Fat Buttery Words

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.

The other day on our Facebook page, Jeremy Benstein shared a letter that I’d forgotten about that I like very much, and I wanted to share with you part of it.

It goes like this.

I like words.

I like fat, buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady.

I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straight-laced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory.

I like suave V words, such as sphengali, svelte, bravura, verve.

I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty.

I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip.

I like sniggly chuckling words such as callic, gurgle, bubble, and burp.

Wow. Who is that beautiful writer?

That’s really great, right?

Yeah.

His name is Robert Pirosh, or Pirosh, P-I-R-O-S-H.

And you can find the entire text of that letter at lettersofnote.com, which we’ve discussed before on the show.

And this was a letter that he sent around to Hollywood studios in the 1930s when he was trying to find a job.

He had been a copywriter at a New York ad agency, and then he changed his mind and headed to the West Coast, and he actually ended up getting a job interview because of that letter.

Well, this entire show is a celebration of language, and we’d love to talk with you about it.

Call us at 877-929-9673 or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Abby calling from Dallas, Texas.

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

What’s going on?

Well, I have this family phrase that we’ve used for many years, and it’s the phrase, I’m so sure.

And we use it in many different ways.

Sometimes we’ll use it as a term of disbelief, of excitement, of disagreement, of exclamation.

We have a kind of an umbrella usage for it.

And I recently was talking with a friend of mine for whom English is their second language.

And I kept using the phrase, and he finally stopped me and said, you know, what is that sentence?

I’m so sure mean that I don’t know how to translate that.

That doesn’t really make sense.

And it got me thinking that’s sort of a phrase that’s indigenous to my family from what I’ve experienced.

And I wondered if maybe someone else also used it or if you knew where it came from or how we started saying it.

And maybe dissect it a little.

Yeah, we might be able to help you.

Tell me a few things.

First, how many is many years?

For as long as I can remember, I’m 29.

How old are your parents?

My parents are 61 and 66.

And my mom’s out of the family.

They haven’t been saying it their whole lives, probably just the last 20 years.

Oh, that’s good.

That’s good.

Do you have older siblings?

I have one older sibling.

How much older?

A couple years?

Ten years?

She’s four years older.

She’s 33.

Okay.

All right.

So here’s my theory.

Okay.

You weren’t born in an Abbey, but I was, and so was Martha.

And we remember Valley Girls with Moon Unit Zappa doing this Valley Girl slaying in the song in 1982, I think it was.

And she’s like, I’m so sure.

And I’m sure.

And it’s like a way of expressing this kind of doubt.

You’re saying exactly.

It’s sarcastic.

It’s sarcastic.

The words are positive, but the intonation is negative.

And that was actually a thing for a while in the 80s where people were doing Valley Girl slaying.

It showed up in movies besides this song and was much talked about and actually probably more talked about it than it deserved at the time and still more talked about than it deserved.

But it was a faddish thing for a while to say, I’m so sure.

Or I’m sure.

Yeah, Abby, are you familiar with that song?

No, I’m not.

Oh, okay.

Oh, dig it out.

It’s a treasure.

It’s a treasure.

So Moon Unit Zappa is the daughter of Frank Zappa, who was a musical genius.

And he noticed that his daughter, as I remember it, came home with this language.

They lived in, what is the valley outside of Los Angeles?

Is this San Fernando Valley?

It might be.

I noticed that she was coming home with this particular language.

He made a song about it.

He’s got his daughter on the track doing some of the lingo.

And it was a phenomenon.

It was big.

It was huge.

And it caught on.

Even in the backwoods of Missouri where I lived at the time as a 12-year-old, we heard it.

We caught on to it too.

Yeah.

It’s really along the lines of some other things that we say when we want to express doubt in an emphatic way.

Do you remember Elaine from Seinfeld?

And she would push people on the chest and she’d go, get out of here when they said something.

She’s expressing excitement in a negative way.

We also say things like, no way, or you’ve got to be kidding me.

So all of these different ways, we’re saying with words one thing but actually meaning another.

I’m so sure it perfectly fits that pattern.

Yes, yes, and we typically use it in a sarcastic way.

That’s the most used way we use it.

Do you do the Valley Girl intonation, though, Abby?

Do you go, I’m so sure?

No, not always.

Actually, we use it sort of in every way.

We even have sort of a hashtag when we’re on Facebook with one another.

Oh, really?

Yeah, we’ll do hashtag ISS or just ISS and I’ll count it.

Nice.

So that’s my theory.

There’s about 35 of us that use it regularly.

Oh, really?

Okay.

So that’s my theory, that you’re using a slang expression that caught on about 30-plus years ago.

And that sounds right.

I have older cousins who are in their 30s, and they might have been the ones to start it, and then it’s just trickled down.

Well, that’s why I was asking about ages, because they would probably actually need to be closer to my age, maybe a little younger.

So we would say late 30s, early 40s would be about right for somebody to really have been a teenager when this caught on and really probably picked that up as native slang.

Yeah, yeah, and if they’re older cousins, then you’re going to think they’re really cool.

