Cut to the Chase

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Each week we take your questions about language.

You can ask us about word origins, old family sayings, pesky points of grammar, even slang.

Call us at 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or fire off an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant and Martha. This is Karen. I’m calling from San Diego.

Hi, Karen. What’s up?

Hi. Well, you know, this is something that I don’t know if it’s my old expository writing teacher that got me thinking about this,

But it was dangling modifiers and how they can be used a lot in public signs or newspapers.

And they can even be kind of humorous because they end up not really saying what they were intending to say.

And I have one that I just thought you guys probably had some funny examples,

But the one that I have in the elevator where I work says something to the effect of,

This elevator sometimes lurches when it first begins to operate.

Please hold on to the rail when using the elevator for your personal safety.

When you’re using the elevator for your personal safety?

And I always think every time I get in this elevator, and maybe it’s me being overly logical,

But I thought, I’m not using the elevator for my personal safety.

I’m lazy.

I’m using the elevator.

And then I found one also in the newspaper that said,

A soldier in Iraq helps to deliver a first baby in Virginia.

Right away I thought, wow, I would have thought a baby had been born in Virginia a long time ago.

But they have really long arms.

Yeah, yeah.

Headline speak tends to lend itself to these, doesn’t it?

Because they leave out articles and pronouns and prepositions and the whole thing.

Yeah, I always liked actors sent to jail for not finishing sentence.

That’s great.

There’s a place that I go when I want to find a lot more of this kind of thing,

And not just dangling modifiers, but just bad signs in general,

And it’s to Flickr, the photo website. Do you know it?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of it.

F-L-I-C-K-R, and there’s a whole bunch of groups there that do this.

One of them is called the Strange Signs Pool.

But the best one is called The Bad Sign Brigade.

So you just go to Flickr, look for Bad Sign Brigade.

And it’s image after image of just signs where somebody just wasn’t.

They were on the clock, but they weren’t on the job, if you know what I mean.

They weren’t doing it.

They weren’t doing it.

So Michael Quinion of the World Wide Words newsletter, Google him, that’s Q-U-I-N-I-O-N.

He takes submissions of this sort of thing from his readers.

So he always has a whole bunch of this wonderful stuff where you can get a little giggle.

Oh, that sounds good.

Yeah, like Queen Mary having bottom scraped.

I love that one.

Yeah, I’ve seen ones where they show inappropriate use of quotes where I think it said security guard.

And for some reason they put quotes around it.

And so the question was, is here a security guard?

They need an elevator for their personal security, obviously.

That’s right.

Well, thanks a lot.

All right, Karen.

Thank you so much for your call.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

There’s one that I saw this week on the Bad Sign Brigade.

It says, part-time chefs and cooks required.

Must have a good understanding of English.

But, of course, chefs and cooks have apostrophes in them.

Oh.

Anyway, if something like this has caught your eye, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Erica from San Diego.

Well, hello, Erica.

Hi, Erica.

Hi.

What’s going on?

Well, I got a nasty little email from one of my clients at work,

And I turned to a coworker who had also received the same email,

And I said, man, she is such a pill.

And my co-worker said, oh, my grandmother used to say that.

And it had never occurred to me that it was an old phrase or something, you know, that not a lot of people said because it was something that I always heard in my family.

So I was wondering if that phrase is dying out or where it’s going or where it came from.

I don’t think there’s any evidence that is dying out.

How old are you, Erica, if you don’t mind me asking?

Oh, sure. I’m 29.

Well, Erica, if you’re using it, then it’s alive and well.

I don’t think that you have very much in your speech to worry about.

It’s not outdated.

It does have an old history, though.

Can you guess where it comes from?

Well, I’m guessing that it comes from medicine,

Like a bitter-tasting pill that you wouldn’t want to swallow.

Right.

But the key here is it’s something that tastes bitter,

But you take because you have to.

Right, exactly.

And this is exactly your situation, right?

Right.

The person is a client, so you have to put up with their nonsense.

So they’re medicine that’s hard to take.

Yes.

So they’re a jagged little pill, huh?

Yeah, yeah.

She’s not the best person in the world to work with, but that’s really interesting.

Well, that was very charitable of you, actually, just to call her a pill.

Yeah, I guess I could have chosen some other words.

Oh, that rascally woman.

That gel tab.

You know what this reminds me of, though, and this is completely unrelated to language,

But did you know that in the old days, and even still, they made medicines taste bad

Because the idea was if it tasted bad, it probably had to be good for you.

I didn’t know that.

Yeah, this whole idea of syrupy, sugary medicine mixes that we have today,

You know, the cherry-flavored, grape-flavored, whatever, forget it.

No, they’d put something like, I’m not sure I’m saying this correctly, but it’s a safetida?

Psymptopetigy. My dad used to wear that around his neck.

A-S-A-F-O-E-T-I-D-A.

And this is a nasty smelling thing.

It’s a little like anise, only much more bitter.

And they’d often put that in there.

