Feeling Gruntled (episode #1390)

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. Not long ago, the residents of Iceland were asked what the most beautiful word in their language was.

And this was a contest put on by the University of Iceland and the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

They asked thousands of Icelanders to submit their choices, and they narrowed down the entries to some finalists, and then people voted on them.

The finalists included the word for enthralled, which, pardon my Icelandic, but is húfánkn.

Nice.

And the word for oh well, which is jája.

But the winner, the most beautiful word in the Icelandic language, supposedly, and again, my apologies to anybody who speaks Icelandic, is liósmóðr.

Something mother.

Yes.

Lion’s mother?

Very close.

What is that?

It literally means light mother, and it’s the Icelandic word for midwife.

Oh, so the light that first comes to you.

Yeah, isn’t that beautiful?

And I read that the other day, and I was so taken with that because in Spanish, if you give birth, you give to the light, literally.

Oh, very clever.

Yes, that is very beautiful.

I was worried that you were going to say that Reddit got a hold of the survey and gamed it and came up with something silly like Edward Snowden’s name.

That would be the end result these days.

But I like that.

Light Mother.

And Lucina in Roman mythology was the goddess of childbirth.

And you can hear the root for light in there.

Exactly.

Very nice.

Beautiful, right?

Very beautiful.

If you’ve got a favorite word, the most beautiful word to you in any language, let us know.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Seth from Tyler, Texas.

Hi, Seth.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have a question.

I was up late pondering things, as often happens,

And I was remembering an episode being in the dentist’s chair,

And the dentist kind of was working in my mouth and kind of flinched back,

And, you got me.

And, you know, I didn’t, of course, intentionally spit,

But it was kind of an involuntary release of saliva.

And it reminded me also of a friend that I had from Puerto Rico when I was a kid,

And he did something similar, and he called it Gleek.

That was his word for it.

But I was just wondering if there was any sort of word to describe this phenomenon.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Gleek is the word for it, as a matter of fact.

How old were you when you and your Puerto Rican friend talked about this?

Gosh, I was probably…

What year?

12, 13. 1994, 5-ish.

Okay, that’s pretty good. That’s pretty good.

A number of years ago, on my old website, the Double Tongue Dictionary, I made an entry for GLEEK.

And GLEEK means to spit saliva from under the tongue.

It can mean other things, but usually it means to eject liquid from your mouth in a stream.

And there were a number of commenters and people who remembered using this word in the 80s, and some of them claimed the 70s.

I don’t know whether or not they were telling the truth.

I assume that they were.

But the best theory that we have is that this word gleek, G-L-E-E-K, comes from super friends, from the monkey of the same name who would kind of just shed saliva every time he got really excited and started making monkey noises.

But yeah, that’s the word.

And it’s very slangy.

It’s pretty much used by people who grew up in the 70s and 80s and 90s.

Prior to that, I don’t think there was a word for it.

Yeah, I don’t know.

I always wanted to learn how to do it.

There was a kid in my sixth grade class who could do it.

And I’ve tried.

I’ve gone online.

There are videos

That tell you how to do it.

YouTube videos

If you’re not squicked out

By Gleeking.

I tried to do it

But I choked myself.

Gleek as a word

Is used to describe

Fans of the show Glee

So kind of a

Confluence of

Glee and Geek.

Yeah, they can

I mean there’s enough

Semantic differentiation there

Which there shouldn’t be

Too much collision happening.

There’s an older form of Gleek

That comes from Shakespeare

It means to trick

Or to make a joke

About somebody

Or at somebody

But that’s unrelated as well.

You can find

Videos of Gleek the monkey

Gleeking on YouTube

If you just Google. That’s fantastic.

Well, I appreciate it. That clears it right up.

Someone I think had mentioned Spittle also, and

That sort of works, but not

Quite. Yeah, like I say, go to our website

At waywordradio.org and search the word

Gleek, G-L-E-E-K, and you’ll find everything

That I researched on that. Great. Well, thank you guys

So much. Yeah, sure, Seth. Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Call us with your language questions.

877-99-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Dave Copeland calling from Boulder City, Nevada.

Hi, Dave. How are you doing?

Hi, Dave.

Welcome to the show.

Doing really good. Well, thank you.

I’m just sitting here with my driving partner here, Lulu, an 80-pound Doberman.

But we’re driving up from our regular run on Thursday up from Calexico back up to Las Vegas,

And I heard you say about a passage from literature that was memorable.

And I remember something from Oscar Wilde when he said, in one of his plays,

He was talking about one of the characters.

She was not disgruntled, but she was far from gruntled, which struck me funny.

And how there are certain quirks of our language that you only use words with a prefix,

Like disgruntled and impeccable, something like.

My favorite is overwhelmed.

People are always overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but they’re never whelmed.

Whelmed.

I bet whelmed is a word.

I bet if we look it up, we’ll find it.

Just not that common.

Yeah.

Yeah, and same for gruntled, actually.

I mean, disgruntled was around a lot longer, but probably in the 1920s or so.

That’s the earliest use I’ve seen of gruntled, meaning happy.

It’s one of those conversation stoppers, though.

I mean, you wouldn’t wish anybody a gruntled birthday.

You’d probably get punched.

I’ve heard whelmed used, but it’s kind of a West Virginianism that my father-in-law would say.

He’d say, whimalated.

If you overexert it, you whimalate yourself.

That’s nice.

I don’t know if that’s too whelmed or not, but it’s hilarious.

I like that.

