Gauge and Head-Up

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. And it’s time for Slang This, the puzzle where you guess the meaning of strange slang terms.

Today’s contestant is Jessica Stackler from Storrs, Connecticut. Jessica, welcome.

Hi, how are you?

Doing great.

Hello, Jessica. What’s going on?

Not much. I’m getting psyched up to play the slang quiz.

Do you have a favorite slang term for us?

Yes, I certainly do.

My favorite slang term is something that I’m pretty sure only my boyfriend and I use, at least in this context.

And the phrase is Barry Manilow concert.

There’s obviously a story to this.

So being sort of the cheap college students that we are, I get about three channels at my apartment.

So one day we were snowed in and we were looking for something to watch.

And you know the digital feature where you can scroll through the channels without actually changing the channel?

Right.

So it said that there was a documentary about ancient Egypt on.

So that was pretty good considering everything else was either in the church channel or in Spanish.

So when we changed the channel, it was actually a really cheesy, like straight out of 1983, Barry Manilow concert.

And we were really disappointed.

So now everything that is something that wasn’t expected or is disappointing, we call a Barry Manilow concert.

That is awesome.

How did you like the concert?

We changed it.

I think we put in a DVD or something after that.

He’s not really our favorite.

I mean, no offense to him.

It’s just how we’re looking for.

Well, I like that a lot.

I may have to steal that.

Yep, anytime you want.

I’d be honored to be used to.

Well, we hope this won’t be a Barry Manilow concert for you, Jessica.

I hope so, too.

All right.

Well, here’s how we play our game.

Grant’s going to give you a slang term,

And then he will give you three sentences suggesting what that term could mean.

Now, only one of those is real, and the other two are fake,

So your job will be to guess which one of those sentences

Actually illustrates the way this slang term is used.

And you probably won’t have heard the word before,

But that means that the trick is going to be to puzzle out the word’s meaning,

And I’ll be standing by to help if you get stuck, okay?

All right.

All right, well, here we go.

We’ve got two words for you today, Jessica.

And the first word is gauge, G-A-U-G-E, gauge.

It’s probably not going to be the gauge that you know, but we’ll see, all right?

Okay.

And the first clue.

Bridie Mae gauged and curtsied before the mayor in an effort to sway him to label her cake of all the cakes in the contest as the county’s best.

And the second clue.

He wore 13-gauge blue jeans, with each of the 13 rivets holding down a corner or a seam.

And the third clue.

By the time he finished gauging his ears, the lobes hung in big rubbery loops almost to his shoulders.

So is gauging, is to gauge, is it to make exaggerated movements of deference towards an authority figure?

Is it the count of rivets on a pair of blue jeans, or is it to stretch new holes in one’s earlobes with ever larger rings or jewelry?

Well, luckily, I am part of this generation.

My ears are not gauged, but I have had some piercings in my day.

I’m going to go with C.

C is absolutely correct.

You’re a busted Barrett.

Yeah, busted.

Well, there you go.

It’s a real slang word.

I’ve been accused in the past of making this stuff up.

It’s real.

Yeah?

It’s real.

I see these guys.

You know, I live in New York City.

I see these guys here and there, subway, wherever, and it looks awful.

Oh, it’s ridiculous.

It doesn’t look appealing to me, and I don’t know what their tribe is, but it’s not my tribe.

There’s a tribe of white Americans doing this, and it’s okay, but whoo.

And are they called gauges or just the act of—

Well, the gauging, if you think about the gauge of a pipe or the gauge of wire, it’s about the size of the pipe, right?

To the size of the wire.

Making it bigger and bigger, yeah.

Right.

So using ever larger gauges of whatever it is you’re shoving in the holes in your lobes

Is why it’s called gauging.

So the next time I’m in Starbucks, I should say, nice gauges?

I mean, is it a noun or a verb?

Jessica, what do you think?

Have you heard it both ways?

Well, I used to have my eyebrow appearance, and I wore like a 14-gauge was the size.

So, yeah, you could probably say nice gauges.

It’s more of the act or the description of the size.

Okay.

All right.

Well, maybe I would just sound awkward if I went into Starbucks and said that.

You know, I’ve got to say, Jessica, that’s the first time and I think ever that I’ve

Been giving the slang quiz that somebody actually knew the answer for certain and wasn’t just

Guessing.

So, bravo.

We’ve got another one here.

We’ll see how you do on this one.

Okay?

You ready?

Okay.

The next one is two words.

It’s head up.

H-E-A-D-U-P.

Head up. And the first clue. Cuban baseball features an innovation that goes by the English

Name head up. Borrowed from soccer, this is a move in which the batter is permitted to bunt with the

Head. The second clue. Two gangs of young men met in back of the superstore for a head up in which

The two leaders fought for control of the neighborhood. And then the third clue. People

Joke about making the wrong movement in an upscale auction house for fear of accidentally agreeing to

Buy expensive art, but the truth is an experienced auctioneer will never confuse such gestures

With a head-up from a real buyer. So, Jessica, is a head-up A, a bunt done with the head

In Cuban baseball, is it B, a gang term for a fist fight or brawl, or is it C, the nod

A buyer makes to tell an auctioneer that he is bidding?

Well, my dad is a baseball fanatic, and I’ve never heard anything about bunting with the head, which seems kind of ridiculous.

As for the other two, kind of a toss-up.

I mean, it makes sense with the auction, but maybe a little too obvious.

All right, I’m going to go with B.

B, it is absolutely right, 100%.

A++, gold star, and the whole works.

Head up, just think about two guys going head-to-head.

They’re going head-to-head and they’re having a fight.

That’s all that it is.

So, hey, Jessica, do you already have the book Weird and Wonderful Words by Erin McKean?

I do not, but that sounds like something I would love.

That sounds like something that should be on your shelf.

And for playing our game today, we’re going to send you a copy.

Thank you so much.

All right, thanks for playing.

All right, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

If you’ve got a question about language, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.