Funny Papers (episode #1601)

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 was in New York City recently, and I was walking out of Penn Station when this building across the street caught my eye. It was this stately neoclassical structure with these rows of tall Greek columns, and above them there was this frieze running the length of the building, and the frieze was inscribed with these big capital letters. But what they spelled that gave me a little jolt. I don’t know. It was just so grand. I expected to see Latin, but the inscription said, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. And of course, Grant, you know what building that is. That’s the Green Lantern headquarters. No, no, that’s the U.S. Postal Service. Yes, that’s the James Farley post office there.

But you know, it made me think about what we expect to read when we see something that somebody’s taken all the trouble to inscribe in stone. For some reason, I was expecting Latin, although I did find out later that this saying is actually a translation of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. It didn’t originate with the U.S. Postal Service. There’s a part of the history of Herodotus where he talks about the efficient messengers of the Persian Empire. You know, there’s messages like this on buildings across the world. And a lot of them, of course, have that classical idea going back to ancient Greece or ancient Rome.

And there’s one over the entrance to the Goodhue building at the Los Angeles Public Library. And it says, books invite all, they constrain none. And the simplicity and the perfection of that message is just, oh, it’s a chef’s kiss. That’s exactly right. But you know, there are other messages for other buildings that you might not see, and sometimes they’re over houses. And there’s one I found especially charming. It was in a journal, an old journal from the 1800s, and it was on a small house in the UK, and it’s in Latin, and it’s parvased apta mehe. But in English, it means small but just right for me.

And yeah, you know, a little cottage, you know, with a little bit of garden and just someplace you can sit, and it’s exactly what you want. And there’s another one in the same bit of journal, and it’s also in Latin, but I’ll give you the English. And it says, as the body is to the mind, so the house is to the body. This house is an organism where all the pieces work together to produce this feeling of an entity. And I just love that over the door as you enter, that you acknowledge that you’re entering into this space that is all working in concert to create this feeling, this presence that a house has.

Yeah, that’s a lovely sentiment. I’m suspecting that the listeners have more too. Is there a particular inscription or an epigraph over a building that you know and love, something that strikes you as funny or poignant or moving, please share.

We’d love to hear them, and we’ll share them back with everyone else. 877-929-9673. That’s toll-free in the United States and Canada. Email us, words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on Twitter. Our handle is @wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. My name’s Kelly Goddard. I’m calling from Tallahassee, Florida.

Hello, Kelly. Welcome to the show.

I’m calling about, it’s kind of a game, but it’s also, I guess, an exclamation that my grandmother, it passed down from my grandmother. She played it with her siblings when she was younger and then as an adult. And it’s only played around the holidays, specifically Christmas. And it’s called Christmas Gift. It’s kind of like a, almost like a tag game. So it’s like the first person to say Christmas Gift is the winner, but you don’t really win anything except for bragging rights.

Just bragging rights.

Yeah, that’s kind of how you play it. And so for us, it’s always just been like, who can say Christmas Gift first? But I was just really curious. I never knew anybody as I was growing up. I never knew anyone else that played that game. But then my daughter, she’s now a senior in high school, but when she was in middle school, she had a friend whose family played Christmas gift. And they were like, I’ve never ever heard of another family that did this. And so it just got me thinking where it came from. And I was curious.

How does it work?

Okay, for instance, if we are, let’s just say, after Thanksgiving, game on. Okay. And if the phone rings and you think it might be, I mean, nowadays it’s super easy with caller ID. But before you call her ID, I remember my grandmother would just answer the phone. Christmas gift. So no one could get her. Like it gets more competitive towards Christmas. And then the ultimate winner is Christmas Day. Like whoever says Christmas gifts on Christmas Day, you are the ultimate winner.

So you get one chance the whole season to say Christmas gift to the other person first and then that’s it?

Well, no. Every time you see them, it’s like, oh, I got you. I got you.

Oh, okay. Gotcha.

You try to sneak up on people. You really quietly arrive to the house.

That’s ridiculous.

It really is ridiculous.

That sounds fun, though.

There’s no gift. There’s no prize.

No.

No prize.

Just bragging rights.

But other people have played it that way.

Well, yeah, I’m fascinated that your family plays it for so long, because the tradition I’m familiar with is you just say it on Christmas Day or maybe Christmas Eve. Would you believe you can actually find Civil War letters where guys are riding back home and wishing people Christmas gift?

