Folding Money (episode #1616)

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. Here’s a word I just added to my vocabulary, and you might want to

Add it too if you don’t know it. Willipus wallipus. Willipus wallipus. What did the doctor say caused

That? A willipus wallipus, which is W-I-L-L-I-P-U-S hyphen W-A-L-L-I-P-U-S. In the late 19th century,

A Willipus Wallipus was this vague, legendary monster with lots of legs that supposedly haunted

The American South. But soon after, it became a term that applied to a steamroller or some

Similar large machine that you’d use on the road, any large piece of road equipment.

And I was just looking at a 1932 newspaper that talked about the town’s municipal Willipus

Wallopus. I’ve been thinking about willopus wallopus for any large thing. My dog bear is

Getting really big and I heard myself call him willopus wallopus the other day. I’m going to

Yeah, it’s a cute term, right? Well, I wonder if in the fanfic world, if anybody has written about

Willopus wallopus and I’m thinking about fanfic because the word I’ve come across recently,

I didn’t know I needed it, but boy, did I. It’s the opposite of caps lock.

The opposite of caps lock.

Yeah, so instead of putting down the caps lock key and typing everything in all capital letters,

It’s laps lock, where you don’t type anything in capital letters,

Not even the first letter of a sentence or someone’s name or the pronoun I.

Laps lock, L-A-P-S-L-O-C-K.

And it’s the kind of thing that a fan fiction writer might do to kind of set their style or set their tone.

You might see it on AO3, the website archive of our own.

And it’s particularly the kind of term that you would use when somebody should have used capitalization.

They were like, oh, the lapse lock fanfic, I can’t read this.

I was spelling it in my mind, L-A-P-S-E, you know, like they just forgot.

I think that’s part of the hint there, part of the connotation.

Yes, they’re lapsing and they’re caps locking.

We’re using the words Willipus Wallipus and Laps Lock these days.

What are you using?

Let us know.

877-929-9673 or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Janet from Tucson.

Hello, Janet in Tucson.

How are you?

Well, you know, I love words and I was tickled to find your show.

So when I was young and wild back in the 80s,

I was working in a bar in Alaska during the oil boom, and this guy came in, dressed really nicely,

And I went over to see if he wanted a drink, and he had an accent.

So I asked him where he was from, and he told me South Africa, and handed me a card with an embossed lion on it,

And it said, Fortune favors the audacious.

So that just lit up something inside me.

I thought, wow, I have to live by that.

But I’ve seen it written out as Fortune favors the brave.

I’ve seen Fortune Savers the Bold, and I was wondering about the origin of it and what the accurate quote is.

Oh, wow. Well, Janet, we’re wondering about your time being young and wild in the 80s in Alaska.

That sounds pretty wild.

And what’s stopping you now?

Right now, I’m 69, and my quote would be a T-shirt I’ve seen lately that said,

Your mistake was thinking I’m a nice old lady.

All right. So you still got some sass in you.

Go back up to Alaska and show them what’s what.

And you’re audacious.

I’m wondering if this guy, was that his family crest?

I’m wondering about this card.

Did you find out anything more?

Was he ex-military or anything like that?

No, he was a businessman and, you know, probably in sales.

And that would explain the card because, you know.

It sure would.

Well, Janet, what we can tell you is that this is a really old idea. It goes back to antiquity.

And there were ancient Roman writers who recorded several Latin sayings to that effect.

And as you suggested, sometimes it’s fortune favors the bold or fortune helps the brave.

And the idea in the Latin versions of that was that the Roman goddess Fortuna, the goddess of luck, is going to help people who are brave or who are strong.

And versions of this have been adopted as a motto by various military regiments in different countries, which is why I asked about that.

And also by sports teams.

Some people put a version of this on the family coat of arms.

But we see it back in the second century BCE in a comedy by Terence, the Roman playwright from North Africa.

And then a little bit later, we see the Roman poet Virgil, who had a version a little bit closer to yours.

It’s Audentes Fortuna Uat, which means fortune helps the brave.

And of course, it doesn’t always favor the brave.

There’s another story about the Roman commander Pliny the Elder, who supposedly said something like that right before going to watch the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

And that did not go well for him.

But I can see why a guy would put it on his card and pass it out to attractive young women or to anybody, to sales prospects.

Well, that’s really interesting.

Thank you for sharing.

Well, Janet, I think we’ve given you several millennia of history here.

Thank you.

It was very interesting.

And thank you for calling.

Take care of yourself in Tucson.

Stay audacious.

Right.

You guys are awesome.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you so much.

I just love the idea that she came across this cool language question slipped across a bar in Alaska on a business card.

