Color Me Surprised (episode #1676)

Over the centuries, the meaning of happiness has traveled a long way. Today we speak of the pursuit of happiness, but it used to be that the word happiness suggested something that occurs only by chance–something that simply… happens. Plus, the joys and challenges of learning a new language in adulthood. And: Ready for an adventure? Then prepare for some boondocking. Or wallydocking. Or maybe even some crackerdocking. You’ll want to know those terms and more if you travel in an RV. Plus, stinky slinky, mishap, fubsy, meckle, dogwalkers’ slang, a consonant-heavy puzzle, som plommen i egget, collect the pearls, Genussstille, companionable silence, gassers, coffee soup, sliding pond vs. slide, duffel bag, and lots more.

This episode first aired March 7, 2026.

People Have Themselves an RV

 If you’re going to hit the road in a motor home, best to bone up on some of the slang used by RV enthusiasts, like stinky slinky, PUPs, and gassers. A stinky slinky is a sewer hose, a PUP is a pop-up camper, and a gasser is a motor home powered by gasoline rather than diesel.

Finding Out About Happy and Happiness

 A listener in Lorain, Ohio, wonders about the origin of the terms happy and happiness. Both come from an older word hap, meaning “chance” or “luck,” also the source of happen, mishap, hapless, happenstance, happy-go-lucky, and perhaps. Language commentator Ivor Brown once described happiness as a “chubby, fubsy, comfortable word,” fubsy being an archaic word meaning “fat” or “stout.”

Boondocking, Crackerdocking, Wallydocking

 The slang term boondocking refers to camping off-grid in an RV without a hookup to water, electrical power, or a sewer. The -docking element in the word also gave rise to Crackerdocking, which is “boondocking in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel” and Wallydocking, or “boondocking so in a Walmart parking lot.” The word boondock has come a long way from its roots in Tagalog, where bundok means “mountain,” and gave rise to English boondocks, meaning “a remote area.”

Coffee Soup and Hot Toddies

 Cathy from Lexington, Kentucky, recalls visiting her grandparents in Pennsylvania and enjoying a special treat: toast with coffee, cream, and sugar on it, which they called something like Hotty Tootie. That name is likely related to hot toddy, originally a drink containing alcohol. The treat Cathy’s grandparents enjoyed sounds a lot like kaffi-supp or coffee soup, a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch dish.

Don’t Ooze Out

 The slang term doorknobbing denotes an extended leave-taking, as when someone says “Goodbye,” but keeps coming up with one more thing to say. Sharon in Wind River, Wyoming, shares a story about someone who used to respond to such a person with If you’re going to go, go. If you’re going to stay, stay. But for God’s sake, don’t ooze out. We’ve talked about Mexican leave-taking and US Southern leave-taking before.

Voice and Unvoiced Word Game

 Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle relies on voiced and unvoiced consonants, specifically the consonants D and T. One clue brings to mind a famous name with an unvoiced T sound in it, but also a clue to the name if you replace the voiced T with an unvoiced D. For example, here’s a musical question: What two words ending in T and D are suggested by the hint He wrote “Raindrops keep falling on my nest,” and “What the worms need now is love.”?

Color Me Adjectival and Presidential

 John in Cincinnati, Ohio, says that if something seems unsurprising to him, he’ll say sarcastically Color me surprised. John is sincerely surprised to learn that the color me X construction, where X is any adjective, goes back to a 1962 bestseller called The JFK Coloring Book, a jokey coloring book seemingly directed at children, but that actually satirized the administration of John F. Kennedy. In the tradition of non-satirical coloring books, which historically included cheerful instructions how to color in the illustrations, like color me brown for the dog or color me blue for the sky, this book instead had instructions like “color him red, white and blue” for JFK or “color her beautiful” for Jackie Kennedy. After JFK was assassinated, the book ceased publication, but you can find images of the original coloring book on eBay.

A Canine Business Title That Sticks

 Professional dog walkers call a dog obsessed with carrying sticks a branch manager. Another dog who grabs the other end of the stick and helps carry it around is jokingly called an assistant branch manager.

Duffel Bag and Fabric

 The heavy Army-issue utility bag called a duffel bag takes its name from the town of Duffel in the Belgian province of Antwerp, which produced a thick, coarse, woolen cloth from which such bags were originally made. The word duffel, also spelled duffle, also came to mean not only the bag itself but its contents.

Sliding Ponds and Paths

 In New York and northern New Jersey, a children’s playground slide was once commonly known as sliding pond or sliding pon. The terms reflect the considerable influence of Dutch settlement in that area, the Dutch word baan meaning a “path” and glijbaan or “slide path” being a term for what others call simply a slide.

As If the Italian Language Were Already Inside Me

 Writer Jhumpa Lahiri grew up speaking Bengali and later English, then became passionately devoted to a third language, Italian. Her book In Other Words: A Memoir (Bookshop|Amazon) is a love letter to Italian and a vivid account of the challenges and joys of learning another language as an adult. Lahiri wrote the book entirely in Italian; noted translator Ann Goldstein rendered the text into English. Lahiri reads both versions aloud in the audiobook.

Pearls and Sunbeams and After-Dinner Cleanup

 A Nevada listener says her mother used to ask her to collect the pearls after a meal, meaning “gather up all the unused dishes and utensils that didn’t need to be washed.” In Australian slang, such an item is often called a sunbeam.

Voracious Silence, that Quiet Interlude While Eating

 Kinsey from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is looking for a term that denotes the silence that falls around a dinner table when the food arrives and everyone is really enjoying it. Some possibilities include German gefressenes Schweigen, or “voracious silence” or Genussstille, which means “enjoyment silence.” There’s also the similar French expressions silence gourmand and silence de gourmandise. In English, you might refer to companionable silence. The term incipit, which refers to the first few notes of a musical work, might be extended metaphorically to those first few moments of a meal.

February, Sobbing and Blustering Its Lachrymose Way

 Dorothy Sayers’ 1935 novel, Gaudy Night (Bookshop|Amazon) includes a memorable description of late winter transitioning into early spring, noting that “February was sobbing and blustering its lachrymose way into March.”

Stop Meckling Around

 Carol in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, recalls her mother using the word meckle to mean “mess around with,” as in stop meckling with your cereal and eat it! Or if a sewing project was too complicated, she’d say there was too much meckling involved. Meckle may be related to Yiddish mekern, German meckern, and Dutch mekkeren, all meaning “to bleat like a sheep” but also “to complain.” Similarly in English, there’s fuss meaning “complain” and fussy meaning “overly complicated.”

Fit Like a Yolk in an Egg

 The hit TV show Pluribus featured a scene in a Norwegian ice hotel where guests are assured that once you get used to it, their room is quite cozy, and uses an apt Norwegian idiom describing how they’ll feel: som plommen i egget, or fitting “like a yolk in an egg.”

This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.

Modified image “making-coffee-at-revolver-20121010-1.jpg” by Roland Tanglao used under a Creative Commons license.

Books Mentioned in the Episode

Music Used in the Episode