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

Yeah, it goes way, way back. And other versions of it early on would involve people, like you said, sneaking up to a house and knocking on the door and seeing Christmas gift. And the recipient was supposed to oblige with a gift to those people, an actual gift, like popcorn or homemade coffee.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, or fruit, maybe an apple or an orange. There is one more extreme version if you want it.

Yeah, I would.

So one of the citations in the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English describes people getting up early on Christmas morning, usually the children. They go to their nearest neighbor’s house secretly and quietly, and then they, quote, serenade them by banging pots and pans and setting off firecrackers. And then when the neighbors come out to say, what in tarnation, they yell, Christmas gift.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, that’s way farther than we’ve ever gone. We’ve never woken anyone up with pots and pans and firecrackers.

Kelly, there’s always next Christmas.

That’s right. We can start planning, Martha. Thank you so much for sharing these memories with us. It sounds like you guys have great fun.

Yeah, it is a lot of fun. And thanks for taking my call and my question. I appreciate it.

All right. Be well.

Christmas gift to you.

All right. Thanks, you guys.

Thanks, Kelly.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Well, we’d love to hear your vaguely linguistic folkloric traditions. Whatever holiday they’re attached to or not, 877-929-9673. Or email words@waywordradio.org. Or tell us the details on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Susanna King and I’m calling from Aiken, South Carolina.

And my dad had an interesting expression that he would use. It started when I was a baby. My parents used to feed me baby food mixed with baby cereal and fruit in it. And it was sort of this sticky, gooey mess. And my dad would call it slumgolion. And it sort of stuck with our family. Whenever anyone was eating something like oatmeal with a bunch of stuff in it, he would call it slumgullion. And it’s such an odd word. He’s the only person I’ve ever heard use that word. So I was wondering if you’d ever heard anyone else call sort of sloppy, goopy stuff slumgullion.

Slumgullion. That’s great. Did he give you any clue? Did you ever quiz him about it?

You know, I never did. It was just always the family story was, oh, that’s what he called the baby food that you ate when you were little.

It doesn’t sound very appetizing.

No, and I guess it really kind of wasn’t, was it?

But here you are, an adult. It worked. You survived the slum gullion.

Yes.

Well, there is a great story about slum gullion, and it has to do with the gold rush days in the United States.

During the California Gold Rush, there was a lot of high-volume mining, and it involved, as it still does, a lot of water, just huge amounts of water running through soil.

And it flushes away the lighter stuff and leaves behind the heavier bits.

And this makes it easier to find the gold.

And what is created from this, the stuff that is discarded, is this gross, muddy waste mixture.

And this was called slum gullion.

And we knew the term was used in California during the Gold Rush as early as 1853.

One report from the time describes it as, quote, a softer sediment which settles lightly on the surface of the sand, a slippery yellow mud that looks like a large pond of cake batter, just ready for baking, yet with a glazed surface reflecting the surrounding scenery as beautifully as water could do it.

But I’m sure it did not taste like cake batter.

You wouldn’t eat it, obviously.

And the word itself, you can break down the two parts.

The slum part is probably related to the word slime.

Slum, slime, you can kind of hear it.

Not related at all to a bad urban neighborhood.

It’s just a different word completely than that kind of slum.

The gullion part is either related to a word meaning a muddy hole or a cesspool.

That makes a lot of sense.

Although it could be related to the same word gullion, meaning a type of severe stomachache in horses.

Yeah.

And there’s another little interesting fact.

It’s got a connection to Moby Dick and the hunting of whales.

In 1851, Herman Melville published Moby Dick.

And in there, he refers to the discarded offal, O-F-F-A-L, and the waste from the butchering of whales as slob gullion.

That’s S-L-O-B-G-O-L-L-I-O-N.

And his description, here it is, in his words, it is an ineffably oozy stringy affair most frequently found in the tubs of sperm oil after a prolonged squeezing and subsequent decanting.

I hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case coalescing.

Ew, that sounds awful.

Nobody writes like Melville.

So, yeah. So slumgullion is S-L-U-M-G-U-L-L-I-O-N.

So you can hear that they’re spelled very similar and they sound very similar.

So that word that he used, Susanna, that slumgullion when he was feeding you baby food, has got all this history connected to it from the Gold Rush days.

That’s really neat. And I’m so glad that it’s part of California history, too, because that really connects to my family.

Yeah. Cool, right? Thank you for sharing that with us.

And we are so happy that you called.

Thank you very much.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Susanna.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

More about language and how we use it as A Way with Words continues.

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 John Chaneski, who has a gleam in his eye and joy in his voice.

