Give It the Old College Slang

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

You know, Martha, I was flipping through some old issues of dialect notes. It was started more than 100 years ago. It’s long since ceased publication. But while it lasted, it collected word lists and glossaries and language from around the country. People would report from all quarters and all corners of the things that people said and the words they used. In there are collections of college slang and high school slang. And what’s really interesting about this stuff is how much of it lasts. But even more interesting is how much of it doesn’t last. A lot of this language simply doesn’t endure. And if I gave you some of these words, you wouldn’t know what I was talking about.

Oh, yeah? Try me.

All right. If I called somebody a dub, what am I saying about them? D-U-B, dub.

A dub? It doesn’t sound very positive, whatever it is.

A screw-up? Somebody’s a klutz?

Yeah, a foolish person.

Yeah, it’s pretty good. Yeah, it does sound like it should mean somebody who doesn’t have their act together, right?

Yeah.

That word was collected in New Mexico and California, again, about 100 years ago. Here’s another one. If I said that somebody was dibby, what would I be saying about them? Or if I said that the weather was dibby, what would I be saying about them? D-I-B-B-Y.

Dibby.

I have no idea. When I think of dibby, I think of a little baby or something with little fat rolls.

It simply means fine. And I’ve kind of chosen these two words because one’s negative and one’s positive. And this is one of the places where slang is most productive, coming up with words to indicate that something’s bad or indicate that something’s good. But you and I don’t know, dibby. And we might have used it if we were Brooklyn schoolgirls 100 years ago, which is that’s where it was collected. But it’s gone. Like a lot of the slang, it just went poof and disappeared.

Some of this stuff stays, though. I mean, 100 years ago, you could still call a woman a babe and say, oh boy, isn’t she a babe, meaning that she’s very attractive. A hundred years ago. A hundred years ago. Who knew it was that old, right? Anyway, I had a good time reading this stuff, and I thought you would appreciate it.

I love it. It was dibby. Did I use that correctly?

Very dibby, yes.

You’re no dub.

Thank you. Well, if you’d like to talk about slang or grammar or pronunciation or old sayings or new coinages, regional dialects, you name it, give us a call. The number’s 1-877-929-9673. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Victoria DeLeon from McAllen, Texas.

McAllen. Oh, hello. What’s going on in Texas?

I have a question for you, something that’s bugged me for most of my adult life. Let me give you a little bit of history on this. Back when I was about 12 or 13, I think I picked up one of my grandmother’s Reader’s Digest or something, and there was an article in there that talked about words that are, let me see, they’re relabeled after a new form of that product is invented. Let me give you an example. Television, when it was first invented, was simply television or TV. Everybody had a TV. But when color TV was invented, they had to go back and relabel the first one, black and white TV. So black and white didn’t exist until color TV existed. The same thing with an acoustic guitar. An acoustic guitar didn’t exist until an electric guitar was invented. Before then, it was simply a guitar.

Now they’re air guitars.

Exactly.

So you’re calling about this phenomenon then?

Yes, sir. And actually, they had about 30 to 40 more of these words, and there was a term, like a collective term for all of those words.

The word that you’re looking for is a retronym.

A retronym?

Yep. R-E-T-R-O-N-Y-M. Retronym. And it’s been used to describe this phenomenon since at least 1980. As a matter of fact, one of the first people we know to use this word, and perhaps the first, was a former president of National Public Radio, Frank Mankiewicz.

Yeah. And he was quoted by William Sapphire in one of his on-language columns in the New York Times magazine in 1980, talking about this phenomenon. And you’ve mentioned some of the classic retronyms.

Okay. The acoustic guitar one is one that’s almost always brought up when this is discussed in the language books.

Yeah, another one of my favorites lately is bar soap.

Bar soap.

Yes. As opposed to liquid soap, huh?

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah, all of a sudden everybody’s using liquid soap. What else do we have here? Silent movies. All movies were silent in the beginning, and they didn’t come to be called silent movies until the talkies came around, right?

Okay. Well, how about this one, you two? How about World War I?

Oh, great one.

Yeah, so the list goes on and on. They’re great fun to collect.

They are, and I haven’t exactly started a pencil and paper list, if you will. I just kind of keep them in my head.

-huh, -huh. If you Google the term retronym, you’ll come up with some lists that other people have made, but I have no doubt at all that they’re incomplete, and you could probably add plenty to them.

Okay, well, thank you.

Sure thing. It’s interesting that you say paper and pencil list. I mean, what other kind of, you know?

Instead of a wiki list or a Palm Pie list.

To tell you the truth, I now make all my lists on my Palm Pilot.

On your Palm or your Palm Pilot?

My Palm Pilot.

Okay. I didn’t know if you were writing on your skin or what.

No, no. Victoria, thank you so much for your call. I’m glad we were able to help you.

Well, thank you very much.

All right. Best of luck.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a favorite retronym, give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Brian Pollack from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hi, Brian.

Hi.

Hi. What’s going on in Cincinnati?

Well, I have a question about a word I’ve heard at work a couple times, and the word is voluntold.

Voluntold, how are you spelling that?

V-O-L-U-N-T-O-L-D.

