Far Out, Man (episode #1497)

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.

On Twitter, Antonia Nickel, who tweets at Flamin’ Haystack, asked, what if the person who named walkie-talkies named everything?

Oh boy.

So stamps, therefore, would be… lickies-stickies?

Yeah! What about a defibrillator?

Shocky hockey? I don’t know.

How about hearty-starty?

Hearty-starty, nice.

And what about a pregnancy test?

Oh, oh, no.

Preg twig?

I don’t know.

The pee stick?

I don’t know.

Ify jiffy?

No, it’s maybe baby.

Maybe baby!

And what’s her name again?

Her name is Antonia Nichol.

Supposedly, she’s a firefighter in London.

Antonia, you’re making the world better one word at a time.

That’s right.

Oh, and speaking of words, what about parrots?

Parrots, beaky, speaky?

Speaky beaky?

That’s better than what I saw.

Yeah, wordy birdies.

Wordy birdies.

Nice.

Very good.

If you’ve got some of these rhyming compounds for everyday things, let us know, 877-929-9673.

Or email words@waywordradio.org.

Or join the Twitter conversation on this topic @wayword.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Bianca calling from San Diego, California.

Hi, Bianca.

Welcome.

What can we do for you?

Thanks.

So I have been curious about where the saying far out came from.

I had always thought that it had something to do with the 60s and the psychedelic era.

And I had an aunt tell me that it had something to do with surfing and the surfers being far out in the ocean.

So I’ve never really known.

And I actually brought it up at a family dinner recently.

And my grandparents suggested it had something to do with the Beach Boys.

But no one really had a good reason or answer for where it came from.

Far out.

How old are you, Bianca?

Can I ask?

I’m 26.

26.

Okay.

It doesn’t seem like you’re slang from your generation, does it?

Not particularly, but I do hear it.

Okay.

You don’t use it.

You just hear it.

Now, you said you’re your grandmother.

Sometimes I use it.

You do?

Depending where I am.

Ironically or just genuinely?

Ironically.

Okay.

Gotcha.

It’s kind of like the bee’s knees at this point.

Everyone’s heard it, but you only use it as a little bit of a joke, right?

Yeah.

It’s not from surfing, and it’s not from California.

It’s from jazz.

And it goes way, way back.

Oh, no way.

And it’s connected to so many other slangy terms of yours.

Let me lay this out for you.

There’s just a ton of stuff here.

I’m going to make it as brief as possible.

Martha’s giving me the cocked-eye brow where she doesn’t believe me.

I’ve got the lasso right here.

So there’s all these similar expressions, and they all kind of mean the same thing, that something is so good that it is beyond human experience, that it is otherworldly.

So first, there’s beyond compare, where compare is a noun, meaning comparison.

And that’s from the 1600s.

So if something is beyond compare, it’s so good that you can’t match it.

Then there’s out of sight, which is the early 1800s in the U.S.

Really? That early?

Yeah, that early, out of sight.

Not as an interjection.

But you might just describe something as being out of sight to mean to a great degree or utterly.

And then later in the 1800s, you get out of sight kind of as one word, like as an interjection.

And then we get by the 1920s, we get out of this world or out of the world.

And it was very much in jazz, 1920s.

And then by the 1940s, you would get far out of this world, which was quickly shortened definitely by the 1950s to far out.

So by the 1950s, you can find far out in jazz magazines or in liner notes on jazz albums where people are just using it authentically with no irony intended.

Oh, how cool.

Yeah.

And then it spread to all the other countercultures.

And it’s no surprise to me that it was picked up by surfers because surfing for a long time was this really insular kind of fringe culture thing until it got big.

Decades, maybe.

Wow, that’s amazing. That’s awesome.

Yeah, how about that? You’re going to have a next great family dinner, right?

Right, right. And I’m sure my family will tell you I’m otherworldly, so that’ll be funny.

You are, Bianca. You are indeed.

Thank you so much for calling.

Yeah, thank you guys. Have a great one.

All right, take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

There’s one of these quotes. I’ve got the Golden’s Jazz Dictionary.

He wrote it as his thesis and later printed it as a book.

But he’s got a quote in here that I think really sums it up.

The power of musicians of skill to transport is verbalized in send me, which is another one of those slang terms.

Something sends you.

It means it puts you to heights of ecstasy.

It is little wonder that swing devotees on the general observations of music as heavenly and a melody of the spheres proclaimed they were sent propelled by that centrifugal force out of the world.

And then by the 1940s, far out was a thing.

It reminds me of that modern Greek expression.

I don’t remember the Greek, but it translates as something like, it’s so great, it doesn’t even exist.

Oh, I like that.

That’s nice.

It’s impossible to imagine.

It’s so good.

Right, right.

It doesn’t exist.

What word or phrase has caught your ear?

