Hair of the Politics that Bit You

[MUSIC PLAYING] You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

In this political season, I find myself thinking about political language.

I’ll bet you do.

One of my favorite political terms is the old-fashioned term “leg treasurer.”

That’s two words.

Do you know it?

I have no idea.

Leg treasurer?

Somebody who appreciates legs?

Oh, no, no, no.

This is somebody who absconds with government funds.

It’s somebody who embezzles and runs off with the money to Europe or someplace like that.

And I just like it because it’s descriptive.

It’s colorful, the idea that you’re stuffing wads of cash in your pants and making off for the border.

That’s nice.

That’s nice.

And so that’s an old term.

How old is it?

It is old.

It’s over 100 years.

It’s old-fashioned.

We don’t use it anymore.

But it’s still got its charm.

Well, yeah, that’s a weird one.

I was thinking more recently of a word that we’re hearing all the time in terms of politics.

And that’s the word ballot.

Do you have any idea where that comes from?

I think I do, as a matter of fact.

It’s originally from Italian, right?

Right.

The roots of this word are in 14th century Italy, where people used to cast votes by dropping a little ball into a box, say a white ball for a yes vote and a black ball for a no vote.

And one of those little balls was called a ballotta.

You see the same idea in our verb to blackball somebody.

That comes from dropping a black ball in a secret vote.

How did the name for a ball get applied to paper?

It’s just the thing that you’re using to cast the vote.

It’s kind of a transference of idea there?

Exactly.

Yeah, people have used all different kinds of things.

In ancient Athens, they would use broken pieces of pottery to cast votes.

That sounds efficient.

Yeah, yeah, better than Chad’s.

Because I’ve been to the ruins, and there’s all kinds of broken pottery everywhere.

So they surely had lots of it lying around.

Well, yeah.

How did you prevent people from casting multiple votes?

That’s a good question.

And I’m sure they had voter fraud back in those days too.

If you were using broken pottery, you could just go and make your own new ballots.

That’s true.

And do you know the word for those little broken pieces of pottery in ancient Greek?

No, what is it?

Ostraka.

We get the word ostracize from that, because you would vote on whom to ostracize.

Who to kick off the island.

Exactly, or out of the city in that case.

Well, if you’d like to have your vote heard and be included rather than ostracized, call us with your questions and comments about words and how we use them.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who is this?

This is Karen Jensen from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Well, hello, Karen.

What’s going on?

What’s going on?

I have a question for you.

OK, please.

I was quoted in the local newspaper The Indianapolis Star because I used a phrase, a fish stinks from the head down.

And after that quote aired, our local paper has the ability to make comments on articles.

And some of the comments were very critical that I had said something so unkind, because I was talking about an organizational leader who I felt like was not the right leader for the organization.

And I used that phrase to describe the problems in the organization.

And I was accused of calling the leader a stinky fish, which I didn’t think is what I was doing.

I thought what I was saying was, there’s a problem in the organization.

You need to look to the leadership.

Right, that’s how that phrase is understood, right?

Yes, that’s what I thought.

But I got a lot of criticism.

And he’s a very nice man.

And I like him a lot.

And I don’t want to call him a stinky fish.

And I want to make sure I don’t use the phrase inappropriately.

So your version of it was, a fish stinks from the head down?

Yes.

Oh, because a slightly more common version is, a fish rots from the head down.

I think you should go back to that comment section and just type, can you say figure of speech?

I mean, it is a figure of speech.

And Karen, you’re in great company.

I mean, this expression has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years.

You’ll find variations of it in German, Hungarian, Albanian, Turkish.

I’ve seen it in ancient Greek, in Latin.

And it’s exactly what you’re talking about, that when there’s corruption or decay, it starts from the top.

So you hear lots of different versions of it.

I think the question is, does a fish literally rot from the head?

I don’t know.

I don’t know the answer to that.

Do we have someone else we can ask that question of?

I bet we have some people in Alaska that know fish very well.

Maybe they can tell us.

There’s an idea.

Yeah, we have listeners in Alaska.

And they’ll let us know, hopefully.

Well, I tell you, this question has troubled language buffs enough that some of them have asked experts in the field.

I remember William Safire asked somebody at the Smithsonian Institution about fish and how they rot.

And the answer was, they probably don’t rot from the head down.

There’s not that much to rot in the head.

It would probably start in the intestines.

It really makes me want to get a fish and lay it outside and see what happens.

A little scientific experiment of my own.

Yeah, Karen, it really makes you want to get a fish and lay it outside and see what happens.

The original dilemma here is that somebody misunderstood what you had to say.

As Martha has rightly pointed out, they’re wrong to misconstrue that.

It’s not a paddocks.

You don’t call people a fish as an insult, usually.

There’s one slang fish that I could think of that might be mildly insulting.

And that’s a newbie or a new person at a company or job or on a sports team might be called a fish.

Or in prison might be called a fish.