Okay. And it’s used kind of exactly the same way as the word volunteered, but it would be used, for instance, if you were to say, if someone was at a fundraiser event and you’d say, oh, I didn’t know you were going to be here, and you’d say, oh, my boss voluntold me.

Nice.

Right, right.

Nice. Where do you work that you hear that?

I work at a camp. It’s a nonprofit camp, and so there’s a lot of things where we are volunteered to do fundraisers and things like that. But my suspicion is actually that it’s probably a military word. I was wondering if I was on the right track.

Yes, definitely. When I think of this expression, I think of the commanding officer in front of his troops going, I need three volunteers to clean up the nuclear waste. You, you, and you. And the thing is, there’s no hand-raising there. He’s just picking three people, and that’s that.

Right?

That’s what we’re talking about?

Right. Because when you do volunteer work for a not-for-profit, you still have a boss. There is still somebody telling you what to do. And there’s a certain kind of patina of politeness there that maybe you wouldn’t encounter in a normal workplace. But somebody’s telling you what to do. So you are actually being voluntold.

That’s hilarious.

So is that military?

Yeah. As far as I know, it is. It’s very common in the Marines. The earliest use that I know of is from 1996, which is way too recent. I’m betting it’s from at least the 60s. But there’s no way to prove that. I haven’t seen it in print any earlier than that, though.

All right. Well, Marines make sense. There are a couple of Marines that work at the camp that I work at, and those are the guys I heard first using the term.

Aha. There we go.

Aha. Well, nice. That came together, didn’t it?

Yeah.

All right. Thanks a lot.

Okay. Well, thanks for your call, Brian Bessler. What kind of camp is this? Is this for kids or summer camp?

Yeah. What kind of camp is this?

It’s an outdoor education camp and a summer camp.

It’s actually a YMCA summer camp and outdoor education.

You teach the city kids not to be afraid of bears?

Pretty much, yeah.

All right.

Well, thanks for your call, Brian.

Have a great summer.

Yep, you too.

Thanks a lot.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye.

Voluntold.

Voluntold, you know.

I love that.

There’s no end to the sack of slang that the soldiers bring to the language.

None at all.

The sack of slang.

I love that.

And they keep churning it out, you know.

Yeah.

If you’ve got a question about grammar, usage, punctuation, spelling, send it on.

We’d like to hear it.

1-877-929-9673.

Or send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hello. This is Kathleen Weinberg.

Hi, Kathleen. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from San Diego.

Well, hello. What’s on your mind today, Kathleen?

What I want to know is the origin of the expression, you’re the apple of my eye.

Well, I can tell you, Kathleen, this phrase is really old.

I mean, it is one of the oldest expressions that I’ve come across in English. It goes all the way back to at least the 9th century. Oh, my goodness. And the answer is pretty simple. Centuries ago, people assumed that the pupil of your eye was actually this little hard, round object, kind of like an apple. Oh, my goodness. They didn’t notice that it changed size?

Well, I guess, you know, growing, I didn’t think about that. But there’s been, Kathleen, in many languages, including English, a long tradition of connecting one’s eye with something that is really cherished, something that’s really treasured.

And so metaphorically, that part of your eye, the pupil, is something that you treasure, and that got applied to other things that you cherish, like a person.

Oh, that’s very sweet.

That’s very nice.

Isn’t that lovely?

Yes, it is.

Wow.

Well, you’re the new apple of our eye, right, Grant?

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your show.

You’re welcome.

Thank you for calling, Kathleen.

All right.

Bye now.

Bye-bye.

Grant, there’s so much to say about all this.

Well, spill.

We’ve got time.

Well, you know, speaking about the pupil of your eye, the pupil is so named because of the Latin word pupilla, which meant little doll or puppet.

Because, you know, when you look up close at somebody’s eyes, you can see this little image of yourself.

Isn’t that fabulous?

I love it.

That’s great.

I love it.

And in fact, the Hebrew term that the King James is translating, it translates literally as little man.

The little man in your eye.

One other thing to say about this, Grant, that you’ll appreciate.

You know, the French word for pupil, the pupil of the eye.

I don’t actually know that word.

It’s prunelle.

Little plum.

Little plum.

There we go.

Little plum.

Isn’t that great?

Mm—

That’s very nice.

Oh, and Kathleen is a kindred spirit.

Love it, love it, love it.

The world apparently is filled with them.

They keep calling.

I know.

And you can, too.

Call 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

What’s that address, Grant?

The email address is words@waywordradio.org, and you can drop by our discussion forum at waywordradio.org and tell the whole world what’s on your mind.

Hey, Grant, you remember the conversation we had a while back about playful nicknames for one’s hometown?

Like San Diego is sometimes called San Diego, with good reason, of course.

Yes, indeed. I do remember that.

Somebody reminded me that St. Louis is called the Gateway City or St. Louis.

Oh, yeah, Gateway to the West.

Well, we asked you for your hometown nicknames, and we got some great ones from a woman in Canada named Giselle Da Silva.

She lives in Vancouver, and she sent us a number of nicknames for Vancouver, one of which I loved was Vansterdam.

She says, by far the best known and most widely used, thanks to Vancouver’s well-earned reputation for the availability and quality of a certain recreational substance.