He’s our quiz guy. Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. I’ve got a puzzle, a quiz in my hands as well.

So let’s get started.

Now, this quiz came from an idea by my friend, puzzle constructor David Ellis Dickerson.

His challenge was to find a two-word title, which, when the two words are switched, they still make a pretty good title.

Now, we’re going to work with books and movies today.

I’ll describe for you a new work based on the new title, and I’ll give you the original title’s author, maybe the director.

You identify the new title and, of course, the original title.

For example, if I said, this new work by Stephen King is a book about a dog owned by a gravedigger, the answer would be Cemetery Pet.

Right.

Of course, the original is Pet Cemetery, though the spelling is debatable.

So you get how it works?

Yes.

Yep.

Yes, you do.

Good.

Then let’s try a few.

And I wish you luck good.

Here we go.

This new classic collected by the Brothers Grimm is simply an examination of how winter precipitation gets its color through light refraction.

Winter precipitation gets its color through light refraction.

White snow?

White snow.

Yes, exactly.

Or lack of color, I should have said.

Yeah, very good.

This new classic from George Orwell is simply a book-length description of a nondescript cow.

Farm animal.

Farm animal.

Farm animal.

Just farm animal.

Now we go to the movies.

Let’s go to the movies.

From George Lucas, a biography of a soldier who has been a key player in several major conflicts.

War stars?

Wars star, right.

Wars star.

Sorry.

Wars star.

Yeah.

Only Charlie Chaplin could create a new classic based solely on a family of typeface fonts.

Charlie Chaplin.

Typeface fonts.

A new classic.

Roman times?

Times Roman?

Oh, close.

It’s something.

It’s modern times.

Times modern.

Times modern, yes.

As opposed to modern times.

Finally, from director Greta Gerwig, a new classic about an old reclusive woman who eschews cats.

She instead keeps parrots and parakeets.

Something bird. What was that?

Yeah.

Saoirse Ronan, right?

Yeah.

Was it Lady Bird? Bird Lady.

Bird Lady.

Yes, Bird Lady instead of Lady Bird. Yes, very good.

Well, guys, done well and well done.

They both mean the same thing, and you did very, very well in that quiz.

Good job.

Give our best to the family.

Will do.

Thanks so much, John.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to talk with you, too, about any aspect of language whatsoever.

Slang, word origins, grammar, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your questions and stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, yes, my name is Grace. I’m calling from Savannah, Georgia.

Hey, Grace. Welcome.

Hi, Grace. What’s on your mind?

Hi, yes, I’m in school down here for industrial design, and I’m learning a 3D modeling software where we learn to prototype and 3D print objects.

And one of the most useful functions in the program is called a Boolean.

It’s B-O-O-L-E-A-N.

And it’s so much fun to say, and we use it all of the time, because in order to make complex shapes in this program, you have to do it by building upon simple geometric shapes.

And so it kind of works as a 3D Venn diagram, and depending on what you need to build, you can have it take away certain parts of an object where they overlap or leave only that section where they overlap.

And I was just wondering if you guys had ever heard of that term because it’s so out of place in the tech world that it just seemed so bizarre.

Boolean.

So it’s like somebody invented a word out of just letters or syllables.

That is what it feels like.

That’s really what it feels like.

I wouldn’t put it past the tech world.

Really?

Yes.

I have a story for you, Grace. There’s a great story here. And it starts with a poor boy, an English poor boy, largely self-taught, born to a lady’s maid and a shoemaker, who went on to lay some fundamental foundations that are still used today in computing, in neuroscience, in logic and mathematics.

You want to hear it?

Okay. Yes. And I was just about to say that my younger brother’s learning to code. He was familiar with the term from that.

And I just thought how bizarre that it’s in both places.

Yes, please.

So this boy, his father was also brilliant in mathematics.

However, he was very poor and could work only as a shoemaker.

But he taught his son some mathematics.

And this son had a tutor in Latin, but otherwise had no schooling, taught himself Greek, however, and French and German, and was brilliant enough to work as a teacher at 16, published some sophisticated mathematics papers in professional journals while still in his teens, then was hired as a professor at Queens College in Cork, eventually becoming a dean at the college, a position he held until his death.

So this guy, undegreed, but universally agreed to be brilliant.

So this guy’s name is George. I’ll give you his last name in a minute.

His mathematical papers developed the algebraic idea that differential equations could be used to solve any mathematical problem, resulting in either the answer zero or one.

