Going for that Anti-Marketing Dollar (episode #1260)

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Despite the great recession that we’re in, there’s still every effort being made by advertisers to separate us from our money.

I’ve noticed that they play on our sense of frugality instead of trying to convince us that we deserve it or that we’re worth it.

Everything is recessionary spending.

They’re twisting the language a little bit.

I guess advertising has always done that, right?

They try to persuade us with just the right word or the right turn of phrase.

They want our money in their pockets.

Right.

It’s called spin.

It’s called spin.

Well, there was an article by Stuart Elliott.

He is the advertising beat columnist for the New York Times.

And in it, he explains that part of the common strategy of selling things to people in the recession is to use upbeat language.

You’re not going to buy a product from somebody who says, “Life sucks, doesn’t it?”

Right?

No, you’re not.

So the advertisers use words of encouragement, words that have positivity.

Right.

But I’m still laughing over the Quaker Oats campaign.

Go humans, go.

Well, it’s positive.

Go humans, go.

It keeps you regular, but my heavens, you know?

No, but the art was nice in that.

It’s a man with two cardboard canisters of oats strapped to his back like a jet pack, and he’s flying off into this great future that we’re all supposed to have, right?

Well, I know, but that’s just a little too upbeat even for me.

Oh, is it now?

It’s not like up with people or something.

Almost.

Almost.

Go humans, go.

Up with people.

Right, yeah.

Humans, you rock.

You’re great.

You’re human.

Go be your human self, yeah.

Maybe you’re right.

There’s something kind of inane about that.

I like my oats, though, so.

Oh, I love it.

I love it.

That’s the thing is I was buying oats in the up economy, in the down economy.

What am I supposed to do now?

Buy more oats?

Well, we could talk about the motivations that come from advertising and the way that they persuade us to spend our money all day, but if you’ve got something else to talk about, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

You can also talk about this and any other topic on our discussion form at waywordradio.org/discussion, and you can send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, super-duper to take from Grant and Barney.

My name is Kristen, I’m calling from Dallas.

Kristen from Dallas?

And you call this Grant and Barney?

Super-duper.

Isn’t that what he says all the time?

It is what Grant says all the time.

Yeah, I do say that all the time.

It’s a parody of myself.

You’re busted, Barrett.

Well, Kristen, welcome to the show.

Hi.

I’m going to choose you in a minute.

Well, there is a rhyme that we used to do as a kid all the time, and everybody looks at me like I’m a crazy person when I try to tell it to them.

Okay.

And I’ve been able to find the beginning of the rhyme off and on online, and I’ll tell you what it is.

It’s William Trimbletoes, he’s a good fisherman, catches pins, puts them in the pins, lyre briar, limber lock, three geese in a flock, one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, O-U-T spells out, you old dirty dishrag, you.

And this sounds like a counting game.

This is for kids, right?

Yeah, this is for kids.

We would play it with my grandmother, and so she would point.

And I’ve been able to find that part on the internet off and on, though it’s a little different.

So we had a continuation where the person who was out would then go hide behind something, and we would all yell, “When you coming home?”

And the person would respond, “Tomorrow afternoon, what you gonna bring, a fish and a spoon and a fat raccoon?”

“Well, what you coming home on?”

And that kid gets to choose an animal, like a dog, so somebody runs over there like a dog yelping, and brings them back, and then we all say, “Shake ’em ’til he spits, and you shake ’em ’til they fall off.”

Well, first of all, I was wondering where this comes from.

My family’s Cajun, and so I kind of assumed it was that, but I had also thought, in the epigraph of the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he has the line, “One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.”

Yeah, and if you look in the text, he does a version of that, William Trimbletoes.

Oh, really?

Because I haven’t read the book, but I- Yes.

Right, yeah.

It’s in the book.

And that goes as far as the additional part that you’re talking about.

And that is just the family weird edition?

Well, you know, it’s interesting that you mentioned the family weird edition, because there are other families who played similarly.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are you aware of any regions that that’s specific to?

All over the south, Alabama, Mississippi- Mm—

Virginia, even.

Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, for sure.

And do you remember this part?

Did the leader, did grandma say when the person came back what you got there, and the person says a bag of knits?

And then they say- You know what?

That is totally ringing a bell, yes.

Is it?

I mean, this was so long ago, I wasn’t even sure if I remembered the whole thing right.

Yeah.

Well, that’s interesting.

