Electric Soup (episode #1635)

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.

In March of 2018, an international team of 26 researchers and support staff were deposited at a research station in Antarctica, and they were left to conduct six months of scientific studies there. They were totally isolated. They were at the bottom of the world in the dead of winter. There were a few Germans, some Scots, a speaker of Welsh, and a couple of Americans, and somebody from Iceland. So the language they all shared was English.

And during their stay, they took part in a study by phonetics researchers in Germany. And every few weeks, they would go off by themselves and record themselves saying the same 29 words. And a funny thing happened, because at the end of those six months, their accents had changed ever so slightly. Now, not so that you could hear it, but the researchers back in Germany could see those changes by analyzing the acoustic waves on computers. It’s a fascinating study, and we’ll link to it online.

Another interesting thing that came up in news reports about all this was some of the vocabulary that the researchers used. For example, they used the word dingle. And they used the word dingle to mean clear weather, a dingle day, or the weather is dingle clear. And that was a really positive term. It’s dingle outside.

Another term that they used is electric soup. Any idea what electric soup is, Grant?

Oh, no. Electric eels turned into soup? I don’t really know. Electric soup. The bouncing of their own lights off of the fog?

I love all of these. I’m just going to let you go.

I don’t know. Tell me.

Electric soup is wine. And again, this isn’t a term that they came up with themselves because apparently they use this term in Scotland to refer to fortified wine, fortified different ways. And what strikes me about it is the kind of language that you pick up when you’re working in the workplace with people who aren’t from your own background, you know?

Yeah, just this mix from all these different people. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a full history waiting to be written of all of this language.

Well, whether you work in the Arctic or Antarctic or somewhere in between, we’d love to hear the language of your workplace. What’s that special word or that special phrase or the in-joke that just seems to last and last and last?

We’d love to hear about it. 877-929-9673 is toll free in the United States and Canada. And if you’re somewhere else in the world, there are lots of ways to reach us. Go to our website at waywordradio.org and find them all.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Deb Mecham from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hello, Deb. Welcome to the show.

Well, the other day listening to my oldies station, I heard Casey and the Sunshine Band playing Shake Your Booty. And I realized that my four-year-old granddaughter uses the word booty when she refers to her derriere. And then I wondered about pirate booty. And I just wondered where that all came from, if there’s a connection between the two.

One of my thoughts about a pirate’s booty is I know there’s a lot of French history with some of the pirates. And I wondered if it was some sort of relationship to the French word beauté. But I have no idea, but it’s just kind of a funny word. And I wondered if the two were connected and how we got to use them so frequently.

Great question.

Now I’m picturing all these pirates shaking their booty.

Shaking their booty.

Yeah, but those two words are not related. The booty that is what pirates covet is probably from an old Germanic word that means loot or plunder. And that goes back to the 15th century. And it may be influenced by the old English word boat, B-O-T, which means advantage or a little more. And that gave us to boot as in, you know, in addition, something to boot.

Oh, sure. Okay. So the pirate’s booty is not related to your derriere. The booty that you shake, and I’m sure you did when that song came on, that booty is actually an alteration of body, B-O-T-T-Y, which is your bottom. And back in the 1920s, in the language of black Americans, body was a term for the derriere. Derriere. And over time, body became booty and bootylicious.

My daughter, my granddaughter says, I’m going to scooch my booty over.

Yeah, there you go. Scooch your booty. Scooch your boot.

Yes. Yes. All righty, then. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Well, thanks so much for calling, Deb.

All right. Take care, Deb.

Sure.

Bye-bye.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ian Charlton calling from Jacksonville, Florida.

Hey, Ian, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, I’m in the Navy Band here in Jacksonville, Florida, and musicians have got a lot of slang that we use, and one of those that I’ve been using for years has been a clam. We apply that to a wrong note, a chip note, any kind of error in performance, and I’ve noticed myself using it the other day in conversation and wondered, why a clam? Why do we call it a clam? Why isn’t it something else? And because I listened to your show, I thought you folks would probably have an answer for me.

So a horn player plays a wrong note and the leader stops and says, you clammed? It can be either a noun or a verb, usually more as a noun. The leader might say there are a lot of clams in there. We need to practice where the clams are. But occasionally you will use it as a verb, like, you know, you clam, but that seems to be a little less frequent.

Okay. We do know something about this, and I think we can help you get to the bottom of it.

Oh, I’d love it.

