Got Your Six (episode #1370)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Parrott.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

When you and I competed in spelling bees as youngsters, all we had to do was spell the words we were given, right?

Right.

We didn’t have to say anything about the meaning of the words.

But that’s about to change for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

For the first time in their 86-year history, participants won’t just have to spell words in front of an audience.

They’ll have to take a computer-based vocabulary test beforehand, and that’s going to help determine who gets in the final rounds.

So the vocabulary test doesn’t show up in the competition on stage in front of the cameras, right?

No.

Oh, because I was worried it’d be like a three-day cricket match and go on forever.

No, it’s multiple choice questions.

Okay.

You know, you see the word in a sentence and you have to guess what it means.

And if you fail this, then you don’t make it to the big competition.

Well, it counts for 50% of all the points that you’re tallying.

And when I heard that, I thought, great, that’s fantastic.

Let’s talk about the etymology.

Let’s talk about the meaning of the words.

Why are people just using brute memorization for this?

As if they’re just strings of characters, just like these non-functional widgets.

Exactly, exactly. Objects.

And so I was all excited about this, and I was taken aback by all the resistance to it that I saw in discussions online.

Yeah, a lot of people are arguing, hey, the spelling bee is great the way it is, and why should we add this burden to students?

And I just think, well, why not?

Well, if you’ve been mastering the language, the spelling of words for three or four years and you’re a kid, now you have a whole new task in front of you if you haven’t also been mastering the vocabulary.

Or as I’ve seen some kids saying, well, it’s not going to be that much of a problem for me because I’ve been memorizing Greek and Latin roots to better know how to spell words and prefixes and suffixes and so forth.

So for some, some kids are like, okay, a little more work, but I’m up for it.

I would hope that for those kids, it would be like, oh boy, look at all the presents. Now I get to open them.

Not everyone has that response.

Well, yeah, apparently a lot of people are saying, why add this extra work for kids? They’re already working so hard to memorize them.

Very interesting.

Yeah, but my favorite response online was that somebody was saying, yeah, yeah, the spelling bee is charming, sort of a charming anachronism.

But if you really want to jazz it up, you should combine the National Spelling Bee with the Hunger Games.

And a tribute from San Diego.

Well, we’d love to know what you think.

Should students have to be accountable for the vocabulary as well as just spelling the words?

Let us know.

Well, in competition, anyway.

In competition, yeah.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. This is Julia calling from Portland, Oregon. How are you guys?

Julia from Portland. Well, welcome to the show.

Hi, Julia.

We’re super duper.

Hi, Martha. What’s cooking? What can we help you with?

Well, I had a question about an expression that I learned about from a sci-fi fantasy show that you might be familiar with called Stargate SG-1.

I don’t know it.

You’re revealing all of my geek cred here, right?

So it’s about a pack of Air Force folks, and they have an expression that is, I got your sixth.

And I take it to mean that it means that I have your back.

And I was curious about where that came from.

You know, I thought it was such an interesting expression and I couldn’t put it together.

And I actually did a little research and still couldn’t find out any information.

This is the television show Richard Dean Anderson, right?

Yeah, it is.

Okay, so they’re Air Force folks thrown into this weird kind of intercultural relationship with people who use time portals or something like that, right?

Yes, in fact, I think you’ve seen it.

Maybe, once or twice. I liked the reboot a lot.

There’s Gransky, Corrid. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

I liked the reboot a lot with Robert Carlyle.

So what you’ve got here is this weird mix of jargon, but what are the circumstances in which they would use this term?

So what, they’re going out on a mission, and when does this come up?

Right, so they’re going out on a mission, and maybe they’re pinned down by the bad guys, and someone’s got to make a break for it, and somebody else will shout, I’ve got your six.

And so I just, I take that to mean, you know, I’m watching out for your back.

Exactly.

Yeah, it does.

Look at a clock, an analog clock.

Put yourself where the hands cross and face the 12.

The six is right behind you.

Right.

And so.

That’s your six.

That’s your six.

It’s like if you’re at a party and you say, you know, there’s a cute guy at two o’clock, you know.

That’s right.

Then you look forward and a little bit to your right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And what’s going to happen now?

A lot of people are going, oh, because this comes up in TV shows all the time and in movies all the time, and they don’t explain it.

They just assume that you know or that you just pass it off as jargon.

And now it’s going to be a little clearer what’s happening.

So they’ll say, I need you at 2 and you at 4, and I need you to hold back here at 7, right?

And this is just positioning yourself in order to take on the enemy.

Right. Totally makes sense.

And then military, that piece of being able to clearly see based on a clock.

Right.

Right. And it probably comes from aviation originally.

Right. And sometimes pilots say to each other, check six, which means watch your back or be careful.

Right.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, probably first arose in the early part of the last century as a jargon in aviation.

You’ve got these people who are now lifted up off the ground and kind of have to consider the world in a little different way.

You might not be fully cognizant of left and right or up and down because you’re in an airplane where these things matter a little less, right?

Right.

Yeah, so the etymology is really clear on that one, yeah.

Yeah, no, I love it. That’s great.

Well, Julia, thanks for taking time out of your busy video-watching day to call us.

