East Overshoe (episode #1588)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Years ago, while traveling in Argentina, I heard a great phrase to describe somebody who’s very stingy. You know, that guy who never picks up the check in a restaurant, never gives money to charitable causes. In Argentina, that kind of person is said to have a crocodile in the pocket, un cocodrilo en el bolsillo. A crocodile in the pocket. That means he’s not about to reach for his wallet because there’s this scary sharp-toothed animal there in his pocket that’ll snap his hand off. And I thought that was a really cool, colorful phrase.

And I was reminded of this the other day because I just learned that in France, a stingy person doesn’t have a crocodile in his pocket. Instead, he has orsins. He has sea urchins in his pockets. And you’re not going to want to reach in there because, ow! And so I started digging around and it turns out that in various countries, there are various dangerous animals in the pockets of stingy people. In Brazil, sometimes you would say that there was a scorpion in somebody’s pocket or in Serbia, it’s a snake. All preventing you from getting in there and take out your money.

Yeah, yeah. Don’t blame me. My father, who passed on a couple years ago, was very careful with money, let’s say. And I always used to say that he was so tight with money that he squeezed a nickel till Jefferson screamed.

Oh, that’s the polite version. Well, we know that there are people in your life that you love, but there’s something about them that just deserves a colorful phrase. Share them with us, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Audrey and I’m from Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Hey, Audrey, welcome.

Hi, Audrey, welcome to the show.

Thank you, thank you.

I was calling because I have a question about the phrase East Jesus Nowhere and kind of my story about how I realized it was a weird phrase. I’m originally from Arkansas, but I work as a traveling speech therapist. And I’ve done jobs in California and Massachusetts. And I’m on my way to Florida right now for my next job. But when I was up in Massachusetts, me and some of my coworkers were talking about, you know, where I would go next and how travel therapy works. And I said, well, if you’re willing to work out in East Jesus nowhere, then you can make a lot of money. And they all started laughing at me. And they were like, I’ve never heard that before. And I kind of brushed it off. I thought maybe it was like a regional thing, like from Arkansas, even though I don’t feel like I usually have a Southern dialect. And we kind of talked about, well, what do you guys say?

And one of the guys said he would say something like East Overshoe or just call it the middle of nowhere, something like that.

So I was like, OK.

So later on, I was thinking about it and I was like, no, I got that from the movie Juno.

I remember the mom in Juno says, oh, they’re out in East Jesus nowhere.

And so I got curious.

So I did some Googling.

And the first thing that came up was a link to a Reddit page talking about how Billy Joe Armstrong, the lead singer of Green Day, had written a song called East Jesus Nowhere inspired by the line in Juneau as well.

So then it got me wondering, was that a phrase before Juneau or did it come from Juneau?

And then I was like, I know who to call.

So East Jesus Nowhere is just this vague, faraway place that is hard to get to.

Yes, exactly.

People are like, oh, they live way out in East Jesus nowhere.

Like, they live in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, the sticks, the boondocks.

Yes.

Oh, and I liked the other one you mentioned, too, East Overshoe.

Yeah, I had never heard that before.

I was like, I’ve definitely not heard that one.

It’s near West Galoshes.

Oh, yeah.

These both have a history, and I’ve got a few more to throw in there in a minute.

East Jesus goes back to at least the 1940s.

There’s a story in the Louisville Courier Journal from 1945 where a Lieutenant Bill Riley from Greenwich, Connecticut, was pretending to be a Lieutenant Joe Murphy from East Jesus, Texas.

And he tried to fool a reporter, but the reporter figured it out.

And the reporter asked him, she said, why were you pretending to be this Joe Murphy, this Lieutenant Joe Murphy?

And he says, well, for years, I’ve been sending postcards from all over the country to a non-existent Joe Murphy in a non-existent East Jesus, Texas.

And this is the first mention that I found anywhere of East Jesus.

So I don’t know if this Bill Riley from Greenwich, Connecticut invented it, but we know that at least goes back to 1945.

And there’s plenty of uses of it ever since.

So, yeah, so it doesn’t come from the movie Juno, but I’m sure that that and the Green Day song helped popularize it or keep it alive anyway.

Yeah, for sure.

I love it.

It’s such a good, juicy descriptor, you know.

It’s just kind of a fun thing to say, East Jesus, nowhere.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s just a God-fearing country where people go to church, but it’s very far away, and it’s going to take a long time to get there.

East Wilfershire actually is a little older, as far as I can tell, 1930s.

It was formerly far more widespread.

People would say East Overshoe, but it’s far less common now.

