English Down Under

(upbeat music) You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette, and here’s a cool word for you.

Grant, what is a kangaroo-ster?

(laughing) That’s something created on the island of Dr. Moreau. (laughing) Right, a cross between a kangaroo and a rooster? Not quite. No. Not quite. I don’t know, what is it? It is a person from Australia.

Isn’t that fabulous?

I love it. A kangaroo-ster. A kangaroo-ster, yes.

I found this word in the Australian National Dictionary, and this is such fantastic news for language lovers.

It seems that Oxford University Press has been publishing this dictionary since 1908, and to celebrate this 100-year milestone, it has made the dictionary available for free online. Oh, that’s fantastic.

I have a hard copy of it, and it’s tremendous.

It’s a historical dictionary, right?

They provide some background on the history of the words. Yeah, it’s just lovely, but it’s so much fun to have it on the internet.

It’s my new internet time waster. You need another one?

(laughing) I like to alternate.

You can go there, choose a letter, and start browsing through this incredibly colorful form of English.

Here’s another one for you, Grant.

What is a pumpkin squatter? A pumpkin squatter?

Is this the guy who hogs the seconds at the buffet line?

(laughing) Right? I like it.

No, no, no. No, the guy who takes all the pie on the holiday, I don’t know.

What is it? And the whipped cream.

No, it’s a small farmer. Oh, pumpkin squatter. I love it. Okay, good. I love it. There’s like an internal coherency there, right?

Kind of makes sense. Sure. Online, I’ve been a subscriber to the Macquarie Dictionary, which is also an Australian dictionary, for years.

It’s not free, it does cost, but it’s not expensive, and it’s comprehensive. Wow, well, you can really spice up your language with Australianism, with strine. Oh, strine, yeah. Tell you what, we’ll put a link to both these dictionaries on our website.

That’s waywordradio.org, and in the meantime, if you’d like to talk about Australian English, or American English, or British English, or dictionaries, writing, grammar, vocabulary, regional expressions, call us, the number’s 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-WAYWORD, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello. Hiya, who’s this? This is Donna from El Cajon, California. Great, well, what’s on your mind today, Donna? One day you talked about family words, and it brought to mind a family word that we use that I’ve never heard anyone use, or have seen in print anywhere.

And the word is “faunch.” How are you spelling that? Well, that was what I thought was funny, was my sister and I discussed this, and both of us decided it would be spelled F-A-U-N-C-H.

Not ever seeing it in print, but we both agreed that that’s how you would spell it. Aha, and what does it mean? It means kind of a restless feeling.

It means like you couldn’t, you were bored and restless, you couldn’t figure out what to do with yourself, so you just faunched around. Faunched around, like you had a bad case of the Fantods. (laughing) I’ve never heard that word before. I’ve never heard that one in the South.

I got a bad case of the Fantods, I can’t stop moving, but it sounds like “faunches” must be the same thing. Yeah, it sounds like it, yeah.

Maybe you were trying to give a kid a haircut, and he would wiggle around, and you’d say, “Quit faunching around.” Okay, I can see that.

I can see how that would work.

All right, well, let’s just reassure you, Donna, you are not alone.

This word is pretty well established in the dialect of some communities in the United States. Really? Yeah, it’s not just your word. No, huh. And the use that you put it to is remarkably close to the use that I find in a variety of dictionaries.

And one of them, the Dictionary of American Regional English, has it back as far as 1970, with a little footnote for you.

And I’ll get to that footnote in a second.

And says it means to fret, to show irritation or impatience.

And that is remarkably close to the definition that you gave us, don’t you think? Yeah, it sounds like it.

But did you say 1970 or 1917? ’70, seven zero. Yeah, because I got it from my mom.

And she was born in 1910. Well, that’s where I was gonna, that’s where my footnote comes in. Okay. And I’ve added this footnote myself.

It comes from an older meaning of the word faunch, which goes back to at least 1911.

And that definition is something like to rant and rave.

So, and it’s particularly in the literature that I’ve seen associated with horses.

So if a horse is impatient and it’s kind of champing at the bit or pawing at the ground, it might be said to be faunching at the bit or faunching around. Oh, wow. And in humans, the equivalent is to rant and rave and kind of rage and kind of, you know, make big wild gestures and anger and stomp around and stuff. That’s really cool.

Yeah, so the new meaning comes out of the old.

As always in English, the old gives birth to the new.

And it sounds like you’ve got a little bit of the case of the new there. Yeah, that’s a really cool explanation.

I like it. I do too.

So are you faunching to go now? Well, Donna, make sure you hang on to that one ’cause that’s good American English, all right? Thank you. All right, bye bye. Bye. Bye bye.

If you’ve got a question about something grandmother or grandpa used to say, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

And you can always send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello, Grant. Hiya, who is this? This is Marty.

I’m calling from Denver, Colorado. What is on your mind, Marty? A couple of weeks ago, I got an email that I was sharing with my cousin.

And he said something about a moose.

And I sent a reply back, “Unfortunately, we’re not the mooses that this is happening to.”