Whimalated. Never heard it, but that’s a good one.

I’m writing it down now. Whimalated.

Yeah.

Well, that goes to James Howler.

There are a lot of these words in English.

They’re called unpaired words where we, for some reason, don’t have the antonym.

Maybe we had it once and it has fallen out of use or maybe it never existed.

So disgruntled and gruntled are kind of that.

Whelmed and overwhelmed are kind of that.

Yeah, it looks like whelm originally meant to overturn or capsize.

So if you’re overwhelmed, that’s probably an intensifier as well.

Dave, you sound like the reading sort.

I want to recommend an article for you in The New Yorker.

It’s called How I Met My Wife.

It’s by Jack Winter from July 1994.

And the whole thing is a story in which he uses unpaired words.

It’s kind of, I’ll leave it to you to find it.

It’s called How I Met My Wife, New Yorker.

Just Google that and you’ll find it, all right?

Very good.

Thanks for calling.

And give Lulu a kiss for us, will you?

A big slobbery one.

She has, you know, she really could use a breath mint.

I’ll just pat her.

A scratch behind the ear then.

Okay.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Drive safely.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There’s a similar work by J.H. Parker from the 1940s.

I believe this first appeared in Collier’s magazine where he uses a bunch of these unpaired words.

You want to hear a stanza of this?

Oh, yeah, I love this stuff.

It’s called A Very Descript Man.

I am such a dolent man.

I aptly work each day.

My acts are all basilic.

I’ve just aim things to say.

I just what?

Aim things.

Instead of inane, he’s got aim things.

Oh, aim things.

And you can find that, too, with a little bit of Googling.

It’s called A Very Descript Man by J.H. Parker.

Oh, very interesting.

And it’s interesting, too, that a lot of those words do exist.

I mean, there is the word kemped, which is related to the word comb.

So if you’re kemped, then you’re well combed.

But the unkempt is much more common.

877-929-9673.

I’ve been diving into old books again.

Yes?

Yes, and I looked up all the old college slang from more than 100 years ago.

Oh, you had fun.

You know, I’ve done this before, but every time I look into it, I come up with new stuff.

And I found some stuff here I wanted to share with you.

I love this one.

Do you know what balloon juice is?

Balloon juice.

Yeah.

Air?

Yes, it’s empty talk or noisy talk.

There’s a lot of noise, but no content.

That’s balloon juice.

Okay, somebody has a blather control problem.

Yes.

Also, if you fall down under the table, it means you fail a course completely.

Oh, okay.

I love that.

Fall down under the table.

I don’t know.

I always think of you fall down under the table if you’re drunk, but maybe they were.

Maybe that’s why they failed.

But to fall on the ball, on the other hand, is to begin to study.

Oh, really?

To fall on the ball?

Yeah, so in football, if you fall on the ball, it means you’re taking possession of the task, right?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Falling on the ball.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Brian Trapp from Richardson, Texas.

Richardson, Texas.

Welcome to the show, Brian.

How you doing?

Hiya, Brian.

I’m doing fine.

Thank you.

What can we help with?

How to use scared versus afraid.

I talk with this about my kids quite a bit.

They keep saying, I’m scared of this or I’m scared of that.

And I think it should be, I’m afraid of this.

And the example I give them is, you might be afraid of the dark because the monster under your bed will scare you.

So that’s the way I think it should be.

This is a really great question that is widely discussed because the nuances between these words are so personal for a lot of people.

And then we’ve got difficulties with parts of speech.

And we’ve got difficulties that afraid is an adjective that never goes before the noun.

You don’t say he’s an afraid person.

You usually would say he’s a person who is afraid.

Really interesting.

So let’s just break this down.

Some of the differences are really obvious.

Scared tends to be informal, is associated with shock and surprise and excitement.

So scared is a really active kind of negative emotion.

Afraid is a little more formal in its usage when I’m looking at the text.

And it tends to be associated with a calmer comportment,

Like a contemplative notion that I am about to be scared, as you put it.

So there’s a little bit of usage separation here.

And afraid and scared both technically act as adjectives,

But afraid, like I say, is an odd adjective that never goes before the noun, almost never.

And scared actually is a past participle of the verb that behaves like an adjective.

So it technically isn’t an adjective even though it behaves like one.

And I think you’ve hit on something interesting in terms of register.

I’m looking at a biblical concordance right now.

Nice.

Because I’m thinking of be not afraid and, you know, they were sore afraid.

So a concordance looks at all the text in the Bible and matches up all uses of a word

So you can see all of the context through all the chapters of the Bible.

Yes.

Okay.

And the word afraid is used in the Bible 189 times.

The word scared is never in there.

Oh, interesting.

And I can see, you know, a culture that’s really familiar with the Bible sort of suggesting that in people’s minds.

So, Brian, it’s your prerogative as a parent to teach your children the word uses that you want.

I think teaching them afraid is a good choice because it’s a little more formal, but I wouldn’t criticize them for their use of scared.

Well, and I’m betting all of their peers probably say scared as well.

Well, I guess so many people say scared.

You know, listening on the radio on NPR, I hear people using scared all the time.

I go, should they be using it like that?

And I hear it all the time, so I guess, you know, I can’t say that it’s wrong,

But it just doesn’t sound right.

It sounds like it’s no better if they would say, I’m afraid.

Interesting.

So you weren’t taught that necessarily in school?

It’s just a feeling you have?

It’s the feeling I have, yeah.

Interesting.

Brian, thank you so much for your call, sir.

