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A California college student is campaigning for international scientific authorities to adopt the slang term hella as an official prefix indicating a huge number. Will he succeed? Also, how to pronounce niche, the regional terms doppick and nixie, the origins of towheaded and frenetic, and a phrase familiar to African-Americans but little-known outside that community: I couldn't buy a louse in a wrestling jacket.
This episode first aired October 2, 2010.
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Prefix "Hella"
Whether it's bytes of data or intergalactic distances, humans are accumulating ever more massive amounts of data. But how do we use language to describe such mind-bogglingly huge numbers? There's mega, as in mega-millions, and giga, as in gigabytes, but a California college student is urging international scientific authorities to adopt hella as a prefix to indicate a huge number: 10 to the 27th power. What are his chances for getting this slang term officially adopted as a unit of measurement?
Towhead
Someone who's flaxen-haired is said to be towheaded. Martha explains what kind of "tow" is involved.
Wrestling Jackets
Here's a variant of a phrase that's familiar to many African-Americans, but virtually unknown to most others: "I'm so broke I couldn't buy a louse a wrestling jacket." What's its meaning and origin? It's also heard "buy a flea a wrestling jacket" or "buy a mosquito a wrestling jacket."
National Book Awards Word Quiz
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a special inspiration for this week's puzzle: His wife, author Jennifer Michael Hecht, is one of five judges for the nonfiction category of the National Book Awards. He's crafted a quiz based on some of the 500 titles in contention.
Doppick and Nixie
A veterinarian in Pennsylvania Dutch Country runs into some strange terms. What's wrong with a dog that's doppick, or a cat that's nixie? What does it mean to have your animal dressed?
Niche Pronunciation
The pronunciation of the word niche has changed over the years.
Defining Numbers and Colors
Grant and Martha talk more about the challenges dictionary editors face when trying to define numbers and colors.
Wish In One Hand
A descendant of the legendary Hatfield family of Appalachia remembers her grandmother saying, "Wish in one hand and tacky in the other, and see which fills up first." She wonders about the origin of this advice, and what the word tacky means in this case. Yep, we know all about the coarser, earthier version of the phrase! Here's another: "If wishes were buttercake, beggars would bite."
Frenetic vs. Frantic
The adjectives frenetic and frantic arise from the same linguistic root, but have slightly different meanings.
Allan Metcalf Book Recommendation
Grant recommends the new book, OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word by Allan Metcalf.
Play it By Ear
When we agree to make a decision later, we might say we're going to "play it by ear." What's the origin of that phrase?
This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.
Photo by Dennis Jarvis. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Book Mentioned in the Broadcast
| OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word by Allan Metcalf |
Additional trivia: ten to the 27th power is "one octillion". That's the smallest whole number with the letter C in its English name. Every other letter except J, K and Z appears in the name of some number smaller than 10^27.
Here's the complete list of the smallest numbers with each of the remaining 23 letters:
B one billion (ten to the ninth power)
C one octillion (ten to the 27th power)
D one hundred (ten to the second power)
E one
F four
G eight
H three
I five
L eleven
M one million (ten to the sixth power)
N one
O one
P one septillion (ten to the 24th power)
Q one quadrillion (ten to the 15th power)
R three
S six
T two
U four
V five
W twelve
X six
Y twenty
(Someone is bound to jump in at this point and say that "a hundred", or maybe "one hundred and one", contain the letter A, but that's not how I was taught. "And" only appears in numbers with fractions or decimals attached.)
And just what power ten are those numbers, hmm?
You can always decide to include "zero" in your counting if you feel you have to use the Z, but J and K are out of the running.
(I don't see a way to edit an existing post to correct an error, but the entry for W should be "two", not "twelve".)
"Nixie" recalled to mind the nixie tube, which those of a certain age will recall from old electronic displays.
More on the dictionary definitions of numbers: you need dictionaries to tell you that billion is a thousand million in the US, but a million million in the UK (or at least it used to be). Since new number-words typically appear when the number of digits increases, it's reasonable to define them in terms of the corresponding power of ten.
But if you need a definition for a less "round" number, would you prefer that the dictionary define forty-three as the smallest number not mentioned in the Bible? Or one thousand seven hundred twenty-nine as the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways?
Ron Draney said:
But if you need a definition for a less "round" number, would you prefer that the dictionary define forty-three as the smallest number not mentioned in the Bible? Or one thousand seven hundred twenty-nine as the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways?
Or "the smallest number that cannot be represented in eleven english words."
And 10^(10^6989) – the largest number that can be represented using only parentheses, decimals points, negative signs and a single '1', a single '2', a single '3' and a single '4'.
Yes, we already have octillion, nonillion, decillion, ad nausillion… It looks like he is trying to insinuate it into the giga-tera-peta-exa-zetta-yotta sequence. Frankly, I think we should have "Hecka", followed by "Hella". but what comes after that? Nine levels of Hella?
Telemath, you must be a reader of Douglas Hofstadter. In his classic tome "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" he dwells at some length on the self-referential nature of certain verbal and symbolic expressions. Don't recall his exact example, but one of them was similar to your "the smallest number that cannot be represented in eleven English words." That expression unambiguously defines a unique number, but also happens to contain exactly 11 words. So that gets you into a kind of weird logical contradictory loop. If you like that sort of stuff, and haven't yet read the book, I highly recommend it.
Heimhenge,
Ayup. I read GEB: EGB in high school. I still want to carve the cube that's on the cover of that book...
I've always liked Gödel's theorem, Russell's paradox and the Berry Paradox, which I stole without credit, above. No system - mathematical, computer, language, or otherwise - is perfect. A good mathematician knows that. A good programmer knows that. And I've met a few grammarians who could use a little Gödel zen in their life.
Hey, you got me monologuing...
Regarding wishes and tacky--could the tacky be related to whatever tacky is in the "Weeds" show intro theme? All the houses on the hillside are all made of "ticky-tacky" and "they're all built just the same." Generally implying they're shoddy and identical, but perhaps there's some actual material it derived from?
thedid said:
Regarding wishes and tacky--could the tacky be related to whatever tacky is in the "Weeds" show intro theme? All the houses on the hillside are all made of "ticky-tacky" and "they're all built just the same."
I've never seen Weeds, but the song "Little Boxes" (words and music by Malvina Reynolds) dates to 1962:
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/MALVINA/mr094.htm
(The OED defines ticky-tacky as "Inferior or cheap material, esp. that used in uniform suburban building." The earliest citation is the song "Little Boxes.")
Regarding frantic/frenetic and words related to them - which include one of my favorite pseudosciences: phrenology.
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