Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Regarding polkadodge, a teacher back in the 60s called it The Alphonse-Gaston Routine, referring to two overly-polite French cartoon characters, who went through a routine of "After you," "No, after you," "No, after you".....

Grant Barrett said:

Should youngsters learn cursive handwriting in school? Plus, someone can be ruthless, but can that same person be ruthful? Which word refers to something larger, humongous or gargantuan? Also, funny newspaper corrections, a crossword quiz, Texas idioms, and a version of Three Blind Mice with an upgraded vocabulary.

 

This episode first aired June 16, 2012.

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Even the best newspaper reporters make mistakes. Here's an unfortunately funny correction about the My Little Pony character a young woman thinks about to cheer herself up. Another correction from the Centralia Morning Sentinel notes that a member of a Christian rock band was on, um, drums, not drugs.

What do you call that moment when you try to walk past someone on the sidewalk, but you both move in the same direction? Perhaps slidewalking, doing the sidewalk boogie, or stranger dancing? Martha votes for polkadodge.

In the military, a certain kind of duct tape is known as hundred-mile-per-hour tape because it can withstand 100-mph speeds.

Someone can be ruthless, but can that person be ruthful? Ruthful is indeed a word that derives from an old definition of ruth meaning "the quality of being compassionate." But unpaired negatives, like ruthless, unkempt, uncouth, or disgruntled, are common words that lack positive correlatives in common speech.

A middle-school librarian caught the Arkansas Democrat Gazette messing up the title of the second book in the Hunger Games series. The newspaper then issued an abject apology.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has lifted some tricky puns from New York Times crossword puzzles for this word game. What's "a green org," in three letters? How about a three-letter answer for "peas keeper"?

It seems there's a sesquipedalian version to the classic "Three Blind Mice" about a trio of rodents with impaired vision. Need a visual yourself? Try this one.

Should educators continue to teach cursive writing in school? For the sake of learning to read old documents and honing their hand-eye skills, many say "yes." Most current teaching standards, however, require only keyboard training, not longhand.

Owe somebody money? How about you charge it to the dust and let the rain settle it? This is a useful idiom for friendly transactions where no payment is necessary.

"It ain't no hill for a stepper like you," is a popular idiom in the South meaning someone can finish the task at hand.

In the Army, a battle buddy is someone assigned to be your constant companion, and it's often shortened to just "battle." Other words, like Upstate and cell, as in a mobile phone, have dropped the nouns they modified.

Which word is larger, humongous or gargantuan? Which refers to something larger? Grant and Martha agree with usage expert Bryan Garner that the word gargantuan is the larger of the two.

A correction in London's Daily Mail notes that a Mr. Smith testified in court that he had "a dull life," not "a dull wife." Oops.

In Jamaica, the youngest child is commonly known as the wash-belly. In addition to being the youngest, the term can also connote that the wash-belly is lazy and spoiled. Frederic Cassidy traces this and other terms in his Dictionary of Jamaican English and Jamaica Talk.

Craig Silverman's book Regret the Error contains a maze of a correction that simply corrects an incorrect correction. You can also follow more recent collections of corrections on his blog at the Poynter Institute.

Should youngsters  learn cursive handwriting  in school?

Reminds me of an old western where the old cowboy admits to being able to read reading but couldn't read writing.

telemath said:

Knowing me, I've probably posting this before.   Jack Winter wrote a wonderful bit using the positive form of words lacking negatives:

 

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/how-i-met-my-wife.html

Chauncey replies:

That is probably the most difficult bit I've ever read! Jack Winter is to be congratulated because I am now completly founded.

The term battle buddy might be as recent as you claim, but I would be surprised if the practice was as new. I recently listened to a BBC Witness documentary in which a British paratrooper in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict in 1982 describes how the fundamental soldier unit is two people. He just called it a buddy-buddy system. He described how they looked after each other, even drying each other's feet as they laid in their BASHA (a makeshift accommodation comprising a groundsheet and a topsheet), too cold to reach their own.