There are a couple jazz dictionaries, and one by Robert Golden is the one that is the most authoritative. And so this is the one that I’m going to use as my primary source, but there are other people who have talked about this over the last hundred years. And let’s take this history in reverse order because I think it has more to say.

So right now we’re talking about clam meaning a particularly egregious musical era, right?

Yes.

So it’s something that kind of stands out to everybody. And this meaning has been around since at least the mid-1950s. So that’s pretty interesting. During that same period, there was the jazz slang Clambake. It was a jam session with, unfortunately, bad vibes or no groove and just nothing working between the musicians. Lots of clams, in other words, like a clam bake. And outside of jazz, at the same time in everyday slang, a clam bake was a party or other event that wasn’t all it was supposed to be. Basically, a fun time that fizzled.

So clambake was basically a bad time in slang both in jazz and outside of jazz.

Okay.

That clambake, that negative clambake, had as far back as the 1930s, it was a good thing in jazz. So somewhere along the way, it transformed.

Okay.

So a clambake was a good jam session. And we know this because there’s lots of records of it. For example, Tommy Dorsey had his Clambake 7. This was a smaller band within a band from his larger group. And it wasn’t named that because it was a bad group. It was because it was very good.

So somewhere along the way was something called pejoration happened. This is like the word pejorative where we went from something positive to something negative. And that positive that we went from was a real Clambake. These are outdoor gatherings or seafood and other things are baked or steamed, which are, you know, nice parties to have. And so we went from the literal, actual clam bake, something positive, to a figurative clam, something negative, over a span of a couple decades.

So why did that happen? What was the impetus behind the language changing?

It’s because people love to mess with words. They love to play with language. That’s literally it.

What’s really interesting to me, too, is that it’s extended beyond music. I used to do a lot of rowing and sculling, and we would always talk about catching a clam.

You know, you’re in a four- or an eight-person boat, and somebody messes up, and the oar doesn’t go completely in the water the right way, and you’re said to catch a clam.

So that means you’re out of rhythm, just like a jazz musician might be out of rhythm.

Mm—

Fascinating.

Interesting.

Yeah, I hadn’t heard that one.

That’s pretty cool.

So there’s some weird thing that happened where Clambake went from a positive jam session to a negative jam session.

And that’s the one that interests me the most.

There’s like this 20-year period where that transition happened.

And it’s possible that the slang became skunked, as linguists sometimes say, where a term becomes so overused that the cool people stop using it and only the squares use it.

And then so the cool people kind of just use it as a pejorative term for the square people who are still using it.

Interesting. Thank you. That clears up a lot and gives me some places to look and read a little more.

So, Ian, we’d love to hear some more musical slang sometime. I’m sure you have a lot of it.

And some of it I’m not even sure is slang anymore. I use it enough, but that is just part of the language.

But that was one I just got to thinking, it’s like, why a clam?

Does it have to do with the food that it’s a mollusk?

But I had no idea that it was descended from the party, a clam bake.

That’s cool.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for calling.

Appreciate it.

Take care.

Appreciate you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

We’d love to hear about the language in your workplace or the hobbies that you pursue.

Give us a call at 877-929-9673 or send your stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Bianca Bosker is a journalist who really gets into her subjects.

And she was curious about the world of contemporary art.

So she spent five years working in galleries and taking entry-level jobs, doing things like working in artist studios.

She became a security guard at the Guggenheim Museum.

All in hopes of getting a better understanding of that world, which is very, very insular.

And the result is her new book. It’s called Get the Picture.

And it’s very funny, particularly about the language of the art world,

Which if you’ve spent any time around it, you know can be impenetrable sometimes.

They use terms like indexicality and iconicity.

And in one case, Bosker tells a curator that this performance art piece that they just saw was boring.

And the curator says, it wasn’t boring.

It was durational.

Oh, I’m hanging on to that one.

Durational.

This has been a durational meeting.

Thank you.

Yeah.

That’s good.

That could be a great euphemism, you know, in the workplace.

Oh, my.

And here’s one other thing to hang on to.

Her line from the book that goes, art devotees spoke like they were trapped in dictionaries and being forced to chew their way out.

I’m imagining like the alien monster.

That book, again, is called Get the Picture, a mind bending journey among the inspired artists and obsessive art fiends who taught me how to see.

And it’s by Bianca Bosker.

Well, chew your way to a telephone, 877-929-9673, or share your impenetrable jargon with us and email words@waywordradio.org.

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 striding forward with his chest puffed out is our illustrious quiz guy, John Chaneski.

John, welcome.