But that’s clearly not the context here.

And anybody who misunderstood that is going out of their way to misunderstand.

I think you were right to use that expression.

Well, that makes me feel a lot better.

Excellent.

I’m glad to hear that.

It’s sort of like the lipstick on a pig expression, isn’t it?

I mean, nobody’s talking about literal pigs.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I didn’t think it was literal either.

Right.

I wouldn’t have used it.

Well, Karen, we got your back.

And that’s good to know, because you guys having my back is what matters.

Oh, rock and roll.

All right.

All right.

Well, we appreciate your calling.

Thank you, Karen.

Thank you very much.

OK.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

One thing I should have said to Karen was, I know the kind of people that just write comments on the internet without really thinking about what they’re saying.

Sure.

And they’re not to be taken seriously.

I mean, that’s an overgeneralization.

But it’s so easy to leave comments without really contemplating what you’re putting in print, right?

Right.

Absolutely.

And people tend to willfully misunderstand.

They tend to go out of their way to find anything that you might have said that might possibly be offensive and then make a big deal out of it, rather than being generous in giving you the benefit of the doubt.

If you’ve got a question about language, drop us a line, a hook, and a sinker, and we’ll try to help you out.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

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

Grant, I think that was a P-U-N.

Mm, and a S-T-I-N-K-Y.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

Hi, this is Kevin.

I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Kevin, how are things in Circle City?

It’s rockin’.

It’s rockin’?

Oh, yeah.

Well, what did you call us about?

Well, I guess maybe it stems from some of the rock culture that I surround myself with.

But I’m always interested in the term “dude.”

“Dude” and “hey, dude”— and it’s like a term of endearment.

It’s a greeting, a citation.

It’s a single sentence word.

And I just don’t know where it came from.

I also hear of a dude ranch, and so I don’t know whether that term ever came into being in popular culture or before then.

Yeah, you’re right.

It’s like that beer commercial where all they say is “dude.”

You know the one I’m talking about?

There was a scene in Finding Nemo like that, too.

The turtles did that, didn’t they?

I don’t remember.

Did they?

Dude.

Dude.

Dude.

Dude.

Dude.

Maybe they were doing “whoa, the whoa.”

I was like, “Whoa, whoa.”

It was a mixture of both.

It was a mixture of both, was it?

“Dude” is unfortunately an origanc, which stands for origin unknown.

We do know that “dude” broke onto the scene of American English in the early 1880s.

In 1883, it just exploded.

It shows up in newspaper after newspaper, magazine after magazine.

It’s just one of those terms that sprang from the earth fully formed and ready to go.

In January of 1883, there was a poem about the word.

So we know that it was common, at least in the end of 1882.

There was a poem about the word.

And they were kind of making fun of dudes.

Dudes were dandies.

These were men who dressed in the fashions of the day, just to the hilt.

These days, you might call them a metrosexual.

But they were the finest clothes, the finest shoes, went to the finest restaurants, smoked the finest tobacco.

They were seen as effete and prissy.

And that term, that use of “dude” migrated out to the western part of the United States and quickly became used to mean people from the East, or newbies from the East, people who didn’t really know the ways of the West, or the ways of the country, or the ways of the cowboy, people who came from the big city and really just didn’t get it.

You know what I’m talking about?

That’s the dude ranch.

That’s the dude ranch.

Exactly right.

Dude ranch shows up, though, first in the 1920s or so.

So dude ranch came much later.

There are some interesting side notes to dude.

The one thing that really interests me is that we’ve kind of had that split where there’s still a little bit of the use of “dude” to mean, how should we put this, as in “dude ranch,” somebody who really isn’t very countrified, but for the most part, “dude” is just a normal, everyday term of address.

It’s like “fellow” or “guy” or “buddy” or “Mac” or “pal.”

You just say, “Hey, dude, what’s up,” right?

Yeah.

So it’s really changed over the last 100-plus years.

So that’s a very condensed history of the word “dude,” but it’s a great multi-purpose word.

I’ve talked about this on the show before.

I think you remember, Martha.

It’s one of those words that’s contagious.

If the people around you use “dude,” you are quickly using the word “dude” yourself.

Is that true for you, Kevin?

Oh, hell yeah, dude.

And with the movie “The Big Lebowski,” that term, you exploded even more.

The dude abides, and that’s a cult movie now.

There are, I guess, there are conferences and annual meet-ups and gatherings around that movie, and people doing, like, I don’t know, what do you call those?

Movie karaoke where they’ll recite the lines of the movie that’s playing on the screen.

It’s just crazy.

And that movie is just filled with the word “dude.”

I don’t know what the incidence is, but it must be in the thousands.

Dude, yeah, somebody should count them.

So that’s the short version, Kevin.

How’s that sound?

Oh, that’s great.

It’s fascinating how much it can change.

Yeah, it’s come such a long way.

Mm-quite a long way.