It’s claimed that that has its own curative powers,

But usually it was put in there just because it tastes nasty.

Yeah, my dad used to wear that around his neck.

That’s how you warded off the flu back in the hills in North Carolina.

Wow.

So bonus information.

Yeah, the stinkier the better.

Right.

Well, I guess that makes everything better, which is why the phrase works.

Maybe that’s why it isn’t around as much today, or I don’t hear it as much as I guess.

Well, I think it’s around sufficiently that most people would understand you if you said it.

Right.

They might not use it themselves, but I think they’re going to know it.

Right.

Well, good luck at work, Erica.

Thank you so much.

All right. Take care.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, if you’re not feeling well, give us a call.

We’ll diagnose your condition or answer your language question.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or you can always join our discussions online.

That’s at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Matt from Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Hiya, Matt.

Hello, Matt.

Hi.

What are you calling us about?

Kind of a childhood memory floated back to me this summer

Of when my grandfather at the end of like a meal, or usually I think it was supper time,

Would use the phrase, good stuff Maynard.

I don’t know if it was just a polite way of telling grandma she’d cooked well,

Or it was something else, and it just came back to me,

And it’s been about 20 years since I’ve heard it.

But I was wondering where that came from and if it meant anything.

When did you first hear it?

I think he said it, and I was probably eight years old, so that was probably mid-1980s.

Mid-1980s, that’s about right.

And your grandmother wasn’t named Maynard?

No, she wasn’t.

Okay, just checking.

May for short.

Very embarrassing for her.

Did you ever eat malto meal?

I remember being talked about.

I don’t think I ever agreed to eat it if my mom served it.

Well, that’s actually the reason that the advertising agency that worked on behalf of the product, malto meal, had this whole series of ads with a father and a son.

And the father, as a way of kind of trying to goad the child into eating the malta meal, would say, good stuff, Maynard.

And these commercials, this is in basically pre-cable television days, three or four channels on the air.

These things ran for ages.

You can find a number of them on YouTube.

And he would say, good stuff, Maynard.

And they ran so often it became a catchphrase.

Really?

Good stuff, Maynard.

Yeah, I remember it very well.

And if you look at the commercials, I bet, I’m betting you’re like, oh, I remember that.

Because there’s this one that we used to make fun of.

There’s a little boy.

He’s all dressed up in his winter clothes.

He’s got the scarf, the hat, the coat, the gloves.

He’s all bummed.

He looks like a Michelin tire man, right?

And he’s like, I think I need some more mother meal.

You know, meaning he would have to take the whole outfit off, right?

And he’s got this, like, snotty kind of, I think I need some more mother meal.

That actually rings a bell.

Yeah, there we go.

That’s why you never ate the stuff, right?

Probably.

I don’t know if they say good stuff Maynard in that commercial, but it’s those series of commercials about this little boy and his family and the little boy is one over and starts to eat the malto meal.

I actually like the malto meal with lots of butter and sugar, of course.

I never had it, never heard of it.

I had cream of wheat.

But doesn’t the Maynard go back even further to Maynard G. Krebs on the old Dobie Gillis show?

Yeah, but the catchphrase, good stuff Maynard, I don’t think it goes back to Krebs, no.

Oh, I thought it did.

I thought he said that.

Even if it was older than that, it was definitely popularized by the commercials in the, I believe it was the late 70s and early 80s and maybe even through the 90s.

Good stuff, Maynard.

Well, good stuff, Grant.

Good stuff, Matt.

Thank you much.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, ringy-dingy-dingy.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Questions about grammar, slang, usage, old sayings, something you heard as a kid, something Grandpa used to say.

Or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Earlier this year, we tackled the slang term sketchy, which means creepy or alarming or suspicious.

Do you remember that, Martha?

I sure do.

In sketchy McSketcherson.

I can’t even say it.

Okay.

In sketchy McSketcherson, right?

Thank you.

Yes.

In sketchy.

Right.

Well, we traced the word back to sketchy as in sketchy details, meaning that the subject was unclear or poorly explained.

And we also talked, I think, about the colloquial use of sketchy to mean insubstantial or imperfect.

And we suggested that was the origin of the modern slang version of sketchy, meaning suspicious or creepy, right?

But a listener named Gwen wrote us to point out that there are a variety of similar terms that are used by people who are involved with other people who do the drug methamphetamine.

So a sketcher, for example, is someone who uses meth, or if you are sketching, then you are high on meth.

And sketchy is used to describe someone who appears to be high on meth, though you don’t know for sure, right?

And so I didn’t know these terms, so I looked them up, and sure enough, I found a bunch more examples of most of them that back went up.

But the difficulty here is I think that those are so new, and the sketch explosion in the United States,

Just the rapid use of it is relatively new compared to the longer history of the older meaning of sketch or sketchy.

That I just don’t think that we can say that the slang meaning came directly out of the meth user’s world.

I suspect that the meth using kind of sketches, the sketcher.

Yeah, they came, they forked.

They all came from the same path, but it’s not the source of it.

