This week on A Way with Words we start a brand-new season! Find out what a motorcyclist wears to keep from getting sunburned and why your little finger is called a pinkie. Plus, a recap of 2007—in limericks!
Read the original blog post and listen to this episode.
It's a brand-new season here on A Way with Words! To celebrate, Martha and Grant are noodling with anagrams—including the one in the title of this episode. Also:
A New York City schoolteacher asks, "Why do we call our little finger a pinkie?" and relates his invented etymology.
Another caller snickers over a newscaster's attempt to pronounce the word homage. Which of the six ways is best?
A Hoosier who's been hanging out on motorcycle discussion boards is curious about the origin of the term do-rag. Or is it dew-rag?
"Why is an undesirable task called a g-job?" asks a crew member on the set of the Fox Television series 24.
Martha shares a trick for remembering the answer to that perennial question: "Does a comma go inside or outside of quotation marks?"
The hosts weigh in on whether the expression "very fun" is grammatically correct.
What the heck is a podsnicker, anyway?
Puzzle-man Greg Pliska joins us for a recap of 2007—in limericks!
Is your DVD player always flashing "12:00"? A caller wonders if there's a word for a society ruled by children, something along the lines of patriarchy and matriarchy.
Also join us for another slang quiz, in which DeeDee picks "slon doon" as her favorite slang word. You can see what she's talking about in the picture below, taken by Kiwi world travelers Carol and Lawrie Chandler in Gansu Province, China.
Welcome back! I am so happy about your return to the airwaves that I haven't words to express my joy.
Thanks very much, John! Hope you'll keep listening, and sign up for our newsletter to get the latest about future episodes!
Btw, re that first call about why our little fingers are called "pinkies": We received an email from Carey Carpenter, a professor at Palomar College, who's writing what sounds like a very cool book on how different body parts got named. Lots of fun stuff (and great illustrations!) at his blog, Anatomy Word of the Day.
Glad to hear the new show! It was a lot of podfun.
I have to say that "very fun" bothers me less than "great fun". The latter just sounds so awkward and conflicts with the "a lot of fun" and "not much fun" as a quantity type concept.
Also, with all those anagrams -- I saw what you did there.