Days of Wine Flights and Mullets

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Barack Obama wants to pump money into public works projects like roads and bridges, much like the old Works Progress Administration from the 1930s.

And Mark I. Pinsky recently had a really interesting essay in The New Republic about another program from that era, and that was the Federal Writers Project.

And he urged reviving that.

Now, Grant, you know about this project.

This employed more than 6,000 out-of-work reporters and editors and other kinds of writers to produce some really fascinating stuff, like, for example, oral histories from freed slaves.

And it gave a lot of writers a chance to practice their craft, people who turned out to be Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston and John Steinbeck.

I think that this would be a really great message to send, that this is another kind of infrastructure that merits that kind of investment.

I don’t suppose that the reception to that would be any different now than it was then, Martha.

I do know about this.

At the time, there was a great outcry.

People saw it as the pointy heads getting a free ride on the government.

And there was much criticism, even of the people who were doing jobs for the WPA that involved a great deal of manual labor, crushing rocks to build roads or erecting buildings and working in the woods, that sort of thing, just hard manual labor.

People just saw them as being lazy.

I mean, it wasn’t a universal opinion, but there certainly were divided camps on whether or not it was a good idea.

Right, what, these people were just sitting there typing or something?

Well, yeah, it’s even harder though to justify in the minds of most people, at least at the time it was, it was hard to justify paying salaries to people for something that seems so slight.

I know a lot of magazines that have that same problem, that same attitude, believe me.

Yeah, it hasn’t much changed since then.

But I would love to see something like that.

There’s a great deal of work that is still undone from the original WPA.

You’ve heard me talk about the lexicon of trade jargon, right?

Oh, yeah, right.

This was a federal writers project that was never completed.

It was never published.

The manuscript lies there in the Library of Congress.

A handful of people have consulted it.

Eventually, I hope to finish it and publish it.

But, you know, that’d be a great thing to try to revive and maybe update so you could compare the 1930s to the, you know, the 2010s.

And this is jargon from various vocations.

That’s right.

They went around, they interviewed people.

A lot of it happened in New York City.

As a matter of fact, they went to union work halls and just buttonholed people and found out what the language they used on the job was.

Well, if you want to talk about language, writing, editing, the origin of words and phrases, grammar, slang, pronunciation, you name it, call us.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Diane Boone.

I’m calling from Juneau, Alaska.

Hi, Diane.

How are you doing?

I’m doing great.

I love your show.

Terrific.

What’s going on?

Well, we moved from Anchorage, Alaska to North Carolina a number of years ago.

And some of the people that we knew you might call hillbillies.

And they were very proud of their dialect.

But it was really hard for us Yankees to understand them.

And so one day with this couple of friends of ours, we were out deciding, trying to ask each other what our favorite foods were.

And the man said, “Well, he, I love them vineyards.”

And I said, “Vineyards? What’s a vineyard?”

“Well, you know them vineyards.”

And I, “them little vineyards.”

And I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.

So I said, he said, “them vineyard sausages.”

And I said, “How do you spell that, Ralph?”

And he said, “V-I-E-N-N-A.”

And I said, “Vienna sausages,” as if I ever wanted one anyway.

And my question is, is this a common thread do you think that runs through the South where vienna sausages are known as vineyards?

So he means the little sausages in the can kind of thing?

Yeah, he means vineyard sausages.

Do they only come in the can, though?

You can buy them like over the counter at the right meat shop, right?

I don’t think so.

I don’t think there’s a high call for them.

Although, we went to a Christmas party recently and I could not believe it.

Somebody served vienna sausages.

Well, yeah, sure, sure.

They’re like, you put them out with the crudités, right?

Exactly.

You got the, you got the dip and the chips and the celery and the carrots and the vienna sausages.

You know, poor, poor vienna.

We just mangle that name.

Did you know, Diane, that there’s a vienna Georgia?

Oh, no.

Yeah, there’s a vienna Georgia and there’s also a vienna Maine, which is right down the road from Madrid, Maine.

Actually, I come from North Carolina hillbilly stock and my Aunt Mazo used to talk about vienna sausages.

Isn’t that great?

I can’t believe it.

Yeah.

And it feels very familiar to me because in that same area, Western North Carolina, Eastern Kentucky, people also talk about playing the pie anner.

I mean, my dad used to go tell me to go practice the pie anner and he was making a joke because he knows that the standard pronunciation is piano, but he was imitating the language of his parents.

And I think you’ll find that kind of pronunciation among a lot of older people in particular.

But let’s just lay out the etymological trail here.

When we talk about vienna sausages, we’re talking about vienna, you know, the city in Austria, right?

And in Austrian German, then they would spell it W-I-E-N, right?

Right.

And then somebody who is a citizen of W-I-E-N is, and it is pronounced with a V, even though it’s spelled with a W, right?

Right.

It is a viener, right?

Which is also where we get the word for wiener.

So that’s like the full circle.

Wonderful.

Maybe that’s what, how does wiener schnitzel fit in?

That’s right.