You know, stranger things have happened.

Maybe it fell out of a book that you checked out at the library.

Maybe it came up over dinner.

Maybe it’s just something you remember whispered on the dead of night while you were trying to fall asleep.

Whatever it is, we want to help you answer that language question.

877-929-9673.

In Spanish, if you want to describe something that is super old, you can say it’s del año del caldo.

Now, literally, caldo is broth, and so it means from the year of the broth.

And the idea is that it’s so old that it goes back to the year broth was invented.

Isn’t that wonderful?

Yeah, that’s very good.

I was also thinking, I was wondering, like, the idea of broth that is always on the stove.

You’re always adding water and little scraps of leftovers to it.

Oh, so it’s been there all that time.

Yeah, so you might talk about somebody wearing unos pantalones del año del caldo.

Oh, wonderful.

877-929-9673.

That’s the number you call to share your proverbs and sayings from wherever you are in the world.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Mark from Scranton.

Hi, Mark from Scranton. How are you?

I am good.

So I was watching a 70s crime drama, and I heard a character use the phrase,

I dropped a dime on him.

And I didn’t quite understand what they would have meant

And why diming out somebody or dropping a dime on somebody would mean something.

What were you watching? Was this like Columbo?

It was actually the Rockford file.

Oh, I love that. I love that.

I was going to say, thanks for the earworm.

Living on the beach in a trailer?

Yes, and on the beach with the trailer was Angel was the character.

That’s right.

My idea of a rascal is James Garner in the Rockford Files.

Great show.

Oh, yeah, so dropping a dime.

Yeah, drop a dime for quite a while has been a term that means to become a snitch or become an informer.

And it goes back to those old days when you’d make a call from a public telephone.

I always think it’s so weird now when I see a movie and somebody steps into a phone booth, you know, or on the Rockford Files or something like that.

And they have to actually step into a phone booth and literally drop a dime in the slot in order to get a dial tone.

And that became slang to tip off the police because that’s how you would do it.

And there are lots of variants of it, like drop the dime on or drop a dollar on or drop a quarter on.

Meaning to become an informer.

I was curious about whether you’ve heard it in terms of sports as well.

I have not, and I’m a big sports fan, but no, I’ve never heard it in terms of,

I’m trying to think of where it would be used in a sporting analogy.

Think about a sweet pass in basketball that turns into an assist,

Like an alley-oop pass that’s just perfect.

Sometimes that’s called dropping a dime, or the same in football.

Dropping dimes down the field. You know, he just keeps connecting perfectly with the receiver.

So it’s a lovely extension of that. Yeah. So you mentioned to dime it to dime out. That goes back

To the 1980s. Earlier, we have dime dropper, meaning an informer to the 1960s. And to drop a

Dime goes back to 1958, at least when it appears in this supposed collection of teen gang slang that

What the police were putting together so you could identify teens and their evil language.

So the phrase never updated to account for inflation.

We don’t drop quarters on people, do we?

Well, it did.

Yeah, Martha mentioned dropping quarters occasionally.

And literally, when we talk about dropping the dime, that was the mechanism of the machine.

The weight of the dime caused things to happen.

You needed the gravity to trigger the mechanism aside.

So you will see mentions of dropping a dime for the bus or for public toilets or for other things.

Because that’s what those little boxes did.

The weight had to hit the trigger or the switch inside to make the thing happen.

Yeah, and if you’ve heard that sound, you know it.

So I guess today it’s really not going to be around since it’s hard to even find a phone book.

But I guess if you’re going to do that today, you’d get a burner phone, right?

And just make your phone call and then get rid of it.

Yeah, exactly.

Borrow one from some unwary passerby.

Mark, thank you so much for your call.

Maybe I have to give Watford Files a spin and see if it holds up.

I remember watching after school and just thinking James Garner was the coolest.

He was always in so much trouble, but he always seemed to pull it out by the end of the episode, didn’t he?

Just in the nick of time.

It still holds up to today.

All right. Well, that’s good news. Thank you so much. Take care of yourself.

Thank you.

Bye, Mark.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

It’s not quite the same, but drop a dime on your cell phone, 877-929-9673,

Toll free in the United States and Canada, or contact us by email, words@waywordradio.org.

And if you want to reach us another way, there’s at least a dozen ways to do it.

Go to our website at waywordradio.org slash contact.

In the slang of the 1940s, if you wanted to say, I agree completely with you, or what you said is definitely true, you could say, you shred it, wheat.

You shred it, wheat.

Who said that?

Like, you know, somebody asks you to go to the movies with them, and you’d say, you shred it, wheat.