Well, thanks so much for your call, Kevin.

Thanks, dude.

No problem, buddy.

Bye-bye.

Bye, dude.

Bye.

Martha, one stanza from that poem was in the New York world in January of 1883.

And it goes, when Darwin’s theory first saw light, the dude he tried to think of, but monkeys being far more bright, he made the missing link of.

Oh, wow.

The whole poem was very derogatory towards the dude, the original fancy dude.

How interesting.

Yeah.

So these are sort of wannabes, cowboy wannabes.

Think of— people like this, they’re very, very fashionable.

They read the Thursday style section of The New York Times to know how to dress tomorrow.

You know what I’m saying?

Sure.

The people who have closets full of clothes that they’ll never wear again because they’re simply not fashionable anymore.

Those kinds of people.

Dude.

Men, mostly.

Dude were men, you know?

Dudes were not women.

Although, you will find today, just like guy and guys, you’ll find women being addressed as dude these days.

Yeah, I rarely use that word.

Dude.

Dude.

I rarely do.

I have a bad case of it.

I’m sorry to say.

Yeah, you have the dudes.

You have the dudes.

If you’ve got a question about the history of a word, slang, or otherwise, give us a ring, 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Wait, let me explain something to you.

I am not Mr. Lebowski.

You’re Mr. Lebowski.

I’m the dude.

So that’s what you call me, you know?

That or his dude-ness or duder or, you know, el duderino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

Are you employed, sir?

Employed?

Next up on A Way with Words, something puzzling this way comes.

Stick around for a quiz.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

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

Hi, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

How you doing?

What’s up, buddy?

Oh, I’m just, you know, lugging these puzzles around.

I’m looking for a place to put them down.

I hope this is good right here.

[LAUGHTER]

Oh, have a seat.

Send us some quizzes, a few enigmas.

When you say “lugging,” are you putting them on stone tablets still?

I still— you know, I’m a luddite.

I just— I don’t trust these pencil things you talk of.

I don’t know.

So— -huh.

So—

Now, look, I don’t have a lot of time for horsing around.

So I’m always looking for ways to save time, OK?

Right.

OK.

Thanks for coming today.

We’ll see you later.

Adios.

All right.

In that vein, I’ve decided that if I come across two words where the first word ends with the same sounds that the second word begins, I’ll just condense them.

For example, I was at a garage sale yesterday, and I purchased a pair of those metal supports you use in a hearth to keep the firewood off the floor.

And my wife asked me what I bought that day, so I said—

Any guesses?

I bought something and irons.

Right.

Irons and irons?

What else did you buy?

Well, they were at a garage sale, so they were used.

Used and irons.

What’s that?

Secondhand irons.

Secondhand irons, very good, yes.

That’s exactly how this works.

I call this overlap-plied linguistics.

So we’re making blends.

Yes, we’re making blends.

They’re similar to portmanteau words, but they’re—

OK.

Each word is there.

OK.

Right.

Like I said, I’m in a hurry.

Let’s do this.

All right.

The first one is a classic.

In fact, if you do a web search for the combo, you’ll find over 2,000 hits.

I’m a big fan of the baseball team from Maryland, the team Cal Ripken played for.

I call them the—

Balmorials.

Very good, Baltimore.

You’re in more of a hurry than I am.

Oh my gosh.

Yes, the Baltimoreals.

That was actually the inspiration for this puzzle, the Baltimoreals.

OK.

Here’s the next.

My new favorite show is a reality show where fashion designers attempt to create clothes for astronauts to wear on spacewalks.

It’s called—

America’s Top—

Diaper.

No.

No.

Astronauts.

I’m trying to think of words that—

Astronauts, NASA.

Well, spacewalks are—

Astronauts on spacewalks can be described as—

Extravehicular activities, EVAs.

I guess you guys don’t watch this fashion designer show where they—

Oh, Project Runway Out in Space?

Project—

Try to find a word that begins with way—

I’m looking for it. —describes people in space.

Weightless.

Weight loss.

Weight loss?

Project Runwayless.

Project Runweightless or Runweightlessness.

Very good.

No, that’s horrible.

I think Project Runweightloss would be a big hit.

Well, yeah, that would probably be the biggest loser in space.

A lot of barfing, yeah.

Since Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro is about a guy who cuts hair, I like to call it a—

or it takes place in a—

Barbershoppera.

Barbershoppera.

Very good.

OK, I think you’ll like this one.

I like this one.

Hey, have you heard about this really talented guy I know?

He’s the first African-American presidential candidate, and he also wrote Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

Barack Obama—

[HUMMING]

Obamadeus?

Obamadeus, right.

Remember that song by Falco?

Barack me, Obamadeus.

I used to think that was Eat Me, I’m a Danish.

Eat me, I’m a Danish.

Yeah.

Here’s the next one.

My kid’s doctor doesn’t only know medicine. She knows absolutely everything from A to Z. So we call her the— Pediatrician know-it-all?

