Diamond Dust (episode #1585)

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

In English, if we’re saying a casual goodbye, we might say, see you later, alligator. After a while, crocodile. And it turns out that there are lovely rhyming goodbyes like that in several different languages.

For example, in Spanish, you might say, ciao, pescao, which means bye, fish. And in Dutch, you say, ayu, pa de plu.

Oh, I hear the French in that.

Yeah?

Goodbye, umbrella.

Yes. That may have been popularized by a Dutch sportscaster.

A you pas de plus?

And in French, there’s one that goes, a plus dans le bus? See you later on the bus.

Yeah.

But one of my favorites is in Swedish. It goes, tako, hey, liverpaste. Thank you. Goodbye, liverpaste.

That’s really good. You know, there are more verses to the see you later alligator after a wild crocodile, but they don’t make any sense either. There’s one like, if you beg, said the egg.

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Yeah. In a few said the stew. They’re all food related. I don’t know why.

Well, I know that there are lots and lots and lots of these, and we would love to hear about them from you. So send them to words@waywordradio.org. Or if you want to talk about any aspect of language, give us a call. 877-929-9673.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Linda Wheatley. I’m calling from Greensboro, North Carolina.

Hi, Linda. Welcome to the show.

Well, there was a thought or a word, a couple words, if I can just share them.

Yeah, sure.

One is voluntold.

Voluntold.

Voluntold.

Oh, yeah.

Yes. Yes. Did you want to tell us more about that?

Well, I didn’t coin it myself, but one of my co-workers did. Before I retired from the school district, I worked as a speech pathologist. And my co-worker and I, we were at our meeting that we usually have with our principal at the beginning of the week. And so she was looking for volunteers for bus duty. I think bus duty or lunch duty, something like that. So there was a group of us there, teachers there, but nobody volunteered. So she said, well, you know, so-and-so, then you will do bus duty. And so my coworker said, oh, you just got voluntold. I thought that was pretty cold.

That was pretty cold. You just got voluntold. All of our military listeners, people with military service are all going, huh, huh, because that’s incredibly common in the military. Sometimes it’s just a passing comment from your commanding officer, but you had better will understand that it is a command that you need to, you know, do whatever it is that they just happen to mention in passing.

Absolutely. Sometimes they pick you for a duty in your off hours, in your free days, like a public relations event or something like that. And you said you had something else that you wanted to bring up?

Yes. There’s another word. Again, I didn’t coin this one, and it’s swallow-ship. And swallow-ship, that’s when you’re eating your meal, you’re enjoying a meal with someone, friends or family, and you are fellowshipping as well. So we call that swallow ship.

Linda, I appreciate the explanation because that was starting to sound really painful when you first said the word. I was thinking of a ship in a bottle or something.

Ouch.

Yes, that was coined by a friend of ours in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where we used to live. And then the final one, this is the one that I coined, okay?

Yeah.

All right. It’s smart attack.

Smart attack.

Have you heard that before?

Smart attack.

Smart attack.

Like not a heart attack, but a smart attack.

What is that?

A smart attack. Well, for my students, whenever they got the correct answer or they came up with a really great idea, I would say you just had a smart attack.

Oh, yeah.

Giggle and giggles. So, yeah. I was just thinking of that moment when kids get so excited when they know they’re right and they get fidgety in their seats and their hand goes up and they go, oh, oh, oh. And they just want to tell you.

That’s right.

That’s right. And I’m saying, you’re right. You just had a smart attack. So they’re like, yes, Miss Willie, yes.

Linda, that’s a good one. That’s a really good one. I can just picture it. I bet you were a great teacher. You sound like you’ve got a warm heart and a kind spirit.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you. I love my babies. I really did. I call them my babies.

Oh, that’s so sweet. I bet you never had to be voluntold.

Look, often, often I was voluntold. Still, that still happens in my life. That still happens.

Oh, thank you for sharing these words. We really appreciate it, Linda.

Oh, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to share with everyone.

All right. Take care. Thanks for listening. Bye.

Okay. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hey, Grant. This is Zach from Santa Barbara.

Hi, Zach. Welcome to the show.

Hi. Thanks for having me.

So I’m calling today about the use of the word right. I feel like I’ve noticed a trend in the use of the word right in a rhetorical sense in the middle of some sort of monologue when someone’s speaking and the speaker wants to come off as if something that they’re saying is fact and everything that they’re describing before then. And then they keep going right after without pausing to let somebody come in and say, oh, wait, maybe there is maybe there is some room for discussion there. And they keep going as if everyone’s on the same page.

