Cut the Mustard (episode #1646)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And Grant, I need some marital counseling.

I hope you can help me out here.

Oh, no.

You guys are so cute together.

Well, yes, for the most part, we are.

But there’s this one thing, this one, I know I’m not supposed to peeve about language.

But there’s this one thing that my wife does.

She’ll talk about, oh, yeah, the flashlight lives on that table over there.

Or the peanut butter lives in that cabinet.

You know, where’s the peanut butter?

Oh, it’s in the cabinet where it always lives.

You’re not fond of that verb, to live, meaning that’s where it stays, that’s where it belongs?

Yeah, not if it’s an inanimate object.

Are you peeving?

How dare you?

I know we preach against that all the time, but every time she says…

Sometimes you can’t help it.

Well, of course, it’s good-natured kidding, but I always make the argument it’s not alive.

But I don’t know.

I mean, of course, the point here is that you can’t break down the English language too far or you’ll drive yourself nuts, right?

That’s right.

The idiomatic expression to say that something lives on a shelf, meaning it belongs there or that’s where it stays, is comprehensible.

Whether or not it annoys you, it’s also grammatical.

It’s syntactically and semantically valid.

Okay.

Now it’s your turn to order dinner, Martha.

We would love to hear about those funny little language disputes that you have with your spouse.

The ones where you kind of let off a little pressure on the relationship, on the nonsense of life.

Let us know what you’re discussing about language.

877-929-9673 in Canada and the United States.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

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We’ve got a dozen ways to reach us on our website,

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sean Durkin calling from Oneonta, New York.

Oneonta.

I love it.

Beautiful country up there.

City of the hills.

Welcome to the show, Sean.

Well, I’ll tell you, as I was growing up in northern New Jersey,

I had a really tight-knit family, but it extended to multiple generations and to just dozens and dozens of cousins just spread out across the tri-state.

But the German side of my family used to use a word that sort of inspired this imagination in a young person called Bux to Huda.

Whenever they would take us in the car and not really want to admit where we were going, we’re going on an adventure.

We’re going on a short or long trip, they would say we’re going on Bux Dehuda.

And a Bux Dehuda could be anything from going to Cape Cod and seeing lighthouses,

To going to the Jersey Shore, going to the Adirondacks,

Or even just a local park that, you know, one of the cousins had grown up in,

That you were, was grown over by ivy and history now, and hidden behind a lot of buildings.

But it was just a magical experience in a really vague word,

And I was wondering if you had heard that before used to have assigned maybe these short, unannounced,

Maybe even unplanned now that I’m an adult with five kids of my own.

Sometimes I take my kids on Bux to Hooters just because I don’t know where the hell we’re going.

I need to get them out of the house.

Right, right.

Strapped in is better than running wild.

Amen.

Let me ask you, were these German Germans or German heritage?

A little bit of both.

You know, one of the legends of my family is that my fourth or fifth great-grandfather is Wilhelm Grimm, one of the storytellers that wrote this.

Is this true?

In fact, the Grimms, my grandmother was a Grimm, and they all lived in an apartment in the Bronx near some bridge.

But it was that side of the family, for sure.

So German immigrants, at the very least.

How about that?

Well, Grimms are considered…

The Grimm brothers are considered two of the fundamental founders of modern linguistics.

Yes, indeed.

Well, my twin brother and I fancy ourselves storytellers, but we’re not of that ilk, I don’t think.

I think we take more of the against the gab from the Irish side.

Yeah, that’s a high bar to reach.

But Buxtehude, that sounds familiar, Martha.

Yeah, and your mention of the Grimms makes your question even more exciting.

Now, there actually is a word Buxtehude, and it’s spelled B-U-X-T-E-H-U-D-E, Buxtehude.

There is an X.

Yes, and indeed, it is a little town in northern Germany.

Often in German, people will say of somebody that they’re Aus Buxtehude, meaning they’re from out in the sticks.

It was just a funny sounding name that people applied to a faraway place.

Like you might say, oh, you know, he’s from Timbuktu or they’re from out in the boonies.

But it’s actually this beautiful little town.

I’ve never been there, but I want to go because it looks beautiful in the pictures I’ve seen.

But the really cool thing here is that there is a Grimm’s fairy tale connection.

Did you know this?

No, I did not know that.

I did not know that at all.

First of all, I’d rather go there, too.

Yes, absolutely. Yes, the tale of the hare and the hedgehog race takes place on the heath in Buxtehude. You know, I mean, the grim fairy tales are often pretty grim. And in this story, a hare makes fun of a hedgehog and challenges the animal to a race.