And my spell check kicked it out and said that mooses is not a proper plural for moose. Oh. And it bothered me.

And I used to do, when I was in high school, I used to teach English as a second language to Russian immigrants.

And so, you know, I’ve always heard, you know, well, if it’s a goose, it’s geese, why isn’t it, you know, if it’s moose, why isn’t it meese and all of that stuff.

But I just assumed that the plural was mooses and it just really bothered me.

It didn’t look right when I wrote it, it didn’t sound right when I said it out loud to just say, “We aren’t the moose that this is happening to.” Right.

Couldn’t you have just said elk? Or is that kind of the same problem?

(laughing) I don’t know. Well, you know, I think elk would probably sound better to my ear, but mooses just, moose didn’t sound right. So mooses sounded right to you? Yes.

It was moosic to your ear? No, no, I’m sorry.

Oh, wait a second. Call a doctor my heart. (laughing) That was really tough for you then. It just bothers me.

And I want to know if I can use mooses instead of moose, no matter what my spell checks are. Can he use mooses instead of moose as the plural of moose, Martha? Yeah. Can he? Well, you know.

May he? (laughing) Most style guides and dictionaries that you look at will tell you that the plural of moose is, drum roll. Moose. Moose. Moose. (laughing) You sound so disappointed. I really am. (laughing) Well, yes, the plural of moose is moose, as you say.

And this happens a lot with fish and game and livestock.

I mean, think about these examples.

One fish, two fish. Yeah. One deer, two deer.

One sheep, two sheep.

Fish, game and livestock.

You know, I mean, English is pretty wacky, but it doesn’t form by analogy with goose and geese.

Oh, I knew that.

(laughing)

Well, and it doesn’t form by analogy with noose and nooses either.

Exactly.

Exactly, now go figure, but that’s what the authorities will tell you.

And that’s probably why Microsoft’s spell checker kicked it out every time.

Hey, Marty, can I give you a bit of jargon that you can go home with?

Might make you feel a little better.

Sure.

Jargon always makes you feel better, doesn’t it?

(laughing)

Well, it’s language jargon, so it’s okay.

Oh, okay.

These sorts of words are called zero plural words.

Yeah.

They’re the same in the singular form as they are in the plural.

Zero plural words.

Now that makes you feel better, doesn’t it, Marty?

It just doesn’t flow off the tongue right.

No, no, that’s, yeah, that’s why I was asking, could you just substitute another animal there?

Well, I could have, but he’s the one who brought up the moose.

Right, okay.

Well, Marty, I hope this helps you feel a little better about mooses not really working out.

Well, next time I’ll just suggest another animal.

Thank you, thank you both.

All right, bye-bye, Marty.

Thanks, Marty.

Bye-bye.

Armadillos, maybe.

(laughing)

So, Grant, what’s the plural of mongoose?

Mongooses.

I don’t know, let me check one of my 40 dictionaries that I have on my computer and see.

All right, get back to me.

Oh, gooses, mongooses.

Mongooses.

Yes, all of the dictionaries that I have say so.

Really?

You have them all up on your screen at once?

Well, yeah, they’ve searched them all at one time.

You’re scary.

Well, if you’re troubled by a language question, give us a call.

The number’s 1-877-9299673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who is this?

This is Don Hanlon in Greenwood, Indiana, just outside of Indianapolis.

Hi, Don.

Hi, Don, what’s going on?

Well, it’s the word episodic.

Who, the what?

My grandmother used to say if you had a cough or something that you were catching the episodic.

Oh, okay.

A few years ago, I heard that episodic was the horse plague that went through Indiana before World War I.

And then, recently, I was reading Justinian’s Flea by William Rosen, and there’s the word.

I’d never seen it in print before.

Oh, wow, that must have been fun to see that after hearing your grandmother say that.

And it had a T instead of a D.

-huh, -huh.

And the phrase is during the times between episodics or a year without an episodic.

Right.

That’s so interesting that your grandmother picked up on that because, you know, at least as early as the mid-1700s, we see this word that’s pronounced episodic.

It’s the word you’re talking about, E-P-I-Z-O-O-T-I-C.

Is that the way it was?

Yes, that’s it.

Right, right.

And that’s a word that means a disease afflicting many animals at the same time.

It comes from the Greek word for animal, Don, you know, like, which is zoan.

Oh, yeah.

And you see it in episodic, E-P-I-Z-O-O-T-I-C.

You also see it in the word for the place where they keep all the animals.

Yes.

Which is?

I thought it was just a made-up word, some kind of a Hoosier slang word or something.

I love it because it sounds like it would be, doesn’t it?

It sounds like a fun word, but it actually comes from this technical term that means a disease afflicting lots of animals.

Lots of the same kind of animal, right?

Right, right, like a whole herd of horses.

So it’s the animal equivalent of epidemic, which usually only refers to people.

Exactly, exactly.

The zoo in episodic is animal and the demic in epidemic is like the rule of the people, democracy.

Well, thank you very much.

I really appreciate that.

Well, it’s good to talk with you, Don.

What I want to know is once she diagnosed you with episodic, did it make you feel better or worse?