Can you give us like a more specific example?

Yeah. So we all know that chocolate is the best flavor of ice cream, right? Therefore, we’re not going to be carrying it at the grocery store for the rest of the month. So the way you said that was we all agree that chocolate is the best flavor of ice cream, right? And then you continued and you didn’t give me and Martha a chance to say, no, strawberry or no, vanilla.

Exactly. Yes. Thank you. And I feel like I hear it a lot in politics and in discussions and maybe courses and lectures and stuff like that. And I’m wondering if it’s maybe like a new use of that word or a new way that people are using that to describe something. I feel like I hadn’t heard it so much when I was younger. Maybe I’m just noticing it more now.

Well, I don’t know if it’s newer, but it’s what we call in linguistics a tag question. It’s sort of like the expression, you know, which can be used a whole lot of different ways. And linguists love picking apart all the different ways that a tag question like right can be used. Because sometimes, you know, or right can be, you know, an attempt. I said, you know, didn’t I? It can be an attempt to build camaraderie. Or maybe the speaker’s trying to get the listener to accept the speaker’s statement as a matter of mutual knowledge, like that statement about the chocolate, you know. Or there I go again. You and I can agree that water is wet, right? And sometimes right can function as a floor-yielding device. You might say, for example, today’s staff meeting is at 4 o’clock, right? And then you answer with the correct answer. But I think what you’re talking about, I don’t know, to me, it feels more like a device for holding the floor or a way of asserting that speaker surely is correct. And I understand what you’re saying. You take a breath because you want to respond to that question, but you don’t get the chance.

Is that what you’re talking about?

You are spot on in describing it better than I could. And you just keep going and you’re like, wait, well, maybe there is room for discussion, but it just keeps on going. And like you said, it’s not like, oh, you were at the grocery store last night, right? It’s very much like you were describing it. Somebody in their monologue and a way to keep holding the floor.

You know, it’s interesting, Zach, because I have caught myself doing that from time to time. You know, when I listen back to the show, sometimes I do that. And, of course, I just caught myself saying, you know, again.

So I think the point that you and I can agree on is that if there’s an overuse of that, then it is distracting.

Right?

It takes away from it.

It’s distracting.

Right, Zach?

Yes.

Yes.

If you had to say that your opinion or whatever it is is right, then I’m like, wait, well, I feel like if your opinion is right, then you might not even have to say that.

So I feel like it almost cheapens it for me sometimes.

That’s interesting.

So there are a lot of different ways to say right. We’re all agreed on that. Right?

Correct.

Right.

Correct.

But there are a lot of different. So this is a prejudicial sentence tag. This is one where you are kind of forcing your opinion on the other interlocutors, to use a specialty term.

You’re forcing them into this mode of thinking that were you a fair interlocutor, whether you’re actually having a fair discussion, you would have given them an opportunity to speak their mind.

Right. Correct. Right.

But let’s talk about those other uses of right that don’t follow.

So one of the ways we use right or similar words is to help the speaker refocus their thoughts.

It isn’t for the other people.

It’s for the one who’s talking.

They just need that little bit of pause to give them a second to put their next words in order before they come out of their mouths.

There’s also things like it helps them keep the listener’s attention.

That word right can gather in everyone who’s there and have them focus their eyes and ears a little more carefully on what comes next.

And it sometimes helps the speaker keep the rhythm and the timing of what they’re saying so it comes out in just the right way.

So maybe there’s a big reveal that’s about to come or a punchline that’s going to happen.

And it can really hit that zinger, hit that note exactly right.

Yeah, so there are lots of different ways to use that term right.

And I think what you’re zeroing in on, Zach, is just the overuse, just when you hear it after every sentence or every other sentence.

And then it kind of undermines what the speaker is saying if you get distracted by that.

By the way, Zach, if you are one of the right sayers or if anybody listening is one of the right sayers,

A technique that some people use is to put a rubber band on their wrist.

And when you hear yourself saying a word that for you is an unnecessary word that just keeps coming out of your mouth for no good reason, snap it.

Just give yourself a little snap on the wrist.

And you’ll soon learn not to say that word.

Yeah, or just pause.

There you go.

Yeah, I was thinking the amount of times I could have said the word right just while talking to you guys in this moment.

I’m like, oh my gosh, how many times is this coming up?

Well, Zach, we’re really glad you called.

Thanks for making us even more self-conscious.

My apologies.