You shred it, wheat?

Yeah, yeah, like you said it.

Are you sure that wasn’t just a cereal maker just trying to force a thing on people?

Well, it’s interesting.

It shows up in collections of slang from the 1940s.

And then a little bit later in newspapers, I saw it used to mean you figure it out.

You know, like, what am I supposed to do with that problem?

You shred it, wheat.

Okay.

Gotcha.

All right.

We’ll shred your wheat and your barley and your corn.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And you can find our WhatsApp number on our website at waywordradio.org slash contact.

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 we’re joined by our quiz guide, John Chinesky.

Hello, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Hi.

It’s a pleasure to be back once again.

You know, if I had a dime for every time we did a quiz based on rhymes, I’d have enough for a subway ride, maybe.

Instead of doing rhyme time, I thought we’d try something a little different.

This is called rhyme and time.

In the following answers, the rhyming words are separated by the word and.

For example, if I gave you the clue, this is a technique for narrowing the aspect ratio of a widescreen movie so that it will fit on your TV screen.

You might know that that technique is called pan and scan.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, they pan the movie.

They find where the action is, and that’s the part they use.

Pan and scan.

So it’s going to be blank and blank, and the two words will rhyme.

Here we go.

Speaking of techniques, it’s a technique for courting someone.

You take them out frequently for drinks and good food.

Wine and dine.

Yes, wine and dine.

It’s a pretty good technique.

You’re not likely to make many friends with an attitude like this one.

You’re a pessimist who focuses only on the negative aspects of any situation.

Groan and moan, moan and groan, moaner groaner.

That’s something, but I don’t think it’s something I’ve heard regularly.

Doom and gloom.

Yes, doom and gloom.

I would also accept gloom and doom.

Both of them are used.

Now, you won’t make many friends if you’re not there for them.

It may sound like an advantageous position to be in during a flood, but it really means you need help.

High and dry.

Yes, high and dry.

Very good.

A better way to live your life is to be honest and straightforward when dealing with people.

Be equitable.

Be a parallelogram.

Fair and square.

Yes, fair.

I was going to say true and blue, but no.

Oh, that’s true and blue.

We can make that a new thing.

I like it.

This term is often used for an event where fans can encounter celebrities in person.

Now, it sounds a little redundant to me.

How can you do the first and not the second?

Meet and greet.

Meet and greet, yeah.

Meet someone and then not say hello at least.

Just ignore them.

I don’t know.

Yeah, exactly.

The internet age and spam emails, social media, fake news have given new life to a form of securities fraud.

It involves artificially inflating the price of a stock with misleading positive statements and then selling your overvalued shares.

Pump and dump.

Pump and dump.

Yes, very good.

Wall Street term.

It wasn’t until Jenny was pregnant with our firstborn that I heard this phrase.

The parents who use it are actually doing some good re-overpopulation.

One and done.

One and done.

Yes, exactly.

Whereas Jenny and I, we are two and through.

That’s something I came up with.

Now, while this rhyming term can describe several flags, including the flags of Syria, Honduras, Venezuela, Texas, even the U.S.,

It’s typically used as a nickname of the flag of the Confederate States.

Stars and bars.

Stars and bars.

Lots of flags have stars and bars, but that’s the stars and bars.

Finally, this phrase described what my genes have been through.

In some places, they’re so thin you can almost read through them.

In others, you can read through them.

Wear and tear.

Wear and tear, yes.

And on that note, I’ve got to go buy some new jeans.

Okay.

You guys were great.

Take care.

Thanks, John.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Bye-bye.

See you then.

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 comments and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Lorelai calling from Wakefield, Virginia.

Hi, Lorelai.

Welcome to the show.

We’re delighted to have you. What’s up, Lorelai?

Well, I was hoping to speak with you about nonce words, N-O-N-C-E.

It’s not even a word that I knew a month ago,

But I play this game every morning with my husband over coffee called the spelling bee.

It’s in the newspaper.

So you’re given seven letters and you have to come up with as many words as possible

Using any combination of any of those letters.

Whenever the letters N-O-C-E are in play, I always miss the word nonce, honestly, because I had never heard of it.

Certainly never used it before.

So I Googled it, and I discovered that it’s an adjective, and it means coined for or used for one occasion,

Which I thought was hilarious because to me in my world, nonce is like a one-occasion word,

The only occasion I’d ever use it is for this puzzle.

So I was wondering if you had other examples of nonce words.

So you learned nonce from the New York Times spelling bee then, huh?

Yes, yes.

And that’s the only time you see it.

Yeah, nonce is not that common a word.

It has an interesting origin.

It comes from Middle English words that literally mean for the once.