And so they’re each running down a plowed field side by side, each in a furrow.

But what happens is that the hedgehog outsmarts the hare because he sneaks his wife, who is also a hedgehog, who looks very much like him because hedgehogs tend to look similar.

So he sticks his wife at the end of the furrow.

And so the male hedgehog and the hare are starting their race.

And the hare just starts running and running and running and gets to the end of the furrow.

And the little wife says, I’m already here.

That does sound like a family member of mine.

Oh, does it?

And so the hare says, oh, wait, let’s, you know, make it two out of three.

And so then they run the other way.

And, of course, the male hedgehog is at the other end of the furrow.

And so the hare says, well, let’s do it again.

And so the hare and the hedgehog supposedly race for 73 times.

And on the 74th trip, the hare drops dead in the middle of the furrow.

Oh, no.

So a typical grim fairy tale.

But by tradition, this story happened on a small heath near Buxtehude.

Exactly.

Buxtehude Heath.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that’s really cool.

That’s very cool.

Well, I think it’s appropriate being on such a long adventure and a long trip and arriving in a town like Oneonta that out in the sticks may be quite apropos.

But that’s also a nice country there, too.

Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Yeah, it’s beautiful.

There’s another story about Bux to Hooda they tell.

There’s an old saying that Bux to Hooda is where dogs bark with their tails.

Have you ever heard that one?

No.

So they’re chasing their tails?

Well, where dogs bark with their tails.

And what it’s referring to is that some of the oldest German churches are in Buxthuhudah,

And the bells in these churches are rung with a rope and a clapper.

So the dogs barking is the bells ringing, and the tails are the ropes.

Wow, interesting.

How exciting.

I knew you’d get to the bottom of it.

Well, Sean, thank you so much for your time and your call.

We really appreciate it.

It’s been my pleasure.

I’ve been a long-time fan.

All right, take care.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for the question.

We’d love to hear your story about your heritage and how the language carries on generation after generation.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Joan from Augusta, Georgia.

My grandfather, he was born in Georgia in 1933.

And he, when I was growing up, he always called onions, onions.

And I’ve never heard anyone else call them that.

And I was just curious if it was a dialect to Georgia or if anyone else used that, if it was just something special to him.

And it was just always something funny growing up to hear him say urnion, like an urnion sandwich instead of onion.

Urnion.

So are these those delicious Vidalia onions from Georgia or any kind of onion?

I’m sure they were mainly Vidalia.

And if you spelled that, am I understanding that would be E-R-N-I-O-N, Ernie?

Yes, that’s what I think.

Okay.

Your grandfather had a dialect feature.

Yeah, there are records going back as far as the 1700s of people in the United States pronouncing onion a lot of different ways.

It could come out as ingon or angin or angin or angin or oinion.

Lots of spellings, lots of pronunciations.

And all of them going back ultimately to this problem of the word being borrowed from French, where the French pronunciation never fully translated into English in any one way.

So think about it like this.

Onion is a French word.

It’s onion, something like that.

It was borrowed multiple times into English because for a long time it was only a French word.

But as it got borrowed and Anglicized, all these different traditions of pronouncing it caught on throughout the different regions of English.

And then when you tack on top of that all this other dialect stuff going on where people have their own particular ways and their own particular geographies, then it transformed even more.

I think I counted 32 possible pronunciations of this word over the last 300 years.

That’s crazy.

Grant, you really know your onions.

But yeah, so it’s just, it really has to do about it being A, being borrowed multiple times from French into English, and B, no one pronunciation ever winning out until ultimately in the last 100 years, onion winning out.

And it’s weird that we pronounce both of those O’s as a schwa, right?

An sound.

So that itself is weird.

Even now, even though we think of that as an ordinary pronunciation, that is odd to pronounce O’s as ‘s, as schwa’s.

We just don’t do that for many words except maybe mother and brother.

Joan, I’m curious about those sandwiches.

I think it was just sliced onions and mayonnaise and white bread.

There was nothing I want to eat.

Oh, my.

But there’s a lot of solid vitamins in that.

But you could, here’s the thing.

I just want to say about onions and speak on behalf of the onion.

When we think about scurvy and ancient sailing days, and we think about lemons and limes, the answer wasn’t lemon and limes.

It was onions.

An onion a week will give you enough vitamin C to keep off scurvy.

Is that right?

Yeah.

I didn’t know that.

And onions keep longer.

What about onions?

Onions keep even longer still.

But anyway, yeah.

So your grandpa was, he was fine.

He was Armenian.

It’s a thing.

And it’s a bit of color that I love in our language.

