What do you say if you have guests over and someone in your family has stray food left on the face? In some households, the secret warning is "there's a gazelle on the lawn." But why a gazelle? Also, this week: the term for a party to introduce one's new baby to family and friends, the past tense of the verb "to text", and why some people use three syllables when pronouncing "realtor." And did you know there's a language in which it's perfectly normal to wash your clothes in Barf?
This episode first aired March 21, 2010. Listen here:
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A recent fire in Grant's apartment building has him pondering the role played by "fire" in English idioms.
A listener in Washington, D.C., says that his parents taught him that when guests were over for dinner and a family member had specks of food on his face, the polite way to surreptitiously nudge him into wiping it off was to say, "Look! There's a gazelle on the lawn." Is that unique to his family?
Martha shares a great automotive Tom Swifty sent in by a listener.
What do you call a party that new parents throw to introduce a baby to family and friends? Kiss-and-cry? Try sip-and-see.
Here's the kind of riddle they were telling more than a century ago: "The lazy schoolboy hates my name, yet eats me every day. But those who seek scholastic fame to hunt me never delay."
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a word quiz about words and phrases that have two sets of a double letter. Here's an example with a one-word answer: "The place where you learn 'the three R's.'"
A Tallahassee listener hates it when realtors pronounce the name of their profession "REAL-a-tor." Why do they do that?
What's the proper past tense of the word "text"? Texted or text?
Martha tries to stump Grant with another Tom Swifty, this one nautical in nature.
The phrases "Well, I swan!" and "Well, I swannee!" are genteel substitutes for swearing. Where do those phrases come from?
Martha shares listener email about linguistic "false friends," those perplexing words in other languages that look like English words, but mean something completely different. A case in point is the detergent popular in the Middle East called "Barf," the name of which happens to be the Farsi word for "snow." Skeptical? Behold!
Dry a grape and it becomes a raisin, dry a plum and it turns into a prune. Why don't we just call them dried grapes and dried plums?
Parents sometimes refer to their rascally kids as honyocks. Where'd we get a word like that?
Another riddle: Why is "O" the noisiest of all the vowels?
What's the difference between a lexicographer, a linguist, and a wordsmith?
So many points to touch on this week. I'm torn between writing one big post and a bunch of shorter separate ones.
Grant Barrett said:
A recent fire in Grant's apartment building has him pondering the role played by "fire" in English idioms.
You mentioned the Trumpian "you're fired". In another online discussion forum, we've touched on this and it seems to be from a bit of wordplay, that the verb "to fire" (as a weapon) is a synonym for "to discharge".
There's also been much discussion over whether it's an anachronism to have a general shout "Fire!" to his archers in a scene set in pre-gunpowder times.
What's the proper past tense of the word "text"? Texted or text?
I'd like to talk about other verbs where the past tense is formed by adding "-t" instead of "-ed". Off the top of my head, there's "deal", "dream", "sleep" (with some additional adjustment to the root), "spill" (ditto), and whatever the present tense of "yclept" is.
Martha shares listener email about linguistic "false friends," those perplexing words in other languages that look like English words, but mean something completely different. A case in point is the detergent popular in the Middle East called "Barf," the name of which happens to be the Farsi word for "snow." Skeptical? Behold!
A Brazilian woman I used to work with would always giggle on alternate Fridays when people would run around the office gleefully shouting "Payday!" It sounds just like the Portuguese for "I passed wind!" (She was also a little shocked when I referred to cooking with "adobo" seasoning; apparently in Portuguese the same word means "poop", as she put it. That, I suppose, would be a Spanish-Portuguese false-friend.)
Dry a grape and it becomes a raisin, dry a plum and it turns into a prune. Why don't we just call them dried grapes and dried plums?
Have we ever touched on the cilantro/coriander business? In the US, "cilantro" is the the leaves and "coriander" is the seed or fruit. In the UK, "coriander" is used for both, qualified if necessary as "coriander leaves" and "coriander seeds". That's in English; in Spanish "cilantro" is used for both.
I have a vague recollection that there's a third term for the root (or is it the bark) of the plant. You don't often hear that one because few cooks actually use those parts.
A Tallahassee listener hates it when realtors pronounce the name of their profession "REAL-a-tor." Why do they do that?
There are loads of examples of this kind of metathesis in English. Websters lists some of these pronunciations with the obelus (÷) symbol:
÷nü-kyə-lər
÷re-lə-tər
The obelus represents a note including this disclaimer (emphasis mine):
… a pronunciation variant that occurs in educated speech but that is considered by some to be questionable or unacceptable.
You can look up the dictionary's complete note on the obelus symbol in the entry in the Webster's pronunciation guide: Pronunciation Guide pdf
Aside from the argument of the order of the letters in the spelling, there is little reason to balk at these pronunciations, since they are widespread and commonly understood. For those who like to argue from spelling, I simply ask them to read the following sentence:
Women iron on Mondays and Wednesdays in February.
That usually refocuses the discussion away from pronunciation arguments based on spelling.
As for your discussion of dried grapes and dried plums, thanks for giving us the raisin d'etre.
One more set of false friends:
In Denmark, you might see a sign proclaiming "God Mad". It means "Good Food".