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You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. It’s time for another update on some new words that I found.

Yay!

Or old words that I found.

Yay.

Let me ask you, do you have a catio in your house?

Do I have a catio?

Well, you have dogs and no cat, right?

Is that a patio for the cat?

Exactly.

A catio is a patio for the cat.

It’s kind of enclosed.

They can’t get away, but they can still see the sky and the trees.

Oh.

A catio.

Oh, very nice.

That’s a sweet little word, right?

What about a flyaway?

A flyaway?

Do you follow Formula One racing?

No.

A flyaway is kind of like a sleepaway for cars.

What?

Well, no.

That means that Formula One races usually happen in Europe,

But sometimes they’ll play Asia.

So the whole shebang, the whole show, the whole shooting match goes to Asia, and they have a Formula One race there.

It’s called a flyaway.

The race itself is the flyaway because everybody goes to a different country?

Yep, they all fly away to a different country to have their Formula One race.

Cool.

Interesting, right?

-huh.

If you’ve got some new words that you’d like to share, give us a ring-a-ding-dillo, 1-877-929-9673,

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

And you can find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash waywordradio.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lydia Casarda. I’m calling from Temecula, California.

Hi, Lydia. Welcome to the program.

Hi.

Thank you.

You know, my husband and I are actually very competitive when it comes to trivia,

And I think our children have witnessed some brutal jeopardy, you know, competition between the two of us.

And one of that sort of pressing, not pressing, but kind of a long battle between us has been the word subscribe.

And he is claiming that I’m using the word incorrectly when I say something along the lines of, oh, that’s an idea that I subscribe to.

And he’s telling me I can’t subscribe to an idea.

What are his authorities?

What?

Yeah, you know, exactly.

And, I mean, he’s like, you know, that’s not applicable for that.

You’re not using it correctly at all.

Is he just pulling this out of thin air or does he have some supporting data for this?

Well, I have to say this about my husband, too.

He’s terrific about arguing.

I mean, he’s almost frustrating because he has too much time to think about the argument or something.

I don’t really know.

We have four-year-old twins.

I don’t know how that’s possible.

Yeah, and so, you know, I mean, he’ll come back at me with some things,

And they make sort of sense when he’s talking about it, but later on I’m thinking, what?

What just happened?

Yeah, so this is our dilemma, and I’m dying to know who’s correct.

So you married a bologna artist and you want us to fix it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

He’s a well-spoken bologna artist, though, I should say.

Okay.

Maybe you say prosciutto.

Prosciutto would be a higher level.

Oh, I see.

But still lots of prosciutto, lots and lots and lots of it, right?

Exactly.

With some capers and lemon even or something, you know?

Okay, okay.

That’s another show.

That’s good.

That’s good.

Food, you can’t go wrong.

Great.

You can certainly subscribe to an idea.

Why not?

I don’t understand what his argument even is.

He’s wrong.

He’s patently, clearly, 100%, provably, demonstrably, factually wrong.

This is so fabulous.

But the question is, will he accept our authority?

Maybe just put it this way.

If he won’t accept our authority, tell him there is no style guide in English that agrees with him.

None of them.

They don’t even address it.

Even the most hardline, most conservative style mavens don’t even bother with this because there’s no question that you can use subscribe to mean to follow an opinion or to agree with a point of view.

Sure, to endorse heartily.

Yeah, yeah.

I’m doing the happy dance.

So now he has to take care of the twins for a couple weeks all on his own, right?

While you go on a vacation or something?

I subscribe to that.

Yes, I do.

Indeed.

Well, we’re glad we could help.

Well, thank you very much. I so appreciate your settling this long decade of a topic.

Decades? Wow!

A decade, yeah.

Oh, you put up with too much, Lydia.

Yeah, well, that’s another story, too.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, Grant, it could be that he read someplace about a scribe.

Oh, it’s possible.

You know, like you ascribe human characteristics to your smartphone that is bothering you and frustrating you.

I sometimes do that.

And people use that incorrectly.

How do they use it wrong?

They say, I ascribe to the idea that such and such.

Oh, I see.

That’s possible.

It could be that you got confused there.

But I think we had a happy caller on our hands.

It’s always nice to make people happy.

Lydia’s husband, give us a call if you want to argue about it.

We will happily engage.

If you have a question about language or a dispute you’d like to settle,

Call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Josh calling from St. Paul, Minnesota.

Hi, Josh. Welcome to the program.

Hi, I had a question about the phrase to sleep like a log.

While I was doing some missionary work in Tanzania, I learned Swahili,

And it’s a very common phrase in Swahili, and it’s a very idiomatic use.

And they taught this phrase to me, and they said,

You’re probably not going to understand what it means, but it’s to sleep like a log,

And the phrase is neelilala fo fo fo fo.

And they were thinking they were going to have to explain it to me,

And I was like, no, we have that exact same phrase in English.

And they’re like, no, there’s no way that’s possible.

You know, this is one of our phrases.

And so I was wondering if you guys knew the origin of that.

Oh, Joshua.

I need to hear that again.

Yeah, what’s the Swahili?

The Swahili is me-li-la-la-fo-fo-fo.