Grant, what could she possibly be talking about?

Van high-top shoes.

Van’s high-top shoes, right?

I don’t think so.

I don’t think so.

She had several others, including Hollywood North.

She points out that on film, Vancouver has doubled for almost every major city in North America, including Vancouver.

It’s one of their biggest industries there.

And following up on that, she says that bearing in mind that the word Brawley means umbrella, her own favorite nickname for Vancouver is Brawleywood.

I love that.

Well, if you have something you’d like to share with us, call us anytime, eh?

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Up next on A Way with Words, it’s a word puzzle.

And we’ll take more of your calls.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined once again by that wacky, that crazy, that nutty quiz guy.

John Chaneski.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hey.

What’s up?

What’s up, buddy?

How are the kids?

Good.

The kids are just great.

You have the loveliest children I think I’ve ever seen except for my own.

Yes.

I’d say the three of them together comprise the most beautiful children in the world.

When you’re in public, do you do like I do?

You just face them in certain directions so they can cast their glow over the world and make it good?

Oh, sure.

Whatever they’re facing blossoms, right?

It is my duty to show my children to the world and let them spread happiness.

I assume you’ve come here to spread happiness.

Yes, I’ve come to spread happiness by way of puzzles and quizzes.

My speciality.

And here we go.

As you guys know, I’m a big fan of comics.

While I read and recommend the mature artistic version of the medium, you know, the work of Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, I still enjoy the fanboy stuff.

That is the men in tights, good guys versus bad guys, save the world stuff.

Anyway.

Which is why, while reading my dictionary, as any good word boy should do daily, I discovered a whole treasure trove of heretofore unknown superheroes.

-oh.

Yeah.

Wow.

For example, I discovered a hero who can instantly keep any ship or other seagoing vessel from moving.

Do you know his name?

Anchorman?

Anchorman, that’s right.

Oh, I get it.

Anchorman.

Anchorman.

Oh, no.

Do you know what his alter ego does?

Host the news?

He reads the news on TV.

That’s right.

Right.

So now we have a superhero and his name and his alter ego.

I like these alter egos.

I’ll give you the powers.

You tell me their superhero names.

If you need it, I’ll tell you what the alter ego does as an additional clue.

We’ll see.

We tend to need those, so keep those ready.

I’ll keep them in my back pocket.

Here we go, flying in with superheroes.

This hero can, with mind-numbing speed, put together furniture from Ikea all without losing a single nut or bolt.

-huh, and does he also serve as a politician in the state?

His alter ego is also…

At the state level, he’s an assemblyman.

Assemblyman!

Assemblyman can assemble furniture from Ikea, which, moving to a new house, I could certainly use assemblyman’s help.

I wish I had the signal watch for assemblyman.

Assemblyman to the rescue.

Now, this hero can perform any dance to perfection, but he specializes in the bump, the hustle, and other dances from the disco era.

Oh, no.

It’s not the Walkman.

No, not Walkman.

No.

Did I just ruin one of your answers?

No, no, not at all.

No.

Now, this hero’s alter ego, sorry to say, likes to hide in closets and scare children.

Oh, it’s the Boogeyman.

Boogeyman.

The Boogeyman.

Boogeyman.

Okay.

Here’s the next one.

Thanks.

Now, this one’s a little tricky.

He has the unusual ability of being able to eliminate the barriers between any two yards.

Privets, pickets, chain link, none of these can stand in his way.

Well, we’re talking about fences, right?

Right.

Okay.

His alter ego plays near the goalie on the Manchester United football team.

Defense man?

Defense man.

No.

Really?

Yes.

I went there.

I did.

Privets.

This was just the clue.

And I followed you.

We’re still…

And you followed me there.

That’s right.

All right.

I did.

Okay.

Here’s the next one.

Yes.

This hero can take any food item that is past its expiration date, send it back through time, and make it edible again.

His alter ego is in his first year at NYU.

Fresh man.

Fresh man.

Oh, my gosh.

Yum.

This one is also kind of tricky.

This hero is useful if you’re missing one of your shoes.

He can miraculously find the other one, no matter where it may be.

Boy, is it something, boy?

We need a boy here.

Where are the sidekicks here?

If you’re missing any one of two things, he can find the other one.

Because he’s a footman?

You’re close.

Footman?

Is that footman?

No.

It was a pair, and now it needs to be a pair again.

Repair man.

He’s repair man.

His alter ego fixes Maytag washing machines.

So he has a lot of time to be a superhero.

Because metallic washing machines don’t take a lot of repair.

Okay, and on that note, up and away.

Goodbye, Grant.

Goodbye, Martha.

Goodbye, John.

That is my superhero quiz for today.

Thank you, Super John.

Thank you, Quizman.

Who was that mask quiz guy?

Any comic books that are created as a result of this quiz, I retain the rights.

FYI.

All right, thank you so much, John.

Thank you, Grant.

Thank you, Martha.

If you would like to get on the air with a question about grammar, punctuation, slang, jargon, or what have you,

We’re the people to call 1-877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Here we come to save the day.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who is this?

Hi, this is Schumet Desculta calling from Oakland, California.