It just kind of made you dread what was happening, that somehow this was going to be bad.

Oh, it sounds bad.

It does, doesn’t it?

But it sounds like the cure is something delightful.

I don’t know, gin maybe.

Not in that side of my family.

Oh, oh, okay.

Laudanum, then.

Yes.

No, oh, okay.

Well, Don, thanks so much for calling.

Thank you, Don.

Well, thank you.

Stay well.

Bye-bye.

I love this stuff, Martha.

If you’ve got more for us, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or you can email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

(upbeat music)

Next on “A Way with Words,” get ready to shake your puzzle-solving fangs.

Stay tuned.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

You’re listening to “A Way with Words.”

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And across from me now is our quiz guy, John Toneski.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

How are you?

How are you, John?

How are you doing?

Hello.

I’m doing just great.

I have a puzzle for you guys.

Are you interested?

Yes, please.

Here’s a little puzzle.

I call blank the blank or verb the noun.

Oh, okay.

Some common phrases are couched in terms of verb the noun.

For example, if I said, “Tony and Angela have been enemies for years, but they finally decided to blank the blank,” what would you…

Tie the knot.

What?

Let’s say they’ve been enemies for years.

Oh, enemies.

They finally decided to…

I thought it was one of those…

In the feud?

No, stop the…

No.

Stop the madness?

I think it’s time that we…

Quit the…

That we…

Oh, bury the hatchet.

Bury the hatchet.

Verb the noun.

Bury the hatchet.

Very good.

This is gonna go swimmingly.

I’ll go find.

It’ll be great.

Let’s try if you got it.

Tony and Angela have been such close friends for years that they finally decided to blank the blank.

Bury the hatchet.

No, that was my example.

They’ve been enemies.

Oh, tie the knot.

Tie the knot is good.

There’s also another answer I’ll take for that.

Up the ante?

I don’t…

Ooh, maybe.

Well, it’s kind of a slang term for tie the knot that has to do…

It comes from African-American culture.

Jump the broom.

Jump the broom, yeah.

There you go.

I love that, jumping the broom.

I love when people actually do that at the weddings.

It’s beautiful.

Here’s the next one.

Tony said, “I don’t believe I cheated on you, Angela. Therefore, I did not cheat on you.”

But he’s just blank the blank.

This is a logic phrase, a phrase in logic.

Phrase in logic.

I got an F in that.

“I don’t believe I cheated on you. Therefore, I did not cheat on you.”

But that’s just blank the blank.

Begging the question.

That’s exactly it, begging the question.

Often used imprecisely.

In this case, I think we use it precisely.

Nice work, Martha.

Thank you.

Here’s the next one.

“If you thought cheating on Angela was bad, Tony has also been blank the blank in his job as an accountant.”

Dun, dun, dun.

Oh.

Cooking the books.

Cooking the books is right.

This Tony, oof, jeez, he’s got problems.

Here’s the next one.

“After the way he treated her, I can’t say I’m surprised that Angela would blank the blank to the feds.”

Oh, darn, I keep thinking I know what these are.

Drop a dime?

Yeah, I was gonna say fly the coot.

Sing like a canary?

No.

Blank the blank, you have to have the the.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s not fly the coop.

Spill the beans, spill the beans.

Spill beans is correct, very good.

You wouldn’t think these would be hard, but they’re hard.

I know, I know, ’cause once they’re said, you’re like, oh, of course, and then you’re like, but why didn’t I get ’em?

Here we go.

“Wow, an affair, an indictment, there’s nowhere for Tony to run now.

“He’s just gonna have to blank the blank.” End the series, cancel the show. Jump the shark, fly the coop. No. Jump the couch.

“He can’t avoid his troubles now, he’ll just have to blank the blank.” Face the music. Face the music is right.

Here’s the next.

“Wow, it really stinks in here.

“Hey, Tony, did you blank the blank?”

“Cut the cheese.”

Cut the cheese is correct. Suddenly I’m nine again. There you go.

Here’s the next.

“You know what?

“I think this whole show has finally run out of ideas and they’re just adding dumb plot elements.

“They’ve really blank the blank.” Jump the shark. That’s jump the shark. Yes, lost the plot. Props to Ted McGinley, the patron saint of jumping the shark.

Okay, here’s the last one.

“Hey, let’s turn off the TV, call a few friends and have them come over.

“We can play a naughty little game called blank the blank.” Spin the bottle. Spin the bottle is right.

I bet you Martha would have got that if she could stop laughing for a second. I would have. That’s true.

“Well, you know what?

“That’s all the ones I have.

“I think we’ve just scratched the surface there, but it’s time to pull the plug.

“So thanks very much, guys.

“I’m gonna hit the brakes.” Oh man, before you fly the coop, John, I just want to say that was great. Thank you very much. John, yeah, that was fun. Thanks, thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. If you have a question about nouns, verbs, wordplay, language, grammar, slang, regional dialects, call us 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org. Grant, we were talking earlier about the Australian National Dictionary.

I have another term for you. Is this a quiz? Yes, it’s a quiz.

Are you ready?