Me-li-la-la-fo-fo-fo.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

I love that.

That’s melodic.

It’s musical.

It’s great.

Yeah, it’s very melodic, and it’s definitely an idiom.

And, you know, it’s really beautiful in their language, not so beautiful in English.

And I was wondering if those two correspond in any way.

Oh, my gosh.

I just want to wake up tomorrow saying ni-li-la-la-fo-fo-fo.

It’s really fun to do that, yeah.

You were in Tanzania, and you learned Swahili as part of your work there as a missionary.

Are you still fluent?

Unfortunately, I’m not.

Right now, I’m a seminary and graduate school student in St. Paul.

I was only in Tanzania for about four months,

But it would probably be a lot easier for me to re-pick it back up.

Martha, am I right in remembering that Swahili and English aren’t the only languages

Where someone who sleeps well is compared to sleeping like a log?

Well, I know you do in Spanish.

What’s that?

You sleep like a tronco.

Like a trunk.

A trunk of a tree.

Yeah, right.

And Italian is similar too, right?

Is it? I don’t know.

My Italian is terrible, but it’s something like

Domina y de la grosa.

A grosa is just often a word that can mean a trunk of a tree

Or something big like a big rock or a big thing.

Yeah.

That’s interesting.

So your question then, Josh, did Swahili get it from English or vice versa?

Or is this just a common human comparison?

Yeah, well, it’s just so beautiful. Swahili and Swahili is such an old language.

I figured we must have picked it up from them.

But now that you say that’s in Italian, I’m just really confused.

Do you think it’s a size thing?

Do you think that maybe a trunk, you know, that’s a part of a tree looks about like a sleeping human?

I mean, maybe it’s just a natural thing.

I think so.

I mean, think about a big tree and it falls over.

And then it just lies there.

Right, there it is, on the ground.

Interesting.

I suppose it’s one of those things where something arose independently all over the globe.

That’s going to be my guess, that there wasn’t some kind of trade between Swahili and English or anything like that.

It’s so common.

It’s almost impossible that Spanish and Italian and English and Swahili would…

I mean, it’s very possible they should independently derive this.

It is, of course, possible that they all got it, that three of the four languages got it from Latin.

Originally, but I don’t see any evidence of that in the historical record.

Right, I don’t either. I don’t either.

I think they arose independently, but Joshua, that’s just my guess.

I have a question for you, by the way, about Swahili and Scripture.

You know, is it Psalm 51 where they talk about, wash me and I’ll be whiter than snow?

Yes, -huh.

I heard that in Swahili it gets translated.

Do you know this already?

Yeah, well, this was a big problem for a lot of missionaries.

When they came down and started translating the Bible into African languages, a lot of people didn’t have a word for snow.

And so that’s a big movement right now in adapting different biblical versions is trying to understand the message for message in a phrase and translate it so everyone can understand it.

So what do they say instead of snow?

Do they say clouds?

Well, it’s Wazili that grew up in Tanzania and on the East Coast.

So they have Kilimanjaro.

So there’s snow up there.

So they actually have a word for snow.

Very good.

But for a lot of ones, they also have the translation.

It just washes you clean like water.

Okay.

Somebody told me that some scripture says, wash me and I’ll be whiter than coconut, which I just love.

I hope it’s true.

I’ve never heard that one, but that sounds like a lot of fun.

Maybe you could do some digging for us.

Well, how do we say goodbye in Swahili?

Kwahere.

Kwahere.

Oh, well, thank you so much for spending some time with us, Josh, and sharing your story.

Yeah, thank you very much.

And if you ever get a chance, pick up Swahili.

It’s easy and very versatile and a lot of fun.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Have a good day.

Bye.

Are you inspired, Grant?

To do what?

Learn Swahili.

I tried as a boy.

I had one of those books from the bookstores that was, you know, 12 languages.

You know, it’s like standard phrases like, where do I find a hotel? And excuse me, that’s my wallet.

Things like that.

Please send the valet up to my room.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That’s wonderful stuff.

I’ll take a martini, please.

And Swahili was one of the languages in this book.

And I remember learning it.

And that’s one of the reasons I am standing in the studio with you is because of little throwaway phrase books that I found when I was a kid.

I love it.

The farm boy in Missouri trying to learn Swahili.

That’s so cute.

Call us with your stories about languages learned and languages lost.

1-877-929-9673.

Or put it all in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, not long ago on the show, we talked about the expression to hold a candle to.

You remember that, right?

Mm—

Well, there’s an expression in French that translates as to hold the candle.

But do you know what it means?

I don’t know.

It’s different.

In French, to hold a candle means to act as a chaperone.

Very good.

But it’s still related to our to hold a candle because it’s the idea that somebody is alongside of you giving you light.

Right.

They’re kind of a third wheel.

And that led me to another term in English, which is to play gooseberry.

To play gooseberry?

Yeah.

What is that?

It’s the same thing.

It means to be a chaperone for somebody.

It was used in the 19th century.

And I don’t know if it had to do with the young couple goes out gooseberry picking and the person goes with them and sort of turns their back to the kids and pretends to pick gooseberries.