Thank you very much. You take care.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send your observations about language in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Granta, know how much you love puns.

Why did the chicken cross the basketball court?

I don’t know.

Hear the referee calling fouls.

That’s terrible.

He says he hates these, but he loves them.

Secretly.

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

And send your silly jokes to words@waywordradio.org.

Stay with us as we talk more about words and language and what it all means.

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 with us today is John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

Hello, John.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

How are you guys?

Great.

How are you doing?

Do we need to promote you, quiz guy?

You need to be like quiz master, quiz lord?

Oh, I like that.

Grand quizard.

Does the grand quizard have a quiz in his pocket?

I do, yeah.

And this one starts with a little story.

So I’m in Los Angeles this time, and I’m looking at that famous mural on Hollywood Boulevard

In which a whole bunch of stars are seated in a theater.

You know that one I’m talking about?

Sure, yeah.

It’s actually called You Are the Star.

I said to my friend, hey, there’s Shirley Temple.

And he said, where?

And I said, in the Marilyn Monroe row.

-oh.

Well, that’s all I needed.

We see how your brain works.

Yes.

This quiz is about famous people whose last syllable is or sounds like a word.

For example, you know, these days you can get all sorts of gift items with famous scientists on them, like glassware.

I have a shot glass with a picture of Nikola Tesla.

My favorite is blank.

Albert Einsteinstein.

Right, my Albert Einstein’s dying.

Oh, boy.

Nice.

When I can get you guys laughing like this,

That’s just the example.

I know we’re going to have some fun.

Oh, yeah, there’s something really good about this, John.

You’re on to something, buddy.

This is your big one.

All right.

It might not be fanatic or it could be fanatic.

Let’s try these out.

Here are some more.

I’ll give you the first name if you need a hint.

All right.

I’m a big fan of the Jeeves and Worcester books.

In fact, when I was traveling in Britain,

I visited the blank.

P.G. Woodhouse house?

The P.G. Woodhouse house, yes.

Actually, he spent most of his time in New York, so I could visit it from here.

I was in a thrift store in Key West, and the guy offered to sell me a Guayabara shirt that was once owned by a famous author.

Now, I don’t know if it’s real, because it’s huge.

What do you think?

What did blank?

What did Hemingway?

Something where.

Well, we’re doing it in a certain construction.

What did Ernest Hemingway?

Yeah, what did Ernest Hemingway weigh?

What did Ernest Hemingway weigh?

Yes, that’s what I want to hear.

Very good.

His name wasn’t Ernest Heming.

Okay.

No.

Now, my Uncle Joe told me that when he was at West Point in the 50s,

His roommate was the guy who eventually went on to lead the U.S. Forces in the Persian Gulf War.

He said this guy often caught colds, and Uncle Joe would always end up with what he called the blank.

The Schwarzkopf cough.

Oh, yes.

The Norman Schwarzkopf cough.

Oh, very good.

Cover his mouth, please.

Very good.

All right.

You know, when Grand Central Terminal was erected in 1913, it replaced an edifice called the Grand Central Depot.

Now, that place was constructed by a famous railroad tycoon.

In fact, the depot was known as the house that Vanderbilt built.

Vanderbilt built.

Very good.

I collect autographs, and I prefer it if they’re part of actual correspondence.

One of my favorites is from the host of the TV show Kids Say the Darnedest Things.

I’m very proud of my blank.

Art link letter letter.

Yeah, my art link letter letter.

It’s a little something for the older folks, by the way.

That’s why I got that.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

I don’t know if you might even say the book, Phil Cosby, but no, it’s art link letter.

So the History Channel was running a special series of 60-minute mini documentaries on every single U.S. President.

I was watching them all, but I conked out during the blank.

The hour hour?

Oh, the Eisenhower hour.

Yes, I conked out during the Eisenhower hour.

Very good

Oh, oh

One last thing guys

I heard that a

Well-to-do fan

Of A Way with Words

Has invited us all

Out for a week

At his winter cabin

In Aspen, Colorado

He writes

I have just one question

Does

Blank

Does Will

Shorts

Wear shorts?

No

No

No

The A Way with Words

Team

Us

Does Grant Barrett

Barrett?

No

No

In the winter cold

Winter cabin

In Aspen

Does Chaneski ski?

Yes, does John Chaneski ski?

Oh, my God.

By the way, the answer is no.

I don’t.

I’m sad to say.

Anyway, you guys did fantastic on that quiz.

Way to go.

Oh, boy.

Thanks, John.

That was a winner.

That was a very good one.

We’ll talk to you next week, all right?

Talk to you then.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Well, we’d love to take your quizzes, puzzles, questions, any jokes you want to send us,

877-929-9673, email words@waywordradio.org, or hey, share them with the world on Facebook

And Twitter. Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, good afternoon, how are you? Great, who is this?

This is Christian from New Haven, Connecticut.

Well, welcome to the show, Christian. Glad to have you along.

Hi, Christian. What’s on your mind?

Well, the other day my boss

Asked me to proofread a contract,

And as I’m going through it, I saw the word

Peruse, and I thought, you know,

Perusing a contract isn’t really what to do,

You really want to understand every level of it.

So I quickly, I looked up the definition

Of peruse, and it turns out it means

The complete opposite of what I thought it meant

For the past 27 years.

How so?

Peruse means to investigate to the finest detail.

I thought it meant to skim lightly, to kind of never really get to the whole point, just to kind of understand on the surface.

So you want to get that right if you’re talking to your boss, right?