Well, thank you.

I’m glad to know he didn’t just make it up, that it came from somewhere.

And I think I’ll keep calling it Armenian so that my kids can keep that little piece of him going.

Yeah, hang on to those linguistic heirlooms, Joan.

Yes, for sure.

Joan, call us again sometime with another question from your grandfather’s language, all right?

Okay. Thank you all so much.

Be well. Bye-bye.

Well, if you call us to talk about language, it will bring tears to our eyes.

No, really. 877-929-9673.

Or send your thoughts about language to words@waywordradio.org.

More about language and how we use it as A Way with Words continues.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, this show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And walking in slowly with a metal detector, a magnifying glass, and a compass, it’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski, looking for a clue.

I hope you wait a minute.

Yes, well, I put all these things down.

There’s hardly any space in here with all the dictionaries.

People always ask me, how did the modern Olympics come about?

Why? I don’t know.

Well, the surprising answer is that the events evolve by changing letters in their names.

For example, when the Olympics took place in a more rural setting, there used to be an event where athletes would take turns jumping over small lemming-like rodents.

One year they just changed the letter, and the modern pole vault came out of the early vole vault.

Oh, boy.

Oh, goodness.

Get ready for it. Here it comes.

So I just watched the Olympics, so it’s time for talk about early summer Olympic sports.

Here we go.

People were once very afraid of getting into the water, but they were quite practiced at throwing stones across it.

At a level of simultaneity, and what sport was that?

Yeah, so you’re skimming rocks, right?

Right.

And you changed the K to a W?

Well, yes, exactly.

They changed the K to a W, and it became synchronized swimming instead of—

Synchronized skimming.

Synchronized skimming, yes.

Okay, now I get how it goes.

Oh, okay.

I added the simultaneity just because I enjoy the word simultaneity.

I never get a chance to say it, so there we go.

And it’s a nice image, you know?

It is.

Synchronized skimming.

I like that.

Yeah, two people throwing rocks.

Or reading books really quickly.

Exactly.

Have you ever been to the theater and marveled at all the different ways the actors take a curtain call?

Some of them dip real low and some of them curtsy.

And there’s a real art to it, which is why medals were once awarded in what sport?

Bowing instead of rowing.

Exactly.

Bowing instead of rowing.

I think one of the reasons people were afraid of the swimming may have been the incident that occurred when they tried to mix aquatics and spring-driven bouncing equipment.

They figured if you can bounce up and down on land, why not in a pool?

Things didn’t work out so well in what sport?

Oh, shoot.

Water pogo.

Water pogo, not a success.

Water pogo.

I think I found the one I can meddle in.

Yeah.

Going for the gold and the water logo.

That I’d like to see.

Back in the day, people would create a sport using whatever was on hand or whatever was on foot.

Personally, I think I could earn at least a bronze in tossing my Nikes as far as possible in what sport?

The shoe put.

The shoe put, yes, that’s right, which eventually became the shot put.

They said, let’s not use shoes.

Let’s walk on them instead.

And we’ll use this shot that we have lying around.

So those are our Summer Olympics change a letter questions.

And you guys were fantastic.

Really, really good job.

Oh, thank you so much, John.

And if you want more bogus etymologies, you can call John.

But if you want to find out some real word origins or talk about any other aspect of language whatsoever, you can give us a call.

877-929-9673, or send your thoughts about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s David, and I had a question about accents.

Great. Where are you calling from, David?

Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Well, ask us about accents.

So, I’m a software engineer, have been for 30 years, but previous career, I was a truck driver, and this was, again, several decades ago.

So I’d have the CB on sometimes and was born and raised in the Midwest.

So I sound like I do now for my whole life.

And I noticed on the CB, no matter where I went, the accent of the people there, because I was a new truck driver at the time, but the accent of those people, it was different.

But it wasn’t like from Oklahoma and it wasn’t from New Jersey.

It was sort of a mishmash, but it was the same on the radio, no matter where I was in the country.

So I was wondering instead of, or not instead of, in addition to regional accents, is there a such thing as occupational accents?

You’ve got groups of people around each other, all waking hours, and their accent becomes that way?

Love this question.

Can you do your impression of the accent for us?

No, it’s been decades.

Oh, come on, David.

Breaker 1-9.

You got the one honeybee here.

What’s your 20?

See, that didn’t sound right.

The words were right, but the accent wasn’t.

It’s been a long time since I was honeybee on the CB radio.

Do you remember the movie Smoky and the Bandit?

I do.

With Burt Reynolds and Sally Field and Jerry Reed.