Wiener schnitzel and wiener wurst are also related to that.

Yeah, there are a lot of those meat names that go back to the cities where they supposedly originated.

Like think about Bologna, Bologna, Italy, and Frankfurter’s and hamburgers.

They’re related to those, or at least there’s a heritage there.

So, but your Aunt Mazo and this fella that Diane was talking to, they share something that’s a regional, a regional pronunciation then.

Yeah, viener sausages.

Hey, Diane, thanks for this stroll down memory lane.

Oh, this is so much fun.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right, well, if you want to talk about food words or any other kind of words, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-9299-673, or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

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

Hello, Jan.

Welcome.

How are you today?

We’re doing well.

What do you have on your mind?

Well, one of my favorite college classes was on etymology, the study of words and their origins.

And I’ve been looking for a long time and never really found the origin of the word mullet as used as a haircut.

That ugly, short in the front, long in the back one.

And you’ve looked high and low?

Well, I’ve looked and I’ve had the description of the haircut, and it’s also a fish, but I’ve never figured out how being a fish became an ugly haircut.

So you were talking about the haircut that’s short in the front, long in the back, and you think is stupid.

Yes, I do.

You know, I have a haircut just like that.

Well, I don’t know if it ever left fashion.

In certain circles, it’s been fashionable for decades, hasn’t it?

Yes, I guess so.

Well, let’s talk about the etymology first, and then in a minute I’m going to theorize on why I think that haircut remains popular, all right?

Okay.

Have you ever heard somebody called a mullet or a mullet head just to mean stupid person?

I mean, they weren’t being called that because of their haircut.

Yeah, I guess I have actually.

I’ve heard mutton head.

Mutton head?

Yeah.

Well, mutton head too, but you’ll find that mullet as an insult or kind of a way of describing somebody as a stupid person or a fool dates back a long time, long enough that it predates any use of mullet to refer to the haircut, which is also known by the way as the hockey haircut, or people say it’s business in the front and party in the back.

Right, I’ve heard that definition.

Right.

I like that.

So, in any case, mullet head is a kind of a derogatory term.

It dates to the mid-1800s.

It was later shortened to mullet, and then by 1994, it shows up in the printed record actually in a magazine put out by the rap group The Beastie Boys, which is the first in print use of it we can find.

The theory is, and this is what most of my colleagues think, and this is what I agree with, is that this is simply a way of saying first you start out as a mullet head meaning stupid person, then it was shortened to mullet meaning stupid person, and then the haircut, which people think was stupid, borrowed that term and became not just the name of the person, but the name of the haircut the stupid person might have.

So it is a stupid haircut.

Well, unless you’re Billy Ray Cyrus a while back.

Who made amends off of that.

There’s probably a mullet defense league or something out there, don’t you think?

Why does it exist if people don’t like it?

Here’s my theory.

When I was growing up in Missouri, the mullet was a popular hairdo.

I did not in any case ever have a mullet.

I did not have it.

But the problem is if you want to be kind of a rebel, it usually involves keeping your hair long, right?

But if you keep your hair long in the front and the sides as well as in the back, then you find yourself kind of reflexively doing these hair flipping motions or like pushing the hair back behind your ears or these very feminine gestures.

The only way to keep your hair doing its own thing without having to use like a, you know, a scrunchie or a rubber band or something like that or without having to constantly flip it back behind your ears with your hands is to keep the front and the side short.

And then the back is long, so you get points for being the rebel for having long hair in the back, and then you lose all possibility of having any kind of accidental feminine kind of way of dealing with your hair, you know, because it’s definitely seen as a macho, masculine thing.

Well, you certainly don’t see women wearing it.

Oh, I have seen women wearing it.

No, I have seen women wearing it.

Definitely.

It’s not common, but yeah, it does exist.

Oh, yeah.

Well, Janice, I hadn’t really thought about all these theories, but I think Grant makes a lot of sense.

What do you think?

I do, too.

I like the revolution from the mutton head to mullet to the hairstyle.

It answers the question.

Thank you very much.

All right.

You’re welcome.

Thanks for calling.

All righty.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

If you need fashion advice, give Martha a call.

If you’re someone to make fun of, you give me a call.

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

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

And don’t forget, you can go to our discussion forum online.

There is plenty of new content there every single day.

Grant, here’s a word for you.

Do you know the word borberigmic?

I don’t know what that means.

It comes from the Greek word borberigmus, which means the rumbling in one’s intestines.

So you might speak of a borberigmic sound.

And the reason that I bring up the word borberigmic is because the other day somebody was saying, “Are there words that I can teach my children to get them really interested in language, intriguing them?”

And I just remember this word is one that little kids learn to love because they have a word for that rumbling in their intestines besides rumbling in their intestines, borberigmic.

And it sounds like what it is, borberigmic.

Don’t you think?

Borberigmic, borberigmic.

Yeah, the B sounds in particular are very appealing to children.

Yeah, I think so.

Well, if you got a word that you like to say aloud, give us a call and tell us about it.

The number is 1-877-WAYWORD.