I want to get that right, and now I have this horrible feeling that maybe there are other words I don’t understand that I use on a day-to-day basis.

Join the rest of us. It’s a club. It’s called English Speakers Anonymous.

Pull up a chair.

Yeah, peruse is a really confusing word. I think you have to use it with a lot of care.

Yeah, definitely.

I’m one of the people who grew up being taught that peruse meant to look at something really carefully, really, really sift through it carefully.

But a lot of other people were taught exactly the opposite, right, Grant?

Yeah, yeah. It’s not a word that ever occurred in my household. I learned it from books.

Oh, yeah? But which way did you learn it?

I learned both, actually, side by side, and have just come to accept it as kind of what they call the Janus word, the two-faced word that has two meanings.

Yeah.

And so I look carefully for context, but as you know, the problem is the context with peruse isn’t clear almost any of the time.

Yeah, if somebody asks you to peruse a contract, you know.

Did you mean skim this and take a minute, or did you mean read this carefully over the next two days?

Exactly.

Yeah, and part of the problem is that in the early 1900s, some grammarians started saying,

Well, peruse definitely means to look something over very carefully.

They were using the Latin sense of it.

The P-E-R there is a word that can mean thoroughly, like pervade.

And so they thought, well, you know, just use the Latin sense of the word.

But other people have other authority.

I mean, Samuel Johnson, for heaven’s sakes.

He just thought it meant read.

In his first dictionary, the P. Pallavishi.

In 1755, yeah.

So peruse throughout its history has meant a variety of kinds of reading.

And there has never been one of these meanings that has really won out over the others, which is really interesting.

It’s always meant to read, but it never really was certain whether it meant to just quickly scan or whether it meant to go line by line with a pen.

Yeah, and it doesn’t even necessarily have to mean read.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You can peruse, I don’t know.

Yeah, the fashions. One of the style guides mentions about a number of quotes where they were walking through the store perusing the fashions.

They weren’t even perusing. There were no words involved. They were just looking at clothes.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, Christian, don’t feel bad about it.

So, Martha said something I think is important. I don’t know if this word is skunked, but our advice to you probably is going to be that you avoid using the word peruse in a professional environment because these meanings are so variable.

Certainly so.

It hasn’t settled out yet.

We may get 100 years now where one meaning wins out over the other,

But right now it’s just too much conflict.

Well, and what about perusal?

I hand you this document for your perusal.

Yeah, same story.

What does that even mean?

Yeah.

You know the other thing about it, to be honest with you, Christian,

Is that peruse is often used by people who just want to sound important

When actually they should have just used the word read.

Consider it avoided now.

Now, is there anything else I’m going to step in or other words like this?

Oh, my gosh.

Keep our number by your phone.

This is the hotline.

Next time you have a legal emergency.

Thanks, Christian. Take care now.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

You know, scan is another word.

It is, yes.

It’s so weird.

Originally, scan meant to look at something really, really carefully.

And this confused me when I was in college and I was reading Greek poetry

Because you’re supposed to scan the poetry,

And that’s a slow, tedious process to scan the poetry.

And I never could understand why I was scanning Greek poetry.

And now was it when the computer era kind of came about and scans started to mean something technological that it started to change?

Or was it prior to that?

I suspect it was prior to that.

I don’t know.

Okay.

Well, English, what a mess she is.

But call us and we’ll all talk about her when she’s not around.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Curly Price from Fort Worth, Texas, called us recently about our conversation about teasing a beginner on a job.

Remember, you send somebody to go look for a bucket of striped paint or something like that.

Curly said that when he started work at an airline, they told him to go find a belly stretcher.

And he said that the funny thing is that everybody gets in on the joke.

We hadn’t mentioned this part, but you get sent to one gate at the airline and you’re told to look for a belly stretcher.

And you ask somebody and they say, oh, no, no, no, it’s down at gate, you know, 34 or something.

And so you go all the way down.

And so everybody’s in on the joke and pretty soon you’re all over the place, he was saying.

And I thought that was really interesting.

I looked it up in the Dictionary of American Regional English and there’s a whole slew of stretchers.

And so beware if somebody asks you to go get something that stretches.

They have bottle stretcher, board stretcher, pipe stretcher, lumber stretcher, paper stretcher, flag stretcher.

And in restaurants, they tell you to go get the bacon stretcher.

The bacon stretcher.

But if you’re an EMT, you want to get just the plain old stretcher for sure.

That’s right.

That’s right.

Call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

How are you today?

Great.

Who is this?

Good. My name is Bob, and I’m calling from Escondido, California.

Hi, Bob.

Hey there. Welcome to the show.

I heard your show a couple of weeks ago and just got hooked on it.

And it started me thinking that there was a word that describes the very awkward silence on an elevator once the door closes,

And you’re stuck inside with two, three, four, or a dozen strangers.

And I used to know what that word was.

And I’m trying to find out again what the word is.

A dictionary gives you the definition if you have the word,

But it doesn’t give you the word if you have the definition.

You need a reverse dictionary. Such things exist.

Yeah.

It wasn’t awkward silence, was it? I mean, that’s kind of obvious.

No, it was one word.

No kidding. For the awkward silence when the elevator door closes

And you’re all sort of looking up at the numbers as they change?

Exactly.

I don’t know about a word for that.

I’ve heard the expression elevator conversation sandwich.

Have you heard that?

Oh, no.

What’s that?

You get on an elevator and there are a couple of other people and you’re sort of like they’re on either side of you and they’re talking over you.