I feel like people on CB who are speaking English try to sound like Jerry Reid from that 1977 movie.

It’s a kind of a generic country accent, kind of like country singers use even if they’re not from the South.

It reminds me so much of that.

Yeah, sort of.

Sort of. okay

If anyone hasn’t listened to the CB radio in a while and you want to hear what we’re talking about, there are recordings on Internet Archive.

You can look for, for example, user 187outlaw has posted a bunch.

But there is something happening there.

And to answer your question, you can have, I guess it’s called an in-group accent more than an occupational accent.

A group of people who are involved in the same enterprise will begin to talk like each other.

And just like in any group of people, they’re influenced by people with the most prestige or respect.

And so if you listen to some of those recordings on Internet Archive, some of them are 10 or 15 or even more years old, you will still hear people using that CB radio way of talking.

Now, some of it isn’t really an accent.

You know, a linguist defines an accent differently than a non-linguist.

So what it really is, it’s about the medium.

There are some difficulties with talking on CB radio.

There are lots of people to talk over and static to talk through.

So you have to adopt this rhythm and this pacing and this intonation that makes your speech more intelligible.

And there’s a lot of repetition, too.

If you listen, people do say the same things over and over, one right after the other.

So they will say Breaker 1-9, Breaker 1-9, which means somebody’s on Channel 19 and is looking for somebody to talk to.

But I still think there’s a little bit of a almost southern tinge to the way English speakers talk in North America on CB.

Well, and you remember you mentioned country music.

And I’m thinking about that song that was super popular in the mid-70s, Convoy by C.W. McCall.

Oh, right.

Oh, yeah.

Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy.

Well, that’s why I mentioned Jerry Reed, because he does Eastbound and Down and Smoky and the Banquet.

And that song was a huge hit for him, partly because it’s a great song, but partly because of the movie.

And in the movie, Jerry Reed is on the CB a lot.

All of the truck drivers are.

And all of them talk approximately like what David is referring to.

Anyway, the short version is yes, people can adopt occupational accents.

Like, for example, think about the way pilots all sound alike when they talk on the PA.

Right?

Right, right.

Yeah, or the air traffic control.

You know, they’re talking to these people all day long, more than they talk with their family.

So, yeah, would they all start sounding the same?

Well, David, thanks for a really interesting question.

We haven’t talked about this before.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye.

Well, we’d love to hear about how they talk in your occupation or your hobby, 877-929-9673.

Or send us audio clips.

Attach them to an email.

words@waywordradio.org.

Well, Grant, I found one more thing to worry about.

Becoming addicted to seaweed.

This is your pond voice.

Doggone it.

I was trying to sneak this in.

Do you know what you’re supposed to do if you become addicted to seaweed?

There is a solution.

What is it?

Seek help.

Oh, terrible.

I know.

Terrible.

But you busted me again.

I never can slip these past you.

You’ve got to stop using your pun voice, Martha.

Oh, gone it.

Oh, gone it.

I’m going to have to practice more.

As I always say, send your terrible puns to Martha at waywordradio.org.

And if you want to talk about language, you can call us 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Amanda Levy, and I’m calling from Reno, Nevada.

Hey, Amanda, what’s up?

Hi, Amanda, welcome to the show.

I guess it really started because my husband and I, we don’t always agree on terms.

He’ll say close the light.

I say turn off the light.

So we just have a, we don’t always agree.

And so we were at a hotel and we were pulling out the fold-out couch.

And I said, oh, I wonder if this is any comfortable because my sister was about to stay on it.

And he said, why did you say any?

And I said, what do you mean?

And he said, that doesn’t make sense.

You could have just said, I wonder if this is comfortable.

And I said, yeah, and maybe that’s not exactly what I was asking.

I don’t know if I just want it to be comfortable.

I wonder if it’s any comfortable.

And he said, that doesn’t make sense.

So I consulted Google, couldn’t find anything.

So I was just calling you guys, the experts, to see if there is, what am I trying to ask?

Does that make sense?

Thank you.

So it translates to, is this bed at all comfortable?

Right, exactly.

Maybe any just replaces at all.

The degree, what is the degree of comfortable?

Maybe that’s what I would ask.

Yeah, that’s what I was picking up.

It sounds like, what is the degree of comfort there?

I wouldn’t say that it’s standard at all and certainly not colloquial, which is it’s not idiomatic.

People aren’t saying this all over the place, but it is comprehensible.

Typically, you find any used this way as an adverb in front of well-known adjectives.

Like, is this any good? Is this any better? Is this any or I can’t wait any longer?

Or is there any more?