But we don’t hear that anymore.

Of course, we don’t really have chaperones that often anymore, I don’t think, do we?

No, these days people just make out when mom and dad are around.

In French also, to see 26 candles, voir troncille chandelle is to see stars.

Like if you get hit on the head?

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, okay.

Not if you’re walking down Hollywood Boulevard.

Oh, okay.

If you’ve come across an interesting word, we want to hear about it.

Call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

It’s a puzzle coming up next on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And we’re joined right now by our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, John.

What’s up over there?

You guys want to do a puzzle?

Yeah.

Oh, sure.

You know anybody who has puzzles?

Yeah, I got one.

It’s more like a game.

-oh.

Okay, this week.

Now, there are lots of car games, but one that I play all the time is the license plate word game.

Maybe you know this game.

Oh, we do this all the time here in California.

Great.

Some license plates have three letters and three numbers.

Now, the way the game works, you spot a license plate, you ignore the numbers, and try to think of a word that contains the three letters in order.

They don’t have to be consecutive at all, but they have to be in order.

Okay.

For example, if I saw a car with a license plate ABC123, I might think of the word…

Absedarian.

Absedarian.

Jackson 5.

That’s not bad.

Jackson 5, right.

Abacus.

ABC123.

Abacus is exactly the word I was going to use in my example.

Absess.

Very good.

Absess is good.

Halfback is fine.

It contains A, B, and C in order.

They’re not together.

But like I said, they don’t have to be, right?

We’re going to play a version of the license plate game.

It is very simple.

I give you three letters, and you each have to give me a word that contains those letters.

Each of us.

Yeah.

I’ve been leaning on Martha this whole time.

Now I actually have to perform.

You’re on your own.

Do you have to take turns, or is this a race?

And do we go for the longer one or the shorter one or what?

It’s sort of a race.

We’re going to go for short ones, if you can.

The shortest you can.

The shortest?

See what you can do.

Oh, this isn’t the way I play it.

Well, I mean, kind of challenging, I think.

That’s how we roll over here, Martha.

You’ll have 15 seconds after I give the letters, okay?

The shortest word, quote-unquote, wins, though, you know, we’re friendly here.

Here we go.

Let’s start with a couple that I think are easy ones, okay?

Okay.

Here’s the first one.

The first letters are C-B-L.

So cable is a good one, but maybe we can do shorter than that, right?

Cabal is shorter.

Yeah, very good.

Well, I’ll call time on that.

Cable and Kambal actually both have five letters, so they’re tied for shortest.

And that’s a good word, Cable and Kambal.

Okay.

Here’s the next one.

EXN.

EXN.

Oh, man.

See, I’m going for the longer ones.

Extenuate.

Extenuate.

Say exiting.

Why not?

Don’t let the man hold you down.

Just do the long ones.

We’ll be fine.

I don’t mind the long ones.

Ding, that’s 15 seconds.

I was going to say Texan, but…

Texan, a proper noun, comes in at five.

That’s very good.

It’s a proper noun, though, so…

Yeah.

But I think the shortest I could find common words for six letters, expend.

Very good.

Extent.

And extern.

I like the word extern.

Good one.

Yeah, very good one.

Is it a former intern?

What is an extern?

Somebody who works for you but outside the office, I believe.

Oh.

You’re fired.

Okay.

It’s an intern on a road gang.

A chain gang apparently is next turn.

Okay, here’s the next one.

The letters are R-Y-T.

Trist.

Ooh.

Ooh, Trist is good at five letters.

Very good.

I would do better than that.

Sure, maybe.

Yeah, try it.

Martha, you could probably match it.

Riot.

Riot, R-Y-T?

No, Riot in the 15th century.

Oh.

Fair.

But Riot attacked.

That’s good.

Okay, that’s time.

I hear a ding.

I like the word.

That was a ding, but the word for that I like is crypt.

Oh, good one.

Let’s see.

The next one is D-S-U.

D-S-U.

Disuse?

Oh, nice.

Nice, nice.

D-S-U.

Dissuade.

Well, that’s time.

Disuse, fantastic disuse.

We’ll give you that one at six letters.

I also had discus.

Oh, nice.

Let’s try this one.

Ready?

D-U-T.

Duck.

Dust.

Duck and dust.

Those are two I have there.

Very good.

Two four-letter words.

And I’ll throw in duet.

Oh, nice.

Very good.

Good.

Nice.

This is tough.

Let’s try this one again.

Eight letters was the minimum I found.

F-D-C.

Fiduciary.

Fiduciary is nine.

Can you do a little better?

F-D-C.

Feducate.

No, I don’t know.

Refudiate.

No.

Fiducal?

Fiducal?

Yeah, fiducal.

That’s another one I found.

Very good.

And I’ll call time on that.

I also found the word feedback.

Oh, that’s a much easier one.

Oh, my goodness.

That was a really tough one, John.

But I like that because this is an incredibly portable game.

I can take this and do stuff with this, right?

Yeah.

Very good.

Well, we’ll do it again sometime.

Yeah, let’s do it again sometime.

I got to drive.

I got to bolt.

Well, thanks, John, for that workout.

Thanks, Martha.

