Fighting Artichokes (episode #1430)

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.

I’m not much of a fan of musicals.

Are you, Grant?

Do you like musicals?

Yeah, yeah.

I love them.

Do you really?

Oh, sure.

I love to get carried away by the songs.

Okay.

All right.

Well, then you would love the musical I just saw.

It’s called Come From Away.

And I have to say that even though I’m not a fan of musicals, this has to be one of the best theatrical experiences I have had ever in my life anywhere.

Wow.

That’s saying something.

You see a fair amount of theater.

I do see a fair amount, and this is just right up there.

And let me tell you why.

It’s called Come From Away, and it just finished a run here at the La Jolla Playhouse.

In the hours after the September 11th attacks, there were 38 planes carrying 7,000 passengers that were all diverted to Gander, Newfoundland.

And it’s the story of how they all converged on this tiny place that only has 500 hotel rooms.

We’re talking 7,000 people.

Wow.

And it’s just an extraordinary tale in every way about what happened over the next few days.

And it really made me want to go, of course, to Newfoundland.

But in the meantime, I’m checking out all the language.

The title, Come From Away.

Well, that’s interesting.

There’s something in there, right?

Well, yes, that’s interesting that you mention it.

I mean, the language there is this really interesting odd mix of English and Irish and French and Aboriginal languages.

And so, yeah, you get these strange constructions like come from away, which you would think is a verb, but actually it’s a noun.

The whole thing? All three words?

Yeah. Come from away is a visitor.

It’s someone who has come from away.

Sometimes it’s just abbreviated as CFA.

Isn’t that cool?

CFA. I’m a come from away.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I’m really working on the pronunciation of this place, Newfoundland.

They say, think of understand and Newfoundland because they get.

Gotcha.

They’re not happy.

It’s not Newfoundland.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

We’ve gotten feedback about that before.

So I’m trying really hard to get it right.

Thanks for writing.

Grant, I just dyes at you.

You do?

I know I’m handsome.

No, you are very, very handsome.

But it means you’re so funny if you say, I just dyes at you.

Oh, nice.

That’s great.

Yeah.

I really like this one.

If you do something remarkable, whether it’s remarkably stupid or remarkably good, if you did something like that, Grant, I would say, Grant, who knit you?

Who knit you?

K-N-I-T, knit you.

So what is the stuff of the earth that you’ve been knit from?

Yes, exactly.

Oh, what are you made out of?

Yeah.

That’s cool.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s cool.

Yes, yes, see?

See, so I’m going to share some more of those later in the show, but I thought you’d get a kick out of that.

Newfoundland.

Newfoundland.

Oh, dear.

Newfoundland.

Newfoundland.

Got it.

Understand Newfoundland.

Understand Newfoundland.

I think I’ve got that right.

Let us know, people in Gander.

877-929-9673.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jordan Falk calling from Olympia, Washington.

Hi, Jordan.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, Jordan.

How can we help you?

Well, I had a question about full mascots.

I’ve been thinking about how some schools come up with some funny mascots.

Here in Olympia, we have the Evergreen State College, and their mascot is the geoduck.

The geoduck.

It’s kind of a giant clam.

Yeah, that’s G-E-O-D-U-C-K, right?

Geoduck.

Yeah, that’s right.

It’s kind of a local specialty around here.

The fighting geoducks?

That’s right.

That’s right.

Wow.

It doesn’t really inspire fear.

But I was really curious about where that word comes from, the word mascot, and also what kind of funny mascots other people have around from where they’re from.

Oh, that’s a great question.

That’s a really good question.

Can I tell you my favorite before we look at the etymology?

It’s the University of California at Santa Cruz banana slugs.

Because these long yellow slugs, about the color of a banana, about the size of a smallish banana that you find in the redwood forest here in California.

My wife loves these.

We have so many pictures of my wife holding banana slugs.

Mascot is a really interesting word, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah.

It’s got something of a murky etymology early on, but it seems to go back to a French word that has to do with a person or an animal or a thing that’s a kind of talisman, something that brings good luck.

It actually got popularized by a 19th century comic opera called La Mascotte that was a French opera that had to do with some farmer who was cursed by bad luck.

And so to bring him good fortune, his brother enlisted this country girl to be his mascot.

That is his lucky charm.

But the only catch was that she had to remain a virgin.

And you can imagine how that goes.

In a comic opera.

But it’s interesting to think about it in terms of some kind of being that’s with you to give you good luck.

I’m also thinking about the Spanish word for pet, which is mascota.

It’s related to the same idea of some kind of creature that sticks around with you, a companion animal.

I saw in one of the dictionaries there was a suggestion that maybe it goes back to Latin words for mask.

Right. It might be related to mask.

So you might have masks and then witches are involved and spells are involved.

Yep, sorcery.

So all along we’re talking about magical, I don’t know, magical elements.

Right, more magical than you think of now with sports teams.

Now it’s more like a symbol of the team.

And also to get the crowd riled up, right?

To do the stunts and the jokes and stuff.

By those gooey ducks or whatever.

Do they have somebody who dresses up like a gooey duck and revs up the crowd?

They do.

They look kind of funny.