Zach, it was a real pleasure.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks, folks.

I appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear how you’ve dealt with the work that you say all the time that you just want to stop saying all the time.

How did you get yourself out of the habit?

Let us know.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

This show’s about language examined through family, history, and culture.

Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And Hark, who goes there?

It’s John Chaneski.

Behold.

Our quiz guy.

Behold. Hark, it’s me. Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. I’m sorry to interrupt your harking, but it is time

For a quiz. So let’s get started with this. Whenever I lose something, I often forget to

Look inside something else. You know, like I’ll find my keys in my pants or the book I’m reading

In the bag of groceries for some reason. It’d be a lot easier if the name of the thing I was looking

For was inside the name of the thing that it’s in. For example, if there’s something you need to

Scratch, in what room of the house would you find it? Does it have an itch in it? Yeah, that’s right.

It’s got an itch in it. Which room in the house has an itch in it? That would be the kitchen.

The kitchen, yes. Kitchen contains itch. Nice. That’s how you get the premise of this one. Here

We go. Let’s look for a few other items. So your high school has a baseball game coming up and you

Say you’ve lost one of your officials? Well, why not

Look to the marching band? I’ll bet

You’ll find him hiding in one of the instruments.

In the trumpet?

Yes, you’ll find the ump in the

Trumpet. Tiny little umptiny,

Tiny little ump hiding in the trumpet.

Now, in what planet would

You find your lost collection of paintings and

Sculptures?

Oh, on Mars?

No, not on Mars.

R’s, A-R-S is…

Yeah, what about that?

That’s a… Throw some Latin in there.

That’s a valid workaround, yes.

But all of these are English, and all of them, by the way, are in the middle, not at the front or back of the word.

Okay.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

In the middle.

Let’s see.

Oop it.

Jupiter.

I don’t know.

How about Earth?

How about Earth?

Yes.

What are we looking for?

Art.

We’re looking for our art, and art is in Earth, yes.

Now, if you’re looking for a large wooden ship used to transport animals, what item of clothing should you examine?

Let’s see.

So it’s an ark and…

Something really warm, I guess.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I guess it would be a parka.

Yeah, seasonal item of clothing, of course, the parka.

Yes, the ark is right in the middle there.

Suppose you’re thirsty for…

Yes, Martha?

Sorry, go ahead.

No, I was just thinking of jumper and ump, but never mind.

Oh, I could…

Your ump could be hiding in a jumper.

You never know.

Similarly, if you want to pave your driveway, what continent should you search?

Pave my driveway? What am I putting down? Am I putting tar?

Yes.

Yeah, so maybe Antarctica?

Antarctica, yes.

Now, Groucho said, outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.

Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

However, inside a certain breed of dog, you can find a cooking implement.

Now, if you finish reading and you’re ready to make dinner, that’s useful.

Wow.

There are so many breeds of dogs, dude.

Yeah, this is going to take a while.

But how many common cooking implements are there?

Well, there’s the oodle and poodle.

That’s an implement.

No, I’m kidding.

A beagle has an eagle.

A pan.

Spaniel?

Spaniel, yes.

A spaniel with a pan inside.

Oh, good, Martha.

Well done.

Please be careful when examining your spaniel for a pan.

All right.

I am finished for the day.

Goodbye, you guys.

Talk to you next week. Bye, John. Take care. Be well. Bye-bye. You too. You know, we do a lot of

Goofing around on this show, and it’s even more fun when you join us. You can call us and say your

Piece, 877-929-9673, or send us your thoughts, questions, comments, stories, ideas to words

At waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, it’s Kathy Donnelly. I’m calling from

The bucolic town of Beaumont, Pennsylvania, which is kind of near Wilkes-Barre. Hiya Kathy, how are

You? We’re doing good, thanks for asking. What’s going on? I have a son who is currently dating a

Trans. See, that’s the thing. They’re not really… they’ve decided they’re just binary.