We got your six.

Thanks, Martha. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much.

Cheers to you.

All right, take care.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant and Martha. This is Kelsey calling from Houston, Texas.

Hi, Kelsey. Welcome.

Hi, Kelsey. How’s everything in Houston?

Doing well, thanks.

I’m calling about a term that my father uses.

Most of the time when someone mentions there being a hole in something, someone will say, like, oh, there’s a hole in my shoe or a hole in the wall over there.

And he’ll say, usually off the cuff, a whole hole or a half a hole.

And my question kind of has two parts.

First, have you heard anyone else ever using this, or is it just something that my father says, which could be entirely possible?

Secondly, my younger sister and my wife both have a problem with this.

They maintain that there’s no such thing as a half of a whole.

They say that if it’s a whole, it’s a whole.

You can’t have half of one. It’s a whole regardless of the size.

My response is, well, it’s a morbid example, but if you’re digging a grave and you’re halfway done, it’s half of a whole.

And my wife says, no, that’s half of the whole.

So I’m kind of looking for validation on my part and wondering if anyone else has ever used it.

Okay.

Kelsey, this reminds me of somebody I used to know who, anytime you said, well, he would say, that’s a deep subject for such a shallow mind.

Did he use the show?

My father does the same thing.

Yeah, I mean, what does that do? Just stop down?

I mean, do you get into this discussion every time he says that?

Or do you just roll your eyes or what?

I have started repeating it.

I’m a little bit too much like him for my taste.

But I suppose that’s…

Too much like your father.

The apple doesn’t far fall from the tree.

Right, right.

A whole apple…

Except if it’s on a hill.

So the first question is easily taken care of, right?

Right.

You probably Googled this, Kelsey, right?

Actually, no, I didn’t.

I was hoping y’all could answer it.

Very good.

Well, we Googled that for you.

And it turns out that this comes up again and again.

It is a joke that certain people use repetitively.

They like the joke because it has that nice homophonic kind of dissimulation there where for a moment you’re confused until your brain sorts out which hole is met.

Yeah, a whole hole or half a hole.

And then it prompts discussions like the ones your family has.

Yeah, so people use it.

I don’t know that it’s widespread.

Perhaps it popped up in a comedy routine in the 50s.

I don’t know.

It kind of reminds me of the safe family comedy.

Well, speaking of, it reminds me of, are you familiar with the book Make Way for Ducklings?

It’s a little children’s book by Robert McCloskey.

I think I’ve seen that, actually.

Yeah.

Oh, I used to love that.

Do you know?

I haven’t heard of it now.

Okay.

Well, Robert McCloskey wrote a whole lot of children’s books.

And he wrote a whole series that had to do with a guy named Homer Price back in the 1950s.

And there’s one book where he’s got this big donut machine that keeps making all these donuts.

Oh, yeah.

I remember that.

Do you remember this?

Yeah, yeah.

And there’s a crazy poem in one of these things.

I don’t know if this has anything to do with it or not, but I wanted to share it with you guys.

Part of the poem goes, there’s no nuts in you know what’s.

In a whole donut, there’s a nice whole hole.

When you take a big bite, hold the whole hole tight.

If a little bit bitten or a great bit bitten, any hole with a hole bitten in it is a holy whole hole and just plain isn’t.

We have to put that on the website because that’s confusing.

Yeah, I know.

I’m already confused.

But I mean, it’s that same kind of playfulness with language and goofy humor.

And from the 50s, I wonder.

So that leads us to the question, can you have a half a whole?

We’re talking half of an H-O-L-E.

This is a question for on being.

And I have a couple things.

This reminds me, for example, it’s like being kind of pregnant, right?

Or it’s like being too rich.

And it’s also when somebody asks you if you’re asleep and you say yes.

There’s like, there’s not, you can’t have both states, right?

That’s good.

It’s actually binaries that are treated as gradations.

That’s kind of the problem here.

I think you can have half a hole, but it’s still also a hole.

Well, I think your point is well taken about a grave.

Yeah.

If you’ve only got it half, you know.

Otherwise, the arms are going to be sticking out.

That hole needs to be a certain depth.

I shouldn’t see the top of the casket, really.

Oh, man.

But there’s other kinds of half holes, right?

If you need a particular depth of a hole and it’s only three inches deep and it should be six, then, you know, you’re not going to be able to put your chair together.

Right?

It’s half of a hole.

That’s right.

Yeah.

I think your wife’s quibbling about the article with half of the hole is irrelevant, actually.

It’s still half of a hole.

I’m sure she won’t be happy to hear that.

I’m sure she’s lovely.

She’s probably a wonderful woman.

Just give her my compliments.

She married you, right?

Yes, there we go.

But still, don’t get fixated on the article there.

Oh, it’s fun.

Yeah.

It’s fun, isn’t it?

See how much fun we’re in?

It’s all in good humor.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

But you know what you should do?

I think you need to memorize this poem.

So the next time you feel compelled to be your father, when you feel your fatherness coming on, just recite this poem instead.

Or to your father.

I think that’d be great.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Double down on him.

Say, oh, yeah.

Well, I got one for you.