For than anes.

And, as you said, it involves words that are invented on the spur of the moment just to be used on that particular occasion.

Sometimes they just, you know, float out into the ether and sometimes they stick around.

The famous words, it’s a novelty word, is frabjous, you know, that Lewis Carroll used in his poem.

Jabberwocky.

Yes, yes.

That’s a great one.

But there are a lot of those.

The other day, somebody was asking me for a languagey book.

They wanted a recommendation for a languagey book.

And I thought, well, that’s a perfect nonce word, right?

You can’t find it in the dictionary, but a lot of times you add a Y to a word and you get something like languagey.

And you know what I mean, right, when I talk about a languagey book.

Right, right.

It struck me that nonce is a nonce word.

Like, it is what it is.

Can you think of any other words that kind of are what they are?

Like, I suppose, I guess portmanteau actually is a portmanteau.

Are there any words that really are what they are?

Yeah, yeah.

Portmanteau meaning a word that combines a couple of different words, like motel from

Motor hotel.

Portmanteau being an old word for suitcase in French.

Right.

Well, those words are called autological words.

I mean, think of the word polysyllabic.

That word is.

Oh.

Polysyllabic or pentosyllabic.

Or mellifluous, which means smooth like honey.

Right.

Flowing like honey.

Right.

Pentosyllabic.

Yeah, Grant was talking about like a mellifluous voice.

There’s also sibilant, you know, which is a sibilant word, right?

It means sort of, you know, having a hissing or whistling sound.

Oh, that’s a great one.

I thought of noun.

Like noun really is a noun.

Noun is a noun.

That’s a perfect example.

Really?

Yes.

Oh, how about we, W-E-E?

It’s a little bitty word.

Oh, right.

That’s perfect.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate the insight on non-swords,

And hopefully having this whole conversation about this word

Will help it stick in my brain so the next time those letters are up,

Not only can I come up with that word,

But also have a conversation about it and what it means and what it is.

Good luck with your pangrams.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Have a good afternoon.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You can leave us a voicemail anytime, 877-929-9673.

Grant, you remember our conversation about blessing boxes, those little free pantries

That are stocked with canned goods and other household items for anybody who’s in need.

Yeah.

That was a great conversation.

Blessing boxes are kind of the dry goods version of Little Free Libraries,

Where people who have extra canned goods and household items can make them available to the community.

Right. They’re like Little Free Pantries.

And we heard from Joe in Milan, Italy, who told us about something called the Love Fridge.

And that’s in Chicago.

And that’s a refrigerator that serves the same function in a community.

And it turns out that there have been hundreds of these springing up around the country in the last few years, and in fact, around the world.

And some people call them freeges, F-R-E-E-D-G-E.

And it’s the same idea, you know, take what you need and leave what you can.

Yes, I’ve seen that near a church here in San Diego, and my family has left a few items in them.

Just when the tiny freezer in our house is a little too full, and we’re like, well, this is still good.

And we haven’t eaten it because it was a gift from somebody else.

Let’s go put this in the refrigerator next to the church

And maybe somebody else will take it.

Well, you can actually go to freege.org, that’s F-R-E-E-D-G-E.org,

And see a map of these freges all around the country.

We’ll see if that word sticks.

And thanks to Joe and Milan, who, by the way, communicates with us via WhatsApp.

And you can, too, no matter where you are in the world.

You can find our WhatsApp contact info on our website at waywordradio.org slash contact.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is John Bauman, and I’m from the Upper Peninsula, Michigan.

Great, a youper.

That’s right, that’s right.

Welcome to the show, John.

What’s on your mind?

So I’m a biologist in the region, and I cross a lot of rivers as I drive all around Michigan.

And I noticed there’s several rivers in Michigan and other Great Lakes states that are named the Carp River.

And I believe many of those rivers were named prior to carp being introduced into the Great Lakes region, perhaps in the late 1800s or so.

And so I just suspected that perhaps carp meant something else, maybe not specific to fish.

And I thought that might be something you could answer.

Yeah, so the dilemma is how were they called the carp river before there were carp in the United States?

That’s right. I thought maybe there was a different meaning to the word carp.

Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

Basically what happened was the Europeans came here, saw some fish that looked like the carp that they knew back from the old world, and just called them carp.

Even though they weren’t actually carp.

So you probably know the Latin names better than I do.

So carp are of the family, what is it, Cyprinidae?

Cyprinidae, that’s right.

Cyprinidae.

But there are other common names, and you can find these in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Fish are sometimes called silver carp or white carp, but they’re not actually carp or cold water carp, humpback carp.

And these are not of that family at all.