And so you’re going to take on their slang.

Of course.

Yeah, I’m so sure.

So your 60-some-odd-year-old parents use this as well?

Yeah, they do.

My mom’s the middle of five kids, and all five of them use it.

And, yeah, it’s really kind of a family thing.

So find that song.

I think you can find it on YouTube, probably all over the Internet.

It’s still lots of fun, and it’s time capsule of an era for sure.

For sure.

That’s great.

You know what? I’ll play it over Thanksgiving, and then we can have a big party.

Thanks, Abby.

Thanks, Abby.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What’s the expression that your family is known for?

Call us about at 877-929-9673, or you can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And if you just can’t wait to talk with us, find us on Facebook and Twitter.

New book just crossed my desk called Just My Typo, compiled by Drummond Moore.

And the subtitle is From Sinning with the Choir to the Untied States.

And a lot of it is stuff that you’re laughing.

People can’t hear it, but I can see it.

I’m smirking.

You’ve got a smirk.

A lot of this stuff I can’t read on the air.

It’s a little bit naughty.

One man was admitted to the hospital suffering from buns.

That was a headline in the Bristol Gazette.

But I really like that.

They actually have a picture in here of a sign that says, illegally parked cars will be fine.

Okay, then.

Yeah, just my typo.

From sinning with the choir to the untied states.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gail Bosworth in Montgomery, Alabama.

Gail from Montgomery. Welcome to the show.

How are you doing, Gail?

What can we help you with?

Well, I have a little bit of a convoluted story.

My mother’s eldest sister was supposed to be a boy, and she would have been named after my grandfather, Andrew.

Okay.

Well, because she was a girl, they did her the honor of naming her Wordna, which is Andrew spelled backwards.

No.

How’d she like that?

A dear lady went through her life with the name of Word or Wordy.

Are you serious?

They didn’t just call her Andrea?

I love it.

How’d she like it?

Well, she was a very neat little old lady.

She used to call me old woman, terrified me.

Wore corset, very strict.

But if you asked her how old she was, and she was the eldest female in the family, she would say, I’m as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth.

So I wondered where that phrase came from.

And by that she meant what?

That her teeth came in when she was a baby.

They weren’t there when she was born, right?

Exactly.

That’s funny.

That one actually goes back to the famous satirist Jonathan Swift in the 1700s.

Oh, really?

Yeah, and Jonathan Swift, there’s been long periods in the Anglophone world where Jonathan Swift was a must-read in a variety of different coursework for a variety of different universities and colleges.

So there was plenty of opportunity for everyone to pick that up from Jonathan Swift and then to spread it further from there.

My goodness.

Yeah.

How about that?

Was she college-educated? Perhaps she read it herself.

She was not college-educated. Now her mother had gone to college.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

But it’s got a really strong life ever since the 1700s.

About 1738, I think it was published in, oh, what was it called?

Polite Conversation, I believe.

There’s like a collection of three essays or something.

Oh, I am tickled that y’all know.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it’s popped up also famously in Gross’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1811.

And this is kind of the first really well-known slang dictionary that every lexicographer will spend some time with just because it starts to lay the foundation for separating slang out from standard English.

But I tell you, after you read that dictionary or read parts of it, you’re going to want to wash yourself with lye soap.

It’s pretty filthy.

Yeah, it’s about the low life, pretty much.

A lot of gutter rolling there.

Oh, my.

But, Gail, Aunt Wordy.

Aunt Wordy.

Aunt Wordy.

She was something.

Well, let’s hear it for Aunt Wordy, all right?

Yeah, bless her soul.

Gail, thanks for calling today.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

I appreciate the information.

Bye now.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

We know you’ve got a ton of these kind of expressions floating around in your head.

Give us a call about a couple of them, 877-929-9673, or email us.

Tell us the whole story, words@waywordradio.org.

Got some writing advice from Stephen King here, Grant.

I think you’ll appreciate it.

He wrote you with writing advice?

He did.

Martha, your writing needs some help.

Here’s what I recommend.

He has a pet name for me, Stephen King.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

We’re kidding.

But anyway, I think this is really good writing advice.

He says, if you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

Yes.

Simple as that.

Yes.

This is the advice that I give to people.

Yeah?

People, oh, yeah, I don’t have time for novels anymore, but will you read my manuscript?

I’m like, no.

No, I won’t.

What’s wrong with this picture, right?

First of all, I don’t read manuscripts anymore anyway.

Right.

Yeah, but like, there’s a ratio of like 10 to 1 or 100 to 1 of reading versus writing.

Right, right.

You’ve got to fill up your pitcher before you pour out, right?

Yeah, something like that.

And read good stuff.

Yes.

Read the stuff that you love, but it is also quality.

Yes, read your betters.

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

Language is such a small word for such a large thing.

Stay with us and we’ll talk some more about it.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And here he is, John Janiski, our quiz guy.

Hello, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Hi.

What’s cooking there?

What do you got in your pocket?

I thought you guys might be interested in knowing what puzzle guys do when they get bored.

