Electric Hootenanny (episode #1409)

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. Grant, you and I are fans of proverbs.

Oh, yes.

And I have a particular fondness for a type of proverb known as an eponymous law.

That’s a jokey way of packaging a pithy observation and naming it after somebody, either real or fictional.

And of course, I guess the most famous is Murphy’s Law.

Right, which goes…

If a thing can go wrong, it probably will.

Exactly.

And then there’s Muffrey’s Law.

Muffre’s.

Muffre’s Law is when you try to make a correction to somebody else and then make a mistake yourself.

Right. It’s misspelled, right?

Yes.

And there’s something about attributing it to somebody and making it like a scientific law that makes it a little funnier.

Well, is it the mixed registers here? Because the content is a joke, but the name sounds so formal.

Exactly. They’re all kind of wry like that.

And I was trying to think, well, what would Barnette’s Law be?

Oh, no. I don’t know.

Well, I was thinking about it on the way to the studio, and then I was thinking maybe Barnette’s Law is the lane you just got out of is the one that’s going to move faster.

I was going to say, Barnette’s Law is no matter what time you leave, you still get there at the same time.

Yeah, that’s probably true.

What would Barrett’s Law be? I don’t have one.

Oh, you have lots of laws. It’s hard to boil it down, though. What would Barrett’s Law be?

Well, the one I tell my son, which is in fewer or coarser words than this, is don’t mess with things.

That’s my law, because you’ll inevitably mess them up.

It’s kind of like leave well enough alone, basically.

Yeah, yeah, and that’s good, using the word mess.

He’s the kid that will push the button that should not be pushed, you know?

He’s a baron.

What can you say, right?

Well, we’d love to hear your own particular eponymous law.

Call us with it.

The number is 877-929-9673 or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Share your wisdom with us.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jim Stewart in Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Jim. Welcome to the show. How can we help you?

Great, thank you.

Well, I’ve noticed that a particular type of human communication is disappearing.

And I wonder what you think about it.

Specifically, graffiti writing on restroom walls is not nearly as prevalent as it once was.

I’m out and about all day in my car, office buildings.

I go to gas stations, warehouses, department stores.

And I noticed not long ago that the restroom walls were clean in this particular facility, and it was a gas station where usually it’s a prime target for graffiti.

And so I started doing a little bit more scholarly research and paying attention.

And I see that there’s very little writing on restroom walls anymore, not nearly as prevalent as it was just a few years ago.

How interesting.

And I’m wondering what you think about that.

I think you need to go to a lower class of joints.

Well, I otherwise have a life.

That’s a fascinating point.

You know, I have not seen much either.

And in fact, I went into a restroom at a restaurant recently and they had chalk on the walls specifically so people could put graffiti on there.

And I remember being kind of jarred by that because I don’t see it anymore.

Yeah, maybe it’s a trend.

It’s certainly, I don’t know if it’s a lost American art form, but I don’t know if we can cry about this very much.

I don’t know, but Jim, do you think that people are finding different outlets through social media or something?

Well, my theory is social media is taking the place of that particular form of communication.

If you look at social media, it’s the same basic, mostly the same basic types of communication that you see on restaurant walls.

Specifically, the most prevalent topics are religion, sex, and politics.

And you see that a lot on Twitter and Facebook.

And some people are not very discreet about it either.

So it’s not nearly as anonymous as it would be if you’re communicating on a restroom wall.

But I think the topics are basically the same.

That’s a good theory.

I don’t know how we’d ever prove that, but it is a really good theory.

We now have a place to release all the little goofy things that we’d otherwise, or angry things that we’d write on a bathroom wall.

Yeah, yeah, just a way of saying, I was here, look at me.

And I think the other thing, too, is, I mean, not that I made a practice of writing on bathroom walls, but I send a lot of texts from bathroom stalls.

Many people do.

Don’t you?

Yeah.

You’re a constant companion there, right?

Well, I don’t know about constant companion.

How many times have you gone to the restroom and realized you didn’t have your phone and went to get it before you did your business?

This is the way we live now.

Yeah, I think it’s…

This is not something I plan on.

I don’t plan on doing a really exhaustive research on this.

I have asked other people.

If you do want to read exhaustive research on this, Jim, there’s a book written by Alan Walker Reed.

It was originally published in Paris in the 1930s because American publishers wouldn’t touch it.

Alan Walker Reed was a great lexicographer.

He traveled around the country and recorded the graffiti.

He wrote it down and made a study of it.

It was eventually published in the U.S. under the title of Classic American Graffiti.

And if you look for that name, Classic American Graffiti, you’ll likely come up with the book.

It is an astonishing read.

One of the most amazing things about it is how consistent graffiti has been over the years.

Even though there’s not as much in the restroom stalls as there used to be, you would still find some of the same poetry.

Wow, I thought I was the only one that had too much time on my hands.