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Coming up next on A Way with Words, it’s a word quiz and more of your calls.

Stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And across from me is the amazing Greg Pliska.

Hello, Greg.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

Hi, Greg.

And you’re our quiz guy.

I am your quiz guy.

What do you do in your day job?

Let’s say you’re a composer.

Yeah.

And you’re a father.

A father.

Right.

And she’s…

One of the two things I get paid for.

You get paid to be a father?

No, that’s the other one.

Well, I thought after you did the sperm donation, the money stopped.

No.

Oh.

No.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

How about that?

No, this week’s quiz is off color.

Oh.

No, that doesn’t mean you get to haul out all your favorite X-rated slang terms.

I’m sorry.

What it means is that each answer is a phrase with a color in it, except that that color isn’t used literally in the phrase.

For example, if I gave you the clue, a place where actors relax between scenes…

Is the green room.

You’d say it’s the green room, which isn’t necessarily green, although some etymologies say that that’s…

And sometimes they do paint them green.

So if you understand how this quiz works, then let’s get off color.

All right.

Let’s go.

Okay.

All right.

Here’s your clue.

Restrictions that enforce moral standards, such as prohibiting the sale of beer on a Sunday.

Blue laws.

Blue laws.

Blue laws.

Absolutely.

Okay.

A partial loss of electrical power.

Brown out.

A brown out.

A brown out.

Absolutely.

Which, of course, is never actually brown.

It’s either dark or light.

No, but it’s brown power.

That’s what it’s called.

Brown power.

What does that mean?

Brown power.

It’s power that’s either operating at a lower amperage or lower voltage than it should be.

Of course, he knew that.

That’s an interrupt.

I never heard that.

I always assumed brown out was just because it’s not a complete blackout.

That’s what I thought.

Well, there’s both of them, actually.

Both the terms coexist, and they have some overlapping kind of self-reinforcement there.

That’s cool.

See, this is a great show.

I should listen to this show.

I’ve learned so much.

All right.

Here’s another one.

These are easy.

Of little or no value?

Small red potatoes.

Good.

You have the right color, Martha.

Do I?

Yeah.

Red is the color you’re looking for.

Not a red cent?

Not worth a red cent.

Exactly.

Okay.

How about that?

Exactly.

Which actually referred originally to a copper US coin, which was reddish in tone.

Although now, of course, when we say that, we don’t literally mean the color red.

Red.

Yeah.

Here’s a good one.

A lockdown of a hospital when a newborn goes missing.

Oh, pink alert.

Code pink?

Code pink.

Is it really?

Yeah.

I had no idea.

Here’s the next clue.

False and sensational reportage?

Oh, yellow journalism.

Yellow journalism.

Rarely as of an event?

Once in a blue moon?

Yeah.

Very good.

We can just rip these things off.

Sure.

Go for it.

Generic or unbranded as a product?

White label.

White label indeed.

Here you go.

One more.

Information gained without serious effort?

I know this one.

That wouldn’t be blackmail.

No.

No.

White knowledge.

White knowledge?

It’s a term coined by the science fiction author Terry Pratchett, and it describes things that you know, but you don’t know how you know them.

You pick them up.

White noise, for example, is kind of this all-pervasive noise.

You can’t really pick an individual sound out of it, and white knowledge is the same thing.

Oh, that’s nice.

You have this knowledge.

It’s in your brain.

It comes when called for, and you’re like, “How did I know that?

I have no idea how I knew that,” but it’s there, and he really is referring to cultural knowledge, the things that we all believe to be true.

Exactly.

Yeah, sort of background facts that somehow have seeped into all of our brains.

We all know these things.

Right.

Cool.

Well, it wasn’t in my brain.

I didn’t know that.

Oh, I am.

I’m sorry, yeah.

I am actually trying to look at Greg.

So handsome.

So there you go.

There’s some white knowledge for everybody to let seep into their brains today.

Well, Greg, that was super duper fun.

Thank you very much.

Always glad to have you here.

And if you’d like to talk about grammar, slang, punctuation, or words, and how we use them, the number is 1-877-929-9673.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes.

Hello, this is Mike from Milwaukee.

Hiya, Mike.

What’s going on?

There’s a term that I grew up with, and I’ve heard nobody use it anywhere else, and I thought maybe you guys could help me.

Okay, what is it?

The term is “devil strip.”

Devil strip?

Either devil strip or devil strip, and I’m not sure which.

-huh, and what does that mean?

Well, I grew up in northern Ohio, and the devil strip was a piece of grass between the sidewalk and the curb.

Maybe Akron or someplace like that?

Yes, just north of Akron.

-huh.

Bingo, Grant.

Yep, exactly.

And how did you know that?

This is one of those questions that’s come up a few times before, but there is a beautiful entry for this term in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Okay.

And both spellings, just as you spelled them, are in there.

D-E-V-I-L apostrophe S-S-T-R-I-P, or without the possessive, so devil strip or devil’s strip.

Okay.

And you know what’s really weird about this, Mike, is that this thing, this part of the land that you’re talking about, goes by so many different names around the country.