Oh, yeah.

You know, it’s really irritating, I think.

I mean, I think my word for that silence when the elevator door shut would be golden.

You know, until somebody whips out their cell phone or something.

You know, we can make a word for this if you wanted, Bob.

I mean, I have two words here that are real words, just not that common.

One is silentium.

That’s a place in which silence is enforced.

S-I-L-E-N-T-I-U-M.

I like that.

And the other one is obmutescent.

Obmutescent, it means characterized by persistent silence.

So we could call an elevator in which no one is talking a obmutescent silentium.

Well, I think I like that.

However, maybe some of your listeners do know what that word is.

I heard it, I think, when I was in the eighth or ninth grade in school.

That’s quite a number of years ago.

Is that right?

And it sounds, Bob, that you would prefer that people do talk rather than not.

Oh, sure.

Well, I’ll tell you what we are going to do for you, Bob.

We are going to ask our listeners if they know the word, the one word,

That describes the awkward silence in an elevator

When it’s full of people but no one is talking.

Or maybe you can make one up.

Maybe hi-otis.

You know, like Otis.

Otis, the elevator people.

Yeah, a little, you know, brief period.

That’s terrible but funny.

Thank you.

Bob, we’ll let you know what happens.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, Sarah.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Enjoy your show.

Bye.

Call us and let us know what you think, 877-929-9673,

Or you can send your suggestions to words@waywordradio.org

And find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Grant, do you know what it means to acknowledge the corn?

No.

Or to confess the corn?

No. I can’t imagine. I can’t even think.

It looks like it’s an Americanism.

It means to admit to being drunk and by extension to admit to any mistake, fault or impropriety.

So a corn that has been soured and turned into alcohol.

Exactly.

I’m looking at a reference from 1842.

This guy says, Your Honor, I confess the corn.

I was royally drunk.

I confess the corn.

Nice.

Nice.

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

Or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carrie from Trinidad.

Yeah, I was listening to your show and thinking back to when I was copy desk chief of a pretty good-sized newspaper,

And we would go to the dictionary when we needed to really be certain that we’re changing a word in the right way

Or choosing the right word for a headline.

And one of the things that surprised me as we got to bigger dictionaries was how often early usages from newspapers were cited.

And I found it sort of scary to realize how circular that whole process could be,

Because I also knew what could get through our desk when we were very busy.

I saw the potential for us being kind of an echo chamber for our own errors.

Oh, good point.

So you worked on the copy desk for a big newspaper.

I love your description of the editing process because when I was in newspapers, it was exactly the same.

Something could go through six or seven people and still there would be errors in it the next day.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

It was inevitable.

There’s no such thing as perfect.

There’s such thing as a deadline and there’s such a thing as perfect.

You’ve got to pick between the two.

Yes.

This is really familiar to me for a variety of reasons.

One, from the journalistic history that I have.

Martha probably has encountered the same thing.

We both have a journalism background after a fashion.

And I call that poisoning the well, where the newspapers, for example, all use the Associated Press to make their style consistent across the newspaper.

And then the newspaper goes to print.

And then the next time the Associated Press has a question about what to do when a new issue comes up, they look at the very newspapers that use their own style guide to decide what to do.

And that’s a problem.

I don’t think they do style that way anymore.

This AP style book is very interactive now.

And there’s an ask the editor question and you can send your questions in.

And they will give you some sort of definitive answer on, yes, we hyphenate this.

But this goes directly to your question, Carrie.

Associated Press is the best example that I know of, of this kind of misuse of quoting newspapers.

But other newspapers have the same problem.

I personally probably have contributed to a similar Poisoning the Well.

Every year I do a new words column for the New York Times for 10 years now,

And I am persuaded that some of the reason that some of these words continue to be used

Is because the New York Times printed them,

And I somehow was a part of legitimizing this brand new word

And kind of ensconcing it into the language.

And that bothers me. It bugs me.

It ruffles my feathers quite a bit to think that I’m no longer the impassionate, dispassionate observer,

But somehow I’m actually out there affecting the language change on the very things that I’m observing.

It’s a problem.

Then you must love social media because it’s taking that power away from newspapers

And handing it straight to the people.

Well, right. And this is how language is properly observed.

The best thing about using newspapers as sources on what to do with language

Is that at least the text is considered.

And I use that word very carefully.

That means that somebody consciously thought about the structure, tone, and so forth of that passage,

And probably more than one somebody.

And it’s really nice to look at a body of professionally edited text,

Despite whatever errors may creep into there,

And to know that everything that you’re looking at was thought about.

It’s carefully put upon that page.

And that, to me, is a real good comfort.

On the other hand, it represents only one particular register of English.

That’s it.

It’s journalese.

It does not—I mean, there’s some variations there.

Sports tends to be a little looser and the editorials tend to be a little tighter.

But for the most part, it’s just this one register, whereas there are probably 15 or 20 other registers of English that never show up in the newspaper.

And that’s what we get from social media and the last 20 to 30 years of the online world.

We can observe the language a little more closely to the way people actually speak and write it and not in this kind of stilted professional tone.

I think good editors are worth their weight in gold.

But anyway, we appreciate your calling, Carrie.

Sure.

Well, I appreciate the show.

It’s a lot of fun to listen to.

Thank you, Carrie.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

Or you can send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

I bet you can guess in college slang from 100 years ago what a lunch hook is.

Lunch hook? I have no idea.

It’s your finger or your hand.

You’ve probably heard meat hooks used to mean your hands or your fist, right?

