Dust Bunnies and Ghost Turds

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Earlier this year, we received an email from longtime listener Gordon Walker in Anaheim, California.

Gordon wrote to say, my wife is Scottish, born in the Isle of Man, raised in Scotland until she was 25, when I got her to come over here and marry me. Over here means America.

He goes on to say, there is a big difference between standard Scots English and standard English English, which I side note, Martha, is an understatement.

It would be interesting to have a program where you discuss the differences and where they come from.

Now, as you know, that wasn’t the last we heard from Gordon.

No, it was not.

Gordon wrote a bit later and again and again to give us some examples of the Scots that he’s picked up from his wife, like fankle, F-A-N-K-L-E.

Did you remember that one, Martha?

Fankle? F-A-N-K-L-E? It sounds cute and small and negative.

Yeah, well, it means messed up or confused. Very good. What made you think that was negative?

Fankle. This telephone cord is all fankled.

Oh, there we go. It’s interesting you should say telephone cord because fank means a coil of rope.

Oh, it does?

Yeah, or to fank means to mess up or to confuse something.

And so Gordon wrote to give us some tips on how we could talk about Scots.

And Gordon, here we are talking about Scots English.

If you want to send us an email on this subject, by all means do so, and we’ll talk a little bit more about it later on.

Well, if you’d like to talk about Scots English or any other kind of English, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sally McCarty from Indianapolis.

Hiya, Sally. What’s going on?

Well, I have a question.

This has bugged me for years.

When I was younger, my family lived in New Jersey out of the East Coast.

About middle school, junior high, we moved to Indianapolis.

The playground equipment where you slide down, the name for that piece of equipment that I was familiar with from the East Coast was called a sliding board.

And I was using that term with my friends when we moved out to the Midwest, and they all looked at me like I was crazy.

I didn’t know what I was talking about.

What’s a sliding board?

Because in the Midwest, that piece of equipment is called a slide.

And I wonder if you know the difference, why there’s a difference in the parts of the country, the term for that piece of equipment in different parts of the country, or if you’ve heard of this from anybody else before.

-huh.

Well, you know, I had a somewhat similar experience.

I grew up with sliding boards in Kentucky, and I was shocked when people just referred to them as slides.

I thought, what language are you speaking?

Well, that’s strange because Kentucky is closer to Indiana than New Jersey is.

Yeah.

Well, I tell you, Sally, you do see this attested in places like New Jersey.

I’ve read about it being documented in Pennsylvania, Maryland.

But I have seen, as you go farther west, that you do see slide in a number of places.

Wisconsin, Michigan.

Grant, you grew up in Missouri.

Yep.

Slide was all we knew.

It was only a slide.

Sliding board to me sounds kind of splintery.

Had thought about it that way, but it sure does.

There are several terms for this piece of playground equipment, and one that was really striking to me, Grant, was sliding pond.

Sliding pond. I’ve heard of that.

Yeah. That was used in New York City by kids.

Sliding pond or sliding pond, P-O-N, and it may be a partial translation of a Dutch word, meaning sort of sliding path, which would make sense because of all the Dutch influence there in New York.

Yeah, but the problem is that the sliding pond doesn’t go far enough back to when people actually still had even a memory of Dutch being spoken in New York.

Is that right?

There’s a gap there of quite a number of years.

I think more likely it’s related to the pastime in the very cold winters in the northeast of actually sliding literally on ponds.

Really?

Yeah, it was a pastime.

You can read about it in books from as early as the 1900s, maybe even a little bit before that.

They talk about going out and sliding, you know, just get a good run.

Do you go down a slide?

No, no.

You just find a good, smooth stretch of ice, and you get a good run, get a good head start, and launch yourself on the ice head first, you know, butt first, feet first, whatever, and then go as far as you can go.

Sally, did you guys do that in New Jersey?

Yes, but I don’t think we called it anything.

Just sliding on the ice.

I wonder if sliding pond, though, got translated to board as it moved south in New Jersey.

I have to tell you something, Sally.

When I was a kid, there was always a kind of a one-upmanship between me and my siblings, my sisters and my brother, of always trying to do something a little more outrageously than the other guy.

And one of our pastimes, and this sounds so stupid, but I’m going to tell you anyway, was trying to slide the furthest distance on the concrete floor in our basement in one of the houses that we lived in.

We would use can after can of pledge.

We would spray it on the floor, you know, furniture polish, and get out just the right kind of socks or several pairs of socks and run as fast as we could and see who would slide the furthest.

And I could see how a child might innovate with a board and go, this isn’t fast enough.

I need to do something else.

How can I make this more slippery?

And, you know, going and finding a piece of scrap metal and kind of working it out so that it would be super fast.

That’s just a theory of mine.

Well, Sally, does that make you feel better that you’re in good company?

Yes, it does. It does.

All right. Well, thanks for calling.

Well, thank you.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye now.

We would love to hear from you.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Jim from Mineral, Virginia.