It’s really astonishing.

In different places, people call it the berm, the boulevard, the green belt, the city strip, the parking, the parking strip, the sidewalk clock.

Just the parking?

Yeah, the parking or the tree bank, the tree lawn, the tree belt.

It’s crazy.

And you wanna know one other really cool thing about devil strip, Mike?

What’s that?

Devil strip figures in this wonderful story of forensic linguistics.

Do you know what that is?

No.

Forensic linguistics is the study of the language of criminals.

And there is a terrific story about a linguist named Roger Shy.

Grant, he’s a colleague of yours, right?

That’s right.

Yeah.

A few years ago, there was a kidnapping and the authorities took the ransom note from the kidnapper to this linguist and said, “Can you tell us anything about this guy?”

The linguist looks at the ransom note and he says, “Well, do you happen to have any suspects who are well-educated men who are from Akron, Ohio?”

And they said, “Oh my gosh, yes, we do.”

As a matter of fact, the guy was caught and convicted.

And do you know how he did it?

This is so interesting.

They figured out the well-educated because he was misspelling on purpose certain words like cops.

He would spell them K-O-P-S, but then he wouldn’t have any problem with longer words.

And so it was clear that this was somebody who was trying to disguise his education.

And then the other telltale giveaway was that he used the expression devil strip and that is so particular to one little part of Ohio.

Just Akron.

Do you know where that came from?

We don’t know.

And it’s one of those things that has been well-researched.

The PBS documentary, “Do You Speak American?” talks about this and we’ll link to Roger Shai’s full explanation of the court case.

But it’s…

I always thought, I assumed and it’s just my own assumption that it might have been called that because you didn’t own it, but you had to maintain it.

Kind of a devil’s deal, huh?

Right.

I have read that in Mansfield, Ohio, it’s sometimes called a tax strip or a government strip.

So maybe there’s sort of a similar idea there.

Only in the Akron area.

That’s interesting.

Pretty much Northern Ohio.

But I just think that’s such a great story.

Great.

Well, that’s helped me.

All right.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Don’t kidnap anybody.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

So he’s a colleague of yours, Grant?

Right.

I’ve met him a couple of times.

We’ve traded emails.

I think he is in retirement or headed for retirement.

He’s got a couple of books about forensic linguistics.

They’re interesting to me.

I don’t know if they’re everyone’s cup of tea, but his last name…

Oh, come on.

We should spell his last name as S-H-U-Y, Roger Shai.

Yeah.

He Googles very well.

If you Google him, you’ll find his bibliography and maybe find something there to interest you.

What I want to know is why doesn’t this guy have his own TV series?

I mean, that’s terrific.

Well, you know, it’s funny.

That is an interesting case, but it’s the kind of thing that you can’t always do.

Right.

Roger would probably tell you gleefully and gladly about his list of failures because they’re sometimes more instructive than his successes.

Well, maybe we should ask him.

If you’ve got a question about language, if you want to know why people say the things they do, we’d like to help you.

The number to call 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.

Oh, hi.

This is Leslie from Escondido.

Escondido.

Hi, Leslie.

What’s going on?

Well, I was wondering about the origins of the phrase “falling in love.”

Are you?

Yes.

Yes.

Especially since we were discussing in services at our synagogue the other day, we were discussing Genesis 24, verse 64, and the rabbi mentioned something interesting about the Hebrew translation.

It’s the story of Rebekah when she meets Isaac, and apparently she’s riding a camel when she first lays eyes on him.

And the Bible always translates what she does next as she “elit from her camel.”

But our rabbi said that the Hebrew actually indicates that she fell off her camel, because the Hebrew word for what she did was “no fail,” which means “to fall.”

And so I was wondering, I wonder if that’s where we got “falling in love.”

Oh, my goodness.

That’s interesting.

Well, Leslie, I have to tell you that I grew up as a Baptist preacher’s kid, and Genesis 24, verse 64 is burned into my memory.

I remember it very, very well, but for a completely embarrassing reason.

Hello.

Let me get my notepad.

Blackmail.

Well, my little brother and I used to run around as preacher’s kids, and we would say, “Do you know when cigarettes were mentioned in the Bible?

Genesis 24, 64.

And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel.”

Thank you for laughing.

I appreciate it.

That’s how the King James Version translates the Hebrew Scripture there.

So I remember, embarrassingly enough, I remember this verse very, very well.

And I was not aware of the original Hebrew meaning of the verb there.

So I don’t know if she was just so nonplussed to see Isaac that she fell off the camel.

But I would suspect that that doesn’t have anything to do with falling in love.

That would be my guess.

Did your rabbi suggest that it did?

No, I just suggested that it did, and then everybody laughed, and I got a big kick out of making a joke.

Oh, so you’re a comedian as well.

I see.

Well, I can tell you that falling in love, we first did this in English in the late 1500s.

And I think the idea was simply that it’s, A, something that happens to you suddenly, and that when you fall, you’re sort of out of control too, which was sort of be consistent with falling in love.