They look like a guy wearing a giant sleeping bag.

I was going to say, I bet those halftime shows are fun.

What kind of stuns can a gooey duck do?

Wow.

Well, I bet we will hear from lots of other folks like you.

With crazy mascots.

Yeah.

We want the mascot and the story, if you know it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you very much, Jordan, for your call.

Really appreciate it.

Well, thank you.

All right.

Take care now.

All right.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Tell us your mascot stories.

Maybe your high school, your college, maybe elementary school.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

One great resource for words from Newfoundland is the Dictionary of Newfoundland English online.

It’s got a beautiful layout and typeface, and you can find all kinds of great stuff, like, for example, the expression best kind.

What’s that mean?

No, I don’t know that one.

It means wonderful, awesome.

Instead of saying that’s awesome, you would say that’s best kind.

Oh, nice.

Or if I say, how are you today, Grant?

You would say, oh, the best kind.

Oh, that one.

So does it take the definite article all the time, the best kind?

Not always.

No.

Okay, interesting.

Reminds me a little bit of the business jargon, best practices.

Oh, interesting.

Well, just because it feels unusual to have best in that way.

Yeah, doesn’t it?

Again, it’s sort of that uncanny valley.

Like it sounds like our English, but not quite.

Oh, nice.

It’s like going to sleep for 30 years and waking up and realizing everything’s changed around you.

Sort of, yeah.

Rip Van Martha.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Dorothy.

I live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

It’s a suburb of Milwaukee.

Wauwatosa.

Welcome to the show, Dorothy.

How can we help you?

Well, I was just calling because it amazes me.

I go to Florida in the wintertime, and I had to have a new, what I say, roof put on my home in Florida.

And I mentioned to one of the neighbors that I was having this roof installed, and he said, a what?

And I said, a roof put on my house.

And I do have two little dogs.

And then he laughed, and he said, oh, I think you’re with your dogs too much.

You’re starting to talk like them.

I thought, what are you talking about, you know?

And he said, it’s not a roof.

It’s a roof.

And I said, well, I always said a roof.

And they just laughed.

They never heard of anything like that.

And they were from Massachusetts.

And I was just wondering, which was the proper pronunciation, or if it depends on where you live.

Like in New Hampshire, they say we park the car, and everybody talks differently right here in the States.

Yeah, we do, don’t we?

You got that right.

Let me ask you a couple other questions.

What do you say for R-O-O-T?

Oh, root.

You don’t say root?

No.

What do you say for R-O-O-M?

The room.

You don’t say root?

Yeah, that’s true.

And one woman, when I was in the pool in Florida, she said, well, of course it’s roof.

She’s from New Hampshire.

She said, oh, oh is ooh.

And I said, well, then what would you call a sweater that somebody knit for you?

A wool sweater?

It’s wool.

And then she shut up.

Yeah, or hoof, or foot, right?

I don’t know.

So you say roof?

I’m going to put that in a book.

Yeah, book, hoof, foot.

There are plenty of double O’s in English that sound exactly like the way that you say roof.

This is a classic American dialect split, but it’s interesting.

It’s not very geographically pronounced.

It is a little more common in the South Atlantic, the Gulf states, New England.

But it’s fairly sprinkled around the country.

And a lot of the people who say ruff do also say room, broom, root, things like that.

But it’s not completely consistent.

And it all goes back to our language heritage in the United Kingdom, where many people also still say things like ruff.

But they are slowly adopting the roof pronunciation as well.

I see.

Yeah.

So it is widespread.

I mean, we’re talking millions of people say roof.

I mean, it’s not like there’s a handful of people.

It is so pronounced, very well studied, the kind of thing that’s going to come up in a sociolinguistics 101 class.

That’s how well known it is.

It’s not like you and your dogs are wrong.

No, your dogs are right.

That’s good.

That’s good.

But, you know, before I was talking to you, I was thinking about that.

And another word, and I think that is all over the United States, that I would say 90% of people mispronounce, and that is realtor.

Oh, yeah.

Everybody says realtor.

Yeah, you want a vowel between the L and the T, don’t you?

Your tongue almost demands a vowel there.

Yeah, it seems that way.

Yeah.

But anyway, the roof, roof thing, I thought was…

The folks in Florida and the lady from New Hampshire, you know, maybe they need to get out more because it’s very widespread.

I’m surprised they didn’t hear it.

I think Dan Rather even had a couple of those pronunciations like that.

Room.

Really?

He’s from Texas, right?

A big room.

Huh.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate you bringing this to our attention, Dorothy.

Just go ahead and roof all you want.

Roof, roof, roof.

You’re totally fine.

All right?

Okay.

It’s a great American dialect feature.

Don’t worry about it.

Okay.

I will do that.

Use it with pride.

Take care now.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

You know, there’s a town in West Virginia called Poca, P-O-C-A.

It’s short for an Indian word, Poca, P-O-C-A.

You know what the mascot there is?

The hauntus?

I don’t know.

No, the dots.

Oh, the dots.

The pokey dots.

I was going to say the eyes.

Pokes in the eyes?

I don’t know.

Oh, that’s terrible.

I don’t know.