I know how you love collecting these weird expressions. Let’s see how we do. Okay.

Saddle my nag. Get off my back?

Say hello to my wife?

(laughing) I don’t know.

Where’s my purse? Saddle my nag, according to the Australian National Dictionary, is a game of leapfrog. Okay, I can see that, sure, saddle my nag.

When you’re on somebody’s back, you’re kind of like the saddle and they’re the nag. Got it, got it, exactly.

So down under you play saddle my nag rather than leapfrog. Well, that’s cool.

Well, if you’ve got something to share with us, it doesn’t have to be Australian English.

Give us a call.

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD. Or you can email us.

Our address is words@waywordradio.org. (upbeat music) Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Ellen Robinson calling from Indianapolis. Hi ya, Ellen. Hello, Ellen. Hello. What are you thinking about today in terms of language? Well, I have a question about a very short and simple little word, the word ask.

I had begun to notice, oh, I don’t know when, but years ago that there was an alternative pronunciation and it was ax, like it was spelled A-K-S.

Predominantly among African-Americans that I heard this pronunciation.

And then I thought, well, gee, I wonder where that started and how long, you know, where and when it started. What a good question. So let’s just review.

We’re talking about the word A-S-K as in ask a question, right? Yes. And you are sometimes hearing it pronounced as if it was spelled A-X-E, ax. Yes. All right.

What would you say if I told you that this particular pronunciation dates back at least 600 years? I would be amazed.

You in fact, in fact, Ellen, you can find Chaucer spelling it in the late 1300s A-X-E. Really? And the reason he spelled it that way is because at the time it was one of the standard pronunciations of the word. Huh. How about that? And so what’s interesting over the, you know, last 600 plus years, this has ebbed and flowed.

A lot of people have reverted back to the pronunciation of A-S-K, I mean, it never went out of fashion.

It’s not as if ax was always the one that people were using.

But that particular pronunciation of ax became kind of relegated to certain dialects and certain groups and it continued to survive plus it tends to reoccur because that K sound and the S sound next to each other set up the perfect conditions for metathesis, which we’ve discussed on the show before.

We swapped the pronunciations of two consonants sometimes in certain kinds of words.

Bird, for example, used to be brid, B-R-I-D. Yeah, and dirt used to be drit. And they stuck, however, ax has fluctuated back and forth.

So fast forward a number of years and today, in the United States, as you say, you’ll find this pronunciation ax among black Americans, but you’ll also find it in the speech of white Americans, particularly if they’re from the south or rural parts of the United States, because this is where that particular pronunciation has held its ground and continues to exist.

Now, and I wanna reiterate here and I just know that I’m gonna get some people who are gonna argue with me on this.

It is not necessarily an incorrect pronunciation.

I know that it’s looked down on today.

I know that it is and I know that in a formal situation, you should probably avoid it.

But I also know that there are many well-educated white and black people in the country who say this because that’s the way they learned it from their whole community, not just from one or two people, but everyone they know says it that way.

It is a standard part of their dialect. But Grant, how would they spell it? They’re still gonna spell it A-S-K. Interesting. But English isn’t, as you both well know, right, Ellen?

English doesn’t necessarily spell words the way they’re pronounced.

So why not?

Why couldn’t ask be pronounced ax?

I know it seems contrary to your expectations.

I know that it does, but the record is really clear here.

This is actually one of those areas where there’s no mystery about the pronunciation ax.

We know why it’s here, who says it, how long it’s been said, and where it comes from. Well, Ellen, you raised a terrific question. 600 years. Well, I certainly got an answer I didn’t expect, so I’m certainly glad I asked it. Well, Ellen, I wanna thank you for axing at this question. (Ellen laughing) I hope it didn’t hurt. Not at all. All right, bye-bye, Ellen, thank you so much for calling. Thanks, Ellen. Thank you. All right, bye-bye. Bye-bye. If you’ve got a question about pronunciation, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD. Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org. Martha, we’ve got an email here from David in Southern California.

David has a question about the expression three sheets to the wind.

You know that one, right? I’m not, if that’s what you’re asking. Oh, no, no, three sheets to the wind means drunk. Right. And he found it in the movie “Sixteen Candles.”

Remember that early ’80s teen flick? Right, right, right. It’s a great film with Mallory Ringwald.

She has a bad day and there’s all kinds of crazy stuff that goes on.

In any case, somebody in the movie uses the expression three sheets to the wind and David just wants to know where it comes from and what it means exactly.

What are the sheets? You know, when I was growing up, I always assumed that the reference was to a clothesline hung with sheets and the wind’s blowing and they’re just flapping wildly.

That was my childhood experience and so that’s what I thought it meant.

Then later on, I heard that it was a nautical reference and so I was assuming that it was sheets of, you know, sheets like sails.

The sails flapping like sheets in a strong wind, but that’s not it either.

I found out I was wrong about that. Okay, what is it then? Well, the real story is that in nautical language, the word sheet, S-H-E-E-T, actually refers to a rope that’s tied to the corner of a sail and is used to control that sail.