So this is Martha.

This is Martha.

Martha, I have a question.

And my friend and I are talking, and she is getting ready to travel off somewhere, and she’s trying to decide what to pack, whether to pack for hot weather, cold weather, whether to take some winter clothes.

And I looked at her and I said, well, you know, if it’s wintertime, I’ll take my khakis and a couple of knit shirts.

If it’s hot, I’ll take my khakis and a couple of knit shirts.

If it’s fall, I’ll take my khakis and a couple of knit shirts.

And she laughed, and she said, well, yes, but I’m a clothes horse.

And my question then to her was, well, what’s that make me?

And we couldn’t answer that.

So you’re a guy who just dresses average or you dress poorly?

I would say average.

Okay.

It works for school and it’s what I wear.

All right.

But you’re not overly concerned with the latest fashions or looking your best?

No, no.

And what kind of shoes?

Nice leather shoes.

Nice leather shoes.

Okay.

You can always tell a man by his shoes and his watch, right?

Right.

Which is why I go barefoot and don’t wear a watch.

No.

But you know what a clothes horse is, first of all, right?

Yeah.

Well, I went and looked up.

It’s a drying rack.

That’s right.

Or it’s someone who does a good job of wearing clothes.

Right.

It’s somebody who is more about the clothes and the fashion, probably too much so.

It seems to be the only thing that they care about is having the latest clothes or the best labels or the most expensive things.

Right.

The opposite of a clothes horse is a tough one because I wouldn’t say that you are the opposite of a clothes horse.

I would say that a poor dresser, someone who dresses poorly, is the opposite of a clothes horse.

You’re kind of in the middle there somewhere.

So you’re just a regular guy.

Okay.

So my answer is I’m just a regular guy.

Yeah.

I mean, I have to admit, I’m kind of the same way.

Once I found stuff that worked for me, as long as they continue to manufacture it, I’m going to wear it.

Right?

I don’t have any need to go buying the latest whatever.

None of the dresses fit me anyway.

So you’re not a fashion victim.

You’re a fashion survivor.

Oh, maybe.

Does that work?

No.

Avoider.

Avoider?

Avoider.

Ooh, maybe.

How about clothes beast of burden?

Nah.

Nah, okay.

Let’s go back to your question, what’s the opposite of clothes horse?

Most of the terms that I know that are even remotely opposite of that are really negative.

The only mild one that I can think of, DWI, and it means dressed without instructions.

Oh, I get some of those.

But it’s not really that positive, and it’s not that well-known, and it was kind of a blip on the slang history.

It wasn’t really – it’s nothing that stuck.

But Jim could claim that, you know, reclaim that word and use it as his own.

I like DWI.

You could also call yourself label blind.

Label blind.

Label blind.

Or label agnostic.

I like that one better.

Well, that’s it, maybe.

A label agnostic.

Catty-dressed man.

I think label agnostic is probably the best.

You like that the best?

That’s pretty good.

Okay.

Well, Jim, I think that you’re not alone, that there are other people out there who might let us know what they call themselves, because you can’t be the only one.

I’d be interested in hearing that one.

Well, let’s see what happens.

All right, we’ll put the call out.

Okay.

All right.

Thanks much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Mike in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Hiya, Mike.

How are you?

Good.

All right.

What’s up?

Well, my question goes back to if people remember until after World War II, most people had carpeted bedrooms.

But before that, it was wealthy people had either Harvard floors or those that weren’t had linoleum or floorboards.

And I grew up in Minnesota and moved to Wisconsin.

And that stuff you find under the bed, my wife referred to as dust bunnies.

But my mother, who was raised in Texas, had a rather colorful term for it.

She called it slutswool.

I thought that was kind of an interesting expression.

I just wondered, could that have been a southern expression?

What do you people use?

Maybe you don’t have dust under bed anymore.

All those things.

What’s under my bed, huh?

I’ve heard slutswool for sure, but you know what?

It’s British.

It goes back to…

Well, it is British.

Yes, it goes back to the mid-19th century at least.

But I can tell you, Mike, that the slut in this case isn’t a prostitute.

It’s not what we think.

No, it’s not a loose woman at all, no.

No, slut is also a word that can mean a slovenly, slatternly, sloppy person, especially a woman.

And it was used in that sense to describe that wool from that kind of person under the bed.

Right, somebody who didn’t keep house well.

Exactly.

I could tell from my mother’s tone of voice that was people who, especially in those days, that was only a woman’s job, and it was a woman who did other things, and the cleaning that she was supposed to do.

Right.

You could see how that usage of a slovenly woman could kind of transform into meaning a woman who had loose morals because she was out and about and doing other things and not taking care of the home like she was.

Okay, but you have heard the expression.

I’ve never heard of it around here.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And there are quite a few of those expressions.

Have you heard any others, Mike?

No, I have not.

No.

Like I said, in fact, when I married my wife and came to Wisconsin, that was the first time I’d heard dust bunnies.