And so that’s the binary language of computers beginning to form right there, although it took many more decades and the work of many others to make it happen.

Additionally, his algebraic logic intended to allow putting argument and thought into logical, regular structure.

And he published a paper on this in 1847.

And so this is why we call things Boolean. His name was George Boole, B-O-O-L-E. And so this is why, for example, when you do a search on the internet, you search for apples or oranges, not bananas. That or and and not, those are Boolean operators. And those come from George Boole. Those are part of his logic. And so all of this Boolean stuff comes from the work of George Boole, born in 1815, who was a brilliant autodidact.

Wow, that is fascinating. And it also sounds like the same way that you search a library catalog, like how they store library information when you’re looking for specific things.

Yep, that’s right. That’s the man. Now, obviously, like all fields, a lot of his work took time to see fruition. Other people used his work to base their work on. And obviously, it’s a series of people working together over the decades and even the centuries to come to what we have now. But it’s fundamental. And his name being attached to this as Boolean is a credit to his original foundational work that he did. There’s a reason his name is attached to it, because it was so important.

Wow, that is amazing. Yeah. All righty. I will definitely have to look him up. I really appreciate you guys taking my call. That’s amazing information.

Thanks for calling, Grace. And good luck with your work.

Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye.

All righty. Bye-bye.

Toll free in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673.

We heard from Lenny Lefebvre in Corona, California. She works in veterinary medicine, and she once worked in a clinic in Washington State where the staff decided that they needed some kind of code that they could use over the loudspeaker if a client got particularly unruly. And they found out that there’s a code that’s used in medical facilities for when somebody gets disruptive and the staff needs an authority figure to come in and de-escalate things, and that’s paging Dr. Armstrong.

That makes good sense.

Yeah.

Dr. Armstrong.

Yeah.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but when I worked in IT, one of the companies I worked for, we would forward sales calls to Mr. Springfield, which was a dead-end voicemail box.

Oh, really?

We never emptied. Got that from The Simpsons. That’s just a Springfield.

Oh, oh, oh.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Nias from Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Hi, Nias. Welcome to the show.

Hey, how’s it going? What’s on your mind today?

Yeah, so my word is ringthams. And it’s a tradition in our family on my mom’s side that, like, so we use this term ringthams whenever someone gets a new haircut. And if we see them walk into the room and we say ring thumbs before they say no ring thumbs, then we get to ball our fists and run our knuckles up the back of their head.

Yeah.

But if they say no ring thumbs first, then obviously they cancel that out.

Ouch.

Oh, boy.

So ring thumbs and noogies is what this sounds like. Ring thumbs, like R-I-N-K-T-U-M-S?

Ring thumbs?

I would spell it R-I-N-C-T-U-M-S, but obviously the K is there as well. It could go both ways. I’ve talked to other family members, and they spell it with the K.

Oh, so it’s more than just your immediate family. It’s your broader family?

Yeah, so all my uncles and cousins on my mom’s side. And it’s mostly done in the males of the family, but of course you can do it to females, but you don’t because we want to do it sometimes to hurt the other person.

That totally is a dude thing. And so is this just in New Mexico or outside the state?

Just in New Mexico, but, well, it started originally in New Mexico.

Well, Aeneas, this sounds painful. How do you feel about rinktums?

I like it because, you know, I like it whenever I’m able to do it to my cousins or my brother or my dad. But obviously I don’t like, I haven’t got a haircut in about four years probably because of that.

Lots of long-haired people in your family, Aeneas, huh?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So it’s like getting noogies.

Yeah, it’s basically like a noogie, but you run it, like, so you ball up your fist and run the knuckles up the back of the neck up to the top of the head. So it’s just like one swift motion. And I’ve asked around, I’ve never heard, like, no one else has heard of it outside of my immediate family, like my mom’s side of the family.

Well, you’ll be interested to know that this tradition goes way back to at least the early part of the 20th century. There’s a really funny article that ran on the Associated Press wires back in 1921. And it was talking about the newest fad at the University of Texas. And they call the fad ringtoms and scrapings. And let me just read a little bit of this article to you. You will appreciate this.

When a student gets his hair cut or trimmed and sallies forth on the campus, the other students have the right to declare rinkdoms on him. In case he yells, vink your rinkdoms, before the unshorn students declare their right, he is safe from all harm. The foiled students then have recourse. They’re shouting scrapings, and the shaven-headed student has the same right as to shouting, vink your scrapings. Rinktums consists of a heated rub with the knuckles on that part of the cranium that is more fully exposed on account of the recent hair trimming. It’s a common sight on the university campus to see a student walking about with a fresh haircut and shouting, vink your rinktums and vink your scrapings at every cluster of student he sees.