And if you have one or two or even worse, if you have three of these controlling sheets loose in the wind, then of course you can’t control the boat and you’re wobbling around and can’t steer the boat.

And so if you’re a person in your three sheets in the wind, then you’re sort of staggering around like a drunken sailor. So you look like the boat that is poorly guided, right? Right, right, that has those ropes or sheets just flapping in the wind.

And I think that that reflects the fact that we landlubbers don’t really know the origin of that.

We’re thinking of those sails as sheets. So sheets are ropes, but don’t ever tell a sailor that you’re calling his sheets ropes ’cause there are no ropes on boats.

And some boats aren’t boats, they’re ships, right?

So don’t do that either. Oh. (laughing) Where’s my Xanax? They’re very particular about their language, aren’t they, the sailors? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well cool, sheets are ropes.

And if you’re three sheets to the wind, then your ropes are loose and not tied down like they’re supposed to be. Exactly. If you’ve got a question about language, so you wanna send us an email to have it read on the air, the email address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Chris Jamison in Racine, Wisconsin. Well, Chris, what would you like to talk about? I’m interested in finding out if you know the definitive answer to the meaning of a saying or a phrase that I heard years ago, and that phrase is wet birds don’t fly at night.

What in the world does that mean, Chris? And where did you hear that? Well, I had a boss when I first started my career many years ago, he used the phrase in a couple meetings with a small group of people.

And finally, after a couple meetings, I asked my coworkers in private, what does he mean by this phrase?

None of them knew what he had meant.

We were all just sitting there nodding as if we understood what he was talking about and we had no clue what he meant. How many years ago was that? Probably 30 years.

30 years, and what field? We’re in education. Education, okay. He was a school administrator and we were a group of teachers. I love this, a whole group of teachers sitting around the table and the guys saying, “Wet birds don’t fly at night,” and everybody’s nodding along saying, “Mm-mm-” right, right?

And nobody knew. But in response to what? What kind of thing would he reply to when he said that? Well, I had the feeling it was when he wanted to move on from one agenda item to another, he wanted to tie up one item and move on to the next, he’d say, “Well, wet birds don’t fly at night.”

And then we’d all nod and we’d move on to something else.

That’s how I remember it, but 30 years ago. Yes, yes, exactly.

Well, let me tell you a small story and see if this helps, all right? Okay. You might not remember him, comedian Jackie Vernon, he was famous for a time, he died in 1987, he used to tell a joke with this punchline, and as a matter of fact, he told it in 1965 on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

And the joke in its short version is this, a man climbs a mountain to visit a guru and asks about the secret of life.

The guru says, “My son, a wet bird never flies at night,” and the man says, “That’s it? I come all this way and you say that wet birds don’t fly at night?”

The wise man says, “Surprise, do you mean to tell me that wet birds do fly at night?”

And the way Jackie Vernon tells the story, the wise man then gave up being wise and went to Istanbul and lived with an exotic dancer.

And the point of this story— Ba-dum-bum! Yeah, that’s the thing, the point of this story is that the line, “A wet bird never flies at night,” is meaningless.

I believe that’s the whole point of it.

It’s like a zen koan, do you know these, K-O-A-N? Not like K-O-H-E-N, but K-O-A-N? A zen koan is an anecdote or riddle that really kind of just exposes how inadequate our own logic and reasoning powers are.

And so when you throw this into conversation, it does the same thing, it’s just a non-sequitur.

It’s contentless, it’s meaningless, and it’s only there just to have a transition to something else or to puzzle people maybe is a little bit of a joke. And so the joke’s been on me for 30 years, I’ve been trying to figure out what he meant by it, and it didn’t mean anything. Well, there’s nothing, well, the whole idea of zen kowans is that there’s honor and enlightenment to be found in reasoning out things that actually don’t have an answer.

Oh boy, Chris, I have this feeling that executives all over the country are gonna be using this to end meetings.

Well, I haven’t heard anyone use it since then, or I never heard it used before, so it’s just, it was a one-time experience for me. Yeah, I hope that you’re not too disappointed, and I do think that there’s some value in mulling things over even if you’ll never arrive at the answer.

What is the meaning of life?

Why are we here?

Well, they’re actually really good questions to put your brain on. Yes, well, I think he used it appropriately, and I just didn’t realize at the time what it meant.

Well, thank you very much. All right. Thank you so much, sir. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. If you have a question about language, call us, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAY-WORD. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org. (upbeat music) Martha, I bet you have more quiz for me. How did you know? I know you. You do know me, yes. You wanna stump the stumper? I do.

I have another term for you from the Australian National Dictionary. All right, let’s hear it. Okay, what is aerial ping-pong? Aerial ping-pong? Mm— Is this when you don’t buckle up and you get turbulence on a flight?

(Martha laughs) I don’t know. I like that, with a little chundering besides. Yeah, right, right.

I don’t know, I don’t know what that is.

Aerial ping-pong in Australia is a term for Australian national football, which of course isn’t football, it’s soccer. Oh, they do a lot of kicking, right?

So the ball’s always in the air. Right, right, bouncing off your head.

Aerial ping-pong, I love it.

You gotta go to this site.

