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Why is it that what you say to your family and what they hear are different? If you say "no," your child hears "maybe," and if you say "maybe," she hears "ask again and again, and yes is just around the corner." Grant and Martha discuss ways that families communicate and miscommunicate. Also in this episode: the West Coast exclamation moded!, the Navy expression turn to, how to pronounce llama, what it means if someone says your car is banjaxed, and more.
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Grab some popcorn, slip into a folding seat, and you're ready to watch the coming attractions. But if they're shown before the main feature, why in the world are movie previews called trailers? Enjoy old movie trailers at Turner Classic Movies.
It's California in the 1980s, and—uh-oh!—you're outsmarted or caught doing something stupid and someone else says, "Ooooooooooo, moded!" This Schadenfreudian slip of an expression was sometimes accompanied by a chin-stroking gesture, or elaborated still further as "Moded, corroded, your booty exploded!" Grant has the goods on this expression's likely origin. Check out his entry for it—and the comments of people who know the term—at his dictionary site.
In a previous episode, a caller sought a classy term for a worker in the meat section of a cheese shop, something a little more sophisticated than, say, meatmonger. The helpful suggestions from listeners keep rolling in, and Grant and Martha share a few. Wait, did they really suggest carncierge and meatre d'?
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska drops in with a word game called "False Opposites." They're pairs of words whose prefixes, suffixes, and other elements make them appear to be opposites, even though they're not. For example, what seeming opposites might be derived from the clues "forward motion" and "American legislative body"? Feel free to weigh the pros and cons of your answer.
Navy veterans will recognize the two-fingered gesture that looks as if someone's turning an invisible doorknob. It accompanies the order turn to, meaning "get to work." How did this handy expression get started?
If you appropriate something that no one else seems to be using, you may be said to kipe that object. A Wisconsin caller remembers kiping things as a youngster, like a neighbor's leftover wood to build a fort. Grant discusses this regionalism and its possible origins.
Is there a distinction to be made between envy and jealousy? The hosts try to parse out the difference.
Grant gives a brief review of the new third edition of Paul Dickson's The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, all 974 pages and 4.5 pounds of it.
To some folks, they're thermals. To others, they're long underwear. And some folks call them long johns. Are these warm undergarments named after some guy called John?
If your car's broken down you might say it's banjaxed, especially if you're in Ireland. A caller who grew up in Dublin is curious about the word.
Martha and Grant revisit the "apple core, Baltimore" game they discussed a few episodes ago. Many listeners learned it from this Donald Duck cartoon.
How do you pronounce the word llama? A caller who learned in school that Spanish ll is pronounced like English y thinks it's a mistake to pronounce this animal's name as LAH-ma. Is he correct?
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A Way with Words is sponsored by Mozy:
re: Grant's disdain of the mispronunciation of St. Louis as St. Louie
I'm from Vineland, NJ. I was born here and have lived here all my life. Portions of the novel and movie "Eddie and the Cruisers" take place here. In the movie, the character of "Wordman" says that he's been a high school teacher in "VineLAND" (putting the emphasis on the second syllable and pronouncing that second part as you might in the place name "Disneyland"), which grates on my nerves since residents would pronounce it more like "VINElind" or "VINElund" (putting the emphasis on the first syllable and pronouncing the second syllable as you might in the country names "Scotland" or "Ireland").
I'm listening to this episode right now, and just got to the part where Greg Pliska comments that "progress" and "congress" are false opposites.
Back in the 70s, comedian Nipsey Russell put this conjecture into poetic form:
The opposite of 'pro' is 'con'
This fact is clearly seen
But if 'progress' means move forward
What does 'Congress' mean?
(May not be an exact quote; it came from Wikipedia. I remember it slightly differently, but we'll go with what's "in print," as it were.)
Is "turn to" too old to be a borrowed baseball term? It immediately made me think of "turn two," as in turning a double play. The context sounds really similar. If you're slacking off, and it's time to get back to work, this is sort of analogous to letting some hitters get on base, and needing some good defense to get out of the inning. Plus, the hand gesture sounded just like the throwing motion of the second-baseman catching the ball and then pivoting to throw to first. One that is fairly recognizable in baseball and could certainly be abbreviated as a twisty two finger point.
TwoSheds, it's highly unlikely to be a borrowed baseball term. We know that "turn to" in the naval use refers to something like "turn to your task." One sense, defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "to apply oneself to some task or occupation; to set to work" dates to as least as early as 1813. Another sense, "to direct one's mind, desire, or will to or from some person, thing, or action," dates to at least as early as 1200.
Catching up on the old podcasts so I apologize if this is dated.
I wanted to offer a little insight as to what was explained to me in regards to the word "kiped". This comes from growing up in the Pittsburgh area, an area with a good ethnic diversity, mostly Western European. There were many Poles, Germans, Irish, Scots, etc.
I'd like to apologize for any ethnic or religious slur inferred here, but it was explained to me that "kiped" was a gentler way to say "kiked" which was a slur against people of Jewish descent and their rumored thrifty tendencies. Sort of like Scotch tape was derived from the same inference about the Scottish people.
Is there any possible truth to this? I know this is a delicate subject, but I could definitely see something like this happening in an era of our history that we are not so proud of and I would hate to see revisionist history sweep this under the rug.
Once again, my apologies for any slur. There were a lot of Archie Bunkers in that era in a blue collar town like Pittsburgh.
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