No, but that’s the second word.

What is?

Pediatrician.

Oh, second word.

Encyclopediatrician.

Encyclopediatrician, yes.

Oh, Wikipedia-trician.

Oh, Wikipedia-trician.

Well, that’s somebody who thinks they know-it-all but doesn’t. That one goes out to Dr. Gillespie, the kid’s encyclopedia-trician.

Yeah.

You know, they say that the number of smiley faces you use in your lifetime is finite, and once you run out, that’s it. That’s why I practice— Emota conservation?

That’s it, emoticonservation.

Right.

That’s pretty good, actually.

Thank you.

OK, here’s the last one.

I was watching this old movie from 1939, and I saw a whole bunch of people worshipping this giant ape. And I thought to myself, how nice for that priest to have such a large— It’s congregation.

King Congregation.

Yes, it is.

King Congregation.

Oh, King Congregation.

OK.

And that’s it. Like I said, fast one in, out, boom, I’m done.

Wow.

This conserved space.

Thank you, John, that was fantastic.

Thanks, guys. I hope you had a good time.

Yeah, colossal. What a taxing one that was, though.

Yes.

Wow, my brain hurts.

Thank you very much.

See you later.

See you soon.

Bye-bye.

And if you’d like to talk with us about any aspect of language, grammar, slang, punctuation, or words, and how we use them, the number to call is 1-877-929-9673. The number is 1-877-WAYWORD. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sandra. Mel, I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hi, Sandra, how are you?

I’m doing well, thank you.

All right, what’s up?

I had a question about an origin of a phrase. I was wondering about “hair of the dog,” or sometimes you’ll hear “hair of the dog that bit you.”

-huh, -huh, and in what context do you hear this?

Well, mostly it’s if someone has had a little too much to drink and they’re hungover, you’ll hear someone say, well, how about a little “hair of the dog” and offer them more alcohol? Somehow that’s supposed to make them feel better. I don’t understand that exactly.

And we had been on a trip and had been bike riding. And we did the Virginia Creeper Trail in Abington, Virginia. And I’m not much of a bike rider. And I was hurting for several days afterwards. When we got home, we have an exercise bike in the living room, and my husband was like, here, why don’t you get on there? That’ll make you feel better. And I said, oh, yeah, “hair of the dog.” And that’s kind of how it came up. And we just were discussing what that possibly meant.

If a dog did bite you and somebody gave you some hair from that dog, I’m not sure what you’d do. Would it make a salve, you know, the wound, or make a little voodoo dog and stick pins in it to get your revenge? I mean, we were just kind of kicking around ideas about what that possibly meant.

So the way you used it, it was kind of like to get back on the horse after the horse has thrown you, right?

Right.

Well, he was saying, yes, I rode some more that I would feel better. And I did not think that was the case.

Well, the way you would use the dog hair is you would take a little bit of dog hair, some soot, and some ham fat, and then you would rub it right into the dog wound.

Oh.

That would make it better, huh?

Well, that’s what the folk remedy is.

OK.

It’s known in Latin. It’s a no-no, seriously. That’s one of the formulas for if a dog bites you, especially in a case of rabies or hydrophobia, that was one of the folk remedies to supposedly solve that.

OK, for a dog bite.

For a dog bite.

This expression, in various forms, the hair of the dog or the hair of the dog that bit me goes back about 450 years. In Latin, you will sometimes see it in the old medical manuals as crinis, canis, rubidi.

Oh, there you go.

OK.

Right, which is the hair of the dog, the rabid dog.

Right.

So Sandra, the whole idea here is supposedly the thing that injures you is also the thing that cures you. And there might be a little bit of wisdom to this folk remedy because if you can catch a rabid dog and pluck some of its hair, then you’ve got a good chance of killing it so it won’t bite somebody else. So in one way, it’s kind of a preventive measure, somewhat more than it is a remedy.

So it did literally mean to get some of the hair and put it on the bite. And OK, I just couldn’t imagine how that would possibly help. But OK.

In the earlier centuries, before modern medicine came along, there were all sorts of these things that you would do.

Well, it’s interesting that these days, you think of it usually in terms of what she was talking about in terms of a hangover, right?

A Bloody Mary for breakfast.

Yeah, it’s interesting how it kind of migrated just to that one specific use, right?

Right.

Yeah, we don’t use it in another context.

Right, people have been getting hungover for hundreds of years.

Well, that’s great. Well, thank you for calling. We appreciate it.

Well, thank you.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye.

Grant, I remember reading a few years ago in the Annals of Internal Medicine, they were proposing a medical term for hangover.

What was it?

It was vicellgia.

Oh, right.

Sure, I remember that.

Do you?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, come on, really?

I think I might have an entry for it on my website, actually.

Is that right?