And some other ones of invented faraway places are South Burlap and West Burlap, West Hell, Balutha Hatchie, Ginny Gall, Back of Beyond, South Succotash.

For years, I’ve said Sal Belly, Arkansas, but I’m from Missouri, so we always like to poke fun at Arkansas.

Hey now, hey now.

I don’t know if anyone else says Sal Belly, Arkansas, but that’s what I say.

I have not heard anyone in Arkansas say that one.

But anyway, that’s fun stuff, Audrey.

It sounds like as a speech pathologist traveling around the country, you’ve not only got the ear for picking up language, you’ve got the opportunity.

Yes, definitely.

I hear a lot of things where I’m like, oh, that’s a little bit different than where it is over here.

You know, just the minute differences in regional languages for sure.

Well, we’re going to deputize you as one of our field reporters, and we require that you report in once in a while, all right?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Your badge is in the mail.

Thank you, field worker Audrey.

Thank you for your call.

Thank you so much.

That’s so awesome.

Y’all have a good day.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, whether you’re in East Overshoe or West Burlap, give us a call at 877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Chris.

How are you doing?

Hi, Chris.

Where are you calling from?

Nassawattics, Virginia, the Eastern Shore.

Yeah.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Yeah.

I was wondering if you guys might happen to know the origins of a crazy term my girlfriend happened to come up with on our second date.

Oh.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I grew up in upstate New York where pine needles are appropriately called pine needles.

And I think it was our second date.

We were walking through the woods.

And I don’t know how the conversation came up, but she looks at them and calls them pine shadows.

And I just kind of went quiet for a second or two.

What did you just say?

Pine shadows?

Shadows, yeah.

-huh.

Some people might call them shatters, too.

Mm—

She’s here, too.

Sorry.

Oh, she’s here, too.

Well, let’s put her on.

Let’s see what she has to say about this.

Hi, my name is Yvonne.

Hi, Yvonne.

Tell us about these things on pine trees.

It’s really when they’re on the ground, they’re called pine shadows.

I wasn’t born here.

I grew up here, and I think I just picked it up from people who live here when I was a kid.

In Virginia.

I mean, I know that they are pine needles, but I can’t stop saying pine shadows.

Okay, but there was a moment of silence where Chris was just looking at you like you’re out of your mind or you have two heads or something.

Why am I dating this woman?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

What are you saying?

You’re making these things up.

Yeah.

Well, I tell you what, we need to have Chris back on the phone because, of course, you are using a perfectly legitimate word, and we will explain that to him.

Okay.

How’s that?

Thank you so much.

This isn’t the result I was hoping for.

We always ask at this point, is there something on the line, like dishes for a week or a nice dinner out or a car wash or something?

No, there’s nothing on the line other than just pure defeat.

Okay.

I am a little concerned with our new child being raised, calling them by something I truly believe is wrong.

Okay, listen up, buddy.

Actually, this is a really delicious question because you’re from upstate New York and she’s from Virginia.

And she heard the term pine shatter or pine shadow, which is a term that you will usually hear in Virginia.

It’s a dialectal term that refers to those pointed leaves that fall from pine trees.

There’s also a dialectal verb shatter, which refers to seeds falling from a seed pot or oats falling out of their case.

Or you’ll also hear in parts of the United States, you’ll hear people talk about shattered corn, which is corn that’s loosened from the ear.

And those two words may be connected.

Darn.

Yeah.

But it’s a cool phenomenon what happened here.

So the shatter, S-H-A-T-T-E-R, is sometimes pronounced as if those T’s or D’s, shatter.

And the word shadow is sometimes pronounced as shatter.

So those two shatters can sometimes be mistaken for each other.

So pine shatter can be mistaken as pine shadow.

And besides, the way the leaves fall, the way the needles fall, does look like a shadow of the tree.

It really does look like a pine shadow.

Her mother uses that alternate shatters.

Yeah, pine shatters, yeah.

It’s a real thing that’s been chronicled by dialect researchers and been mapped out even.

So how about that, Chris?

This is the worst news ever.

Well, congratulations on the child who will be speaking a proper Virginia dialect.

Oh, thanks.

Y’all are adorable.

You got to call us back again sometime.

Give Yvonne a kiss and a hug for us, and thanks for calling, all right?

Will do.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

What are those little linguistic disputes that you have in your house that are never quite resolved?

And maybe you have fun battling your partner.

Maybe it’s just a little teasing here and there.

Hey, let us get in on the action.

877-929-9673.

Feral pigs can grow up to 600 pounds, and they’re spreading across Canada,

And they’re causing a lot of environmental damage.