Okay, yeah.

So your lunch hook is your hand.

This is where you snag your lunch, right?

Put your finger through a donut hole or put it under the strap of a pail, right?

Yeah, that’s how college students eat, right?

Just go through the cafeteria line.

Well, 100 years ago, right?

When you might actually bring a pail or you’d have a string wrapped around the paper that wrapped your sandwich, right?

So you have your lunch hooked on your finger.

Lunch hook.

877-929-9673.

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 this is just a wild guess, but I’m betting that you are as irritated as I am by a certain kind of language that’s been polluting the Internet.

That’s big talk. What is it?

It’s that overheated, hyperbolic, breathless language on sites like Upworthy, you know, where you see something like what this seven year old said on the Ellen DeGeneres show will make you cry or make your jaw drop, you know, or will blow your mind.

It’s just clickbait, right?

It’s trying to get you to click through no matter what.

And I’m really glad to see that there’s also a backlash against this kind of language.

There’s an extension you can put in your browser from Downworthy that changes all that language.

Changes literally to figuratively.

Just kind of brings the hype down a notch, right?

Yeah, yeah.

It changes like will blow your mind to might perhaps mildly entertain you for a moment.

I’m not incredibly annoyed by it.

A little bit annoyed by it.

I’m really annoyed by it.

I put stuff on Twitter, just kind of carping about it.

And I do block Upworthy on Facebook because…

You do, you block it.

The fulfillment’s not there for me.

They offer more than they deliver.

And I don’t like that particular hiding the ball.

How many times I’m going to be suckered into clicking on a link

Only to find the video was four minutes of nonsense

And like three seconds of good content.

Exactly.

You feel like Charlie Brown in the football.

Exactly.

The football keeps getting yanked away as you come to kick it.

But there’s another aspect to this, which I think is really important,

Is that as this level of expertise rises,

As everyone in the media business knows what makes a good headline, knows what makes people click, everybody is hyping it up.

Exactly.

And so the whole higher level of hyperbole is we’re to the point where it’s basically a lot of innuendo and kind of lying, frankly.

Exactly.

Yeah, it’s language turned up to 11, you know, and if you start there, then there’s no place to go.

But that said, this is very American.

Well, yeah.

You can go back to the works of Charles Dickens where he writes about being in America and he talks about the way Americans are super happy about things that they’re not supposed to be happy about or that other people would just take for granted.

Right.

We are known as the kind of the artificially happy people.

This is how we’re seen around the world.

Well, it’s funny that you mentioned Charles Dickens because there’s also a site that takes the titles of famous books and changes them into that kind of language.

Like, watch this kid burst into tears when he’s refused more porridge.

Or this one for Pride and Prejudice.

He didn’t want to dance with her when they first met.

Now he really, really does.

That’s just genius.

I’m sorry.

That’s a winner.

I’m going to follow them wherever they are.

It’s themillions.com.

Oh, yeah.

They always do great stuff.

Yeah, isn’t that great?

Look, there’s a place and a time for hype.

Absolutely.

And you want people to click on your stuff.

We’re urging just a slight bit more, like, just straight up, plain speaking.

Yeah, dial it down a bit.

If you’ve got an opinion or a comment about this hyperbolic language, this just up, up, up, up kind of language, give us a call.

Write it in all caps.

Don’t, please.

In an email.

But that’s what it feels like, right?

It’s hard on my old eyes.

No.

877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Talk to us about it on Facebook and Twitter.

And you can also get the show for free on SoundCloud and iTunes.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, thank you so much for having me on the show.

Hi, who is this?

My name is Nancy Anderson-Wolfgang, and I am calling from Youngstown, Ohio.

What you got on your mind, Nancy?

Well, I am working on my dissertation, and it focuses on the use of the musical theater vocal quality known as belt.

All right, so you’re doing a whole dissertation on belting out like Ethel Merman, that kind of thing.

Exactly, right.

That’s fascinating.

Right, and my committee was reading through my paper, and one of them asked me to identify the origin of the word belt.

And I thought that was a really good question, so when I went back and started trying to do that on my own,

Every time I finally got to the end of the research strand, it was identifying the piece of clothing that goes around your waist.

So I was hoping that you guys might be able to help me in terms of how it relates to singing.

Okay.

Great question.

Yeah, that’s a really good question.

So this is something that you’ll be graded on later?

Yes.

And do you have to sing?

It’s just my career at stake.

It’s okay.

Okay, yeah.

So we’re doing your homework for you, right?

In a way, yeah.

Oh, okay.

But you will be sighted, so.

Oh, we’ll be sighted.

I’ll put on my best voice for you then.

There’s two R’s and two T’s in Barrett.

Well, since the 17th century, the word belt has meant to thrash with a belt.

You know, you might be afraid of your parent belting you back in the day.

So belt has been a verb meaning to hit or attack.

And it was used in boxing as well, right?

If you belt somebody out, you knock them out.

You’re belting them with your fist.

Yeah.

So that’s around the 1930s.

And then what we find that by the 1950s, it’s kind of moved from one kind of performance.

Boxing to another kind of performance, the stage, where you get these loud, big singers

Who literally belt out a song.

So just think about the parallels with the slang expression to knock out.

You can knock somebody out by punching them, or you can knock them out by giving them a

Boffo performance, right?

So there’s two different kinds of knockout, but also two different kinds of belting.

We often find this in the language where two words kind of track similarly in terms of

Having similar meaning.

So belt works and knockout work that way.