Yeah.

Have a good one, Dad.

Kelsey, good question.

We loved it.

Thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Thank you for listening.

I don’t think we helped.

Oh, yes.

It helped immensely.

Okay.

Take care now.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Grant, I came across a quotation from Montaigne recently that I liked.

Because a man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

Very good.

Isn’t that great for this day and age when there’s so much fear around?

And it’s a great example of chiasmus, right?

That rhetorical structure where you invert a statement.

And it comes from the Greek letter chi, which is shaped like an X.

Two bars crossing, a path, a crossroads.

Yeah, but I like that.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

Very good.

So don’t worry.

Be happy.

Happy.

877-929-9673.

Hop on the Word Bus as A Way with Words continues.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’ve got a special guest, ladies and gentlemen, the return of Greg Pliska, our quiz guy.

Greg!

Greg!

Hi, buddy!

It’s nice to see you again.

Hey, what have you been doing?

Yeah, is there life after being the musical director for a Tony-winning Broadway show?

Well, they put him in cryo sleep and they opened it up just for us.

Just for you, exactly.

You thawed my head out.

It’s actually just my head that’s sitting here on the table at the studio.

It is the thawed that counts.

Well, I’d like to revisit a favorite puzzle of mine, which I call initi arithmetic.

Ooh, that’s one of my favorites, too.

I’ll give you a clue to a set of items for which there are a particular number.

But some of the words in my clue will be replaced with just their initials.

So I might say there are 12 M in the Y.

And then you would tell me what words, starting with M and Y, go in that sentence.

Twelve months in the year.

Exactly.

There are 12 months in the year.

So we’ve done this before.

I think you know how it works.

Let’s play.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Here’s your first one.

There are nine SF in one SY.

Nine SF in one SY.

Boy.

Oh, nine square feet in a square yard.

Oh.

Exactly.

Oh, wow.

Oh, okay.

Boy.

This is tough.

Yeah.

Here’s another one for you.

Nine C of H in the DC by D.

Oh, please.

Nine C of H in the DC by D.

D.

Boy.

This is in your category, Martha.

This is classics.

Oh, it is?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, the Divine Comedy by Dante.

So it would be the Nine Circles of Hell.

Very good.

Nine Circles of Hell in the Divine Comedy by Dante.

Yeah, you had me going all the way back to ancient Greece.

And the third circle of hell is reserved for puzzle guys like me.

It should be farther down.

I’ll give you a coin for the boat.

Thank you.

There are 10 P and 3 T that make up C.

And your category is geography.

10 P and 3 T that make up C.

And our category is geography.

10 provinces and 3 territories that make up Canada.

Whoa.

Exactly right.

Good one.

For bonus, name them all.

I’m kidding.

I’m sure you could.

We don’t have time for that.

We do not have time.

It would take some time.

All right.

Here’s a sports one for you.

68 T in the NCAA’s MM.

68 teams in the NCAA’s March Madness.

Oh, there you go.

Martha, so quick with the sports.

Hey, basketball is a state religion where I grew up.

Oh, you’re right.

You’re right, it is.

31F sold at BR.

31F sold.

31 flavors.

At Baskin-Robbins.

Exactly.

Right back to your childhood.

Or back to yesterday.

I don’t know which it could be.

3-B-A-O-1 by DDL.

3-B-A-O-1-W-O-N?

Yes, W-O-N.

By?

Oh.

DDL.

Three Best Actor Oscars by Daniel Day-Lewis?

Correct.

Very good.

My record set just this year.

Martha, very good.

All right, here’s your next one.

56S on the U.S.D. of I.

And I’ll give you a hint.

J.H.’s is the L.

Oh, thanks.

Yeah, that was helpful.

56S’s on the U.S.D. of L?

D. of I.

56 S’s on the U.S.D. of I.

So is it stars?

No.

Signatures?

56 signatures on the U.S. Declaration of Independence?

That’s right.

And J.H.’s is the L.

John Hancock’s is the largest.

Exactly.

You could just talk like this all day, Greg.

You could.

Next week you’re going to do the whole show like this.

His kids hate him.

All right.

4 P depicted on MR.

Four P depicted on M-R.

Man Ray.

No.

It’s more specific than people.

Four presidents depicted on Mount Rushmore?

Oh, and Martha steals at the last minute.

Four presidents depicted on Mount Rushmore is correct.

I got one more for you.

Okay.

One more.

There are 117 Y in the 100 YW.

In the 117 years in the 100 years war?

Yes.

Exactly right.

Hey, Greg, thank you so much.

And it’s good to have you back, buddy.

It’s good to be back.

Thank you, guys.

I don’t even remember the name of the other guy anymore.

Who?

We had another guy?

We did, yeah, for a while.

Oh.

It doesn’t matter.

Oh, J.C.

Greg, we hope to see you again soon on the show, all right?

Sounds good.

I’ll see you soon.

Thanks, buddy.

It was great.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear your questions about words and language, anything at all.

877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org, and find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Leslie Tweedy calling from Chicago.

Hi, Leslie. Welcome.

Hi, Leslie. Welcome to the show.

What’s going on?