And part of the reason is that they’re able to survive some of the coldest parts of the country

Because they tear down plants and they build these little shelters for themselves.

And you can probably guess what these little shelters for feral pigs,

In very cold places, are called…

Pigloos.

Yes.

Yes, this is a word that researchers use, pigloos.

Yeah, apparently they sometimes burrow in the ground,

Line these burrows with, you know, leaves and small branches

And other soft insulating things,

And they kind of slumber through the coldest parts of the year.

Right.

Get in your pigloo.

Get in your pigloo.

I need a pigloo.

Don’t start calling my bedroom my pigloo.

Well, call us from the inside your pigaloo, 877-929-9673, and tell us your story, your idea, your question about language.

This show is about language seen through family, history, and culture.

Stay tuned for more of A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words,

The show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and joining us now

Is that mystery wrapped in an enigma

And a T-shirt and jeans.

Our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hello, Martha. Hello, Grant. It is so great to be here with you guys again.

I’ve got a quiz for you today, something we’ve done before I think you guys like.

It’s called Common Bonds.

Oh, yes.

I’ll give you three things, and you tell me what they have in common.

Oh, boy.

There’s lots of names for these. If you’ve ever played the board game Try Bond, same thing.

Or if you’re a fan of the UK game show Only Connect, same thing.

When I host Pub Trivia every week, it’s typically our last round.

I call it Common Bonds.

For example, if I said a report card, USDA inspected beef, and an incline, you would say?

Grade.

Grades, yes.

We’ve done that example.

So here are the actual clues.

Three each.

Here we go.

Number one.

Ten con pen.

Ten con pen.

T-E-N?

Ten?

No.

No.

Oh.

T-I-N?

T-E-N-N.

Oh.

What?

These are states, state abbreviations.

These are old state abbreviations.

Yes, ten, con, and pen, two N’s on each.

Yes.

Let’s try this one.

Mirror, liar, Corinna.

Oh, they’re words that are reduplicated to come up being names or famous expressions.

Corinna, Corinna, mirror, mirror, and liar, liar.

Names of movies, actually.

Yes, they are all movies.

Yes, well done.

Mirror, mirror, liar, liar, Corinna, Corinna.

How about this one?

Number, judge, proverb.

Well, preachers girls can get this one.

I was just going to say the very same thing, Grant.

Those are books of the Bible.

If pluralized, they do become a book of the Bible.

Yes, very good.

Number, strain, air.

These are all references to types of musical music.

Yes, they are a synonym for a song or a tune.

Number, a strain, or an error.

Very good. Here’s the last one.

Heart

Pace plan.

Heart? H-E-A-R-T?

H-E-A-R-T.

Pace, P-A-C-E, plan.

P-L-A-N. Heart, pace,

Plan.

You know I’m a plan maker.

Blank of heart

Of pace, of plan.

Oh, change of.

That’s it.

Change of heart.

Change of pace.

Wow.

Change of plan.

Okay, change of plans.

I was going to do some more, but I think we’re going to stop right there.

That’s our change of plans.

You guys were fantastic, though.

Congratulations.

You did your common bonds very well.

John, thank you very much for the games.

We always appreciate it.

Take care and be well.

Thank you, guys.

You too.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

This show is about language.

We’d love to take your calls and questions, hear your stories and ideas and your thoughts

About, well, puzzles, slang, new words, old words, something you heard at work. 877-929-9673. Email

Words@waywordradio.org or try us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, welcome to Way With Words.

Hi, how are you guys? I’m Beth. I am actually calling from Virginia. So I’m calling because

I thought you all would be just the ones to help me reclaim my accent.

So I grew up in Tidewater, Virginia, which was kind of a unique area because it was settled fairly early on by the British colonists.

And it was pretty well isolated up until maybe the early to mid 20th century.

So there’s this kind of regional accent that seems to be pretty specific to this area.

I moved actually to the Midwest a few years ago

And one of my colleagues there said to me

Oh, I’m surprised I thought you would have a southern accent

But you sound like you’ve lived in Illinois all of your life.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

I mean I don’t think she meant it in any specific way

But I was kind of like wow I wish I did have an accent

I wish you could kind of tell where I was from

I would love to get back some of those sounds I heard growing up.

Mm—So Beth, what were some of those sounds? Can you put it on if you need to?

A little bit I can, but just as some examples, house is more typically host.

Mm—

Of is more of a of, like an A-H-V sound instead of an O-V sound.

You know, I’m a little bit homesick living in the Midwest, and I just kind of would like a little piece of home with me and a little, I don’t know, a little bit of my identity.

Are there people back home who still have that accent?