Give us a call about it, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yeah, hi.

This is Scott calling from La Jolla, California.

Hi, Scott.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, Scott.

What can we do for you?

I had a question that my family, this is going back when I was a child, and our grandmom and my aunts used to say a word, hock me a Chinick or hock me a Chinick or stop hocking me a Chinick or something like that.

I was curious as to the derivation of that word.

What did it mean?

What kind of shenanigans were you up to when they said it?

I’m not sure.

I think we were probably roughhousing and asking a lot of questions or doing some fun things like that.

It would normally come, perhaps we were maybe somewhat bothersome, if that’s possible.

Loud, maybe. Noisy?

Yeah, perhaps, yes.

And what’s your family’s country of origin?

Eastern European, primarily Russian and Polish.

Primarily Russian and Polish.

And Yiddish speakers, perhaps?

There was some Yiddish speaking in the house, absolutely.

-huh. -huh.

And the reason we’re asking about this is that, yes, this is a Yiddish expression.

It’s usually hakmir nichin chynik or something like that, right?

Right. The chynik is in there almost always. There’s a lot of varieties.

Yeah.

I butchered the word then.

Well, I did too just now.

But the bottom line is that it’s a Yiddish expression that basically means don’t knock me a tea kettle.

Stop banging on that tea kettle.

And it’s interesting that you mentioned Russian because you hear the Russian word for tea in there, chai.

Fantastic.

It’s like asking somebody to stop making a ruckus.

Because, you know, if you’re banging on a tea kettle with a spoon or something like that, it’s going to be noisy.

So I guess he means, you know, like quit bothering me or?

Yeah, yeah, quit bothering me.

Quit making the noise?

Yeah, quit making the noise, quit being so annoying.

Yeah.

Now I understand it very well.

Well, good.

When was that first used?

When was that first used?

I’m betting it’s really old.

Well, I don’t know about biblical times, but it certainly—

I don’t think they had tea kettles in them.

It predates the modern age as far as we can tell.

It shows up in a lot of Yiddish dictionaries and joke books with Yiddishisms in them and that sort of thing.

But the Three Stooges used it in one of their skits.

That’s true, yes.

So at least back to the Three Stooges.

Fantastic.

Thanks so much for your call, Scott.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

I see in my Yiddish books that there’s a variety of different connotations.

And one that I like is you could say that somebody is banging on a tea kettle, but you mean that they’re just talking nonstop, that you can’t get a word in edgewise, or that they have a lot of useless chatter.

And some people think that’s about the tea kettle boiling and the noise that the tea kettle makes.

Sounds a little bit like somebody just nonstop talking and not quitting.

Interesting, with the lid sort of rattling a little bit.

Yeah, so people…

So they’re hocking.

So people think that there’s a variety of different mental images that people get with this expression.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

In the wake of the death of Stephen Hawking, I saw a wonderful commentary on language that was tweeted by Tommy Santelli.

He wrote, using a wheelchair uses a wheelchair, just like wearing glasses, wears glasses, not, quote, confined to being behind frames or, quote, being behind frames or lens bound.

A wheelchair is a tool, a good tool, like glasses.

Oh, I love it.

Isn’t that a great commentary on language?

Yeah, we talk about framing your perspective on the show, and that is a perfect example.

That’s wonderful. And that tweet was by who?

Tommy Santelli.

Tommy Santelli. Thanks, Tommy. That’s beautiful.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Billy from Chilmark, Massachusetts.

Hi, Billy. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

I have a word that I’ve heard only in New England.

I looked it up in the OED and I couldn’t find it.

And the word is pronounced cunning.

And I’ve heard some people say cunning, but I’ve been informed that it’s pronounced cunning.

And it refers to a cute baby or, you know, something that’s very pretty or cute.

And I wonder if you could help me out to figure that one out.

Yeah, it’s weird.

The word cunning itself goes back to the 14th century, and it comes from a root that means to know.

You know, somebody who’s cunning is very knowledgeable, clever, that kind of thing.

And it wasn’t until the mid-19th century that we see a particular usage of it pop up to mean in the U.S. something that’s cute or dainty or just…

Or quaint.

Yeah, quaint.

Intricate.

And pretty.

And it’s really interesting that the word cute itself has a sort of similar development like that.

The word cute, you know, we think of a cute little baby today, but it goes back to acute, which means sharp or knowledgeable.

And that went through that change as well.

So it’s very weird.

We get questions about the word cunning and cunning for children from time to time in our email, and it’s usually from somebody in the Northeast.

So you may be right.

So it is a regional thing.

You may be right about that.

I don’t have data on that.

What I know about it is the same, Martha.

And a couple hundred years of history, right?

And the roots go back to dialects of England, right?

Different kind of settlement patterns brought that word with them to the northeast.

And not to the other parts of the United States.

Yeah, so that would make sense.