The dots.

That’s fun.

How long until you get tired of that pun when you live in that town, though?

How long does it take?

Probably not long.

A week?

Maybe a day?

Share your mascots with us.

We like the funny ones.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Your questions, our answers.

It’s all about learning how to listen to language.

Stay with us.

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 on the line is our quiz guide, John Chanesky.

Hello, John.

It’s me.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

My wife and I occasionally like to have parties, and we have party games.

And one party game I’m sure you’re familiar with, a board game, is Taboo.

Oh, it’s a super party game.

How does that work?

Well, you have to describe something to your teammates, but you’re not allowed to use certain words, five words, as a matter of fact.

For example, if I was trying to get you to guess the word snowman, I would not be able to use the words winter or build.

Oh, and of course, you can’t use snow or man and other words.

Now, we’re going to try reverse Taboo.

That’s where I’ll give you a list of words, and you tell me the term that those words are taboo for.

For example, signed, huge, first, signature, declaration of independence.

John Hancock.

Taboo for John Hancock.

Yes, very good.

Got it.

Now, of course, the sooner you get the term, the more impressed I will be.

Oh.

If you’re playing for points at home, let’s say 10 in the first word, 8 for the second, 6 for the third, 4 for the fourth, 2 for the last.

Oh.

We’re not keeping score, but this way you can—

What do points mean?

Prizes!

Points mean prizes.

We’re not keeping score, but you can play it as a game this way at home.

Please do.

Okay.

Let’s do it.

Here’s the first one.

Cold.

Eating.

Popsicle.

No.

No.

Snow cone.

Let’s go one guess for each of you.

Al fresco.

Just to streamline it.

No.

Cold.

Eating.

Fast.

Headache.

Ice cream.

Brain freeze.

Ice cream is the last one.

Brain freeze is correct.

Nice.

There’s one for Martha.

She found the weakness in your plan, which is you didn’t put a limit on the number of guesses.

That’s true, yeah.

That’s why we do play testing.

Okay.

It’s time to play test.

Right.

Here’s the next.

Credit card.

Money.

Pocket.

Purse.

Hold.

Handbook?

Wallet.

Wallet is correct.

Another one for Martha.

Very good.

Next one is awake, bed, conscious.

Insomnia.

Night.

Stroll.

Sleepwalking.

Sleepwalk is correct.

Nice.

Brooke.

Violin concerto.

Violin concerto is not right.

Brooke.

Chatter.

Tower.

Babble.

Babble is right.

Very good.

It’s you.

This is your game.

Tower.

It’s in her wheelhouse.

She’s throwing words out.

I’m just like gooping.

I’m just like clowning around over here, and Martha’s like serious.

She’s like, I’m going to get this.

I’m doing it.

Hermione is at it again.

Eye of the tiger.

She’s in there.

Eye of the tiger.

Car.

Clock.

Burglar.

Siren.

Alarm.

Alarm is right.

Didn’t even need fire.

Very good.

Give it to both of you.

Imaginary, great, for, F-O-U-R, unreal, amazing.

The Beatles.

No.

Yeah, I was thinking Beatles or Mount Rushmore.

Imaginary friend?

No, imaginary…

Fantastic?

Yes, fantastic, Grant.

Good one.

Let’s try eggs, breakfast, eat, pig, sausage.

Bacon.

Bacon’s right.

Yes.

You guys are fantastic.

You have to come over to my house for a party.

No, Martha, you aced this one.

I got like one, and John tried to buck me up with some false praise.

But okay.

Thanks, buddy.

I really appreciate it.

I love free associating.

Thank you, guys.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks, John.

I’ll see you next week.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

And if you’d like to talk with us about any aspect of language whatsoever, call us 877-929-9673 or send your questions and observations to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nan Sturman.

Nan Sturman.

Hi, Nan. How are you doing?

I’m doing well.

I have a plant question for you.

I bet you do.

I bet you do.

Nan Sturman, you do a television show.

-huh.

I do.

It’s called A Growing Passion, and we explore the growing world of plants, and it airs on public television.

Yeah, you’re in Southern California like we are, right?

Yes, I absolutely am.

And, you know, I deal with plants all the time, and I write about plants, and I design gardens and things like that.

And there’s this thing that’s bugging me, and I wanted to ask you about it.

The term plant is a noun and also a verb.

So especially when I’m writing, I find myself writing, plant your plant.

Plant the plant.

The plant.

Plant the plant.

You know, it gets to the point where I feel like, aren’t there other words I can use?

Do you want another word for the verb or the noun?

Or both.

Yes.

I mean, I can say, install the plant.

But that sounds kind of clinical and mechanical.

It does.

It sounds like using screwdrivers.

It sounds like you’re building an auto plant.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, or I can say, plant the biota or the flora.

And that sounds superfluous.

I mean, that just sounds like, you know, being pretentious.

Right. So help me. I want to make things more interesting for my readers and my listeners.

What other languages do you speak, Nan?

Not ones that will help this.

Oh, okay. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

Well, you know, we talked a million years ago on this show, because we have been on for a million years. We talked about rehoming plants. I wonder if you can just, when you put them in a new pot, I wonder if you can just talk about homing plants. Does that sound weird or like you’re talking about pigeons, like they’re flying back from the coop with messages on their ankles?