Very few people. Mostly maybe my grandparents’ generation, born in maybe the 20s or earlier.

So there are not a lot left.

And so those who do have the accent are few and far between.

How does somebody reacquire their accent?

Well, a couple ideas.

Well, one, obviously going back home on regular visits is a way to do it.

We get a number of calls and emails every year from people saying, like, you know what?

It’s so strange.

And when I go back to where I’m from, it doesn’t take more than a couple hours and I sound like I used to.

I pick it all right back up.

And so that’s one thing you could do, Beth.

Another one is the Dictionary of American Regional English has put its tape recordings online.

These are recordings that they made for decades as their field workers traveled across the country interviewing people and recording their words and their ways of speaking.

And you can find those at the University of Wisconsin library site.

We’ll put a link on the show notes.

Or you can just Google Dictionary of American Regional English Fieldwork Recordings.

If you do a search for Virginia, you will come up with several pages of results so you can hear people.

And since many of these recordings were done decades ago, you’re very likely to hear exactly the kind of voices that you’re remembering, that you’re nostalgic for.

Oh, I would love that.

I would love that.

What a great idea.

Okay.

It is hard, though, isn’t it?

It is hard.

It’s very hard.

Because you tend to talk like the people who are surrounding you.

And if you’re not around people with that accent, I mean, it must be weird if you ever run into somebody who does have that accent, right?

It’s like the hairs on the back of your neck just stand up, don’t they?

I have been known to introduce myself to people who I think speak in a similar way and just kind of try to interrogate them a little bit.

Where are you from?

And see if we have any connections.

And that leads me to my other bit of advice for you.

That’s actually a really good approach.

I want you to think about another you,

Somebody two or three generations further down the line,

Who themselves may be nostalgic for your voice

And the way that you sound.

And you might want to start your own language memory project

Where it’s something as simple as recording videos or phone calls of you talking to people back home.

Anybody, it could be schoolmates or old teachers or just folks that you know,

Getting that stuff on tape and asking their permission to save it and store it

So that 30, 50, 80 years down the line, somebody else will consider this a language treasure.

And it’ll be something that you’ve done for the future you, Beth.

That’s a lovely idea.

I love that.

Do you all know anything about the accent itself in the area?

And like what, I don’t know, how could I research it a little bit more and just kind of learn more about the specifics of where it came from?

Well, we mentioned the Dictionary of American Regional English.

It is available online.

Many libraries have subscriptions, so you might check your local library.

Or if you still have university library privileges, check there.

But they allow you to search by region.

And those will give you a little bit of idea of some of the lexus and some of the pronunciations used in each one of these regions.

Another thing that you can do, and I know this sounds weird, but go back and read old newspapers.

You’ll be surprised how often the letters to the editor or the recipe column or the sports pages will just start ringing some bells for you.

Because the cadence of the writing will remind you of the spoken speech.

That sounds like a lot of fun, actually.

It can be. And if you search for family names, you may be surprised what you find.

When I search for my family names in newspapers, I find like garage sales that they held or the time that my brother and sister won a T-shirt at a mall, which I didn’t remember until I found it in a newspaper.

You know, it’s just like dumb stuff. But I’m like, hey, that’s my family.

Yeah, you got to hold a small town newspaper.

And so much of it is sound.

I mean, I’m looking on YouTube right now for a Tidewater accent.

And there’s a, you know, there are all these little clips of a TV spokesman with a Tidewater accent is the first one that pops up.

I’ve been known to do that with the Western North Carolina accent, which is part of my childhood in the summers when I went to visit my grandparents.

And sometimes I just do that just for fun, just to get that little.

It’s like when you smell something and immediately you’re back in first grade, you know, that there’s something just limbic about hearing those sounds.

So you might just cruise YouTube.

Well, thank you so much.

Yeah, you’re welcome.

And thank you for suggesting this idea.

This is something we would recommend to everyone is that they reconnect with their linguistic history and maybe you’ll start something new here.

Oh, maybe start a trend.

Sure.

Well, thank you.

Take care.

All right.

Be well.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you, Beth. Bye-bye.

We asked folks for stories about how their nicknames came about, and we got some great responses.

Joanna Schlegel from Cape Cod wrote to say,

When we were kids, my sister Jennifer was writing her name in block letters, all caps,

But she omitted the support on the final R so that it read,

Jenifep.

She’s been Fep ever since.

And today she’s a tenured linguistic anthropologist,

But she still goes by Fep in certain circles.

That’s cute.