Thanks, Grant.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

And if you’d like to talk about language, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And if you just can’t wait to interact with us, check us out on Facebook, Wayword Radio.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Peter Schack from Davis, California.

How are you, Martha and Grant?

Hello, Peter. We’re well.

Hi, Peter.

Great.

Something popped into my head the other day that I hadn’t thought of probably in 30, 40 years, a phrase my mother used, and I’m wondering who the cat’s mother was.

For example, when my sister and I would be doing something naughty or something like that, and I’d say, oh, here she comes, my mother would yell out, who do you think she is, the cat’s mother?

And I never understood what it meant.

I do now. I think it’s a term of, you know, it’s showing disrespect for using a pronoun instead of somebody’s name, I guess.

But where does it come from? I can’t conceive of how that would, somebody would think of that.

That’s a really great question, Peter.

So you’re saying that your mother was just a little peeved that she was being referred to as she and not by mother or her name.

Or mom. And she would even do it, you know, if we were referring to some other woman.

And, you know, I was talking, well, she said this or she said that.

And she said, well, who do you think she is? The cat’s mother? In other words, use her name.

Right. Instead of saying, you should have said Mrs. Robinson.

Exactly.

Right. Very good. Very good.

This is part of a longer tradition. You can find this back as far back as the 1870s, maybe even earlier, of people talking about this particular phrase.

It’s pretty interesting. There’s a famous journal called Notes and Queries. You know this, Martha, right?

This is a classic journal where scholars and dilettantes who had a desire for knowledge will send their queries to notes and letters to ask a question.

And then everyone else will respond and that will be published in the following issue.

It’s basically kind of a precursor to a discussion forum on the Internet.

Or our show, right?

Exactly.

I’m the dilettante.

I’m just the guy who reads.

There’s a great example. It’s exactly like yours.

It says a little girl runs into her mother and says excitedly, oh, mama, we met her just as we were coming home from our walk.

And she was so glad to see us.

Upon which the mama says, who is she? The cat’s mother.

Right.

And then the child laughs merrily and replies, no, it was Lucy Jones.

But how and the mother says, but how could I know that when you did not mention her name?

And that’s the crucial argument.

So the cat’s mother is just kind of a way of saying she could be any woman or any female animal of any kind.

You know, you could be referring to the house cat, you know.

And it’s really interesting to me because this particular bit plugs into something I wondered as a boy as well, Peter, just like you.

My mother didn’t have that phrase, but she would get very upset when she would hear me and my four siblings talking about her and just saying she instead of mom.

Right? Because she would just get kind of upset because she was raised in a way that meant that you referred to your elders by their title or some kind of term of respect, you know, something that she deserves.

Exactly. And it was only with females. It was never with males.

Well, you know, there’s a famous book called She by H. Ryder Haggard where he comes up with the acronym for She Who Must Be Obeyed.

And it’s been used numerous times since by other authors.

Yeah, John Mortimer, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

Rumpel of the Bailey.

Exactly right.

It’s an acronym, SWMBO?

Yes, SWMBO.

In any case, the whole point of this, that in the Rumpel books, he refers to his wife as she all the time.

And it’s an idea that she’s got a presence, even when she’s not around.

And she weighs heavily upon his mind.

And she is, well, anyway, whatever.

She is not the way to refer to your wife or your mother, right?

Right, right.

It’s like referring to the other, right?

Yeah, yeah.

There’s a third kind of she here, which I think plugs perfectly into this culture paid to a woman who deserves your respect, right?

We require that.

That is part of who we are.

In the Tolkien books, right, Gollum refers to the big spider, a she with a capital S.

That’s right.

The spider who guards the pathway to, I don’t know how you say it, Kirith Ungol or whatever, that goes up to the Dark Tower.

And it’s the same idea.

She is, she’s not whatever her name is.

It’s she.

So anyway, this is all related, part and parcel, to the expression the cat’s mother, as in who do you think I am, the cat’s mother.

You should use the name, and that’s what your mother was telling you.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, our pleasure, Peter.

Thank you so much.

That was great.

Peter, thanks for bringing it up.

Okay, take care now.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

And Grant, I had never heard of that, and so I was thinking that it must have to do with her sneaking up behind them as quietly as a cat.

Oh, very interesting.

That was fascinating.

That’s possible.

All the history of that.

If you’ve got a question about something that your mother used to say, seems to be a trend, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or put the long story in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sheila from Billings, Montana.

Hello, Sheila, welcome.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Well, my husband and I both grew up in Colorado, and everyone that we knew pronounced C-O-Y-O-T-E as coyote.

And we now live in Montana, and this seems to be true throughout a lot of Montana and Wyoming as well.

We all say coyote.

But both our kids moved back east, and we’ve noticed that elsewhere in the United States, a lot of people seem to say coyote instead.

So we wondered if saying coyote was some sort of Western regional dialect, and if so, how that came about.

Yeah, bingo. Exactly right.

It is a common pronunciation of the word C-O-Y-O-T-E in the mountain states and in the southwest and in the west in general of the United States.

If you look in dictionaries from 100 or 150 years ago, all of them have the two-syllable pronunciation as the standard pronunciation.