And I actually have something from a book by Virgil Vogel called Indian Names in Michigan,

Where he specifically talks about the Carp River getting its name in Michigan.

And he mentions that it was named for the sucker, which is a type of fish.

Maybe you know something about that.

That’s right.

Yeah, there is a species of carp sucker.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he says the Indians had named it for the sucker.

And he writes, but the whites translated the name as carp for fish introduced from Europe.

So it was an Ojibwe name originally.

So that river in particular was named for a type of fish, but it wasn’t the carp, according to him.

That makes sense.

I had thought perhaps that the word carp meant to pluck, you know, as if you’re carping on somebody.

So perhaps when folks relied more on subsistence fishing, it was kind of maybe beneficial to know where they could go and just carp a fish out of the river for dinner.

But it sounds like it has more to do with the species that carp sucker.

Yeah, and the Europeans did that everywhere they went.

For example, the European robin and the North American robin aren’t the same bird at all.

They just look vaguely alike.

And so they called the North American robin the robin just because it looked like the European robin.

And the possum and the opossum in the United States and Australia have the similar names just because they both have the pouches and they’re both similar.

But they’re not the same species at all.

They just looked kind of alike, so they took the same name.

And you’ll find that again and again and again, the common names are borrowed over and over again to refer to very different species.

And this is, of course, as you know, why we have the Latin names in order to, because the common names only get you so far before there’s tons of confusion.

Makes sense.

Yeah, same thing with plants and flowers, you know.

A single flower name can apply to a lot of different flowers as well.

I loved your question, by the way.

I think it’s a really interesting question.

I love that it gets us into the naming of all of the different places and animals in this country.

Just the heritage of this one river, there is some continuance there that we still name the Carp River after a fish,

Continuing what the Native Americans had done.

It’s not the same name.

It’s not the same fish.

But there’s a little bit of continuance there.

So the historical chain of providence is still present.

Agreed.

Yeah, I guess in addition to carp, there are a number of sturgeon rivers throughout the Great Lakes region.

And some of those sturgeon rivers, sturgeon, as you know, are a protected species all around the Great Lakes.

And some of the rivers that are named Sturgeon River, there may not be a remnant population in existence there today,

But there are sites for reintroduction or rehabilitation.

And so some of the names of those rivers give an idea of what might have been here historically

And maybe provides us a goal where we want to get to in the future in terms of species rehabilitation.

John, thank you so much for your question.

As you’re driving around doing your work with biology and fish and so forth in Michigan

And come up with other questions, by all means, give us another call, will you?

Will do. Thanks for talking with me today.

Sure. Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye, John.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Via from Harwich, Massachusetts.

Welcome to the show. What’s on your mind?

I was wondering the origin of to throw someone in the bus,

Because, you know, it doesn’t seem right for it to be someone actually throwing another person in the bus.

No, not really, does it?

Is this something that you’ve, a phrase you’ve run across in your life?

I’m in high school. I’m in freshman year.

So I hear like different phrases all the time and most of them I understand.

But then this one, it’s just like, I know what it’s supposed to mean, but I don’t know the origin of it.

And what does it mean in your world?

Like to betray someone.

Oh, yeah. That’s a great word for it. Betrayal. High school betrayal is the worst betrayal.

Throw someone under the bus. You know, I have an entry for that in my 2006 book.

The official dictionary of unofficial English. But since I published that book, Merriam-Webster has

Done excellent research on this topic. Just a really fantastic essay on this. And so I’m going

To point to that. We’ll link to it on the website. But to summarize the work that they’ve done,

Which improves upon the work that I did, they’ve traced this to British English, which surprised me

Quite a bit because I hadn’t found what they found. But new information is appearing in the

Digital databases all the time. And they found it used in British politics as a maneuver to kind of

To shift blame or responsibility or to gain some kind of control over political situation.

And the best example that they have in print is from 1982. This is in the London Times.

And it, quote, she was in deep trouble and the lobbies hummed with their prospect of her departure.

President Galtieri had pushed her under the bust, which the gossips had said was the only means of her removal.

And it’s not a literal pushing under the bust.

It’s a figurative one.

And it’s exactly like we use it today, even though it’s from 1982.

That’s 40 years ago.

It’s crazy to think that this expression’s been around that long because it feels so contemporary, doesn’t it?

Yeah, definitely.

This is new information that Merriam-Webster found,

And it kind of replaces all other theories on the origin of throw someone under the bus that you might find.

Yeah.

How about that?

That’s not what I expected, to be honest, politics.

What were you expecting?

Yeah, what were you thinking?

I don’t know what I was expecting.