And we also heard from Wendy Larson, who said,

A good friend of mine in elementary school named Rachel

Was an unusually advanced reader for her age,

And one of her prized possessions was an unabridged random house dictionary.

During one of her regular explorations of the dictionary, she apparently made a connection between my name, Wendy Larson, and an extinct primitive ungulate called a condylarth.

She thereafter playfully referred to me as Condylarthen. Two names.

And 60 years later, I’m still known as only conned to her.

And I’m struck by both of those stories in the fact that sometimes a nickname just comes from one little tiny incident, and you’re stuck with it the rest of your life.

And you’re stuck.

We’re still taking stories about how you got your nickname or how you gave one.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Good afternoon. How are you?

I’m doing well. How are you and who are you and where are you?

My name is Jeremy. I’m calling out of Charleston, South Carolina.

Very excited to be on the show today. I’ve been a longtime listener and a fan of the show.

Hi, Jerry. What’s on your mind?

Well, so I grew up in the southeast corner of New Hampshire, and there was this odd form of speech that I never was able to quite understand the root of it, and I’m hoping that you can help me out.

So it’s an odd use of a negative.

My example is that let’s say I have a red car and you also have a red car.

If I made the statement, I drive a red car, you could respond, well, so don’t I.

Or you could say, well, so doesn’t Susan.

It’s this odd negative where the contraction doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense where you could say, well, so do not I have a red car?

And I didn’t know if you could shed any light on it.

What’s odd about it is that it’s a positive and not a negative, right?

That’s correct.

Right. So what is meant is, I also have a red car.

Yes, it is the opposite. Yeah. So you’re trying to express that you have the red car, but you’re using the negative to express it.

Whereas in the rest of the country and most of the English-speaking world, people would say, so do I, instead of so don’t I.

Yes, this is what perplexes me.

Definitely. When linguists have studied this, one of the things they almost always point out at the top of the papers that they write on this is how perplexing it is to people who don’t have this in their dialect.

This so-don’t-die construction. And there are other ways that it appears, and I’ll get to those in a minute.

And it is primarily found, but not exclusively, in New England in the United States.

So having it in New Hampshire is exactly on target, but you will find it in Vermont and New York and Rhode Island and other places.

I have lived in Vermont and Rhode Island, so that fits as well.

Yeah, but there are other constructions that don’t involve the verb do.

For example, and these come from the linguist Jim Wood of Yale University who’s written excellent papers on this topic.

For example, you might say, sure, it’s trendy, but so aren’t most nightclubs.

And what you mean is, so are most nightclubs.

Or you could say, yes, the clerks should be cheated with respect, but so shouldn’t the customers.

And what you mean is, so should the customers.

And all of these are curious because they just sound wrong if you don’t have them in your dialect.

And they sound perfectly fine if you do have them.

But it’s not the only place in English where we mean a positive, but we use a negative construction.

For example, we say, well, don’t you look pretty?

When in fact we’re saying you do look pretty.

Right.

Or we say, aren’t they lucky?

Oh, I follow.

Yeah, I never connected this before.

They are very lucky.

Or wouldn’t you like to know?

That means you would really like to know.

So it’s very similar to those. And so these semantically negative sentences are all positives.

And interestingly, it can work the opposite as well. You can have sentences that have one negative marker or even no negative marker at all, but they’re actually positives.

For example, you can say, like he would know anything about it, meaning he doesn’t know anything about it.

That’s a negative, but there’s no negative in the sentence. How does that work?

And so when we start to look at these other examples, it starts to, the so don’t I starts to fit into this pattern.

We go, oh, so it’s not really this outlier.

It’s only an outlier because in this one dialect, this particular construction exists where it’s not part of the whole set that the rest of the mainstream English uses.

And do you find that those other forms of the negative are also typical in New England?

No, they’re widespread.

Oh, they’re widespread. Okay.

Yeah, but the so don’t I is really, really localized.

Yeah, the so don’t I is localized.

Yeah, is that what you were asking?

The so don’t I is in New England.

But when we talk about, well, don’t you look pretty or aren’t they lucky, that’s national or even international.

That’s all of English has that.

Right.

There’s something in there which is kind of an implicit question-answer pair with the so don’t I.

So what’s happening is there, what is understood is, when you say so don’t I is, do I not? I do so.

That’s kind of what’s happening with the so don’t I.

So I have a red car, and then the other person says, do I not? I do so.

That’s kind of what the so don’t I is saying.

I think I follow that. I was trying to parse it out as extending the contraction and perhaps forming it as a question.

So do I not have a red car?

It doesn’t quite work, though, does it?

Yeah.

No, it doesn’t.

If you want a really detailed but very readable explanation of this, there is a great page at the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project.