Yeah. So it is related to the word belt, meaning the thing going around your waist.

But a long way ago. And we don’t want to say, oh, it originally meant belt, because the key here is that moving from boxing to musical theater.

Sure. Yeah. But the verb itself was to hit with a belt.

If you want references that aren’t us to look into, we recommend the Historical Dictionary of American Slang published by Random House and also the Oxford English Dictionary.

Those are two authoritative sources. Although in this case, the Historical Dictionary of American Slang has a better entry for this meaning of belt.

Okay.

So good luck with that. We expect a copy of the paper, and we want to be on your dissertation review board.

Absolutely. I’d love to have you.

We’ll be kind.

Thank you so much for the help.

I understand there’s cookies and coffee at those things.

Okay, will do.

Thanks, Nancy. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye.

She was madly scribbling notes as we were giving the answer.

I know.

I hope she was recording that call.

Wait, we were, right?

Oh, gosh, I hope so.

877-929-9673.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Yes.

This is John from Dallas, Texas.

Hello, John.

Welcome to the show.

What can we help you with?

Thank you.

Well, first of all, you need to know I’ve been married to an English teacher for a long time.

I’m sorry.

I mean, congratulations.

Lucky you.

Yes.

And I’ve worked very hard to hone my skills in the English language.

I’m usually the go-to guy for the last edit on important things that are going to clients

Because I declare war on misplaced commas and apostrophes and split infinitives and such.

But one of them has really got me vexed.

When writing a letter of reference in the salutation to whom it may concern,

Which of those words do I capitalize?

Oh.

What’s your instinct?

Well, let me start by saying I’ve asked X number of people and gotten X different opinions,

And nobody has an authoritative source.

I’ve checked Strunk and White.

I’ve checked secretarial handbooks.

My instinct would be to capitalize everything.

My cop-out is to say, dear sir or madam.

I’d really like to get an authoritative opinion on how it should work.

Do you write your documents in Microsoft Word?

Normally, yes.

Okay, because my version of that program capitalizes it.

It automatically does that.

You mean the first letter of all the words?

Yeah.

All five words?

Yeah.

To whom it may concern?

Yeah, if I start typing that, that’s what it does.

Does it do that because you added something to your personal dictionary,

Or is it built into the autocorrect?

No, it’s built into the autocorrect.

Interesting.

The bottom of this, John, is the problem that this is a matter of style, and it’s not something that’s required by the language itself.

English doesn’t care one way or the other.

English is a system of logic, what logic there happens to be, doesn’t care at all whether or not to whom it may concern is capitalized at all.

All right?

And so anytime that you find somebody saying it should be capitalized on the first letters or only two should be capitalized or don’t ever even use that phrase,

These are all matters of style, and they tend to be institutional style.

For example, at Purdue, OWL, which is their online writing center, I don’t know what the L stands for, but whatever.

It’s a fairly well-known writing resource on the web.

They say that you should capitalize the first letters of all five words in to whom it may concern.

A number of other places, particularly on job sites, say don’t use that.

If you don’t know who you’re writing to, it’s a terrible mistake.

That’s another whole problem in itself.

You even use that because it seems old-fashioned, maybe a little stilted. And if you don’t know who

You’re writing to, then maybe you shouldn’t be writing to them. Or maybe you should spend more

Time finding the actual name of the person. So you could put, dear Mr. Smith. Yeah, but I think

That’s true if you’re trying to get employment. But I think you raise an interesting question about

What if you’re writing a letter of reference that maybe the person’s going to use again and again?

What do you say? I think that’s a really good question. Because otherwise, I think to whom it

Make concern sound sort of, you know, sort of mad men, you know.

Does it?

I use it.

I think it’s a little antiquated.

Do you?

I totally use it.

But usually it’s with people that I don’t know at all that I have.

When you write to, let’s say, your cable company because they’ve overbilled you or something,

Right?

So it doesn’t really, I don’t care if they’re offended.

I have an issue.

I just need, I’m polite enough to put a salutation on there, but I don’t care enough that they

Might be offended that it’s stilted or old fashions.

I tend to say dear sir or madam, but that’s kind of a cop-out in terms of the King’s English.

So, as I say, I’ve gotten as many different opinions as I’ve asked the question.

Yeah, so what do you end up going with then, John?

Yeah, that’s my question too.

You capitalize it?

Dear sir or madam.

Oh, that’s what you do?

You just avoid the problem altogether.

I say capitalize it just to be consistent.

You do, if you use it at all.

Yeah, if you use it.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m getting kind of attached to it just because it’s one of the few places I see the word whom anymore.

Yeah, I noticed I was using who a few sentences ago.

So there’s that.

So here we are.

You can add this to your long list of opinions, yet another one.

But the matter lies in your hands.

You are authorized by the English language to make that decision for yourself, John.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it.

I bet we’re going to hear about this.

Sure, yeah.

So stay tuned, John, okay?

Keep on plugging away, dude.

I will do that.

All right.

Thanks very much.

Thank you very much.

Do you have an opinion on To Whom It May Concern?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org, or talk about just about

Anything at all on our website or at Facebook and Twitter.

At the beginning of every opening credit scene to The Simpsons,

Bart Simpson is at the chalkboard writing a message.

Did you know that there is a name for that kind of punishment of a student?

Not just the writing, but there’s a name for the extra work you give somebody

Because they failed an exam or they messed something up or whatever as a punishment in general.

Ooh, so it doesn’t have graph in it. It’s extra.

No, it’s extra, yeah.