Well, you give an academic a grant and some spare time, and they’ll study just about anything.

Well, somebody needs to do a modern day.

I’m going to pick that up.

Yeah, we need a new one now in the age of social media.

Well, I think that’s what we’re looking at.

I think certain parts of sites like Reddit and FARC and some of these Facebook groups, this is the place where we share the goofy stuff.

We write the little dogger roll in order to entertain others, right?

Well, you get a much bigger audience.

And I think the repetition that we see there is almost identical to what happened in the bathrooms as well.

You would go into bathroom and bathroom after bathroom and see the same little rhymes, the same little jokes.

When I was growing up as a kid, my father worked in a train station, and there was an Air Force base there, and there were people from all over the world that would come through there, and even the language on the stalls was, some of it was in foreign languages.

Oh, really?

You know, that was a significant part of my early education is reading things on restroom walls, and I had no clue that existed in the world.

Well, Jim, I think we need you to continue collecting data for us.

Well, okay, I’m your man.

Okay.

I’ll let you know what I find.

Yeah, please do.

Just post it on our Facebook page.

Well, thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Great.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about the graffiti.

It’s not the big murals that people are painting.

We’re talking about the stuff on bathroom walls, the little messages to others, not the crude things, but the funny things, the jokey things, the memorable things.

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

Grant, we were talking earlier about eponymous laws, and one that I really like is the one from Cyril Northcutt Parkinson.

Parkinson’s law, which is work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Yeah, and the corollary, which is your stuff expands and contracts to fill the space available too, right?

Oh, yeah, your stuff, your personal possessions.

You can have like a wallet and it will just suddenly fill a room.

I don’t know how that works.

I thought you meant the stock Sanford corollary to Parkinson’s law, which is if you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.

That is true.

I can vouch for that one.

I think you found your life’s T-shirt.

Outstanding.

We know there’s a bunch of these out there, these eponymous laws.

Google it, what the heck, and share your favors with us, 877-929-9673.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Elise. I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Welcome, Elise. What can we help you with?

Well, okay, I have an interesting situation.

So I’m a school teacher. I teach seventh grade.

And this is my first time in Dallas. I used to live in Los Angeles.

And I noticed my kids over here were starting to say this word, and I didn’t know what the word was.

The word was finna, F-I-N-N-A.

And I noticed they would especially use it with each other, or if they wrote each other notes, they would say this word finna.

And I didn’t know what it was.

They would say finna, go to the store, or finna, hang out with my friend.

And then I started realizing that it was actually a slang term for fixin’ to.

And I thought that was so interesting because we don’t say fixin’ to in California.

We say, I’m going to, or I’m going to go to the store.

And so I started seeing the connection there between finna was a southern thing and gunna was maybe a non-southern thing.

That’s what I wanted to ask you guys about.

Yeah, I think the southerners also say gunna.

But yeah.

Okay.

So finna is a really tight condensation of fixing to.

It’s very standard in the American South.

And Gulf states also appears in African-American vernacular English throughout the United States.

And through hip-hop, Finland is actually transmitted to the larger culture.

And so you’ll actually find it in the language of people who have no historical connection to African-Americans or to the American South.

Really interesting.

But it does follow the same pattern as going to and want to.

I want to go to the store.

So want to instead of want to.

And the rarer one, which is trying to.

I’m trying to fix this.

Trying to.

I’m trying to fix this.

So those are the four big boys in China kind of being the left out one there.

But yeah, so this is a really common kind of colloquial way of speaking.

Good on you for having the ear to sense the regional differences there and not come out heavy handed to judge them harshly.

Well, at first I started telling them, don’t do that. Like, speak properly, you know.

And then I thought, if it’s a colloquial thing, if it’s a slang thing, who am I to correct their mannerisms, I guess.

Yeah, if they’re standing from the classroom giving a presentation, that’s when they need to bring out the fixing to, not the finna.

But yeah, just talking to their pals, that’s a different story.

The Dictionary of American Regional English, that amazing work at daredictionary.com, traces back fixing to, not the finna form, to the 1930s.

And I’m sure it’s much older than that and probably came into the United States through the Scots-Irish heritage.

Interesting. Very, very interesting. Well, thank you for that information.

Sure thing, Elise. Thank you for calling.

And good luck with the kids. You’re doing the best work out there. Teachers are our people.

I appreciate that very much. Thank you.

All right. Bye-bye.

Nice to talk to you. Bye.

Okay. Bye-bye.

What word has caught your ear? Give us a call about it, 877-929-9673.

Or you can send it to us in email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Grant, I bet you haven’t heard of this eponymous law.

Maybe not.

This is Kohl’s.

Kohl’s Law?

Mm—

Let me hear it.

Thinly sliced cabbage.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

That’s terrible.

You liked it.

Was that laughter I heard over there?

Yes, it was laughter because you seem to be enjoying yourself and it’s infectious.