It is not until later that the three-syllable pronunciation comes into play.

And there’s a reason for this.

It’s a classic story of how we learn words.

Whole parts of this country only know the coyote from reading.

And so they looked at the word, they figured it was some kind of foreign word, probably Spanish, and then they pronounced it that way.

So you have these two diverging paths of pronunciation.

But in the West, historically, as I understand it, Americans from the earliest days picked the word up not from Spanish speakers, but from Native Americans.

Oh, really?

Yes. And in their language, the word comes to us from Nahuatl, which is a Mexican language.

And it’s C-O-Y-O-T-L.

And it is more or less two syllables.

The L, I believe, is very liquid.

So it’s coyoto, something like that.

And so it sounds more like coyote than it does coyote or coyote or any of the other various pronunciations that people have invented for themselves.

And so in the West, the word comes into English from a Native American language where it is very similar to coyote.

It is a natural, normal pronunciation.

It’s not an affectation.

That’s not anything that means that they’re uneducated or anything like that.

It’s a part of the dialect of the West.

And as a matter of fact, if you and I met Sheila, say, at a business conference somewhere and I wanted to figure out where you were from, one of the standard questions I might ask you is how you pronounce that word.

And then I could divide the country right down the middle and assume that if you said coyote that you were from the West.

And so in California, they tend to say coyote also.

Oh, you know, obviously this is a country with a lot of migration and a lot of weird patterns of people from elsewhere, particularly in the military towns and in the industrial towns and that sort of thing.

But in general, people who’ve been here for a generation or two and have strong roots in the West and definitely in Colorado, it’s great that you’re from Colorado because that is the heart of it.

Coyote is nearly universal.

People know the coyote pronunciation from television and movies, but it’s not part of their natural vocabulary.

Yeah, I was going to say Wile E. Coyote probably influenced a generation, right?

Yeah, definitely.

Those Roadrunner cartoons.

Yeah, definitely.

So to summarize, Sheila, the coyote pronunciation is fine.

It is the older pronunciation in American English.

It probably comes from the Mesoamerican Nahuatl language spoken still in Mexico.

And the coyote pronunciation is also fine.

It just happens to be newer and probably descended from a different pronunciation tree.

Great. Thank you so much.

Sure. Our pleasure.

Thanks for calling, Sheila.

Thank you.

Bye-bye, Sheila.

Bye-bye.

Tell us how they speak out your way, 1-877-929-9673, or put it in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Hilary Mosier. I’m calling from McKinleyville, California.

McKinleyville. What county is that in?

That’s in Humboldt, past the Bong County.

Well, put down the pipe and tell us what’s on your mind.

Well, you know, I, many years ago, in the early 70s, decided to go to college in England.

And I thought that, you know, it would be fine because I speak English and they speak English.

And I got there and discovered, no, no, no, I speak American.

They speak English.

And the first time it hit me was when I went, the first night I was there, and I went into one of my roommates and asked if I could borrow a bobby pin.

And she just looked at me blankly and said, what’s that?

And I said, you know, it’s like a wire clip that holds your hair back.

And she said, you mean a Kirby grip?

And I said, who’s Kirby?

And she said, well, who’s Bobby?

And all of a sudden they’re Kirby.

Yeah, who is Bobby?

What the heck?

And then several months later I was working as an au pair for a young British family, and we got up on Sunday morning and the mother said, we’re having a joint tonight.

And I thought, what?

I had just moved from San Francisco and hadn’t had any such thing in quite a while since I’d been in England.

But I thought, okay, well, we’ll see how they do joints in England.

And we went throughout the day, and we, you know, went gardening, and then we cooked the roast beef and the potatoes and the green beans, and we ate our dinner, and we bathed the children and put them to bed, and then they started to say goodnight.

And I said, well, wait a second, how about the joint?

And they both looked at each other and blinked.

And just in that moment, I remembered reading Shakespeare in high school and coming across a joint of mutton.

And it occurred to me, their joint must be the roast beef.

How disappointed you must have been.

They both said, oh, we didn’t know if you smoked or not.

And it turned out, it all worked out well, but what a confusion.

It all worked out well.

And then on another time, I needed some thumbtacks.

And I went to a place called Portobello Road, which is like a gigantic yard sale.

And they have little booths that people go and sell their things.

And I later found out, actually, if you get burgled, you go there and find your things that weekend.

But I said, do you have any thumbtacks?

And they would say, thumbtacks?

No, we ain’t got none of those.

Go down the road.

And I’d go to the next one.

Do you have any thumbtacks?

No, no, go down the road.

And finally, I saw on a corner a store that was called the Iron Mongers.

And it had like washboards hanging from the eaves.

So I went inside and sure enough, it turned out that’s the English version of a hardware store.

And there behind the counter, I saw a package of thumbtacks.

And I said, I would like a package of thumbtacks.

And the man said, thumb what?

No, we ain’t got none of those.

Go down the road.

And I said, no, no, they’re hanging right there.

And he pointed and he said, you mean these?

And I said, yeah.

And he said, drawing pins.

I said, yeah, drawing pins.