We use boredom to make a puzzle.

All the answers to the following questions will begin with either ho or hum.

Okay.

Ho or hum.

Okay.

Okay.

H-O or H-U-M.

For example, this is a person who, back in the day, rode the rails.

You’d say…

Hobo.

Hobo.

Hobo, right.

There’s your ho.

And this is a flying feathered creature who apparently doesn’t know the words.

Hummingbird.

Hummingbird, right.

So we got a ho, we got a hum.

All right.

This describes Marty Feldman’s character Igor in the film Young Frankenstein.

Humpback.

Humpback is correct.

A popular funny t-shirt, the title of a young adult novel, and the title of a Jimmy Buffett song all state, suppose the blank really is what it’s all about.

Hokey pokey.

Hokey pokey, yes.

Very good.

A soft food from the Middle East made from mashed chickpeas and eaten cold with pita bread.

Hummus.

Hummus is very good. Yes, you got it.

It’s very good because I like it. Yeah, I love it.

The name of this thin, unleavened food comes from the fact that it was originally baked on the blade of a farm tool over an open fire.

Ho cake?

Yes, ho cake. Nice.

Could do with a ho cake right now. I haven’t eaten any lunch.

This is a woman who throws a party or a brand of dessert cake she might offer you.

Hostess.

Hostess is right.

He’s the main character in J.B. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

Holden Caulfield.

There we go.

Holden Caulfield is correct.

Holden Caulfield.

It’s nonsense or sham especially used to cloak deception or an interjection used during the same.

Hogwash.

Does it have to sound like ho when I say it?

Yeah, I picked all the hoes instead of the haws.

Humbuggery.

Humbug.

No.

Think of magic.

Yeah.

Hocus pocus.

Yes.

Hocus pocus is right.

Nicely done.

It’s when you couch your self-aggrandizement in self-deprecation.

Like when Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers tweeted, totally walked down the wrong escalator at the airport from the flashes of the cameras.

Humble brag.

Humble brag is right.

Love that one.

You know what?

You guys, you woke me up.

This is actually pretty good.

You guys did very well.

Nice job.

You always flatter us, even when we do poorly.

I don’t know what to do.

I really do.

I do.

I go right ahead.

I’m shameless.

I go right ahead and do it.

Well, I’ll be back next week anyway.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

This is the show about language and history and family and culture.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

You can also email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org and find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Stacey Lee Hutchins calling from Buffalo, Kentucky.

I love your show.

I’ve heard you guys discuss multiple times about how languages change and certain words get replaced, conjugations fall out of youth.

And my question is, is there a point where those of us who love language and we love grammar should just give up on certain words?

Thinking specifically about lay and lie.

Maybe it’s just here in Kentucky, but in everyday use, I almost never hear anybody use lie correctly.

Even my husband, he’s a very educated man.

He’s pursuing his Ph.D., and he refuses to use lie correctly because he thinks it sounds pretentious.

Oh, interesting.

Interesting.

So specifically, would you say that lie is going the way of the dodo bird?

And more generally, just when do we give up on a word?

I tell you what, it pains me to say it.

It really pains me to say it.

But I think lie is on its way out, the correct use.

And you have the evidence in what you just told us, Stacey.

Your husband is an educated man who feels it sounds pretentious.

And there’s no going back.

The general rule in linguistics is that once the public starts to cry out about language change in a particular case, it’s too late.

It’s already done.

And they’re on the downward slope of catching on to that trend.

Well, speaking of downward, I mean, I’ve taken just way too many yoga classes where the instructor said, now lay down on the mat.

And I’m just, you know, it harshes my mellow when they do that still.

I mean, you know, that’s the flip side of it, that those of us who grew up with an English teacher for a mom, we know the correct use of lie and lay.

And so do you, Stacey.

And it grates a little bit.

I mean, you don’t want to be pretentious about it, but it does hurt my teeth a little bit.

Because I went to all the trouble to learn it, you know, when I told my mom.

Nobody bothered to teach me.

I had to learn as an adult, and I still get it wrong most of the time.

Seriously, it’s hard to undo that one.

It’s such a tangled mess.

Yeah, it is.

I want to answer your initial question.

How do we know when it’s time to give up?

It’s the question you can only answer for yourself unless you’re paid to judge the language of other people.

If you’re a copy editor or professor or a grade school teacher or editor of some kind.

Otherwise, for most of us, if we’re not in those kinds of jobs, it’s your own personal decision and one you’re just going to have to make for yourself.

And that’s already really what’s happened, where lots of people have already silently made this decision for themselves or maybe verbally, like your husband.

And collectively, they are demonstrating that the language change has moved along.

I mean, on a scale of one to 10, we’re probably at a nine in terms of how much this is done being changed.

But it’s hard to know what to do.

Yeah, there’s another thing I wanted to address, though, in what you said, Stacey, and I think this is really important.

You said something about for those of us who love language, I would argue that most people love language.

And not respecting the old rules about lie versus lay doesn’t mean that you don’t love language.