Yeah, so it’s interesting that the town I live in was settled by the English.

There we go.

There you go, yeah.

Thanks for your call, Billy.

Really appreciate it.

Well, thank you very much.

Take care.

Thanks, Billy.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

I was particularly interested in the etymology because you said that no and cunning come from the same root.

And so what we’re talking about is before no, before that K went silent.

Because we used to pronounce the K in English.

Yes.

It would have been more like cano, right?

Yes.

Or something similar.

And then we lost the K sound.

But it’s still the same word.

They’re both from the same root.

Right.

Right.

That’s a very good point.

Yeah, and a very, very, very old word.

Right.

What are we talking?

1,500 years?

Even more?

Back to Old Norse.

How’s your Old Norse, Martha?

Yeah.

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Email words@waywordradio.org.

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

Stay tuned for more.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us now is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hey, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hey, Grant.

Hey, buddy.

What’s up?

Hey, well, you know, I just got here, but I’m going to take off.

Just kidding.

What I mean is we’re going to do takeoffs.

Yeah, we’ve done this before.

These are called takeoffs.

That’s where we take off the first letter of a word to get another word, right?

Okay.

Now, this time, we’re only going to make two words by taking the letter D from the start of a word.

Only D this time, okay?

For example, if I said that my sound equipment had been damaged in the flood, that would clue the words damp and amp.

Aha.

Gotcha, okay.

Now, remember, the two words will always rhyme.

We’re not going to do any devil and evil.

It’s always going to be Orion.

Dad and ad like that.

Got it?

Got it.

Okay.

Good.

Let’s see what these clues clue.

I say my false shirt front has become disgusting.

My dicky has become icky.

Dicky and icky.

Yes, very good.

And if that wasn’t enough, my lacy decorative mat has become rather oleaginous.

My oily doily.

Oily doily, yes.

And this lifeboat is no better.

It’s watertight, yes, but there’s a breeze coming in through this crack in the canopy.

A drift rift? I don’t know.

Close.

Change the vowel and you’ve got it.

Draft raft.

Draft raft, yes.

Now this, it’s what the gutters on my rooftop do.

Drain rain.

Hey, drain rain, yes.

Oh, this small baked good is quite amusing.

Not dinner roll.

Oh, so close.

Really?

Really?

This small baked good, it’s so humorous.

Oh, a droll roll.

Oh, it’s so droll.

Oh, boy.

Now, I’ve determined that this Christmas ornament hangs precisely 90 degrees from its branch.

The angled angle?

Yes, the angled angle.

Nice.

If you think I can’t escape your clutches, you’re fooling yourself.

Elude, delude, delude, delude.

Yes, elude, delude. Very good.

And now I acted that role to the highest degree, but I have been relegated to the chorus.

Emoted, demoted?

Yes, very good.

Now, finally, will somebody please turn this boat’s lights on?

Dark arc.

Dark arc.

That’s good.

All right.

All right.

Those are our takeoffs for the letter D.

Nicely done, you guys.

Thank you.

Oh, John.

Done in one.

Done in one.

Done in one, yes.

We’ll talk to you next week, John.

Thank you for the quiz.

Talk to you then.

Thank you.

We do a lot of goofing around on this show, but we also take your questions about all aspects of language.

So call us 877-929-9673 or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jonelle from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hi, Jonelle. Welcome to the show.

Hello.

My community is having a problem right now.

There’s a lot of heated discussion over one particular word.

Our local high school has a mascot, which is the Redskins, and people are on both sides of the topic fighting it out, whether it should be changed or not.

Okay.

So one side says it’s a racial slur and it’s offensive.

The other side says it’s a 70-year tradition and it honors the people that came before us.

The problem is the two groups are not communicating because everyone’s finding something online that states what they want to hear.

Right.

So I thought I’d contact you guys to tell me what the real information is, what’s the origin of the word, how has it changed over time, and what’s our community do?

Because I hate that it’s all broken up like this.

Jonel, do you have a week?

We can just stay on the line and figure this out.

That is a tall, tall order for an hour-long show.

It really is.

It is something that has been discussed for decades, and we’re not going to be able to resolve it completely on the show.

However, we can throw a few things your direction, and you can see what you can do with them, all right?

Great. Thank you.

All right.

So the origins are super interesting, aren’t they, Martha?

It actually goes back to a French translation of some Native American words where the Native Americans self-described them as having red skin.

And it was borrowed, you can find it in some of the earliest documents showing interactions between Europeans in the New World, both in Canada and the United States.

So there is some history of that.

So the origins aren’t in dispute.

Nobody disputes that.

Where we start to get really interesting with the term Redskins is when we look at, well, there’s a book that I would recommend, first of all.

And I got a word out of it that I want to share with you.

The book is called Redskins, Insult and Brand, and it’s by Richard King.