Yeah, can I have a package of those, please?

Hillary, you’re great fun.

Well, thank you.

Thanks for calling, Hillary.

All right, you’re welcome.

Best of luck to you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What are your crazy stories about English encounters?

1-877-929-9673.

Or put in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Do you know the word elemasonary?

Well, if you don’t, you will when A Way with Words continues.

We’ll be right back.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Elemosanary.

Elemosanary.

Elemosanary. Now there’s a word you can lift your hat to, right?

Mm-And my spelling, too. How do you spell that?

It’s E-L-E-E-M-O-S-Y-N-A-R-Y.

Eleemosynary.

What a strange word.

It is a really weird word.

And it means of or relating to or dependent upon charity.

It comes from the Latin.

It’s related to the word alms.

That’s how you can remember it.

Grant, I was thinking of this word recently because I saw a production of a play by that very name, Eleemosynary, here at Moxie Theater in San Diego.

This play is written by Lee Blessing, and I love it in part because it’s a celebration of language itself.

Very good.

It’s about three generations of women, including an eccentric grandmother, her repressed daughter, and her granddaughter, who wins the national spelling bee by spelling correctly that word elemocenary.

But she talks a lot in the play about the very deliciousness of words, and I want to read you just a little bit from the script.

I fly with words.

Oh, I know I sound stupid to say, but it’s true.

Certain words literally lift me up to a private altitude.

Sortilage, sherevery, ungulate, favonian.

And the word that means playing with words, lagadattily.

Isn’t that a great one, lagadattily?

It’s a one-word yodel.

I love that.

Lagadattily.

Nice.

I love that.

And I won’t go through now the meanings of all those words, although I do love Favonian.

What is Favonian?

It means mild, and it comes from the Latin word for the west wind, which was known for being particularly mild.

But, you know, Grant, the other word that I was thinking a lot about that night because I was sitting in the theater called Moxie Theater is the word moxie.

Now, that has a great origin, right?

Sure, yeah.

It is a soft drink, I think.

Yes, yes. Back in 1884, a guy up in New England marketed something called moxie nerve food, which was kind of a nostrum that helped you with all kinds of physical ailments.

But this was one of the first soft drinks in the United States.

And it was kind of bitter, but it was known for giving you pep and vigor and energy.

And, you know, people would say, oh, that person has a lot of moxie, meaning they have a lot of courage and gumption, that kind of thing.

It’s a perfect name for what theater should be for you.

You know, it should be bracing like a tonic for your mind.

Vigorous.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Vigorous.

So I was thinking about both those words, elemasanere and moxie.

Okay, super duper.

If you’ve got a question about language, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or put the whole thing in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

Good morning. Who’s this?

This is Ilima calling from Hawaii.

Alima.

Alima, welcome to the program.

Thank you so much.

I’m excited to be with you guys.

Well, what can we help you with today, Alima?

Well, guess what?

Chicken butt.

What?

That’s my question.

What?

I had a question about the expression, guess what?

Every time I see it written, I see it written with a question mark at the end.

And that’s never made sense to me because it always seems more like an imperative than a question.

Aha. Very interesting.

So if you were writing it, you would put a period and not a question mark?

Yeah, or an exclamation point.

Very interesting.

Well, let me ask you, how would you punctuate the sentence, would you please shut up?

This is a hypothetical, right?

I would punctuate that with an exclamation point, too.

An exclamation point, not a period.

I could see how it could be a question mark or a period, yeah.

Sure.

So if you say, guess what, as far as you’re concerned, it’s an order and not a query.

That’s just what it sounds like to me.

Nobody else writes it that way, and it just never looked right with a question mark to me because you’re right.

To me, it sounds like an order.

You’re telling the person to guess.

Right.

You’re not asking a question.

Right.

It sounds like there’s some words left out.

Like, I want you to guess what I’m thinking or something, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And you’re right.

In all of the data that I can search here, I see that people use a question mark.

Like nearly all, actually, in professionally edited texts, like books and newspapers, it’s almost always a question mark.

In casual stuff like blog posts and emails and discussion forum stuff, people tend to use the question mark plus the exclamation mark.

Because I think there’s a sign of, there’s a sense of a question happening, right?

But there’s a sense of something forceful being said too, right?

Guess what?

Guess what?

You don’t say, guess what?

But you’d almost think with a question mark it’d be, guess what?

Yeah, that’s how it looks in my mind when I read it that way.

It looks like you’re saying, guess what?

And to me, you’re telling somebody else to ask a question.

And the response to guess what is, what?

And that’s the question.

There are plenty of questions that you might ask where you wouldn’t raise the inflection at the end.

Like, do you mind?

Do you mind?

No, you say, do you mind?

And there’s a little bit of a hit there, but…

Say what?

Exactly.

What?

Say what, yeah.

So there we go.

So your question is, do you use an exclamation mark or a question mark in the two-word phrase, guess what?

Yeah.

It’s a puzzle.

Well, I got to say that this question has come up before.

Some people prefer to use the Interobank.

Do you know this punctuation mark?

No.

I-N-T-E-R-R-O-B-A-N-G.

It is a single character that combines the question mark and the exclamation mark into one.