It might mean that you appreciate this new efficiency because really what’s happening with lay versus lie is a consolidation of forms where we’re adding, we’re removing ambiguity and we’re adding simplicity.

And this is actually a nice little efficiency that’s happening in English.

And it’s worth respecting that when people move forward with this and just kind of consolidate all these different forms, it’s great.

It’s actually really good for English.

It removes personal uncertainty and doubt about our own speech and stops making us feel dumb.

What do you think about that?

I think my husband is going to love this.

But, you know, I am notorious, Stacey.

Everyone who listens to the show, I am notorious for being the guy who says, yeah, that’s fine.

Do whatever you want.

And Martha is a little more of a moderating force on that.

Oh, that’s a nice way to put it.

But I think between the two of us, I think there’s a large distance between getting from where Martha is or was with Leigh versus Laie and getting to where I am.

And it’s a long road.

And if you’re like Martha and you had it pounded into you by your parents, it is hard to let go of that.

I told my mom I was laying on the couch and she said, oh, goody, how many eggs?

I don’t have to go to the store.

And that taught me immediately.

How many eggs was it?

It was no eggs.

But it just took that one time to teach me.

But, I mean, I learned that stuff by osmosis.

And so we are in this really weird position right now.

We’ve talked about this on the show before, but I want to recommend Garner’s Modern American Usage.

Get the new addition to it.

Brian Garner is a very conservative language commentator.

I mean conservative in a non-political conservative way.

He respects the older forms and the older traditions.

And the reason he does this is because he’s addressing an audience that can’t afford to take any chances on speaking well to their professional audiences.

And that’s totally respectable.

But what he’s added in the newer editions of Garner’s Modern American Usage is this language change spectrum where he will show you his personal opinion on how far along these innovations have come.

So he has things like a one to five scale, a five being like, it’s done, give it up, don’t fight the battle, and a one, which is it’s not too late to keep this traditional usage with this traditional form.

It’s only just begun.

It’s really worth looking into.

That sounds really interesting.

It is.

I mean, if you’re a big nerd, I hope you are.

You sound like a nerd.

I mean that in the best possible way.

So, Stacey, why don’t you call us back sometime, and we’ll talk about who versus whom.

Anyway, Stacey, thank you for calling, all right?

Thank you both.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening, too.

Say hi to your husband for us.

I will.

Thank you, Martha.

Y’all have a good day.

Okay, you too.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

We’d love to know what you think.

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org, and we’ve got some great discussions going on on Facebook.

We talked on an earlier show about the term abibliophobia,

And I came across an adjective the other day that I kind of like that describes someone who has that condition,

Where they can’t stand to be away from books.

Book-bosomed.

Book-bosomed.

That is, they’re always carrying a book.

Yes, isn’t that great?

They have them strapped into their brassiere, right?

If they have a brassiere.

Next to their heart.

Yeah, I think it was used originally of monks carrying books under their cloaks.

But I think that should be expanded.

Book-bosomed means you are never without a book.

Exactly.

Of course, in this day and age, maybe it’s smartphone-bosomed as well.

Kindle bosoms.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi there.

This is Brian from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Welcome, Brian.

What’s going on in Circle City?

Oh, I have a question about the word massive.

I have a little disagreement with a friend of mine, and we wanted some clarification there.

Okay.

What’s your disagreement?

Why are you talking about massive?

Well, I am a professional balloon artist, and so is my friend Joey.

Wait a minute.

And we…

Wait, what?

Professional.

You make a living at it.

I make a living at it.

Yeah, this is my career.

This is what I do all year long, and it’s my only job.

Wait, what?

That’s awesome.

Wait, no, what does a professional balloon artist do?

We’re not talking hot air balloons.

We’re talking kids’ parties?

You’re not painting things on balloons.

Are you blowing them up?

What are you doing?

We blow them up, and then we do sculptures out of them.

I work at restaurants, birthday parties, company events, colleges, universities.

I do just about everything there.

But my favorite thing to do is these really, really huge sculptures.

My friend Joey and I work on them often, and we call them super sculptures.

And they’re things like a 3,000 balloon roller coaster or a full-size biplane

Or a full-size elephant all made out of twisting balloons.

For real?

How long does it take to do that?

It depends on the sculpture.

Our longest one that we’ve done so far took 110 hours.

I was actually on a huge project with some other balloon artists led by another friend of mine that took 75 artists four days, and that took 55,000 balloons.

What were you making?

Oh, my gosh.

That one was Jack and the Beanstalk.

Of course.

That is crazy.

And I bet that was massive.

Yeah, that’s the question there.

So my friend Joey always describes these.

We’ll be talking on the phone.

We’ll be heading down to Fort Myers, Florida, where we do a lot of our sculptures.

And he says, oh, man, this one’s going to be massive.

Or when they see how massive that sculpture is, they’re going to be really impressed.

And I always point out to him that, too much to his annoyance, that they aren’t massive.

They’re large.

They’re gigantic.

They’re huge.

There’s a whole bunch of different adjectives that you can use.

But not massive.

Why not?

