Good Egg, Bad Apple (episode #1664)

If you like to use emojis, you have some 3800 to choose from—and the organization that approves them is about to announce even more. But do we really need a purple splatter emoji? Or one that looks like Sasquatch? Plus: If you’re retired in the US, you may jokingly call yourself a “geezer.” In the UK, though, the term is more derogatory. Also, why good eggs make much better company than bad apples. And, how to pronounce macabre, the difference between mass nouns and count nouns, an Italian phrase about foolishness, alight from the front, Japanese pager slang, a brain teaser for bookworms, vermilion, crimson, carmine, cochineal, You thought like Nelly, and more.

This episode first aired August 30, 2025

Harp, Splatter, and a Face With Bags Under Its Eyes: New Emoji

 Communicating by text often involves those colorful symbols called emoji, those cartoon-like images of everything from smiley faces to sushi. As of Summer 2025, there were some 3800 of them, and every few months, the Unicode Consortium adds even more.

The Buggy Origins of Crimson

 Kim from Council Bluffs, Iowa, notes that kırmızı, the Turkish word for “red,” sounds a lot like the English word crimson. Are they related? Yes! Both derive from a word for the insect whose scientific name is Kermes vermilio. The English words crimson, vermilion, and carmine all have to do with the color red and stem from the name of this tiny insect used in making bright red dye. Another blood-colored dye made from insects found in Mexico is cochineal.

The Black Licorice of Punctuation

 Salon magazine writer Andi Zeisler likens the em-dash to black licorice: ”Those who like it love it; those who don’t will loudly and repeatedly let you know.”

You Thought Like Nelly

 Greg in Mena, Arkansas, says that when he was learning to be a professional pilot, one of his instructors would say, You thought like Nelly if someone had thought they were doing something correctly, but failed to. Although the phrase is not that common, there are several similar versions, such as You thought that peanut butter was jelly, and, with varying words of different levels of coarseness, You thought the cat pooped jelly, You thought scat was jelly, or You thought like Nelly, and thought crap was jelly. The saying Greg’s instructor used is likely a clipping of one of these, just as happy as a clam is a shortening of happy as a clam at high tide.

Origin of the Word “Emoji”

 The word emoji doesn’t come from the English words emotion or emoticon. Instead, it is a combination of the Japanese words e for “picture” and moji “written character,” so the blend emoji literally means “pictogram.” In Japanese, the word emoji can be used as either singular or plural, and in English, the plural can be either emoji or emojis.

If These Famous Books Had Sequels

 Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been busy writing sequels to famous novels inspired by changing the tense of verbs in their titles. For example, what might be his new iteration of a classic Gabriel García Márquez tale about two romantic youths who became enamored in Colombia during the turn of the last century?

Alight from The Train

 Aaron in Los Angeles, California, notes while using public transit in Britain he and other passengers were instructed to alight from the front, meaning “exit the car from the front.” Alight comes from an Old English word alihtan, literally, to “lighten” or “make lighter.” The terms light from and light off mean to “get off of” as in “to dismount,” the latter of which figures in a silly riddle about when cigarettes were mentioned in the Bible. (The answer is found in Genesis 24:64).

999 Times I San Kyuu

 In Japanese, the word san (さん) means “three” and kyuu (きゅう) means “nine.” Said together, the words sound like English “thank you,” so back in the 1990s, when pagers were all the rage among Japanese teens, typing 999 was a quick way to punningly thank someone.

You’re a Good Egg, but Are You Hard-Boiled?

 Dan in South Bend, Indiana, wonders about the phrase good egg, meaning “a good-natured, kind person.” The expression good egg was preceded by bad egg, that is, a literal egg determined to be undesirable by viewing it close to a candle. Bad apple, on the other hand, meaning “troublemaker,” originally referred to a rotting apple that had the potential to ruin an entire barrel of them, hence One rotten apple spoils the barrel. Variations of this idea of one item causing ruin for many more are reflected in many modern European languages, as well as in Latin. In Spanish and other Iberian languages, a similar expression translates as “A bad goat leads the whole flock astray.”

Geezers: Silly Clothes or Cranky Old Dudes?

 A retired Montana listener says a buddy fondly referred to their friend group as geezers, a joking term for a person, usually male, who’s advanced in years, possibly with too much time on their hands. In 19th-century England, the word geezer more often denoted “someone who acts strangely,” and not necessarily an older person. Geezer apparently comes from the much older term guiser, also spelled geyser. In the 15th century, guisers were people who dressed up in silly clothes, going house to house to entertain folks on holidays, putting on little plays while wearing face paint or masks—in other words, guisers were mummers who were literally in disguise.

Face with Tears of Joy

 For a deep dive into the world of emoji, check out Keith Houston’s new book, Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of the Emoji (Bookshop|Amazon). Emoji offer what’s called paralinguistic restitution, that is, restoring to written language elements that are otherwise lacking. Among younger users, the skull emoji suggests laughter, inferring the slang expression I’m dead, meaning “I’m laughing myself to death. Similarly, the blue trucker’s cap emoji can accuse someone of lying, because it can indicate the slang term cap meaning “lie.” Houston is also the author of a wonderful book on the history of punctuation called Shady Characters (Bookshop|Amazon), which tells the story of the @ sign.

The Obscured Origins of White Dog Whiskey

 Vlad in Tucson, Arizona wonders: How did white dog come to be a slang term for whiskey that’s not yet been sufficiently aged? It probably has to do with the natural coloration process, where the whiskey starts out clear (or “white”) and then assumes the color of barrel in which it’s aged. It may also be connected to the terms white lightning and white mule referring to the clarity and kick or bite of the drink. The idea of hair of the dog, referring to a hangover remedy, goes all the way back to antiquity, but is unrelated to white dog.

The Mother of Fools is Always Pregnant

 The wise Italian saying La mamma degli scemi è sempre incinta translates as “The mother of fools is always pregnant.”

Pronouncing Macabre

 How do you pronounce the word macabre, meaning “morbid” or “gruesome”? The word may go back to the ancient Book of Maccabees, commemorated in medieval France with the danse de Macabré, often depicted in art as skeletons leading every type of person, from kings to peasants, to their death.

Can You Have Four Corn?

 The owner of a Berlin, Maryland, produce stand wants to know: When a customer is buying four ears of corn, should they say I have four corn or I have four ears of corn? Corn is a mass noun that can also be counted as a plural, just as we might say I have four coffees, even though coffee is generally thought of as a mass, or uncountable, noun.

This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.

Photo by Rob Alter. Used and modified under a Creative Commons license.

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