A sumptuous new collection of poems about specific photographs shows how the moment in time captured by camera can inspire a verbal work of art as well. Also, why do we say that a quarterback got sacked? Plus, If you’re planning to vacation at a textile-free resort, you probably don’t have to pack much. Non-textile means “clothing-optional”—or even “clothing-free”! Also, the phrase turned off cold, a puzzle about funny irregular plurals, finifugal, got the bots, leveling, Weltschmerz, chiffarobe, words of encouragement from Hong Kong English, and more. Add oil!
This episode first aired November 29, 2025.
Add Oil!
In Hong Kong English, Add oil! means something like “Go on!” or “Go for it!” A recent addition to the Oxford English Dictionary, this expression of encouragement comes from Cantonese (加油 or gā yáu; rendered as jiāyóu from Mandarin) and draws on the metaphor of literally adding oil to an engine to keep it running smoothly—lubricating, reducing friction, and providing a little extra oomph.
Why are Quarterbacks “Sacked”?
A Green Bay Packers fan wonders why a quarterback who’s tackled is said to be sacked. The roots of the word sack as in “bag” goes back thousands of years, all the way to Akkadian, later spreading through Greek, Latin, and then to Romance and Germanic languages. The football sense is connected not to paper bags, but to the verb to sack meaning “to pillage,” that is, to stuff plunder into a sack, which is to say, sacking a city. A similar idea underlies sacking someone from a job: That person literally puts their belongings in a sack and departs.
One Hair from Nine Oxen
To describe something tiny or insignificant compared with something vast, you might reach for phrases like a drop in the ocean or a drop in the bucket. In Mandarin, there’s an equally picturesque phrase that translates as nine cows, one hair, 九 牛 一 毛, with different versions in other languages such as Korean and Japanese: one hair from nine oxen. Imagine nine large oxen and then just a single hair among them. Now that’s tiny!
Turned Off Cold
An Arkansas listener is puzzled when a neighbor notes that the weather turned off cold. This expression is part of a long-standing American dialect tradition that includes come off cold, come off hot, or turned off pretty. Such phrases show up across the U.S., and are attested as early as the 1840s. The broader sense of come off meaning “to turn out,” or “to result” is even older, as in, the “the event came off as planned.”
“I Have Tried to Spin Out Words… This Is Only Skim Milk…”
A 1905 letter from Virginia Woolf offers comfort to anyone who lacks confidence in their own work. As a young, would-be writer, Woolf herself expressed doubt about her own abilities. It would be another 23 years before she published her groundbreaking essay, “A Room of One’s Own.”
The Plural of Fool is Feel?
Oo-ee! Quiz Guy John Chanesk’s brain-teaser is all about irregular plurals involving double O’s and double E’s. Since the plural of foot is feet and goose is geese, he says, surely this means that the plural of boot must be … wait, what?
You Got the Botts and There’s a Buzzing
Martha from Rock Hill, South Carolina, wonders about the phrase She’s got the botts, meaning “she’s pouting.” The botts, also spelled the bots, refers to “a general malaise or moody spell,” and the bot in this case is the same bot in the botfly, a parasitic insect that infests horses. By extension, having the bots came to mean “feeling down or out of sorts.” She’s also curious about the phrase Keep your tail over the dashboard. It’s a way of urging someone to stay as energetic and upbeat as a horse whose tail perkily hangs over the dashboard of the vehicle it’s pulling.
Finifugal
The rare adjective finifugal describes someone “averse to endings” or “wishing something could go on forever,” whether it’s a book, a beloved TV series, a podcast, or anything else you don’t want to end. It comes from Latin finis, “end,” and fuga, “flight.”
Dialect Leveling in Baton Rouge
A former resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wonders why the English spoken there sounds distinct from both New Orleans English and Cajun English. It’s a combination of factors, including vowel lengthening common to the broader Southern dialect, a bit of influence from Cajun French vocabulary, and the process linguists call leveling, in which speakers unconsciously smooth out distinctive features of dialect to align with local norms.