Yeah, B-E-I-S-A-L-G-I-A. I don’t know if it ever took, though, but it’s still in use here and there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it comes from a Norwegian word meaning uneasiness after debauchery.

That’s the normal case, isn’t it?

Yes, exactly, vicellgia.

So a little hair of the dog for your vicellgia.

If you’ve got a question about a colloquial expression that you want explained, by all means, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673. Pop us an email to words@waywordradio.org, or visit us at our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Daniel calling from Pittsburgh.

Hi, Daniel.

Well, hi, Daniel. What’s going on?

So I moved to Pittsburgh about a year ago from Chicago. And Pittsburgh has all these great words that I’ve never heard anywhere else, and way of speaking. So I guess the most common one is yinz.

So I’m from New York originally, and we say yuz a lot.

Yuz, yuz guys?

And it usually means two people. But here, so it’s yin. So I understand that it means more than one person, but it’s still not as fluid as yuz. So where does this come from?

In older forms of English, you could make plurals by attaching the suffix -en. And you still see this in children and brethren, right? But we don’t do that anymore. But there is some speculation that the yuns, which comes to us from Scots, actually is the inheritor of that tradition of pluralizing. It just doesn’t exist in modern English, but perhaps this is a throwback.

Oh, OK.

Do you have any other examples of things you’ve heard there in Pittsburgh?

Well, there’s also nebbie, which is meant to be nosy. And my neighbor that I met, and she asked a couple of questions. And she said, oh, don’t mind me. I’m just being nebbie. And again, I understood what she meant, because I just thought it was like a shortening of nebbish, the yippish word. But then a friend of mine pointed out that actually that’s not what nebbish means. And I was like, yeah, that isn’t what nebbish means. Nebbish means meek or timid.

Yeah, I think nebb comes from an old word that means nose or beak.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s also one that probably comes to us from either Scott’s English or the northern dialects of England, because these are the types of people that settled in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, it’s got what? Two rivers, the Allegheny and the— The Mon, I can’t even say it.

Yes.

You’re still working on that one, huh?

So because of it, even though it is in the center of a landlocked state, it still has a little bit of this kind of island. How should we put this?

Dialects tend to cluster in places where people tend to look inward rather than outward and tend to have a feeling of an island mentality.

Think about the island of Manhattan or the peninsula in San Francisco or a variety of places around the world where certain kinds of features happen to the local culture because they’re literally an island.

But it can also happen in places where they’re not literally an island, they’re only psychologically or geographically kind of separated from the surrounding area, the surrounding country, state, what have you.

I just think that’s kind of what’s happened in Pittsburgh.

OK.

There’s a great deal of good work that’s been done about the Pittsburgh language.

And one of the things is at Carnegie Mellon University.

It’s called the Pittsburgh Speech and Society.

They have a dictionary.

They have some recordings, some podcasts.

It’s great stuff.

We’ll link to it on the website.

There’s more work that you can read out there.

We’ll try to find some of this and collect it in one place so you can go to some reliable sources that can tell you a little bit more about what you’re hearing.

All right?

Great.

Great.

Thank you so much for your call, Daniel.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, let’s definitely link to that site, Grant.

They have recordings of people of various ages from Pittsburgh talking.

And they have little podcasts about the dialect there.

It’s fabulous.

And if you go to that website, you can find out what a grini is.

Ooh, what is a grini?

G-R-I-N-E-Y.

You’re not going to tell me?

You’re going to make me look it up.

Oh, I’ll tell just you.

Just you, Grant.

OK.

It’s a chipmunk.

A grini?

Yes.

Isn’t that fabulous?

I don’t know if it’s because they look like they’re grinning when they have little nuts in their cheeks.

I don’t know.

I don’t know what the origin of it is.

But there are all kinds of wonderful things on that site.

And we will have it on our website, which is waywordradio.org.

You can always call us.

The number’s 1-877-9299673.

Or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Franklin.

I’m calling from Monon, Indiana.

All right.

What’s going on, Franklin?

Well, when I went to school up at IU Northwestern, Gary, I heard a lot of people saying the word “finna” and substituting it with “going to do.”

And I was just wondering if there was an actual derivative of that slang term.

Now, give me an example.

Like, “I’m finna go to the store.”

OK.

So that’s like F-I-N-N-A.

Right.

OK.

Sure.

That makes sense.

And you say it means I’m going to do something, right?

I’m about to do something?

Yeah.

OK.

This is a great example of a corruption of a dialect phrase that turned it into a slang phrase.

The original form of this is “fixing to.”

You’ve probably heard that, right?

Yeah.

I’m fixing to go to the store.

That’s probably what it meant.

Yeah.

It is exactly where it comes from.

And I’ve seen it in print as early as 1993.

I have no doubt that “finna” is one word spelled F-I-N-N-A is older than that.

Another variant is “fitna,” F-I-T-N-A.

And you’ll frequently see it used in the very informal writings of black Americans in black speech, because it’s something particular to certain regions of the South where they used “fixing to.”