But to replace any of those adjectives with another adjectives does make sense.

I could see why an English speaker would do that.

Right?

Because good and better and longer and more here are all adjectives, and so it’s comfortable.

Yeah.

Okay.

So he’s right to point out that it’s odd, but you’re okay to use it.

Okay.

Oh, that’s the perfect compromise.

I love it.

Thank you so much, Amanda.

We’ll talk to you again sometime.

All right?

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye.

Well, if you have anything that you want to talk with us about, we would love to hear about it.

If it has to do with language, 877-929-9673.

Joe called us from West Virginia to say that his dad used to refer to a basketball layup as a snowbird.

And he’d never heard anybody else use that term.

And he wondered if it was his dad’s term.

But no, it’s a common term.

Snowbirding in basketball is when a player hangs back, you know, back past half court while her teammates play defense.

And when the opposing team misses a shot, then that player breaks for the basket where she can be ready for a long pass and an easy layup.

And that’s called snowboarding, probably because it describes people who move to warmer climates during the winter months.

You know, they sort of go off and avoid the tougher conditions.

And I said she because I’ve been watching a lot of Indiana Fever basketball.

You’re an ex-basketball player, right?

Well, yes, I played 35 seconds against Florida State once.

That’s enough. It counts.

Sports is just full of fantastic language and slang.

We’d love to hear your favorites, 877-929-9673, or try us on social media.

You can find all of our handles and nicknames on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Eric Handel from West Lafayette, Indiana.

West Lafayette. Hi, Eric. Welcome to the program. What’s up?

I was having a discussion with my family regarding the phrase, being too old to cut the mustard, and my son said he’d never heard it.

So I was wondering if you had any insights on this too old to cut the mustard or too old to cut the mustard was sort of our debate going back and forth as to which one it was originally.

What was the conversation about when this came up?

What was happening?

What was meant by that?

Oh, I think I said I was too old to do something anymore.

And I think I said I was too old to cut the mustard.

And my son goes, I’ve never heard that in my life.

And he’s 22.

And I was like, oh, well, it’s not something I say all the time.

Yeah, and 22 is young enough where most things are new still.

Yeah, and my wife had said she always thought it was too old to cut the mustard.

And I remember on a cruise we took a long time ago that we had the mustard was where they showed you where the lifeboats and life vests were.

And I thought, well, that makes sense, too, because at some point, you know, you’re in your age.

You’re like, well, maybe I need to know where the life vests are on this boat.

So you’re too old to cut the mustard.

But then also harvesting mustard is also hard work, bending over and cutting plants.

I’m just not for sure.

So we’re talking about mustard, M-U-S-T-A-R-D, versus mustard, M-U-S-T-E-R.

What do you think, Martha?

The more common phrase is cut the mustard, like the thing that you slather on food, cut the mustard.

And you made the point that mustard actually is a hard plant to cut.

It’s a fibrous plant and it can be kind of challenging, especially when it gets tall.

But we think that it probably, the phrase probably goes back to the idea of mustard just being this kind of spicy condiment.

In fact, as early as the 1600s, people were talking about something being as hot as mustard or as strong as mustard or as keen as mustard.

It may be that the idea of cutting mustard and the spicy quality of mustard sort of reinforced the idea, but most likely it comes from the idea of the spice itself, of it being spicy and strong and keen.

So you’d be too old to cut the mustard, then you’d be too old to have spicy food or too old to not?

It’s not literal.

Well, not literally. Yeah, not literally.

Yeah, the cut is a little bit problematic, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah, the cut is problematic.

One of the earliest uses we know of in print talks about someone not being tall enough to cut the mustard.

Because as Martha said, the plant can grow tall.

So it’s somebody who is short maybe in mental stature rather than physical stature when we use it figuratively.

There is another aspect specifically to the form too old to cut the mustard.

And it has to do with a lack of male virility.

Oh.

I don’t think you were saying that about yourself, Eric.

But correct me if I’m wrong.

I was too old to lift, I think, a heavy box is what it was.

Gotcha.

Part of what’s happening here is that cut the mustard is being confused with pass muster.

And those are different.

The last is M-U-S-T-E-R.

And the first is M-U-S-T-A-R-D.

Cut the mustard with a D and pass muster with just an R at the end have become synonyms, but they didn’t start out that way.

Yeah, mustard historically has been a sort of positive idea.

You might talk about somebody being mustered back in the early 20th century, and that meant to be sharp-witted or to be very good or excellent.

So it’s all sort of mixed up in there, sort of slathered like something.

Mixed up like a good condiment.