And it’s common enough that it actually appears in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary in one of their tables of punctuation.

It’s never really caught on, although once in a while you’ll find it on the keyboard of an old typewriter.

I was going to say, it’s taking me back to when I used to make those with the backspace and everything.

Yeah, yeah, you could make them in a typewriter in a way that you can’t easily do on a computer.

Right.

Although it is now a standard part of the Unicode font set, so you can actually call it up if you know how and use it.

But it’s not a part of formal writing.

It’s like any copy editor worth his or her salt would just strike that mark right out of it and replace it probably with a question mark.

With a question mark?

Yeah.

But it is weird.

I understand what she’s saying.

There is an alternative here.

Oh, there is?

Yeah.

Did you ever hear the fellow Ted Bernstein?

He was a language commentator in the 1960s and 1970s, wrote a few books.

He’s long since passed, but he used to be a managing editor for the New York Times.

He invented a character called the prone quark.

What?

P-R-O-N-E-Q-U-A-R-K, the prone quark.

And it never really caught on.

I guess not.

But it solves the problem.

It’s a question mark lying on its side.

A dead question mark?

So it’s kind of face down with the hump pointed up.

And he says that you should use this on expressions like, would you please shut up?

Because it’s really an order, not a question.

Right?

Right.

If I say, would you please shut up, I really mean shut up.

And if I say, guess what, it means I don’t really care if you guess.

I’m about to tell you something that I find to be significant.

Right?

And so he suggests you should use the prone quark.

What do you think?

Are you advocating this, Grant?

I’m just thinking.

No, I’m just offering this an opportunity to confuse and muddle things.

So if I muddle this, then my job is done.

A muddle opportunity.

I don’t know.

Does it appeal to you, Elima?

I’m definitely going to bring back the prone quark.

But to summarize this, if you’re writing professionally and formally for business or for, you know, something that’s going to be printed and read by a lot of people, you should go with the question mark.

Otherwise, have a ball and put the exclamation mark there.

Let people know that it’s an exciting moment for you and that there’s not really a question implied.

And really what you’re saying is, I’m about to tell you something that I think is important.

So that’s my advice.

Great.

Does that work?

That’s terrific. Until we bring back the prone quark, I’ll get used to seeing it with a question mark.

Yeah, if you Google the prone quark, look for the fellow. His name is Theodore Bernstein, Theodore M. Bernstein, and you’ll find a little bit of information about him, his books, and the prone quark.

Terrific. Thank you so much.

Super duper. Thanks for calling.

Mahalo.

Mahalo.

Something about punctuation have you puzzled? Call us 1-877-929-9673, or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Mark. I’m calling from Dallas.

Hi, Mark. Welcome to the program.

All right. I grew up in New York, and my wife is from West Texas, and we’re always teasing each other about accents and odd words and stuff.

And one that I really love is a story she tells about her grandfather, who was a World War I vet who lived around Tulsa, Oklahoma his whole life.

And she said that when a meal was really delicious, old Sam would push back from the table and say, that’s Larapin, and I’ve never heard of that.

Nice. Where in New York are you from?

I was born outside the city, and I lived in upstate New York up by the St. Lawrence River.

Okay. So these are two very distinct styles of American English, aren’t they?

Oklahoma English and New York-style English.

Seems to be.

Yeah, well, this makes perfect sense. Yeah.

What is that Larapin? Is that a regional thing?

Yes, it is. As a matter of fact, you hear it mostly in the Texas, Oklahoma, West Midlands area like that.

And it’s an adjective, right? Larapin.

It’s not like he’s comparing it to some noun that’s a larapin.

It’s not a kind of terrapin or anything like that.

Right. Do you have any sense of how it’s spelled?

I don’t know, actually. I’ve only heard it in speech. So L-A-R-A-P-I-N, I would assume.

Yeah, that’s one version of it.

It’s not really standardized.

Oh, there are about 900 ways to spell laraphyme.

Yeah, but it looks like it comes from an old word that means to beat or to strike or thrash.

So, you know, a whomping good slice of pie.

Right, okay.

Oh, wow.

So we have other words in English that behave the same way.

Sure.

Doesn’t that beat all?

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Okay, all right.

So it’s just a comparison about if it thrashes or beats something.

Then it’s just so good that it actually literally pummels the competition and lies to the top.

Yeah, strikingly good.

Strikingly good.

There we go.

What a hit.

Yeah.

That’s great.

We could go on and on.

Martha, my southern flower, do you have larripen as part of your vocabulary?

Only by adoption.

I’ve adopted it into my vocabulary because I love it.

Have you, Mark?

Well, since I learned about it, yeah.

I now do that as sort of a tip of the hat to my wife and her family or whatever.

And so I’ll pipe up with that at the end of a meal sometimes.

And it goes over well.

People receive it and they understand that it’s a compliment, right?

Yeah.

Okay, good.

Larapin.

Yeah.

Well, maybe more people will adopt it now.

I think it’s a great word.

Larapin.

Well, you’re a larapin good caller, Mark.

We appreciate your calling.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

All right.

I’ll be listening.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

What’s on your mind about language?