What’s on your mind today, Schumet?

Oh, I got a question.

I had a friend of mine in college who had all these rather crass colloquialisms that he picked up from his father.

They’re wonderful.

A lot of them I can’t really say on the radio.

But, you know, I picked up on them, and I used to go around saying them for years.

And one in particular is a way of describing, I guess, an unattractive woman.

And he would say she’s got a face that could gag a maggot off a gut wagon.

Gag a maggot off a gut wagon?

Ew.

You could pair it, I guess, both ways and make gender equity,

But for some reason I can only think of guys saying this.

So the question I had actually was, for years,

This phrase has been going through my head,

And I always just figured the gut wagon was just for effect.

Everything seems to be rooted somewhere.

So I thought, is there an actual gut wagon and why?

-huh.

Is there a story behind the expression gut wagon?

Yes, there is.

And probably those of you who are eating breakfast right now might want to either turn down the radio

Or just reach for the crunchiest thing on your plate and crunch for a little bit while we explain,

Because it is pretty gross.

Are you ready, Shumit?

Yeah, I think so.

Okay.

Yes, a gut wagon is an actual thing.

It’s a wagon or truck that hauls the carcasses of dead farm stock.

Okay.

So a gut wagon is a pretty gross thing,

And if you’re a maggot on a gut wagon, then you have a pretty strong stomach.

So if somebody’s got a face that could gag a maggot,

Not just any maggot, but a maggot on a gut wagon,

That’s quite a face.

Oh, boy.

Thanks for that, I think.

Thanks for that, I think.

Well, Shumit, one thing about the gut wagon, it’s actually not that common a vehicle.

You’re not going to find these on every block in town.

Thank goodness.

These days with farm culture basically being managed by the big corporations,

It’s just the kind of thing that’s almost passed completely into colloquialism,

And you’ll find it used as a comparison device in a lot of colorful expressions.

So there are a couple that I know.

Are you ready for these?

None of them are as gross as what we’ve been talking about,

But you can say that somebody stinks so bad that they would stink a dog off a gut wagon in a dead faint.

Oh, that’s excellent.

Or the inverse to what your friend said.

You could say a woman is so fine that the men were after her like buzzards after a gut wagon.

So you’ll find it in literature and in newspapers over the last, what, 100-plus years, Martha?

Quite a while.

At least back to the 1920s, yeah.

Yeah, people using it as a kind of device because it’s something so extreme.

It’s so filthy and disgusting that it’s kind of like a marking point of things being better than that or things being worse than that.

And it’s actually causing a very positive or very negative reaction in people.

One of my favorite ones, though, Schumann, I will leave.

I’ve got a bunch of these, but this is the last one I’ll tell you about.

Are you enjoying this, Schumann?

Not really.

It’s informative.

Oh, yeah.

Pretty much everyone says that about our show.

One last one.

He says, I knew him when he was nobody and had nothing, he couldn’t flag down a gut wagon.

Which is kind of saying, you know, he couldn’t get the attention of anyone.

So I like that one.

Excellent.

Thank you for that.

Love your show.

Thank you so much for calling, Chewbacca.

Still?

I’m glad to take the call.

All right.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

If you’d like us to explain some stuff to you that’s not quite so gross, or maybe we’ll do the gross stuff.

Why not, right?

Why not?

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAY-WORD.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Celeste calling from Washington, D.C.

Well, hello, Celeste. What do you do in D.C.?

I am a legal assistant.

So are you calling for grammatical assistance?

I am calling because I’m curious to know the origins of the phrase, go fly a kite.

-huh. Go fly a kite meaning buzz off?

Yes.

Now, what got you curious about that?

Well, someone had mentioned it to me a while ago, and I was really confused as to what they meant.

I was bothering them, and obviously I stopped bothering them because I just didn’t know what they were trying to tell me to do.

Okay.

So you were a little kid and you were told to go fly a kite?

Yes, I was.

So you thought they were literally telling you to go fly a kite?

I did.

I did.

Oh, bless your heart.

Well, it’s an expression that’s been around for, what, Grant, since at least the early…

The 1920s, as far as I know.

-huh, -huh.

Really?

And so it’s part and parcel of that whole family of expressions like that.

Go jump in a lake, go fry an egg, go cook a radish.

All of those expressions were common during that period of time.

And it’s certainly a lot more polite than what you might say.

Go fry an egg or go fly a kite.

Yeah, and I mean, I think it’s just one of many phrases like that.

I mean, you see it in other languages, too.

In Spanish, you’ll be told to go fry an asparagus or go fry potatoes.

So the kite, though, Martha, you’ve heard the theories about why people say fly a kite or fly a kite, right?

People are directly going back to this myth that Ben Franklin discovered lightning or that he discovered electricity, and he didn’t do either.

But people do know the story of Ben Franklin flying his kite in the lightning storms, right?

Right.

So the idea is that if you go fly a kite, they’re hoping that you’ll get struck by lightning.

So it’s a way of saying go injure yourself.

Sort of like go jump in a lake.

Yeah.

Go play in traffic.

Go play in traffic, exactly.

So there’s no way to prove that, but it makes the most sense.