Oh, really?

Anyway, I thought that was kind of a colorful one.

Yeah, that’s what we used in my house growing up in Missouri.

Yeah, mine too.

They sort of multiply like bunnies.

Yes, they do.

Well, there’s your answer, Mike.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

You’re welcome, Mike.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

So what’s under your bed?

Give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Up next on A Way with Words, it’s a word puzzle and more of your calls.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined now by quiz guide John Chaneski.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

How are you guys?

John Chaneski.

Could you do it like Oprah?

I’d prefer to be John Chaneski.

That’s pretty good.

Gotta do it like the popcorn guys at Yankee Stadium.

Chaneski, get your Chaneski here.

Chaneski.

I used to sell popcorn at Giant Stadium.

It was my favorite thing of the job.

To do the shout?

Yeah, sure.

Did you do the ice cream, the popcorn, the pretzels?

Let’s hear it.

I sold hot dogs.

Hot dogs, yeah.

Hot dogs.

And I say hot dogs, and of course it’s New Jersey, so it’d be hot dogs.

And I sold popcorn, and I sold Italian ices on the day of the big soccer games.

I sold Italian ices.

That was fun.

How about quiz?

Do you have any quizzes?

I got a quiz for you.

I got a quiz here.

Quiz.

I got a quiz here.

This is a simple quiz.

It’s called Three’s a Charm, okay, for the three of us.

For the three of us, right.

I’ll give you three words.

You tell me what one word can go in front of them to create a common phrase.

For example, if I say these three words, standard, bed, and boiler, you could put the word, any guesses?

Standard.

In front of the words.

In front of each of those words.

The same word can go in front of each of those words.

Oh, like water, but that’s not it.

Standard, bed, boiler.

Double.

Double is the word.

Oh, double, standard, double bed.

Double standard, double bed, double boiler.

Okay.

Sometimes the words will be part of a compound word or a hyphenate, like blacksmith, say, or black sheep.

But sometimes they’re just two-word phrases.

Okay.

Here we go.

The first one, the words are weight, wheel, and fishing.

Which weight are we talking about?

W-E-I-G-H-T.

Weight, wheel, and fishing.

How about fly?

Fly is a perfect answer.

Very good.

How about that?

Fly weight.

Flywheel.

And fly fishing.

Fly fishing.

Very good.

Right.

Okay.

Off to a rolling start.

Here’s the second.

Ball.

Pin.

Trigger.

P-I-N.

Right.

Hair.

Hair is correct.

Right.

Very good.

Hair ball.

Hair pin and hair trigger.

Nice.

Is my hair ball contribution.

Okay.

Surgery.

History.

Exam.

I was going to say plastic, but that’s not going to work.

Plastic exam, not plastic history.

Some history can be quite plastic.

Surgery, history and exam.

That’s right.

And not final.

Final surgery would be bad.

Not intent.

Exam, I think, is the tough one here.

Rectal?

No.

Nobody think you’re on to something.

Am I?

Let’s just say it’s the opposite of rectal.

Brain?

No.

No.

Boy, this is harder than it looks.

This is a hard one, yeah.

This is a very difficult one.

Let’s make it surgery, history, thermometer.

And we’re not back to rectal?

No, we’re not back to rectal.

Oh, oral, oral, oral surgery.

Oh, there we go.

Oral surgery, oral history, oral exam.

Oral exam.

That’s definitely the other end.

Definitely, yeah.

Pick that one.

No, yeah, okay.

Okay, here’s the next.

Note, stone, ring.

Note, stone, ring.

Key.

Key, very good.

So key note, key stone, and key ring.

Key ring, right.

Stone was the clue there for me.

Good, that’s your toehold, your way in.

That’s good.

All right, here’s the next.

Wind, string, coming.

C-O-M-I-N-G.

That’s right.

Wind string coming.

Again, on the string word, you might want to think sports, sort of a sports phrase.

String music? Wind music?

A racket has strings. What else has strings?

Yeah.

Gee, sports?

Shoe?

No.

Shoe coming?

As far as a coming is concerned, it would probably be capitalized as an event.

Homecoming.

No.

No.

Home string, home wind?

No.

No.

Coming out?

No.

It’s got to be before coming.

Yeah.

Oh.

Second coming.

Yes.

There we go.

Second wind, second string, and second coming.

That kind of string.

There we go.

This is a dashboard pounder for sure.

That’s a good word.

I like that.

Okay, here’s the next.

Beef, zero, floor.

Beef?

Beef, zero, floor.

Ground?

Ground.

Yes.

Oh, nice.

Very nice, Martha.

Very quick.

Ground beef, ground zero, ground floor.

Okay, here’s the last.

Job, ball, man, odd.

No?

Odd man maybe.

Odd man doesn’t really work.

Yeah, it’s almost there.

I’ll give you a half credit on that.

That’s pretty good, but you can see if you can think of the one that I was thinking of.