I don’t know.

Oh, Grant, I think my editors would redline that in about one millisecond.

Oh, I see.

We have gatekeepers.

It’s not just your final word.

We have, like, picky people to get past.

Well, sometimes, I mean, often I am, but sometimes I have editors to work with, too.

But even so, I mean, I’m thinking about who’s reading, you know, my audience.

Who’s reading this or who’s hearing this.

Home your plant.

What?

All right, I have a couple suggestions.

I mean, obviously you can’t get away with using plants at least a little bit of the time, right?

But you can do things, I hesitate to say this, but you can do like George W. Bush did, which is everything’s got a nickname, right?

So you can say, put that beauty in the ground and watch, you know, you could say, look at this bad boy, isn’t that the most amazing thing?

Stick that little bugger in the hummus.

This little gem is going to flower like crazy if you do the following things to it.

I have to say, I never thought of it that way, and that’s a really good idea.

Is it? Is it really?

Don’t sound surprised.

In some situations, I certainly could imagine doing that.

In some situations, what I’m really looking to do is vary the language I’m using.

So if I have some option to vary the language, that’s one way to think about it.

Yeah, well, of course, you have to figure out who your audience is.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, obviously that’s a more lighthearted tone, really kind of informal.

Another thing is, and I’ve heard, you know, I spent a lot of time in beautiful Balboa Park here in San Diego. And some of the plant experts there will just fall back on the Latin forms of the plant name that are easier to say.

And that’s kind of nice.

And I can’t think of any off the top of my head right now, but that’s kind of nice.

So instead of using the common name, they’ll just toss out a little bit of Latin, which also sounds a little elevated, but sometimes it’s beautiful in its own way.

So I don’t know if you do that.

I always use the Latin.

You always do?

I always use the Latin.

Good for you.

I always have to.

Oh, yeah, because if you use the common names, well, there’s 50,000 different plants called daisy.

That’s true.

Right, right, right.

Right?

So to be precise, I always use the Latin names.

So, yeah, so I could say, you know, plant your salvia or install your leptospermum.

I don’t know.

That sounds a little potential.

Yeah, the salvia is nice to say.

The other one, not so sure about.

Well, yeah, there are other words.

The verb is harder.

Like we’ve kind of given you something for the noun that might be workable.

But the verb is difficult because you are seeding sometimes.

Sometimes you’re…

You’re nestling.

Yeah, you’re inserting.

It starts to sound like softcore porn at some point, right?

Depends on the Latin name.

Right.

Yeah, there we go.

I never thought about that.

That would be a problem for garden writers, right?

When I was young, which is not that long ago, my grandmother gave me a book of gardening stuff from the 1930s. And the whole book was written in this interesting language where you didn’t plant anything.

Everything was introduced.

Oh.

You were introducing the plants to the soil.

And in my child brain, I was like nine, I was imagining like a formal meeting with plants in top hats where they’re like shaking hands in front of a committee.

You know what? I’m betting we’re going to get suggestions from listeners as well.

We can crowdsource this thing.

Yeah, we can.

What would you use instead of the noun plant or the verb plant?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your ideas and email to words@waywordradio.org, or tell us about it on Twitter @wayword.

Nan, we will share our results with you.

Surely something will come of it.

I just warn you, though, usually it’s puns.

Love it.

I love it.

That’s great.

Thank you guys so much.

Take care.

All right.

Good to talk to you, man.

Take care.

Good luck with the show.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Grant, if I’m in Newfoundland and I want to wish you good luck, I might say fair weather to you and snow to your heels.

Snow to my heels.

Oh, get the snow behind you.

You know, I was thinking that, and then I was thinking, I wonder if it means snow just up to your heels.

I don’t know.

Yeah, that’s better because snow is inevitable.

So if you’re going to have it, might as well not have a lot.

But I kind of like it snow maybe behind you.

I don’t know.

Right, the wind to your back.

Maybe someone will call and tell us.

Oh, now we have to go there.

Yay!

877-929-9673.

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Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, Martha. This is Kyle from San Diego.

Hey, Kyle. Welcome to the show.

What’s up, Kyle? How can we help?

So I have an old saying that my mom would say to my brother and I growing up that, say, we were instructed to clean our rooms, and instead we kind of just scooted everything off into the closet. She would say that that was Finnegan McGee’s Corner.

Finnegan McGee’s Corner?

Interesting.

And asking her about it, the first time that she had heard it was her mom on her Irish ancestry side, of course, talking about her great aunt and that she had this very well put together house. But if you open this certain room, it would just be all of her knickknacks kind of piled up.

And it would be Finnegan McGee’s room.

So my brother and I were just mentioning that to each other the other day. We’re realizing we really had no idea where that came from.

That’s interesting. Are you sure it was Finnegan?

Yeah, Finnegan McGee.

Okay.

Is there a similar one that you know?

Well, as a matter of fact.

As a matter of fact, there is.

Do you ever listen to a lot of old-time radio?

No.

I guess not.