So this is like a Pokemon battle, really.

Yeah.

They use the reverse card.

Yeah.

So wait a second here. So basically what’s happening is I’ve gotten a haircut. Others have the right to declare ringtoms on me. But I can yell vink your ringtoms to stop the knuckle attack. But they can yell scrapings to stop my stopping. Or I can yell vink your scrapings to stop their stopping of my stopping. And I can yell vink your ringtoms and vink your scrapings to stop all the stopping and make sure nobody knuckles my head.

Well said.

Yeah, or like Aeneas, you can say no ringtoms.

No ringtoms.

I think Aeneas’ version is simpler and still allows dudes to be dudes and, like, knuckle each other’s noggins.

Yeah.

It would have got too complicated if we allowed all those counter-strikes in our family.

Oh, yeah, it would just be a fist fight every time, right?

Yeah, seriously.

Yeah, that’s crazy because my grandpa actually went to the University of Texas. And he’s the one that started it or that we can trace it back to my mom’s side of the family. So maybe that’s where he got it from.

Oh, interesting. I’d be interested to find out when he went there.

Yeah, so that lasted for a while. It showed up. So what was that date, Martha? 19… 1921. Yeah, it lasted into the 1920s at the University of Texas. And who knows how much further.

Yeah, I think that should be about the time my grandpa was over in that area as well. Well, how about that? Well, Niaz, thank you so much for sharing this family story with us. It’s more widespread than you might think. Take care, dude. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Welcome to A Way with Words. Oh, hello. Hi there. This is Julie. I’m calling from Northern Michigan. Years ago, when I was married to my first husband, my mother-in-law, who was a wonderfully high-spirited woman with family roots in Texas and New Mexico, would often say, like when encountering a mess or evidence of rambunctiousness, or just rambunctious behavior in general, that someone was tearing up Jake. And so like if our children had made a mess while playing, she explained that the room looked like someone was tearing up Jake in here. Or if her grandkids were playing wildly, they were just out there tearing up Jake. Tearing up Jake. You know, the usual name is Jack instead of Jake. There are a lot of variations to turn up Jack, tear up Jack, kick up Jack, cut up Jack. And believe it or not, this goes back to the 1700s and possibly earlier. There’s a card game called All Fours where turning over a Jack, you know, the card just above a 10 and below a queen, scores points. And this card game, which was sometimes played for

Money was played all throughout North America and Europe and from the 1600s forward.

And versions of it are still played.

It’s very popular in Trinidad.

It goes by other names and has variations.

In the U.S., 7-Up is a version of it.

And there’s an expression where people would say that somebody who was willing to play this game against the devil and turn up jack, meaning they didn’t care about the consequences of winning the game or doing well at the game, even if they were playing the devil. So they would play the devil and turn up jack. That’s as I understand it.

Interesting, which would mean that you were scoring big and you’re going to take everybody’s money at the table, you and your partner, because it’s a partner game. So it started with turn up jack because you’re literally turning over the card, which is the jack.

So over the years, that verb changed. And so turn up jack became tore up jack or tear up jack and raise up jack and cut up jack and kick up jack. And it just changed. And the general idea went from playing kind of risky game against the devil to just being rambunctious or being rowdy.

Yes.

And so now when you hear it, usually in the American South, it’s just really about just being usually used for kids or small animals.

So just as you used it.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Making a mess.

Just kind of not behaving well.

Very interesting.

Well, a little fact that you might find interesting is that game, all fours, is where we get the word jack for that card in a deck of cards, the one after the ten and before the queen.

It used to be called the knave.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah, yep, the knave.

So in the 1600s, that word jack migrated from this game all fours to just the rest of the deck and the rest of the card games in general.

So, Julie, your family is part of a great long tradition of tearing up Jake or Jack.

It certainly is, and that would quite aptly describe this youngest cat that I have that tears up Jake around the house all the time.

Yeah, they do, don’t they?

To get the zoomies and go through the room.

Yes, I do.

I will pass that information along on that family saying.

Excellent.

Well, take care, Julie.

Thank you for chatting with us.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us still free in the United States and Canada, 24 hours a day, 877-929-9673.

You can send us email to words@waywordradio.org, and you can find many other ways to reach the show at waywordradio.org/contact.

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.

Ellen Joven is a self-described grammar nerd.