That they’re not really trans one or trans the other or anything really, which is fine, but I am

Having a hell of a time with the pronouns. The main reason is, I think it’s a brain thing. I

Swear to God, I do, because this person looks and sounds like a woman, but they prefer either he

Or they. And they were visiting. They brought their child, who is a girl, age 10, up and they

Were visiting, and the very first thing I did, I mean, talk about embarrassing yourself. The very

First thing I did is I come down and it’s morning and I say, good morning, ladies. And then I just

Wanted to die and kill myself and just jump into a big hole. And you, you apologize and you say,

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that blah, blah, blah. But you know, they don’t forget there it’s,

It’s in there now. And it’s just, it’s like, why am I having such a hard time with this particular aspect of of language? Yet you know, it’s like my brain just won’t do it and I yeah I ascribe that to being old, but I’m not sure that’s what it is. It’s just, it’s making me crazy. I mean, I have I teach college and I have students that identify as trans. they They look and sound more like what they’re transitioning into. Do you know what I’m saying? So it’s not as hard. The thing that they tell you is if you meet somebody and they say, my name is Robert, but I like to be called Bob, you’re not going to call them Robert. You’re going to call them Bob because that’s what they like to be called. Why did you call this person what they like to be called? And it’s just like, I am trying so hard. Nobody has better intentions than me, but you know what the nuns used to say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t know how to switch that switch in my brain or whatever.

I think we can help you a little bit here. Martha, don’t you think that Kathy’s starting from a good position? I think you’re starting from a fantastic position. I’m curious how your son and his sweetie reacted. Oh, they know very much that I am an ally and that I will do everything I can to support whatever they want to do. So they’re just like, yeah, you’re old, we get it. But it’s like, I just, I want, I want to do this right. I really want to do this right. And I am having a hell of a time.

Well, talking about communicating, it seems to me that you’re really communicating your good intentions in a big, big way. I mean, this is new to so many people, and it takes practice, just like learning another language would take practice. But I think, as Grant said, I mean, you’re way out in front with communicating your intentions. And I think that that’s such a huge part of this, because ideally language should be about connecting people.

And I think if you look at it from their perspective, I mean, you know, if somebody tells you their pronouns, that’s what tells me the language part, the connecting part.

It feels like I’m not doing my part.

It feels like I’m not, you know, reaching out to the double yellow line. They are.

They have to because they live in this society.

I want credit for reaching out to the double yellow line, but I can’t get that until I get the damn pronouns right.

You know, I think you get credit for trying.

You get credit for trying and trying.

You get a ribbon.

Your love and affection will show through as you keep trying and trying.

And the conflict here is that you worry about being seen as a bad person rather than as someone who just made a mistake.

And there’s a very big difference between those two things.

It’s not a bad person.

It’s just somebody that doesn’t think enough or doesn’t care enough, you know?

But it sounds like you care a lot.

I’m hearing love. I’m hearing affection. I’m hearing how distraught you are shows that love and affection.

Look, if you want a linguistic explanation, what you’re having to do here is add into this list of pronouns that you learned vicariously.

You absorbed your understanding of English language pronouns without really having to think about it from the people around you as a child before you ever went into school.

And they’re in your brain in a deep way.

And now you’re consciously having to add this new pronoun paradigm into that kind of deep understanding of pronouns that you’ve never had to really articulate.

And that’s the conflict happening here is that you’re having to put an intellectual understanding of a new pronoun paradigm on top of kind of a intuitive, emotional understanding of pronouns.

Yeah.

And that’s work for you, Kathy.

But I’m also thinking about the other person because they’ve been dealing with this very problem a whole lot longer than other people.

You know, I mean, I’m thinking from the perspective of a gay person.

I mean, for example, you never come out just once and have it done with.

Your whole life is a process of coming out again and again and again and again, whether you’re at the doctor’s office or you meet somebody new.

And it can be exhausting.

And I just, I cannot tell you how grateful one can be when somebody makes that effort, you know, reaches out to you toward that double yellow line.

I think you’re doing a fantastic job.

I understand the frustration, but I think you’ll get there.

The other thing is just exposure.

I mean, I would recommend if you haven’t seen it, the Netflix special called Disclosure.

You might think of it as an all-trans companion piece to the movie The Celluloid Closet, which was about on-screen depictions of gay people through the years.

And this one is about on-screen depictions of trans people through the years.

And I think just exposure is really, really helpful that way.

So the video is called Disclosure, and I would highly recommend it.

Immediately. I’m going to immediately go do that right now.

Cool.

All right. Kathy, keep us updated. Let us know how it’s going. All right.

All right. Will do. Thanks, you guys.

All right. Take care. Be well.

Go get them.

Bye-bye.

You too. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

If you leave a job for some reason, you may end up having an exit interview with your boss.

But more and more in business, people are having stay interviews or stay meetings.

Stay meetings or stay interviews designed to see what the company can do to keep you on the job.

Right. It’s less of the boss giving you a performance review and telling you things.

It’s more of the boss asking you, you know, how can we make this better?