Yeah, yeah.

Like the comment, right?

Yes, yes.

Eric, thank you so much for sharing this little anecdote with us and hope that helped.

Nope.

Thank you guys.

Love your show.

Yeah.

Take care.

Thanks for calling, Eric.

I know.

You can pass muster easily.

Just call us 877-929-9673 and spill your guts into our voicemail.

Grant, you remember our conversation with Kelsey about wishing well eggs?

Yeah, that’s a piece of bread, maybe buttered into the hole torn in the middle, and you fry the egg right there in the hole.

Right. And it goes by lots of different names like cowboy eggs and pirate’s eye.

We also heard another name from Lydia Elizabeth.

She lives in Viroqua, Wisconsin.

She said, my family called them UFOs.

And that was a name that they got from a kid’s cookbook.

And it stands for Unidentified Frying Object.

Oh.

Well, I hope you know what you’re eating.

Right.

Mommy, can we have UFOs for breakfast?

I love it.

We don’t care if you’re an earthling or an alien.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

This show is about language seen through the lens of family, history, and culture.

Stick around for more.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

The organization called California Labradors, Retrievers, and More finds homes for dogs.

And if you go to their website, you’ll see lots of photos of adoptable pups.

But as cute as they are, what really strikes me is their names.

A lot of the dogs that they rescue are pregnant.

And once that dog gives birth, the volunteers raise those puppies until they’re adoptable.

Now, the nonprofit has lots of dogs.

And to keep track of them all, each litter is named according to a theme.

I looked on their website the other day, and there was a litter name for the story of the three bears.

So one of the pups was named Big Bear, and there was also Little Bear and Wee Bear and Goldilocks and Porridge.

Grant, Porridge.

Porridge.

Pet names are always good when they’re about food.

Porridge, little Pori.

Porridge.

Yeah, little Pori.

I guess that would work.

But, I mean, it’s interesting to me that they have a challenge of, you know, there’s so many dogs that need homes.

And so it’s a real challenge to come up with these themes and then come up with these names within the themes.

But, of course, it’s an understandable system given the number of dogs they have.

But it got me thinking about how we decide to name our companion animals.

Because I’m sure a lot of people change the dog’s name after they’re adopted.

But it also seems to me that while we may have a name in mind when we go to look at dogs, sometimes those dogs tell us what their names are, or those cats, you know, after a few days.

Right. You just wait and see, right?

Are they rambunctious? Are they loving? You just don’t know.

You’re not going to name an evil cat that doesn’t want to be pet.

It’s sweetie.

Or maybe you will, ironically.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

We fostered a tiny little kitten that we called Fang.

I love it.

I love big names for small animals, too.

Right.

Right.

Or for big animals.

You know, a Great Dane that you name Fifi or something.

Right.

Right.

We would love to hear about how you named your litter of animals, be it cats, dogs, llamas, whatever, 877-929-9673 is toll free in the United States and Canada.

Or you can send us a voice note to words@waywordradio.org or just drop a regular old email in there.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yeah, hi.

My name is Jacques Van Rooyen calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

Omaha, Nebraska.

Jacques as in the French Jack?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, welcome to the program.

How can we help?

Well, thank you.

Not so long ago, I heard somebody use a word that I’ve heard many times and I understand and everything, but never had considered where it came from.

And it’s the word skosh, which is used to mean like a little, so like just a skosh, right?

And for some reason, the day that I heard that word, it occurred to me to consider where it came from.

And so I looked into it, and I was thinking all along that maybe it was like a Yiddish word, it kind of sounded Yiddish to me.

But when I looked into it, it looked like it actually comes from a Japanese word.

And the word apparently was brought over by Korean War vets who had maybe taken leave in Japan, had picked up the word there, and then brought it back.

And so all along we’ve been using this word skosh.

I had no idea it came from Japanese.

And this is all interesting to me because I’m really interested in foreign languages, particularly Asian languages.

I’ve studied Chinese for many years.

My daughter studies Japanese.

And I know there’s so many languages or words from Europe that we use all the time.

And we know where they came from mostly, and we know when we’re using them.

But hardly do we understand what might be like an Asian word in our language that we’re using, completely unaware of.

And so I was curious if there’s other words like this, word skosh, where we’re using it and don’t even know that where it comes from or that we’ve incorporated some Japanese or some Chinese into our common everyday parlance.

That’s a great question because it gets to the heart of something really important about language, which is that etymologies don’t travel with words very well, regardless of where they come from.

Like their origins need to be explored to really get to the root of it.

I mean, sometimes you can sell a little word sounds French or looks Latin.