Welcome, McWay. I take large steps. How are you?

Hi, guys. It’s the Monopoly guy. It’s me. Mr. Monopoly. That’s right. You know, guys,

Sometimes a word is so fun to say that you just don’t want to stop.

Often I’ll take the last

Syllable of a word and I’ll repeat it over and over, especially if it makes some sort of

Grammatical sense. For example, I’m so enthralled by a certain luxury fashion house in Spain

That I am very much Balenciaga Gaga.

As you can see, I’ve done the last syllable three times.

It’s ga-ga-ga.

Balenciaga, gaga.

I’ll give you a tortured and overwritten clue to a phrase consisting of a polysyllabic word

And another word that repeats the last syllable twice.

Like, when playing a simple game with a toddler, it’s a real faux pas to forget to reveal your face again.

And that would be a…

Peek-a-boo-boo.

Peek-a-boo-boo-boo.

Peek-a-boo-boo-boo.

Yeah, let’s have three of the last syllable.

Yeah.

Here we go.

My business plan is this.

I’ll find a chain of islands, and on each one I’ll open a nightclub with music and dancing.

I plan to be the master of the…

Archipelago-go-go.

Oh, yes, the Archipelago-go-go. Very good.

For Halloween, I want to be a classic spooky vampire.

But I also want to be a ballerina.

I’ve got it. I’ll wear a…

A tutu, something tutu, tutu.

Do you know a classic spooky vampire?

Oh, Nosferatu tutu.

A Nosferatu tutu.

Yes.

They say that these big flightless birds are extinct, but guess what?

I found one in Denver.

What is it?

Colorado dodo.

Colorado dodo, yes.

Everyone ridiculed Nelson Muntz when he invested in a company that makes both musical instruments and motorcycles.

But now they’re the biggest and he’s having the last laugh.

Maybe Martha’s having the last laugh.

Yamaha.

Ha ha.

Yamaha.

Very nice.

Your pizza sauce recipe has entirely too much wild marjoram.

Too much spice in the sauce is an…

There’s another name by wild marjoram or sweet marjoram goes by, by the way.

How about an oregano no-no?

Yes, that’s an oregano no-no. Don’t do that.

I could always count on my grandfather to have some candy in his pocket.

He knew I especially liked dum-dums.

That’s why I called him…

Lollipop Pop-Pop.

Lollipop Pop-Pop. Yeah, very good.

Finally, as an expert in toys from cities around the world,

I can tell you that the best hula hoops are made in Ottawa,

The best frisbees are made in London,

And for string toys, nothing beats a…

Tokyo Yo-Yo.

Yes, Tokyo Yo-Yo.

You guys did fantastic. Great job.

Thank you, John, for the quiz. We appreciate it, as always.

Bye, John.

Bye.

All of John’s quizzes and all of our past episodes are on our website at no cost to you, at waywordradio.org.

You can also find more than a dozen ways to reach us so that you can be on the show.

Go to our website, waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary Lou Brown from Memphis, Tennessee.

I was actually calling in because years ago, 1972, I think, I was a young intern at a newspaper in Memphis.

And I had an eccentric assistant managing editor who would say, Mary Lou, I’m off to the salt mine.

I’m going to the salt mine.

And so, you know, I didn’t know what he meant.

You know, some other people told me, you know, he was going downstairs to check on the paper or something.

But I just didn’t know where that phrase came from.

And so I was curious about it.

And then also a question about when we wrote stories back then before computers, we used to end stories with dash 30 dash.

And I just knew that meant the end of the story, but I don’t know where that terminology came from.

So I was just curious about it, and I listen to y’all every Sunday on my way home from church.

And so I thought, well, I’m going to call and ask you.

Well, Mary Lou, we’re glad you called.

We can handle both of those.

I just want to note that eccentric managing editor is kind of required for the newspaper business.

I was going to say, it’s redundant.

Oh, yes.

So let’s deal with the salt mine first.

Unfortunately, it’s got a sad story behind it.

And it originally referred to sending dissidents and prisoners to the Siberian salt mines, both before and after the Russian Revolution, where they would serve their time in harsh prison camps.

And upwards of 90 percent of the people who went there did not leave alive.

And so it was it’s kind of originally started as a way to say, you know, I dislike my job and my job is kind of like the Siberian salt mines.

And you will find early examples where when people say, I’m going to the salt mines, they say, I’m specifically going to the Siberian salt mines.

And they mean I’m going to my job or going to do my work or going to do a hard task.