What would motivate you to stay?

What would motivate you to leave?

I like the idea.

They’re trying to keep you from being a part of what’s being called the Great Resignation.

Indeed.

More and more people leaving their jobs.

So I expect we’re going to be hearing more about stay interviews and stay meetings.

I like the idea.

New lingo?

Is there new lingo that’s passed before your eyes?

Share it with us.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Joseph Torsivia from Houma, Louisiana.

Hi, Joseph. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Joseph.

Hi there. Thank you. Hello, Grant Martha. How are you?

All right. What’s up?

So I have an interesting story, and I didn’t know if there’s some other local dialect type of distances that folks would use,

But I am in the Coast Guard, and I was stationed in Morgan City, Louisiana,

And I was going out to an oil spill out in the Chafalaya Basin, so real deep in Cajun country.

And when we showed up at the boat launch, we didn’t know how to get out to where the oil spill was,

And a local crawfisherman gave us a unit of measurement that I’d never heard before.

He told us to go down the bayou about four eye sights,

And when we finally got him to explain what that was, it was as far as you could see,

And that was one turn of the bayou, and then that was one, and then you’d go to the second, and so on and so forth.

Oh, wow.

Once he explains it, it makes sense, right?

It does, especially for somewhere down there where it’s real windy and there’s not a lot of landmarks.

It was 2011, so GPS was still not really a thing quite yet.

Yeah, it was a pretty cool term.

So he was actually using this seriously, right?

Not just as a joke or something.

No, absolutely.

We were there in official capacity, and he was giving us the best directions he could tell us.

How nice is that?

Just nice to hear those terms in the wild, Martha.

Yeah, that’s wonderful.

And Joseph, it reminds me of a call that we had, gosh, years and years ago, maybe eight or nine years ago,

From a guy named Brian who was running across the United States.

He would go off and run across, you know, Vermont or go off and run across Utah.

And he called us to say that when he was in West Virginia, he was asking directions.

And one of the people there said, well, to get to where you’re wanting to go here, you want to go six Farsis away.

And he thought, Farsis? What are there? Farsi speakers here?

But then he realized that the guy was saying, go as far as you can see, and then go as far as you can see from there, and do that a total of six times, six Farsi’s.

And that’s always stuck with me.

I’ve seen it mentioned a couple of other times, once in relation to West Virginia, and somebody else in upstate New York used that term, Farsi.

So it sounds like the same thing, really, an eyesight or a Farsi, as far as you can see.

It absolutely does.

It’s interesting how the terminology has changed a little bit, but it’s still that same measurement of distance.

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s changed or just coexisted, but Grant, we have lots of approximate measures of distance like that.

Well, I have a third one to toss in here.

This is from a book, and they’re talking about something they heard among the Pennsylvania Dutch.

And in answer to a question about a route to take, they heard back, go two far sights, turn right, one go down, cross to a tree, and a right smart piece beyond.

Those were the directions.

But a far sight is the same as an eyesight or a far see.

So that’s three different ways to say the same thing.

So we’ve got a pattern here.

That is pretty neat.

We sure do.

I’m wondering if GPSs are going to start doing that.

In 400 meters, turn right and go one Farsi.

But I would really love to hear if there are other people around the country or around the world who have similar expressions like that.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

We’d love to hear your unconventional measurements of distance.

Joseph, this was an enlightening call, and we would love to hear anything else like this that you run across in your work for the Coast Guard.

Absolutely. I’ll be sure to send it along.

Okay. Thank you for calling, and take care out there, all right?

Thank you. You as well. You guys have a great day.

All right. Be well.

You too, Joseph. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Martha, you mentioned other kinds of measurements, and besides distance, we have things like talking about water or mud that is shoe-mouth deep.

Shoe-mouth.

Yeah, yeah.

Is that where your shoe ends and your ankle starts?

Yeah, well, the mouth of your shoe, where your ankle goes in.

Or water that is straddled deep that’s kind of up to your crotch.

Or among loggers, supposedly at one time, they’d talk about things being an axe handle length.

And one definition is it’s a unit of length shorter than a hoop and a hauler.

Axe handle length.

It’s interesting how many times we use parts of the body to measure things.

Like I’m thinking about the word fathom, which was originally the distance of a man’s outstretched arms.

That’s why we have the expression, I can’t fathom that.

I can’t get my arms around it.

But a fathom was usually about six feet.

And then there’s also the double fist, an amount equal to the size of putting your two fists together.