Fall for somebody.

It’s consistent with French.

French has the exact same phrase only in French, of course.

“To fall in love” is exactly the same.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if the English got it from the French.

That would make sense.

And I wouldn’t be surprised to find in all the romance languages.

If you’ve ever seen the Godfather movies, you know that there’s the thunderbolt or the lightning bolt when you fall in love in Italian, right?

And there’s all these ways to indicate that falling in love is a bit of a personal disaster, right?

You’ve kind of been struck down beyond your ability to fight back.

Well, Cupid and his arrows.

Yeah, exactly.

Sure, sure.

Although sometimes falling in love is less like a lightning bolt and more like a sunrise, don’t you think?

I agree.

All right.

Well, thanks for reminding me of that joke.

Thanks for sharing it.

I’m glad somebody finally laughed at it.

All right.

Thank you, Leslie.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Give us a call.

The number is 1-877-9299673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or you can email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Janet Lippum, and I’m calling from San Diego.

Hello, Janet.

How are you?

Hi, Janet.

What’s up?

I’m trying to find out the origin of an expression.

You know how people start IM sessions with like YT or YouThere?

Mm—

Well, this friend of mine, who is also one of my co-workers, is originally from Vietnam.

So one day she’s IMing me at work, and she starts out, you know, YouThere, and I was feeling playful at the time, so my response was, “Nobody here but us chickens.”

Would have thought, you know, in the time that she’s been in this country, she might have heard that, but apparently she hasn’t, because her response back to me was, “Why? Where did everybody go?”

Like we were the only two people still left at work.

And I started to explain it, you know, I explained to her where the expression came from, and I realized I didn’t know where it came from.

So I did an internet search, but all I could find were references to an old Louis Jordan song.

So I thought, then I thought of you guys, and I thought, “Well, if anybody knows where this came from, it would be Grant and Martha.”

Now then, I like that kind of faith.

But it’s amazing how often people put their faith in us, Martha, and we let them down.

Oh, but that’s not going to happen this time.

Not at all.

What’s the title of the Louis Jordan song?

Do you know?

I think that is the title of it, “Nobody Here But Us Chickens.”

Yeah, and it’s a great song.

Have you guys heard it?

No, I haven’t heard it.

I saw the lyrics, but I haven’t heard the song.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It’s a lot of fun.

And it refers to this old joke about Farmer Brown, I think his name is Farmer Brown.

He goes out to the henhouse because there’s been a commotion, and he’s got his gun, and he’s looking around, and he says, “Who’s there?”

And there’s this little voice in the back that says something like, “Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”

So there’s a chicken thief in there or something.

Yeah, yeah.

So that’s the joke.

But it’s interesting because this actually goes back to the joke itself, the original joke that both Grant and I have read in old, old newspapers, say from 1908, 1909.

It kind of has racist overtones, doesn’t it, Grant?

Yeah, it’s about the original story that you can find in print, and it’s probably older than we’re finding, again, 1908, 1909, around there, involves a slave and a slave owner.

And it’s the exact same story, only the slave is the one in the chicken coop, and the slave owner is the one going out to see what the commotion is about.

And the story paints the slave as being stupid.

And so that’s kind of the focus of the joke.

The joke is that this person thinks by saying something in English, in human words, that the slave owner is going to be fooled.

So it’s not a nice story told that way, but when you tell the story just about a regular old farmer and just somebody coming by to steal chickens, then it’s harmless.

Well, my thought would have been like this fox in the henhouse.

You say, “Oh, no, no need to worry. Nobody here but us chickens.”

I think that’s probably how a lot of people think of it now.

And to me, this is really interesting because it started out with this story that had kind of language that we would find offensive today, you know, “Ain’t nobody here but us chickens, Massa,” or something like that.

But I would say that in the intervening hundred years that this phrase has taken on such a life of its own that I wouldn’t hesitate to use it, especially after Louis Jordan reclaimed it with that fabulous song that was really, really popular in the 1940s.

I mean, you see all kinds of people covering that song now.

Right.

It definitely, if it ever was an unsavory story, it lost it before he recorded the song in the 1940s.

I think also this line was used in one form or another in the movie “Chicken Run” in the year 2000.

Did you see that?

I did, but I don’t remember the song.

It’s an — well, not the song.

I think the line was used, the line, “Nobody here but us chickens.”

Yeah, and I talk to a lot of people.

I mean, I hear the expression all the time.

Lots of people use it.

Nobody really knows.

Nobody I talked to really knew where it had come from.

So it’s very — the slave story, I think, is very interesting.

It is.

It’s like a lot of things where it has to be taken in the context of the time in which it was, you know, created originally.

So that’s really interesting.

Right, because it would be overly simplistic to go back and apply our values of, you know, 2008, 2009, and apply them to something that was 100 years old, right?

Right, exactly.

And thank you guys so much for the information.

Thank you so much for calling, Janet.

All right, bye-bye.

All righty, bye-bye.

Bye.