But yeah, your question is powerfully important when it comes to understanding language and how it got this way.

I mean, I’m thinking about the word tycoon.

I mean, you probably have more expertise on these than we do if you’ve been studying Asian languages for a while.

But I know that the word tycoon comes from a Japanese word that means great lord and goes back to a Chinese term.

I think beyond that, it means big prince.

But we have fundamental food words as well, like the word tea, T-E-A, meaning to drink.

It is one of the most traveled words in any languages.

It’s spread throughout the entire world from a dialect of Chinese.

And we use it in English without even thinking about that.

Ketchup, the word ketchup, comes from a Cantonese word.

Originally referred to a fish sauce, a fermented fish sauce.

And we’ve had it in English since the 17th century.

So many.

Tsunami, kimono, karaoke, futon, origami.

I’m thinking of, you know, you might have a yen for catch up.

That comes from a Chinese word meaning a hope or desire or craving.

And kowtow, of course, is interesting as well.

Right.

You know, refers to the ancient practice of greeting a superior, like an elder or a leader or an emperor.

And you bow down to that person.

And I think kowtow literally translates as knock your head.

But we can go to other parts of Asia we can look into the Indian subcontinent so words like juggernaut and pundit and loot and avatar and bungalow all come from that part of the world.

Interesting avatar being Sanskrit originally but also appearing in just like T appearing in lots of languages throughout the world now.

Especially among video gamers now that’s right yeah so yeah we could go we could do all day.

Do this all day how much time do you have?

One word that I as I kind of racked my brain to think about one was the phrase gung ho.

Oh yeah which was really interesting and I and I thought I had the suspicion it might be from the Chinese and so I asked around to some friends you know see if they knew what it meant.

Because like I did and they did also, you know, be overly enthusiastic.

And it seemed like everyone knew it,

But nobody understood or had any idea where it came from, including myself.

And it turns out that one also has like a military connection.

Being brought over during World War II.

And having nothing to do with its original meaning either.

It’s really interesting.

Well, kind of, because the original meaning was something like work together or a cooperative.

And in that idea, to be gung-ho means that you want to work with somebody on a thing.

You’re gung-ho for whatever they’re suggesting and it’s still used in the U.S. Marines and kind of has a different meaning there it’s a little derogatory if someone is gung-ho there they’re too all in they’re too much about showing off and participating and proving that they’re the best that they’re the most aware of what’s happening.

Jacques clearly the three of us could go on for a very long time about this and I really appreciate your bringing this up because because you’re right. Usually on this show, we end up talking mainly about Indo-European, well, European languages.

It’s nice to talk about these other ones as well.

Definitely. Thank you.

Yeah, our pleasure, Jacques. And if you have any more questions, give us another call sometime, all right?

Will do.

All right, take care of yourself.

You can always call us 877-929-9673, toll free in the U.S. and Canada.

And you can reach us from anywhere in the world.

Go to waywordradio.org/contact to find out how.

In German, you might hear someone say, Der Bus hält an jeder Milchkanne,

Which basically translates to the bus stops at every milk can.

And what it means is the bus stops at every small out-of-the-way town.

Oh, I love that.

Using milk can to refer to little tiny towns.

Oh, that’s so sweet.

A little dwarf.

A little dwarf, yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Penny Rossiter in Savannah, Georgia.

Hey, Penny, we’re glad to have you. What’s up?

Well, my father was a World War II veteran, and he was in the Navy and served in the South Pacific in the Battle of Guadalcanal.

And anybody who is in my age bracket and had a parent who served in that branch of the military probably knows that they had a lot of expressions and names for other people that seemed to be indicative of that era that they went through.

And my dad always used the term, if he talked about other people in a certain way or another person in a certain way, he would say, that person doesn’t know if he’s punched, bored, or drifted.

I never knew what that term meant.

And as an adult, I’ve tried to Google that term, and I get absolutely nothing.

But in my mind, in my older mind, I thought, well, it probably has to do with something he heard or learned in the Navy.

Penny, when you say that he talked about people in a certain way, what was that certain way?

Well, now that I look back on my childhood, it must have meant that the person he was talking about didn’t know what they were talking about.

Or they didn’t have enough experience to know what they were talking about.

Because it was almost, I don’t want to say in a derogatory fashion,

But it wasn’t a compliment when he said that about somebody.

Let me phrase it that way.

And I’ve never been able to, I’ve never heard anybody else use that expression,

And I’ve never been able to find out what that expression meant or where it came from.

I would say for certain that your information about the Navy is important here, but I’d also say that it is derogatory.