There was a classic show. I mean, it was the number one show in the country for a while, on the air from 1935 to 1959, starring Jim and Mary and Jordan, and it was called Fibber McGee and Molly.

And Fibber and his wife, Molly, had, it was basically a sitcom setup, family setup. And Fibber was kind of a rascal, and she was the long-suffering wife.

And anyway, one of the things that he always claimed that he was going to do was finally clean out that closet.

And so at various times, every few episodes or so, he would go to a closet and open it up. And then the sound effects guys would have a really good time for like 90 seconds where it was everything in the world sounded like it was falling out of that closet.

Bowling balls and jingle bells and bricks and books and flags and anything that could make the slightest noise or the biggest noise.

And it was a running gag, and they used to get amazing laughs from it.

But it’s Fibber McGee’s closet is the original expression.

And for a long time, and it’s faded now because old-time radio isn’t what it was, but for a long time you could find Fibber McGee’s closet or McGee’s closet or Fibber’s closet mentioned in newspapers and books and songs and in other movies, other radio shows, as a really messed up, dirty, crowded thing that needed a lot of TLC.

Interesting.

So I probably just got changed again over the course of my family history.

Yeah, probably.

Sounds like it.

Yeah.

I’ve known people that have Fibber McGee drawers, too. That’s just where you put everything.

Yeah, I certainly have a few of those around. That’s neat.

I had no idea that it would be coming from your world, right? So mystery solved.

Yeah, well, little did I know I’d be getting some radio history here.

Yeah. It’s a pretty good bet. I used to be a big old-time radio buff. I still listen now and again.

Do you have a Fibber McGee corner or closet or drawer? Oh, at least one. And countertops and bookshelves. Litterbox.

Well, not the litterbox. Yeah, don’t we all.

Anyway, thank you so much for your call. Yeah, thank you so much, Grandmaster. Take care, Kyle. Bye. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number for you to call with your question about language or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Here are a couple more high school mascots that I really like. One is from Hoopston, Illinois. That’s the Hoopston area cornjerkers.

Okay. What does that mean exactly? That has to do with…

When you’re husking? Yeah. Yeah. Back in the old days. I think that’s the sweet corn capital of the world, actually.

I know, right? Let’s go. Road trip, right? That’s one thing I miss from Missouri is just sweet corn plucked right out of the field.

Right. Right. You would be a corn jerker in that case. Totally.

There’s another one from Avon, Connecticut. The Avon Old Farmed Winged Beavers.

Winged Beavers? Yes. What does the mascot look like? I’m going to envision in my mind some beautiful creature with, like, glowing eyes.

Okay. Yeah. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. Welcome to A Way with Words. Hello. Hi. Who is this? This is Melissa Powell.

Hi, Melissa. Welcome to the show. Hey, Melissa. Hey, Martha. Hey, Grant. Hey, where are you calling from? Shreveport, Louisiana.

All right. All right. Welcome to the show. Sounds like you’re on the tail end of a cold or something.

Well, I’ve got a little bit of a hoarse throat. Oh, I’m sorry. I am too.

Well, you probably know that there’s been a lot of rain in Louisiana and Texas. Yeah. I was watching rain fall down one day, and it was just like a waterfall going down the steps.

And I thought about the word cataract, and I said, I wonder why it means waterfall and also an eye problem. So, of course, what did I do? Went and looked it up in the dictionary, and it gave both definitions, but it didn’t tell me why.

It’s the same word, you know. I think it comes from a Greek word that means waterfall. Yeah, you’re right. It is kind of confusing, but there is an answer for that.

Cool. It goes back to the Latin word kataracta, which comes from older Greek words that mean a waterfall and the idea of water rushing down. But the interesting thing is that in antiquity, the word Kataracta also referred to one of those iron and timber heavy gates that are hung outside of a city to protect against invading hordes.

The portcullis. Yeah, yeah, it’s called a portcullis. Kind of thing that they drop so the enemy can’t come in, right? Yeah, exactly. But you can still shoot arrows through.

Yeah. You see that, for example, in the main entrance to the ancient city of Pompeii, there’s the portcullis, the big iron and timber door that drops down. And what you could do was let the enemy come in to the main gate of the city and then the portcullis drops behind them and then you’ve got them trapped.

Oh, pour the boiling oil on them and so forth. Well, oil was expensive. They didn’t actually.

Oh, I see. Yeah, but arrows, hot sand, that kind of thing.

But anyway, the whole idea comes from the notion of something falling with great force and crashing like a cataract being a waterfall. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So for your eye. Yeah. It’s a barrier coming down over your lens, right? So that’s what a cataract is.

It’s a filmy, translucent, or even opaque growth in your eye that blocks your vision. Yeah, it just comes down and blocks, just like those ancient gates blocking the enemy.

So the figurative usage made it split off, and so now, even in English, we have these two meanings still. Yeah, how cool is that? That’s pretty good.

Now, I also have another question about cataract. When did it start being used for the eye problem? Do you know?

That’s a good question. Well, at least the 1500s. Okay. That sounds about right.

And you’ll find, you know, there’s always that long history of Greek and Latin being used in medicine and science. So I’m not surprised to find it. There are a lot of Greek words that use that prefix, kata, meaning down.