And then over time, the pronunciation kind of got mushed together.

It’s very similar to rendering “going to” as “gonna.”

Right.

-huh.

Or “in it” for “isn’t it?”

Yeah, it’s something like that.

How’s that sound?

Well, it’s very interesting.

My wife said it was probably fixing to.

I was like, I don’t know if Tom’s really warped from that.

So you heard this as a university student.

Was it white kids, black kids, everyone?

It was mostly black people who used it.

But anyone who was from a predominantly black area would kind of catch on and use it that way.

Yeah, it’s definitely characteristic of African-American vernacular English.

And you will hear it among the speech of white Americans, but it’s less common there.

Yeah.

Well, Franklin, we’re finna go.

Did I say that right?

Yeah, it’s something like that.

All right, thank you so much for your call.

All right, well, thank you all for having me on the show.

Sure.

Super duper.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

I probably sounded like an idiot saying that, didn’t I, Grant?

You’re all right.

Thank you.

You’re very generous.

No, it’s an interesting one.

It is.

It’s usually a very colloquial or very informal language.

It’s not something you’ll ever find in a formal letter or business writing or school writing.

Finna.

That’s so interesting that, I mean, I’m quite familiar with Fix-N-To, having grown up in the South.

Well, see, that’s what I was saying.

That’s why it usually appears in the language of black Americans, is because it comes from the post-war migration of the blacks to the North, and they brought a lot of that Southern language with them.

Fascinating stuff.

Well, if you’d like to talk with us about language, give us a call.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

I did not know until recently that there’s a word for the phenomenon of seeing images of recognizable objects like faces in places you don’t expect, like when you see the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast or a cloud that looks like Mr. Magoo.

There’s a word for that, Grant, and it’s pareidolia.

That’s P-A-R-E-I-D-O-L-I-A.

It comes from a Greek word for image, and it’s the same root that gives us idol and kaleidoscope, both of which have to do with images.

And that word, again, for seeing the face of Elvis in your grilled cheese is pareidolia.

I learned it from Dave Wilton’s newsletter about language, which is called The Harmless Drudge, as you know, Grant.

And I think we should put a link to that on our website.

It’s a really interesting article.

You can find that article at waywordradio.org.

And if you’d like to give us a call, the number’s 1-877-929-9673.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Coming up on A Way with Words, it’s our quiz about some of the oddest charms you may never have heard.

Stay tuned.

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[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

It’s time for our weekly slang challenge, where we try to stump a member of the National Puzzlers League.

Today’s contestant is Joe Cabrera from Boston, Massachusetts.

Hi.

Hi, Joe.

What do you do there in Boston?

I do graphic design, print production, mainly.

A little programming on the side.

And a little puzzling, too, I guess, huh?

A lot of puzzling, unfortunately.

What do you mean, “unfortunately”?

People give you inquisitive looks all the time?

Oh, yeah.

I’m always on the subway with my little pad of puzzles, leaving away, wasting and killing time.

Nice.

Well, Joe, we like to start by asking our contestants if they have a favorite slang term for us, speaking of being inquisitive.

Oh, yeah, actually, I do.

It’s the term “a Clark Kent job.”

Ooh, what’s that?

Is that like your day job that subsidizes the night job that you really want to be doing for a living?

Exactly.

That’s exactly what it is.

I’ve never heard that term.

Where did you pick it up?

I heard someone using it on the internet once.

And I said, oh, that’s kind of interesting.

And I looked it up, and other people have used it, though.

Oh, no kidding.

So into a nearby phone booth?

Are there still any phone booths around?

Oh, good point.

What do superheroes do now?

I think he changes so super fast that it doesn’t matter where he is.

Oh, that makes sense.

All right, well, Joe, let’s see how you do with our quiz.

I’ll give you a sentence with a blank in it with two possible answers.

Only one is correct.

In case you need a lifeline, Martha will be standing by to try to help you, OK?

OK.

All right, let’s see how we do.

Here’s the first one.

Whoa, she kicked him right in the blank so hard that he almost vomited.

Is it A, prosciutto, or B, labonza?

That’s L-A-B-O-N-Z-A.

And prosciutto is P-R-O-S-C-I-U-T-T-O.

Hm, those are my two choices?

That’s it.

That’s it.

I’m going to go, hm, I’ve heard this one before.

So I’m going to go with labonza.

Oh, yeah, why is that?

The breadbasket, the belly, the paunch?

Yeah, I mean, that’s what I’m guessing.

That’s where I’m guessing where it is.

No, you’re absolutely right.

And do you have any idea where that comes from?

Labonza, it sounds Italian.

Yeah, there we go.

Is it?

I’m not familiar with it.

Yeah, it probably comes from the Italian term lapantia, L-A-P-A-N-C-I-A, which is the paunch.

Sure, lapantia in Spanish.