You gotta go to waywordradio.org and click on the link to the Australian National Dictionary.

You won’t get much work done that afternoon, but. (both laugh) Right, and if you’ve got a question about any aspect of English from anywhere in the world, usage, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, what have you, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD. (upbeat music) Get ready for our slang quiz that’s next as “A Way with Words” continues. (upbeat music) Support for “A Way with Words” comes from National Geographic Books, publisher of “I’m Not Hanging Noodles From Your Ears,” a collection of intriguing idioms from around the world by Jag Bala.

Learn more at shopng.com/noodles. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You’re listening to “A Way with Words.”

I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette.

It’s time for another round of “Slang This,” our weekly slang challenge.

Grant, today’s contestant from the National Puzzlers League is Todd McClary from Denver, Colorado. Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant. Todd, what’s going on? I’m having a great afternoon and I’m just really excited about playing “Slang Quiz.” Do you have a favorite slang word you’d like to share with us?

Yeah, I do a lot of game creation and presentations and I like the slang term Vanna, V-A-N-N-A. Vanna, like Vanna White or Zanna? Exactly, and it basically means a person who is an assistant to a game moderator, somebody who would help keeping score, passing out materials.

And I also sometimes ask people to Vanna for me, so I’ve sort of made it into a verb. Very nice.

I don’t think I’ve heard that one, but it makes perfect sense.

She’s such an institution on that show.

That’s right.

Well, Todd, are you ready to play the game?

Yeah, if you’ll be there to help me, Martha.

I will be here Vanna-ing and vamping and helping you as much as I can, okay?

Wonderful.

All right, well, let me tell you how we play.

Grant will give you a sentence with a blank in it and then he’ll give you three slang words that might fill in that blank.

So your job is to figure out which of those slang words fits best.

And I haven’t seen these, so as I said, I’ll be joining you and we’ll figure it out together.

All right?

Okay, I think I got it.

All right, here we go.

I’ve got two puzzles for you today.

Here’s the first one.

Remember, I’m gonna read a sentence with a blank in it.

You fill in the blank with one of my choices.

Okay.

When I was 10, I was rocking my Wranglers, my Reeboks and my flannel shirt.

That’s how we blanked in the early 1980s.

So is it we rolled in the early 1980s, we stooped in the early 1980s, or is it dooded in the early 1980s?

Wow.

So I guess looking for how you styled yourself or how you dressed.

That’s right.

You know, the last one, dooded.

I love that, the sound of that.

Martha, did that sound like it’s up to you?

D-O-O-D-E-D?

Yeah.

Is that what you said?

That’s how I spelled it.

That’s how we dooded?

That sounds like how we did it sort of, don’t you think?

I guess it sounded like dude, like D-U-D-E, so that’s why it appealed to me.

Ha, okay, dude.

Can we hear the sentence again?

When I was 10, I was rocking my Wranglers, my Reeboks, and my flannel shirt.

That’s how we blanked in the early 1980s.

So is it that’s how we rolled in the early 1980s, that’s how we stooped in the early 1980s, or that’s how we dooded in the early 1980s?

And I do spell the third choice D-O-O-D-E-D.

Okay.

Well, with that clarification, maybe rolled.

Maybe that’s how we rolled?

Yeah, I think that just sounds more mellifluous.

That’s how we rolled, rather than that’s how we dooded.

Oh sure, absolutely, 100% it is rolled.

You know, when you say that’s how we roll, you’re saying that’s how we behave.

That’s how we style ourselves.

That’s our nature, you know?

Okay.

All right, here we go.

Here’s your second choice.

Are you ready for this?

I’m ready.

All right.

Yeah, I know you won 10 grand, but I get my blank C, and that comes out of your end.

So do I get my gherkin?

Do I get my vigorish, or do I get my hip clip?

Gherkin, vigorish, or hip clip?

Yes. (laughing)

Well, let’s see.

Is anything jumping out to you, Martha?

Well, I’m thinking vigorish.

I think of like a drink or something.

You know, something you’d have in a shot glass.

I don’t know why.

My vigorish.

But I wonder if that could be just like a little sip of…

Yeah, I might go with vigorish.

Hip clip sounds too… Well, I’m willing to go with vigorish then.

I think that, I can see where you’re coming for, that sort of, again, it’s sort of mellifluous. It sounds edible, does it? Yeah. Well, you guys are exactly right.

Your logic is completely wrong, but your answer is 100% right.

Vigorish is the cut, for example, that the loan shark takes off the top of whatever transaction they do with you.

So for example, yeah.

Or your bookie, actually, if you place a bet with your bookie and you make a lot of money, let’s say you make 10 grand, he gets a percentage of that as his fee for placing the bet.

And in the illegal gambling world, that vigorish, V-I-G-O-R-I-S-H, can be a substantial sum of money.

And sometimes in the really crooked games, it can be everything that you win.

And you need to have a relationship with your bookie in order to not have that happen.

So the answer is vigorish.

And you almost always phrase it that way.

Somebody gets their vigorish, or I get my vigorish.