And over the years, it became what we refer to as ameliorated, which is the harshness of the original reference was lost.

And it just became a more gentler term, a gentler reference.

And the original harsh connotation was lost.

Well, that’s very interesting because both of my children are from Russia.

Oh.

And one’s from east of Siberia, Komsomolsk.

Well, there we go.

So that’s very interesting.

I’ve read many, many books on Russia, but that never, I guess, never stuck with me.

So that’s interesting, yeah.

The other one, to end a bit of writing or a bit of copy with a dash, 30 dash,

Or even a hash mark, 30 hash mark, or a pound, 30 pound mark,

Actually has a really, really complicated story.

Because everyone in the newspaper business decided to look into it,

And when they didn’t find an acceptable answer, they made their own.

The Newswriters Handbook by Rob Milton, for example,

Collected 18 different supposed origin stories for it.

And they’re all kind of lacking in the true detail, the truth that you want there.

You’ll also find other variants like three X’s or three pound signs or hash marks, whatever you want to call them.

But when I looked into it, what I found was that you can find people in the printing business, which I think is directly allied with the newspaper business and has been for a long time, as far back as the 1880s discussing its origin.

And one editorial person, remembering from the 1860s, and sure enough, if you look in the 1860s, you can find in a book by a fellow named Oren Wood.

But it’s called The Plan of Telegraphic Instruction.

He talks about 30, 30, being a telegraphic code,

Meaning finis, finis, F-I-N-I-S, which means the end.

Like today, we might see the end of a book or a film.

And that code 30 is just one of a long list of numbers

Used for very common things like hello or thank you or yes or no.

As far as I’m concerned, as far as I can tell,

That 30 was simply just the next number in line when they were trying to come up with a list of numbers to represent common expressions.

So they had all these expressions that they needed to use in the telegraph.

Yes, no, thank you, hello, please.

And the next in line for end was 30.

There’s no other meaning to it.

There’s no happy story.

There’s no complicated story at all.

It’s just 30 was the next one.

And then they moved on to 31 for the next expression.

You know, that sounds like it would be something that would be correct, though, because, you know, I couldn’t figure anything else out.

Like 31 is, do you understand?

And 32 is, I understand.

So it’s like they’re all really, you know, they’re all like really basic stuff.

Well, thank you for doing that research.

I enjoy listening to your show.

I always learn something.

Oh, it’s our pleasure.

You call again sometime, all right?

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Take care, Mary Lou.

Share your language from your workplace with us.

877-929-9673.

Here’s another bit of slang used by those researchers in Antarctica.

Smoko. Do you know what Smoko is, Grant?

Oh, yeah. That’s Australian for a smoke break.

So there must be Australians there.

Or is it older than that?

And it’s just been handed down from research team to research team.

Oh, that’s cool.

I don’t know.

I love the idea of different generations of researchers coming to this isolated station and bequeathing to the next generation some of that slang.

Yeah, that’s pretty cool, right?

Like the Scots term you mentioned earlier, the electric, what was it?

Electric soup for fortified wine.

Yeah, like that that’ll last and last until people just don’t know where it came from.

Exactly. Let us know the slang in your workplace. We’d love to hear it. 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Claudia Harrelson calling from Cherville, North Carolina.

Hi, Claudia. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Well, I have a question. It’s springtime here, and all of the beautiful yellow flowers that everyone else calls daffodils are blooming.

But when I was growing up, my grandmother, who lived with us, always called those flowers jonquils.

And that’s what everyone in our family called them.

In fact, I never heard the term daffodils for those flowers until I was actually in high school.

And we were reading the poem by Wordsworth called Daffodils.

And there was a picture, and I said, those aren’t daffodils.

Those are jonquils.

I’ve been wondering all these years why it is in my family that we call them jonquils instead of daffodils.

Can you spell that for us?

I think it would have been spelled J-O-N-Q-U-I-L-S.

It was the word my grandmother used.

Yeah, that sounds right.

Well, yes, I had the same experience, Claudia.

I grew up in Kentucky, and my Virginia-born mother used to always call them jonquils.

And it was jarring the first time I ever heard somebody say daffodil for that particular flower.

But here’s what we can tell you about those flowers.

Both of them, daffodils and jonquils, belong to the botanical genus called Narcissus.

And you may remember from Greek mythology that Narcissus was the guy who was really, really handsome.

And he was transfixed by his own image in a pond.

He couldn’t tear himself away.

He was just looking down into this pond like a mirror.