It’s not bass.

Oh, so many things that can be in front of man.

It’s almost useless to start with that one.

Ball is a little…

Let me help you out then.

I’ll give you another one.

Job, ball, leopard.

Leopard?

That helps a lot, John.

Thanks.

Job ball leopard.

Snow.

That’s it.

Snow.

No.

Snow job, snowball, snowman, and snow leopard.

Snow leopard.

Very good.

I saw a snow leopard this morning on the Flickr slideshow I was showing my son.

You just go to animals category in Flickr and put it on the computer and the boy is entranced.

Sweet.

Good work, guys.

And that’s my Three’s a Charm quiz for today.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Super duper, John Chesnacki.

Thank you so much.

It was charming.

Thank you.

And so are you, John.

Thank you.

Thank you, Martha.

Thank you, Grant.

Bye-bye.

I feel twice blessed.

It’s horrific.

Well, if you have a question about wordplay, language, slang, grammar, regional dialects, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ted from Indianapolis.

Hi, Ted.

Welcome.

Hello, Ted.

Hello.

What would you like to talk about today?

I was curious what the origin of the term on the ball is, or I guess the phrase on the ball.

Where did you run into that recently?

Me and some friends, we were on our way down to Mexico for the weekend.

I was visiting them on the West Coast, and it just kind of came up.

We were talking about someone at his work who was on the ball, and he kind of paused and said, you know, I wonder where that came from.

And so I sort of ventured a guess and then kind of stopped and thought, you know, I don’t really know that.

So I thought I’d find out if you guys knew anything.

What was your guess?

My guess, I actually kind of connected a few dots.

I knew a little bit about naval aviation and that when they land on the aircraft carrier, they have all these nicknames for parts.

So the arresting cables are called spaghetti wires, and the Fresnel lamp is called the meatball.

And at one point in the landing process, they actually are told to call the ball.

Sure.

And I don’t know what they say at that point, but in theory you would want to be on the ball because that would mean you’re lined up, and I know all their landings are judged.

So I connected a bunch of dots and said, I wonder if that’s where it came from.

It’s not a bad theory.

I think I’ve run into that language myself, not the least from movies.

I think they used that in Top Gun, didn’t they?

Right.

But unfortunately, the reason I know that it can’t be the origin is because the term is older than aviation.

Aha!

Early 1900s for certain, but definitely before they were landing jet fighters on aircraft carriers.

But would it surprise you if I told you that it’s probably from baseball?

So many other terms that we have that have migrated out of baseball, like to hit a home run or to touch all the bases or all these…

Grand slam.

Yeah, grand slam.

Most word researchers believe that it has to do with the spin that a pitcher puts on the ball.

So if you have something on the ball or you have something good on the ball, that means that you’ve done just the right thing to it.

So it will break at the plate like it should or will handle like it should, curve, or just do the thing that it’s supposed to do when it goes across the plate.

But more generally, I think that it has to do with all of the ball-related sports, but maybe especially baseball.

You always have to be aware of what the ball is doing, where it is, where it’s going, where it’s been.

The game, especially in baseball, is about the ball.

So to be on the ball is to be conscious of the ball, to be paying attention to the ball.

So all of the early uses of this term that we find in print demonstrate that it probably did definitely come out of baseball.

But, you know, whether or not it had to do with just general interest in paying attention to the ball or specifically to the English that a pitcher might put on a ball.

Or spit.

The spit, or yeah, or tar, more likely, but yeah.

Hair treatment.

Yeah, so it’s an enticing theory about the meatball, but is that what you call it?

The meatball.

Is that what you call it?

Yeah.

Yeah, well, the meatball is kind of the slang for it, but in the actual ending, they just call it the ball.

Yeah, call it the ball, call it the ball.

Okay, all right.

And if you can’t call the ball, then you have to come back around for another try, right?

Exactly.

Okay.

So something as simple as baseball, then.

All right, Ted.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, get on the horn and call us.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Gary Lehman.

I’m in Hillcrest, San Diego, California.

I’ve been there.

What’s up, Gary?

Well, I have a question about words.

The phrase is, hit me up.

Now, as you probably know, hit me up can mean a number of different things.

And what I’ve discovered recently is that hit me up means call me or communicate with me by cell phone, text message, instant message.

It means to contact me.

So I’m curious as to the etymology of this particular phrase, because it’s kind of a dividing line.

If you ask older people what does hit me up means, they’re going to suggest that it’s asking you for something.

Right, like money or something like that.

Specifically money.

Well, Gary, how did you hear about this?

Online.

I’m a musician, and I’m trolling Craigslist looking for work.

And so all the people who have ads looking for musicians, none of whom are paying any money, by the way, they all say, hit me up.

Sure, right, yeah.

Meaning call me.

It means communicate with me.

It doesn’t necessarily mean call.

I don’t think it means call.

They’ll hit me on my beeper, hit me on my cell, hit me on my burner, right?