And he introduced a word to me, and it’s pretendians.

And these are people who pretend to be Indians or that they do a little of what Salman Rushdie called behalfism.

They speak on half of the Indians or the Native Americans without being a part of the Indians or Native Americans.

And that’s where things kind of get messy when it comes to the Redskins trademark or logo or name and so forth.

Is the people who claim to represent somebody that they don’t represent, and they have an opinion one way or the other.

Oh, it’s fine. They all said it was fine. Or, oh, it’s terrible. They all think it’s terrible.

And that’s what I see messiest about this.

And that’s exactly what’s happening here.

I was going to say, do you have a sense of what the—they’re just two sides that are duking it out here?

Pretty much.

-huh.

And they’re not listening to each other.

So I’m actually right now in Washington, D.C., and I went to the National Congress of American Indians Museum here and asked them.

And they are very—the people I’ve talked to there are very against the mascot.

I found the same thing to be true here with the bands and tribes in Southern California.

I spoke to them personally, face to face, and this topic came up among many others.

And they agreed that it was a term that they could not respect people who didn’t understand the need for it to be changed.

Now, that’s not to say that all Native Americans think the same about it, but these particular groups did feel that way.

So I’m wondering who the people are who are saying that this honors the Native Americans who came before us.

Maybe the Pretendians.

It sounds the people that do not want to change the name are people that have been in the community for generations.

You know, Jonel, there’s a really good example right there in Ohio of a university that changed the name from the Redskins.

And that’s Miami University.

And they’re now called the Red Hawks and have been for more than 20 years.

They did it.

They pulled it off and they developed a new kind of sensitivity and an increased relationship with the Native Americans in Ohio.

And what they discovered was this new depth to their culture and their heritage and what they were truly trying to respect about the origins of the word Miami even or the people for whom that name is a longstanding moniker.

It was really interesting.

So if your community in Cincinnati is looking for a model, they need only look down the road to Miami University.

Does that sound like a possibility?

That sounds, again, some people have already mentioned that.

Yeah.

I just think more communication and more listening needs to happen.

Yeah, so that’s really the key, right?

How do you get both sides to listen to each other?

Yes.

Can I tell you one other thing?

So I’ve been reading about this for a few years.

I worked for an anthropology museum for a while, and we had an exhibit.

And part of the exhibit was devoted to this very topic.

And read some books, listened to some interviews, and so forth.

One thing that I found that was really interesting.

In places where they were able to make a change.

I’m not necessarily only talking about the Washington Redskins.

But I’m talking about high schools and grade schools and Pop Warner and colleges.

It happened surreptitiously at first where the community introduced a new mascot and a new identity.

Without seeking approval from anyone in charge.

They just decided, I’m going to start calling this team by a new name.

And here’s the logo and here’s the shirt I’m going to wear.

And here’s the flag I’m going to wave.

And here’s the call that I’m going to shout to cheer my team on.

And I’m going to be there and I’m going to be a supporter.

But I’m not going to say that old name.

I’m going to say the new one.

I hope we can find a solution that won’t just break up the community right now.

Yeah.

Anyway, I’m suggesting that as a course of action for you, Jonelle, to just simply, without seeking anyone’s approval, just bring on your own, be there at the games and be your own supporter for this new name.

I like that.

Jonelle, I’m curious, too.

Is it more the adults who are having the controversy or are the feelings that strong among the students in the high school itself?

I definitely see it among the adults.

I do not know how the students are feeling about this exactly, and no one’s been asking.

So what I would like to do is ask the students and have them come up with a new idea for a new mascot.

That could be productive.

Yeah.

It could be productive and creative rather than destructive.

Right.

Bring another voice into the conversation.

Janelle, I know this is a complicated topic, and we’ve only lightly touched upon a few points of it.

But we would love it if you would keep us up to date on how it goes.

Send us an email or call us once in a while and let us know, will you?

I will.

I will.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Good luck with this.

Good luck.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

I want to mention that book again because I think it will help.

It’s called Redskins, Insult and Brand, and it’s by Richard King.

And he goes through the whole history of the conflict and the argument and the controversy.

And I think he takes a fair look at both sides, all of the arguments about tradition and respect versus being derogatory or even outdated or outmoded.

We’d love to hear what you think.

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

Here is a proverb that I was told comes from the Jewish tradition.

I haven’t been able to track it down, but I like it in any case.

Do not confine your children to your own learning.

For they were born in another time.

And you know what that reminds me of?

This idea that came about over the last 20 years or so.

That young people today may have more in common with young people in other countries than they do with their own parents because that’s how fast culture is moving.

Oh, now spin that out for me.

What do you mean?

Imagine you have at home a 16-year-old who is connected to the Internet.

And they’re on social media and they use a wide variety of international websites and software that anyone can use around the world.