And that’s where we get the word narcissist, by the way.

Yeah, yeah.

And these flowers often bloom near ponds.

And so that’s part of the reason that they’re called narcissists.

Daffodils is a general term for all of those flowers in the genus Narcissus.

And jonquils are a specific variety of narcissists.

They’re called Narcissus jonquilus in the Latin nomenclature.

Okay.

Yeah.

So daffodil is the general term, and jonquil is the specific term for that particular kind of flower.

But, you know, Claudia, when it comes to names of flowers and sometimes names of foods, those names are just really slippery, the colloquial names for them.

I mean, that’s why the Linnaean classification system is so helpful in identifying specifically what a flower is, because a lot of people use those terms interchangeably, jonquil and daffodil.

Okay. Well, I’ve never heard anyone else call them a jonquil.

But that was what we called them.

And to this day, and this was all a long time ago, but I feel when I see them blooming in the spring, the first thing that comes to my mind is that, oh, the jonquils are blooming.

And then I stop myself when I’m in a group of people to say, nope, nobody else knows what a jonquil is.

I have to call them a daffodil.

Claudia, I do, I do, and a lot of other people do, particularly in the South.

A lot of people call them jonquils.

Some people have called them johnnyquils, which I think is really cute.

Okay.

I’ve not heard that term before.

Claudia, thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There are lots of wild trips you can take through language with us.

Come join us, 877-929-9673, or email us words@waywordradio.org.

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hey, how are you? I’m Jay from Marana, Arizona.

Hey, Jay. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

A couple of months ago, my nephew was visiting me, and he asked me for something cool to drink.

I went to the fridge, I pulled out a can, and then I pulled out an insulated sleeve to put it in to keep it cold.

And he screeches at me, and he goes, ooh, a koozie.

I’m going, a what?

You know, I’m from New York.

I’ve heard everything.

I’ve never heard koozie before.

So I looked at it, and I said, okay, I’ve always called them insulated sleeves.

And after I gave it to him, I went and started doing my homework.

And I tracked koozie to two places.

Number one, there is actually a trademark on the term koozie here in the United States, capital K-O-O-Z-I-E.

And then I tracked it back to Australia, where they call these can coolers koozies over there.

But then I tracked it even further back over to England many years ago,

When they used to put their tea kettles on their potbelly stoves and heat up the water.

And when they took them off to keep the water hot, the women had knitted these woolen caps,

And they put them over the teapots, and they called them cozies.

And I can understand that.

You know, on a cold day, you want to kind of get cozy under a blanket.

But I haven’t been able to get any further back than that.

I don’t know where the term came from.

And I got to tell you, I never heard koozie before.

Jay, you made a really good start here.

Let me break some of that down and correct a few things here.

First, let’s work backward from that.

First, they didn’t used to put koozies on their tea kettles.

They still do.

Second of all, the men and the women knit them.

It’s not just a female thing.

Also, they put them on eggs as well.

They can have an egg koozie.

And it’s not only the British that do it.

You can find these throughout the world.

People like to keep their kettles warm.

The Australian koozie comes from the American koozie.

It’s not something they invented, although they do have stubby holders, S-T-U-B-B-I-E.

For the stubby is a short bottle of beer.

Those date from around the mid-1970s.

And the trademark that you found, it was first filed in 1979 by, I believe, by somebody by the last name of McGough, M-C-G-O-U-G-H.

It was first misfiled in 1979, then later refiled and finally granted in 1981.

But then it expired or lapsed in 2001.

I believe it was refiled, and it’s now owned by the Bic family of brands, B-I-C, the people who do the ink pens.

Yeah, that’s K-O-O-Z-I-E.

But it looks like it’s directly related to the Cozy, as you noted, the T-Cozy or the Ed Cozy.

Yeah, well, I’ve got to tell you, I was stunned when I heard this because I’m going, what is a koozie?

I’ve never heard this before.

And, of course, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve heard koozie all over the place.

Yeah, always, right?

That’s how it goes.

Yeah, I mean, the other night I was listening to Rachel Maddow, and she said koozie, and I said, wait a second.

No, I haven’t heard this ever, and all of a sudden it’s popping up everywhere.

Well, Jay, now you know.

Well, I appreciate it.

I figured if anyone’s going to be able to give me any information on this, it’s going to be you two.

Jay, thank you so much for your story and your entertainment.

Thanks a lot.

We appreciate it.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Grant, I just learned the word stravenue.

Do you know this word, stravenue?