Politics? It was not on your mind.

British politics, you’re like, how does that make it to my high school?

Yeah.

So basically just a metaphor.

And I guess if it’s in England, it’s going to be even more painful if it’s a double-decker bus that you’re getting thrown under.

Those red buses hurt more, is that what you’re saying?

They’re bigger.

But that’s all that we know.

Again, like I said, you’ll find some other theories out there, but those are old theories and they’re outdated.

You’ll find theories that it comes from touring bands or it comes from sports.

Those are no longer accurate.

Yeah.

Got it?

Well, thank you.

Yeah, super duper.

Call us again sometime.

You know, we’re going to hire you as our field worker in Massachusetts high schools.

That’s what we’re going to do.

You have to report back with some slang and new language, okay?

Yeah, please do.

Thank you for your call today.

In any case, we’re happy to have you.

Thank you for having me.

All right.

Be well.

Take care.

Bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Sometimes high schoolers ask the best questions.

We’d love to hear from you or your high schooler.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

It’s toll-free in the U.S. And Canada.

Hey, Grant, what’s the best thing about Switzerland?

St. Bernard’s, mountains, snow, lovely lasses.

Yeah, but don’t you think their flag is a big plus?

Oh, oh, Martha.

Yes, sir.

Don’t make me come over there.

I’ve got noogies saved for you.

Bad jokes.

Martha loves them.

Send them to Martha at waywordradio.org.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Many years ago, I spent some one-on-one time with the writer Barbara Kingsolver.

She rarely did interviews, but she wanted to publicize a reading that she had coming up.

It was an event to benefit the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, which is a grassroots organization that was advocating on behalf of the LGBTQ community in Kentucky.

And so she agreed to let me profile her for the state’s largest newspaper.

So I spent a day with Barbara Kingsolver on her family farm in the beautiful Blue Ridge Highlands of southwestern Virginia.

And rolling hills and lush woods, and her family lived in a very rustic farmhouse. And over lunch

There, we talked about her most recent book at the time, The Poisonwood Bible, which was a finalist

For the Pulitzer Prize. And I remember her speaking with such a sense of wonder about what she called

This monstrous stroke of luck that she’d had as a writer, and how important it was to her to use

This megaphone that she’d been handed. And the other thing that struck me from that day was her

Adamant belief that Kentuckians were among the last groups in America that it was still okay to

Make fun of. Whether it was jokes in everyday conversation or in the mainstream media, people

Were still getting away with mocking folks from Appalachia for their appearance, for their

Intellect, and certainly for their dialect. And I kept going back to that conversation last week

While reading her brilliant new novel, Demon Copperhead. It’s a modern retelling of the

Charles Dickens novel, David Copperfield, lifted out of England and set down in Appalachia.

And like Dickens, King Solver is dedicated to being a voice for people whose voices keep getting

Drowned out. And the plot of her book follows a similar trajectory. A lot of the characters’ names

Are similar, but I want to emphasize you absolutely do not have to have read David Copperfield in

Order to appreciate this book. Demon Copperhead stands on its own. And one of the great pleasures

Of this book is that King Solver has such an ear for the way people in that part of the country

Speak. And if you’re a longtime listener of this show, you’re going to recognize a lot of features

In Appalachian dialect that we’ve talked about over the years. For example, people use the word

Whenever to refer to a single event, like you might say, whenever my dog died. Within that

Dialect, the word whenever there makes perfect sense. Demon Copperhead is this magnificent,

Absorbing novel. It’s all about connection and loneliness and addiction and hardship and

Perseverance and finding a way to go on it. Granted, it’s one heck of a great read.

And for a real treat, listen to the audio version.

It’s voiced by Charlie Thurston, and he does a terrific job of rendering these characters.

They just become unforgettable.

That book is Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

And Martha, I’m sold.

And I’m delighted to say that Demon Copperhead just won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

We’ll put a link to it on our website.

And we’d also love to hear about what you’re reading, what passages really grabbed you lately.

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mike Fitzgerald from Madison, Alabama.

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

Well, I have been in the Army for a long time.

I retired a few years ago, and I’m still supporting the Army.

And a term came up recently.

I’m like, what is this?

But the word is charrette.

And usually it sounds like it’s some sort of event or some sort of planning type of thing.

But I was like, what does this actually mean?

Charrette.

So how would you use it in a sentence?

Usually it’s like we need to do a charrette on this topic or for this operation.

I received an email recently where they referred to it as a design charrette.

That’s a good clue. Design charrette is a very good clue.

And does it happen outside of something that’s designy or creative like that?

I’m not really certain. I just know that as different events are being planned, sometimes this term gets thrown out there.