Okay, great.

Send your terrible puns to Martha at Martha at waywordradio.org.

Thank you.

You can also tweet Martha at Martha Barnette.

And call us with your language questions and observations, 877-929-9673.

What’s the word you find most savory?

Come on, you can tell us.

More from A Way with Words in just a minute.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett and are joined once again by our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

John, behold.

You’ve made some quizzes for us, I hope.

I have.

I have one for you right here.

You know, I’m going through some old day planners of mine.

And of course, being a puzzle guy, the notes are kind of cryptic.

If you add an abbreviation for a day of the week to one of the words in one of my memos, you get a word related to the activity.

That’s how I keep track of things.

Oh, okay.

I think we can do this.

For example.

For example, what days did I do the following thing?

Let’s try this one.

Oh, okay.

All right.

What a lovely ceremony, lovely couple.

Too bad my car got a little ding in the parking lot.

Wednesday.

Yeah, that was on Wednesday.

It was a wed ding.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Very good.

At feeding time, I accidentally locked myself in with the baboons.

Luckily, my supervisor had his keys on hand.

Whew.

What?

Monkey.

Monkey.

Oh, monkeys.

Yes, the baboons.

Let’s try this one.

After a long day at the textile shop, it was a relief just to get in bed between some silky soft sheets.

Satin.

Satin.

Satin, yes.

Very good.

Saturday.

Nice.

Do you know what? Let’s move on to the months.

Oh, no.

I started getting so busy I couldn’t make daily entries, so I started writing once a month.

Add an abbreviation for a month to the beginning of a word in the clue to get a related word.

Here we go.

It’s taken me weeks to perfect my greatest orchestral work ever, but this grand opus is fated to only be the theme music for a documentary on marine life.

Marine life.

Octo-something.

Oh, octopus?

No.

Octopus, yes.

Oct-opus.

How about this?

I convinced my shy, gawky Aunt Ella to join me on a camping trip.

Too bad for us both that the campground turned out to be something of a swamp.

Marsh.

Marshie.

Marshie, yes.

Very good.

Nicely done.

I was fixated on Ella.

Okay.

I know.

Tricky.

Keep thinking of that.

Keep thinking of that.

Because the governor of Alaska has been courting my shy Aunt Ella for weeks now.

He sent her flowers, candy, and eau de toilette.

Oh, Juneau.

Yes, Juno.

All of our Alaska listeners are going,

Toy!

Toy.

I spent the last month carefully copy editing a short book for my shy Aunt Ella, the writer.

What month was it?

Novella.

November.

Yes, it was November for the novella.

Nicely done, Martha.

Thank you.

Finally, now that my shy Aunt Ella is gone, having the book she dedicated to me has certainly eased the pain of losing her.

Deceased. December.

Yes. Deceased. December. Nicely done.

So that’s all we’re going to go through my calendar.

I’m going to just get rid of this calendar right here.

I’m going to… That’s it.

You don’t need these notes anymore.

But you guys did fantastic. Nice work.

Thanks, John. I really appreciate it.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Talk to you then.

Well, we’re talking about words here today, and if you want to ask us about any word, call us 877-929-9673 or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Josh from Belgrade, Montana.

Hi, Josh. Welcome to the program. What’s going on?

Well, so I have a question about an ongoing dispute between my fiancé Liz and I about the way that I pronounce the possessive form of her name, Liz.

For example, I would say, when referring to her job, Liz Job, or her car, Liz Carr.

I also have a nephew, Alex.

I do the same thing, where I say, Alex School, or Alex Fish.

And this just sounds dumb.

It’s as if I was saying Grant Carr, or Josh Carr.

Because you can’t hear the possessive in there?

Yep, it’s the possessive.

Yep, she thinks I should pronounce this Liz’s job, or Liz’s car.

And I think for me where this derives from is the written form where I would write that, Liz apostrophe.

And that comes from the way that words or names ending in S, some styles dictate that you can just use an apostrophe, others an apostrophe S.

So for me, I use just the apostrophe, and when I pronounce it, I just say Liz Carr.

Okay.

So the question is, is he right? Am I right? Are we both somewhat right? Is there a gray area?

And you’ve done this all your life then. Did people tell you? Apparently. It was never brought to my attention until she had a problem with it.

I bet you haven’t done it your whole life. I bet you learned it from books. I bet up until the point when you had somebody point out to you that the apostrophe appeared after the S, after some words that you said Alex’s and Liz’s, Liz’s car, Alex’s school. I’m betting that you taught yourself because it seemed like the right thing to do.

I’m guessing that’s correct, yeah. But we’ve done some Internet research on this, and it’s kind of a split decision about how to do this.

Well, how do you define split? You know, you can have a split where there’s 50% on each side, and you can have a split where there’s 10% on one side and 90% on the other. I’d say the latter is more accurate.