Just Google Yale Grammatical Diversity Project and so don’t I, and you’re sure to come up with it.

I love that there’s research on this.

Yeah.

There absolutely is.

And if you hear it in South Carolina, I think that’s a conversation starter.

I think we know what your next question to that person.

Let me guess.

You’re from New England.

They’re going like, how did you know?

Yeah, they will.

That would be the bellwether right there.

Hey, thanks so much for calling.

We appreciate it.

I appreciate the information.

Have a great rest of the day.

Take care and be well, Jeremy.

Take care.

And if you want to get really wonky,

You can find linguist Jim Wood’s paper on So Don’t I.

Just Google affirmative semantics with negative morphosyntax.

And make that your next email password.

And if you’d like to talk with us about any aspect of language whatsoever, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Or find us on Twitter. We’re at Wayword.

More about what we say and why we say it. Stick around for more.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And here’s a book I am really excited to recommend.

It’s about the history of scientific taxonomy, about how we classify and define the living world.

The book is called Naming Nature, The Clash Between Instinct and Science.

And it’s by Carol Kasich Yoon, who has written extensively about science for the New York Times.

It’s incredibly engaging and gorgeously written.

And one of the words that I learned from this book is the word umwelt.

That’s U-M-W-E-L-T, umwelt.

It’s a German word that literally means the world around.

And it was coined in the early 1900s by a Baltic German biologist

Who wanted a word for the world as it’s perceived by various animals

According to their sensory abilities and their cognitive powers.

So, for example, a honeybee with its compound eyes is going to have a very different umwelt

From, say, the umwelt of a dog, which understands so much of the world through smell.

And we humans have our own umwelt, of course.

And the human umwelt, that way of perceiving the environment, is the basis of the work of Carl Linnaeus.

Now, of course, he was the Swedish botanist and so-called father of modern taxonomy.

And he categorized things by what he could see and touch.

You know, these flowers have five petals.

And this animal is very similar to that animal.

But here’s the thing.

Advances in evolutionary and molecular biology have shown how Linnaeus’ system was limited by his own umwelt.

Because when you start analyzing things at the genetic level, it gets a whole lot more complicated.

And let me give you an example.

A lungfish has either one or two lungs, depending on the species,

And they can survive out of water for months or, if necessary, years.

And if you sort creatures by their evolutionary closeness, what you find is that a cow and a lungfish are more closely related to each other than a lungfish is to a salmon.

That is, they share a more recent common ancestor.

And if you look at them anatomically speaking, a lungfish and a cow both have lungs.

A salmon does not.

A cow has an epiglottis.

So does a lungfish.

A salmon does not.

And a lungfish’s heart looks more like a cow’s heart than it looks like a salmon’s heart.

So what exactly is a fish?

And that’s the kind of question raised by this book.

It’s this rich, chewy book about how we try to make sense of things by giving them names.

And it’s about how we divide up and impose some kind of order on the world or try to,

Which, of course, is what we do with language.

So I really think you’d dig this book.

I would love to read the book.

Does she talk about that human instinct to categorize how we want to sort and divide and list and put things into their boxes and charts and graphs and maps?

And there’s something fundamental about that for us, isn’t there?

So fundamental.

In fact, there is some research that suggests that there may even be a part of the brain that governs this kind of thing.

She cites some really interesting research about people with brain injuries who have a hard time recognizing one or the other.

Like they can recognize inanimate objects, but they cannot for the life of them recognize things that are alive.

There are people who can say, oh, that’s a flashlight or oh, that’s a canoe.

But if they see a kangaroo or a flower, they’re clueless.

They just can’t identify it.

And so there’s some thought that maybe, you know, this is something instinctive.

And then you also look at little kids, you know, when they go through that dinosaur phase.

A lot of times they aren’t making up stories about the dinosaurs.

They’re categorizing them.

They’re naming them.

They’re all about the names and the different characteristics of those dinosaurs.

So don’t get me started.

Just read the book.

It’s such cool stuff.

And it’s pretty mind-blowing.

So that book, again, is Naming Nature, The Clash Between Instinct and Science by Carol Kasich Yoon.

Thank you, Martha.

We’re always interested in what you’re reading.

No matter where you are in the world, there’s a way to contact us.

Go to our website, waywordradio.org/contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marion from Charleston, South Carolina.

Hey, Marion, welcome.

I have a weird one for you, at least weird for me.

It’s UFTA, spelled U-F-F.

And then maybe there’s an apostrophe, sometimes yes, sometimes no, D-A.

And, or a dash, something like that.