Well, I know you like workplace jargon, so I was calling with some bike shop slang.

Bike shop, did you say?

Yes.

Do you work in a bike shop then?

Yes, my husband and I own Roscoe Village Bikes in Chicago.

Oh, great. Fantastic.

Yeah.

Good.

I’ve become a bike rider myself recently.

That’s what I was thinking. It’s the perfect time of year for it.

It definitely is.

So you run across all kinds of language related to bikes.

Just a repair jargon or a competition jargon or what is it?

Mostly repair jargon.

We do actually try to use the proper name of components for the most part.

It just makes things easier.

But there are some things you may or may not have heard.

Like, for example, a bike mechanic is called a wrench.

A wrench.

Okay, yeah, that conforms to some language that we see in some other industries.

Another one we use with repairs is we talk about boomerang bikes.

And how we don’t want to see any boomerang bikes.

Boomerang bikes. Tell us about that.

Are these lemons that have to keep coming back for work?

Exactly. It would be something that goes out the door and comes right back.

So if we change a flat tire and maybe we miss a tiny piece of glass and, you know, 20 minutes later the customer comes back and they say, hey, it’s flat again.

That’s the last thing that we want.

So we always talk to our mechanics about how we would not like to see any boomerang bikes.

I can see that.

Another one we use is JRA.

So a customer will bring a bike in.

And do you have any ideas what JRA might be?

For a bicycle?

The Justice.

Something of America. I don’t know.

It’s Just Riding Along.

Nine times out of ten, customer comes in, some crazy mishap with the bike, and you say, oh my gosh, what happened? Well, I was just riding along.

And, you know, yeah, so, you know, you’ll give the bike to one of the mechanics, and he’ll say, you know, what’s going on here? Well, JRA.

Oh, interesting.

Interesting. Now, do you know if that’s industry-wide or is that just in your shop?

I think that is industry-wide.

I like that. JRA.

Yeah, JRA, all bike repairs.

Let’s see, another one we have related to repairs.

We wouldn’t want to use this in a derogatory sense, but it’s a bicochondriac.

Bicochondriac, so that’s somebody who brings in a bike and they’re sure something is wrong with it, but you can’t find anything wrong?

Yes, and maybe they sort of hear little squeaks and clicks and grinds, but if you test ride the bike, you just can’t replicate it.

So we would only use this in a loving way.

But it would be difficult.

More business for you, right?

Yes, that is true.

These are all good.

What else do you got?

A Frankenbike.

Oh, yeah, sure.

I bet you just take multiple pieces of multiple kinds of bikes and make one out of them?

Exactly.

We see a lot of these.

So it’s nothing you could find in a catalog.

It’s nothing that was ever stocked.

An original, a Mutt.

And is that a positive or just a description?

It’s a bit of both.

Somebody might refer to their own bike as a Frankenbike and be proud of the work that they put into it.

Right, okay.

Yeah.

Oh, that’s good.

You know, I’ve got a couple terms.

I’ve been collecting language for, I don’t know, more than 10 years now, and I’ve come across a few terms.

Let me see if I can quiz you on these, see if you know these.

All right, I’ll try my best.

Do you know what to bonk means?

Yeah.

So to bonk would be if you’re in a competition and you just kind of hit that wall.

Yeah, you’ve got nothing left.

There’s no second wind, no third wind.

It’s all done, right?

Yeah, they sell bonk breakers, right?

Those high-energy bars.

Oh, really?

There we go.

Okay.

And then you probably know what a sag wagon is.

Yes, it’s a support vehicle.

Right, so if you bonk and you can’t make it any further, the sag wagon comes by and you climb aboard and throw your bike in there and you’re done.

Yeah, the one I like is door prize.

Oh, yeah, or to get doored, right?

To get doored, yeah.

You’re biking along super fast, and somebody just flings out their driver’s side door, and you go right into it, and then you do an endo, head over heels, right over the top.

Oh, man.

Yeah, I always heard it called a door prize when the car is parked there.

I learned that from some messengers in Toronto.

Oh, really?

And I understand they also use it in New York and maybe in Chicago.

Getting doored?

Yeah, well, both of those.

Actually, both are used, yeah.

Door prize, yeah.

Yeah.

Got to be careful about door prizes.

I always think about that when I get out of the car.

That’s all the ones that I can think of off the top of my head, Leslie.

Well, I’ll keep thinking of them if we come up with any more.

Thank you so much.

I love this insider stuff.

I was just riding along and then it broke on me.

I have no idea why the chain is wrapped around the wheel like that.

Good stuff.

Leslie, thank you so much.

You’re welcome, have a great day.

Bye bye, take care.

If you’ve got workplace jargon or anything more, slang we’ve never heard about bikes, we’d love to hear it.

877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

We’ve talked many times on the show about euphemisms when you’re trying to call someone’s attention to something but nobody else in the room.

For example, we might say you have a bat in the cave for if you have something in your nose.

Or, you know, if your zipper is down, you might say X, Y, Z or something.

You know, just something that you say.

Right, your Monday is longer than your Tuesday.

Right, right, for your slip.

Yeah, right.

And I came across a great one the other day in our beloved Dictionary of American Regional English that goes, is your finger sore?