Yeah.

Burner?

Hit me, hit me.

Yeah.

Hit me on my burner.

I’ve done some research online. I can’t come up with the, you know, the the derivation, where the C change.

Because, I mean, that’s pretty drastic. Words are supposed to communicate instantly, if possible.

And that just doesn’t sound like good communication, you know. Hit me up.

Yeah, but Gary, slang is, and this is patently slang, slang is always a little bit cloudy.

It always excludes one group or another, doesn’t it?

It does, and it’s colorful. It makes language more entertaining, but I can’t find exactly where it came from.

Let’s just say that this kind of thing is almost impossible to trace back to its ur form, as you put it.

Yeah.

And also, but let’s look at hit for just a second.

Hit is a partner in a lot of phrasal verbs.

Hit plus a variety of prepositions means a lot of things.

Hit me means to give me another card at blackjack or to actually punch me in the face, right?

Right.

Or to hit on means to, you know, use a come on line with somebody.

Or to hit back means to launch a revenge or, you know, a counterattack.

There’s a lot of different ways that hit can play out here.

And so what I’m going to say to you is have you considered the possibility that hit me on my cell phone is not directly descended from hit me up for money?

Well, it’s probably not.

Right.

But the casual listener will be confused, you know, of the meaning.

Yeah.

And that’s my concern.

Yeah, I agree with you, Garrett.

But clearly where you’re picking this up in Craigslist, they’re not interested in communicating with people who aren’t part of their peer group.

They are assuming that if you understand them, you’re an insider.

And so you are one of their people, and you are going to understand it means call me.

There’s no better way.

Communication is about getting somebody’s attention.

There’s no better way of getting somebody’s attention than to hit them.

You got a point there.

Yeah, but hit is kind of a generic verb.

Depending on how it’s partnered with prepositions and other words become a phrasal verb.

It just means an instance of something or to act upon or to affect.

And so hit in its basic form doesn’t necessarily mean to punch somebody to make contact with somebody with your fist.

It sounds very Anglo-Saxon.

Well, I would think it is.

And very, very modern.

Well, thanks, folks.

Gary, thank you very much.

If we come up with anything new on this, and it’s one of those things that you can keep trolling for, it’s so hard to look for things with the word hid in them.

If I come up with anything new, I’ll post it to the forum, all right?

That’s wonderful.

Okay, thanks.

Take care, Gary.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question about language, hit us up.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or you can hit us up via email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Sid from Indianapolis.

What’s on your mind?

I have a question about the word notorious.

All right, let’s hear it.

I’ve always thought that meant, meaning well-known, I always thought that meant bad, such as a notorious scoundrel.

But I’ve heard it recently used in a sense of not necessarily bad, such as a notorious singer, that sort of thing.

And then I saw in Thursday’s New York Times article regarding a call from two comedians in France pretending to be Nicolas Sarkozy called Governor Palin, and they were described as they are notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state.

So it seems like maybe it’s not necessarily bad, but perhaps mischievous.

I don’t know.

How should you use the word?

Well, that’s a good question.

So a notorious singer is a good singer or somebody like Grant and me during the slang quiz from time to time?

I don’t know.

I don’t know how to take it, whether this is a bad singer or a singer that is just well-known.

Exactly.

That’s how I feel about the word.

Yes.

I think that is exactly the problem with the word notorious.

I mean, the word began its life as simply a more neutral or even positive term.

It comes from a Latin word that means noted or known, publicly known.

But over time, it’s taken on that notorious flavor, that negative flavor.

But you will find dictionaries and usage manuals that say there are exceptions.

You know, you can use notorious to mean something neutral.

But, you know, I agree with you, Sid.

I don’t think it’s a good idea.

If you look at large bodies of text, if you look at corpus information on this, you’ll find that notoriety is more neutral and tends to be used by people both equally positively and negatively, and that notorious is almost exclusively used negatively.

However, it doesn’t have to be.

It’s just the way that we tend to use it.

You’ll find that all dictionaries and the evidence will support positive uses of notorious.

But as you both are pointing out, boy, you’re so likely to be misunderstood if you use it that way.

It’s like somebody scratching their fingernails on a blackboard when I hear notoriety used in a context that’s not necessarily bad.

I would agree with you.

I just think there’s so many other alternatives.

I’d like to see notorious.

And it is mostly that way.

It’s mostly trending that way.

And so, you know, maybe in another, what, 100 years, it’ll always be negative.

Something to look forward to.

So it could be used either way, but it really should be used not necessarily to describe somebody who’s doing something good.

You’re right.

You’re going to be misunderstood most times if you use it that way.

It’s best to choose a different word.

That’s what I say.

Sid, you have A Way with Words.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you, Sid.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, listen to this.

Okay.

What is the beginning of every end and the end of every place?

The beginning of every end and the end of every place?

Yes.

It wouldn’t be the letter E, would it?

It would be.

Yay.

Riddle champion Martha Barnette.