It’s simply a brother to the other more general use of sketchy as a slang term.

If you have an observation about language or slang, give us a call.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673 or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Think you’ve heard every Christmas carol ever written?

Well, think again.

That’s next on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and we’re joined once again by that quiz guy.

What’s his name?

John Chaneski.

Monkey Man.

I’m sorry.

What’s my name again?

Monkey Man.

Monkey Man.

Monkey Man, here to save the day.

Hi.

My secret identity is John Chaneski, by the way.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

How are you?

Hi, John.

What’s cooking over there?

This is a quiz about holiday songs.

I’ve taken the titles of several famous holiday songs.

What holidays?

Mother’s Day, Fourth of July.

Harbor Day.

Mostly end of the year holiday season songs.

Oh, that kind of holiday.

Yeah.

I took the titles of several famous holiday songs. I changed but one letter, and then I described the result of the new song that could be titled like that.

I see.

For example. You have an example.

Yeah.

This song tells how animals in the wild, like the lion, wildebeest, giraffe, and elephant, how they ring in the holidays. There’s a clue in the word ring.

Yeah.

Jungle bells. Jungle bells. Very good.

Yes.

One letter change.

Wow.

Oh, this is going to be great. Plug in brain.

Hello, what is my cord is unplugged here? Operator, operator, get my brain, please.

Right away, sir.

Now, remember, I’ve changed just one letter in the title of each song. Okay? One letter. One letter change.

Okay.

So if you want to write up a list of the real titles, it’ll help you out.

Oh, that’s cheating.

Okay, super duper.

Yeah.

Now, this song describes how game geeks like myself spend December 25th playing board games, especially the one where someone gets killed in the conservatory with a wrench.

Oh, my goodness.

So that would be Clue, right? But what would it be? What letter would change?

I’ll have a blue Christmas. Blue Christmas. Without you, Miss Scarlet. I know what I want for Christmas. Mrs. White.

You want the CD.

I want earplugs.

You want the CD of this, don’t you?

All right.

Now, this song is pretty funny. It’s about a kid who discovers one of his parents playing the dozens with a jolly old elf. He hears her say, “You’re so fat you caught six elves in your gravitational pull.”

I saw mommy dissing Santa Claus.

Right.

I saw mommy dissing Santa Claus. That’s actually the song I kind of want to hear that one.

Now, this song pretty much sums up the holidays for anyone with young kids. All you hear is, “Oh, I want a PlayStation. Oh, why do we have to go to Ann Eileen’s house?”

Wow.

Well, it’s not Silent Night.

No.

I don’t know. I need a little more information, I think.

Let’s see.

Oh, Howley Night?

No.

That’s an insertion of a letter. That’s funny, though. I can’t think of how the original song goes. But the key is in the, aww. I want a PlayStation. Why do we have to go?

So is it wine or cry?

Wine.

Wine.

Yeah.

Wine.

Good King.

No.

No.

I don’t know. I need a little more of this.

Shine, wine.

Well, it’s a Bing Crosby.

Oh, I’ll have a wine Christmas.

Oh.

It’s wine Christmas.

It’s wine Christmas, right.

People were pounding the dashboard. You know, many people think this song is associated with Christmas, but actually it tells the story of a future piano man born to Howard and Rosalind of the Bronx, New York, in 1949.

Joel, Joel.

Is that it?

The first Joel.

The first Joel.

Oh, I got it.

That’s right.

Very good.

Billy.

Billy, the first Joel.

-huh.

These are tricky. Howard and Rosalind. You know his parents’ names.

Howard and Rosalind. God bless Wikipedia.

That’s right.

Oh, my God. This song is about a woman who really desires fashion accessories made of a precious metal.

Silver cells?

Silver.

Close.

Am I silver?

Silver.

Yeah, almost there.

I’m working my way through the alphabet.

I’m not finding a word that works.

Fashion accessories.

Certain fashion accessories.

Silver belt.

Silver belt.

Silver belt.

Oh, I was thinking silver gels.

I like the shoes, but yeah, silver felt nice.

Now we have an idea of what a fashion accessory is for Martha.

Gels.

Gels shoes.

Yeah, they spike the hair a little bit, a little glitter under the eyes, you’re good to go.

Finally, Adam Sandler sings this modern holiday classic in which he tells how, for the Festival of Lights in 1972, he really wanted to receive a certain classic Atari arcade game.

Oh, I know the song, but I can’t remember the…

Let’s work on it together.

The Festival of Life.

Frogger, Pong.

What are the big ones?

You had it there.

Was it Pong?

-huh.

This is a classic Adam Sandler song.

Right.

You hear it every year around this time.

David Lee Roth lights the menorah.

That one, right?

Yep, that’s the one.

I’ll have to throw over the cards for you Gentiles.

Yes, please.

The Hanukkah Pong.

Oh, of course.

The Hanukkah Pong is, of course, a version of Adam Sandler’s The Hanukkah Song.

So, there you go.

John, that was fun. Thanks for your presence.

