Faux Po and Pole Tax

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

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

Today’s contestant is Glenn Peters from Portland, Oregon, the city of roses, right?

Yes.

Welcome, Glenn.

Hello, Glenn.

Yes, thank you.

Glenn, to get past door number one in this challenge, we’d like for you to share your favorite slang expression with us.

Do you have one for us?

Well, I was thinking of a word that we had used in college where we had posted up a comic of Sam and Max.

Sam and Max, okay.

Yes.

And there were the two main characters, a dog and a rabbit, were saying, let’s mock their stumps, talking about a bunch of pirates.

And that came to be used on our hall to refer to, you know, some people who had made questionable romantic decisions and, you know, and such.

And then it was sort of associated with anybody who went out looking for, you know, dates and such. And so then stumping would then become the verb that was associated with that.

So how would you use stumping in a sentence?

Oh, you know, we’re going to go out to the library and go stumping or something like that.

I mean, that kind of works too, because it’s like the political stumping where you’re out there making a pitch for somebody to vote for you. If you’re out there making a pitch, you’re pitching woo to a woman, you are kind of, in a way, stumping for her vote.

Yeah, I think it was more, you know, looking than wooing, but yes.

Oh, I see. It’s more about the browsing than the buying. Okay.

Right.

Right. All right.

Glenn, let’s move on to your next challenge.

Grant is going to present you with a slang term, and then he’ll give you three possible examples of how it might be used in a sentence.

Only one of those is real, and the other two are just something that he made up.

So, Glenn, your task will be to choose which one of those really is a slang term. You got it?

Okay.

And I will be standing by if you want to puzzle it out with me.

Right.

All right, here we go.

So the first clue is faux-po, and it’s spelled F-A-U-X hyphen P-O, and F-A-U-X being the French for fake, so faux-po.

So the first clue is a fake cop, that’s all.

No gun, a plastic badge, and a shoulder patch that looks more like a burnt rabbit than an eagle.

He’s not faux-po, he’s faux-po.

And the second one.

Don’t be fooled by the faux-poe Salvation Army clothes and the bedhead hairdo.

Underneath those cheap duds is silk underwear.

And the third clue, you’ve never seen so many harpo marks look-alikes in one place.

The annual faux-poe convention in Las Vegas has more harpo doppelgangers than there are fake Elvis’s in all of North America.

So, Glenn, which is it?

Is a faux-poe A, a security guard, B, a description of someone who thinks looking poor is fashionable, or C, a Harpo Marx lookalike?

And the second part is spelled P-O?

Yeah, just P-O.

I’m inclined to go with the second one.

That seems somehow more accurate.

Yeah, the second one, FOPO, I defined it as someone who thinks looking poor is fashionable.

Yeah, I think the second one was trying to seem fashionable about looking poor.

It is actually A. It’s a fake. It’s a security guard.

And I kind of gave so much of it away in the first clue that I thought maybe for sure that I’d given too much away.

Because I said at the end, he’s not Popo, he’s Fopo.

And if you knew that Popo is a slang word for police, then Fopo would make a lot more sense.

Ho, ho. I had known that.

So there we go.

So FOPO, F-A-U-X hyphen P-O, is a security guard or rent-a-cop or also known as turkey bacon because they’re not real bacon.

Never mind.

All right. Here we go.

The second expression is poll tax, P-O-L-E-T-A-X, poll tax.

And the first clue for poll tax is government officials in Texas are charging a poll tax, five bucks extra just to walk in the door of a strip club.

And the second one.

When you pick a tent, consider the poll tax.

You might get more room in a bigger tent, but you’ll have more polls that are heavier to carry and harder to set up.

And the third clue.

Why the extra charge for bean polls like me?

Why should tall, skinny men’s clothes cost more than short, fat men’s clothes?

Is it some kind of poll tax?

So which one is it, Glenn?

Is it A, a tax levied on patrons of strip clubs?

Is it B, the burden of extra tent poles when camping?

Or is it C, the extra amount charged for tall men’s clothes?

As suspicious as it is to have two that are A in a row, I’m inclined to think that it’s A because, well, I don’t know exactly why I think that.

How many times have you watched Showgirls?

I have not watched Showgirls.

Oh, okay.

Not that my movie standards are that high.

I just have a 10.

Huh.

So a poll tax would be a tax levied on patrons of strip clubs?

That just sounds so outrageous.

It’s what it is, though.

That’s the correct answer.

You’re right.

He’s right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow, yeah.

No, in Texas, though, in Texas, they did it kind of as a punitive measure to make it just a little more difficult for these businesses to stay in business, charge $5 a head, and maybe fewer people will go, and the businesses will just evaporate.

Nice work, Glenn.

And for playing slang this, we’re going to send you a copy of Grant’s book.

It’s called The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, perfect for this election year.

Excellent. Thank you.

All right.

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

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

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