You might have, in mining, a double fist-sized piece of coal is known as a cobble, which is interesting.

There you go.

And then galpin, you know, the term that means the amount that you can hold in two hands.

Galpin or yespin.

We could go on all day about this.

Well, we have an hour.

We’d love to hear your unconventional measurements.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Grant, what kind of tomato really smells?

A to-may-to.

Because it’s on your feet and your feet are stinky.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

A beefsteak tomato that’s been left in the sun.

Steak?

Rotting meat?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

What kind of tomato really smells?

Roma.

That’s terrible.

877-929-9673.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And Grant, I must thank you so much for that book you gave me a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah, you’re welcome.

Obviously, you know me too well because you gave me a 1955 glossary of Arctic and subarctic terms.

And it is fantastic.

Yeah, a glossary instead of a greeting card.

That’s the thing for Martha Barnette.

It’s a glossary of scientific and indigenous terms, primarily for military personnel.

But boy, so much of it is so poetic.

I mean, it has terms like sugar iceberg and tapioca snow and diamond dust.

Isn’t that gorgeous?

Yeah, diamond dust.

Oh, I love it.

What is that?

That is precipitation of fine ice crystals falling directly from the atmosphere with no cloud formation present.

Diamond dust.

Yes, isn’t that gorgeous?

And tapioca snow, as you can guess, is just kind of snow pellets that look like tapioca.

A sugar iceberg is an iceberg composed of porous glacier ice.

But let me share with you my favorite term in the whole book.

It’s nieve penitente.

And that’s Spanish for penitent snow.

If that’s not something you could write a poem about, I don’t know.

I’m not sure how I would interpret that.

Penitent snow.

What could that mean?

Well, look it up on the internet because there are gorgeous photos of penitent snow.

I spent half an hour just looking at those. Penitent snow refers to spikes or pinnacles of ice that are produced when a snowbank or a glacier melts in an uneven way. And you see this, especially in the high altitudes along the border of Chile and Argentina. And it’s called nieve penitente, which means penitent snow in Spanish, because it recalls the image of all these penitent people, you know, repenting for their sins, kneeling across the landscape. Or it might also come from the fact that certain religious orders during Spanish Holy Week, you know, march through the streets and they have these tall pointed habits. You can see pictures of those too.

And I think it’s just such a gorgeous term, penitent snow.

Wow. And it’s so culturally important. Like that’s why it’s opaque to me because it’s not a part of my experience. I haven’t seen the ice feature and I don’t know that the religious order.

So interesting. Yes. And then once you do, it all becomes legible. It reminds me of, you and I have both spent some time in the desert here in Southern California. And at first it looks, you know, it just all kind of looks the same. But over time you start to see more and more features and recognize them and it becomes more specific. And you start to realize that there’s this near infinite variety of features out there. I’m glad that you enjoyed this book, Martha.

Well, I am too. So again, that’s the glossary of Arctic and subarctic terms. It’s from 1955. It’s dated in a lot of ways, but I still really enjoyed it. And I think it’d be great for a poet just to page through and get some ideas.

We’d love it when you share the words of your hobbies and your jobs and your histories with us.

If there’s a glossary or a dictionary or some little word list that you’ve been saving, we’d love to learn more about it and share it with everyone else.

Send it to us in email, words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on the telephone, 877-929-9673.

That’s toll-free in the U.S. and Canada.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Nikki calling from Northampton, Massachusetts.

Hey, Nikki.

Noho. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Nikki.

Thank you. Hi. Well, I have this, it’s kind of a mystery. It’s a word, a term that my dad used to use with us when we were little and while we were growing up. And it is something that has stuck with me and I use it. And I use it and also my wife uses it and she’s from Israel. And now our tween uses it as well. And I was always wondering what the origin of the word was. Was it something that my dad made up? Was it something that he kind of picked up based upon where he grew up? He was an African-American man, and he grew up in Indiana. And he grew up surrounded by working-class African-Americans, but also working-class Eastern Europeans, immigrants.

So I was kind of wondering what this word, which is kind of a strange sounding word, just what its origins were.

This is quite a buildup. I can’t wait to hear what the word is.

That makes two of us. The word is do funny.

Do funny. How do you spell do funny?

I think it’s just kind of it’s D-O and then F-U-N-N-Y.

And I think that’s how he spelled it or that, you know, that’s what he said.

Yeah.

Did he use it as a noun or a verb or how would he use it?

A do funny was just kind of a person with unusual ways.

It was like someone with maybe odd ways.