You know, I found one thing online, though, that kind of brought it back to Scotland.

And they had a different version that instead of saying hens, it was something about hands.

There are a bunch of different versions of this.

Most of them are much shorter than the version he gave us, so they were a little longer.

I found it in a Virginia newspaper more than 100 years, from more than 100 years ago.

Really?

Wow, that’s fantastic.

In the 1990s, Hampton, Virginia.

Now, did they do the second part or just the first part?

Both parts, actually.

Mm—

Both parts.

Because one of my sisters kept telling me, “I think that second part, we used to do that to something else.

I don’t think that’s related.”

I’m like, “I’m pretty sure it is.”

Mm—

Well, thank you so much.

That answer’s so much.

I’m so glad other people play it.

All right.

Okay.

Have a good one.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear the rhymes you used as a kid when you played your games with grandmother or siblings or whoever.

Give us a call at 1-877-929-9673, send us an email to words@waywordradio.org, or leave them on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ray Wartel.

I’m calling from Dallas.

All right.

All right.

Here’s my question.

I’ll preface it with a little background.

I was born in the Midwest, lived there for about 10 years old, moved to Texas, grew up in Texas.

I’ve traveled all over the country, lived in England for a year.

And it wasn’t until I lived on the Northeast, specifically in New York, that I noticed this.

New Yorkers say, “Standing online” instead of “standing in line” or “waiting online” rather than “waiting in line.”

Never noticed it anywhere else.

It strikes me as odd every time I hear it.

Why are New Yorkers backwards in this regard is my question.

Backwards?

What are you saying, mister?

I’m joking.

I love New York.

I love New Yorkers.

I lived there a long time.

I hear you.

I’m a New Yorker.

I speak to you from 20th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan.

And I appreciate what you’re saying about the quirks and oddities of this city.

Not only is the economy so heavily dependent on finance, but the language is really weird here and we all have these like strange arrogant behaviors about us that have to do with we like the fact that we say online, don’t we?

New Yorkers.

It seems so.

We revel in it.

We talk about it as a feature of our speech.

This is something right, Martha?

New Yorkers are well known for saying, “Yeah, we say online.”

It’s no secret to a New Yorker.

So where does it come from?

What are the origins?

Or is it just unknown?

It’s just a regional thing?

This is clearly a marker that distinguishes New Yorkers and people in New Jersey, too.

And you know what’s really weird is there are pockets, small pockets around the country where they do say online.

And I don’t know if this is people who have been influenced by New Yorkers, ex-New Yorkers, but there’s a great dialect map on the web.

And you can see little pockets of it around the country.

But you’re right that it’s very, very concentrated in New York.

And I don’t think anybody’s ever quite figured this out.

I’ve seen one suggestion that maybe it has to do with German influence on the language because in some parts of the country that were settled by Germans, like parts of Pennsylvania, they’ll say things like, “On the attic,” like there’s an old bed up on the attic.

But I think they just talk funny.

No, I don’t know.

I think nobody really knows the answer to that.

But it does drive those of us outside of New York nuts, wouldn’t you say?

Well, why would it?

You don’t listen to it.

So you shouldn’t hear it, right?

You should only hear it if you’re here.

And then when in New York do as New Yorkers do.

That’s true.

That much is true.

Maybe once upon a time, there were actual lines that told people where to stand, maybe some sort of, I don’t know, official buildings, and you literally had to stand on the line to be counted.

I don’t know.

That’s one of the theories.

But I think it’s pretty interesting, the idea of the tape on the floor that shows you where to stand.

And also there’s a difference between getting in line, which is to form a line, and getting on line, which is to add yourself to an existing line.

Does that make sense?

So there’s a kind of difference in behavior there too.

There are a lot of different ways that could come about.

But as I was saying, one of the problems with online versus inline is that New Yorkers know that’s what they’re supposed to say.

And because most of us, including me, aren’t from here, we learn it when we get here, and we take it on as a feature of our language to show, either consciously or unconsciously, that we’re a New Yorker.

And hey, you know what?

Everyone does this.

No matter where they live, they take on the local language, and it self-perpetuates.

It doesn’t need a reason anymore, except to say, the only reason it needs is to say, I’m a New Yorker.

This is what New Yorkers say.

Therefore, it’s online.

Oh, really?

So it’s sort of a linguistic initiation rite for you guys.

No.

It’s a shibboleth, as they say.