It sounds like strode.

So I would guess it’s street plus avenue.

Oh, a strode?

A strode is a street plus a road.

You’re exactly right.

Apparently in Tucson and maybe nowhere else.

I don’t know.

I’ve only heard of this in Tucson.

A stravenue is a street running diagonally between an east-west street and a north-south avenue.

And as you said, it’s a combination of street and avenue.

And the U.S. Postal Service actually has an official abbreviation for it.

It’s S-T-R-A, stra.

I did not know that.

Yeah, a strode is sometimes jokingly said to have the worst aspects of a street and the worst aspects of a road.

Particularly if you’re a pedestrian.

Oh, wow.

So are there stralies and strolovards?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Well, pick up your strolephone and give us a call, 877-929-9673.

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. What’s the difference between the verbs assume and presume?

Is there a distinction between ethics and morality?

If somebody asked you, could you tell them the difference between an epigram, an aphorism, a maxim, an adage, and a proverb?

Well, there’s a delightful new book about all of this by Eli Bernstein.

It’s called, not surprisingly, Dictionary of Fine Distinctions, Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning.

And it’s a light, fun browsing book.

It’s got whimsical illustrations.

And it really makes you think about words like these and to try to sort out for yourself words that are really close in meaning but not quite.

Like, for example, in the section about epigrams, he talks about how epigrams are witty.

Euphorisms are philosophical.

Maxims are rules of conduct.

Adages are old and well-known.

And proverbs are folk and traditional.

And I hadn’t really thought about those fine distinctions, but that’s exactly what the book is about.

And it’s a lot of fun.

It’s a great book to add to your shelf of books about language.

I have another book which I would recommend adding to your shelf of books about language.

And this is Says Who by Ann Curzan, who is a professor of linguistics at the University of Michigan and also the dean of the College of Literature and Science and the Arts there.

And what this book amounts to, in my opinion, is a summary of a new way to think about language.

Well, it’s a new way for people outside of linguistics because inside of linguistics, this is how linguists think about language.

She does talk about common questions about usage, where to put the word only in a sentence, for example.

But she also talks about language change and why linguists tend to be pretty relaxed about it, whereas the general public tends to be kind of tense about it.

There’s a part of the book, for example, where she talks about power in language.

And Martha, you and I have talked about this before.

Many times, yes.

She says, those who have historically enjoyed a lot of social power have had to worry less about consequences, making it seem like freedom of speech is the same as freedom from consequences for getting it wrong.

And this is what is so interesting and disruptive about recent movements advocating for more sensitive, inclusive language.

She talks, you know, of course, about pronouns.

She talks more about how a language of minority groups, be they gender-based minority groups or racially-based minority groups, have an impact on the larger language.

But she breaks down these worries that we have about language and explains them in a practical, realistic, fact-based way so that anyone can understand.

So this is a book by a great linguist.

I’ve known her for decades.

For anyone, not for other linguists.

And I would highly recommend this.

It’s called Says Who? A Kinder Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words.

And it’s by Anne, A-N-N-E, Curzan, C-U-R-Z-A-N.

What a great title.

I love that she added funner to the title.

And your book, Martha?

My book is Dictionary of Fine Distinctions, Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning by Eli Bernstein.

We’ll link to them both from our website, of course.

Martha and I are always interested to know what you’re reading and what you would recommend to everyone else who listens to our show.

Let us know, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And we are all over social media.

You can find all of our handles and nicknames on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, A Way with Words.

I am Mike from Glasgow, Kentucky.

Alaska, Kentucky. Hello, Mike. Welcome to the show.

And thank you.

What can we do for you?

I have been curious for a number of years about a phrase that I heard more than once on some British comedies.

Are you being served? And last of the summer wine.

And I’ve been a longtime fan of British comedies.

And the phrase I have heard on the show, which sparked my curiosity, is, I go to the foot of our stairs.

And in what context would you hear this?

The context was always seemingly someone who had just been told something that was shocking, surprising, or amazing.

Yeah, that sounds exactly right.

Yeah.

There’s a whole bunch of weird catchphrases that don’t make any sense out of context.

But they feel right.

It probably sounded right in the middle of the show, though, right?

It sounded—

Well, sure.

Yeah.

In the middle of the show, it’s like, all right, that sounds like an expression of surprise.

I can understand that.

But out of context, you’re like, why would they say that?

I’ll go to the foot of our stairs.

This doesn’t make any sense.

How is that a thing?