It was, well, it was kind of the cherry on the top of oddness.

So if he was going to use it, he was going to say, well, gosh, that person is, you know, oh, you know, do funny.

And, I mean, I’ve used it, and I’ve said it about people who, you know, have done something that is kind of odd, kind of weird, you know, not horrible, but just a little strange.

So I’d say, oh, you know, the do-funnies out the street or this or that.

So as far back as the 1850s, do funny, both with the single O spelling D-O-F-U-N-N-Y and with the double O spelling D-O-O-F-U-N-N-Y, was used as a funny last name for characters in satire, whether it was in the newspapers or on stage.

Oh, wow.

You know, this keeps happening again and again. And by the 1970s, it’s used as what is sometimes known as indefinite specifics, words like doohickey or thingamajig or whatchamacallit. So these are words, hand me that do funny, you know, or I don’t, give me the, what the, the, the, the do funny, you know, you know, it’s usually situations where it’s clear what you mean, but you can’t think of the true name right at the moment.

This whole time from the 1850s forward, it continues to be used as a funny name.

Like there’s one work of fiction where a daughter uses it to refer to her father.

She calls him Old Doofunny in a humorous kind of confrontational way.

There was a newspaper columnist by the name of Peter Finley Dunn, who wrote under the pen name of Mr. Dooley, pretending to be an Irish barman in Chicago newspapers.

And he wrote this kind of Chicagoese dialect column.

And he often wrote, used the name Doofunny.

He used it as a police holder’s last name.

You know, again, kind of like using thingamajig or doohickey,

He used Doofunny.

Oh, Mr. Doofunny over here.

Because he couldn’t remember the name.

Or he didn’t want to print it.

But the real key here, Nikki,

And tell me if this rings a bell,

There was a play called the do funny family that was performed around the country from the 1920s

Going forward and even through the 20s and 30s and 40s well into the 70s and 80s you can still find it

Mentioned in you know the entertainment sections of newspapers as being performed like usually

Small town theater you know like something put on by the the school or the pta or the the old

Folks home, that sort of thing. And it was broad humor and slapstick gags, lots of running around,

Farcical stuff, singing old songs with new silly lyrics, people wearing clothes that are too big

Or too small. That definitely sounds like something that would be in the Do Funny universe that I was

Afforded to growing up. Yeah, that name of the play is pretty much a trailer right there.

Yeah, the Doofunny family. So, I mean, according to what I see in the listings of the newspaper, this play was widely presented across the country. And I would not be surprised if this is the kind of the place where Doofunny, meaning a goofy person, was popularized. And it’s possible that’s where your father picked it up.

But there’s another element here. You mentioned the African-American connection. There is a use of do funny used in the black community referred to a gay man. And I wonder if he had that meaning as well. And for him, it just meant somebody who was out of the usual or out of the ordinary.

You know what? It could have. My brother and sister and I kind of debated this. And my brother said, well, he did say funny. He didn’t put the do funny on it when he spoke of certain things, but certain other things he did put do funny on.

And he would never mean it as anything malicious or anything to kind of, you know, to hurt anyone.

He would always mean it as somebody.

OK, what is that person doing?

They’re just acting like a doofunny.

So, you know, it was probably picked up when he was younger from all of these elements, which is actually really, really fascinating to me.

And I can’t wait for my siblings to hear that.

Yeah, it’s possible it was just floating the ether.

And none of these sources are where he picked it up.

He could have just learned it from somebody else.

But that’s what we know about DoFun.

It does have, you know, 150 years plus of history being used as a goofy last name.

Oh, that’s so interesting.

Yeah, Nikki, that’s one heck of a linguistic heirloom.

I’m glad you’re carrying it on.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, I am too.

And I’m so grateful for you both.

Thank you so much for helping me with that.

Well, thank you for your call and thanks for listening.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Thanks, Nikki.

Okay, thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So when you’re filling out your will, put a codicil in the back that includes the words your children are going to inherit from you,

And send that list to us. Email words@waywordradio.org.

We had a conversation a while back about the pronunciation of that fruit that some people call apricot and some people call apricot.

Well, we heard from Alec McLean, who grew up in the Santa Clara Valley long before it became Silicon Valley.

And Alec says there are lots of orchards there.

And Alec maintains that the proper pronunciation of this fruit is cot.

Oh, of course.

Alex says all the kids in town had summer jobs cutting cots, that is slicing and pitting them to be dried.

