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When you get to the end of a wonderful book, your first impulse is to tell someone else about it. In this week's episode, Martha and Grant discuss what they've been reading and the delights of great prose.
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[audio:http://feeds.waywordradio.org/~r/awwwpodcast/~5/392857398/080915-AWWW-pwned-prose-stat.mp3%5D
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An Illinois man recalls that as a kid, he used to mix fountain drinks of every flavor into a concoction he and his friends called a suicide. He wonders if anyone else calls them that. Why a suicide? Because it looks and tastes like poison?
It started as a typo for “own,†now it's entrenched in online slang. A Kentucky caller is curious about pwn. It rhymes with “own†and means “to defeat†or “to triumph over.†Our hosts talk about a special meaning of “own†in the computer-gaming world.
Quiz Guy John Chaneski is Havana good time with Martha and Grant on an round-the-world International Puzzle Hunt that will leave you Beijing for more.
You seem to hear it on all the television hospital dramas: “stat!†A physician says she knows it means “immediately,†but she doesn't know its origins. Quick! Is there a Latin expert in the house?
A San Diego fisherman notes that he hears mariners talk about snotty weather. “Snotty?†Is it the kind that gives you the sniffles? Or does it cop an attitude?
Do you ever stare at a word so long that you think it's mispellllled? Even though it isn't? Your dialectal duo hunt up a word for that phenomenon.
Grant and Martha reveal what books are on their own nightstands, waiting to be read. Just the top of the stacks, natch, because there are just too many.
This week's “Slang This!†contestant tries to guess the meaning of the terms liver rounds and put the bite on someone.
An Indianapolis woman who grew up in the South says that when her slip was showing, her father used to say, “Who do you think you are, Miss Astor?†Martha shares other euphemisms for slips showing. If someone sidles up to you and says, “Pssssst! Mrs. White is out of jail,†it's time to check your hemline.
You can tell someone's an A Way with Words listener when they confess to lying awake at night wondering about questions like, “Are the words fillet and flay etymologically related?â€
A Minnesotan has been observing his infant babbling, and wonders if words like “mama†and “papa†arise from sounds that babies naturally make anyway. Are there some words or sounds that are instinctive? Or do babies only learn them from their parents?
About the infant babbling and the words for Mama and Dada, my husband and I arrived at an additional theory. When infants are unhappy and need comforted, they make m-m-m-m sounds. When infants are happy and playing, they make d-d-d-d sounds. Since Mothers traditionally provide comfort or are the one helping the baby who is unhappy, the m-m-m babbling or "Ma-ma" got assigned to the female parent role. Likewise, since Fathers traditionally spend more time with the infant while it is happy and in a general good mood, the d-d-d babbling or "Da-Da" got assigned to the male parent role. THis would explain why it is fairly consistent across many languages and cultures that the m sound goes with the female "name" and the d sound goes with the male name.
“PWN†is a term used by pubescent and teenage male players of on on line MMO video games, the “language†is commonly referred to as “L337 (i.e., “leetâ€) talk.†The same kids who use “teh†instead of spelling in correctly (â€theâ€) are speaking “L337.†The exact definition for “pwn†is “power owned.†You may be interested to know that many gaming guilds (on line MMO game fraternity/sorority-like groups), have banned the use of L337 talk by its members.
Hello,
in the latest "Slang This!" a woman who grew up in Minnesota said there was a term used there (ish/isch ?) that was similar in meaning to ick. It sounded a lot like a term in Swedish (I'm Swedish), that term is: usch! This term is used not only as a spoken reaction to something icky but also about bad weather, for example, among other things.
So I thought: Minnesota, many Swedes emigrated there (10% of present day people have Swedish ancestry there according to Wikipedia), then maybe it's the same word.
Great show, keep it up!
Cheers
Jesper
Lizante said:
“PWN†is a term used by pubescent and teenage male players of on on line MMO video games, the “language†is commonly referred to as “L337 (i.e., “leetâ€) talk.†The same kids who use “teh†instead of spelling in correctly (â€theâ€) are speaking “L337.†The exact definition for “pwn†is “power owned.†You may be interested to know that many gaming guilds (on line MMO game fraternity/sorority-like groups), have banned the use of L337 talk by its members.
Lizante, have you got a source for the definition ("power owned") you give? I'd be interested to know, as there are lots of different ideas about where it comes from.
I'm in Scotland and when I was growing up (I'm now 54), I knew my petticoat was showing when a well meaning friend would hiss 'It's raining in Paris!' I wonder where that came from.
A point about 'McCoy' and 'Mackay' - the latter isn't pronounced Mack-AY, it's more a kind of fast dipthong Mack-AH-EE. Although we Scots are used to Americans mangling our names and placenames (our capital city of Edinburgh is routinely called Edinbro which makes me awful crabbit (a good Scots word there for you to chew on!). I thought I might politely point this one out.
In Scots, snotty means snooty, or stuck-up. Even allowing for us personalising the weather, I can't imagine a giant wave being stuck up 🙂
Listening to the show (on podcast) is a joy - keep up the great work.
I used to play these online games myself, and I agree with what was originally said about "pwn". It was a typo for "own", maybe it has come to mean "power owned", but that's not how it originated. Just like "teh" instead of "the". Accidental misspellings that turn into something new. And for those of you wondering, as far as I know, the "lee7" or "leet" talk that was referred to stands for "elite".
Another typographic error that certain friends of mine now use deliberately is for “typo” itself — tupo!
Grant is absolutely right that while specific terms like pwn and w00t are relatively new, texting-style abbreviations and certain "chat" (mis-)spelling conventions (e.g., 'dude' as d00d, that's dee-zero-zero-dee) have been around as long as chatting by computers has been possible. "w00t", by the way, was originally "We 0wned the 0ther Team!", in player-versus-player team games, although now it's become a more general whoop (wh00p?) of joy.
My first experience with the text-chat style was in the early 80's, on my home city's public school student-use mainframe (which one could dial in to at the then-blazing-fast speed of 2400 baud, i.e 2.4K compared with the now familiar -- if obsolete -- 56K), and use a program called "Citizen Band Emulator" to chat with other students.
Hi, xheralt -- In general, it's risky to assume that a particular word originated as an acronym. Grant has written extensively about w00t, and explains on his blog why that explanation doesn't hold true.
And wow, your mention of that blazing-fast 2400 baud-modem is making me smile with fond memories of my old Kaypro with two floppies and no hard drive! And word-processing with WordStar. Those were the days, eh?
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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