And the reason it makes the most sense is because the first use that I know of is from a comic strip

Where the guy in the comic strip is flying a kite in a lightning storm.

There’s a bolt of lightning in the air about to strike his kite.

But he’s not looking where he’s going, so he’s not only going to get struck by lightning,

But he’s going to run headfirst into the rear end of a donkey.

So he’s going to get it either way.

Well, Celeste, aren’t you glad you didn’t go do that?

I am very glad.

I’m a little concerned that that’s what she was telling me to do.

Well, you know what?

Maybe you need a lawyer of your own.

That sounds like an unemployment dispute to me.

Thank you so much.

You’re welcome, Celeste.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So do you have a copy of that comic strip that we could post to the website?

I will post it online.

Yes!

I would love to see it.

Super duper.

If you’ve got a question about grammar, punctuation, spelling, or the best way to put something into print, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

And you can always send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We read everything.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Philip Woodson from San Diego, California.

Hiya, Philip!

Hello, Philip. What’s going on?

Well, here’s my question. And a couple of months ago, I was picking up my high school grandson with a bunch of his buddies from school. And so they were hungry, and I took them out to get something to eat. And there I discovered a peculiar way of them talking that’s my question to you today.

They would always refer to themselves in their last name. For instance, it would be like, hey, Sullivan, pass me the ketchup. Or Garcia, do you want your French fries? Hunter, if you’re going to the game tomorrow, can I get a ride with you? Always using the last name.

So I was kind of curious about it because when I was growing up, too many decades ago, but when I was growing up we had nicknames for each other, but we didn’t use our last names in talking to each other. But they didn’t seem to think it was unusual that it was done all the time in a group.

Now, my grandson has a twin sister, my granddaughter, and so I asked her, I said, if there’s a group of girls, do you ever refer to each other with your last name? Like, you know, talk the way you refer to it. She said never. They would either call themselves by their first name or sometimes by a nickname.

So I guess my question to you is, is this typical just to San Diego, the adolescents here? Is it typical throughout the United States? Is this strictly for adolescents, or is this common in other areas where they would use just the last name?

Well, these are great questions. You mentioned that, as far as you know, quizzing other people in your own experience, that women don’t do this. And I do remember, do you ever see the George Bernard Shaw play The Philanderer?

I’ve read some of his stuff, like Man and Superman, but not that one. Because in there, there’s a club of women who practice all the vices of men. They smoke, drink, they live alone, and they call each other by their last names. And you can read about this sort of phenomenon among young women well into the 20s when there were different kind of movements afoot to bring equality to the way women were treated in the public sphere.

But in any case, that’s a side story there. But the main answer to your question is yes, yes, yes. Yes, it’s common across the United States. It’s common to young men. It’s common to older men. They do it in Germany. They do it in the United Kingdom. They do it throughout the Anglophone world. They do it in Korea, as far as I know. They do it in Russia, too.

What about the women? Do the women ever do that?

Women almost never do. Yeah, I never did. In the Anglophone world, if they do, it’s a kind of very conscious decision to emulate the men that are around them. Professionals called each other by their last names. And from what I understand, the reason that young men do it, we’re talking grade school, junior high, high school, college even, is a kind of, first, it establishes a familiarity. Bonds the group together, and this is so important when you’re that age.

And second, it emulates what the older men do. So it’s kind of like they’re trying to seem more masculine by taking on this kind of language. It’s not something they consciously know that they’re doing in order to try to seem more masculine, but that’s the overall effect of it.

The first time I heard it was I actually never had encountered it. I was probably 8 or 9 when I read my first Hardy Boys book. And Frank and Joe Hardy, they called all of their friends by their last name. I didn’t see it until high school, and then my friends did it, and it seemed natural. And then the Little House on the Prairie Girls didn’t, I assume.

The Little House on the Prairie Girls did not. Philip, here’s the thing about all this. We delight in calling people things other than their names. If you want more information on this, because we could talk about this to the end of time.

Yeah, I do. There’s a great book called The Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address by Leslie Dunkling. That’s L-E-S-L-I-E. Take a look at that. Introductory matter alone is worth the time that you might spend on it. You probably find it at a decent price used. Thank you so much. Hey, Philip. It was a pleasure. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

If you’ve got a question about language, that is usage, grammar, slang, or what have you, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

A while back, we had a call from a guy named Steve who was looking for a better term than retirement. Remember that one, Grant? I do. Steve and his wife were both leaving their jobs after many years, but they wanted to keep their options open, maybe do some more work or get involved in something on the side. So they wanted a word for retirement that suggested something a little more dynamic than just sitting around the house.

And holy cow, our mailbox has been overflowing with suggestions from listeners. Stephen from San Diego proposed pre-tirement, which I kind of like. And Richard from Indianapolis called to suggest the initialism FTC, meaning free to choose, which I kind of like too. Hey, my wife and I are FTC.

A lot of people called and wrote to say that we should just use those great words freelancer or consultant, because if you’re doing a lot of things all at once, either one of those words could apply, right?

