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What's the right way to pronounce gyros? Have you ever heard of feeling poozley? Called something great a blinger? Use the expression one-off to mean a "one-time thing"?
This episode first aired October 3, 2009. Listen here:
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Grant and Martha recommend dictionaries for college students, both online references and the old-fashioned kind to keep at one's elbow.
If you get hold of some bad sushi for lunch, you'll wind up feeling poozley. A caller whose in-laws use poozley insists they must have made it up.
A Texas family has a dispute with a prospective in-law who happens to be a chef. Is their favorite spicy chocolate cake properly known as a sheath cake or a sheet cake?
One place where spelling really counts: on a job application. Martha shares some painfully funny proof.
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska shares a puzzle in verse, challenging the hosts to fill in the blanks with words that differ by just one letter. Like this: "I never count ___ when I'm going to ___; that method does not work for me. Right around five's when I burst into hives: I'm allergic to wool, don't you see?"
In medical terminology, the abbreviation GTTS means "drops" or "drips." But why?
The hosts debate the right way to pronounce the name of that meaty Greek sandwiches known as gyros. Is it JEE-roh? JYE-roh? YEE-roh? Something more Greek-sounding?
Martha says her recent trip to Barcelona brought to mind a listener's question about whether the word gaudy has anything to do with the name of the great Catalan architect, Antoni Gaudi.
A woman who grew up in Detroit remembers her mother saying, "This one's going to be a real blinger!" whenever a big storm was coming. What exactly is a blinger?
A one-off is something that is done or made or occurs just once. A Washington State caller who's curious about the term learns that it derives from manufacturing lingo.
The third edition of Bryan Garner's book, Modern American Usage is now out. Grant explains why it's a wonderful reference to consult, even when you disagree with it.
An ophthalmologist in Arcata, California, is puzzled by the way some of his older patients refer to a single lens. Several of them call it a len, not a lens. This gives the hosts a chance to focus on what linguists call back-formations.
Martha/Grant,
One of the options for online dictionaries is to use your local library's online resources.
San Diego residents can use the Online OED and other goodies from here: http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/catalog-databases/dbdictionaries.shtml
~Vamsi
One of the things I love about this show is when I'm reminded of words or phrases from my childhood. My granny said "sheath cake," although I don't remember specifics about how she used it. Her specialty was chocolate meringue pie from scratch and piecrust cookies.
My first encounter with "gyros" was at the mall food-court, and the proprietors of that shop called it a "year-ohs." It's pretty yummy, no matter how you pronounce it.
Regarding gyro:
I have a colleague who grew up speaking Greek on Cyprus, and he says /dʒɑɪro/. He has found that many of the employees and stores don't speak Greek, so when he pronouces it as he would in Greek /hiro/, it sounds so much like hero that they often think he is asking for a sub/submarine/hoagie/hero.
Chocolate Sheath Cakes --
Well, I admit I was confused as heck when Chocolate Sheath Cakes turned out to just be chocolate sheet cakes. I'd long known of a cake, usually round and tall, that was encased in a (usually-hard) chocolate icing, truly a "chocolate sheath" cake. ("sheathed"?) Yet when I Googled for the phrase, I found, for example, that cooks.com had 5 pages of chocolate sheath cakes, of which at least the first several were just rectangular sheet cakes with scratch chocolate frosting on top, just as you described -- no sheaths at all.
So, I think there *IS* a chocolate sheath cake out there somewhere, but now there's also this whole Texas version about which I never knew.
And, of course, the version about which I was certain is the rare corner case -- the vast body of language seems, indeed, to be simply sheet cakes.
BTW - Did love your explanation that, in Texas, Chocolate Sheet could remind someone of Horse Sheet...
Regarding lens:
While there appear to be a growing number of back-formations of singular nouns from words ending in s, I recall learning of some very old ones indeed, maybe even from the 1200s. In college, we learned that cherry is a back formation of cherise, meaning cherry (singular), related to the modern French cerise, meaning cherry (singular). Also pea is a similar back-formation (around 1700) of the Middle English pease, with the same meaning.
Some notable singular back-formations in addition to those excellent ones mentioned in the broadcast are:
syringe (was syrinx (sing.), syringes (pl.))
primate (from the zoological class primates, plural of primas)
phalange
aborigine
Back-Formed Plurals
I enjoyed hearing of the people, not realizing their glasses included two Lenses, but back-forming Lens into a single Len.