The Internet likes her method better. Well, yeah, and Josh, I would like to ask you a few questions about guests arriving at your wedding and people arriving at your wedding.

So if you’re talking about the arrival of Liz at your wedding, you would say Liz arrival at my wedding? Boy, that’s a good one. I think I would actually say Liz’s arrival at the wedding. Liz’s arrival.

And what about Prince Charles? Yeah. Well, that’s another one. We have a few examples here. Yeah. Okay. Let’s hear them.

Yeah, be Prince Charles’ arrival. We also, she thinks Charles, to say Charles’ car or Charles’ school is acceptable. Same with names like James or Mercedes. Mercedes school, Mercedes basketball, that doesn’t bother Liz. But for names like Elvis or Alex or Angus, you can’t say Elvis song.

So there are just these idiosyncrasies that we kind of agree on even. Oh, that’s interesting. And it sounds like maybe part of it has to do with the second word.

Yeah, maybe. We don’t really know. Like you might say Elvis’s house, but Elvis song. Yeah, maybe. Here’s another path on this.

Most people, regardless of what they write, say Liz’s and Alex’s school. Most people. Even people who hyper-correct, to leave out the S sound at the end of those words, in times when they’re not being conscious of their own speech, still say Liz’s and Alex’s. So there’s no completely right answer here.

And I know we’re going to get emails. People are going, well, Mrs. Frobisher in the third grade told me, well, you know what? There are people who’ve examined large data sets. So look at people’s speech and writing habits. And we know for certain that most people say Liz’s and Alex’s and have over the course of history. And write it that way, too.

Yes. It wasn’t until we became a very, at least in the Anglosphere, became very literate and people started looking really closely at the written language did they try to really make the spoken language conform a lot more to what they were writing. And that’s often a mistake. And then there’s so many exceptions on top of that.

I mean, it’s sort of an Achilles heel, right? Oh, right. I think this is a great place for you to compromise because it’s not that much to ask of you, Josh, to pronounce it her way.

No, I know, and I think that you probably just convinced me that that’s the right way. Tell her to translate it as I love you every time you say Liz’s in your own private…

He would say Liz. Oh, I see. If he comes around to her point of view and says it her way, then she needs to hear I love you every time he does that.

Exactly. I think that’s an apt compromise. I think we can do that. Right. Okay, well, great. Well, best wishes to both of you.

Well, thank you very much, and thanks for taking the call. Okay. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Josh. Bye-bye.

Yep. Bye. We know you’ve got opinions about apostrophes for possession after words ending in S. Let us know. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

This eponymous law comes from Herb Locke. He was the cartoonist at the Washington Post back in the day. And it’s called Herb Lock’s Law. If it’s good, they’ll stop making it.

Oh, yes. You know? Yeah. I talked about this on our Facebook group. There was a kind of socks that they made at the Gap like 15 years ago. I loved them. Yeah. They stayed up. The elastic didn’t overstretch. They stayed up.

Right. You know? They were a cotton polyester mix. Maybe your calves got skinny. You know, they allowed sweat. And then they stopped making them. And I go back and I went back for years to say, do you have any more of those socks? They’re like, no, we don’t make those.

Oh, don’t you hate that? They were perfect. Don’t you hate that? And here we are 15 years later, and I still haven’t found a good replacement for that particular sock.

Oh, oh, I feel your pain, Grant. Remember Pilot is expresso pens? No. Oh, my gosh. Was it espresso or expresso? I think it was expresso. The perfect pen for you? It was the perfect pen. It felt so good in my hand. It moved across the page so sensuously. And I used to buy them by the dozen from, you know, an office supply store. And then they just disappeared. And I’ve looked on eBay. I’ve looked everywhere. If anybody has a stash of those, I would…

There should be a corollary here. We’ll call it the Barnette Barrett corollary, which is like… The worst thing to do is when they change the formula. Oh. Like pears soap. They just change the formula. I’m like, this is not the pears soap that I knew.

No. That’s right. I want the original. This doesn’t smell anything like it. Are we sounding stodgy and crotchety? Get off of my astro surf, sonny boy. 877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk with us.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello. Hi, who’s this? This is Karen. I’m calling from San Diego. Hi, Karen. Welcome to the show. How can we help you?

Thank you. Twice recently, I’ve heard this phrase, to cut off your nose to spite your face. In both cases, the author in one case, Stephen Pinker, and the podcast host, Stephen Dubner, cited a source for the phrase. Stephen Dubner cited a history by Roger of Wendover, which talked about some nuns who were in an abbey who were going to get raided or something, and so they wanted to make sure that they weren’t sexually assaulted by the people. And so the woman who ran the nunnery, the abbess is what they call her, cut off her nose. I mean, the way they described it is just horrible. And then all of her sisters did the same thing. And so then they were, you know, saved of at least that fate.