It comes from Russian or Ukrainian, probably via Yiddish, where it means winnings or profit. Oh, really? Interesting. Well, Todd, great work.

You didn’t have to buy a vowel or anything. Well, my instincts I think were a little off, but I’m glad that you brought me down to earth, Martha. Well, who was that masked woman anyway?

No, I’m glad I could help. Well, thank you for playing today, Todd.

It was great fun. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you for having me. All right. Okay, thanks, Todd. You can find out more about the National Puzzlers League at puzzlers.org. And you can join us here on the show with your questions or comments about slang or anything else language related.

Call us at 1-877-929-9673 or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Lisa from Silver Spring, Maryland.

Hi, Lisa, what’s going on? Well, a word popped in my head the other day and I thought the two parts of the word, I can’t understand what they have to do with the word itself.

The word is stereotype. Stereotype. So I don’t know what that has to do with stereo anything. Aha, aha. I had a few ideas, but they’re kind of out there. Yeah, do you wanna share one? Well, I thought it would be kind of cool if it had something to do with those old fashioned stereo viewers, like maybe there was the mass production of images of typical subjects, those were stereotypes or maybe it’s related to daguerreotypes and those cards were called stereotypes or maybe it’s just much more literal. Well, you know what?

You’ve raised two possibilities that are really interesting because each of them has an element of truth, but it’s actually something a little different.

It’s interesting that you bring up stereoscopes because to understand the word stereotype, first you have to understand the Greek word, stereos, means solid.

And when you talk about stereoscopes, you know how you look through those things and the stuff looks real. Right. It looks solid and a stereophonic sound system is a sound system that seems like it has a more natural sound.

It kind of has that illusion of being actual, quote unquote, solid music.

So you have— Wow, I always just thought stereo had something to do with coming from two directions. Well, yeah. Both of them have that aspect. Exactly, yes, because the sound comes from those two separate directions that it seems real.

It seems like the musicians are right there with you.

And so the first part of this word, stereos, means solid.

And the word stereotype, it’s interesting that you mentioned daguerreotypes because stereotype has to do with a method of printing that was perfected in the late 18th century by a French printer named Fermin Didot.

Here’s how he revolutionized printing of things like, say, newspaper ads.

This guy figures out a way to take a block of movable type and then create a mold from it.

And then once he’s created that mold, he drops the mold into hot, softened metal, and that lets him create an exact duplicate of the original so he can start printing from that.

And if he can make one of those metal blocks, he can make lots of them.

And Lisa, here’s where you come in.

Do you know what this printer called that big solid metal block that he used for— Yes, he called it a stereotype. Right on, that’s exactly it.

So it comes from the world of printing and that’s such a compelling image that by 50, 60 years later, people were using it metaphorically to be a duplicate, a copy, the same thing over and over. The same thing over and over. Yeah. So what a long way that word has come. That is just not anything I ever would imagine.

That’s fascinating. Well, I’m glad that we can still surprise. Yeah, good job. Yeah, I wanna thank you for calling. Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. Bye-bye. If you’ve got a question about language, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673.

Grammar, usage, slang, dialect, you name it, we’ll try to tackle it.

1-877-WAYWORD. Or you can email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Marianne from Chicago.

Hi, Marianne.

Hi, Marianne.

What’s going on in Chicago?

Well, I have been fascinated by the phrase to bus a table.

Why do we bus a table?

When I ask most people, they say because a busboy doesn’t, but that seems to me to be a circular answer.

Yeah, a little bit of one.

Maybe another answer is because we don’t wanna eat off somebody else’s dirty plate, but that doesn’t help either.

Nope.

So why do, it is a weird word, why do we bus a table?

So bus a table, well, bus a table that just means to take the dirty dishes and the plates off and take them to the kitchen to be washed, right?

All right.

Right, okay.

To clear it.

All right, so let me just kind of lay out the whole path here, and I’m gonna start with the word omnibus.

Ultimately, busing tables comes from the word omnibus.

From that big old Latin word?

Mm, yeah, and you’re thinking, wait, an omnibus, isn’t that an old-fashioned name for a bus bus, the kind of bus that you might climb aboard to go downtown, right?

Actually, omnibus is what you do in a legislative session where you sort of just put everything under one rule or something.

There we go, yeah, sure.

An omnibus bill is a bill which means you throw in kind of a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and you kind of take care of a lot of things in one bill.

Maybe they’re unrelated, a multi-purpose bill, right? Right. And so the notion here of omnibus is a lot of varied things altogether, and in the beginning, let’s say in the, I believe it was the 1800s, when an omnibus started in Paris or in France, they were called the voiture omnibus, the coach for everyone, and this is the start of the word omnibus in general.

It immediately hopped across the channel into England where the voiture was dropped off, that’s V-O-I-T-U-R-E, and omnibus was left, and pretty quickly, of course, omnibus was shortened to bus, and here’s where the history gets interesting.

Busboy seems to have come from omnibus because in the very beginning, you’ll find it as early as 1888 in the United States, mind you, not in the UK, to refer to the lab that clears the tables.