So like a catastrophe is literally a downturn. A cataclysm originally in English meant a flood. It meant inundating with water. So stuff coming down.

Sort of like what you’re experiencing in Louisiana, it sounds like. Well, I hope things improve there. And I hope we help.

Oh, thank you. Take care now, Melissa. Okay, you too. Bye-bye. All right, bye-bye.

This is a show about words and language and how we use them. I know that you spend your days thinking about the way that language is so insidious. Words pop up and you’re like, why do we say that? This is the place to find out.

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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.

We heard from John Dunn of Vista, California. He spent many years working as an analytical chemist for a major pharmaceutical corporation. And during the course of his career, he has heard so much corporate jargon that he was maybe in need of pharmaceuticals himself.

It was really, really getting to him. And so he wrote up his own version of Minutes of a Meeting. And it’s sort of this wonderful linguistic cri de coeur. And I just wanted to share it with you.

Oh, boy. This is one of the things where they pile on all this jargon all together in one. Yeah, yeah. And this one is just particularly choice, I think.

So here are his minutes from one of those meetings. It is what it is. So let’s all reach out and circle the wagons to realign no-nonsense core strategic management perspective in order to take ownership and close the loop to see the bottom line and to afford us rationale at any rate, merely as a preference of choice, so to speak.

Consequently, and at this particular point in time, if you will, to touch base at the end of the day, moving forward to think green and outside of the box, needless to say, as it were.

You’re killing me. Stop. With regard to, wait, there’s more. With regard to culture in and of itself, having a proactive stance.

Additionally, in capturing the cost-benefit quality value added by our new paradigm, I’m so called in retrospect to optimize win-win priorities and take us to the next level while facilitating fiscal responsibility and scaling cross-functional teaming to bring awareness and spell this out in context per se.

In conclusion, are there any questions? Oh, no. The linguist in me says there’s a place in time for all of that jargon. I’m sure it does a job.

But the human in me says that nice circle of hell. Yeah, you’ve shipped me bare and rubbed salt in the wound and then made me walk for the remedy.

It’s terrible. It’s so terrible that it’s good. I mean, and it does make sense if you have a lexicon, you know that you can sit there and translate.

I mean grammatically, it all makes sense. But I just love the way that this is like a last ditch creed. Occur. I think I have an antidote to it. Make them stop.

Have you ever seen the video of Robert Benchley doing the Treasurer’s Report? Robert Benchley, the writer for The New Yorker, funny, funny guy, part of this smart set in the 1930s in New York, used to do this skit.

It was finally recorded on video where he pretended to be the fill-in speaker for one of these academic organizations or a society of some kind. And he does a lot of this not really understanding what’s going on and eventually it kind of comes out that funds have been absconded with.

It’s dry, dry, dry. It’s a lot like this in terms of the tone.

And the content, but maybe it’s the correct antidote to this. Oh, that’s pretty funny.

It’s the unicorn chaser to this poison that you put on the air.

It is poison. And since you mentioned that, I will say that I have tried to purge the phrase circle the wagons from my language ever since learning from some Native American folks that they find that offensive. Oh, do they? I didn’t know that. There we go. I’ll have to do that too.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

If you’ve got business jargon to share, yeah, maybe just keep it to yourself.

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Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Christina from Oakland.

Hi, Christina.

Oakland, California?

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Yeah, Oakland, California.

Of course.

Of course.

The one and only O-Town.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

So I get a lot of my news by listening to the BBC. And I recently heard one of the newscasters saying that some politician or other was biting the bit for, you know, whatever upcoming campaign or something.

And I’m familiar with the expression chomping at the bit to mean like, oh, anxiety or anxiousness or like really like gunning to go, I guess.

And I used to ride horses, and when your horse is just nibbling the bit, it can be a good thing, but if they get really obsessive about it, it can be a very bad thing, and it can be a sign of anxiety.

And so I get where the phrase comes from, and I’ve just never heard it other than chomping at the bit.

Oh, okay.

And did it sound like from the show that you were listening to that the biting of the bit had the same meaning, or was there something else happening there?

It did seem to have the same meaning.

Biting at the bit. There’s a larger variation than I entirely missed it.

So if a horse takes the bit in its mouth, and is there an element of it being willful, of it doing its own thing, taking control from the rider?

I’ve had horses stick their tongues under the bit, and that’s taking control from the rider.

But more, I think, like, you put the bit in their mouth, you put it on with the bridle, and that’s great, and that’s what you’re supposed to do.

And then sometimes the horse will chew the bit, right?

And if they’re sort of like slowly nibbling on it, like that’s fine.

And that almost sometimes indicates relaxation.

But if they start like really chomping at it and start really like gnashing their teeth, that’s a sign of anxiety.

And that’s like obviously you’re not going to get the training results that you want.

Of course, it’s really worked up and anxious.

Okay.

My sense of biting at the bit is that they’re doing something willfully and they’re trying to wrest control from the rider.

I don’t know if that’s the context that you heard there.

Okay.

I mean, that could easily be.

The context was political.

So I might have just like heard biting the bit, interpreted it as chomping at the bit and just like.