Well, yeah.

This is how you prove that you’re a New Yorker, because you say online instead of inline.

So Grant, how long were you in New York before you made the switch?

I don’t know, actually.

But I do say both now.

I say online and inline, and I don’t — unconsciously, I don’t — I’ve had people call me on it.

I’m like, oh, that’s interesting.

I didn’t know — I don’t know when I picked it up, but it’s in there.

Okay.

I still haven’t, but I’ve also spent a lot of time in Texas, and we’re just stubborn.

So that might be — Yeah.

I’ve got to say, you know, New Yorkers up against Texans, boy, that’s a contest you want to see.

Well, you know, I have a friend who moved from Kentucky to New York, and then he moved back to Kentucky, and he said he feels like he added 11 years to his life because of the time that he spent standing online in New York, as opposed to inline in Kentucky, where you don’t stand in line very long, because there just isn’t the same concentration of people.

That’s true.

So we have that as consolation, at least.

Well, thanks, guys.

I don’t know if I’m any clearer on this, but it was fun talking about it, and I love your stuff.

I appreciate you letting me be on.

That happens to a lot of people.

Thank you.

We’ll send the therapy bill to your address.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Ray.

Thank you for calling.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Have a great day.

Well, if you have a question about language, you can go online and e-mail us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org, or you can get on the phone line and call us, 1-877-929-9673.

By Twitter, @anna_gonzales, Dallas asks us, “On behalf of her husband, James, if we can help him with the origin of the word ‘ancy,’ as in ‘church makes my kid antsy.'”

-huh.

A-N-T-S-Y.

Well, there you go.

James is not alone in misspelling it as A-N-C-Y.

If you Google that, you’ll find plenty of people spell it that way, because they don’t quite get that it is really related to ants, the little six-legged, you know, red or black creatures that, like, get in your pants.

Because “ancy,” as it turns out, comes from a literal reference to acting as if there are ants in your pants or on your body.

You’re squirming, you’re fidgety, you know, you’ve got no self-control, you’re, like, convulsive because these ants are tickling you or bothering you in some way, right?

And that’s actually what it means to be antsy, to behave as if there are ants on your person.

All right.

Well, if you have a question about language, has you, antsy, run on over to the phone and call us, 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can always email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Stay tuned for a word game and more of your calls, that’s next on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us is our quiz guy, John Chonesky.

Hi, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, John.

What’s up?

Great.

I have a wonderful little quiz for you guys.

I hope you’re ready for me to direct you in the answering of certain questions.

Oh, so you’re going to give us the answer sheet, then.

That’s right.

Great.

Here we go.

I’ll read a sentence to you.

Hidden somewhere in the sentence is the name of a musical instrument.

Okay.

The same musical instrument every time?

You’re a good one.

No, different musical instruments every time.

You’re just listening for the sound of the name of the instrument, not the letters.

For example, if I say, “My cousin is a Santa Monica zookeeper whose specialty is hummingbirds.”

Did you get that one?

“Santa Monica zookeeper whose specialty is hummingbirds.”

He raised his eyebrows at zookeeper.

Santa Monica zookeeper.

Zoo-kazoo.

Kazoo-kazoo?

Kazoo.

Yes.

Very good.

The answer is kazoo.

Okay.

Santa Monica zookeeper.

I see.

Okay.

Here we go with the quiz.

If the waiter doesn’t bring my Chilean sea bass soon, I think we should blow this joint.

Chilean sea bass.

If the waiter doesn’t bring this Chilean sea bass soon, I think we should blow this joint.

It’s a wind instrument.

Chilean sea bass.

Sea bass?

Bass?

Instead of bass?

No.

You’re close.

Bass, I think.

Bass.

Bassoon.

Oh, yes.

If the waiter—no, bassoon.

Sea bass soon, I think we should blow this joint.

Very good.

Bassoon.

Here’s the next.

We found, under the jungle canopy, an overwhelming number of ivory-bearing animals.

Can-a-pee-an-no.

Can-a-pee-an-no.

Piano.

Piano.

I know.

Can-a-pee-an-overwhelming number of ivory-bearing animals.

These are very clever.

Oh, these are great.

Thank you.

Very clever.

Well, I’m glad you like them.

I can never seem to get in touch with my sons, John or Phillip, but my daughter Sue’s a phone call away anytime I need her.

Sue’s a phone.