I’m from South Carolina, and I married a wonderful man from Minnesota.

And it seems that that was something that was on people’s cars.

You know, there’d be a bumper sticker or somebody would say, oofta.

He couldn’t tell me where it came from, except that it was used like if you were lifting something heavy, which sort of made sense.

But it also was used sort of an expression of that’s life or something.

So that’s my word, oofta.

Oofta.

And do you use it yourself?

Me?

No.

No, I just laugh at it because it makes no sense to me.

His father was Swedish and Norwegian.

Bing, bing, bing, bing.

Yeah, there it is.

And they are from Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, which the closest town is Fargo, North Dakota.

Well, Marion, the magic word that I rang the bell for was Norwegian, because this is originally our Norwegian expression.

And it’s used pretty much, as you say, as an expression of general purpose expression.

Surprise, or you can use it like wow, or gee whiz, or ay caramba, or oy vey.

It’s just kind of a multi, it’s the multi-tool of the language.

A lot of places that you can just drop off there.

Off there, the traffic is ridiculous.

And that’s sort of how it’s used or on a bumper sticker just to show that you know what it means and maybe nobody else does.

It is especially common in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

And our listeners there have heard this a lot.

They know it very well.

It might be strange to the rest of the country, but like you say, it’s on T-shirts and bumper stickers.

And it’s incredibly common there.

It’s just something they know as a local expression.

They’re known for having that word as part of their vocabulary.

Is its origin in Norway or it’s just Norwegians that sort of say it?

It’s Norwegian.

It’s from Norwegian.

Now, current Norwegian speakers don’t use it, but originally it was from Norwegian.

I mean, it’s not common.

It’s not something you would usually say.

You would sound like a weirdo if you used it in regular everyday Norwegian in Norway, as I’ve been told by Norwegians.

They might understand it, but it’s just not an everyday.

It would be like somebody saying, alas, today, you know, as an interjection.

We just wouldn’t do it.

Alas, alack, right.

Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds great.

I’m so glad because I know the word, but it just didn’t, it made sense when it was used, but not really.

Not really.

Particularly if you’re lifting something heavy.

I mean, I can absolutely hear that.

That might help a little bit, don’t you think?

It’s very context sensitive, you know?

Sometimes it’s about disgust or negative things.

Sometimes it’s about surprise and delight.

It just really depends where the conversation’s going.

Yeah.

Well, that’s great.

I’m so glad.

All is revealed.

Marion, thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

And thank you.

I love your show.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Keep talking with you.

Bye.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send those language stories to words@waywordradio.org.

In Brazil, if you want to say that something’s very close,

You can use a phrase that translates as

To go on one foot and return on the other.

I just love that.

Ir num pé, é voltar no outro.

Oh, yeah, that’s fantastic.

That makes perfect sense because you can only do that so far.

Yeah, right?

You just step and then you return.

Kind of like to the neighbors and back maybe,

Depending on how close you are.

Or the next room.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Alan Teeley. I’m calling from Omaha.

I was talking to my daughter the other day, getting groceries,

And I told her that I’m finally glad that she’s old enough to start to human.

And that got to me thinking about other times that I’ve turned nouns into verbs.

Most prominently Jenga and adulting.

And I was wondering if there was other examples of it going way back when

Or if it’s something recent coming out of meme culture

And the speed of information nowadays.

Oh, yeah, that’s a great question.

Let me ask you, just out of personal curiosity,

Because I have a 14-year-old,

How old should someone be when they’re ready to human?

Oh, probably about 8 to 10, something like that.

Hold enough to open doors and carry groceries in.

Very good.

Yeah, and to think of it themselves instead of being told.

Yep.

Okay, good, good.

But I like Jenga as a verb, right?

You Jenga the moving boxes in the truck or you Jenga the groceries in the cabinet, something like that.

And hope they don’t all fall.

Yeah, exactly.

I like that too.

What we’re talking about is changing a word’s part of speech.

We’re talking about turning a noun into a verb, and this is called denominalization,

Which is a type of conversion that creates a denominal verb.

But it’s commonly called verbing, so let’s just use that.

And there’s a famous Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where Calvin tells Hobbes,

I like to verb words, and the summary is verbing weirds language, and it does indeed.

But this has been going on in English since English was English.

It’s one of the most common ways that we make new words, where we take nouns and we make verbs.

And it’s something that’s really characteristic of English because not all words can do this.

Our nouns don’t have inflected endings.

That is, except for adding an S to make them plural, typically our nouns don’t change very much, no matter what else is happening in the sentence.

Whereas other languages, the nouns may change depending on what else is happening in the sentence, even beyond things like plural.