Oh, good. That’s pretty unenlightened. Really. So the whole idea behind the expression, though, is to go to ridiculous extremes to stop another bad thing from happening when the thing you’re going to do is bad enough.

Right. Oh, yeah. Good point. And that’s just pointing out kind of this terrible action that we would take. We find examples of the same idea, but not the same expression as far back as 611 in the writings of Publius Sirius, who was a mammographer. He wrote mimes, which were these exaggerated performances, these comical kind of acts. And the version that he uses is to burn your neighbor’s house down in order to get revenge. Because if you burn your neighbor’s house, you’re likely to catch your own house on fire, too. And we find this also, I think it was Henry IV in France. He said that he would have to burn Paris to save Paris. It’s kind of that same idea.

Here’s the thing about Steven Pinker and Stephen Dubner’s sources. I’ve seen the Steven Pinker passage. I haven’t heard the Dubner thing. There may have been examples of nuns doing that, but cutting off someone’s nose as an act of vengeance or even as an official way of punishing them was fairly common, both in England, both in Europe, in Egypt, in Assyria. This was a thing that was kind of formalized, particularly for adultery and certain offenses, particularly if it involved a woman who was treated as a sexual object, where she was seen as attractive.

In order to make her not attractive, they would cut off her nose.

Sometimes they would cut off her ears.

Sometimes they would cut off her hands or breasts, but yeah.

Whoa, that’s awful.

So, Karen, yeah, there may very well have been nuns that did what the two Stevens talked about, but there’s an older history to the whole concept.

Well, cool. Thank you very much.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for calling, Karen.

Bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

It’s been a couple of years, but do you remember when we talked about what you call the drink?

Did you make it the soda fountain when you take a little bit of everything?

Oh, yeah. Suicide, right?

Suicide or swan juice.

Or graveyard or something.

A couple of those.

All right. So I was reading a story where they interviewed Cary Elwes.

He was in the movie The Princess Bride with Andre the Giant and Robin Wright and a bunch of other people, right?

Okay.

And he plays kind of the hero there.

And he was talking about hanging out with Andre the Giant, who was a massive man behind the scenes.

They’d go out to eat.

And apparently Andre the Giant used to drink a drink like that, mixing a little bit of everything, only it was alcohol.

Oh, my gosh.

And they called it the American, a concoction that consisted of 40 ounces of various liquors poured into a pitcher.

Ooh, my head is hurting just listening to this.

And we also, so I was just remembering all these old calls.

We also did the, what was the one where they make it out of the mat, you know, at the well, whatever spills in the mat.

Right, the bartender’s mat.

Yeah, they just pour it into a glass.

Call it a Matt Dillon or something.

Yeah, something like that.

Boy, anyway, I wanted to share that with you, the American.

I will never have one.

Right, don’t ever order an American.

But Andre the Giant R.I.P., you are one of a kind, man.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Evan from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Evan, welcome to the program.

Hello, Evan.

What’s going on?

Hi, how you guys doing?

All right.

Doing well.

Yourself?

I’m doing great today.

Great. Well, how can we help you?

Well, I had a question. When I used to write formal letters to relatives and family members, and when receiving them, I was told that you used the title master to a male below the age of 8 or 10, and mister for anyone above that age.

And I was wondering if that is still practiced, or was that correct?

And if so, is that just something that Southern people, I mean, Southern tradition?

No, I wouldn’t say it’s solely a Southern tradition, and it is a tradition that’s fading.

The rule I had heard was that you say master up until the age of either 8 or 12, and then there’s nothing between 12 and 18.

That’s what always confused me.

They’re not getting any mail at that time.

Yeah, probably not.

And then at 18, you start referring to them as Mr.

This is pretty standard etiquette, right?

Yeah, yeah.

It’s definitely not a regional thing.

It doesn’t culture belong to any one particular group.

Yeah.

So you’re a fan of that?

It’s just something that I remember as I get older now and start writing, you know, thank you cards and more, you know, letters.

Because now, I think, most people just write emails.

Right.

And I’m starting to have nieces and nephews, and I was just wondering if that’s something that’s proper or if that’s fading.

It’s certainly proper.

It’s proper. It’s a little formal in these informal times.

My mother does it when she sends letters to my son, who is seven, Master Guthrie Barrett, and he feels a little flattered by it because he feels like it’s a title.

And what does that title mean, master? Because I’m sure most people don’t have masters anymore.

Yeah, it’s a variant of mister, and I believe mister goes back to the whole idea of masters in guilds, in medieval guilds.

Related to the Spanish word maestro, meaning teacher, right?

Yeah, maestro.

Maestro, yeah.

Or Italian, like that.

Yeah, but going back to Latin then, originally.

Okay, wow, thank you guys.

Well, thanks for calling.

Thanks for calling, Evan.

No problem.

Thank you for answering that.

You have a great day.

Sure thing.