She’s taught English and communication skills for years.

She’s fluent in six languages and has studied more than 20 others.

In fact, she’s such a grammar nerd that four years ago, she stepped out of her New York apartment and set up a folding table near the 72nd Street subway station.

She put out a big sign that said, Grammar Table, and invited people to just come up and talk with her about grammar.

And in less than a minute, a couple had already come up to her to ask her to resolve a dispute about apostrophes.

And she had so much fun that day talking with random strangers about grammar that she did it again.

And then she moved to a different subway station.

And, well, four years later, Jovan has now set up her table in 49 states and had hundreds and hundreds of conversations with passersby.

And she’s compiled those adventures in a new book that’s called Rebel with a Claws, Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian.

Now, much of this book is a travel memoir.

But along the way, she offers easy-to-understand advice about grammar, about adverbs and prepositions, and whether to put one or two spaces after a period.

And Grant, you’ll be pleased to know that for the record, she says two spaces after a period is the mom genes of punctuation.

Oh, I see.

I know you agree with that.

Anyway, it’s a grammar book with a heart.

You know, she makes sure that people know that grammar doesn’t have to be intimidating.

You can just relax and take a deep breath and think of grammar as your friend, that it’s there for clarity of communication.

And she also makes the point that you really shouldn’t judge people for their grammar because you just may be wrong yourself.

And I was reading this book, Grant, and I just thought, why?

What possesses somebody to stick a table out in public and invite people to come and ask questions?

And then I thought, wait a minute, that’s what we do without the frequent flyer miles.

Right, right.

Without the people brushing by headed for the subway, you’re like, no time, no time.

Oh, it sounds like a fun book.

And I always like a travelogue.

I’m throwing a little grammar in there, too.

That sounds like a good read.

Yeah.

You can find Ellen Joven, that’s J-O-V-I-N, on the internet.

Her Twitter handle is at Grammar Table.

And the book again, Martha?

Rebel with the Claws, Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian.

We’ll link to that on our website at waywordradio.org, where you can also find all of our past episodes.

And you can find a dozen ways to communicate with us at waywordradio.org/contact.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. My name is Julia, and I’m calling from Denver, Colorado.

Welcome to the show, Julia. What can we do for you today?

So I have a question, kind of a spooky question, about comb graves.

My parents and I were vacationing in central Tennessee, and we discovered that there’s a really unique type of grave in that region, and they’re called comb graves, C-O-M-B.

And we were so curious what the origin of that name was.

Comb graves. How did you come across them?

We were driving through some of the smaller towns in that region, and we saw them referenced on the historical plaque.

So we decided to adventure and find one of the cemeteries where they’re found.

Yeah, and that part of Tennessee is particularly known for the comb graves.

So describe them for us if you can. What do they look like?

Yeah, so they’re also referred to as tent graves, which makes a little bit more sense.

They’re kind of pitched like a tent, like a little triangle over like the actual grave itself.

But I was, we couldn’t, we were so curious why the word comb is also used to describe them.

So typically they have two long rectangular slabs of stone kind of leaning together to form a long peaked roof over the grave, right?

Yeah.

And yeah, the central Tennessee is well known for them, although they do appear in nearby states as well.

So this word comb, C-O-M-B, here is an American dialect word.

And it does refer to that ridge of the roof where there’s two long slabs come together.

And that and other meanings of comb all descend from the rooster’s comb.

You know, that red thing that sticks up on the top of the head.

So it kind of has like wobbly fingers.

But the part of that red comb on a rooster’s head that is transferred isn’t the wobbly fingers, but it’s the sticky up part.

And so that lent that kind of semantic notion to the ridge of a roof.

And it’s used in architecture as well, not just in this word for a grave.

It’s also used, for example, in the ridge of earth sticking up between the ruts and a dirt road, if you’ve ever seen that.

That ridge of earth in the middle that’s a little grassy in between the ruts, that’s also known as a comb.

That’s pretty interesting, I think, that the comb comes from the rooster’s comb.

Fascinating.

So it’s like making a little house for eternity.

I mean, I’ve seen versions of house graves in Alaska where they’re much more elaborate than that.

They actually look like little houses.

The roof shape has to do with suggesting a home?

Well, there’s a fellow by the name of Dr. Richard C. Finch who’s done a great deal of work on cone graves.

And I have read a couple of his papers on this.

And he doesn’t know, and others don’t know quite why folks started doing it, the earliest appear in around the 1820s.

