Family-Specific Words

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and it’s time for Slang This, our weekly puzzle about slang.

Today’s contestant is Valerie Lippo from Carlsbad, California.

Valerie, are you there?

I’m here, Martha.

Hiya. Are you ready?

Hello, Valerie.

Hey. How are you doing, Grant?

Super.

Are you ready to play?

I am ready.

You ready to rock and roll?

Yes, I am.

No fear? No trepidation? No?

None whatsoever.

Whoa. Whoa, Grant. Are you ready for this, Grant? Okay.

The gauntlet is beneath.

All right. Well, Valerie, to get past door number one in this challenge, you have to share your favorite slang expression with us.

So what do you have?

My favorite slang expression is actually three words.

And let’s see if you know what they mean.

And these words are crumb crusher, rug rat, and ankle biter.

Whoa.

I do know. Do you know how I know?

Because you have one.

I have one.

But also, I recently wrote a column about slang words, and I had those three in the column.

You did?

Yes, slang words about children.

Yeah, you can look it up in the Malaysian star halfway around the world.

Oh, wow.

How neat.

Yeah, the Malaysia star circulation, what, 1.2 million?

They do bite ankles.

I swear they do.

When they’re at that crawling, chewing stage, my son’s around nine months.

He’s got three teeth coming in on top, which makes him look weird.

But he goes for anything he can.

Just leaps for it, lunges.

And if your ankles are the closest thing,

That’s what he takes and bites.

That’s right.

Well, my uncle used to call my brother and me

Crumb Crushers.

And I forgot about that as an adult

Until I had kids of my own.

And then, and also the TV show, The Rugrats.

And I went, oh, yeah.

But my uncle Jack used to call my brother and me

Crumb Crushers.

Crumb Crushers, C-R-U-M-B?

-huh.

I never heard that one.

Well, you give them a handful of Cheerios,

And it’s also almost like they have this magic power to make them like a thousand Cheerios out of the ten that you give them, you know?

Anyway.

All right.

Let’s play this quiz.

All right.

Valerie, here’s how we play.

Grant’s going to present you with a slang term.

Then he’ll give you three possible examples of how it might be used in a sentence.

And only one of those is real.

The other two are something that he just made up.

So, Valerie, your task will be to choose which one is really a slang term.

And if you need help, I’ll be right here to puzzle along with you, okay?

All right.

Okay, Grant.

She sounds ready.

All right, here we go.

We’ve got two slang expressions for you today.

And the first one is dance at two weddings.

That’s a phrase, dance at two weddings.

And the first clue is A, Nimitz and MacArthur agreed.

Dancing at two weddings was difficult,

But if the U.S. Had to fight in two hemispheres of the world, it would.

Here’s B.

My father’s advice to me when I started dating was,

Find a girl you like and stick with her.

You can’t dance at two weddings.

And here’s C.

Listen, I’m telling you, he says he keeps kosher,

But I’ve seen him many a time down at the diner

Digging into a big fat cheeseburger.

He’s always dancing at two weddings.

So, which one is it, Valerie?

Is it A, fighting a war on two fronts?

Is it B, dating a lot and not settling up for one partner?

Or is it C, breaking the rules of your religion, though you claim to follow them?

Well, the slang term doesn’t seem to fit in my mind with two hemispheric wars,

Because it sounds like a more gentle warning about interpersonal relationships

And not so much about political or historical events.

Good, good, I’m liking this.

Yes, I’m not liking A, and I’m not liking C because not following your religious or cultural mores,

It just doesn’t sound like it would fit with dancing at two weddings.

And so I’m going to go with B.

I think it has to do with, you know, make your choice, bet on your horse, and go with that one.

Sounds like healthy logic to me.

It does, but unfortunately the answer is C.

It is C.

Yeah, I believe it’s a kalk from a Yiddish expression.

And I’m not saying that everyone knows this, but it’s more of a colloquial expression than it is slang.

And it really does mean trying to have something two ways.

I think my clue for B was probably a little misleading because it just fit it so well.

You could almost actually just run with that meaning and have it work perfectly well, right?

Right.

But the real one is actually C.

It’s to break the rules of your religion but pretend to everyone else that you’re a saint.

Oh, okay.

This next one I think is easier.

I think.

All right?

So here we go.

Let’s try this one.

The phrase, it’s another phrase, put the big pot in the little pot.

It’s put the big pot in the little pot.

And the first clue is A.

Boys, there’s company coming up the driveway, so tuck in your shirts.

Mama, you best put the big pot in the little pot and set a few more places.

I’ll go out and see who it is.

That sounds like my daddy.

B. String theory says there are eight kinds of quirks, all with weird names.

Up, down, charm, strange, bottom, top, big pot, and little pot.

According to string theory, if you could put the big pot in the little pot, then time travel would be possible.

And C, the way I learned long division was called putting the big pot in the little pot.

I spread out all the pots on the kitchen floor,

Then I stacked an equal number of big pots on top of the little pots.

Of course, this didn’t work at supper time when mama was cooking.

So, is putting the big pot in the little pot A, stretching a meal to accommodate unexpected guests?

Is it B, a theoretical means by which subatomic particles can travel through time?

Or is it C, a way of thinking about long division that makes it easier to learn?

Well, you didn’t help me learn long division, that’s for sure.

So I’m not going to go with C.

I think that’s a wise choice.

The B sounded so complex that it has a lot of plausibility

Simply because of all the detail that you put in the example.

And yet when I’m thinking about time travel, I’m like, wait a minute,

No, that doesn’t make any sense.

So I’m going to go with A.

I think it has something to do, and since Martha liked it, it reminded her of her daddy.

It did.

Where’s our dinner bell?

Yes, indeed, it is A. Absolutely.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

If you put the big pot in the little pot, it’s kind of like stretching the impossible.

Basically, you’re taking the soup and you’re making stone soup out of it.

Although the interesting thing about this expression, putting the big pot in the little pot,

Is that later, much later in the life of the colloquial expression,

It came to mean just to really put on a big to-do, like make a really extravagant meal for people.

So you’ll find it used in even literature today.

You’ll find people using this to kind of bring across that color of country life or rural America.

Okay.

So that’s it, Valerie.

Thank you so much for playing today.

I think you did very well.

Yeah, you only missed one out of all the questions.

I’ll work on those clues.

I always try to leave a little tip off there that I’m goofing on the clue, but sometimes I guess it doesn’t come through.

Well, thank you for letting me play. I enjoyed it a lot.

And hey, by the way, for playing Slang This Today, we’re going to send you a copy of Grant’s book.

It’s called The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English.

Oh, boy.

All right, Valerie. Thanks a lot.

All right. Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

And if you’d like to play our slang game on the air, call us.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

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