Oh.

And I just love it because it’s sort of this great surreptitious way of saying, is your finger too sore to zip up your pants?

But I never heard that before, and I just like how innocuous it sounds.

Send us your family euphemisms, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, how are you doing?

Good, who’s this?

This is Scott.

Scott.

Hi, Scott.

How are you doing?

I’m doing very good.

And where are you?

I’m in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

All right.

Well, welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Well, you know, I’m attending school, and in there we’re talking about plants.

And my instructor had some handouts and a textbook he gave us.

And in there, they’re often talking about the plants do not tolerate cold, and I’ll spell the word out, D-R-A-U-G-H-T-S.

Really?

And I was like, is that a misspelling of droughts?

And I brought it up in class because the connotations is kind of purporting drafts, but it didn’t make sense because the spelling was so off the wall.

So I inquired about it, and he told me it’s not D-R-A-F-T-S, because that’s what beer is, a draft.

And I laughed, the whole class laughed, but he says the proper spelling for draft is D-R-A-U-G-H-T-S.

You have to ask, is your teacher from Britain?

That’s what I asked, and no, in fact, he is not.

He’s not?

No.

Interesting.

Is he pretentious?

Well, he does drive a Volkswagen.

That doesn’t mean pretentious.

Maybe he just likes the smell of diesel.

There you go.

No, he’s not pretentious.

He’s a very kind individual, caring.

Okay.

Okay.

Interesting.

Nice puzzle.

But he spelled it the other way.

So this particular kind of plant doesn’t like drafts of air.

Yeah.

Meaning cool air.

Okay.

They do not tolerate cold droughts.

Yeah, yeah.

So you’re confused because this is not a spelling you’re accustomed to.

Exactly.

Just like spelling color with a U.

Mm—

Well, you’re right to mention color with a U because that’s another Britishism.

And any time you see it spelled D-R-A-U-G-H-T, that’s British.

Although they always pronounce it draft.

Yeah, it’s not draught.

Yeah.

And in American English, it’s always spelled with an F.

Whether you’re talking about a draft of a check or…

I hesitate to say always, but almost always.

Really?

Yeah.

Like where would you find it?

Well, in a botany class, for example.

In a botany class, for example.

Yeah, yeah.

But generally speaking, the American spelling is F.

It’s always pronounced draft no matter what.

Yeah, it’s something like 99.99% of the time in the U.S.

We spell it D-R-A-F-T.

But I will tell you, what really goes through my mind when I first saw that word is draught.

Well, exactly.

So you’re thinking of it being really dry, which has nothing to do with the other kind of draft.

That’s awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s crazy.

Well, you know who’s to blame for this, kind of?

It existed before his time, but Noah Webster, the great spelling reformer in the New World,

He championed the D-R-A-F-T spelling,

And he is part of the reason that it is nearly universal here in North America.

Very intriguing.

The G-H-T actually represents an older pronunciation that was kind of like the Scottish Lach.

Yeah, it’s a Germanic.

Of course, the Latin language was pure joke, of course.

What?

Wait, what?

Hey, if you know Latin, you’re going to have a great time in botany.

Yes, I am having fun in botany.

Is it botany or gardening?

What kind of class is this?

Landscape horticulture.

Oh, okay.

Great.

Very good.

So what kind of plant is it that can’t stand the cold drafts?

Well, there’s some plants like the Norfolk Island pine that really don’t like the cold draft,

But most of them are like ficus benjamina, if you wish to use a Latin term,

Or the ficus benendiikiae.

They will drop their leaves with a cold draught.

Those are the kind that don’t actually produce the figs, but they’re related to figs, right?

Right.

Okay.

You often see the weeping figs in all the offices.

They’re well overused.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

In restaurants, too, right?

Yes, but if you find them with the long leaves, that’s an ollie fig.

How do you spell ollie?

A-L-I-I.

Oh, I never would have guessed that.

Okay.

All right.

Well, your teacher’s wrong.

Okay, so just take that back to him.

Well, you know the Latin language that is used for botany and horticulture

Or naming any other taxonomy names is because it’s a dead language.

The meanings will not change.

The problem we’re having in a horticulture class is these bigwigs that are looking over the plants

Are finding that these plants don’t belong in these families, and the names are changing anyway.

Right. They’re reassigning Latin names, right?

Boy, does that confuse us that are learning it one way, and we have to relearn everything.

That’s how you successfully justify a second and third edition of a book.

Well, you know, that really defeats the whole purpose of using a dead language.

Hi.

Hi.

Welcome to language.

Welcome to being part of the human race.

We are variable, to say the least.

You are great.

Thank you very much.

Good luck in class, by the way.

All right.

You have a great day.

All right.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call with your questions about language or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, do you know what onion snow is?

No. Is it something you can buy at Coney Island?

Or Whole Foods?

Put it on your hot dog.

Oh, Whole Foods, yeah.

In the bulk section.

No, no, no, no.

It’s a term that comes from Pennsylvania.

It’s used pretty much only there.

And an onion snow is a light snowfall in late spring after you’ve already put out the onions.

Isn’t that beautiful?