Weltschmerz
A North Carolina listener is fond of the German loanword Weltschmerz, literally “world pain,” a compound word made up of Welt, cognate with English world and Schmerz, cognate with smart as in That smarts! Coined by a 19th-century German author who wrote under the pen name Jean Paul, Weltschmerz originally referred to a sorrow about the world soothed only by imagining a blessed afterlife. Its meaning later broadened to mean a deep, reflective world-weariness, used by such writers as Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man (Bookshop|Amazon). The word sometimes appears in English with a capital W. Jean-Paul also coined the now-familiar doppelgänger, literally a “double goer,” now applied to a second self.
Sugaring the Snow with Poetry
Ekphrasis is the literary device of depicting a visual work with a verbal description. A new anthology, Ensnaring the Moment: On the Intersection of Poetry and Photography, gathers the ekphrastic poetry of more than 100 poets writing specifically in response to photographs. Edited by art critic Leah Ollman, this collection treats poems as gateways into images, and images as doorways into memory. In the poem “Things that Lose by Being Photographed” by Rebecca Lindenberg succinctly conjures a winter scene with moonlight sugaring snow, two people dancing slowly, and a penny-colored dog shifting paws in the cold—a moment captured in a photograph that becomes a tender meditation on ordinary beauty. This poem is shared with permission of the poet.
Chiffarobe
A listener from Indianapolis asks about the word chiffarobe meaning “a heavy wooden cabinet that combines hanging space with drawers.” The term is a blend of the French word chiffonier—originally a “rag-gatherer” used to store small personal items—and English wardrobe. Many furniture terms in English trace back to French, particularly names for elegant or specialized pieces, including armoire, bureau, commode, and chaise longue
No Ring Toss at the Textile Park
A Southern California resort for nudists—or naturists, as some prefer to be called—had a recent change of management, and residents received a notice that the place will now become a textile park. The word textile is often used in that community as an adjective to distinguish between those who prefer clothing and those who make a habit of going without
Ads Eschew Articles
A San Diego, California, listener has observed that some advertising slogans that omit the part of speech known as an article, such as Get iPhone 14 Pro or Do what’s best for Baby. The phrasing is intentional. Advertising often relies on a compressed, headline-like style for speed and brevity, and because it treats a product name as if it were unique, almost like a proper noun. Removing articles creates a sleeker rhythm and positions the item as iconic rather than ordinary, so iPhone or Baby in these phrases feels elevated and universal rather than tied to a single unit or child. In the 1938 film Bringing Up Baby, the Baby being brought up is a leopard. Geoffrey Leech’s 1966 book English in Advertising addresses this topic
When “Let Out” Means “Leave Out”
Terry from Franklin, Indiana, recalls a moment of confusion when she was working on a horse farm in south-central Pennsylvania. She asked a co-worker, “Are we going to let the stallions out today?” The co-worker responded, “No, they’re already in.” Terry says the conversation devolved into “Who’s On First?” routine, because Terry didn’t understand that in that part of the United States, where the dialect is heavily influenced by German, let can mean “leave.” Other expressions heard in that area include leave the horse go or leave the book sit, all reflecting the multiple meanings of the German verb lassen.
This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.
Books Mentioned in the Episode
| Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (Bookshop|Amazon) |
| Ensnaring the Moment: On the Intersection of Poetry and Photography edited by Leah Ollman (Saint Lucy Books) |
| English in Advertising by Geoffrey N. Leech (Internet Archive) |
Music Used in the Episode
| Title | Artist | Album | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go To Bed Now | Galt MacDermott | Gutterball | Kilmarnock |
| Ba Ba Black Baby | Galt MacDermott | Gutterball | Kilmarnock |
| Wise One | Chico Freeman | Spirit Sensitive | India Navigation |
| Bold And Black | Ramsey Lewis | Another Voyage | Cadet |
| Peace (Salaam) | The Ensemble Al-Salaam | The Sojourner | Strata-East |
| Uhuru | Ramsey Lewis | Another Voyage | Cadet |
| Love Dance | Woody Shaw | Love Dance | Muse Records |
| The Other Side | Sure Fire Soul Ensemble | Step Down | Colemine Records |