Yeah, that always works, consultant. And other listeners wanted to replace the term retiring with other words that have an initial RE, like redirecting, regrouping, recasting, restaging. I don’t remember what else. But finally, several of you reminded us that in Spanish, the term for retirement is jubilación, which is a relative of the English word jubilation.

And both English jubilation and Spanish jubilación go back to a Latin term that means to shout for joy. So maybe we should start calling retirees jubilants. I sure know a lot who feel that way.

Jubilant. That’s great. Instead of a retiree, jubilant.

Well, if you’ve spotted a phenomenon that’s still in need of a name, we’re the ones to help you name it. Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Get ready for our slang quiz. It’s up next on A Way with Words. Stay tuned.

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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 Catherine Bryant of Boston, Massachusetts.

Catherine, come on down.

Hi there.

Hi, Catherine. Say hi to Grant.

Hi, Grant.

Hello, Catherine. What’s going on there in Boston?

Well, it’s a nice spring day here. We’ve had some nice weather, which is a nice change after the winter.

That’s great. And what do you do there in Boston?

I am an editor. I edit elementary and these days middle school science textbooks.

You’re corrupting young, I mean you’re improving young minds.

Exactly. Exactly. With evolution and everything.

Whoa, the E word.

That’s right.

Wow, okay. Well, besides evolution, do you have a favorite slang term?

Well, there’s a term that some friends of mine who hang out at MIT use, and I’ve never heard it from anyone else.

Okay. But it’s a very creative use of the word pants. Specifically having pants or finding your pants.

Pants. And it sort of means having your act together or trying to get your act together.

Oh. So you might say, you know, oh, I wish she’d find her pants already. We’re already late. Or, you know, I’ve been making progress on my project and I think I finally have my pants.

I like that.

That’s great.

But it’s just from a small group of people.

Or do you think it’s more widespread?

I think it’s only this group of people at MIT.

I think it’s one of those college slang things that particularly picked up there.

I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’ve heard it anywhere else.

Boy, I really like it. Have you heard it, Grant?

I think it’s a clever use.

Maybe some people will hear the show and it’ll spread.

Yeah, maybe so.

Well, Catherine, let’s try to find our pants and move on to the game.

All right.

Okay. Grant will give you a slang term, and then he’ll give you three sentences that suggest what that term could mean.

Okay.

Only one example will be real, and the other two are fake.

So your task is going to be to guess which of those sentences illustrates how this slang term is really used.

And chances are you won’t have heard the term before, so the trick will be to puzzle out its meaning, and I’ll be standing by to help if you get stuck, all right?

Sounds good.

Okay.

Here we go.

We’ve got two terms for you today, and the first term to guess the meaning of is boil over.

I’m treating this as one word, B-O-I-L-O-V-E-R.

And here’s the first one.

His body was covered in boil-overs, fingernail-like lesions that shed like snowflakes.

Ugh.

Oh, that’s what I wanted.

That’s the response I was looking for.

Here’s the next one.

More than 30 years later, Grandpa could still recount the play-by-play of the boil-over in 1970 when Great Britain unexpectedly won the ashes in Australia.

And then the third sentence.

He was a pretty sorry bank robber, one boil over after the other, time after time.

He waived his demand note.

Then the place suddenly exploded with police and off to jail he went.

So we have three separate choices here.

Is a boil over an icky hard growth on the skin?

Is it a unexpected win in sports?

Or is it a bank robbery gone wrong?

And I should say that in the second clue there where I talked about the ashes, that is the trophy for rugby.

Well, I sure hope it’s not the first one, because ew.

I’m with you on that, Katherine.

Would it help if I told you that this term is from the Antipodes?

That’s from Australia, that general neck of the woods.

That doesn’t help me.

They certainly have some creative terms down there.

I could see it being a sports term, actually, that like a big upset would be a boil over.

-huh.

I could see that.

Yeah, I’m going to go with that.

I think I like that better.

So it is. It’s an unexpected win in sports.

It originally was used in horse racing, and then later was spread to pretty much any sport, and even elections, which are kind of a sport-like event themselves, right?

Yeah.

All right, so nice work there, Catherine.

We’ve got another one for you. Are you ready?

Okay.

This one takes a little bit of spelling.

It’s nycthemeron.

N-Y-C-H-T-H-E-M-E-R-O-N.

That’s nycthemeron.

And there are three sample sentences.

The first one, once a week in Greece, recycling trucks rumble through the streets pulling a nycthemeron for collecting grass cuttings and compost.

And the second one.

Sometimes, ants from competing colonies don’t fight at all upon encountering each other.

Instead, they enter a state of nycthemeron in which each acts as if the other is not there.

And the third one.

One of the great tricks of good playwriting is to treat an entire year as a nycthemeron.

365 days condensed as if they were just 24 hours.

So, Catherine, is a nycthemeron a recycling container for green waste?

Is it a kind of avoidance posture that insects sometimes take instead of protecting their territory?

Or is it a 24-hour period including a night and a day?

Well, it sounds like a Greek term to me.

So if you’re playing the same trick you did with Australia, that would be the first one.

But you might be playing a different trick for all I know.

Yes.

Let’s see.

So we’ve got grass clippings, insect avoidance, and a day and a night.

It’s a good word.

Martha, you can jump in here and help her out.