And he goes on to say, occasionally if you were talking about the trees or the orchards, you would hear the whole word.

But if you heard it with a short A, you knew you were listening to somebody who wasn’t originally from around there.

Meaning that they all said apricot.

Apricot was for outsiders.

I guess so.

I don’t know what I say.

I still don’t know, even after that conversation we had.

We’ve talked about this before.

You and I, our speech is so messed up because we try things on all the time.

Yes, we are just mutts.

Yeah, we’re too influenced by what we read and hear from others.

Yeah, well, I think cot is really handy.

I’m just going to start saying that.

Yeah, can I have a few cots?

Because you can have things like plum cots, which are crossbred.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, so as a combining form, it already exists.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Dan, and I’m calling from Elmira, New York.

Hi, Dan. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Dan. What’s up?

Well, I’m calling about something that I call structural onomatopoeia,

And I was wondering if you could help me with whether this is a real thing or not.

Structural onomatopoeia. Okay, help us out with what that is.

Well, unlike regular onomatopoeia where the sound would suggest a meaning, in structural

Onomatopoeia, the structure or the architecture, the anatomy of the word would suggest a meaning.

I imagine you want an example.

Yes, please.

So, oh, probably three or four decades ago, I just realized that the word polysyllabic

Is pleasingly polysyllabic.

And it got me wondering about whether when people, when whoever coins a word, if they ever take into consideration the structure of the word when they’re crafting it.

So since then, every once in a while, I would just hear a word or read a word and realize that there was something about the structure of the word that would suggest a meaning.

And so some examples, a few examples.

A radar as a palindrome sort of reflects forward and backward on itself the way a radar does.

Oh, yeah.

I was just talking to my son, and he mentioned that his girlfriend said that the word bed resembles a bed.

Right. Yeah. That’s a famous one.

The best one that I’ve ever heard is the word level, which is a palindrome with a fulcrum in the middle.

The V is the fulcrum. Gotcha.

Right, right.

I’m wondering if this is a thing, if there’s a word for it, apart from my awkward construction, and if you have any other examples.

I have a couple of thoughts about this.

Some people have suggested the word llama in lowercase letters, which sort of looks like, you know, the first two L’s look like the neck of the llama, and then there’s the body behind it.

And I’ve even seen people talking about how the word dog, again, in lowercase letters, if you kind of squint, it kind of looks like maybe a little dog curled up.

Maybe.

What about the word giraffe? Does that resemble a giraffe in any way?

I thought about that, but I thought it was a bit of a stretch.

No, I think that looks like a python that swallowed something, actually, if you think about it.

But there’s a really big difference between this and onomatopoeia.

As you suggested, onomatopoeia involves words that are formed specifically because they imitate a sound like buzz or whoosh or something like that.

But what we’re talking about is words that are already in existence that just happen to have a resemblance to this or that.

But it’s kind of in the eye of the beholder.

So I think the word for what you’re talking about is just coincidence.

Well, in a couple of the word playbooks, some people have called it logological, but I don’t know that that term is actually stuck.

Just like polysyllabic being a polysyllabic word is known as autological or sibilant is sounding sibilant or terse being terse.

Those are all autological words, words like bed or level or radar because we’re the structure.

That is the structure of the letters themselves, their physical form kind of seems like the word itself.

Those might be called logological.

So just to surmise, it’s not really a thing apart from being a game.

Right. I can’t think of a way that a word has been formed because of what it looks like.

Dan, our listeners include tons of people who love wordplay and puzzles.

I am sure that we’re going to get a lot of contributions towards this and maybe some ideas on what to call it. So stay tuned.

I certainly will. Thank you very much.

Thank you for bringing this bit of wordplay to our attention.

My pleasure.

All right. Bye-bye. Take care.

Thanks, Dan.

Bye-bye.

Do you know any more words like the ones that Dan came up with where the form of the word itself looks like the thing that the word refers to, like radar or level or bed?

Let us know. 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or go to Twitter @wayword.

We’ve adopted into English the word siesta, which means a little nap.

But if you go to Mexico, sometimes you’ll hear people talking about taking a coyotito.

And coyotito means a little coyote.

And they’re referring to the fact that coyotes are nocturnal animals.

And so you might echar un coyotito.

You might take a little coyote nap.

That’s very sweet, actually.

Yeah, I like it.

Just curl up.

And, you know, I guess if you’re taking a coyotito in the office, you’re going to do that out of sight of your boss, you know, like a coyote would.

877-929-9673.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler.

You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or email us words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.