Oh, yeah.

Because of your own experience.

Christina, I don’t know if we’ve helped you or not.

You sound like more of an expert on horses.

Oh, I don’t know.

But you’re saying that there’s a difference between biting the bit and chomping at the bit.

I had no idea.

Well, it sounds like there’s a couple of things happening here.

One possible interpretation is it means that they’re raring to go.

Just can’t wait to get out and, you know, hit the track and go full speed.

And the other one is that they are out of control, that they have taken control away from the writer.

I don’t have the show on my phone anymore.

I’d go back and listen to it and try to figure out the context.

But I’ll look for it in the future.

Yeah, keep an ear out and let us know if you hear it again.

Thanks, Christina.

All right.

Thank you so much.

I had a great time.

All right.

Thanks, Christina.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John Bindell from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hi, John.

Hi, John. How are you doing?

Real good. How are you?

Excellent. Thank you.

Doing well. What’s happening in Circle City?

Well, I had a question.

I had recently read something, and it just brought back to mind memory of a client of mine years ago when I was working as a designer, interior designer in Cincinnati, Ohio.

And at that time, the client made a comment.

I was more or less a purchasing agent for her.

She had her own ideas about design, and she would tell me what she was after.

And after working with her for so long, I got a sense of what she liked, what she didn’t like, and I would show her things.

And she made, if there was something that she hadn’t even quite considered, her response would be, oh, I don’t not like that.

And to me, it was a double negative.

And then recently, I was reading an email that I got from a, had an attachment story to it.

From when I was still in Cincinnati and I was on a preservation, on a board of directors with the Preservation Association, and they were doing a story about their home tour.

And in the linked article in print, the homeowner was responding to one of the spaces that they had redone in this house that they renovated, and her comment was, you can’t not like being out here.

And again, it was the double negative, and that’s when it just brought it all back to me.

I thought, what is it? I’ve been other places, lived other places. I’m not that far from there, but I had never heard it used like that from people that I thought might know better, or maybe it is a regional thing.

It’s not regional, just to get that out of the way.

There’s nothing regional. It’s a construction in English where you want to express a positive through understatement, like totes is the term for it.

And so the double negatives here actually are kind of expressing a positive.

It’s interesting when you said the words of your clients, you didn’t really emphasize the not, which I would do.

I don’t not like that, would be the way that I would say it.

Yeah, I was curious what exactly she meant.

Well, that was it.

And again, it was after having that working relationship with her that I came to realize that she probably was not considering that absolutely, but what I showed her was a different alternative, and it probably gave her a different direction to go in, something that she was not even considering, but all of a sudden.

And it was always prefaced with, oh, sort of a surprise response, and that she was probably even surprised of it herself, and then that was how she verbalized it.

I don’t not like that.

So it’s expressing a kind of just a little bit more positive than neutral affirmation of what you’ve done without going overboard.

She’s not saying, I love it.

She’s just saying, okay, my first response isn’t negative.

Yeah, that sounds different from the second one.

Yeah, the second one is different.

You can’t not like this place.

Yeah, it’s impossible for you to dislike it.

That sounds different.

But it’s still those two negatives in a row.

And so in most cases in English, when we have double negatives, the double negatives actually aren’t a positive.

They don’t express, they’re just more negative.

Correct.

And this is one of the few places in English where you do see two negatives in a row expressing something that’s a little more positive than negative.

But I don’t feel like this is hugely positive.

No, no, I don’t either.

But the word you want, if you want to Google this, is L-I-T-O-T-E-S.

That’s a rhetorical device where you express something through understatement.

Yeah, some people say L-I-T-E-S, some people say L-I-T-E-S.

There we go.

Okay, I’ll look into that.

Yeah, there you go. Thanks, John. Appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Take care.

All right, take care.

Bye now.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Another really interesting usage, Grant, that I think you’ll like from Newfoundland English is the use of the word wonderful as an intensifier.

So if you’re really ill, I might say, Grant, you have a wonderful temperature.

Oh, okay.

Isn’t that something?

Yeah.

But so it just means a lot of or more of it, not necessarily positive.

Right, right.

Not necessarily.

Like you might suffer a wonderful loss.

It’s significant.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it’s sort of like awesome in the old sense, you know?

Wonderful.

Inspiring awe or inspiring wonder.

It is.

But it’s just something remarkable.

So unusual that I have wonder about it.

Yeah.

Isn’t that interesting?

Because we always think of wonderful in our use of English as something very positive, but not necessarily.

That’s a good one.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hi.

This is Michael calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Michael.

Welcome to the program.

Hey, Michael.

Yeah, hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

So I wanted to see if you could help me gain some insight into a little jingle from my childhood that came up recently.

The whole reason this came up is because it’s springtime down here, and my wife and I were out for a walk with our son.

And among other things, the dandelions are blooming.

So we thought it’d be fun to teach our son this little jingle that we both knew,

Which is you pick up the dandelion and hold it by the stem with your thumb under the head of the flower,

Kind of like you’re going to flip a coin.

As you sing this little jingle, you flick the head of the dandelion off.

And so the jingle goes, Mama had a baby and its head popped off.