You know, I think sometimes what happens in the military, different leaders will start using terminology and, you know,

Their staffs and whatnot kind of just pick up on the term and start using it.

I don’t know if they’re using it correctly or not, but it definitely caught my attention.

Yeah, I can see why that would catch your attention because it’s, I wouldn’t call it alien to the army, but it definitely came from outside the army.

It comes in this case from architecture. And that’s why the word design caught my ear.

Because if we can work backward from it, in modern architecture, it’s about an intense period of work where students might finish their projects before deadline.

Or even an architectural event where stakeholders or just a bunch of people who are involved in a project

Get together to workshop all of the different things they need to resolve

And solve all the outstanding issues so that they can move on to the next stage in the project.

And so Charette can be either one of those.

So as I look back at the most recent email that I see that,

That’s actually kind of the tone of it, that they’re trying to work through workarounds and exhaust all opportunities.

So that’s really interesting.

Yeah, but it’s even more interesting than that.

If we can dig a little bit into the history of the word charrette, before it came into English, it meant little cart.

And it came about probably because of these little carts with four wheels that architects would haul their architectural plans around on.

So if you imagine these large rolled up drawings that can be kind of unwieldy.

And if you have a lot of them, you can’t really carry them in your arms.

You need some kind of cart.

And there was an expression by 1870 in French,

Se met en charrette, which meant to put yourself in a cart,

Meaning to rush around to finish your work.

It was used by architectural students.

And charrette itself is one of many words we have in English and in French,

Which come from a Latin word, carus, C-A-R-R-U-S,

Which meant car, but not car in the modern automobile sense,

But car is a thing, a vehicle used for transporting other things.

And then we get words like car and chariot and what else, Marth, carriage and carriageway all come from this word.

The military in general has so many terms and acronyms that get used that I figured it just kind of fell into that category.

But yeah, it’s really neat that it’s got a lot more behind it.

Yeah, Mike, I suspect a lot of times the words that come into the Army,

You know, as somebody like you who’s worked in the military for a long time,

You’ve probably seen this before.

A lot of the words that come into the military come from the private contractors.

So they’ll come from outside the military,

From companies that are doing business with the military.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened here.

That’s great.

You know, I think it’s, you know, finding out the origins of words

And especially your show has been really enlightening for me and my family.

So we really appreciate what you do, and thank you for taking my call.

That’s our pleasure. Take care.

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

We love those words from the workplace, those things that come up on your job.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, and we’ll talk about it,

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

I just have to mention that I will never forget the moment that I realized that the word onion is zozo spelled sideways.

Zozo.

Zozo.

Z-O hyphen Z-O.

So the I becomes a hyphen turned sideways.

Right.

Just turn your head and zozo becomes onion.

It’s an onion headline.

You know, the satirical newspaper, area woman realizes onion spells so-so, turns sideways.

Share your linguistic epiphanies with us, 877-929-9673, or send them to us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hello. Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Jeff calling from Virginia Beach area.

What would you like to talk with us about, Jeff?

Well, in a nutshell, I married a foreigner who originally from Barcelona, but grew up speaking British English. And from my accent, you can tell I didn’t. I grew up in Ohio. And right away, my wife, she would pick out this weird, I don’t know, to her a quirk that Americans would say, and they would say this off of combination thing.

For example, take the book off of the table or let’s get off of the highway.

And because I’m a husband who doesn’t like conflict, especially over grammar issues, I just kind of eliminated that of from my way of speaking.

And now when Americans say it, it just kind of glares at me that it just sounds off to me now, too.

It sounds off.

So, yeah, we need to get off of the road or get it off of the table.

Why do we say of?

Is that even grammatically correct?

Is that wrong?

And we have that double preposition thing in American English.

So that’s my question.

Oh, yeah.

So she noticed because she had the dialect conflict between the British dialect that she learned and your dialect.

And that’s natural when two dialects come together.

I always envisioned them like two thunderstorms approaching.

Each one of them, the lightning striking and the thunder booming and the rain falling.

And eventually they settle out and there’s no difference between the two.

And you can’t even tell there was ever a storm.

And it sounds like that’s where you’re headed with your language’s differences

As you each reconcile your own with the other.

So just to reiterate here, the American English speaker would say,

I drove off of the freeway.

And the British English speaker would say,

I drove off the motorway.

Right?

Right.

Right.

The motorway.

Exactly.

And it’s just simply a dialect difference.

That is it.

And there’s no one better than the other.

And this is a really good place to point out

That all of the varieties of English spoken

Everywhere in the world

Are all descendants of other Englishes

That no longer exist.