She’s a phone.

Which is an incredibly rare instrument.

Yes, it is.

Well—my daughter Sue is a phone call away.

Sue’s a phone.

Sue’s a phone call away.

Okay.

Now, this next one requires a little acting on my part, so let me buckle down.

Good day, mate.

How’d you lose all that weight?

Did you reduce your caloric intake or just exercise more?

One more time?

One more time slower.

Good day, mate.

How’d you lose all that weight?

Did you reduce your caloric intake or just exercise more?

Oh, I don’t know.

Well, what kind of accent am I attempting?

Well, it’s Australian, so didgeridoo, maybe, isn’t it?

Oh, it is in there.

Oh, is it?

Didgeridoo.

Oh.

Didgeridoo.

Let’s do it.

I’ve got to think about it.

Yeah, well, maybe they’re right.

You can’t always be right.

You work for them.

Yeah.

No.

I had to tell you that when you asked him what he thinks of when he hears the expression piping hot, you know what I think of?

What?

Chicken pot pies.

I have no idea why, but you know, there’s kind of this stew underneath the crust that’s boiling and it’s kind of burbling through whatever little gaps there are in this perfectly brown crunchy crust.

Yeah.

That’s what I think of when I think of piping hot.

Boy, that brings back some memories.

Yeah.

There’s the doughy underneath and there’s the buttery texture and the big solid pieces of carrot.

Right.

And then your fork kind of scrapes against the, you know, aluminum pan and, you know.

Food.

Don’t get us started about food.

Should we just go out to lunch?

Yeah.

See you.

Bye-bye.

In the meantime, you can give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

We will try to tell you what a word means, where it comes from, and how it’s going to affect the future of the world.

It’s all related.

You can also leave us a message about this call and other calls at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Or pipe up and send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Susan in Encinitas.

Hi, Susan.

Encinitas, California.

I take it.

Yes.

Yes.

Lovely Encinitas.

Well, Susan, welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

I have a question about the word “ajida.”

Ajida?

Ajida.

Yes.

I grew up in Connecticut, and it was a word I heard a lot.

It was a word that one of my friends actually used a lot.

And then the other day, I received an email from my boss that used the word “ajida” and copied one of my coworkers who’s in the Midwest.

And I think the email said something to the effect of, this article gave me “ajida.”

And my coworker wrote me the next day and said, “What does she mean? What is ‘ajida’?”

She said that she and someone else in her office had looked it up and couldn’t find any reference to it.

And part of it might have been the spelling.

And they had never heard of it.

And I asked a couple people here in California, had they heard the word “ajida.”

And they hadn’t.

And I’m wondering, where does it come from, and is it a regional New York Northeast thing?

Yeah, Susan, a couple of things.

Number one, how was it used, and how did they spell it?

She spelled it, I think, O-G-I-D-A.

Ajida.

O-G-I-D-A.

And you said that somebody’s boss said this article gave me “ajida,” meaning that it made them unhappy?

You know, I would take it as, you know, it gave me a stunning outfit.

The way I had used it before was mostly, one of my friends would say, every time she had tomato sauce, it gave her “ajida.”

So, you know, it’d give you an upset stomach.

But I think in this sense, it was more, you know, it made me nervous, it made me upset.

So a generalized feeling of just ickiness and upset and…

Discomfort. …a total body migraine.

I’ve heard it described that way.

That’s a new one.

And your friend, the friend that you learned this from, who used it all the time, is she of Italian heritage, perhaps?

She is.

-ha.

-ha.

And she’s from Connecticut?

Yes.

Well, Susan, you do have exactly the meaning of it, which is heartburn or stomach acid.

Is it an Italian thing?

Yes, it is.

I don’t…

Really?

It originally was Italian, yes, as a matter of fact.

And you know what’s really interesting?

It doesn’t start to occur in printed English, really, until the 1980s, the early 1980s, although I’m sure it was around decades before that.

And how would you spell it?

Because when we did Google it, it is O-G-I-T-A.

I don’t think it came up.

Yeah, well, that’s because ordinarily it’s spelled A-G-I-T-A.

Oh, okay.

Agita.

And there are a couple of different theories about where that comes from.

Such as?

Such as, well, there’s the heartburn or stomach acid theory, and there’s also the idea that it might come from agitare, which means to be agitated.

Oh, okay.

I’m a proponent of the first theory, and here’s why.