You’ve got the classics training here.

Well, you’re right about the Greek.

And if you’ve been to Greece, you know that in the morning people say kalimera.

Oh.

Good morning.

Does that mean good morning?

Yeah.

Well, then that sounds like…

Sounds like the last half of that word, doesn’t it?

Yeah, it does, actually.

What about the first part?

What does that sound like?

And Nick’s could be night.

So we could be looking at a night and a day.

So let’s go with the third one, how about?

Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

That is exactly right.

Hey, all right.

You know, I always rather that the callers get these correct than get them wrong.

It’s exactly right.

I’m glad you were there with that morning piece there.

I don’t think I’d have picked that one up.

Let me spell that again.

N-Y-C-H-T-H-E-M-E-R-O-N.

A nycthemeron is a 24-hour period including a night and a day.

Very nice.

It’s just a fancy way of saying a day.

Right.

And it’s a relative of ephemeral.

Oh, okay.

You’re today, gone tomorrow.

Sure, sure.

Very nice.

Well, this was fun, Catherine.

How’d you like it?

Catherine, you rocked.

Oh, this is great fun.

I’ve learned all kinds of new things.

Catherine, you did wonderfully well.

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

Excellent.

It’s Sapphire’s political dictionary autographed by the author himself, New York Times columnist William Sapphire.

Oh, excellent.

Good year for that, too.

Yes, indeed.

Thank you so much for playing with us today, Catherine.

It was good fun.

Well, thank you.

This was great.

All right.

And if a question about language is puzzling you, give us a call, 1-877-WAY-WORD.

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can always email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is James in Seattle.

Hiya, James. How you doing?

Oh, very good. Thank you.

And, okay, so I had read or heard somewhere a long time ago that an S doesn’t belong on the end of a word like toward or backward.

But I often hear someone say move towards the back of the bus or take three steps backwards.

And so I was curious what the ruling is on that.

And partially because I was listening to a show the other night and one of my two favorite hosts used the word towards.

Towards?

Yes.

Really?

What show was that?

It happened to be one of you two.

Oh my goodness, really?

Inevitably it would be me because I’m the one that constantly mispronounces things and gets it wrong, right?

Go on, spell it.

Well, I couldn’t say that.

But I thought, well, you know, was that a slip of the tongue?

Or is it okay that you put the S on the end?

You know, but the thing is it’s those keen observations about the speech of other people that lead us down interesting paths in language, right?

Yes.

Absolutely.

So, James, you were taught that the traditional rule is that it’s toward and forward, right?

Right.

And I’d read, except for the British usage, they use the S.

Right.

You might say towards the back of a double-decker bus if you’re in London, right?

Yeah.

James, you’re right.

In this country, generally speaking, your best bet is to avoid the S.

So you wouldn’t say, you know, pioneers heading in the direction of California would say westwards ho, right?

That’s how I remember it.

But there are a few exceptions with the word backward.

But like forward and toward, that’s all without the S.

Correct.

From what I can see or remember of my style guides, these rules aren’t the kind of rules that even the most conservative style mavens tend to get really peevish about, right?

Right.

Using the toward or towards or forward or forwards or backward or backwards, they tend not to see this as the worst thing that you could ever say.

What’s really interesting about this particular case of whether or not to use forward or forwards or toward or towards is that the rules are really easy to follow in print and a little more lax out loud.

The kind of thing that you can say verbally is going to be less offensive to people.

And most people won’t even notice that you said the S form and won’t have a problem with it.

And it’s not the kind of thing that you should be excoriated for if you do say it.

Unless you have ears like yours, James.

Well, yeah, it’s kind of funny because I noticed in print you rarely see the S, but almost everybody puts the S on the end speaking.

Well, I think you’ve raised a good point.

I mean, traditionally in print, the rule that you described is correct, no S.

But as Grant was saying, it’s a lot harder to do that when you’re running your mouth.

Right, right.

Well, thank you very much for straightening me out on this.

You were already straightened out.

You were 100%.

You’re part of the club, buddy.

All right.

Well, carry on.

I love your show.

All right.

Best of luck.

We will send you your Nerd Club of the Air t-shirt right away.

Okay.

All right.

I’ll wear it proudly.

All right.

Glad to hear it.

Bye-bye, James.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got a question about grammar, language, usage, what’s right and what’s wrong, we’ll help you sort it out.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or go toward your computer and email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rachel from San Francisco.

Hiya, Rachel.

Hello, Rachel.

Hi, Martha and Grant.

Well, what’s up, Rachel?

Well, I have a question for you.

I was born and raised in western North Dakota.

And a phrase I often heard while growing up was, it’s a horse apiece, which meant it doesn’t make a difference or it’s the same either way.

A lot of times you would hear it in answer to questions regarding driving directions, like should I take the highway or should I take the interstate?

So when I went to college in eastern North Dakota, I would sometimes use the phrase, and it was like I was speaking a foreign language.

So I was just wondering where it came from, and is the usage restricted to western North Dakota?

Huh. So the phrase is, it’s a horse apiece, and it sort of means the same thing as six of one, half a dozen of the other?

Exactly. That’s what they would often tell me, all my Minnesota friends.