So occasionally it’s been used to mean the buttocks, but that’s rarer.

Yeah, usually it means the belly.

It’s kind of a tougher target to hit, too.

Yeah, so whoa, she kicked him right in the labonza so hard that he almost vomited.

That means she kicked him right in the gut.

Ouch, ouch.

Yes, all right, so let’s try another one.

This is the other one.

Okay.

Kinda not feeling well.

Bad case of the blank.

Maker’s mark takes its toll.

So what do I have a bad case of?

Is it the woefits, W-O-E-F-I-T-S, or the moose tanned, M-O-O-S-E hyphen T-A-N-N-E-D?

Can you read that out loud?

Sure.

Read that off one more time.

Kinda not feeling well.

Bad case of the blank.

Maker’s mark really takes its toll.

And the two choices again are?

Woefits and moose tanned.

Woefits and moose tanned.

So Joe, are you familiar with Maker’s mark?

No.

Oh, so I could substitute Southern Comfort or Jameson’s or Jagermeister in there.

Thank you.

We’re talking about a pretty serious alcohol.

We’re talking about good old Kentucky bourbon is what we’re talking about.

All right, let’s see.

I don’t know about moose in Kentucky.

No, I don’t either.

Well, it’s just an alcohol.

Don’t read too much into that.

Okay.

That might make you feel not well.

I kind of like woefits.

That’s a nice little combination of misery and just like a physical reaction.

Oh, so are you having wo when you’re having some fits?

Yeah.

It sounds like a good description of a hangover to me.

Right.

And it’s exactly right.

Joe, that’s exactly it.

It is woefits.

Sometimes it’s spelled and said as woefits, W-O-O-F-I-T-S, and it just means a hangover.

Oh, it’s almost like a captain jammer.

Exactly.

There we go.

Exactly.

Beautiful.

Joe, that’s two for two.

You’re a superhero.

Awesome.

You can— I like comic books, so that’s good for me.

Nice work, Joe.

Congratulations.

Oh, thank you very much.

Well, thank you so much, Joe.

Good luck with the puzzling.

Oh, thanks.

Have fun.

OK.

Bye bye.

OK, see you.

Bye bye.

And if you have a question for us about words, language, grammar, slang, why not give us a call?

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jenny from New York.

Hiya, Jenny.

How are you?

Hello, Jenny.

I’m excellent.

How are you?

Doing wonderfully well.

What’s up?

Well, my question is actually about my Manhattan job.

I am a cheesemonger at Murray’s Cheese, and we are opening up a new charcuterie store in the Grand Central Terminal.

And it’s called Murray’s Real Salami, or it will be.

It’s opening in a couple of weeks.

And behind the counter at the cheese shop we’re called cheesemongers.

So the idea was just to follow that form and call the people who will be working at Salami the meat mongers.

But after some Google searches, we found that it has some rather unsavory limitations.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get over there.

What should we be called?

So do these people have uniforms and little buttons that say “cheesemonger,” or— No, not so much.

But we do have signs that will reference it.

Or we can say, if I’m, for instance, in the front organizing some packages, and someone’s asking me about a particular type of cheese, I can say, oh, just ask one of our cheesemongers up at the counter.

So it’s not really something that’s going to be plastered everywhere.

But we do like to have some sort of title for it.

I see.

OK.

And meat monger isn’t going to work.

There is something vaguely pornographic about that.

Yes, yes.

I did a Google search and found a man given to wenching.

To wenching.

OK.

To wenching.

So salami monger isn’t going to work either.

Yeah, I don’t think so.

OK, so you need something completely different.

People react OK to the cheesemonger?

Yeah, they do.

Sometimes they snicker, and they think it’s a little funny.

Sometimes they say, I’m a cheese mongress.

Mongress.

But yeah, cheesemonger is OK.

I think cheesemonger and fish monger, I’m not really sure.

Aside from warmonger, whatever monger still exists out there.

But I think it’s a common enough word that people don’t get too freaked out by it.

Right, OK.

But you need a better word for the people who work with the meat.

Exactly.

How about fleshchater?

Oh, no, that doesn’t work.

If anything, that’s worse.

OK.

Well, you said you work for a charcuterie, right?

Right, right.

And this is the French term for a place that handles deli meats, not like a butcher.

It’s like the specialty meats.

They’re all cooked and cured.

Yeah, the cooked and cured, exactly.

The seasoned stuff, the stuff that you would make sandwiches or crudites out of, or little hors d’oeuvres, right?

An etymological relative of carnage and carcass, I would just throw in.

Then what about the French term charcuterie?

Is that too pretentious?

I don’t know, because another thing is we really like to try to avoid being pretentious.

So we’re calling it Murray’s real salami.

And we have talked around the idea of salami, like the Italian one.

But it’s such a mouthful.

And also, I’m not really sure how we would do plural, because it’s probably— I think salumiare is singular, and then it would be salumiare plural.