Yay!

Congratulations.

Here’s your prize.

Thank you.

What is this?

If you want to puzzle us, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Coming up on A Way with Words, it’s our slang quiz.

Stay with us.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And it’s time for our weekly slang challenge where we try to stump a member of the National Puzzlers League.

Today’s contestant is an unknown from New York City named Greg Pliska.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, who?

Greg Pliska from the National Puzzlers League, I believe.

Don’t we usually get puzzles from him?

You know, you’re right. Come to think of it.

Greg, are you there?

I’m here. I’m here, Gran and Marcia. It’s good to hear your voices again.

Yours too. How is the baby? I understand that you have a recent addition to the family.

Yes, she is. She’s actually six months old now. She’s absolutely adorable.

She solves crossword puzzles almost as fast as I do.

Oh, my gosh.

She’s at random, right?

She just dabs a little ink here and there and it’s all solved, right?

Well, she fills them in drool, actually.

All right.

Well, welcome back from paternity leave.

Greg, we have to put you through your paces.

Usually we ask our contestants to give us their favorite slang term.

I know, and I’ve been giving it some thought.

And I think my favorite slang term is the word clam.

Clam.

As we use it in the music business, it refers to a wrong note.

Mm—

Kind of like catching a crab, but…

Well, it creates a lot of crabs in the audience if you hit too many clams.

And actually, there’s a term that you hear every now and then called a clam bake, which is, of course, a really egregious performance filled with clams.

Nice. Nice.

You never have any of those, right?

Me, never.

No, no, no.

I had the nickname for a while, Mittens Pliska, which you figure out what that means.

This is when you were playing the keyboards?

Yeah, absolutely.

That’s nice.

If you just mash them right, the notes will come out eventually.

Well, it’s not like I didn’t hit the right notes.

I just did a lot of wrong notes around them.

Oh, sure, sure.

Well, Greg, let’s see how you do with our quiz, all right?

That sounds good to me.

The way it works is I give you a sentence with a blank in it and two possible answers.

Sounds easy, right?

Sounds like a piece of cake, a piece of clam.

Only one of them is correct.

See how you do.

If you need help, Martha is standing by, although I’ve paid her money not to help you.

All right, here we go.

Here’s the first.

If you go around blanking on a girl you hardly know, IMing her, sending her to your MySpace page, asking her for pictures, she’s not going to have a thing to do with you.

So if you go around blanking on a girl, is it dusting on a girl or simping on a girl?

That’s S-I-M-P-I-N-G.

Oh, wow.

Dusting or simping?

Simping.

Well, I would never do either, of course.

No.

But you did it one time.

That’s how you found your wife, right?

Yeah, but that was way before MySpace, Martha.

We’d send notes in class on these quaint things called pieces of paper we wrote on with pens and pencils.

Strange. Sounds weird.

So was that dusting or simping?

Dusting or simping?

Well, you know, dusting sounds negative, like you’re brushing her off, like you’re not interested.

Simping, you know, it doesn’t sound much better, but it sounds a little more active.

It sounds a little more like going after somebody.

So I’m going to say it’s simping.

Your answer is correct, but your logic is horrible.

Simping is online hip-hop slang for crushing on somebody that you barely know.

And even then, you only know them online.

You can either simp somebody or simp on somebody.

So if I say, you know, to somebody I hardly know online because they have a nice picture next to their nickname on the discussion forum, I say, Dan, girl, you look great in that photo, then that’s a simp.

So there’s also a noun.

Really?

Yeah, it’s just a way of, you know, guys do this.

They come on, I hit on every girl that they see online because I don’t know why they do that.

Great word in any case, simping.

All right, well, you got the right answer.

Let’s see how you do on the next one, okay?

Okay.

In the old days, summertime, we’d open up the blank and splash around in the water until the fire department came and shut it off.

So in the old days, would we open up the A, the Johnny Pump, or B, the reverse toilet?

Well, listen, in your neighborhood, pal, it might have been the reverse toilet.

No, we’d open up either the Johnny Pump or the reverse toilet.

Do people still do this?

Now I guess they open up like a bottle of Evian or something.

No, no, no.

People still open up fire hydrants if you go to the right neighborhood.

Right, if you live in the city like we do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, my logic is probably terrible once again, but reverse toilet sounds just so on the nose.

And when you slang something up out on the street there, you usually make it simpler.

Reverse toilet’s a big four-syllable thing that doesn’t really trip off the tongue.

But Johnny Pump, now that sounds like something you’d say in a tree.

Yeah, because the three syllables are easier than the four syllables. Is that what you’re saying?

Yeah, and the cadence of it. Johnny Pump.

Yeah, yeah. I think my dog would be more interested in a Johnny Pump than a reverse toilet.

Although he likes toilets, too.

Yeah, I’ve seen dogs roll around in doo-doo. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Yeah, I don’t know where we’re going with the dog here.

So, yeah, I’m going to say Johnny Pump.