In Cub Scouts, there's a rank called Webelos. The "s" is also an integral part of the word, not a plural; it stands for "We'll Be Loyal Scouts!", preparing the Cubs to transition into Boy Scouts. (There's also an allegorical tradition of the fictitious "Webelos Indian Tribe" occasionally woven in.) In either case, you wouldn't leave out the "s".
I've watched people for several years trying to describe a group of those boys, or just one of them. I certainly see a common usage of Webelos / Webeloses, but I think that the most common is the zero plural.
However, I occasionally see people drop the "s" to back-form a singular: "In your Webelos den, make sure every Webelo comes to this meeting."
Interestingly, I think the pronounciation of the "s" varies. When talking of the program, or of one boy, it's always the soft s, We-ba-loess. When talking of several boys, it's usually We-ba-loze.
Of course, my own favorite is to pluralize it as "Webeli"...
On the subject of "sheath cakes"....
When I was a wee lad (in rural Alabama), I can distinctly remember my maternal grandmother (Nanny) making what she and my mother and uncle referred to as what sounded like "kissterd" pie. Being a wee lad, I wouldn't touch anything that sounded as non-kid-pleasing as "kissterd" pie.
Years later, I realized it was a custard pie when I saw one in a restaurant. I wondered why on earth our family called it "kissterd."
And when I looked at the recipe in Nanny's recipe box, I finally got the joke. It seems that when Nanny was typing the recipe--which she had gotten off the back of a condensed milk can--she hit the 'i' instead of the 'u' in "Custard Pie" and it became "Cistard Pie" henceforth. It was firmly tongue-in-cheek; everyone involved (except me) knew the joke, and we continue to call it "Cistard Pie."
I'll have to tell you about "Aufdenkamp Soup" some day.... 🙂
...and that day is today. Why not? It involves another food that was misheard. 🙂
Nanny used to make "Off-in-Camp Soup" when I was younger, too. I always pictured my grandparents and mother and uncle camping when we had it. Basically, "Off-in-Camp Soup" was/is cream of tomato soup made with fresh tomato juice (as in: pick the tomatoes and juice them, then make the soup) and condensed milk (& butter & salt & pepper & baking soda). The name was, once again, a mystery to me until I was old enough to question her about it.
She first corrected my assumption that it was "Off-in-Camp." Turns out it was "Aufdenkamp" (pronounced "offen-kamp"). Nanny had gotten the recipe decades earlier (in the mid-40s) from a neighbor whose last name was--you guessed it--Aufdenkamp.
Nanny died in the spring of 2008, and among other mementos, I got her recipe books and boxes. I'm sure there are lots of other such things in the collection. (Such as "Phyllis Tacos" and "Ida-Lee Pot Pie.")
I think I've uncovered evidence that the radio show isn't done straight through as it appears to be. Otherwise we would have been reminded during the "len" discussion of Grant's earlier casual comment that "gyros" in Greek is singular.
That aside, what is the plural of "gyros" if one insists upon treating it as a Greek word that must follow Greek grammar?
I think I've uncovered evidence that the radio show isn't done straight through as it appears to be. Otherwise we would have been reminded during the "len" discussion of Grant's earlier casual comment that "gyros" in Greek is singular.
Evidence? You could just ask! We do it more or less like Car Talk does it, though Martha and I do know the questions beforehand. There's much more in the world to know about language than there is about automobiles. 😉
Nanny used to make "Off-in-Camp Soup" when I was younger, too. I always pictured my grandparents and mother and uncle camping when we had it. Basically, "Off-in-Camp Soup" was/is cream of tomato soup made with fresh tomato juice (as in: pick the tomatoes and juice them, then make the soup) and condensed milk (& butter & salt & pepper & baking soda). The name was, once again, a mystery to me until I was old enough to question her about it.
She first corrected my assumption that it was "Off-in-Camp." Turns out it was "Aufdenkamp" (pronounced "offen-kamp"). Nanny had gotten the recipe decades earlier (in the mid-40s) from a neighbor whose last name was–you guessed it–Aufdenkamp.
Nanny died in the spring of 2008, and among other mementos, I got her recipe books and boxes. I'm sure there are lots of other such things in the collection. (Such as "Phyllis Tacos" and "Ida-Lee Pot Pie.")<<
Nice story, Kaa. And nice that you were able to hang on to those mementos.
Regarding lens:
While there appear to be a growing number of back-formations of singular nouns from words ending in s, I recall learning of some very old ones indeed, maybe even from the 1200s. In college, we learned that cherry is a back formation of cherise, meaning cherry (singular), related to the modern French cerise, meaning cherry (singular). Also pea is a similar back-formation (around 1700) of the Middle English pease, with the same meaning.
Another food word along those lines is "caper."
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