I love that onion snow.

So the little green top sticking above the dusting.

Exactly.

That’s it.

It’s just a light dusting of snow and it melts very quickly.

And yeah, you already see the onions coming up.

I think that’s so beautiful.

You know, somebody should write a book of poems and title it Onion Snow.

Don’t you think?

Doesn’t that sound like a book title?

Yeah.

Onion snow?

I don’t know.

And it’s sort of like blackberry storm.

You know, I think of a blackberry storm as a telephone, right?

But a blackberry storm in the south is a storm that happens after the blackberries have already started to bloom.

Interesting.

Great stuff, huh?

Great stuff.

Onion snow.

And food related.

Yes.

-oh.

I can hear your stomach over here.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

More of your questions about language right here on A Way with Words.

Stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

There’s a video that went viral a couple of years ago.

And, Grant, I wonder if you’ve seen it.

In it, this little one-year-old girl sits happily playing with an iPad,

And she’s hitting icons and shuffling them around,

And you hear these little squeals of delight.

And then in the next scene, you see her sitting in the same position,

But this time she’s looking at a magazine, and she’s trying to do the same thing.

It looks like she’s trying to do the same thing, you know, kind of swiping and pinching and poking at it and kind of touching her leg to see if her finger works.

Yeah, if her finger works.

Is this thing on?

Yeah.

Is this finger on?

Right.

Right.

And she seems frustrated.

And the video is called, A Magazine is an iPad that Does Not Work.

I like that.

Maybe she thought it should work like an iPad.

Or maybe she was just being a baby, you know, just kind of touching everything.

But it raises a really good question about the fact that there’s a lot that’s wonderful about e-readers,

But it still is a different experience from reading a book.

And there was a fascinating piece in Scientific American magazine recently.

It was a roundup of a lot of the research.

And it interested me because a lot of the research that’s coming out shows that your comprehension is pretty much the same when you read on an e-reader.

But in many cases, the research showed it was slightly less than if you just read something in print.

So let me guess.

Is this because you have more interruptions?

You get email in the middle of reading and you go check that?

Or is it because you’re tempted by all these other applications?

Or is it because there’s music playing in the background and the song changes and you want to go fix that?

Well, you’re zeroing in on what they’re talking about in this article.

One thing that they mention is just the feel of the electronic reader itself,

Besides all the potential interruptions.

What they call haptic dissonance, haptic coming from the Greek word to touch or grasp,

That there’s just something different about reading something that doesn’t feel like a book,

Where you’re turning the pages and you can see how far you’ve been and how far you have to go.

Because with an e-reader, you’re still just scrolling this endless stream of text.

But so many of them include that.

They include a bar on the side or the bottom that shows you how far into the text you are.

Yeah, but I think what they’re saying is that for a lot of people, it’s just a different experience of sort of where you are in space, in the space of the book.

And maybe you’re spending a little bit of energy.

I’m totally with you on that.

I don’t know if it applies perfectly, but I have a very good spatial memory.

I can usually find a passage that I’m looking for because I remember where in the page it was.

Oh, I do too.

Exactly.

Which side of the two pages?

Years ago.

And I can actually find, I may not remember exactly where in the book, but I know where in the page, which side of the page.

Right, right.

I can too.

I can picture exactly where it is.

And I also saw some research in there.

There was a study of college students and almost 80% of them said that if they really want to understand something, they read it in a book rather than.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there are other studies that show that people have very similar comprehension if they’re reading on an e-book or a book, but then if they’re asked to do other kinds of tasks afterwards, like memory tasks or repetitive tasks, the ones who are reading on something electronic have a harder time and maybe they’re more fatigued somehow.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I mean, it’s all very preliminary research, but I was reading this article online and I got more and more pulled into it, more and more fascinated.

And then I thought, wait a minute, I got to print this out and read it because there’s so much there to understand.

And I did.

That’s exactly how I ended up reading it.

I’m looking forward to reading those articles.

We’ll link to them on the website.

We want your opinion.

Do you find that you absorb more when you read on paper?

Or do you find that the ability to carry around hundreds or thousands of books on an e-reader outweighs whatever kind of loss there would be?

Right.

As somebody said on our Facebook page, paper or plastic?

Paper or plastic, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

We’re on Facebook groups, Facebook pages, and Twitter and Google Plus, and who knows what all.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jared, and I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Jared, welcome to the show.

Hi, Jared, what’s up?

I have a question that I’m hoping will be awfully interesting for everybody listening.

Okay.

And actually, it deals with the word awfully and how I would use that word as an adverb, because the root of the word obviously is awful, which means, you know, really bad, horrible.

But when awfully is used as an adverb, I often think of it in kind of a positive sense.

Actually, what kind of spurred me on is I was reading an article, and it was a sports article, and I tend to see it used this way a lot in sports.

And a GM of an NFL team was talking about a guy leaving, and he said, you missed an awfully loyal, awfully qualified individual.

And obviously in that sense, he’s complimenting the guy, and yet using this word awfully that has a root that means something bad.

And so I know from a definition standpoint, you look at the definition of awfully, and the first definition is basically just extreme.

And so it’s used to describe an adjective or a verb as extreme.