And then as you finish the jingle, you pop the dandelion off.

And, of course, my son thought it was fun, as I remember thinking it was when I was a kid.

And later that day, we went over to a neighbor’s house,

And my son wanted to teach his friend this jingle.

And he did the little jingle and flicked the head of the dandelion.

And I noticed the parents of the friend looked at him with a little bit of concern

And possibly even horror because I guess it is kind of a dark little jingle.

But it occurred to me at that point that they must not have ever heard this when they were kids.

Everyone we knew growing up knew it.

And so we started thinking about this, and we’re both from New England.

My wife’s from Boston, and I’m from southern New Hampshire.

And now we’re down in Texas.

And we’ve since asked anyone who we think to ask down who’s from Texas.

No one’s ever heard of it. So maybe we could get to the bottom of this.

Yeah, it would be jarring to hear it for the very first time. It reminds me of that lullaby

Rockabye baby in the treetop, you know, about the bow breaking and the cradle falling. I mean,

There’s some pretty dark things that…

Yeah, or ring around the rosy, I suppose,

Is rather dark, too.

Yeah, it’s a myth that that’s connected to the plague, though.

Oh, is that right? Oh, interesting.

Because a lot of people who I’ve asked about this dandelion jingle,

They say, oh, it sounds very dark, like the ring around the rosy.

It’s fairly widespread.

A number of years ago, there was a conversation on the website Metafilter,

Which is a great community of folks, and they talked about this,

And some people chimed in to say that there was a variant in Scotland,

For example, in the 1970s, where it was something along the line of

Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off.

That’s the version they used.

And somebody else jumped in to mention that they didn’t use dandelions.

They used what is known as a plantain.

It’s not like the kind that you eat, but it’s got long leaves.

It’s very common in the yard if you don’t have a particularly nice yard.

And it’s got the little stem that pops up in the middle with the seed pod on the end of it.

And you make a little loop around that seed head and pop it right off.

We did that too, but we called it guns.

We just made guns that way.

They pop them off and they fly.

Yeah, I don’t know what we called it.

They fly 10, 15 feet maybe.

I remember doing it with just about any flower,

But the dandelions were the ones that it was understood we could pick them

And, you know, dispose of them.

Let me ask you while we’re talking about this kind of children’s folklore,

Did you do the thing where you hold the yellow flower up to the chin

To find out if they like butter?

We did, yes.

And that, you know, that’s something that we asked around about as well.

And my wife and I both did that.

Yeah, we did too.

But usually it turned into a chance to smear the dandelion on the other person’s face.

Yeah, absolutely.

That’s right.

We had another myth that if you smeared it on the chin and a certain amount of the yellow pollen stayed there, that meant something too.

So that was clearly manufactured for fun.

But anyway.

All the crazy stuff.

So it’s widespread, not necessarily regional, and lots of different variations,

Probably because it’s passed from mouth to ear rather than on the printed page.

Well, what we’re going to do is I know we’re going to get a ton of email on this.

Yeah, we will.

Everyone’s going to have these memories, and we’ll find out if lots of folks in Texas say it, all right?

Okay, thanks.

Thanks for your call.

All right.

Really appreciate it.

It’s fun going down these old roads, isn’t it?

Yes, it is.

Okay.

All right.

Take care.

Take care.

I used to jump rope, and there was that awful one.

My mother and your mother were hanging up clothes.

My mother punched your mother in the nose.

Yes, yes.

What color was the blood?

And then you go through all these different colors.

Right.

And so they trip and that’s the color that it was.

I mean, what kind of stuff are we teaching kids?

No, kids are teaching each other.

Well, that’s true.

Right?

Right?

Maybe a way of dealing with all the dark uncertainty in the world and life.

And also kind of a matter of factness, though, about the world.

That the world has death and darkness in it.

Yeah.

The kids are more resilient than maybe we think.

I loved folklore books when I was a kid, and I know that you, the listeners, have tons of folklore in your life.

This is a great place to share at 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

There was a fun discussion in our Twitter feed about the need for a word for when your favorite restaurant closes.

Oh, yeah.

Wasn’t that fun?

So we got a question from a Twitter follower.

Who was it?

Well, Punch Card Sorter is the one who I think.

That’s the handle.

Yeah.

And I retweeted that out on the account knowing that everyone would step up to the plate.

And boy, did they.

Yeah, they did.

We got some suggestions.

I don’t know that any of them will stick.

Because comedy is the first resort of the replier, right?

Yes.

And for example, Jeff Tobacco suggested Bistro No Moe.

Or I like this one, Gon Appetit.

Gon Appetit.

Not bad.

Okay.

Yeah, but you know that just sinking feeling?

The restaurant business is so tough, so competitive, so challenging.

So this is happening all the time.

I think there really should be a word for it.

Gone Appetite.

That’s not bad, though.

That’s my favorite so far, but maybe we’ll hear others.

If you have a suggestion, give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or email words@waywordradio.org.

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

And you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine

And director and editor Tim Felten in San Diego.

In New York, we thank production wizard James Ramsey,

Quiz guy John Chaneski,

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

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

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

So long.

Thank you.