You know, assuming you have the money for it.

And their behavior and the things that they’re interested in may have more in common with, say, another 16-year-old in Seoul or Berlin or Mumbai.

Yeah, really fascinating, right?

They’re doing exactly the same things as each other, whereas these may not be things that their parents are doing at all.

Right.

It’s sort of digital cross-pollination, right?

Yeah, culture is removed from place more and more.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Erin. How are you today?

Doing well. And yourself, what’s going on?

Doing great. I have a question about a phrase that caused some unrest.

I work for a law enforcement department in the Midwest.

And someone recently, during a telephone briefing, used the phrase honey hole.

And it was taken to mean, at least by the majority of us, that it was a place where there were many citations that were available to be written.

And two people from our team took great offense to the phrase, and it became a pretty big deal.

That individual that mentioned the phrase actually got into some trouble for it.

So the phrase again was honey hole, H-O-N-E-Y, H-O-L-E, honey hole?

That’s correct.

And it was a place where officers might have a lot of opportunities to write citations?

They’ll ticket a lot of speeders or something?

Actually, it’s more along the lines of people disregarding parking instructions.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

That’s the idea, as it was intended, was a honey hole is a place where you were just going to get those tickets written and do a lot of what you’re supposed to be doing.

That’s exactly correct.

And what did they, the other people took honey hole to mean, what, something sexual?

Yes.

Like a part of the body?

Apparently, yes.

Okay, gotcha.

Oh, yeah, I can see how that might be some confusion if no one had, if they hadn’t heard the term.

I can totally see how they might have jumped to some conclusions.

But I got to say on this one, it’s a close call.

I think it’s probably in the minds of the hearers. Think the misreading is their fault. And here’s why. Honeyhole has had a zillion meanings.

You can find it in the slang dictionaries. You can find it in old newspapers and old books. You can find it in magazines and that sort of thing. And none of them, for that particular exact term, honeyhole, none of them that I know of have referred to any part of the body, any sex organ at all. Just so you know.

Wonderful. Wonderful news.

I will share that with my co-workers.

And the thing is, what’s interesting is the things that honey hole has referred to, a hole in a tree or the ground where honey is coming out as far back as the 1800s, a good hunting or fishing spot. All the fishermen and all the hunters who are listening to the show are like, yeah, a honey hole, that’s where you know you can bag your limit or you can hook all the fish up to the limit with no questions asked.

Easy peasy. A honey hole is a place on the baseball field where a hit ball is likely to get a batter on base.

It’s a place where police are likely to catch a lot of speeders or write a lot of tickets. That goes back at least 20 years.

A honey hole is a strong source of income or profit. It is a hole made in a log to attract raccoons.

It’s a place where you might put a fish in the ground and perhaps some vegetable matter to make kind of in-ground compost in order to prepare that soil for planting, kind of in the old Native American tradition of putting a fish in the ground.

And then there are the negative uses of honey hole, where honey is kind of used ironically or jokingly. So it’s a latrine or a place where human waste is buried.

And a honey hole can also just be generally a dirty or diseased area, say someplace where you’re likely to catch malaria or someplace where you’re likely to get an airborne disease, that sort of thing.

It’s ironic in that sense.

But what I think your hearers were thinking of was the term honeypot, which has been used to refer to the female sex organs. And that wasn’t what was said.

So if that’s what they interpreted or that would they read it as, it’s kind of on them.

All right. Well, thank you very much.

I really appreciate the clarification.

Thank you very much. Take care now.

Have a great day.

Thanks. You too.

Goodbye.

We want to hear about the words and phrases that pop up in your workplace. So call us 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Val from Canfield, Ohio.

Hi, Val. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Val. What’s up?

So I am a teacher. I teach ninth grade. And recently when my kids were finishing up a test for the Odyssey, a couple of my students had some questions about how to express the phrase to shoot a bow or to shoot an arrow.

And I didn’t really have a great answer for them because, you know, they both kind of sound right to me. So I thought I’d call in and ask you guys.

They were not sure whether to say that Odysseus was shooting a bow or shooting an arrow at the end. Is that right?

We can tell you that the expression shoot an arrow is far, far more common in English than shoot a bow.

I could see particularly in that context where you might think twice about that, because that’s the big climactic scene in the Odyssey, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. What goes on there?

So Odysseus, he and the suitors, they have to string his bow. And the second part of it is he has to shoot an arrow through 12 axe handles, axe heads, depending on the translation.

Right.

And so, you know, they get, you know, like there’s part one and part two of the test. So I didn’t really know what to tell them. It’s like, are we focusing on the bow or the arrow? I don’t know.

Yeah, it’s interesting to me at the end of the Odyssey, it seems to me that so much of the focus is on the bow itself. Because Odysseus is so mighty that he’s the one guy who can string it like an expert musician and pull it back and actually fire those arrows.