Bye-bye.

This is the show about language and how we use it.

We’ll take your questions on any subject, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

We were talking earlier about eponymous laws.

Here’s one I really liked.

Do you know Betteridge’s Law of Headlines?

Yes.

If it asks a question, the answer is probably no.

Yes.

Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

Did aliens actually abduct the president and replace him with a clone?

No.

Is coffee bad for you?

No.

Right, because it plays on the thing they do in news, which is in order to get you to read the story, they suggest something preposterous and then at the very bottom say, no, actually, the answer is no.

Let us know your favorite eponymous law, 877-929-9673, or make up your own and send it to words@waywordradio.org.

What’s the word you savor the most?

You can tell us.

More from A Way with Words in just a minute.

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.

We had a discussion on the show recently about the language of grief and death.

And listeners have been continuing that conversation online and in email, particularly about two phrases, one of which is I’m sorry for your loss, and the other one being pass away as opposed to die.

We heard from Catherine S. Quinn, a psychologist in Del Mar, California.

She’s not only counseled grieving people, but her own son died suddenly at the age of 24.

And she said that using the word loss in that case kind of minimizes the loss itself.

She writes, the word death is commonly used interchangeably with the word loss, including by those of us who are professionals who sometimes skirt around the intensity of the utterance.

Still, the word death is most realistic.

And when used with sensitivity and compassion when a death has happened, it feels the most accurate for our loved ones and in understanding their experience of this significant event.

And she says that rather than get hung up on the language, sometimes you just have to give a hug, just say, I’m so sorry.

Recognize the fact that you really don’t know how that person is feeling.

And we heard an echo of that idea in a note that we got from Nicholas Clifford.

He’s a professor emeritus of history at Middlebury College in Vermont.

And he wrote, it’s all very well to be against euphemisms.

I’m very much so.

But unfortunately, you’ve got to be respectful of other people’s feelings.

At the age of 84, I’m living in a retirement place.

And here, when the grim reaper pays a call, words like passed on or simply passed are used.

And I don’t think I’m in a position to tell others what language they should employ, even when their own makes me cringe.

And he continues, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve told my children, four daughters, that when I die, I really do die.

I don’t pass or pass on or transition or metamorphose or anything like that.

If my children and those they deal with are unable to use words like die and death, they have my permission instead to say, he left in search of better job opportunities.

That at least should bring a chuckle and a return to reality.

And what was his name again?

Nicholas Clifford.

Nicholas, thank you very much for the laugh there, because it’s a serious subject.

And yet, this is the path that we’ll all take.

Exactly.

We still welcome your thoughts on the language of death and dying.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Thane from Bridger Valley, Wyoming.

Hi, Thane. Welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you.

What can we do for you?

I have a little bit of a story and then a question.

I grew up on a horse ranch here in southwestern Wyoming, and we always were taught that we have to feed the animals before we feed ourselves.

But the problem was Christmas morning.

As kids, we wanted to get up and open all the presents.

And so it was really hard to either go out and do chores or wait for Dad to finish the chores.

So my mother made a kind of German pancake.

It took about a half hour to make, and it included the blender.

And we would eat that with syrup on Christmas morning, and she called it Hootenanny.

She got both the recipe and the name from her mother, who is a Dutch-Irish homesteader out here.

And I thought it was Hootenanny until I went to college in New York City.

And everyone says, Hootenanny, that’s a party in Appalachia.

So I guess my question is twofold. Is that original for here? Is my family the only one that uses hootenanny for a German pancake? Where does the phrase hootenanny come from, meaning a party? And for that matter, why is a hoot a good time?

Okay.

It’s not called a humminanny, right? You’ve got to holler.

That’s right. It’s not a ho-humminanny. That’s right. That’s right. Now, you said a German pancake.

What do you mean by that?

It’s like the recipe for German pancakes.

You take six eggs, some flour, and you put a whole bunch of butter, which is not normal in German pancakes.

And you bake it for 30 minutes, and it fluffs up really big, almost like an egg casserole, and then you eat it with syrup.

Okay.

Okay, this is really good.

You’re not alone.

There are other recipes for Hootenanny pancakes out there.

You can do a search on Google Books, and you’ll find at least four recipes for Hootenanny pancakes.

What’s interesting is that they’re not all pancakes.

Like you say, some of them are casserole dishes.

It’s basically the same as a pancake recipe with a lot of butter and a lot of eggs.

All of the recipes call for six eggs, which as far as I’m concerned is a lot of eggs for pancakes.

I was going to say, it sounds like a big production.

Is that why it’s called a Hootenanny?

Well, there’s a really interesting thing about the word hootenanny.

Thane, it hasn’t always just been these pancakes, which is pretty rare usage,

Nor the big party that you would have in Appalachia.

It has meant just a thingamajig.

It has been like a kind of placeholder word for a lot of different things.