But I’m sort of loathe to take advice from people that think the goose is a great duck.

Well, that’s not quite right, but okay.

So yeah, so it is six of one, half a dozen of the other.

This has actually got a pretty tight little story.

This is a newer form of an older expression, which is a horse and a horse, used in almost exactly the same circumstances.

Somebody would say, you know, do you want the apples or do you want the oranges?

And you’d say, you know, a horse and a horse, they’re the same thing.

And it comes originally, of course, from horse racing, where you might have horses neck and neck coming up to the wire.

So the horse and a horse version of this goes back to the mid-1800s, and the horse-at-peace version, you know what, Martha, I don’t know of it any newer than, say, the 1980s, but it must be older than that.

It feels older, doesn’t it?

Yeah, I mean, I know that most of the people that used it growing up were much older.

There we go.

That’s what I was looking for.

Yeah, Rachel, that’s exactly what I would expect it is.

I would suspect this one goes back at least to the 20s and 30s, if not earlier than that still.

It’s weird that I have never heard of it any earlier than the 80s.

In print.

Is it used across the country, or is it…

It is.

It is.

There’s a tiny bit of evidence that says it’s concentrated in Wisconsin and in the surrounding states, but there’s not enough information in order to draw that conclusion conclusively.

So how’s that for waffling and hedging?

I appreciate the information.

Yeah.

So, Rachel, you don’t talk that strangely.

I’ll let all those Minnesota folks know that.

No, I think a horse apiece is fine.

And if I were you, I’d start taking what I call a little of Chamber of Commerce pride in that expression, which is you just tell them that’s the way right-talking folks speak and that they need to catch up, that they’re behind.

Right?

Okay. Yes.

Well, Rachel, thanks for your call.

Thank you.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, if you have a question about language, call us.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Doug calling from San Diego.

What prompted you to take time out of your busy day to give us a call?

Well, I wanted to know why the prefix un works so very differently in, for example, two different words, undone and unmarried.

If something has been undone, that means it was done to begin with and now has been undone.

If someone is not married, we say they are unmarried, but not because they were married, but they had their marriage undone or reversed.

They have not had an annulment or a divorce necessarily, but they are merely not married at this time.

So I was wondering why the prefix un-, un-, you know, works for both of those, and it doesn’t necessarily mean a marriage that has been, well, undone.

Well, let me ask you, are you sure that undone and unmarried always mean the things that you’ve just said?

Does unmarried always mean that somebody has never been married?

No, no. I assume I take unmarried to mean someone who’s simply not married at this time, which to me means that we could just say they are not married.

It doesn’t necessarily mean someone who’s never been married, just someone who is not currently married.

Right.

But putting the prefix in front of it the way you do with undone, with the word undone, it means that something that was done has now been, well, undone.

That’s how I would work for it, so I have to repeat that word.

But couldn’t you say something like, the chores around the house go undone unless I do them?

Ooh.

Yeah.

Two things, because you’re so close to answering your own question.

You’re just a hair away from it.

One is that an has a meaning, as a morpheme, as we call it in linguistics.

A morpheme is a unit of language that has a meaning but can’t really function as a word on its own.

In this case, an is kind of a negation or a reversal of whatever it’s attached to.

So an attached to done or an attached to married, right?

Right.

And so what it does, it kind of either negates it, turns it negative, or it kind of reverses the meaning.

But the thing is, it really is heavily dependent upon two other things, the meaning of the root that it attaches to and the meaning of the sentence as a whole, which is why I gave you that other possibility, the other way to use undone that might mean something slightly different.

So what you’re going to find here is that un isn’t always exactly the same thing in every word that it’s a part of.

Right.

And so this is where we run into variability of language.

And you’ll find that a lot of the prefixes like dis, D-I-S, work that way.

Mm—

You know what? I was going to ask you if Grant has helped you unravel this question, but what do you do with unravel?

Because to ravel a sweater means that it unravels.

Well, that’s like to—

Oh, my head hurts.

Hey, to ravel is to perform the function that we would also refer to as unraveling.

Right, right, to separate the fibers or the threads.

Oh, man.

Well, that seems to me to open the door to things like you’re regardless, and I cringe even to say that word.

Well, another place that we run into something like that is some people will describe a full box, a box that still has all of its things in it, as an unpacked box.

Whereas if it was also empty, you could also call it an unpacked box.

An unpacked box.

Yeah.

Well, I would draw the line there.

I think it’s not correct, but because I would myself never say that.

Yeah, it’s an interesting paradox, and one of the things when you think about it too closely, it kind of evaporates under your vision.

Oh, Doug.

Well, what are you going to think about now?

Well, whatever it is, when I think of it, I will be contacting you.

All right.

Thank you so much, Doug.

Bye-bye.

Thank you so much.

Bye now.

Well, bad spellers of the world, untie.

Give us a call at 1-877-929-9673.

Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

That’s our show.

You can always call and leave us a message during the week.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Tim Felten is our technical director and editor.

We’ve had production help this week from Dana Polakowski and Michael Bagdazian.

A Way with Words is produced at Studio West in San Diego.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, inviting you to join us next time.

That’s right here on A Way with Words.