But it suggests that it’s perhaps more practical than that.

It’s just to keep the weather and critters off the graves.

Just kind of a real basic notion.

By the way, you can read his papers and see tons of pictures of comb graves on his website at greatrutabaga.com. That’s G-R-A-T-E-R-U-T-A-B-A-G-A.com. His paper, The Tennessee Comb Grave Tradition, is fascinating and very readable to people of all academic levels.

Wow, I’m going to have to look that up.

Yeah, that’s Dr. Richard C. Finch. Yeah, and we’ll link to that on our website as well.

So I hope that helps, Julia. I’m kind of jealous. I would love to travel through Central Tennessee visiting small towns. I’m sure they’re fascinating.

Well, I highly recommend it. They were really cool to see in person. Well, Julia, we appreciate your call.

All right. Take care now. Be well. Yeah, thank you so much. Sure thing. Bye. Bye-bye.

Well, if there’s a word or phrase that’s puzzling you, we’d love to talk with you about it. So call us, 877-929-9673, or send us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org, or hit us up on Twitter. We’re at Wayword.

Heather Kaufman sent us a tweet offering a really great way to end a long phone conversation. It goes, I’ll let you go so you can glue your ears and legs back on. I’m not sure what that means.

Well, I guess if somebody talks your ears off, then, you know.

They talk your legs off too?

I don’t know about the legs part, but I like that. I’ll let you go so you can glue your ears and legs back on. Email words@waywordradio.org or send to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Crystal Ness from Huntsville, Alabama.

Hi, Crystal. What’s up?

I was calling because I have a term that my mother-in-law and my father-in-law use that I have never heard before.

Okay. So they use this term when they’re tucking my kids into bed, their grandchildren. They said this with my husband when he was a child, too. So instead of saying goodnight or night-night, like what my parents used to say to me, they say, I’ll see you in the funny papers before they close the door.

At bedtime?

At bedtime, yep. And what did they mean by that?

I don’t know. I guess they mean, you know, goodnight. It’s sort of done in the same way as people would say goodnight or night-night. So it’s kind of like, see you in the funny papers, and then they close the door. And I had never heard that before growing up.

Oh, really? And you haven’t heard it since?

I only hear it from my mother-in-law. And when I asked her about it, she said that her mother and her father used to say it to her. And my father-in-law said that his parents also said it to him.

Yeah. Well, it stretches back to the early 20th century. It’s just kind of a jovial goodbye. It’s not necessarily putting little kids to bed.

Really? But people would say, yeah, people would say that to each other. And so it was often originally kind of a sarcastic thing. You know, if you’re in the funny papers, then, you know, you’re a comic character. There were a lot of different versions of see you in this or that, like see you in church, which somebody might say sarcastically to somebody who doesn’t go to church or see you in jail. And sometimes see you in the funny papers would have a sarcastic tone to it. But over time, it’s just, well, in your case, it turned into a sweet nighttime goodnight.

Yeah, it’s very endearing. I like that they say that to my kids because it’s just something special that they’ll remember about their grandparents. But that’s fascinating.

Yeah. So, yeah, see you in the funny papers, see you in the funny pages, see you in the funnies. All of those are versions of that. The funny sheet.

The funny sheet.

Yeah. It was a much bigger deal.

I’ve never heard of funny sheets.

Yeah, that term’s almost 160 years old, calling it the funny papers. So do you still use it today?

I guess I should probably keep the tradition alive, shouldn’t I?

Yeah. She continues to say that to my kids. So, you know, maybe when they have children, I’ll use the same term.

Oh, yeah, that’s really sweet. Yeah, tuck them in with that. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Take care, Crystal. Take care. Bye-bye.

All right, thanks. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Scott Randall in Everett, Washington.

Hi, Scott. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

I am learning the Klingon language and I require assistance. At the age of 61, I find myself having real trouble getting new vocabulary into my long-term memory. I have failed my level two certification from the Klingon Language Institute three times in the last two months, always because of my limited vocabulary. Do you have any tips for learning foreign vocabulary and keeping it in long-term memory?

Why are you learning Klingon? There’s a real good place to start with this, Scott. I have been a Star Trek fan since it went into syndication in 1969. In 1985, the Klingon Dictionary came out, and I tried to learn it from that but didn’t do too well. In 2000, I discovered the Klingon Language Institute and dove back into it with the help of a mailing list and stuff, but it still wasn’t easy enough. But now there are a lot of technological aids. Duolingo has a Klingon course. There’s a dictionary app for my phone. There’s a Klingon Learn Facebook page where I can ask questions. And so I’ve just really dived into it. I’m determined to become fluent in Klingon.