Because massive denotes that it has mass,

That it has a lot of mass, that it’s very heavy.

So we both come from a bit of a science background

Before we went into balloon art.

Of course.

He was pre-med.

And so we both understand the science there.

But I claim that it’s a term that comes from mass,

And he claims that it’s just something big.

Anything big is massive.

Yeah.

Brian, I’m going to have to agree with your friend here on this because there’s a couple things happening here.

One is just because the word comes from mass doesn’t mean that it has to completely retain that original meaning.

Two, words can have more than one meaning, and this one does.

And three, there’s at least 500 years of massive meaning just impressive or great or just tall or otherwise being very something.

I think of it as British, massive.

That was massive.

In modern English slang, it is very British.

All throughout the British Isles, actually, massive, being used in the same way that they use brilliant just to mean really good or really great.

Right, right, right.

Interesting.

But, hey, it gives you something to talk about on those long drives to Florida, right?

I hope there’s nothing on the line, though, Brian.

It’s just that, you know, the word is far removed from its roots in many modern-day kind of pedestrian uses.

Sort of like epic.

Yeah, exactly like epic.

Yeah, a lot of our words do this.

I kind of expected that it was more of a modern sort of thing, math being more of a scientific sort of meaning.

But he’ll be happy to know that he wins.

But unfortunately, nothing on the line there for him.

You know what, Brian?

We’d love it if you’d send us some pictures of some of your proudest work.

Yeah, are you on YouTube?

Are these performance art things?

Can we find you on YouTube?

Yeah, I’ll go ahead and send you a link to some of my sculptures.

My website is bryansballoons.com.

And that’s got a link to the portfolio there of all the really big stuff.

Thank you so much, Brian.

Good luck.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear about your interesting line of work and the language you use in it.

Call us at 877-929-9673 or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Patty calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hello, Patty.

Is this Grant?

Yeah.

How are you doing?

Hiya, Patty.

Very good.

Oh, and Martha, too.

Hi.

I decided to show up today.

Hi, Martha.

Close the door.

What can we help you with, Patty?

Well, I have a question for you.

Okay.

I have this saying that I’ve said my whole life, and I thought everyone knew it, and I walked into work, and my administrative assistant was behind the desk, you know, kind of whistling away.

And I said, Jodi, whistling girls and cackling hens always come to some bad end.

You know, that’s the thing that I’ve always known.

And she looked at me like quizzically and went, what?

I think that means a dun, dun, dun after it.

Sounds ominous.

And the camera’s zooming in up close.

Yeah.

And then she said, whatever.

And then I looked over at Jim, who’s my manager, who’s about, you know, a little younger, but about my age.

He knows everything and he remembers everything.

And so I marched into his office and I said, Jim, have you ever heard this?

He said, what?

And I said, whistling girls, cackling hens always come to some better.

And he went, actually, no.

So you’re the only one in your office who knows this expression.

Yeah.

Well, it’s interesting because there’s an earlier and more common version of that that goes something like a whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God or men.

Or men.

God nor men, rather.

And the idea here, yeah, I think the idea here is that it’s something transgressive.

A whistling woman and a crowing hen.

You don’t have a crowing hen because that’s the male’s job.

You know, that’s the rooster’s job.

And same for a whistling woman.

That’s just being out of place.

She’s drawing attention to herself and not being quiet and demure and waiting to do so she’s spoken to.

She’s taking on the masculine role there.

But when there’s a transformation to the new version of this, there’s a couple other things that have come into play here.

The whistling has long been seen as bad luck.

And also a cackling hen may be the one that draws attention to itself when somebody’s looking for a hen for dinner.

Oh, interesting.

So this is all kind of added on later.

People started to assume that that’s what was meant by it.

That, like, if you go in the hen house and you’re looking for a hen for dinner, the one who’s cackling is the one you’re going to look at and pick and throttle and pluck.

Oh, okay.

So it’s not what I thought, like a gossiping hen.

Well, that’s part of it, certainly.

This is what we find with Proverbs, that they tend to take on multiple meanings, and they kind of, people have their own interpretations of them.

But yeah, that’s also in there.

Yeah, I’m going to recommend to you a book that you can find online.

You can read it online.

It’s called Folklore of Women.

You can find the whole thing online, and it’s by one Reverend Thomas Firminger Thistleton Dyer, who was an English clergyman in the 19th century.

And he has a ton of these expressions.

And it is just a great catalog of all the negative things that have been said about women being talkative.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

I really appreciate you guys.

I just love your show.

Oh, thank you very much.

Take care now.

I hope you’ll turn the rest of your office on to it.

Bye-bye.

I will.

Bye.

Bye, guys.

Bye-bye.

Well, give us a whistle at 877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I know what a big Mark Twain fan you are.

So I wanted to share this quotation from him.

He wrote, I never write metropolis for seven cents when I can write city and get paid the same.

Now, he’s making a joke there about Metropolis.

He’s a freelance writer.

He gets paid per word.

Yeah, yeah.

But his idea is that you use the smaller word when you can rather than showing off for no real added value.