If you look in dictionaries of Sicilian dialect, and I have a couple of those at home, you’ll find that there’s a phrase, I’m going to mispronounce this and all the Sicilians are going to call me up and tell me exactly how to do it correctly, but…

-oh.

It’s perhaps, it’s asitu distamuku, or asitu distamuku, which literally means acid or vinegar of the stomach.

And that first word is spelled A-C-I-T-U.

And I could easily see how the spelling might change from region to region, or when Italians or Sicilians specifically came to the United States, they might phonetically spell it out, because it’s easy to see how that C might be rendered as a G in certain speech.

But this is all neither here nor there.

In any case, I think it’s related specifically to Sicilian dialect of Italian.

So is it an Italian thing, or is it a New York thing?

Like I said, you know, if it’s an Italian thing, you would think we covered three regions with it.

Here’s the thing.

No, it’s not an Italian thing specifically.

You will not find the word A-G-I-T-A listed with anything like this meaning in any Italian dictionary that I know of.

And I’ve looked this up before and done a little bit of backgrounding on this, and there’s just, it’s not in there.

But when Italians came to the New World, they came by the Sicilians, and a lot of times they all kind of created local, that is to say, parts of New York had one specific kind of Italian that they spoke, where they took the dialect from this region and the dialect from that region, and some of the best features of all these different dialects kind of prevailed.

So they developed during decades their own regional kind of New York dialect of Italian.

So it’s very easy to see.

I mean, there are lexicons of this stuff.

It’s very easy to see how this word could occur among Italian speakers in New York.

They could still be speaking Italian as far as it goes.

Yeah, and non-Italian speakers as well.

That’s right.

When you say Italian, though, in the New World, you’re really talking about some of these dialects are so different from each other, they’re almost incomprehensible.

I mean, in the written form, they’re far more comprehensible, but they sound very different.

They have a different rhythm, different vocabulary, the whole thing.

So, Susan, I have a suggestion for you.

Okay.

If your friends are challenging you about the word A-G-I-T-A, I think you should all get together and rent the Woody Allen film Broadway Danny Rose.

There we go.

There’s a whole song in there about A-G-I-T-A.

Oh, really?

And as far as most etymologists are concerned, that is the moment at which this word entered the national consciousness.

It became something other than a New Yorkism or, say, a New York, Connecticut, New Jerseyism, and actually reached the larger mainstream English.

Okay.

So, Susan, are you feeling any now?

I am not.

We helped you get rid of your A-G-I-T-A?

You did get rid of my A-G-I-T-A, so thank you.

All right.

All right.

You’re very welcome.

All right.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Anti-Acid Radio, right here.

Well, if a linguistic question is giving you A-G-I-T-A, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

More answers to your questions about language.

That’s coming up on A Way with Words.

Support for A Way with Words comes from Random House, publisher of Origins of the Species, Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, by Patricia T. O’Connor and Stuart Kellerman.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette, along with Grant Barrett.

Martha, reaching into my big bag of words, there’s one I’ve been liking very much recently.

What would that be?

STABBY.

STABBY?

S-T-A-V-B-Y.

STABBY.

They’ll say things like, “Every time the internet goes out, it makes me feel all STABBY,” which means they’re prone to stabbing something, and they feel like they feel like stabbing something.

Okay, yeah, that’s a little violent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you’re saying that it’s used in a more sort of benign way now?

“Oh, I’m just feeling STABBY.”

That’s right.

More benign.

But there’s two things that interest me about this.

First of all, it’s escaped the attention of lexicographers.

I can’t find it in any dictionary.

STABBY.

But you will see that particularly in the last few years, it’s had kind of a vogue, a resurgence.

It’s become popular, particularly in informal texts.

STABBY.

How do you know it’s STABBY?

But the absolute best thing, the reason I like this word, the reason I’m bringing it to your attention is that I found a quote from 1970 in a book called “Wilt Thou Torchy” by Sewell Ford, and I swear that’s the title of it, it’s very bizarre, 1970, and the quote goes like this, “Her eyes are the STABBY kind, worse than long hat pins.”

I mean, what does that tell you about that woman’s face, right?

Okay, that’s nice, yeah.

It’s good.

It’s one of these people with a powerful glare, the one that can make you admit to sins, right?

Oh, yeah.

This is the kind of glance that a mother has to her children, right?

She looks at you, she sees through your soul, she knows things about you.