And I think it’s kind of just been borrowed here and there,

Like you might borrow doohickey or thingamajig,

Just to refer to a thing that doesn’t have a name, right?

So in the Dictionary of American Regional English, they talk about it as a kind of sleigh.

They talk about something to sharpen shears.

They talk about it as an imaginary object, certain other kinds of tools, something insignificant or nonsense, and the party.

So Hootenanny has been a lot of different things.

And we’ll find that again and again throughout the slangy words of English where a word will take quite a while to fix its meaning.

And when it does get fixed, sometimes it’s used for more than one thing.

And here we are.

It’s pancakes or it’s a party.

Or both. Pancakes at a party.

Yeah, I was going to say.

Thanks so much for giving us a call.

Thanks for calling.

No problem. Thank you.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Have you heard of Seagal’s Law?

S-E-G-A-L?

Seagal’s?

I don’t think so.

You might recognize it.

It goes, a man with a watch knows what time it is.

A man with two watches is never sure.

Nice.

I can really relate to that.

I love that.

You know, you look something up and then you look in another source and it’s a little bit different.

Who’s the right source?

Right, and then you call your favorite radio show and make them decide for you.

And then they do the same thing.

That’s right.

Like, whoa!

That’s right.

Sometimes TMI is just TMI, right?

Mm—

What’s your favorite eponymous law?

Make one up for yourself.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Jeremy from Milton, Florida.

Hey, Jeremy.

Welcome to the show. How can we help?

Well, I had a question about two words.

Let’s say that you were going to go on a trip,

And you would normally say,

I went there by plane or by car,

Or I flew on a plane, on a train, but you wouldn’t say on a car.

You would say in a car.

Why is there a distinction between in a car but not in a plane,

Or you wouldn’t say on a car?

I have a general guideline, a general rule for why we do this.

Do you want to hear it?

And it’s about feelings.

We all just kind of notice that we feel that on a train is correct,

But in a car is correct.

It’s a native speaker’s intuition that we’re working with here.

And it has to do about whether or not we feel like we’re being enclosed or whether or not we feel like we’re standing or sitting on a platform or a floor or some kind of long, long surface that contains other people or contains other things.

And we can work down all the different kinds of transportation from small to large and start to notice that there’s a pretty good consistency there about whether or not we feel enclosed or whether or not we feel like we’re on a platform or floor or some other kind of surface.

For example, bicycles and motorcycles, scooters, we’re on them.

Skateboards, we’re on them, right?

We’re not in them because there’s no enclosure whatsoever.

We’re on a sled.

Yeah, we’re on a sled.

But you’re in cars because the enclosure is the salient feature.

That’s the thing about a car.

And also, in a car, you’re kind of like fixed in your seat, maybe even seat belted in,

And there’s not this freedom to move about back and forth across the space like you would

You have on a train, on a ship, on a plane.

Trains are really interesting because I can be on a train, but I’m in the sleeper car

Or I’m in my cabin or I’m in the caboose, but I’m on the train because I don’t feel

Quite as enclosed as I do in these smaller spaces, and I feel the freedom to move about,

To move back and forth.

Yeah, I’m thinking historically, too, the precursors of cars.

I mean, you might say my ancestors came to California in a Conestoga wagon.

Yeah, but if you say that they came on a wagon, you might imagine there was no covering and there was no enclosure, right?

Yeah, I didn’t start thinking about that until a few years ago.

I was teaching English in Japan, and you never think about the language as much as when you’re trying to teach it to somebody.

Oh, absolutely.

Asking you all these questions, and that just happened to be one of the numerous questions

That kind of threw me for a loop for a second.

I was like, I don’t know, why do we say it that way?

Let me ask you about another class of things, vessels that go on the water.

So you would be on a raft, right?

Right.

But for a canoe, a dinghy, or a kayak, what would you be?

Yeah, I guess you’d be in a canoe because you’re somewhat enclosed, I guess.

Or you’d be upon, a sit-upon.

Yeah, but there’s not the freedom to move about.

That’s the thing.

Once you’re on, once the vessel in you become a unit, you’re not free to move about.

Let me ask you about a yacht.

Are you in a yacht or on a yacht?

Does it matter if you’re below decks?

Yeah, if you’re below deck, I guess you would be…

Actually, I would always say on a yacht.

I think I would, too.

Like you said, if you’ve had the freedom of movement, you can move around.

Yeah, that’s a really good point.

Yeah, so it’s pretty interesting. So do you feel the freedom to move about upon some kind of platform and do feeling close? Again, feelings. At the bottom of language, a lot of times, is this relationship to the connotations of the experience and not necessarily about a perfect logic.

Right.

Okay.

Well, that would have been a good answer for those students in Japan.

That was a spectacular answer. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jeremy. Take care now.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, tell us your stories about language. The number is 877-929-9673, or you can send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And you know what? We are all over Facebook and Twitter.