So it’s a piece of work, a duty, or an allotted task, a school task or lesson to be prepared.

In the U.S. Specifically, a piece of schoolwork imposed is a punishment.

That’s the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s called a pensum, P-E-N-S-U-M.

So Bart, at the opening credits of every Simpson episode, is doing a pensum as he is executing this punishment.

Wow.

I wonder if that’s to make him think about it.

It comes from words related to wool and spinning wool in Latin.

Oh, okay.

So it’s work, the work you’re spinning out the wool.

Oh, interesting.

Okay, that’s not the root of it.

Pretty cool, right?

Yeah.

If you’ve got questions about language, we’ve got answers.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Skylar calling from Boston.

Hi, Skylar.

Welcome to the show. How can we help?

I have a question related to a phrase that my mom has always used

That I embarrassingly, I think, realized was unique to our family

A little too late in life, but that’s okay.

The phrase is one that she says when it’s cold outside.

She says something like, oh, I don’t want to go outside.

I’m going to freeze my kaboogies off.

And I have no idea what the word kaboogie or kaboogies, I don’t know if it’s plural or singular.

I have no idea what it means, and I have no idea if anyone else in the world has ever used it.

So, Skylar, you said you discovered late in life that not everybody uses it?

Yeah, I mean, I think I made reference.

My theory is that a kaboogie is some reference to your rear end.

Sometimes she’ll say something like, move your kaboogs.

Oh.

I’m being really cat.

Okay.

And so I think I made reference, you know, I was like 16,

And I made reference to my kaboogs once,

And my friends kind of looked at me in, you know,

The way that high school girls do, like I had, you know, three heads.

So that was when I realized it probably wasn’t, you know,

Wasn’t totally common, but maybe someone out there had a similar experience.

Kaboogs. Move your kaboogs. Move your kaboogies.

Yeah.

So, Grant, have you ever heard this term?

No, but I mean, we have a zillion expressions for the bum, the derriere, the rear end, the hind end, right?

And a lot of them are funny, like caboose or booty or they’re infantile in a way, childish.

And that kind of fits naturally into that.

I have one theory.

It’s just a theory.

Let’s hear it.

Okay.

Have you ever heard the word bahookie?

No.

No, but I’ve heard bazooty.

What’s a bazooty?

Bazooty is your bum as well.

Okay.

We have entries for that in the dictionary on our website.

Okay.

Well, a bahookie is also your bum, especially in Scotland.

And so I’m wondering if bahookie became kaboogie.

Oh, interesting.

I mean, sort of like a spoonerism, like metathesis or something.

It’s possible.

Bahookie.

But it also could just be a family word.

There are a lot of these words, right?

These euphemistic ways to talk about your bum without being crass.

Well, you sort of understand it, right?

Yeah, you get it.

I mean, those high school girls should have understood what you were talking about.

I think they probably did, but they were taking pleasure in the weirdness of it anyway.

Mm—

The struggle to be cool occupies a great deal of mind.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Although, you know, now that I think about it, I had a college roommate who used to use the word behoogies, and she meant breasts.

Yeah, well, I did find a few references here and there where it could mean bosoms.

There are a few things on Urban Dictionary that are spelled approximately the same way.

It began with a K.

They maybe have a B or a P inside somewhere.

That’s what I’m saying about this particular construction.

It’s incredibly common with a wide variety of probably dozens of different spellings,

Usually referring to the bum, almost always in a very low register of English without being crass or offensive.

So I think I would call this a family word unless we get a bunch of calls and emails saying that other people use it too.

And we might.

You never know.

So, Skylar, stay tuned.

And stay warm.

I will.

And if anything, it’s good to know we’re not alone.

Other people make these up, and I can throw a boogie in once in a while to raise things up.

Well, that’s another whole thing.

Never let people stop you using a word that you want to use.

Feel free.

And especially if your boogie’s cold or your kaboogies.

Right, exactly.

It’s perfect for this weather.

That’s right.

You’ve got to complain about it somehow, right?

Stay warm.

Take care.

Exactly.

Thanks for calling, Skylar.

Thanks so much.

It was great to talk to you.

Okay, bye-bye.

You can get off your bazootie and give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or email words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s a word that’s new to me, but I bet it’s going to have more currency.

Do you know the word marioke?

No.

Isn’t that fun?

Is this karaoke at a wedding?

Pretty much.

This is instead of taking a whole bunch of pictures at a wedding, you get your guests to lip sync to a song like the Black Eyed Peas or something like that.

And then people put it to music.

Slice and dice it and edit it and make a whole video out of it.

Yes.

I’ve seen a few of these.

Yeah.

I didn’t know they had a name.

Marioki.

Marioki, right?

And it’s great for the guests and friends because then you don’t have to, you know, watch a long, long video.

You can just watch like three minutes.

Yeah.

That’s nice.

That’s super nice.

People really get into it.

And everybody’s involved.

It’s a video that everyone can have and keep, and in 30 or 40 years, you’ll all look back and say,

Oh, I remember them. They were such a beautiful couple.

Mariokie. Look them up.

Nice.

877-929-9673.

That’s all for today’s broadcast, but don’t wait till next week.

You can join us on Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, or SoundCloud.

And check out our website, waywordradio.org.

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You can also listen to hundreds of past episodes free of charge.

Leave us a message anytime at 877-929-9673.

Share your family’s stories about language,

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

You can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

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

We have production help from James Ramsey.

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.

We’re coming to you this week from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Take care.

Sayonara.