Send it our way, words@waywordradio.org, or ring us on the telephone, 1-877-929-9673.

A couple new words for you.

Martha, you know that I recently started working with this great bunch of young journalists here in San Diego.

Yes, we’re in San Diego.

So I’m getting refreshed on all this great journalism jargon.

Do you know what a FOIA is?

A FOIA?

How do you spell that?

F-O-I-A.

That’s going to give it away.

Oh, a Freedom of Information Act.

Yeah, it’s a Freedom of Information Act request, which is you fill out the paperwork to submit it to a government agency and say, I want this data or these records, and it’s all handled according to the law and official, and they have a certain amount of time to respond.

But it’s a FOIA.

Right, right.

Interesting.

I thought you were pretentiously talking about the lobby there.

I dropped my FOIA in the FOIA.

Yeah.

What’s your new word?

Something to share with us?

Something you’ve invented, or something you’ve found, 1-877-929-9673, or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carol Rieg from Hudson, Wisconsin.

Hello, Carol. Welcome.

Thank you.

How can we help you today?

Well, I have a curious question.

I was raised in northern Wisconsin on a farm, and all our life we referred to cow droppings as cow pies or horse droppings as horse biscuits, and I’m wondering what the connection between culinary and animal droppings is, or culinary terms, and why we would use those in that way.

And several years ago I edited a book for a gentleman who was writing about his family in southern Wisconsin and their role in the Civil War, and he used that term, and I could never document when that term came into usage.

So if you can shed some light on that, too, that would be interesting.

So he was writing fiction from the period, and you were worried that there was an anachronism there with cow pie?

Yes.

I see.

And I know there’s cow chip, and there’s buffalo chip, which is also not quite culinary, but along the line.

So you’re wondering, first of all, why they are connected with food words.

Exactly.

And a pie, other than its shape, doesn’t really resemble something we would put in the oven, and neither does a horse biscuit.

I mean, unless they were cooked by some guy on some cattle drive, but I’m just curious.

Okay.

You know, I have to tell you, I don’t know, Carol, if I would agree with that.

A cow pie, to me, looks remarkably like just a brown meringue.

Well, maybe the way you cook.

The way I cook, for sure.

If we forget what it’s made of and look at the shape and something solid formed from something that used to be liquid.

And the same for the horse biscuit.

Horse poo is sometimes looking like a very tall biscuit that had a lot of baking powder.

I don’t think this is a stretch.

I don’t.

I think there’s a visual similarity there that’s kind of obvious to anybody who thinks about food a lot, which I do.

Well, I’m thinking about Spanish, and you don’t refer to cow tacos, but…

Cow tortillas?

Well, I don’t know if the word is too naughty to say on the air in Spanish, but it translates as cow cake.

I see.

So I see a common thread here, which I never thought about.

So you think about these kinds of things, do you, Carol?

I’ve just been curious because, you know, we spent a lot of time with the animals and raising animals, and, you know, we went barefoot in the pasture in the summers.

And you had to avoid stepping in cow pies, which really looked more like spinach quiche than they do like brown meringue.

Oh, that’s nice.

Thanks for the visual.

Wonderful.

You’ll never eat it again.

Somebody should tell those cows to chew their cud better.

But, you know, I just could never find when it was brought into common usage.

Sounds like you have some dogs.

So you’ve been worrying about this editing decision for a very long time.

I have. This has been like 15 years.

Wow.

And I have to let it go, but the book’s published.

Right.

And so you ended up using cow pie in the book about the Civil War?

I suggested he didn’t use it because I wasn’t sure.

Right.

And since he couldn’t really document it where it came from at the time, I mean, I’m sure it’s just one of those words that came into the dictionary at some point.

But when you Google cow pie, you actually get a candy treat.

You know, you get, it’s a, it’s not, you can’t find anything that refers to cow manure.

You just find this, I don’t know, this cake with marshmallows between it is a cow pie in some areas of the country.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, right, right.

It’s a funny name.

And that’s another food thing.

Yes, yes, yes.

That’s another funny food name that’s applied from something kind of gross.

Sort of like lasagna comes from an Italian word that means chamber pot.

What?

This may be the grossest call we’ve ever done.

Oh, we can do better, surely.

Or worse.

You know, I am looking at the Oxford English Dictionary, which only has cow pie back to about, I can’t believe I’m even saying this, which only has cow pie back to about 1947.

Oh, surely it must be older.

You would think cow pie would be much older than that.

How old is that entry?

Is that from 1989?

I bet they answered it with no problem.

It is 1989.

Well, somebody’s on the cow pie case, Carol.

Okay.

So we may have some news for you in the future about that.

That sounds good.

Thanks for calling.

If we come up with anything that antedates it and proves that it could have been said during the Civil War, we’ll let you know.

Okay, that sounds good.

And thanks very much.

Okay, super.

Okay, bye.

Bye.

That’s our show for this week.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer. Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell and Jennifer Powell.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Take care.

Sayonara.

You say either, and I say either.

You say neither, and I say neither.

Either, either, neither, neither.

Let’s call the whole thing on.

You like potato, and I like patata.

You like tomato, and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato.

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