And none of them are the original, including the British English spoken now is not the original or the first one or the best one or the main one or the most perfect one.

And so it’s not like British English is the parent and American English is the child.

It is the British English spoken today is also a child of another English.

And it is also a sibling, just like American English, of an originator.

So it is easy for people to get kind of snooty about that and forget that British English has changed dramatically over the centuries, just like American English has.

And it is not somehow the purest or best form.

So this is a really good place to point that out.

But while we’re talking about these preposition differences, I want to give you some other differences that you can also be irritated about if you’d like.

Yeah, sure.

He said he was conflict avoidant now.

What the heck.

Americans are more likely to say, in back of the house.

And British English speakers are unlikely to say that.

They’re more likely to say, behind the house.

American English speakers might say, I live on Main Street.

British English speakers might say, I live in the High Street.

But by and large, prepositionally, the two main forms of the two dialects spoken on each

Side of the Atlantic are astonishingly alike, given how long they’ve had to diverge. But it’s

Quite easy to make a big show out of how different they are and to parade around those differences

As being a really big deal. And except in the classroom, it’s not really that big a deal.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Take care and give our best to your wife.

All right. Thanks for having me.

Okay. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

We’d love to hear about your experience in a bilingual household or a multilingual household.

Call us 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ty. I’m calling from Nashville, Tennessee.

Hi, Ty in Nashville. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Ty.

So my question is, let’s set a scene here when I was like, let’s say 15 or 16,

And I’m going to a movie or something like that.

My father might pull out a $10 bill and say, here’s you some folding money.

And to me, this was always different than just money, you know.

I wasn’t going to save it.

It was with the intention upon spending it, you know, go have some walking around money.

And I was wondering if there was any kind of cool origin story to that or if it was regional or, you know, where that might have come from as an expression.

Well, that was nice.

Do you have any thoughts about that?

I mean, I think my thoughts are my whole family was raised in Tennessee, and both of their parents were of the Depression era.

And I was thinking maybe folding money was different than regular money, like it was money that was meant to be spent.

But as far as an origin goes, I’m not too sure.

Well, yeah, that’s part of it.

I mean, he didn’t give you coins, right?

He didn’t drop a bunch of quarters in your hands, right?

No, it was never change.

Right, right. I mean, it was literally folding money. He literally gave you bills.

You know, we’re talking about the Benjamins here.

So that’s pretty much it. He was giving you a $10 bill, which has historically been known by a lot of different terms like that involving folding.

You can have folding dough, folding stuff.

He might hand you what he calls folding matter or folding green or green folding or folding lettuce, you know, which is green.

Like money, and just plain old folding.

It has to do literally with folding those dollar bills.

Folding cabbage.

Yeah, folding cabbage.

And interesting, I love that it applies to all these other ways that we talk about money.

I feel like I never just say the term money.

It’s always some sort of slang term, and all of it can be folding as long as it’s dollars, right?

Exactly.

And as Martha says, it’s the flip side of the other kind of money, which isn’t made out of paper.

Actually, American money is made out of cloth, but acts like paper, where you can refer to it by its physical characteristics.

So we talk about it as greenbacks because it’s green.

But the other kind of money we could talk about is clink or jing or jingle or janglers.

We could talk about either kind as stackola or stacking money.

So we have all these ways of referring to what you physically can do with it, how you can pile it up or how it behaves when it’s in your hand or in your pockets.

Oh, I love that. I love stacking money, too. It’s very interesting.

Right. That suggests a lot, doesn’t it? You’ve got a meaningful amount of money.

And it’s at least 100 years old, Ty, folding money. People have been talking about it as folding money for quite a while.

Oh, that is so cool. I didn’t realize there would be so much context around folding money.

Seriously, dude.

And it sounds like it brings back some really nice memories for you as well.

Oh, absolutely.

It has a kind of warm feeling just talking about it, you know,

Being 16 years old and having a couple bucks in your pocket

Feeling flush with cash at a movie theater or a mall or something.

Yeah.

Well, thanks for calling.

Ty and sharing your memories.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you all so much.

Y’all have an excellent day.

Make some full money.

Take care.

Call us and share your childhood memories.

Make sure they have at least a little bit to do with language.

That would be nice.

877-929-9673.

Our team includes senior producer Stephanie Levine,

Engineer and editor Tim Felton,

And quiz guide John Chinesky.

We’d love to hear from you,

No matter where you are in the world.

Go to waywordradio.org slash contact.

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

A nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Special thanks to Michael Brestlauer, Josh Eccles, Claire Grotting, Bruce Rogo, Rick Seidenworm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

We’ll see you next time.