Oh, you’re welcome. Happy Hanukkah, happy X-mas.

So this about wraps it up then, right?

Oh, yes.

We put everything on tape?

No. Oh, ouch.

You can take your bow. I mean, you bow.

I’m going to take that into the new year with me.

You’re welcome, guys.

I’m out of here.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’d like to talk with us about words, the number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

This is Kat calling from Newington, Connecticut.

Hi, Kat.

What’s up?

Hey.

Well, here’s the deal.

I was sending an email to a friend the other day, and I needed to be brief, so I told him, well, I’ll just cut to the chase.

And I know what it means, and he knew what it meant, but I think I need you guys to tell me what I really mean by cut to the chase.

Where did it come from?

It’s actually very naughty, and you should be embarrassed.

Oh, really? Awesome.

No, no, no, no. I’m kidding. I’m teasing you.

All this time, everyone’s been blushing all around you.

That job you didn’t get, here’s why.

No, it’s actually really kind of cool, actually, I think.

The real origin, this is pretty cool.

Kind of cool.

What kind of chase do you think it might be, Kat?

Oh, gosh.

You know, I’m so crazy busy with the holiday.

If I had time to formulate a theory, then I probably wouldn’t need to call you guys.

Are you serious?

Is it something as simple as that?

A car chase?

In movies.

Pretty much.

You know, when they cut the scene, you know, they got all this drama.

The heroine’s got the tears in her eyes and the hero’s driving to save her.

Sure, it’s a good part of the movie, right?

We all want to just get right to it.

That’s right.

What we want to see is the action.

We don’t want the drama.

We don’t want to see the chickens and, you know, the sunset and all that stuff.

We want the cartoons.

We want the dust cloud, right?

Hey, what do you got against chickens?

Come on.

Yeah, you’ll find that this dates in metaphorical use back at least to the 1940s, the mid-1940s.

And you’ll find them literal uses where in scripts, they actually, as early as the 1920s when movies were still really new, you can see in the scripts the directions that say cut to the chase.

No, really.

How about them apples?

That’s really fantastic.

Yeah.

You know, it’s silly how we think that something’s going to be so complex and then just, you know, the obvious eludes us.

You know, the simplest solution is almost always the right one.

Fantastic.

Well, thanks a lot, guys.

All right.

Take off.

Thank you, Kat. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Most of the language I know that transformed itself from insider jargon of Hollywood into mainstream English came from Variety magazine.

So I was kind of surprised to find this one.

It’s just pretty much a work-a-day term used by film crews.

Yeah, interesting, huh?

Yeah.

If you’ve got a question about language, you want to hear something about slang, you want some car noises from Grant or Martha, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

I can do motorcycles, too.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Ava Lee.

Ava Lee, where are you calling from?

San Diego.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I’ve loved and listened to your show for quite a while.

So when a travel chat post or group that I belong to brought up the remark, it’s nothing to do with travel, but the poster said, so much for an Ivy League education, and he quoted a Barack Obama quote saying, I do not underestimate the enormity of the task that lies ahead.

And he was questioning the correct use of the word enormity.

So after about close to 250, maybe more posters have weighed in, we thought we’d go to the source, the expert, so to say, and maybe you can give us some kind of idea whether that is an improper use of it or if it’s acceptable.

Wow. Well, what did the discussion look like? Were most people saying that he could use enormity that way?

Well, most people felt that it was in the dictionary as a legitimate use of the word.

That there were three, somebody said that there were, the word enormity has been misused in recent years to the point it has taken on the third definition below, which means greatness of size, scope, extent, or influence, immensity.

But I guess originally the dictionary definition was outrageous or heinous character and something outrageous or heinous as an offense.

So the question is, can we use enormity the way that Barack Obama did when he talked about the enormity of the task that lies ahead?

Correct.

And I would say, to borrow another phrase from Barack Obama, yes, we can.

Well, that’s good to hear.

I would agree.

Okay.

Yeah.

It’s tricky because both enormousness and enormity over the centuries of their existence have meant both things.

Sometimes they’ve meant great physical size, and sometimes they’ve meant monstrously wicked, both of those words.

And sometimes there are a lot of sticklers who will say only use enormousness to connote size.

But you see enormity as a definition in the dictionary for something large as well, especially if it’s abstract.

You see less use of enormity to describe something that’s physical, like the enormity of the Atlantic Ocean.

I haven’t heard something like that.

Would you agree, Grant?

I would definitely agree.

I would say it’s interesting that the person on the discussion forum decided that the use of enormity was enough to devalue this person’s entire education.

They’re considering the right evidence, but they’re drawing the wrong conclusion.

The evidence is that somebody with a great education used the word enormity.

And so then you begin to say, well, if this highly educated person used the word enormity in this way, then maybe that’s evidence that that’s the correct usage.

And in fact, you will find educated speakers and educated writers in both the UK, the US, also in Australia and Canada and other English-speaking countries using a nomad in this way over centuries.

And it’s not something that happened last week or 10 years ago.

It’s been happening for a very long time.