It talks about him plucking the string of the bow and what, sounding like a swallow’s cry or something. It’s just, there’s a whole lot of emphasis there on the bow itself.

And so that’s the only reason why I would think about using the expression shoot a bow. But actually far and away what you’re going to find more commonly in ordinary circumstances is shoot an arrow.

Okay. Awesome. I will tell them that.

Yeah, yeah. So I wouldn’t take off points if somebody said shoot a ball. And it’s definitely context dependent because those phrases don’t just float alone on a blank page. They’re surrounded by other words and actions.

Right, right. There’s a danger of analyzing that way too closely.

So Val, give our best to your students.

I will. And they’re definitely going to get some bonus points for this question.

Well, they are. Well, great.

Thank you, Val. Really appreciate it.

Thanks so much.

Take care.

Bye.

Okay. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. 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.

A poem by the ancient Roman author Juvenal included some good advice about living. He said, you should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body. Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death and deems length of days the least of nature’s gifts.

Now, Juvenal says, in other words, that you shouldn’t worry so much about the length of your life, but the quality. But, of course, it’s the first line that has come down to us through the ages, a healthy mind and a healthy body.

And some people know the Latin version of that, which is mens sana in corpore sana. And you can hear the roots of words like mental and sane.

But here’s the cool thing. Here’s where we take the right turn. Go to 1947 in Kobe, Japan. A Japanese guy founds a sneaker company. A few years later, he’s looking for a name for that company.

And so he uses a version of that Latin phrase, anima sana in corpore sano, which roughly means the same thing, a sound mind and a sound body. Anima sana in corpore sano. He takes the first letter of each of those and comes up with the name of the sneakers that you see on lots of people’s feet today.

I’m trying to say it again. Asics.

Oh, A6. Oh, I did not know that. How about that?

That’s pretty cool.

Yeah, so when I look at people’s sneakers, I think of ancient Rome. Juvenile, right?

Right.

That’s cool.

A6 is fantastic. You are carrying language on your body, even if you didn’t know it. And I’m not talking about tattoos.

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

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Good morning.

Good morning. Who’s this?

This is Bill in Del Mar.

Hi, Bill. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. What would you like to talk with us about, Bill?

Well, I’m looking for a word that describes a growing driving discourtesy problem.

Well, there are a lot of those. Which one is it?

I was like running through the thousands of things that people do every day that are very irritating in their cars.

Yeah, so this is a new one. Have you ever been waiting to turn left at a long traffic light and it finally turns green, but the driver of the car ahead of you doesn’t notice it right away?

Yes.

Oh, sure. They decided to do their taxes or something while the light was red.

Yeah, they’ve been looking at their phone for the last two minutes. And so somebody politely honks. The offending driver looks up, sees the cars ahead of him have already turned left and takes off.

But the trouble is by then the gap in cars has triggered the traffic light to turn yellow, and that leaves the rest of us fuming at the red light.

Right. You’ve got to wait for another light cycle.

Exactly. So most of the times, the words follow change.

But sometimes new phrases can speed the needed changes, like road rage or distracted driving or cruise control.

I just can’t find a word for this.

Okay. So you’re not talking about a word for the fuming or the polite honking. You want a word for that behavior of the person who’s at the front of the line.

The evil deed.

Yeah, like when the word tailgating came out, it helped everybody not do it as much.

That’s a good point, right? When we get that phenomenon called to our attention by a particular word, as you said, distracted driving or that kind of thing.

Huh.

Exactly.

Surely you have some candidates for that word.

Well, I was trying to think of something that started with phone and maybe have alliteration with a phone, and then the next word would also start with an F sound, but decided I would not suggest any.

I’m not aware of a word that exists right now, but it makes sense.

Are you sure that they’re always on their phone?

I’m thinking I might have been in a reverie or two at a red light before and messed up the line that way.

It’s gotten a lot worse in the last few years.

And, of course, here in San Diego, we’ve got Qualcomm, and they have helped everyone always be on their phone.

Yeah, it’s a universal condition.

Right, that’s true.

And it is irritating, right?

It’s irritating mainly because when you’re in the front, you have more responsibility, right? You’re the leader of the pack.

Your responsibility is get everyone through that light, right? You’re like the scout in the front leading the convoy over the mountain past to the safety of the other side, right?

Well, yeah, and you have to be careful, too, because sometimes people sail right through those red lights, right?

Oh, do they now?

Yeah.

So we need a word sort of along the lines of, I don’t know, light hog or… I was thinking traffic time vortex because it’s like when you’re up there, it feels like you have forever, but you really don’t.

And you just take more time next.

Or how about this? Stoplight vacation. Stop on vacation. Or red light vacation.

I think it really needs to be one or two words and have alliteration or something that has to do with distracted driving or texting.