Well, you know what? I am so disappointed in myself. I did not make these hard enough.

You’ve gotten this one wrong. It is Johnny Pump.

Johnny Pump is old-fashioned New York City street slang for a fire hydrant.

See?

You’re right. That’s two out of two.

Let me see if I can come up with a number three.

Let me just make something.

No, I’m kidding.

Greg, you know your fire.

It’s funny because I’ve been listening to the slang quiz each week, and I think, oh, my God, I know all of these.

These are easy.

And, of course, today you give me two that I’ve never heard of in my life.

Have I been really making them that easy?

Holy moly.

No, no, just easy for me, Grant.

Oh, I see how it is.

Snark, snark.

Well, Greg, when are we going to have you back throwing some puzzles our way?

I hope very soon.

I’ve got payback now.

I’ve got to get you back to the slang quiz.

Oh.

Give my best to the wife and the baby.

Smooches all around, and thanks for playing with us today, all right?

Thank you very much, you guys.

It’s great to talk to you, and I’ll be talking to you again soon.

Okay, nice work, Greg.

Take care.

All right, bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question for us about words, language, grammar, slang, or fire hydrants, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Eric from Menlo Park, California.

Thanks for taking my call.

Hi, Eric. How are you?

Hi, Eric. What’s up?

I’m doing very well.

Well, in the spirit of finding names for baby animals that are as adorable as they are, I’ve come across and been using the word puggle to describe baby monotremes, monotremes being that strange and small group of mammals that lay eggs and includes a platypus and a kidnapper.

But I’ve never been able to find the word puggle in any authoritative source, ranging from the OED to Merriam-Webster.

And I’d love to know if this word is one that would be generally understood and respected.

Coming from someone like myself, I’m a wildlife biologist, who would be expected to use words related to wildlife correctly.

So puggle, this is for baby platypuses, or is it platypi? How do you say that?

Either one would work.

Platypuses are platypi and echidnas.

Monotremes being the collective name for both of them.

Right. And so puggle, that’s P-U-G-G-L-E.

Yeah.

And where did you pick this up?

I found it reading somewhere on the Internet someplace.

Oh, no, the Internet.

Yes, indeed.

The Internet.

So you’re telling us you…

I say that jokingly.

So your question is, what’s the deal with puggle?

Can you safely use it, and where does it come from?

That sort of thing, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, I think one of the problems has also been that some places that I’ve been trying to research it, say that it only applies to echidnas.

Others say that it applies only to platypi.

And some say, oh, it applies to all monotremes.

But I figure that like the animals that are restricted to Australia and New Guinea, that perhaps the best usage is also restricted to those areas as well.

That’s a fair analysis.

You’re saying that puggle probably is best restricted to Australia, and I would agree with that.

And here’s why.

One of the dictionaries that you probably didn’t check is the Macquarie Dictionary.

Yeah, no.

This is an Australian dictionary, and if you look up puggle in there, it explains that the word puggle comes from a brand name of stuffed animals, or plush toys, as you might say.

And puggle was a brand, and then because the baby monotremes, the baby platypuses, the baby hedgehogs, do they fit in there?

No, anteaters or something like that.

Anteaters, something like that.

Spiny anteaters.

Spiny.

Right, because the babies look like these plush animals, then the Australian scientists began to call the real animals after the plush animals, after the stuffed toys.

And so you don’t find this term anywhere outside of that region of the world.

And if you use it in the United States, most people are going to think that you mean a cross between a pug and a beagle.

Right, right. I’ve seen that usage.

But they’re not as cute as a little baby platypus.

They are very cute.

At least in my opinion.

Well, I think you’re best to stick with something like fledgling monotreme or something like that.

Fledgling monotreme.

Oh, come on.

Come on.

Puggle is a great word.

I mean, maybe Linnaeus didn’t come up with puggle, but I like it.

They need a word for that.

We have words for all other little baby animals.

Are they taking you seriously when you use it, Eric?

Well, I’m using it in non-scientific arenas usually.

But I’d like to still be respected as a wildlife biologist and not be misusing any words.

But I really do want to use it.

Well, look, if you think that you have the authority or can muster the courage to carry off the word puggle, then go with our blessing.

You’re going to be forging in the way for the word puggle to enter the mainstream scientific discourse in the United States.

But you’re going to be out there on your own.

You’re going to be alone on the frontier of the word puggle in the United States.

Yeah, so you think it’s not as well-known or respected?

It isn’t.

Very few people in the United States are going to know this, even within the scientific community.

If they do know it in the scientific or biological community, it’s going to be as a foreignism or an Australian curiosity.

Yeah, I would agree with that, Eric, but you would be great fun at parties.

If I tell somebody I work with puggles…

Well, thank you.

I hope we’ve helped a little bit, Eric.

I would take a look up on Google Images or something, and then I think you won’t be able to help yourself, but refer to them because they are pretty cute.

They are so cute.