But you will find some dictionaries that mark it as informal, and it is merely their way, the dictionary editor’s way of saying there’s some dispute over this.

But it’s interesting.

If you look across a wide variety of printed texts, and I can do this right here, you will see that most people, interestingly, when they use enormity to mean enormousness, it tends to have a negative value.

It retains a little bit of that negative notion that goes with the other meaning.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

You’ll very rarely, you will find it, but very rarely, much less often anyway, you’ll find enormity used in a positive way.

Well, the gentleman who brought this to the attention is a retired English professor.

-huh.

So his credibility, you know, was hard to debunk, I guess.

And so this will be interesting that we can continue the discussion now.

Well, I’ve got to tell you, Ava Lee, this is no doubt not the end of this.

We’ll run into this again.

But thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Well, thank you very much.

And we will continue the discussion.

And those of us who believe it was a correct use will have a little bit of backup from you guys.

All right.

Thank you, Averly. Bye-bye.

Okay, bye.

Well, I’m sure we’ll hear from folks about that.

And the place to call is 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Pepper, and I’m calling from San Diego, California.

Hi, Pepper. What’s up?

Nothing much.

I had a question about, I had a friend from Arkansas, and we went to school together here at San Diego State.

And we were talking, and then one time she said, we were like joking around, and she said, wait just a cotton-picking minute.

And it was so funny because I’ve only heard it like on old TV or like cartoons and stuff, but I’ve never heard anyone actually say it.

And I was wondering, like, where does it come from?

-huh.

You’d never heard that before? That’s so funny. I grew up saying that all the time.

Does Mel Blanc do your voicing?

What’s up, Doc?

You did see it a lot in Bugs Bunny cartoons, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s the earliest use of it that I know of in print, actually, is from Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Yeah, isn’t that weird?

But, Martha, cotton picking, what does it mean to you?

You’re not actually talking about being out in the fields picking cotton.

No, no, no, not at all.

No, I think I picked that up from other Southerners who were using it as an expression that meant damned, you know, like a euphemism for damned.

Why cotton picking?

Why cotton picking?

You know, I’ve also seen variations like pea picking and corn shucking and chicken plucking.

Pea picking I’ve heard before.

I don’t know that anyone in my family uses it, but I’ve certainly come across it in my reading.

Do you know that one, Pepper?

No, I’ve never heard of that one.

Maybe you should try that one out on your friend.

But using this this way, it’s an intensifier is what’s happening here.

Whatever follows cotton picking is kind of exaggerated or emphasized, right?

Right. Mind your cotton picking business.

Right.

It works the same way that the word honking does, which is my favorite intensifier.

That’s a big honking sandwich you have there.

Well, the sandwich does not sound like a goose or a car horn, right?

No, it’s just a way of emphasizing that it’s a big, big sandwich.

So, you know, get your cotton-picking hands off me means don’t just get your hands off me.

Get your hands off me right now, right?

Yeah.

Exactly.

Now, does either of you fear the idea that it might have racist roots, cotton-picking?

Well, I know that it doesn’t.

I know that it doesn’t.

It does not have racist roots.

It’s not racist.

Huh.

Right.

Was that your question?

I was wondering, like, yeah, like, is it, did it come from that?

If it’s supposed to be a negative connotation, then is that what I thought it was?

It’s not racist.

Poor white people picked a lot of cotton, too.

Okay.

Oh, interesting.

Well, so, Pepper, you’re okay.

Yeah.

And so is your friend.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Nice talking with you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org, and the phone number is 1-877-929-9673.

Remember that guy a while back who was looking for a term for when someone just can’t seem to end a conversation?

They say goodbye, they walk to the door, but then they just keep talking?

I’d mentioned that my friend Bob refers to that as doorknob hanging.

And that prompted an interesting email from Kelly, who’s a family physician in Basalt, Colorado.

Kelly writes,

In medicine, we use doorknob in a different way.

Physicians talk about getting doorknobbed, or a doorknob question, or she doorknobbed me at the end of the visit.

What this means is the patient comes in with something simple like a head cold,

And we spend the whole time talking about this problem.

Then at the end of the visit, when we’re ready to wrap up,

The patient will ask another unrelated question.

Oh, by the way, doctor, I’ve been having this crushing chest pain when I walk up hills.

Is that a problem?

Of course, the doorknob question is often more important than the original reason they came to the office

And requires much more time to sort out,

Which means that you run behind in your schedule the rest of the day.

Well, Kelly, thanks for that information about the vocabulary of medicine,

And thanks for explaining why every time I go to the doctor’s office,

I end up reading so many back issues of Highlights magazine.

Just how good is your slang savvy?

Find out when A Way with Words continues.

A Way with Words is sponsored in part by iUniverse, supported self-publishing.

Is there a book in you?

Information available at 1-800-AUTHORS or online at iUniverse.com.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and it’s time for this week’s slang challenge

Where we try to stump a member of the National Puzzlers League with some curious terminology.