And if we can, like, form a new phrase that works like a lightning rod that collects all of the frustrations in society, maybe we can have words lead change instead of vice versa.

Well, that would be an interesting opportunity, right?

The only other thing I can think of is lane squatter or something like that.

What about left-turn loser?

Left-turn loser?

I like that.

Left-turn loser. Left-turn lame-o.

Yeah.

Yeah, just something to make people more aware.

Well, you know what, Bill? We have lots of listeners who have very creative ideas about these kinds of things, so we could throw it out to them.

Let’s do that.

If you know, if you’ve got something on your mind that describes Bill’s circumstance, what do you call that person or the thing that they’re doing when they’re in the front of a turn lane and they don’t turn in time so that everyone else can make the light?

What would you call that? 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

I hope we started something. Thank you.

Thanks, Bill.

Okay, thanks. Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye.

We were talking earlier about the term honeypot, and it reminded me that one of my favorite things to look at in the Oxford English Dictionary is their descriptions of children’s games.

And I remember that there’s a game called honeypot, and here’s the definition.

A children’s game in which a number of players sit or squat with their hands gripping the backs of their thighs, while two other players select one to quote-unquote buy.

That player is then lifted up by the armpits and shaken or swung in an attempt to make him or her let go his or her grip.

Grab the back of the thighs and then somebody swings you around by your armpits.

Yeah, like you’re a honeypot.

Oh, I see. Gotcha.

Yeah.

We’re going to have to do that in our next live show.

Get the whole audience doing the honeypot.

That’s great. I love it.

But I love the academic remove of the dictionary, which is probably a really fun, goofy game, right?

The mismatch of tone there is astonishing.

Isn’t that wonderful?

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chris from Columbus, Wisconsin.

And I’m calling because my kids and I were sitting around working on spelling words.

Specifically, the lesson was on the O-U-G-H-T area.

And, you know, we had a conversation of why is it that we have simple words like buy, and the past tense is significantly more complicated than the root word.

So, you know, buy is now bought instead of just buy’d.

That’s a fantastic question.

So you’re looking at these verbs that have a regular conjugation, so we don’t say bide, right? Or I bided that.

Correct.

And, you know, we tend to try to simplify things in English for the most part, but then we have these, you know, very complicated past tenses compared to the root word.

Are your kids around? Are they available, or is it just you?

It’s just me right now.

Okay.

But we do listen to the program as a family, so they will hear this.

All right.

That’s cool.

Here’s what you can tell them, and you can be the all-knowing dad. Tell them that every time you look at a word like that, like bought, and there’s a few others that fit this structure, they’re looking into history.

They’re looking back hundreds or even more than a thousand years into the older forms of English that no longer exist.

So it’s a residue of older grammatical systems, older ways of making verbs and to conjugate them or inflect them and turn them into past tense or future or what have you.

And it tends to happen with the words that we use the most.

The ones that are most irregular are the ones that we repeat to ourselves and to other people, and that’s how they stay consistent.

So we have a lot of different stuff we’ve inherited from our French history, the Germanic roots or from little bits here and there from the Celtic languages or Old Norse or what have you, stuff that we’ve invented on the, you know, that is true English, its own thing.

And all of these show up one way or the other in our verbs and our conjugations.

Well, that is excellent. Thank you very much.

And the thing to tell them is that in the old days, those verbs were regular.

That was the ordinary way to conjugate them. And they weren’t exceptional.

But we’ve hung on to them because a verb like to buy is really, really common.

Commerce has been around as long as human history.

Literally, almost literally, the first documents that we have written in any language are about commerce.

So buy is a really old word.

So they’re really looking at the footprints of history there.

Well, thank you very much. That is great.

Well, tell them hi for us. What are their names?

Jack and Ivy, who were doing spelling at that time.

But, yeah, they will enjoy this.

Okay. Shout out to Jack and Ivy.

Yeah, thanks, Chris. We really appreciate it.

Keep up the good work.

You betcha. You guys keep up the good work, too. Enjoy the program.

All right. Thank you. Take care now. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

I had the great good fortune to be at a dinner where I met an associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego, named Mark Hanna.

And as it turns out, he’s an expert on pirates.

Ooh, nice.

So, of course, I had to ask him an etymological question about pirates.

Just one?

Just one.

Well, that was all we had time for.

But actually, he’s written a book called Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570 to 1740, which I want to read because he addresses some other etymologies in there.

But, of course, my first question for him was, how long has the word R been associated with pirates?

Right. You find a pirate expert. That is the first thing you ask.

That’s the first thing I ask.

What did he say?

He said that he has not come across it any earlier than the 1950 movie Treasure Island.

And the actor, Robert Newton, who was enormously popular in Britain, is the one who went around saying, he just is like an utterance.

It wasn’t even like part of another word.

It was just part of his talk and his little squinty eye.