Right.

Value is exactly the word I was thinking of.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

As a language dude, I’m always excited when my son gets interested in language-y things.

But it was a little taken aback the other day when my son wanted to buy a book about Greek, ancient Greek.

And then he bought a book of Sophocles’ works in ancient Greek at the bookstore.

Wait a minute.

Your son is seven years old.

He’s seven.

Now, he’s not capable of reading this.

But he showed an interest in it.

And my wife and I were standing there having this thought that a lot of parents have, which is, how do we encourage this without killing it?

Because your instinct is, here, son, here’s everything you need to know on this topic.

Or let me share my textbooks with you.

I’ve got a college professor you need to talk to.

I even said you should talk to Martha because she knows this stuff.

And I’m like, oh, take that back.

Because you’ve got this problem with the kid who’s interested in a topic that you know is beyond their reach.

But you don’t want to tell them that.

Right.

You want to encourage it, but you know that if you give them too much, you’re just going to choke the throttle, basically.

Right.

So what did you do?

Well, we bought him the little book of Sophocles’ work.

Sweet.

And then we bought him a little, you know, ancient Greek dictionary.

This was at the used bookstore, so it was, you know, it was a few dollars.

It didn’t cost very much.

And then we went to the internet and printed out a couple pages of the Greek letters showing how you pronounce them in English.

Nice, nice.

And he really enjoyed writing them down.

I’m like, oh, look at this letter.

You know, it looks like a P, but it’s not pronounced like a P.

It’s pronounced like an R that’s weird.

And we’re like, yeah, that’s really weird.

Oh, that’s cool.

So we went into that.

That’s really cool.

And that’s as far as we took it, and he’s played with it a little bit then.

So I think we did okay.

But the moment that I wanted to talk about was the moment where you know that your kid should pursue this, but it’s a mistake for you to tell them everything.

Right.

As a parent, that’s kind of your instinct.

Right.

You don’t want to squelch their curiosity.

But you know what?

I had a similar experience.

I was a little bit older than your son, but I wanted to learn ancient Greek when I was little because, you know, my dad was a minister. And of course he had the New Testament there in ancient Greek. And I thought, well, that’s cool. I’ll, you know, I’ll start learning ancient Greek. And so I was going through his New Testament and just started at the beginning and was transliterating the letters from Greek into English. And I was so proud of myself that I was doing this. And then I realized, oh, wait a minute. It’s not just a matter of transliterating the letters. It’s a matter of now you have Greek words spelled out in English, but I still don’t know what the words are. In some cases, you’re a little closer because they remind you of English words. Well, I didn’t get very far at all, and it killed an afternoon. And then I just thought, I’ll wait till I get to college.

I had a similar experience. But it was a good experience, right? With the Russian alphabet in the back of dictionaries and various texts. I had a very similar experience where they would have sample passages. I think it was the Pledge of Allegiance in a lot of languages.

Really? Is the Pledge of Allegiance in Russian?

Yeah, well, that’s what they would do because the idea was to, you know, get all these people who come to the United States to speak the Pledge of Allegiance in their own language.

Oh, okay. And so I would transliterate just as you did. And certain words would pop out.

Yes, of course. Oh, that’s almost the same. The ending’s different, but the basic part of it is the same. And I was like, oh, this is really complicated and harder than I thought. I thought it was just a different alphabet, but the words themselves are completely different. But good that you discovered that on your own.

My son, Guthrie, had a similar experience. His ardor cooled a bit when he realized that it wasn’t simply a matter of sounds. He thought it was more like a puzzle than that it was a fully formed language.

I’ll bet. Like a cipher, really. But he felt respected by his parents.

Yeah. Right? And his curiosity.

Yeah, and we didn’t swamp him with way too much information.

Right. And it’s likely to come up again. You know, the same thing happened with Chinese, but there’s no quick entry into Chinese. And so he didn’t get much further than trying to imitate a few characters for some of his comic books.

Right. I know every family has this experience. The kid wants to learn something, and their interest far outpaces their aptitude.

Tell us your story. Was it electronics, engineering, how plants grow, how babies are made? Or was it languages and books and things like that? Let us know, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ed Eubanks from Tucson, Arizona.

How are you doing, Ed?

Hey, Ed.

Doing fine, thanks. How are you guys?

Great, good enough. Doing well. What can we help you with?

Well, I’m originally from South Carolina, but my kids have never lived there. So often we will tell our kids about things that we experienced growing up in the Deep South. And the other day I was telling my oldest two about a phrase that I heard not infrequently growing up, which is a case quarter. That is to say a quarter of a dollar all in one case. And they were totally mystified by this phrase. And so I asked on Facebook for my friends who else had heard of it and who knew that phrase. And one of them was very familiar with it. He said, you mean like, give me a case quarter because this Coca-Cola machine ain’t taking no dives. And I said, yeah, that’s exactly what it means. But most of the folks on Facebook had not heard of it either. And so I wondered, what is the origin of that term, and why is it not as frequently used, or why has it fallen out of use, or was it just so regional that it never really got much steam?