Today’s contestant is Mark Halpin from Cold Spring, Kentucky.

Hi, how are you doing?

Hi, Mark.

Good, how are you doing?

Very well, thank you.

All right, what do you do there in Cold Spring?

I’m a scene designer.

Oh, yeah?

So I design scenery for theaters and museums and so on like that.

Oh, cool.

Oh, that’s cool.

Cool.

Do you have a favorite slang term you’d like to share with us?

Well, I’m not sure if this is a slang term exactly, but I think it’s a regionalism.

The phrase Jeezel Pete.

Jeezel Pete.

Jeezel Pete.

J-E-E-Z-L-E, Pete.

I was thinking about that this morning.

It’s an expression I sort of grew up with, and I don’t know that I’ve heard a lot of people use it outside of this immediate area.

But a lot of people here do use it.

When do you use it and what is it for?

I think it’s a more polite way of holy cow.

Okay.

That makes sense.

Sure.

Or the Lord’s name or something.

Mm—

Jeez OP.

That’s the one place I’ve heard it was in the Cincinnati area.

Mm—

That’s pretty cool.

Well, Mark, let’s see how you do with our quiz.

Okay.

I’m going to give you a sentence with a blank in it and two possible answers.

Only one is correct.

All right.

And if you need help, Martha will be standing by, so feel free to discuss everything with her, okay?

Great.

In fact, please do.

Yes.

All right, well, here we go.

Okay.

Okay, ladies, I want smiles and cheers and blanks whenever we score, okay?

Pom-poms high, go team!

So does the cheerleading coach want smiles and cheers and A, rubber bands, or B, herkies?

Rubber bands, R-U-B-B-E-R-B-A-N-D-S, and herkeys, H-E-R-K-I-E-S.

I have no idea.

Rubber bands, for no good reason that I can justify.

You know, Mark, I have to disqualify myself from this one because when I was in high school, I desperately wanted to be a cheerleader.

Okay.

Desperately.

Well, you can bring your own knowledge to the table, dear.

Okay.

All right.

I would go the other way.

I would go through the herkeys.

Okay.

I was never a cheerleader, so I wouldn’t defer to you on that one.

No.

I couldn’t do the splits, and I don’t think I could do a herkey either.

I could try to show you what it looks like, but…

What is that?

What is a herkey?

It’s some kind of weird move, isn’t it, Grant?

Martha does have the correct answer.

It is be a herkey.

A herky, in my poor understanding of the field, is a type of cheerleading jump in which one leg is bent to the ground and the other one kicks up high.

It’s the kind of thing that they can just do kind of on the spur of the moment when they’re waving their arms and the pom-poms high.

And, you know, that’s the little kick that they do where it’s not the full move where the two legs come out straight to the side.

One of them is kind of bent.

There’s good information if you Google it.

It’s named after the founder of the National Cheerleaders Association, Lawrence Herkimer.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So he came up with it because apparently he couldn’t do the full move that needed to be done,

So he did this kind of variation of it, and it’s pretty easy.

I think this move is harder.

I seem to remember something about my hand behind my back and my other hand up in the air.

There’s probably people doing herkies on YouTube, don’t you think?

Yes, there are herkies on YouTube, and you’ll find this in lexicons of cheerleading websites all across the Internet.

So no worries, Mark, that you didn’t know it, all right?

All right.

Let’s see how you do on this next one.

Okay.

The bigwigs don’t know how to leave well enough alone in the editing room.

So we give them a big blank that they can fiddle with all they want.

It doesn’t actually do anything.

So the bigwigs come.

They don’t know how to leave well enough alone.

We give them a big what that doesn’t do anything.

We give them an executive handle or a producer’s button.

You know, it seems like I’ve heard producer’s button.

I’m going to feel foolish if that’s wrong now, but that kind of rings a bell.

Yeah, what do you think it is?

Why do you think it’s a producer’s button?

That just sounds familiar a little bit.

The notion of giving something that makes them feel like they’re being hands-on while not actually being.

Like a button you might push, but it’s not connected to anything?

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

That’s exactly what it is.

It’s a producer’s button.

And this is a term that…

I’m making up for my lack of cheerleading knowledge.

No, that’s okay.

I first read it in writing about Hollywood.

They were talking about a bigwig producer who would come down and could never just say,

That’s great, go with it.

They always had to be doing this or that.

So you’ll find this happens again and again in the music business.

My friends in the music business talk about, oh, yeah, we’ll make that change.

They make every change that they’re asked for.

And they don’t even tell the bigwig that the album has already gone to master.

And then all these changes aren’t going to be reflected in the final product.

You know, they don’t even tell them.

Just let them feel like it.

Sort of like a producer’s hydrant.

Something like that.

So anyway, that’s good.

One out of two is not bad, Mark.

I think your spirits are good anyway.

Nice work, Mark.

And bone up on your cheerleading stuff and maybe we’ll play again, all right?

Oh, that would be terrific.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for playing, Mark.

Thanks for playing.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You can find out more about the National Puzzlers League at puzzlers.org.