If you’ve got a question about language, you want to know where something’s from, when it’s from, what it’s about, what it means, or how it should be used, we are the people to help you.

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

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or, as always, you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Get ready to stretch your slangitude.

That’s coming up next on A Way with Words.

One night Farmer Brown was taking the air, locked up the barnyard with the greatest of care.

Down in the henhouse something stirred when he shouted, “Who’s there?”

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And it’s time for our weekly slang challenge, where we try to stump a member of the National Puzzlers League.

Today’s contestant is Joe Miller from Howell, New Jersey.

What do you know, Joe?

Hi there.

Come on down.

What do you do there in New Jersey?

I work for an integrator on security systems for border and airport type operations.

Oh.

Well, Joe, you must have a favorite slang term you’d like to share with us.

I do indeed.

This is a family slang, my wife and I.

She drives a yellow VW Beetle.

And we have a term called the Beetle Effect.

When you’re driving down the road and you come up behind somebody and their speed is not all that constant, we tend to drive with the cruise control on.

So our speeds are usually pretty constant.

Sometimes somebody starts slowing down because not paying attention or whatever when you’re behind them.

So she or I will tend to pull out and to try to pass that person.

And she, far more often than I, find that that sort of wakes up the person that she’s trying to pass.

And they speed up and kind of defeat the purpose of the whole thing.

Yes.

Sometimes she falls back and gets in behind them.

And after a little while, they start losing their attention again.

Is it because she drives a— It happens to her far more often than it does to me.

So we call that the Beetle Effect.

Because she drives a Beetle and you don’t.

You think it’s because people don’t want to be passed by a Beetle?

It’s hard to say.

It might be the bright yellow color more often wakes them up.

Or it may be that people have a perception that the Beetle, which is an indirect perception, that the Beetle is, you know, not a very powerful car.

And so we shouldn’t be passed.

You would be humiliating.

It could be the flashing lights on top of the car and the Sheriff’s logo on the side.

No, I’m kidding.

We never thought of that.

Well, are you ready to play a game?

Sure.

All right.

Well, I’ve got a quiz for you.

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

Only one of them is correct.

If you need help, Martha’s standing by.

Right here.

Cool.

All right.

Here’s the first one.

The New York Knicks might have enough blank to sign a pair of maximum salary free agents in 2010.

Do the Knicks maybe have enough A. board butter or B. cap room?

That’s board B-O-A-R-D butter B-U-T-T-E-R and cap room C-A-P-R-O-O-M.

Well, board butter sounds more like something that would involve the playing of the actual game. Something that helps you move around quickly on the court. Cap sounds more like something like they have enough room before they reach some kind of salary cap that the league might have on paying players. I don’t really know the NBA particularly, but I would guess cap room would mean they have enough money before they hit some kind of some kind of league cap.

Ding, ding, ding, ding. That is exactly right, Jill. Perfect answer. And your explanation was right on target. It means the team hasn’t yet reached the salary ceiling set by the NBA. It’s short for salary cap room.

All right. All right. So let’s see how you do on another one. Ready? OK. They blew up everything. The houses, the cars, the people. Damn, son, that movie was mad blank. Was this movie had a lot of explosions? Was it mad A pancakes or B gangster? Pancake. Was it gangster or gangster? Well, gangster, g-a-n-g-s-t-e-r. I’ll read it again. They blew up everything. The houses, the cars, the people. Damn, son, that movie was mad blank. Was it mad pancakes or mad gangster?

I’m going to guess on this one. I’m probably overthinking this, but it’s interesting. When I said the word pancake out loud, my wife, who’s in the other part of the room, said flattened. She can’t hear any of the rest of this, but that’s the first thing she said. And so I’m thinking, OK, that might be what it means. So I’m going to go for the less obvious choice and go with pancake on this one. What do you think, Martha?

I wonder if you’re overthinking that. Pancake to me just sounds silly. I mean, mad waffle, mad French toast. Mad scones? Mad scones, exactly. You know, for some reason, I would go with the other word. But that’s the one that seemed more… Again, that’s why I asked whether it was gangster. But I think I’ll stick with pancake just for the heck of it.

Well, Martha, you’re right on target. And Joe, I’m sorry to say it wasn’t pancakes. I hope that the blowing up of things, the flattening of things, wasn’t too misleading. But it’s really just more about behaving… Well, it just means great. Being mad gangster is just a way of saying great. Mad here is strangely being used as an adverb and not as an adjective. So it’s like a way of saying very something. So it’s very like a gangster, which is in the parlance of young black men on the internet who primarily use this is a good thing.

Overthought that one. Overthought that. You know, Joe, you mentioned the beetle effect. I think this was the wife effect. Should have gone with your instinct there. Yeah, but you’re all right. You got the first one with no problem, even had the answer, the perfect explanation for it. So you’re doing fine, Joe. Yeah, you did a great job. Thanks so much for playing today. Thanks a lot. All right. Bye-bye.

Well, if you’d like to talk with us about language, 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. Hi, how are you? Super dupe. Hi, who’s this? This is Gary McDonald from San Diego. Hi, Gary, what’s cooking?