Well, that’s interesting. I think you’re onto something in terms of it being regional. It’s particular to the South, and particular to South Carolina. I mean, you find it all over the South, but there are a lot of references to it coming from South Carolina, and we don’t know what the etymology is exactly. There are a couple of different theories about it, but the one that we think seems most likely is that it’s simply a shortening of the word caser, which is an old British word for crown. That is a coin worth five shillings, and it has a crown on it. But you’re right. A case quarter is just the single coin. It’s not two dimes and a nickel.

That’s exactly what I suspected, and that since nickels and pennies and dimes all have names that are distinct from their value, but a quarter does not, then I thought that that was one way of distinguishing what you meant exactly by the particular coin.

Oh, that’s interesting. You mean a quarter of a dollar.

Exactly. As opposed to a dime of a dollar.

I see, but you can also have a case dollar and a case nickel, case dime. People will use those as well. And often we’ve had callers say, I’m white, and the person I was talking with was African-American. And the African-American understands case quarter and the white person doesn’t. So, Ed, maybe in your circles, case quarter or case nickel have fallen out of use, but there are plenty of people out there still using it on a daily basis. And I also want to remark upon the fact that I love the Southern pronunciation of Coca-Cola that you use. That’s a sure sign of a Southerner right off the bat.

Right, right. Well, thanks very much for your insight on it, guys. I appreciate your show and listen to it often.

That’s great. Thanks for calling, Ed. Take care now. Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

And so the other theory is that it comes from a Fritch word meaning…

Cash.

Cash, yeah. And both of these theories are weak because we don’t have good written evidence.

Yeah. So etymologists are kind of doing their best guesswork.

Right. I sure didn’t grow up using it.

Did you?

Yeah, I didn’t either, even though I feel half Southern through my father’s side.

No, it’s unfamiliar to me. I like it, though.

Give me a case quarter.

Give me a case quarter. It means give me exactly a quarter, not two dimes and a nickel.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Greg Sunborn. I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas.

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

Well, I’ve been bothered for decades over the word palaver, P-A-L-A-V-E-R. I mean, I’ve never heard it in any conversation, and the only reason I remember it is because as a child, I was reading comic books constantly, particularly Western, like Rawhide Kid and Tales of the West. And there was always, you know, a conversation where they would end by saying, like, enough of this palavering. And I’ve never seen it used in any other context. And I know it means, like, speaking or conversation, things like that.

-huh. So it means talk, and sometimes it has a sort of a negative sense or sort of a sarcastic sense. To mean wasteful talk or excessive talk or even argumentative talk.

Okay. But it’s kind of interesting.

Well, I don’t get the gist of that, but it was usually two guys kind of getting ready to draw on each other with a gun.

-huh. Interesting. That would be enough of the palaver. You’re going to fire that gun or something else.

Very similar to your description there. It’s usually someone who got shot or they got beat up. There’s an interesting story behind palava and how it showed up in English. Back in the 1700s when Portuguese was still a force on the high seas and still a big trading enterprise, I mean, these were sailors that would travel around the world trading goods and slaves, unfortunately, but spices and raw materials.

They set up outposts in West Africa, and as often happened in these trading towns where lots of different cultures would meet, they developed a kind of patois or even a pigeon where all these different languages contributed to this pretty much a language only spoken on the docks.

It’s just what you needed to know in order to do business, to trade goods, to understand money.

So in Portuguese, there is a word, palavra, P-A-L-A-V-R-A.

And it’s the same as the Spanish word palavra.

It means word.

Now, it means word in multiple senses of word.

For example, if I were to say, Greg, I need to have a word with you.

I don’t mean I’m just going to say horse.

I’m actually going to have a conversation with you.

I’m going to say more than a word.

So to have a word with somebody can mean to talk or have a discussion.

And so you’ll find it showing up in the early 1700s in these discussions of these trading towns in West Africa.

And what happened then when the English sailors went there to trade their goods and to do their business, they picked up some of the seaside language used in the docks and brought it back.

And it showed up in English and it was borrowed in in this way.

It’s really interesting.

Now, how it got marked as being rural and Western in old movies, I have no idea.

By marked, I mean somehow we think of it as belonging to these crusty old dudes in cowboy hats and dusty boots.

I don’t understand how it made it from there to there.

That’s exactly what it was.

Yeah, I don’t understand how it made it from there to there.

How do you pronounce it? Is it palaver?

I’ve heard palaver and palaver both.

Yeah, I say palaver.

And also, even in West Africa today, they have what they call palaver huts, which are these round huts where people will get together, and if they have a problem, they just sit there and palaver until it’s over.

Yeah.

So there’s multiple meanings.

One of the older meanings, which is no longer extant in English, is to have a kind of legal discussion where you debate the merits of a claim, almost like a judicial hearing.

So I could see cowboys using it.

Like a mining claim?

No, I mean a claim where she promised to sell me 20 barrels of molasses, but I only got 15 for the money I gave her, something like that.

And you go to a higher authority and try to get somebody to work it out.