Right, right.

STABBY eyes.

Sharp ones.

Piercing ones.

Right, or the face you have on the subway, you know, so people won’t bother you, right?

So that’s, yeah, that’s called mean mugging or mad mugging, sure, I get that one.

If you’d like to share a word with us, the number’s 1-877-929-9673, or you can always send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Chris Conway, I’m calling from Rockwall, Texas, and I’m hoping that you will be able to settle a bet between me and my husband.

He is absolutely certain that the word “Zerbert” was created by Bill Cosby, and I just can’t imagine that it has been around for that little amount of time.

“Zerbert,” and what does “Zerbert” mean, where do you—?

Well, “Zerbert” is when that noise that you make when you sort of blow on your baby’s belly and it makes that sort of silly sound.

Oh, raspberry.

Yes, raspberry.

Okay.

And how do you spell that, Christine?

Well, I guess the way I’ve always imagined it is V-E-R-B-E-R-T.

And I have to ask, what’s riding on this bet?

Does one of you get to give the other zerberts, or what?

No, that would be a movie.

If I lose, I’ll actually have to go see the new Terminator movie with him, and if he loses, I think I’m going to make him rent Twilight with me.

Oh, okay.

I think you’re likely to have a better time at the Terminator movie than he is at the Twilight movie, but okay.

That’s probably true.

And what got you all to talking about this word, of all things?

We have a three-year-old and a six-year-old, so there’s lots of zerberting going on in our house.

-huh.

I’ll bet.

I have to confess, I’ve never seen a reference to “Zerbert” any earlier than The Cosby Show.

I haven’t found it either.

And I used to know the Cosby canon, if you can call it such a thing, quite well, because I had whole albums of his memorized as a kid.

I had an entire wonderfulness album memorized.

But in terms of “Zerbert” being — you know, the thing is, I don’t think it really exists that much outside of Cosby, either.

People who know the term “Zerbert” almost always know that Cosby was the person that they learned it from.

Really?

Yeah.

I don’t know that it’s got a life of its own.

And you can look from now until the end of time, and I don’t think you’re going to find anybody using it before Cosby.

Oh, well.

It sounds like a family word that he just made famous because he was famous.

Oh.

Well, that sounds — You know, something that they used in their own house, and then just because he talked about it on stage, other people picked it up.

Well, it’s certainly being put into good use at our house.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

Lots of zerberts.

Lots of zerberts.

Well, Christine, I wish that — I mean, it sounds like you’re going to be seeing “The Terminator,” unless we get some kind of different answer.

But I mean, surely Bill Cosby listens to this show.

I mean, the man has a doctorate, right?

He has a doctorate in education.

Really?

Bill, if you’re listening, let us know.

Did you invent zerbert?

And words do seem kind of like his thing, too.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, so, you know, maybe you could just sort of postpone your husband cashing in on the bed until Bill calls us.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

Okay.

Happy zerberting.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thanks, Christine.

Bye-bye.

Happy zerberting when you do that with your little son.

Yeah.

No, it’s raspberries.

Raspberries.

Mm—

Yeah.

He especially likes to do it on his mama’s belly.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

It’s such a sweet thing.

1-877-929-9673.

This means you, Bill Cosby.

And you can always e-mail us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Debbie Huron from Burlington, Vermont.

Hi, Debbie.

Well, how are you, Debbie?

How are you doing?

Thanks.

Good to be here.

What can we do for you?

Well, I was curious about the saying, “Way over yonder.”

Like, there’s a barn way over yonder that’s on fire.

Maybe you should get some water?

Yeah, that’s it.

Well, Debbie, what got you to wondering about this one?

Well, my parents moved to Central Florida a couple years ago.

And I grew up in South Florida, which is really not south.

No.

No.

Florida is very southern.

And I was walking one day, and this water main had broken, and water was coming down into this lake, and I wasn’t near home, and I didn’t know the numbers.

So I saw this woman, and I went over, and I asked her, “Are you going home? Could you call the water department?”

And she says, “Well, I live way over yonder, and I’m not going to be getting there too soon.”

And I’m like, “Oh, my gosh.” I may have heard that before, but I was kind of surprised. Wow.

So you were surprised that people use yonder in everyday speech, right?

Yeah. I mean, I probably heard it when I was young about my great-grandmother, but I don’t remember like right now. You know, I live up in New England, and they don’t say way over yonder up here.