It was shortened to bus, and then it was lengthened, which is weird, to busboy. Busboy. Right, now, nobody calls a busboy a bus anymore, but there was a time in English where you could say that, and we do use, of course, as you say, the verb to bus tables.

Now, why they referred to this particular lad or the young men who cleared the tables as an omnibus, we are not quite sure.

There are two possible explanations.

One, Marianne, as you can probably imagine, is because he had many and varied duties.

He didn’t just pull the dirty dishes off the table, maybe wipe the table, threw down a new tablecloth, set the silverware, put the flowers back, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, he did everything. But you know the other thing?

Think about the bus that we know today.

It’s on four wheels, and the omnibus, the busboy kind of omnibus, might have pushed a four-wheel cart, and so that could be a double-decker four-wheel cart, and you’ve seen these in restaurants, right?

He’s got the dirty dishes underneath, under the, maybe there’s an apron or a cloth over it so that you can’t really see the dirty dishes, and he’s got the clean dishes on top, perhaps.

So the whole path to kind of review here is, omnibus is a vehicle, then omnibus is a restaurant worker shortened to bus, expanded to busboy, and then turned into a verb to create busing tables. All right.

I will think of that voiture every time I sit in a restaurant. Yeah, yeah, that’s funny, right?

‘Cause we have a tendency to borrow from the French and then twist and chop and cut and turn the French into something that’s not really recognizable as French anymore. Well, they are very fastidious about the use of the French language, so I’m sure they don’t want it used around the world in an incorrect manner. Well, you know that the thing about the French is, although they’re fastidious about their own language, they’ve done a world of damage to stomp out the regional languages throughout the country of France, and yeah, so.

Anyway, that’s a sign unrelated to this, but there you go, omnibus, originally Latin, now it refers to young men who clear tables. Wonderful, thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD. Or you can always email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Julie, and I’m calling from New York, New York. What’s on your mind today, Julie? Well, I used a phrase the other day with one of my friends that I heard from my father growing up and I thought that it was a common English phrase, and she looked at me like I had three heads.

She had no idea what I was talking about, so I thought I’d use the phrase with you guys and see if you knew where it came from. Okay, yeah, sure, shoot. So she’s gonna run home after work, coming from Manhattan all the way back to Queens, and she was gonna come back to meet us for dinner, so kind of like an errand she didn’t need to run, and I said, “Well, why are you gonna go home and change?

You’re just gonna meet yourself coming back,” meaning by the time she went home, she was gonna have to turn around and leave again, so it was almost like she was gonna run into herself coming back, so it was definitely a fun, jokey phrase, and my father used it all the time and I just thought it was common, so I was wondering if there was any origin for it. Yeah, isn’t that strange the way the language of our parents tends to show up in our own speech? Definitely.

Origin stories for this kind of language are hard to come by. I can tell you that you can find it back, say, 100 years or so ago.

It might be a little older than that. It is the kind of thing that has taken different paths.

But as you say, I just want to reiterate here, it’s a joke, you say it with humorous intent because you can’t really meet yourself coming back unless you have a time machine or a matter of transference machine. Or a doppelganger. Right, or you’re very fast, almost impossibly fast, it’s just not possible.

One interesting aspect of this is that in the earlier uses of the term, meet yourself coming back, they tend to use it to mean that somebody has presented evidence in such a way that they contradict themselves.

And you can actually find it in official testimony, either before Congress or legal testimony, where somebody is being interrogated or questioned by an attorney and they contradict themselves.

They say the opposite of what they meant to say and somebody else will say, well, now you’ve just met yourself coming back. Oh, interesting. I’ve never heard that. Yeah, and another way that you’ll find it, and I’ve seen this numerous uses of this in a variety of literature over the last 100 years or so, they use meet yourself coming back to indicate that a street or a path or something else is so curved or crooked or spiraling or so confusing that you just don’t know where you’re going, that you become disoriented.

The street was so crooked, you’re likely to meet yourself coming back before you get to the end. Gotcha, okay, great. So it’s just a physically crazy impossible thing, trying to run twice as fast to stay in one place or something. Right, right, exactly.

Well, that’s great. I didn’t know that there were so many different usages of it. Sure, sure. Thanks for calling. Yeah, thank you so much for answering my question. Okay, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Well, we’d love to hear from you.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673, or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org. (upbeat piano music) ♪ Things have come to a pretty pass ♪ ♪ Our romance is growing flat ♪ ♪ For you like this and the other.

That’s our show for this week. If you didn’t get on the air today, don’t worry. You can leave us a message anytime, day or night.

Call 1-877-929-9673. You can also email your questions to words@waywordradio.org, or join the conversations going on right now in our discussion forum.

That’s at waywordradio.org/discussion. Stefanie Levine is our senior producer. Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also engineered our theme music. Kurt Konan produced it. We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdasian.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette. And from the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett, inviting you to join us next week right here on “A Way with Words.”

Ciao. Hasta la bye-bye.

♪ If you have a part then that might break my heart.

Before we go, I want to tell you that “A Way with Words” is independently produced and distributed. That means we depend on you to help pay for the cost of producing the show.

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And thanks. (muffled speaking)