If you're inappropriately focused on the minutiae of a project instead of the bigger picture, you're said to be bike-shedding. Grant talks about that modern slang term and Martha discusses a word that goes way back in time, right back to "In the beginning," in fact. The word is tohubohu, and it means a "mess" or "confusion."
This episode first aired February 7, 2010. Listen here:
[audio: http://feeds.waywordradio.org/~r/awwwpodcast/~5/23WbAcJOq7Q/110103-AWWW-the-thought-plickens.mp3 ]
Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).
To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program.
Grant and Martha discuss a new term, bike-shedding, and an old one, tohubohu.
Where'd we get the term swan song? A caller says this expression came up in conversation just before her retirement and she wonders about its origin.
Martha reads email from listeners suggesting alternatives to the word retirement.
Is the word criteria singular or plural?
Quiz Guy John Chaneski's puzzle is about phrases that suggest a pair of words that are spelled alike, except that in one of them, a letter is doubled. Try to guess the two nearly identical words suggested by this phrase: "Wagered on a root vegetable."
It's likely America's greatest linguistic export: O.K. A caller raised in the Philippines is curious about its origin. The hosts give him an answer, and also point out a familiar word in English that derives from the caller's native language, Tagalog.
When is it more appropriate to use the word female as opposed to woman?
David Pogue, technology columnist for The New York Times, grapples with a slang quiz. First he shares own his favorite slang term, nonversation, then tries to guess the meaning of the archaic technological slang terms planktonocrit, phenakistoscope, and sphygmograph.
What's the correct pronunciation of crayon? Is it cray-on? Cran? Crown? Here's a dialect survey map that shows the distribution of these pronunciations.
A Green Bay, Wisconsin, caller is curious about her mother's playful interjections. If someone said, "Well," her mother would add, "Well, well. Three holes in the ground." If someone started a sentence with "So…" she'd interject, "Buttons on your underwear!" Or if someone said, "See," she'd add "Said the blind man as he picked up a hammer and saw." And if they were watching a movie and the dramatic tension rose, she'd declare, "The thought plickens!" The caller wonders if those expressions date back to a particular era or context, and says she's now taught them to her Indonesian husband.
============
We're grateful for support from National University, which invites you to change your future today. Learn more at nu.edu.
I was so excited to hear on the program teaser that you'd be discussing "female" and "woman." But you let the caller off too easily. When you asked, "How would you say that you preferred a female doctor?" she said "A doctor that is a woman...Or, a doctor that is not male." That's not consistent! Why is okay to say male but the word "female" is semi-taboo?
Can I offer my theory on why so many people use "woman" as both a noun and an adjective? In the 1970s, proponents of women's lib made a bit deal about the then-accepted useage of calling women "ladies" (or "girls")and insisted that women be called women. Thus "lady engineers" and "lady doctors" turned into "woman engineers" and "woman doctors" because people substituted "woman" for "lady" whether "lady" had previously been used as a noun or an awkward adjective.
And everyone was left thinking that "female" was somehow non-PC also.
I confess to using the word "female" frequently, and in my case it's related to age -- my own and also the age of the females I'm referring to. When I was in college in the mid-60s, we still referred to one another as "boys" and "girls." "Women" were at least 25! Despite being a MS. Magazine subscriber through the 70s and 80s, not to mention simply living through 40 years of culture and media since then, I still find it hard to think of a female under 21 as a "woman." I'll call females 18-22 or so "young women." If I'm talking about a group of females of mixed ages, I'll use "females," as I just did! And if it's an adjective, I'll always use "female."
Incidentally, in thinking about this subject, it also struck me that -- for me at least -- the term "young girl" indicates a female in her teens or early 20s, while the term "young boy" seems to fit grade-school age! Am I the only one who thinks that?
"The thot plickens" - A friend of mine loves to shock other people. His expression was, "The plot clots." (Sounds to me like an unexpected bloody murder in a mystery film.) *shudders*
male and female: I agreed with the caller about the awkwardness of using "female" as a noun, but I find the equivalent use of "male" just as awkward. Either sounds to me like police jargon or corporate human relations department weaselese. And I'm perfectly happy to use either as an adjective, in case I feel the need to refer to a female or male engineer or doctor.
As for crayons, I just remembered a story my mother told me long ago. When she was a little girl, she distressed a boy in her class by telling him that Santa Claus wasn't real, and in his distress, he grabbed her leg, rubbed her foot back and forth on the ground, and said, "Crane, crane, why don't you write?" She was just as confused as you are at this point, but then she worked out that he was referring to her middle name, Crane. To him, that word was the same as "crayon." (I don't know if this is a matter of dialect or idiolect, but it took place in upstate New York, not far from Buffalo.)
Debby