Mm—

Mm—

Or maybe you remember it from Shakespeare, but soft, what, light through yonder window breaks?

Oh, yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

But I’m not surprised that you don’t hear it up there. I see it generally in the South, and it’s a fantastically archaic word, you know? I mean, it’s almost poetic, isn’t it?

Mm—

People in the rest of the country probably know it, but don’t use it.

Right. Yeah. Maybe know it from songs or from Shakespeare, but it’s this sort of marvelous linguistic fossil that goes all the way back to 1300 or so.

Ooh. But it seems to have dropped out in other parts of the country, but I certainly heard it all the time growing up. I wouldn’t say that it’s archaic now, though. It’s just a regional feature.

Or dialectal.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Because it’s not something you’re going to hear the NBC Nightly Newscasters say, right? Over yonder in the Middle East today.

No, they’re not going to do that. Yeah. You know what it reminds me of, Debbie? The word “reckon.” In the United States, “reckon” kind of has the same notions that “yonder” has.

When you hear “reckon,” you think of either rural speech or southern speech, and yet, in the United Kingdom, “reckon” is an everyday word for many British English speakers. So you might actually have somebody just say to you, “Yeah, I reckon that’s correct.” And they’re not from anywhere in particular. It’s just a normal part of their speech.

Yeah. Reckon that water means over yonder.

I reckon. I reckon so. Well, Debbie, are you going to adopt it into your vocabulary or just…

I think I will. I’m going to have to use “reckon” too.

All right. Well, thanks for giving us a call, Debbie. We’re glad to help out. Well, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you over yonder sometime.

Okay. All right. Bye now. All right. Bye-bye. Okay. Bye-bye.

If you heard something that caught your ear in another part of the country and you’re curious about it, give us a call. The number is 1-877-9299673. That’s 1-877-WAY-WORD.

And if you have a comment about this call or a question for us, you can always leave it at our discussion forum, waywordradio.org/discussion, or follow us on Twitter at the username Wayword.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Jason Wyckoff calling from Grayslake, Illinois. Well, what is on your mind?

Well, I was listening to one of your earlier shows, and you were talking about more of the vocational vocabulary words that you use within a particular profession. I’m in the IT industry.

And one word that I think has jumped from being a technical term to actually using it in terms of how people interact is the word PING, P-I-N-G. And in the technical world, it’s a command line that you would use to type from one computer to basically reach out to another computer and kind of say, “Hey, are you there?” And you kind of get some information regarding that.

And within some of my colleagues during meetings when we’re about to break up and kind of figure out what needs to be done after a meeting, we’d say, “You know what? I’ll PING you later on that,” or, “I’ll reach out to you on that.” And it was something that was rather commonplace for me within my work.

And so my question to you is, is this something that has kind of jumped from being something very specific within the IT world to something that is used a little bit more common? Because it seems as I’ve dealt with more people, my wife and others, when I use the word, they haven’t given me that weird look like, “What am I talking about?” It’s pretty transparent, right?

Yeah, I think so. My perspective on this is a little bit clouded from the fact that I worked in the IT industry for 15 years, and I know both the technical sense of PING and the sense that you’re talking about, which means to check with somebody or to contact them quickly to see if they’ve got something to say or to even see if they’re there.

So I use it, my friends use it, but most of my friends who use it are technical as well. I do know that PING tends to show up pretty frequently on lists that people make of jargon that they loathe, words that they don’t like. And I think it’s because it’s not part of their life, it’s not part of their work, and so it sounds a little forced to them, whereas for you and me, it sounds completely natural.

Yeah, I think for somebody like me, it’s sort of aspirational, you know, PING. We’re saying it as if we were trying to force it on others, trying to get other people to adopt our lingo.

Is that what you’re saying?

No, no. I’m saying that those of us who aren’t as technologically savvy might want to adopt that because it sounds cool, but we really don’t understand exactly the fundamental meaning. I mean, we understand that the abstract meaning of it, PING meaning to contact, but I don’t know, when I hear some of my peers talk about PINGing somebody or I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with that, to me, it still sounds a little forced. I don’t think it’s there yet.

It’s interesting. For me, both words are so ordinary that they almost don’t require any kind of comment. I don’t even have to explain them, you know? And PING, I think, is transparent because of submarines. People see them in movies and understand the signal going out and bouncing back off of the potential target, and they get that that’s what — and it makes a PINGing noise, and they get that that is what is happening.