And are you having conversations in real time, spoken aloud with other people in Klingon?

Only a little bit. With my limited vocabulary, I haven’t joined the Zoom meetings that have actual conversations. I’ve been focused more on translating things with a couple of Klingonist friends of mine, one of whom, Krishkat, has introduced me to the gold list method. We’re trying that, but it’s too early to tell if it’s going to help.

Well, Scott, do you go by Scott or is there a different Klingon word I should…

My Klingon name is Yogtar, but that’s hard for even Klingonists to say.

So, Jogtar, tell us about this method that you’re trying to use.

The gold list method has you write down 20 short sentences, each of which contains one word that you’re trying to learn. So you do that on day one. Day two, you write another list of 20. Day three and so on. And you keep doing that. And then on around day 14, you go back to your first list and they say you will remember about 30% of those words. You take the ones you don’t write and put them in the second list. And in two weeks, you’re going to come back to that one while you still keep writing the new lists of 20 every time. And then when you go back to that list of 14 or so, you should remember about 30%. So you’re then going to have a list of 10 or so that you write and then a final list of about six or so. And that should allow you to learn about three quarters of the words they say.

That sounds like a pretty good method to me. What do you think, Grant?

Well, one of the things I’m noticing here as you’re talking about this is that you are talking about a, I would call this an academic method of memorizing words, but you’re not talking about the fun method, the pleasurable methods. And this is an area that when anyone, whether learning Klingon or another language, really needs to think about. As you can imagine, learning vocabulary has been extensively studied, both for first language learners and multilingual learners. So there’s a lot that we can transfer over to what you’re doing and anybody who’s learning vocabulary can apply. What’s important here is your literacy level and what you can read in the language. Are you reading in Klingon? Are you reading in the language that you’re learning? Not what you’re writing, not what you’re producing.

Up until our host became too ill, we were having meetings three times a week over Zoom where we would translate Hamlet from the original Shakespeare into English. Okay. And then we would all take turns reading a passage out loud in Klingon to work on our pronunciation.

Right. But are you enjoying this?

Yes. The Gold List articles that I read all say you need to make it fun, and that’s why I’m doing it with a friend.

Yeah. Okay, Scott, let’s quickly give you some strategies here. First, you need to read or hear a word in context six to ten times before it has a chance of really sticking. And even then, it’s in passive vocabulary, not active, meaning you’re likely to know it when you see it, but not necessarily able to produce it when you’re speaking or writing. The other thing is, try to think about whether or not you are truly enjoying what you’re reading. Is it being forced on you or did you choose it? This is definitely a personal choice. I love working with Klingon. I love creating the sentences. I love reading my friends’ sentences. And we’ve also got an expert Klingonist who hosts Pab Pinpo, the grammar boss hour every Friday. And so I take all the sentences that I did with my friends that I’m not sure are right, and I go through them with him. And he sets me straight things.

Well, that’s a fantastic way to learn any language, you know? I mean, you have to assume that you’re going to make plenty of mistakes, and some of them may be hilarious, but that’s the way you learn by being willing to make mistakes.

Another thing I want to say to you, Scott, I agree with Martha, and I want to say, how long did it take you to become fluent in English? Give yourself at least that long to be fluent in Klingon. Not just to be able to speak comfortably, but to speak like an adult. Give yourself a break. That might be the best advice we can give you right now. All right? You’re doing great. You have done everything possible here. It sounds fantastic. What a program you’ve created for yourself. Thank you very much.

And if I can leave you with just one thought, that would be mu’me galo de bepoku. That’s the most accurate translation of you have A Way with Words.

Oh, you’ve got to give us that again. Mu’me galo de bepoku. Well, Scott, good luck with your Klingon, and if the spaceship arrives to take your way, please take me with you, okay? Thank you for your help. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Well, your prime directive is to boldly go to the telephone 877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org. Our team includes senior producer Stefanie Levine, engineer and editor Tim Felten, production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weissler, and quiz guide John Chaneski. We’d love to hear from you no matter where you are in the world. Go to waywordradio.org/contact. Subscribe to the podcast, hear hundreds of past episodes, and get the newsletter at waywordradio.org.

Whenever you have a language story or question, our toll-free line is open in the U.S. and Canada. 1-877-929-9673. Or send your thoughts to words@waywordradio.org. 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 Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis. Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye. Bye.