I was calling to see when you use “in regards to” or “in regard to,” and I wasn’t sure if it was a pluralization thing or if it was something else. So you’re writing business correspondence and you’re saying, “In regards to the water damage to my basement, you owe me a million dollars,” something like that. Exactly. Or versus “in regard to.” Right.

Well, there’s a quick answer to that. You never say “in regards to.” Oh. Just don’t ever put an S on “regard” in that situation. If you did, you wouldn’t be alone, but it still doesn’t make a right. Right. The traditional rule is “in regard to,” never “in regards to.” Oh, okay. You’d never say “irregardless.” No, I wouldn’t. Yeah, exactly. I wouldn’t. Grant would do it to get under my skin, but again, the traditional rule is that “irregardless” is not a word.

Exactly. And it’s a word, but it’s incorrect. Oh, it’s kind of like “anyways,” because people say “anyways,” and it’s “anyway.” Right. They do. That’s interesting. So you never use “in regards to.” Right. There’s a little bit of logic behind that that might help you remember it. Do you want it? Sure, please.

All right. The thing is, when you hold someone in high regard, which is a similar phrase, you only have one regard. Right. And so there’s no S there. And this is the same regard. It’s the same one as “in regard to.” It’s kind of a mass noun that means attention or consideration. On the other hand, when you give your regards, right, you have more than one regard. Right. But it’s a different kind of regard. It’s like good wishes or warm feelings.

Okay. So it is a little bit of a plural thing that shouldn’t be happening here. You should not have more than one regard when you talk about “in regard to.” I thought it was more so “in regard to the many” versus “in regards to the one.” So it’s not a pluralization thing at all. No, it’s not. “Regard” isn’t—no, no, no. The “regard” is a noun here. Right. “Regard” is not a verb. Okay. Yeah. Excellent.

Well, thank you very much. All right. And I’ve asked a number of people, and they didn’t know. Aha! Well, now you know. And I’m going to share it with them, too. Excellent. You’re in a position to influence people? Absolutely. And you have a wonderful show, by the way. I just love listening to you. Oh, thanks, Gary. That’s nice to hear. We enjoyed listening to you, too. Well, thank you very much. Have a great day. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Well, irregardless of what you say, Martha, I’m going to go with you. He did it again! I feel like Charlie Brown in the football. I keep trusting that you’re not— Wait, why am I a Lucy? I feel more like Linus. You’re Lucy! Or Schroeder, maybe. Except I don’t play the piano. I think of you more as Snoopy, actually. No, no. I walk into that every time. I just trust that you’re not going to say irregardless, and then you do.

What can I say? You know, what’s funny is it’s one of those words that, although I try not to judge other people for using it, I do my dernest to keep it out of my own speech. You know, you try really hard not to judge others for their mistakes, but then you hold yourself to a much higher standard. Right. Irregardless, I was fully in that category. Did you have to break yourself of the habit? Did you grow up saying irregardless?

You know, it was one of those things that once it became clear that I had a better choice in the word “regardless,” then it’s easy. It’s easier. But sometimes when we have these language dilemmas, the better choice isn’t always clear. So in this case, I think the better choice is clear, and it’s easy just to say, “Oh, I’m not going to use irregardless.”

Well, we’d love to hear from you about language. Give us a call, the number is 1-877-929-9673. Or you can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org. Martha, here’s an interesting email that we got from Steve in Southern California. He says, “At a restaurant last night, my friend and I ordered a flight of wine that was featured.” So our question is, why is it called a flight?

Good question. You know, Steve, this is a good question. It’s probably related to a variety of other uses of flight that mean a bunch of similar things, such as a flight of stairs, or a flight of birds. That’s a flock of birds, which is a loft, or even a flight of aircraft. The RAF uses that term. And, Martha, there is a collective noun for a group of angels, which is also a flight.

Oh, sure. Flights of angels. Flights of angels. So more than likely it comes from that. It’s just a series of things which are similar. They’re like of a kind, but each unique, each different. So for example, you can also have flights of beer, vodka, sake, even olive oil, salmon, oysters, pretty much anything. Anything that comes in a variety of types, but is still all of one kind, you can have a flight of. So like a tasting of balsamic vinegar and that kind of thing? That’s right, exactly.

Or a tasting of different kinds of beers.

The wine one, of course, is more well-known.

I hadn’t thought about the flight of stairs connection, so it’s just a collection of…

A series, actually.

These are things that are presented or happen or, in this case, consumed in order.

I see.

If you take a flight, I believe you’re supposed to consume them in the order in which they’re presented.

That would make sense to me.

Yeah, like at a wine tasting.

Well, you’re the California lady.

Do you ever go out to the wineries and do the booze Saturdays or whatever they call them?

Booes Saturdays.

Right, you can chuck on somebody else’s dime.

You pretend to be a connoisseur, but instead you’re just sipping the Merlot.

Right, and you do it in order.

In order, that’s right.

White to red, and yeah.

Well, thanks for your email, Steve.