So that word — I assume that the word originated in the computer industry, but it sounds like it actually originated somewhere else. I believe it originated in the early days of radar, so in a military or aerospace engineering environment, and then was burrowed into the language of networking in the 1960s and 1970s. And then, in the 1980s, when the Internet and networks like that became a little more established in the business world, the language started to slowly creep out of the specific technical sense and into the more general sense.

Wow, Jason, all of that in one little four-letter word. PING. Pretty interesting. Well, thanks for asking about that.

Well, thanks for letting me PING you guys on this.

All right. Thank you, Jason. Take care. Bye-bye.

I should have known that was coming, right? I do say that we need to keep our eyes on this, and maybe in 10 or 20 years we’ll know for certain how well it’s going to stick.

If you’re wondering about technical jargon, you can always PING us the numbers 1-877-929-9673 or drop by our discussion forum. You’ll find that at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Rebecca Schwartz of Worcester, Massachusetts, asks us via Twitter what the plural of hiatus is, H-I-A-T-U-S, and you know, that’s a very good question. For most people, especially Americans, it’s hiatuses, right?

Right. So that’s easy. The plural of hiatus can also be just hiatus with no E-S or extra S sound on the end, especially in the United Kingdom. This is what’s called a zero plural, a word that’s the same in the singular form as it is in the plural form. So in the UK, you could say we take two hiatus a year.

Yes, you could. Well, if you have a question about language, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello. This is George Borlaski. I’m in Encinitas, California.

Hi, George. Hi, George. What’s up?

Well, I am a physician, a good friend of mine that I communicate with by emails and it’s always those emails with the following.

There are some patients whom we cannot cure, but there are none we cannot help, cannot comfort and none that we cannot harm.

So I really applaud the sentiment, but I’m a little uncomfortable with the whom.

For me, whom almost always is preceded by to whom or for whom or about whom.

So I felt a little more comfortable with who we cannot cure, but even more comfortable with that we cannot cure.

But I’d like to know what you all think about it.

Or you can always knock out the who, whom, that altogether and just say there are some patients we cannot cure.

There you go.

I thought of that, too.

Oh, you did?

Okay.

This is another physician?

Yes, another physician.

Too often, I think physicians forget about the we cannot harm part, especially primary care doctors are so pressured these days to see people every ten minutes and just rushing in and rushing out.

And I think there’s a danger of mistakes being made.

So let’s talk about these email signatures, because there are some patients whom we cannot cure, but there are none we cannot help?

Yeah, there are some patients whom we cannot cure, but there are none we cannot help, cannot comfort, comma, and none we cannot harm.

And so you’re wondering if the who, whom should be who, right?

Yeah.

Right.

Now, that sentence is correct as it is.

There are some patients whom we cannot cure.

That’s right, absolutely.

Because you’d mentioned that you’re used to seeing whom with T-O or too, right?

Or for, or about, something in front of it.

And that’s correct.

And that’s because those prepositions tend to indicate that the word following them is an object of a verb.

And that’s what’s happening here.

The patients are the object of the verb cure.

You cure the patients.

So therefore, whom is called for?

Yeah, one way to think about who and whom is to compare it to he and him.

He is a subject, him is the object, who is a subject, whom is the object.

And in this case, we cannot cure, would you say we cannot cure him or we cannot cure he?

Well, we cannot cure him.

Right.

Right.

So him and whom are a pair and he and who are a pair.

So we would go with whom here.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

Well, good.

Then I’m not going to, you know, I was going to write him and say, “Look, maybe you better check that out.”

But I’m glad I didn’t.

I think I, George, I can tell where you’ve got your reluctance about this.

And this is because whom has fallen so far by the wayside that who seems to be more appropriate.

We’re more used to hearing it.

So therefore, we believe that it’s more correct.

And a lot of times it isn’t.

Yeah, these two- Yeah, it says whom kind of falling by the wayside.

Yeah.

Even the most conservative authorities will acknowledge that whom has disappeared so far that it’s not even necessarily called for in a situation like this.

But you’re still not wrong to use it.

Okay.

Well, that’s good to know.

Thanks, by the way, for sharing the good medical sentiment.

Thank you so much for calling, too.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Thank you for your help.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

If you have comments or questions about who and whom, let us know at waywordradio.org/discussion or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call with your questions about language to 1-877-929-9673.

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