What a legacy as an actor, right?

You think about when you watch the credits of films, you think about how many of those people will make the permanent lasting impact.

But this guy did it to the language.

He did.

And Mark Hanna actually sent me to a YouTube clip that shows Robert Newton uttering R again and again.

So we will put a link to that on our website.

877-929-9673 or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Keisha calling from Lafayette, Louisiana.

How are you?

Doing well.

How are you doing, Keisha?

I’m well, thank you.

What can we do for you?

I grew up in this area of Acadiana and grew up speaking Cajun French and such, but there’s one word that really just kind of hit me over the head, I guess, whenever I moved back because I hadn’t heard it in so long.

And it’s the word haunt, which means extreme embarrassment and shame.

For instance, if someone walks down the street and doesn’t realize the fly is open, say, oh, that guy’s got to be so haunt his fly is open or something like that.

And I’m just kind of wondering how on earth did that even come up?

Haunt.

Haunt.

And how would you say that in Cajun French?

Haunt.

Same thing.

Okay.

It’s the same thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sadly, it’s not really a written language.

Yeah.

Well, there are some Cajun French dictionaries, just so you know.

And actually, one of them does include this word.

And it isn’t the English word haunt.

It’s not H-A-U-N-T.

It’s the French word, H-O-N-T-E, which means shame or embarrassment.

Right.

And so what’s really interesting about that is the Cajun French kept the pronunciation of the H at the beginning of the word.

It comes through a variety of dialect channels and stuff.

Whereas mainstream French, like you would learn in school or that would be spoken in Paris, doesn’t pronounce the H at the beginning of the word honte.

H-O-N-T-E.

But it’s a direct borrowing from the French into English with this particular French dialect pronunciation kept.

And because of other transformations made to sound a little bit more like English and a little less like French.

It’s a fascinating thing.

You know, there are a few, a few Cajun French dictionaries that are trying to be printed and, you know, some that are out there.

Yeah.

And I think what’s happening is that the generation that I grew up with, my great-grandmother, you know, speaking it and such, and I honestly didn’t learn English until I actually had to start school and go to school where, you know, English was spoken.

And it’s one of these things that’s just absolutely fascinating, and I wish there was more of a written, you know, a written form of it to go ahead and pass on to the kids because the generations that were speaking it so fluently and every day are, you know, sadly passing on.

What you want is pedagogical materials, right?

You want classroom lessons and the kind of thing that you might have, you know, kindergarten all the way through high school, different levels of lessons planned so they can learn it alongside English, right?

Right.

Something to that effect, yes.

And I know there are movements and things like that that are happening.

They’re trying to incorporate much more francophone into the schools.

But unfortunately, you know, public school funding and things like that, it’s not very, probably not very feasible at the moment.

But it’s something that they can learn about their heritage in this area, which is very rich.

And are you keeping up your Cajun French?

Just a little bit.

Well, it is a delight to talk to you about this, Keisha.

And thanks for sharing this word.

I think that you’re right.

We are losing that older generation of speakers.

And what’s left, because this is the way that language works.

When the old language goes, there’s a residue.

And it’s the names for relatives, and it’s the polite words,

And it’s the words that have the strongest meaning in the other language that aren’t fully covered in the mainstream language.

So you’re going to keep running across words like haunt that are borrowed from French,

But they’re fully immersed in an English context.

Right, or there’s the Fringlish, I suppose, the hybrid.

Yeah, the Fringlish as well.

Well, thank you very much for giving us a call. We really appreciate it.

No, thank you so very much for the insight. I love your show.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Keisha.

Au revoir.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

And it’s interesting, the idea of haunt as being something embarrassing, right?

Or that you feel embarrassed, right?

Well, the word means in French, French-French, mainstream French means embarrassment or shame.

So you have shame or you have embarrassment.

Oh, okay.

And so it has nothing to do at all with ghosts and haunting or anything like that.

That’s so cool.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk with us, or you can send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

I increase my vocabulary daily, and today’s word is florio.

It’s food that you drop on the floor and then eat.

So it’s floor plus like Cheerio.

Think of a baby sitting in a high chair.

They’re dropping all their food and you’re like, I ain’t making new dinner.

Here’s your food.

Back up off the floor.

Five seconds.

Ten seconds.

They’ve got to improve their immune system, right?

That’s the logic.

You make sure there’s no cat hair on it and you put the Florio back on the tray.

Oh, yes.

Aren’t we all guilty of that?

F-L-O-O-R-I-O.

Florio.

Food that fell on the floor that you didn’t eat.

I love it.

Do you have a term for that kind of thing or a slang term you’d like to share with us?

You can find us on Twitter at Wayword.

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This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language,

And you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine,

Director and editor Tim Felten,

Director Colin Tedeschi,

And production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guy John Chaneski

And that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego,

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.