The questions that I always ask myself are, one, what is there?

What’s at the foot of the stairs?

And number two, what do you do when you get there?

Why do you go there?

And that’s my curiosity.

All right, let’s break this down.

I think I’ve got some ideas and some answers for you.

There are a couple reference books that help with this.

There’s one called The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases by Anna Farkas.

That’s F-A-R-K-A-S that has an entry on this.

But also the catchphrase and quote expert, Nigel Rees.

That’s R-E-E-S.

He’s got more or less the same entry in a bunch of his different books on quotes and catchphrases that mentions this.

And they both point to a BBC comedy radio series called It’s That Man Again, often abbreviated as ITMA, that ran from 1939 to 1949.

You can find some episodes online if you want to hear it.

It doesn’t age very well.

But this show was known for its catchphrases.

It was one of the main things they did with the characters.

It had like a zillion characters on it.

Every character had a catchphrase.

And one of the characters had this, or a version of it, as its catchphrase.

Well, I’ll go to the foot of the stairs.

And you’ll often find it in the years since, in the decades since, modified.

I’ll go to the foot of my stairs, of your stairs, of our stairs, to the bottom of the stairs, or even to the back of our house.

And generally, this show, which featured comedian Tommy Hanley from Liverpool, is credited with popularizing the phrase but not originating it.

And that’s the important part.

Apparently it existed.

But if you think about things, have you ever heard expressions like, well, good night?

Of course.

Okay.

This is what this is doing.

When you go to the foot of the stairs, what you’re doing is about to ascend those stairs and go to your room and go to bed.

I see.

So what you’re saying is that I’m done with this nonsense or this surprise or this is so befuddled me that I have to withdraw from polite company and go to sleep and sleep this off.

That’s basically what you’re saying.

I have to sleep this off.

This is just too much for me.

I’m overwhelmed.

I have asked some English friends in the past what they had to share about the phrase.

One explanation I received was that the person who says the phrase had just been shocked or amazed at something.

And you ask yourself, what is at the foot of those stairs?

And in Yorkshire, very commonly in old times, you found the privy.

And I was explained that somebody was so shocked, so amazed at something that they were just told that they would probably have to go out in the back garden because they had just soiled themselves or needed to use the – yes.

I see. Yes.

Or they needed to think about it.

Well, I found that intriguing and the most plausible explanation.

I think that does go hand in hand with my explanation, though, that they are so overwhelmed by whatever, they’re claiming to be so overwhelmed by what has been said or what has happened.

Right.

That they are forced by circumstances to do something that the body requires.

Yes, yes. And I accept your explanation being in line with what I expected.

Mike, take care of yourself. Thank you for sharing your question.

And I appreciate all the time you put into researching it and bringing it to us.

It has been a pleasure and a thrill.

All right. Take care of yourself. Bye bye.

Good day. Bye bye.

Bye.

Go to the foot of the stairs and call us 877-929-9673.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Jason. I’m calling from central Florida.

I was wondering if you could help me figure out how prevalent a particular turn of phrase is that I have heard many times in my life.

Growing up in Florida and around a lot of older folks who have a little bit more of the Florida Southern accent, I often hear them say, liked to never.

So they use it in a way that kind of means almost did not.

So an example might be, it started raining yesterday and it liked to never stop.

Which is not unusual for Florida.

That’s right.

And this is something you’ve heard your whole life throughout Florida or just in central Florida?

I’ve only lived in central Florida, but I have heard it my entire life from various people that I’ve spoken with, mostly my family members, especially maybe older members of my family who have a little bit more of a southern accent than I do.

Okay.

If you had traveled to northern Florida or gone even further throughout the American South, into Georgia and Alabama or into the Carolinas or Kentucky and Tennessee and perhaps even further, you would have heard it also, definitely in Appalachia, Arkansas and Missouri as well, maybe even into Texas and even sometimes outside of the South and parts of the rural north, because this is an expression that has been established in the United States since the 1700s.

Not always in the negative sense with the never, but sometimes in the positive sense.

Like, I’d like to.

Written, it sometimes looks like L-I-K-E-T-A.

Like, I like to fall over when he pushed me from behind.

And it’s directly related to likely.

Like something is likely to happen.

Like I’m likely to never paint my head purple, you know.

Right.

I’m likely to never grow wings, just to come up with some ridiculous examples.

And these are something that we get from British dialect uses.

So where it’s the most common in the United States is where people from certain regions of the United Kingdom settled in the United States.