I hope that helped.

If you just want to send us an email with a question, we’ll take a look at it.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org.

You can, of course, also call us at 1-877-WAYWORD.

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Amelia Goodhe from Logan, Utah.

Hi, Amelia.

How you doing?

I am great.

I am so excited to be on your show today.

And we’re excited to have you.

Yeah.

Well, I have a little story.

I was driving with my mother-in-law to Las Vegas from Northern Utah for Thanksgiving.

And I introduced her to the show.

And when we got to Las Vegas, we started to prepare the meal for Thanksgiving.

And I asked if we were going to be serving it buffet style.

So she asked, “Or are we having it mortgage board style?”

And I said, “Hey, that’s a great question for A Way with Words.”

So what kind of meal did you serve?

Well, I guess to me, it was buffet.

It was just the island in the kitchen, piled with food, with different dishes.

So to her, it was a smorgasbord.

And to me, it was buffet.

So you didn’t really see a difference between smorgasbord and buffet.

And it’s a self-serve situation, right?

Right, where all the food is just laid out before you.

And you just dish yourself up.

Well, you know, the easiest thing to say here that a smorgasbord is simply a type of buffet.

Oh, it is?

Yeah, yeah.

Of course, originally, a smorgasbord was a little more complicated than that.

In the Scandinavian tradition, there was an order to the courses, like you would start with fish, and then the bread and butter, and cheese and eggs, and then pickled vegetables, and then the hot foods.

And also, smorgasbord could either be the hors d’oeuvres or it could be the main meal.

But we’ve borrowed the term in the English.

And as a result, we’ve kind of made it a little more general.

And now it just generally means a lot of small dishes from which you serve yourself a meal, right?

Okay, so you are saying that it’s basically the same thing?

Yes, yes it is.

I think in this country, yeah.

Yes, in this country it is.

In practical American usage, it’s the same thing.

And it’s simply a word choice.

Okay, and then where did you say the word that comes from originally?

Oh, it’s Swedish.

Oh, that’s what I figured.

It sounded Swedish chef-ish.

Well, you know, Jim Henson, when he did the Swedish chef, was not really speaking Swedish.

Oh, he was?

No.

He actually got funny letters from very serious Swedes who were wondering why he was purporting to speak Swedish or it wasn’t.

But anyway, that’s a side note.

Interestingly, smorgasbord is Swedish.

It comes from two words, smorgas, of course I’m getting the pronunciation wrong, which means a slice of bread and butter plus bord, meaning table.

Okay.

Cool?

Yeah, that’s cool.

All right, well, thank you, Amelia, for your call.

Well, I just have to tell you that I come from a big family. There are 10 of us and your show has brought a lot of fun, conversation into our family. We love your show.

Oh, thank you. That’s very nice. 10 of you. I’m jealous. I only had five kids in my family.

Well, don’t be too jealous. It’s a little crazy.

All right, well, best of luck to you.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, they have to have a smorgasbord, a really long table with that many kids.

Well, if you’d like to speak Swedish with Grant, give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can always email your questions to words@waywordradio.org.

A few episodes ago, we took a call about a woman whose grandmother used to chastise her for wearing a short skirt. She’d say, “Why, I can almost see up to possible.” Remember that, Martha?

Oh, yeah, right.

And the caller wanted to know more about possible used in that way. Well, let’s just say that we gave an answer that is of no consequence. Incomplete at best. Incomplete.

Our listeners have, however, come up with a better answer, and this is for certain a good one. The story that they’ve told us takes a lot of shapes, but it always describes a way of avoiding talking about certain parts of the body, so to speak, right?

And it’s usually put this way. First, you wash down far as possible, then you wash up far as possible, and then you wash possible.

How did we miss that?

Well, I don’t know. It actually rang some bells once it was mentioned on the forum. Matt and Kay had something to say about it on our discussion forum.

A bunch of other people chimed in by email, and some more people said some stuff on the discussion forum.

And once they gave me the clue, I did a lot more digging.

And do you know what?

James Joyce uses a variation of this in Ulysses, which was written in about 1921.

He does?

He does.

This is what he writes.

Remember, this is a page with basically no sentence punctuation whatsoever.

He writes, “When I said I washed up and down far as possible, asking me, ‘And did you wash possible?'”

Okay.

There we go.

So we know for certain that it goes back to at least 1921.

It is a pass-along thing.

I wonder if it’s not Irish or if it’s something that is more well-known in the British Isles.

I don’t know.

The written record on this is scarce, but I was so glad to have Matt and Kay and the other people point out a better path to take.

Yeah, yeah.

We love it when our listeners do that.

And you can always do that by calling us at 1-877-9299673 or sending us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

And the discussion forum that Grant mentioned, where there are always lively conversations going on, is waywordradio.org/discussion.

[MUSIC] That’s our show for this week.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

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Tim also engineered our theme music.

Kurt Konan produced it.

We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdasian and Josette Hurdell.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And from the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett.

Ciao luego.

Bye-bye.

[MUSIC]