I didn’t know any of that information from what limited searching I’ve done.

Well, Greg, we’re glad to help you. Thank you so much for calling, all right?

Well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much for the information, and y’all take care.

You too now. Take care now.

Okay, you too, Greg. Thanks.

All right. Thanks again.

Bye-bye.

Call us with the word that you’re curious about, 877-929-9673, or send us an email about it.

That address is words@waywordradio.org, and we’re all over Facebook and Twitter.

We were talking earlier about lay versus lie, and I found a great poem on the site, Words Gone Wild.

I want to share it with you because it’s kind of handy, actually.

Words Gone Wild.

I’ve never heard of the site.

It’s a blog.

Okay.

And it goes, I was laid up, so I lay down, to lie low while I was sick.

My boss rang up to lay me off, and I laid it on quite thick.

But still my boss laid into me.

That made me worse, no doubt.

Now on my tomb engraved you’ll see, laid up, laid low, laid off, laid out.

Nice.

That’s really nice.

Lots of lays, right?

That’s real poetry.

It rhymes.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha.

This is Brendan.

I’m calling from Redondo Beach, California.

Hi, Brendan.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Well, I was driving past a flood-controlled dam in my area not too long ago, and it was painted back in the 70s with a big sort of text mural.

The 200 years of freedom, 1776 to 1976.

And I have fond memories of that time with the bicentennial and all the big hoopla that was going on about that.

And I was thinking that we’re coming up on another big anniversary, not all that far away.

The United States will be celebrating 250 years of independence.

Oh, my gosh, you’re right.

When is that, in 12 years from now?

Roughly, yeah, 12 years.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, they’re merchandising opportunities then.

Start planning now, right?

I remember.

Everything was red, white, and blue.

Oh, my God.

I was very young then, but I remember the fire hydrants being painted to look like Uncle Sam.

I loved it.

Oh, everything.

I’m sure.

And then the next year, they painted them to look like R2 from Star Wars.

Brendan, I’m sure you remember all those tchotchkes.

I do.

I do.

So we called it the bicentennial.

But what are we going to call it for 250 years?

Is there a word for that?

No, there’s several of them, some made-up ones that nobody uses and a couple that are not, I mean, they’re obviously invented, but nobody still uses those either.

Yeah, a bunch of words that nobody uses.

Well, we have a chance.

So apparently when Princeton University celebrated its 250th year anniversary, they invented a word.

They coined one, bison, quinquaginary, something like that.

That’s not going to work.

Well, you know.

You think?

No.

There’s a couple.

Sester Centennial is actually pretty good.

Yeah.

It’s not transparent to most people, though.

Sester Centennial?

Yeah, from Latin, right?

Yeah, from Latin.

Maybe?

I don’t know.

I mean, do you need to say something like Bicentennial?

Do you need to have another word for that?

You know what I would suggest is quarter millennial.

Oh, why?

Quarter millennial?

Quarter millennial.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we talked about the millennium.

You’re only a quarter of the way there.

It sounds small.

It sounds like the future’s wide open.

You know, got to wear shades.

Quarter millennial, you know?

Okay, does anybody use that?

It’s an expression.

I don’t know how many people, but, you know.

Actually, that kind of works.

I think it’s easy to say.

Yes.

It’s not quite transparent.

What do you think about that one, Brennan?

Quarter millennial?

Yeah.

Yeah, one quarter of a thousand years.

I like it.

You approve?

Okay.

I approve.

All right.

I’ll get working on the T-shirts.

All right, Brennan.

Thanks for the call.

Thank you.

Take care now.

All right, bye-bye.

I bet that catches on.

So in 2026, we’re going to have the quarter millennial celebration for the founding of this country.

Okay, I can buy that.

The case quarter millennial.

I’m on board.

Let’s do it.

The case quarter millennial.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

On our Facebook page, Brian Stoll shared a question with us.

Why have ice cream to celebrate being born?

Why have ice cream to celebrate being born?

Don’t know.

It’s Sherbert Day.

Sherbert’s not ice cream.

I know, I know.

Now we’re going to have all the peavers saying Sherbert’s not ice cream and you don’t put an R in it.

But I like that.

It’s Sherbert Day.

That’s terrible.

Give us more terrible puns because Martha loves them.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty path.

That’s all for today’s broadcast, but don’t wait until next week to chat with us.

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

Check out our website, too, at waywordradio.org, where you’ll find a dictionary, a newsletter, mobile apps, and a discussion forum.

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

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

Share your family’s stories about language.

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

You can also email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

The show is directed and edited this week by Tim Felten.

We have production help from James Ramsey and Tamar Wittenberg.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning and better human communication.

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

Thanks for listening.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Bye-bye.

So long.

I like tomato, potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

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

So if you like pajamas and I like pajamas, I’ll wear pajamas and give up pajamas.

For we know we need each other, so we better call the calling of R.

Let’s call the whole thing R.

The episode you’re listening to costs thousands of dollars to produce.

Want to hear more like it?

Go to waywordradio.org slash donate and make a contribution today.