So that’s why it’s sprinkled mostly and most thoroughly throughout the U.S. South.

I’m a little surprised to hear that it’s common in Central Florida, but not all that surprised.

Because there’s somewhere between the Florida panhandle and the very southern tip of Florida, the dialect map starts to shift.

You know, it goes from the very classic Southern American English to something else.

Maybe more of the, you know, there’s a lot of overlay of the snowbird accents from people who come down from the northeast.

And, of course, all the Latin American layers and language.

They say of Florida that the farther north you go, the farther south you get, which I think makes a lot of sense.

That’s exactly it. That’s what I was going for. That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it.

But yeah, so this is something like, just as you said, you’re saying almost or nearly.

And originally, if you’d written it out back in the day, centuries ago, it might have looked like liked to.

I had liked to, L-I-K-E-D space T-O, or like to, L-I-K-E space T-O, as two separate words.

But often these days, it looks like one word or sounds like one word.

That’s very interesting.

Thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Call us again sometime, Jason.

All right.

Have a great day.

You take care of yourself.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Like Jason, if you’ve heard a word or phrase that’s tickled your ear and you’re curious about it, let us know.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

This is Ollie.

I’m calling from Virginia.

Listen to you guys all the time.

Very excited to join in.

Well, we are pleased to punch to have you on the show.

Thank you.

When I was growing up, I had a friend, and this was late high school, early college, which was back in the late 60s, early 70s.

And they used a phrase that I have never heard anyone else say before.

No one in their family, no one in my family grew up in the same town, same surroundings.

The phrase means something similar to rode hard and put up wet.

And she would use it to describe, for instance, if you’ve been out playing tennis and it’s a very hot day and you’re tired and you’re sweaty and you’re grimy and you’re just exhausted and you looked at it, she would look at you and say, you look like death eating on a nab.

And that’s never made any sense to me whatsoever.

You know, the only time I’ve ever heard the word nab used is we used to refer to the little toasty crackers, the little crackers with the peanut butter in them made by Lance and Tom’s.

We call those nabs.

And that, I believe, was after the Nabisco company that actually made the first little cracker ones.

But death eating on a nab, I’ve never heard before.

And I listen to your show all the time.

And I thought I would call and see what you thought.

So that’s NAB, N-A-B, right?

N-A-B as in boy.

Yeah, those little square snack crackers that usually come in a six-pack.

And you say NAB, and I just hear the thud of one of them in a vending machine.

That’s how I used to get it back in the day.

It used to be a nickel, now they’re $3 or something.

Oh, right.

Yeah, same thing.

Right.

And a lot of them are sort of a fluorescent orange with a little bit of peanut butter on the inside.

Exactly.

Very, very healthy.

Yes.

Yes, really good for you.

By some definitions, healthy.

Yes.

Very interesting.

Have you ever heard the expression, you look like death eaten on a cracker?

Never.

Okay.

But I could see how that would relate.

No, I’ve never heard that.

Yeah, yeah, that’s the much more common one.

And maybe your friend was just being creative and individual.

But yeah, the expression, you look like death eaten on a cracker, is just this humorous elaboration of saying you look terrible.

Saying you look, you know, you could just say you look like death.

But to make it fun and colorful, we say things like, you look like death warmed over.

Or you look like death on toast.

Or you look like death eaten a cookie.

Yeah. Back in the 40s, Ralph Ellison in his book Invisible Man used the phrase like death eaten a sandwich.

You know, because because if you’re talking about death, this is this sort of softens it. Right.

Well, I guess you eat enough nabs.

Headed that way pretty soon.

Yeah. Orange glow of hell’s fires do make you look like death.

That’s right. And the stuff all between your teeth and everything, you know, just great.

Well, Ollie, thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Great talking to you.

See you.

Okay.

Bye, guys.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, wash that cracker out of your mouth and give us a call, 877-929-9673.

That’s toll-free in the United States and all of Canada.

And if you’re somewhere else in the world, you can reach us on WhatsApp.

That number’s on our website at waywordradio.org.

Our team includes senior producer Stefanie Levine, engineer and editor Tim Felten, and quiz guide John Chaneski.

We’d love to hear from you, no matter where you are in the world.

Go to waywordradio.org/contact.

Subscribe to the podcast, hear hundreds of past episodes, and get the newsletter at waywordradio.org.

Whenever you have a language story or question, our toll-free line is open in the U.S. and Canada.

1-877-929-9673.

Or send your thoughts to 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.

Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting,

Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

Bye.