But I’m wondering how that became the number one definition when the root word awful means something so bad, so negative.

And so I was just hoping that you could help me unlock that mystery.

Yeah, sure.

It definitely can do that.

Awfully is a complicated word, as you say, but not just because it’s changed once, but because it’s changed twice.

So let’s go back just a little further to awe itself.

If I am in awe of Martha’s talents, that means that—

If?

If?

What?

We’re in awe of Martha’s talents.

Subjunctive?

What?

What?

Let me just use another example.

Yeah, talk about Jared.

Were I in awe of the Manchester United football team, I wouldn’t call them a team, but I’m an American.

Give me a break.

Were I to be in awe of their skills, that would mean that I was amazed by them, that they were so good that I held them in reverence, right?

Right.

And if I were awful in that particular sense, then that would mean that I was filled with awe at their abilities and their maneuvering and their skill.

And then what we found, though, in the history of English is that awful kind of changed a little bit and became a little bit more about being an intensifier and less about talking specifically about awe.

And that’s what’s happening in awfully as well.

Awfully belongs to these class of intensifying words that describe an action usually or an event in such a way to indicate that it just means more of the same or simply put, very.

So what I like to do when I talk about this class of words is use the phrase good time.

So I had an awfully good time.

I had a whopping good time.

I had a ripping good time.

A terribly good time.

A terribly good time.

A roaring good time.

I had a, you can go on and on.

You can probably think of a bunch, a spanking good time, right?

And all of these intensifiers, what happens when they become intensifiers is that there’s an incredible amount of what’s known as semantic weakening or even semantic bleaching.

Where most of their meaning is gone, and all that’s left is this one action where they simply mean more of the same or very.

Yeah, yeah, you go back to the 15th and the 16th century, and awfully means so as to cause terror terribly, dreadfully, you know, and then it’s done a flip.

But it’s not really a positive because you can say, you are an awfully poor speller, right?

So that’s not positive.

It just simply means very.

And very itself actually underwent semantic weakening.

Very used to mean in truth or truthfully.

Truthfully.

Right?

And now it just means a lot or pile on some more or what have you.

Or I really, really mean this.

And Jared, your instincts were right.

It did start out as awfully as we would think of awfully being terribly.

Yeah.

Well, but before that, it meant in awe.

It was ready to the word awe, right?

And being in awe of somebody.

In awe.

Well, and I do.

In a negative way.

And I actually need to give credit to somebody because one of my friends, Ashley, who turned me on to you guys about two months ago, and I’ve been catching up on the podcast through the archives.

Her husband, actually, we were talking about this, and he said, he suggested that that maybe it was originally awe and has undergone a couple of changes like that.

So I have to give him credit, because he was kind of on point with that.

Exactly.

Very good.

Very cool.

So if you want to find out more about this, I would recommend looking up the term semantic weakening.

Just Google that.

You’ll come across some highfalutin talk, but it should be comprehensible even to somebody who doesn’t have a specialty in linguistics.

Is it highfalutin or awfully highfalutin?

It is frightfully highfalutin.

Embarrassingly highfalutin.

Excellent.

Jared, thank you for calling today.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye.

Language is not logical.

It’s not math, right?

No, it’s not.

So there are these borders to the meanings of words that just kind of vaguely fade off.

They gradate into the distance, right?

That’s beautiful, yes.

Porous borders of language.

Porous borders of language.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673, and find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

This is Amber.

I’m calling from Berlin, New Hampshire.

Hi, Amber.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, Amber.

Is that Berlin or Berlin?

You know they pronounce it Berlin, like rhymes with Merlin.

Okay, Berlin.

Berlin.

All right, very good.

What can we do for you?

It’s different, but I just started working at a prison, and that’s a whole lot of terms, some of which I’ve heard from gang movies and some that are more military-related.

Cool.

But there’s a term that I didn’t know where it came from, and it sounds bizarre to me, and that’s Sally Port.

Sally Port.

Yep, that’s what they call the doors that we go into that close behind us.

There’s actually two doors, and only one of them is open at any given time to kind of restrict entrance.

It just sounds so feminine to me just because of the word Sally that it seems odd that it’s a prison word.

These are like aviaries.

The doors at aviaries at zoos, right?

Two doors so the birds don’t get out?

Yeah.

It’s a word that has a long history, and it refers to things that are fortified, like a fort.

You know, that kind of building where you want to keep people on one side or the other and keep people from coming in and only letting your people out when you want to let them out.

And as far back as the 1600s, a sally port in a fort, like a military fort, was the place where it was really fortified.

And people would go out of this safe place and do things to the enemy, you know, take their stuff or kill them or whatever.

And it was a way of getting people in and out of the fort safely, with no risk of a surge of the enemy coming inward when you were going outward.

Yeah.

And the sally part comes from, it goes all the way back to a Latin word salire, which means to go out.

To leave.

To leap forward or rush forward.

So it doesn’t have anything to do with it.

And then port is a word for door.

Yeah, like porta in Spanish.

So the sally part is about speed?

It’s about going.

It seems like it just slows things down.

No, it’s about exit.

It means leaving, actually.