So there was a great book that Martha and I have talked about on the show before called The Prodigal Tongue.

Linguist Lynn Murphy did a sample of entries from the Oxford English Dictionary for that book.

And she estimated that about half of the verbs in her sample were verbs made from nouns.

And so that’s a very large number of words in English where verbs were made from nouns.

I think, Alan, if we were to do a complete survey, the number would probably be lower.

But it’s still going to be a very large number of everyday verbs in English come from nouns.

So, for example, we’re really glad, Alan, that you phoned us.

Yeah.

Did you have to elbow somebody out of the way to do it?

Well, I did have to stop coding, so.

Yeah, I just stopped coding.

Very good.

There you go.

In her book, The Prodigal Tongue, Lynn Murphy has two really great examples of words that have made the round trip from noun to verb

More than once. And one of them is the noun caterer, you know, someone who provides food for

A party. Caterer comes from the verb to cater, which comes from a noun cater, which is a person

Who catered, which is from a verb to cate, C-A-T-E, which means to dress food. Another example

Lynn Murphy gives is the verb to impact. The verb meaning to press in became the noun impact,

Meaning an impression, which became the verb to make an impression. In any case, so this is a very

Ordinary way to make words in English. It’s incredibly common, and there’s nothing modern

In particular about it. Oh, cool. I imagine with time then, adulting will just be ubiquitous to

Everybody then. It might fade. It still has the tinge of slang about it. There were a couple great

Studies about nouns turned into verbs, and one of them noted that in many cases, the most successful

Verbs that were made from nouns are physical things. So parts of the body, for example,

Are very successfully turned into verbs. You hand somebody something. You leg it down the road.

Thumb a ride. You thumb a ride. You back into a space. There’s just many of these.

Well, cool.

Yeah. All right. Thank you very much for your call, Alan. Give us a call sometime

If you want to interrupt your coding.

Will do. Thank you much.

All right. Take care now. Bye-bye.

Yep. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Here’s a cool term that you might want to extend as a metaphor in your own life,

And that’s the term channel fever.

Channel fever refers to the feeling that sailors get when they’re nearing home.

You know, they’re so anxious and excited, but they’re not quite there yet.

So is this the English term?

So it’s English sailors in the English Channel, but not quite to the port yet.

Originally, yeah, yeah.

Probably arose during World War II, you know, coming back across the Channel and seeing those white cliffs of Dover or something.

Channel fever.

Channel fever.

When anything is almost over, you know, you’re experiencing that channel fever.

Yeah, we’ve extended the term senioritis in our house for that.

There you go.

Right.

Senioritis is when you’re in high school and you’re almost done and you just don’t care about grades or class or anything about ready to graduate.

So you could have senioritis for almost ready to depart for a big trip.

You know, that’s senioritis for the trip.

You’re ready to go.

Ready to go.

Even though it’s days away, you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing because your mind is already at the destination.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Mary in Laramie, Wyoming.

Hello, Mary in Laramie. How are you doing?

Well, I am hoping that you all can give me some information with regard to a term that my mother, who was from Fort Worth, Texas, used frequently.

And that term is possible bath, as in take a possible bath, as opposed to a tub bath or a shower bath or a bed bath or a sink bath, a possible bath.

And what do you think she meant by that?

Well, in our family, it meant taking a bath in the sink and just washing off the smelly parts of the body, as in one foot in the sink, the other foot in the sink, under the arms, etc., etc.

So that’s what she meant by it.

But I never could understand the meaning of the word possible.

And I only heard it, have only heard it in my lifetime, coming from the mouths of Texans.

Well, the expression is pretty straightforward.

There’s a saying that first you wash up as far as possible, and then you wash down as far as possible, and then you wash your possibles.

Okay.

Okay.

That is really interesting.

Well, Mary, you’re going to love this.

It’s not just Texas.

In fact, if you take a look at James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses, there’s a description of a possible bath in there.

Oh, for heaven’s sakes. That’s amazing.

How about that? One of the characters talks about how she washed up and down as far as possible.

And somebody else says, well, did you wash possible?

I love it. Oh, thank you.

Yeah, yeah. It’s also in Maya Angelou’s wonderful book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Wash as far as possible, then wash possible.

Very good. Well, thank you so much for doing the research on that.

We’re always glad to help.

Thank you so much for your call, Mary.

You bet. Thank you.

Thanks, Mary. Bye-bye.

Bye.

What is the euphemistic or refined speech that you use to talk about difficult or awkward things?

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or tell us on Twitter @wayword.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler. You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye-bye.