Yeah.

Well, thank you guys so much for your time.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I’m heading to Google now.

And you can give us a call anytime.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

A while back we had a call from Maura.

She divides her time between northern and southern California, commuting back and forth to see the grandkids.

She was searching for a word that was the north-south equivalent of bi-coastal.

Right, and you wrote in with some good suggestions.

Pat from Racine, Wisconsin emailed to say, since she travels up and down the state, how about yo-yo cow, or maybe yo-cow?

Liz wrote in with, by Vivant, which I kind of like.

I like that, too.

But, you know, Grant, I think my favorite suggestion for someone who does that north-south commute, at least here in California, was one that quite a few people sent in.

You described that person as a vertical.

V-E-R-T-I-C-A-L with a hyphen in there somewhere, right?

Yeah, yeah, I like it.

Now, that still doesn’t take in the people who are going back and forth between New York and Miami.

Right, it doesn’t indeed.

I should also note that somebody emailed us to say that I kept saying no cow when we did that call, and they say that it should be nor cow.

Is that right, Martha?

Gee, I’ve always said no cow, but I haven’t been here that long.

No cow.

Well, if you have an opinion on that, we’d like to know.

And if you have more suggestions for what you should call somebody who commutes back and forth between a northern place and a southern place, by all means, give us a call.

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nick calling from Chicago.

I have a question about the word fathom.

-huh.

Now, I’ll give a back story.

I am in my second year of my job, so it’s not the most stable position in the world.

So my goal is not to miss a day for anything short of, you know, a near fatal illness.

And so my friend kind of dropped to me that, you know, I should just take a day to, you know, sit at home and relax and just kind of chill out.

It’s called a personal habit, which I’m sure lots of people take from time to time.

And I had said, I can’t fathom taking a day like that at this point in my career.

And we kind of started scribbling about connotation of the word.

He was saying that that didn’t really work for my sentence, mostly because it’s more of used in, like, logic and more mathematical things because he is a mathematician, so that would be down his alley.

Where I was, it would be more acceptable to have a general use like I had used, meaning, well, given everything that’s going on and that it’s a new career, I wouldn’t dare take a day off of work for personal reasons.

So I just thought I’d call and ask what your thoughts on the word are.

So your question about the word fathom is what exactly?

I’m kind of curious about the origin and, given the origin, some of the connotative uses.

Is it a more logical use of the word, or is it more, I was thinking a little beyond just the logic, please.

Well, I can tell you about the origin of the word, Nick.

It’s one of my favorite words, in fact, because in Old English, fathom meant the length of a man’s outstretched arms from fingertip to fingertip.

It was a unit of measurement, and it’s usually about six feet.

And so later on in Shakespeare, you hear full fathom five, which means five times six, five times six feet, 30 feet.

So to fathom, the verb really means literally to get your arms around something.

And so metaphorically, to comprehend, to understand.

I love that word because I just love the image of fathom being sort of your wingspan.

And then the idea of grasping a subject or an idea.

Right, grasping, another one of those verbs that behave the same way, can mean to literally grab something with your hand or to metaphorically grab something with your brain.

Apprehend works the same way.

Right.

It means to catch someone or to understand, although it’s less common in that use.

Right.

So when you’re talking about connotations, Nick, what exactly do you mean?

When I said connotation, what I was thinking about, like I said, my friend had thought that it was maybe more of a specifically logical thing, you know, fathom this problem or fathom the answer of this particular equation rather than, oh, more maybe of an emotionally oriented thing or just kind of a general personal, like I can’t take a day at work, I can’t grasp what it would be like for me to take a day at work.

I would lean toward your interpretation of that.

Okay.

Grant, would you agree with that?

Yeah, I think that’s fine.

Okay.

You sound like you’re clear on the meaning and the use.

Right, we’re clear on the meaning.

We were just not sure about some of the finer aspects of the word and where it might fit best and which kind of situation.

One of the interesting things about the use is that it’s almost always used in a construction similar to the ones that you’re talking about, which is I can’t fathom or I couldn’t fathom.

You’d almost never say, I fathom that.

That’s a good point.

Or I am fathoming what you’re saying.

You’d almost never say that.

Yeah, and I was surprised when I had been questioned on that use because I’ve heard that construction before.

And so I was a little taken aback when we got into our little discussion.

So I’m glad to have clarified that and to know that it’s not just me kind of misconstruing something I’d heard before.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate it.

Okay, Nick, thanks.

Yep, have a good one.

Well, if you can’t fathom something about language, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

That’s our show for this week.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message anytime, day or night, rain or shine.

1-877-929-9673.

Or email your questions to words@waywordradio.org.

And join in the conversation right now with word lovers on our discussion forum.

You’ll find that at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also engineered our theme music.

Kurt Conant produced it.

We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdazian.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And from the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett.

Later.

Adios.

Yes, you like potato, and I like potato.

You like tomato, I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

♪ And oh ♪