And you can call us anytime about any aspect of language or share your high school traumas like mine.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Evora from South Carolina.

Well, hello, Evora. What’s happening in South Carolina?

I have a problem with a word.

Oh, no.

Not really.

Since I started listening to your show, I’m very aware of the words around me,

Which I usually was, but now I question them.

Excellent.

Yeah.

And this is the word Circe.

Circe.

Which I have heard it all my life.

I have a Circe for you, meaning I have a small gift,

And it turns out to be something silly and small, like a new pencil.

Now, in what context would you hear this?

Many contexts, but this one, my walking buddy, we were meeting one day, and she said,

I have a Circe for you.

Oh, boy, what is it?

And it happened to be a baggie of goji berries.

Okay, so your friend said, I have a Circe for you, and that meant a little gift.

And how do you suppose it’s spelled?

I spell it C-I-R-C-E, but I’ve never really had to spell it.

But when I was looking it up, that’s what I used, and all I found was the mythological goddess.

Right.

Which didn’t seem to have anything to do with surprises.

No.

Well, except that she changed people into pigs, and that was a nasty surprise.

Yeah.

I love the word Circe, and we have come across it before.

It’s often spelled S-I-R-S-E-E.

-huh.

And it is chiefly Southern, but we’re not exactly sure where it comes from.

I’ve seen speculation that it might come from a Scots word that means to take trouble or take care that sort of sounds similar,

Maybe even going back to the French souci, meaning care.

So it’s a little thought gift, a little gift that you give to somebody to show them that you care.

And just because it’s a pencil or a bag of berries doesn’t mean that you don’t care that much.

It’s just a little gift to let somebody know you’re thinking about them.

It always seems to be in that context.

Yeah.

Well, I have never looked it up.

And so I’ve never really known how to spell it except for the great goddess.

Well, as we often refer to here,

The Dictionary of American Regional English has an entry for this under S-I-R-S-E-E,

And it just so happens that if you go to Google Books,

That particular page is there for the viewing.

So it’s sort of like a lanyap.

Do you ever use that word?

Lanyap?

Mm—

I love that word.

How do you spell it?

L-A-G-N-I-A-P-P-E.

That’s a little extra gift that a store owner might give you, especially in some place like Louisiana.

It’s a French word.

Is it commonly used?

Sure.

It is in the South.

Yeah, it is in the South.

Although I like Searcy.

There’s something diminutive about the sound of it.

Here’s a little Searcy for you.

And that’s exactly how they say it.

Well, Evora, we appreciate your calling.

I appreciate your response.

All right.

Take good care.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, if you’ve got a question about a saying or an expression that seems to be local, we would like to hear about it.

Or if you just want to tell us if it’s not really a question, the number to call is 1-877-WAYWORD.

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Richard calling from Escondido.

Hiya, Richard. How are you?

Hi, Richard.

Well, thank you.

What’s up?

Well, I’ve been looking for a special word, something like schadenfreude,

Which we use in English, taken from the German, to express the joy or glee in somebody else’s misfortune.

But that’s not what I’m looking for.

Oh, good.

I’m looking for a word that expresses the joy you feel after you’ve expected something bad to happen,

But it doesn’t happen, or something has happened, and then you get over it.

Like when my passport was missing just on the eve of an international trip, and I thought, what am I going to do?

And then all of a sudden, it was overseas, and somebody returned it to my hotel.

I apparently dropped my passport.

And you just feel so great that you’re almost happy that it happened.

Right, exactly.

Because you feel so good and so relieved afterwards.

I know both in the military and we were in Foreign Service, you wait for an assignment to come,

And you’re hoping for a good assignment, and you’re sort of expecting the worst,

And then all of a sudden the good one comes through, and it just sort of takes over your whole body.

You feel so good.

Yeah, so is there a specific word for that along the lines of schadenfreude,

But something that specific and that poetic?

I called a friend in Swaziland where I served and said,

In Siswati, is there any such expression?

And she thought about it for a while and asked her kids,

And then they came back with the idea.

They have an expression, Lipume Nembovu in Siswati.

And I thought, well, that sounds interesting.

What does it mean?

And so she told me.

It actually means the boil has burst.

It’s a relief you feel after something like that.

Oh, my goodness. That’s great.

Let me ask you why the word relief itself isn’t enough.

Well, it’s more than just relief.

I mean, to me, it seems to me.

I mean, it’s actually…

What about deliverance?

Deliverance?

Delivered from your fears.

Yeah, that’s…

Deliverance from something you expected that was bad.

That’s a good idea.

And you would think that we would have borrowed some kind of German or French word.

You’d expect the Germans to have put together a couple of words.

I just thought you might join the two words joy relief or relief joy.

Well, the joy is freude.

So I guess if you find your passport after all that time, it’s findin’ freude.

What do you think about that?

Findin’ freude sounds good to me.

It feels as though there should be some kind of very specific word for this.

I’m sure you know the feeling.

Oh, of course I know the feeling.

