of the films that we have today basically have Shakespearean plots, if not the exact words.

But I just wonder if it’s not from some closely related kind of popular work that wasn’t really Shakespeare.

Could be.

You know, there’s just nothing new under the sun.

Oh, no, wait.

Nice.

That’s clever.

If you’ve been talking about words over the dinner table and have a question for us, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.

We got an email from James Berkholz in Plano, Texas, and he writes,

So, in the last decade, I’ve noticed a trend, often when answering a question in a verbal conversation,

To lead off with the word, so, and then answer the question.

I know that it was in isolated usage in previous decades, but it seemed more an affectation of speech, indicating that the speaker was a bit odd, but it wasn’t in common usage.

This drives me crazy.

So should refer to something not used as a throwaway, throat-clearing, verbal crutch.

What James is talking about is when you’re, let’s say we’re doing an interview here, and you say, Grant, what did you do this weekend?

And I say, so we went to the park and we had a picnic.

Right.

And for a lot of people, that so sounds odd because it sounds like you are explaining something.

Yeah, it sounds odd or like James.

It drives them crazy.

It’s a continue.

It sounds like you should be continuing a narrative.

Like, so first we went to X.

Right.

And then we went to Y.

And it’s also used, we use it more often when we’re providing a kind of a summary or a conclusion.

Yeah, in place of therefore.

Right.

So in the end, everything turned out fine.

Right.

That so sounds more acceptable.

What’s really interesting is that he’s caught on to a couple different things here.

One, James realizes, and he says this, once you notice these things, these particular interesting things about language, it’s hard to stop noticing them.

You can’t turn off that notice machine, right?

The radar cannot be disabled.

And so that’s one thing.

So then it gives you the false impression that it’s more common because it actually isn’t any more common now than it was a decade ago or 50 years ago.

This use of so, which is called the sentence initial so, and there are a lot of them, but this particular use of so at the beginning of a sentence is well known and well chronicled and documented and historically accurate, grammatically okay, syntactically just fine.

But I think what throws people, I think what they’re confusing here is their own ability to be more aware of language with language itself changing.

That is, James is paying more attention.

And so it feels like the language is doing something new when the language is actually just doing kind of what it always did.

Grant, I have to say, I have this feeling that I hear people beginning sentences with so more often.

And it’s sort of like you can almost picture them holding up their hands, you know, framing whatever they’re talking about.

And it’s sort of a shorthand way of saying, OK, picture this.

And I’m wondering, I mean, I’ve seen different theories floating around that maybe it reflects the fact that we’re in an age of multitasking, you know, where our attention is diverted all different places.

And if you say so, it’s a way of framing the conversation, just sort of detaching from all the other input like texts and computers and other ambient noise.

Now, I don’t know. I mean, but I do feel like I hear it more.

It’s a theory. It might have a little bit of a vogue. But as far as the linguistic data are concerned, when we analyze the texts of spoken language that people have gathered, it doesn’t appear to be significantly more common now than it used to be.

Now, I say that with a lot of footnotes and caveats and hesitations because we didn’t put these corpora together last week.

They might have data in them from 10 or 15 years ago. But that is the span of linguistic research.

I mean, at that level, when you’re analyzing the things that people tend to do in their spoken language, you can’t do it day by day or even year by year.

You accumulate data over, more likely, over decades.

And then you look at it in the aggregate because you’re trying to do linguistic research that covers ages or eons and not, you know, a month.

Right?

Right.

So I know this is very muddled.

No, no.

It makes sense.

And I guess I’m approaching it more from a feeling kind of.

We’ll throw out the feeling.

So, if you’d like to talk with us about so or language, give us a call.

877-929-9673.

Or you can send an email, don’t begin it with so, please, words@waywordradio.org.

I came across this really interesting article about a new type of spongy mushroom that they just discovered in the island rainforest of Borneo.

Grant, did you read about this?

Here’s the article.

It was in a British publication.

And the lead sentence began, boffins have discovered a strange new type of spongy mushroom, blah, blah, blah.

And I thought, boffins?

I had to go look it up in the dictionary.

It’s an intellectual, an academic, a clever person, an expert in a particular field.

Especially such a person perceived as lacking in practical or social skills.

Right.

And it always reminds me of another Briticism, anorak.

It’s a socially inept person.

That’s another one of those Briticisms that we don’t use in American English.

Collins Dictionary describes it as someone who is socially inept

And considered by most people to be boring.

Socially inept with a hobby.

They will bore you talking about trains or spongiform mushrooms.

Or language.

Or language.

Right. Muffins in Anorak.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or send your wonkiness an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

That is our show for this week.

Don’t forget, you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

Call us at 877-929-9673.

Or email us, the address is words, at waywordradio.org.

Stay in touch with us all week on Facebook and Twitter.

You can listen to all our past shows by going online to waywordradio.org or get the podcast from iTunes.

Stephanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felton.

Tim also chooses our music.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell, Jennifer Powell, and James Ramsey.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit organization.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Toodaloo.

Take care.

Neither, neither, neither. Let’s call the whole thing off.

You like potato and I…

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