Grant, you know I’m a big hiker.

I’ve really fallen in love with hiking since I moved to San Diego.

And just give me a camelback and poles and I am off, right?

Nice, yeah.

And so I was delighted to find this term in Japanese, shinrin yoku.

Shinrin yoku, why is that familiar to me?

I think because maybe you saw it on my Facebook page.

Oh, maybe, yeah.

I was really excited when I discovered it.

It literally means forest bath.

That’s what you’re doing.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think specifically in Japanese it may refer to a more contemplative kind of walking and taking in all the sensations than I actually do.

But I love that notion of a forest bath, you know, just sort of exfoliating all the stress from everyday life, right?

It reminds me of something in British English, which we don’t quite use in American English.

We think of hiking and hikers here, but in there they think of rambling and ramblers.

It’s a little, just far more common there than it is here.

And I love the notion that hiking sounds personal and rambling sounds, well, I’m just going to leave the house and let’s see what happens.

Kind of browsing.

Browsing nature, browsing the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, which literally goes back to the action of cows.

Nice.

One thing to the other.

877-929-9673 is the number to call or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Melanie from Reno, Nevada.

Hey, Melanie, welcome to the show from Reno, Nevada.

How can we help you?

I have a question about the word derp.

My child and the neighborhood kids have been running around saying this word constantly.

I’ve looked it up, tried to figure out what it is and what it means.

I have a pretty good idea, but when I ask them what it means, they say, oh, it’s complicated.

Yes, it must be.

So I felt that I had to go to the experts.

Sounds like they’re the experts.

So how do they use the word derp, and how are you spelling it?

Well, I would have spelled it D-U-R-P, but apparently they spell it D-E-R-P.

I mean, that’s the spelling that I found online.

So the way they use it is sort of as commentary, but there’s many variations.

So if somebody does something that you might consider a fail or is not exactly stupid,

I mean, it has a different meaning.

Like if they slip and fall, for example, or they mess up somehow, they’ll just go derp or derpy derp derp or snrp-a-derp.

Snrp-a-derp.

That would be the really tragic fail.

And my daughter has used it with me, which was surprising.

Hey, Mom, you just derped away.

And what does that mean?

Well, that means apparently that I’m not, I just kind of, she said something to me and I just spaced out and turned away as if I wasn’t paying attention.

So not paying attention has something to do with this.

Sounds like lots of awkwardness involved with being derpy.

Derped away.

I looked at this word derp in 2011 and when somebody had suggested to me that it came from the movie Basketball, which was made by Trey Parker and Matt Stone,

The creators of the South Park.

Yeah.

I was like, yeah, right.

And you turn the movie on and it’s like within the first couple minutes of the show, these

Two dudes are doing something really embarrassing.

They’re going through a woman’s underwear drawer.

And then when she chases them out of the room, for some reason, as the scene cuts to another

Scene, you hear derp, like kind of a non sequitur.

And I’m like, what?

I don’t get it.

Maybe one of the I couldn’t tell if the actors were saying because you couldn’t see their

Faces, really.

But Know Your Meme has done a pretty good job of tracking down every time that derp has been used in South Park episodes,

The show created by the same guys who created the movie Basketball.

And so I would speculate that these two men, if they’re not the originators of the term, are very definitely the popularizers of derp.

And it has been pervasive ever since.

On Reddit, people use it like crazy.

It’s involved with a wide variety of memes and different characters.

You see it now popping up in slinky descriptions of other people and yourself.

It’s thoroughly enmeshed into American English slang at this point.

So, Melanie, I guess my question would be, are you allowed to use it, or do your kids roll her eyes when you say it?

I’m certainly allowed to use it.

Oh, you are? Okay.

Yeah.

It’s not derpy of you not to use it.

It’s not derpy.

Okay.

I’ve got to say, Melanie, this is a great question.

We know we have a lot of parents and grandparents out there who probably have never heard this term,

And their kids and grandkids are all like, of course, yeah.

Duh.

We totally use that.

Duh.

Duh.

Duh.

Thanks for calling today.

Thanks, Millie.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Sure, take care now.

Very informative.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty path.

That’s all for today’s broadcast.

But don’t wait till next week to chat with us.

Find us on Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, or SoundCloud.

Check out our website, too, at waywordradio.org, where you’ll find a dictionary, a newsletter,

Mobile apps, and a discussion forum.

And you can listen to hundreds of past episodes for free.

You can also leave us a message anytime, day or night, at 877-929-9673.

Share your family’s stories about language.

Or ask us to resolve language disputes at work, home, or in school.

You can also email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine. The show is directed and edited this week by Tim Felten.

We have production help from James Ramsey and Tamar Wittenberg.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc.,

A nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning and better human communication.

The show is coming to you from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye-bye.

So long.

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, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.

So if you like pajamas and I…