Yeah.

It’s not about speed.

It’s about the act of going from one place to another.

Yeah.

Oh, that’s very interesting.

Yeah, sometimes on doors you see salira, which means exit.

You know, in Spanish.

And so it has to do with rushing out.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

Well, cool.

Thanks for calling, Amber.

Glad to help.

Thank you so much.

All right, cheers.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear your Sally’s and Riposte.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And we’re all over Facebook and Twitter.

Grant, do you know the expression, winkle out?

Like, you might winkle out information from your teenager about what he really did last night.

Yeah, exactly.

To extract, or you can winkle out an incumbent in office.

It’s mostly a Britishism, and it comes from the idea of winkles.

You know, those sea snails that are edible, and how you have to extract them, you know, with some care.

A little curving motion to pull them out in one piece.

Yeah, to winkle out.

Interesting.

To winkling out the meaning of that expression.

Very good, winkling out.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, is this Grant and Martha?

It sure is. Who’s this?

Hi, this is John Swenson calling from Danbury, Connecticut.

Hiya, John.

Hi, John. Welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you. I’m glad to be here. Big fan.

I was calling regarding a family word gem that has been kind of a stumper for our family.

I’ve got two older brothers and a younger sister, and when we get together, our parents have both passed on.

We talk about a word called ishpi.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this word before, but it’s a word that all of my family members have used growing up.

My parents used it with us when we were growing up, I should say, and then we’ve gone ahead and used it with our children.

But we can’t figure out where it comes from.

I’m not sure I’m spelling it right.

I think it’s I-S-H, either P-Y or P-E-E.

Okay.

If you’re eating something as a child, my mother or father would say, Ish-P.

Ish-P.

And you would know not to touch or eat that.

And my sister says it was even followed with a swipe with the finger gently through the mouth to make sure there wasn’t anything in there that was ish pee.

Now, why wouldn’t they want you to eat it?

Because it wasn’t mealtime or because it was something they shouldn’t have?

Yeah, it was, as my sister says, it was either dirt, marbles, pennies, or something on the floor, a food substance on the floor that couldn’t be eaten.

Ish pee.

My parents were rearing all of us in the 60s.

I often thought it had something to do with not saying the word no to a child in early development, you know, as they’re forming their words and trying to bring the word know, not to repeat that, just use the word ishpi instead of, and they’ll know immediately it has either to do with the mouth or something that’s just not good to put in the mouth.

Boy, I’m racking my brain here, John.

I mean, I’m thinking, well, it’s not really pig Latin.

I mean, the only thing that…

It sounds a little like pig Latin.

Like it could be pish, which is kind of an expression of disgust or contempt.

But that’s a little strong.

Maybe turning it into piglet and take some of the strength of the disgust away from it.

Because it reminds me of ixnay in a way.

Well, yeah, yeah.

I would think it would be ishpe.

But, John, the only other thing that I can think of is just the term ish, which you hear in Minnesota and Wisconsin, particularly among people of Norwegian or Swedish or Danish extraction.

Ish means just, you know, something really disgusting and it comes from terms in those languages that sound like that term and mean, blech, you know, something disgusting.

Ew, that’s ish.

That sounds like it might have some resonance here because my grandmother and grandfather were both from Sweden.

Oh, hello.

Yeah, and they both, well, they raised all of us, I should say, part of the time when we went over when Mom and Dad needed a break.

You know what I mean?

Very interesting.

You know, and we even use it with our dogs, and the dog knows.

I just thought it was interesting.

It’s always been there.

It’s a word gem we laugh about when we get together as a family on holidays and things.

Where is that word?

I said, you know what, I’m going to ask the experts.

These folks might know, you know.

I like Martha’s theory a lot that it might come from Scandinavian languages, but I think we need to throw this out to the rest of our listeners, don’t you?

Definitely.

They’ll definitely let us know.

So if you use ishpi in your family as a term of, well, it means no, basically, or don’t do that, let us know, 877-929-9673.

That’s Ishpi.

You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Just tell us what you know about the term.

Well, thank you so much, and I appreciate all the great work you do.

Well, taksa meket.

Thank you very much, sir.

Yeah, great job.

Basta guh.

Whatever.

Okay.

Hey, John.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye now.

Take care.

That’s awesome.

Nice.

A little Swedish there at the end of the call?

I’ve been talking to some Swedish friends lately.

Very good.

Comes back to you.

Ish-pee.

It sounds like there’s an element of ickiness.

You know what? I love the strength that this term has in the family.

If it is a family word, it’s being passed to now, what, the third or fourth generation?

And the dog.

And the dog.

This is great.

This is fantastic.

It could be a classic example of a family word that exists only for those people.

But usually we find family words have a larger connection to history, the community, or even a whole regional kind of variation.

So let’s find out.

Whatever you know about Ish P, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

That’s the end of this week’s show.

For more A Way with Words, including hundreds of episodes, a blog, a newsletter, a dictionary, mobile apps, and conversations with other listeners, go to waywordradio.org.

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Just as we do, they believe in lifelong learning, better human communication, and the value of a thing well said or well written.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

You like potato and I like potato.

You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.