It is basically saying that somebody doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.

You know, there’s a lot of expressions like that.

Doesn’t know how to pour any liquid out of a boot, that sort of thing.

Right, right, right.

Which is the kind of thing I’d expect from a fellow, you know, from that era, from the Navy, too.

But there are a lot of variations of this.

It definitely has a connection to the Navy, especially in the UK and the Commonwealth countries like Australia.

And it can mean confused or foolish or idiotic or ill-informed, that sort of thing.

And it’s connected particularly to woodcraft, the making of things with wood.

Because all of the forms of the verbs that are used in this expression, bored, punched, drilled, countersunk, reamed, tapered, all of these are things that you can do to wood when you’re making a ship, when you’re putting it together or repairing it.

So one long form is he doesn’t know if his behind, his rear, his derriere, he doesn’t know if his derriere is bored, punched, drilled, or countersunk.

So a lot of times, though, I’m using derriere there when a much coarser word is sometimes used.

But you get the picture, I think.

Or punched board or burnt out by lightning is one that I like.

So the bad things that happen to ships, it sounds like.

Well, they’re good things as well.

He doesn’t know what his circumstances are.

It’s not about bad things necessarily happen to ships.

It’s things that you might do on purpose.

Right.

Because if you countersink something, it’s when you put a nail or a screw into a piece of wood and it’s flush with the surface.

Right, right.

So, yeah, that’s what we know.

There’s another one that’s a little different.

And you can say someone doesn’t know whether they’re Arthur, Martha, or Mabel.

I have that problem.

Never heard that one before.

Yeah, I run into that a lot.

Penny, I bet we hear from some other Navy veterans who have expressions like that.

Yeah.

I really hope so because that’s been a long time ago, World War II.

But thanks for doing the research on that and letting me know and figuring that out for me.

I really appreciate that.

Our pleasure.

Take care of yourself, Penny.

All right.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We always appreciate hearing about language from the Navy or any other branch of the service.

Give us a call and tell us about it, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Katie calling from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Hi, Katie, how you doing?

Well, I’ve been working at a vet clinic for a couple of years now,

And something that I’ve heard from many of the doctors, other physicians,

Is, you know, when we have a patient that’s either just not responding to our treatment or they’re, you know, just really, really sick and we’ve been trying to do everything we can.

Some of the phrases that the doctor will use says, you know, well, I’ve thrown the book at this dog and nothing is working. So I’ve heard it in other places other than breastfed med. I’ve heard it in human medicine. I think I’ve heard it for like people getting their car fixed. You know, I’ve thrown the book at it and your car’s not working. But I just kind of wondered, where does that come from? And, you know, hopefully there’s no background of people actually thinking you could throw a book at something and it’s osmotically absorbing knowledge that’s inside. Hopefully that’s not it.

So you have this mental picture of somebody literally throwing a book. Yeah. Good thing that’s not the case.

No, but you know, people would put, you know, they used to put Bibles on people exercising them, you know, so you never really know that people might find that books have a power beyond what we might actually know.

It’s true.

They are cultural forces.

That’s right.

And sometimes if somebody has a little protuberance on their hand, they call that a Bible bump because you would put a Bible on top of it to kind of weigh it down and make it go back down.

I thought you smacked it with the Bible.

No, no, no.

Wow, I didn’t know that.

Oh, my God.

I mean, we do smack it.

I know we’ve talked about that before.

Martha, let’s go back to the veterinarian stuff.

Why are people throwing books at animals or not?

They’re not.

They’re not throwing books at animals. Thank goodness.

No, the expression to throw the book at is pretty straightforward if you know that it comes from the world of criminal slang. The book in this case is the criminal code. You know, the law books that contain all the possible crimes, crimes that you can be charged with and all the possible punishments.

And so back in the early 1900s, if you got the book in prison slang, that meant that you got the maximum sentence. You know, you got the worst. You got the book. You got charged with everything.

And so the expression then, by extension, came to mean, you know, using every possible resource, every possible strategy or solution to tackle that problem. So in the case of the vet, they might be doing diet and this drug or that drug or maybe a little surgery that they’re throwing the book, meaning that they’re trying every single thing they can think of.

And I kind of thought, you know, throwing the book at someone as well as like throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, you know, that people use the kitchen sink as well.

Yeah, kind of.

It’s metaphorical in that same way.

Exactly.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, I’m a little relieved to know that it didn’t come from some medieval practice of like hitting people with books.

Give some of those animals a little squeeze for us, will you?

Oh, absolutely.

Will do.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

You too.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling.

Bye.

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Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye. you