When you said glee earlier, I was thinking of, well, maybe glee leaf or deja vu.

That’s a good one.

Anyway, I thought I’d call the verbavores to throw out the problem,

And maybe somebody else will come up with an idea.

And I get the feeling that you’re not having this feeling during this call yet.

You’re not feeling the massive relief of getting an answer.

Probably when it’s over, I’ll feel a little more relieved.

Yeah, most of our callers feel that way.

But I’ve been a fan of yours ever since you took over the show.

Oh, well, Richard, it’s a pleasure speaking with you.

Well, thank you so much, Richard.

That’s nice to hear.

Okay.

I hope we can come up with an answer for you.

We’ll put the word out to the community.

We’ll put it in the e-mail newsletter, post it on the discussion forum, and see what we can come up with.

Right.

I look at the e-mail newsletter quite regularly.

Thank you so much, sir.

Thank you, Richard.

Thank you, guys.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Do you like the bursting boil, Grant?

I do.

Like, it’s a little gross, but it kind of really summarizes the, well, bursting a boil is a little bit of a tempting thing anyway, right?

It’s sitting there pulsing on your skin and the bubble is taut, right?

And you feel like you need to pierce it.

And once you’ve pierced it, there’s a great deal of relief.

It’s like scratching an itch under a, you know, under a, never mind.

Right.

Deprescence.

Deprescence.

That’s all right.

Something like that.

Okay, folks.

Obviously, we need a better word.

Call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hello.

This is Nancy from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hello, Nancy.

How are you?

I’m good, thanks.

I’m calling to ask about the expression QT on the QT.

I heard it in the movie L.A. Confidential, which was set in the 40s, I believe.

So I was wondering where that expression came from.

-huh.

And you’re spelling that Q-T rather than C-U-T-I-E?

Yes, exactly.

Just the two letters.

Okay.

Q-T.

Well, how did you know how it was spelled if you only heard it?

Oh, I guess that was a guess.

Because I was just guessing that.

He said, hush, hush, on the Q-T.

Oh, did he say on the…

Yeah, it sounded like a…

I don’t know.

Did he say on the strict Q-T or just on the Q-T?

On the Q-T.

On the Q-T.

I ask because on the strict QT used to be a common variant of it.

Would you believe that this goes back to at least the 1870s?

No.

No, I didn’t know that.

Yeah, it’s got quite a history to it.

And its origins, of course, as is often the case, are obscured in mystery.

We do know that it appeared first in the name of some dance hall songs.

I’ve looked hard for those to try to find them and pull them out and see if there’s any clue in the lyrics.

But I’ve only been able to come across lists of these songs, and it’s in the title.

And then it starts to appear in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, both in London and in New York, and spreads outward from there.

And it’s got quite a life as a slang term.

The origins of it probably are really simple.

It’s probably just simply the word quiet with the vowels in the middle removed.

Oh, okay.

Quiet, QT, on the quiet, quiet, QT.

You know, you can see how maybe somebody who was fooling around with the language might come up with that.

It’s nothing really complex.

So it’s not initials for something else, then.

It isn’t.

You know, I used to think that it was.

I first thought for some reason this was on the quick tip.

I think I’d heard something about this being a horse racing term, but I’m pretty sure that I’m wrong on that.

Huh.

On the QT means surreptitious, secret, confidential.

It’s something that you’re trying to keep quiet.

Hush, hush.

I can’t think of any other words or expressions like that that were formed by dropping out the middle of a word like that.

Well, you know, I don’t know of many either.

And you know what’s further interesting about this, Nancy, is that this is an initialism.

You know, two letters kind of making up a word.

They don’t really stand for separate words, and so they’re not strictly an initialism like ABC or CBS or NBC or anything like that.

But they are, at this point in history in the 1870s, incredibly rare.

They don’t really become common until the 1920s.

And so it’s very kind of amazing that this one should stand out so much.

I mean, OK has an older history than QT, but it too is pretty rare for being a long-lasting initialism.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that’s really neat.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate the chance to ask you about this.

All right.

Well, thank you for calling me.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question about language, give us a call.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673, or you can email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

So, do you know what pandiculation is, Grant?

Pandiculation?

P-A-N-D-I-C-U-L-A-T-I-O-N.

Pandiculation.

That’s when you tickle somebody who panders to you.

I like it.

I like it, but no, no.

Pandiculation.

This is juggling of pots and pans in the kitchen.

No, no, it doesn’t have to do with pandas either, but those are pretty good guesses.

What?

Pandiculation is the stretching that accompanies yawning.

Pandiculation, how about that?

I like that.

It’s from a Latin word that means to stretch out.

Well, if you’ve got a word that you want to share with us, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673 or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

We’re always on the lookout for something strange.

That’s our show for this week.

Don’t forget, you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

Call us 877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Stay in touch with us all week on Facebook.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also chooses our music.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Hardell and Jennifer Powell.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword Inc., a nonprofit organization.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

If we have a part, then that might break my heart.

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Hi, it’s Martha.

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