Or it’s salumiarese sounds weird.

What is the word?

Salumiare.

OK.

And so meter maid spelled with an A wouldn’t work.

Yes.

I’m leaning toward Grant’s original suggestion, charcuterie, right?

Charcuterie, yeah.

That’s kind of nice.

It does flow rather nicely.

And it would kind of balance the, I guess, the country mix, since we do have things from all over the world.

It’s called salami, which is more of an Italian kind of thing, charcuterie.

Jenny, how about meat concierge?

Meat concierge, oh, that sounds nice.

Do you think?

I was just joking.

This is harder than I thought.

I do like kind of trying to work with butcher and kind of make it— give it a bit more finesse.

But cured meat butcher sounds a little clunky.

But it does kind of carry that same rustic charm as monger.

We’ve given you some avenues of exploration.

And I would be interested to find out how this turns out.

And further, I bet we’ll get some emails from listeners.

And if we get something super duper, we’ll forward it on to you, all right?

Great.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Jenny.

OK, good luck.

Bye-bye.

OK, thank you.

Bye.

If you can think of something to call someone who handles the sale and preparation of cooked and cured meats in a fancy shop, let us know.

We’d love to hear about it.

The number to call is 1-877-9299673.

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

Grant, we got an email from Wendy.

She’s an English teacher in Louisiana.

And she had her students write an autographical poem recently.

And when asked to come up with four words to describe themselves, she writes, many used random as an adjective.

She says she asked her students about the meaning of random.

And she looked all over online, and what she’s trying to figure out is, is random a hot teen word right now?

And what do they mean exactly when they use it?

Do you use that, Martha?

Do you use it that way?

No.

Do you mean— OK.

Not at all.

This is something that I’ve known about for quite a while.

As far as I know, it goes back to the early 1990s, probably the mid-’80s.

It’s one of those things that’s very difficult to track, because random is a fairly common word in normal usage.

But among young people, and it’s not a teen phenomenon so much as, I’d say, people in their teens, 20s, and 30s probably know it best and probably use it most.

And it typically means unusual or weird or odd.

And there are some different contexts for it where its meaning can vary.

Slang tends to be very flexible in that regard.

So if I just said, last night I met this random dude at this bar, well, if I talk about a random dude, I mean that he was odd and he probably talked to me in a way that you wouldn’t talk to strangers or he behaved in a way that really wasn’t normal.

So actually, it’s kind of derogatory.

But if I describe myself as being random or if you say something to me and say, well, that’s random, what I just mean is that’s weird.

Maybe it’s a non sequitur.

Maybe it’s abnormal for you to say.

It’s out of the ordinary for someone to say.

So weird or odd generally will cover most of the bases.

Well, that’s interesting that all these students are describing themselves as random.

You can see how a teenager might not want to be perceived as knowable, right?

Teenagers want to think of themselves as a bit of a mystery.

Maybe think of themselves as being complex.

And so if you describe yourself as random, that means that you’re not a simpleton.

Huh.

So this word ended up evolving without my noticing.

Yeah.

Where did it come from?

I think it’s a perfectly normal outgrowth of the regular meaning of random.

If you think of random behavior, you can kind of go both ways.

Random behavior is odd or unexpected behavior.

And then if you use it more and more, the idea that it’s odd and exclusively odd or exclusively weird tends to take hold.

I’ve heard teenagers say that’s so random, but I had no idea that you could use it in that way.

Yeah.

Well, it tends not to be the straight up meaning of random when they use it that way.

Although in your mind, you might be able to make it work.

So yeah, random.

I’m not surprised.

I’m not surprised about it, Martha.

It’s definitely a word for, no offense attended, the younger set.

It’s pretty common.

Most young people in high school are going to know it.

The only reason I probably know it at my age is because I study slang for a living.

It belongs to a specific group and we’re not a part of it.

You’re such a random guy, Grant.

Thank you, doll.

So are you.

We’ll take any random caller.

The number is 1-877-9299673.

Or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Terry from Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Hiya, Terry.

What’s going on?

Well, a little, I guess conundrum we had, solving a statistics problem in our Decisions Sciences class.

My professor had asked, we were dealing with a problem on the probability that the Cubs would win the playoffs.

And the question came up where the word “rooting” came from because apparently in Australia where he’s from, that means that if you’re rooting for a team, that would mean that you were having sex with a member of that team.

So your question then is, what is the deal with these different roots, right?

Right.

What’s the root of root?

Right.

And, you know, it’s funny because I looked on the internet and of course, you know, you can find everything about etymology when you’re looking for the word root, but it’s very difficult to find the etymology on the word root.

You’re exactly right.

You’re exactly right.

Yeah, as far as I can tell, the root in terms of rooting for a team somehow is related to the idea of swine rooting for something in the soil.

And I’m not really sure of the connection except that it’s a noisy affair and you hear little moans of pleasure when they find the things.

So you’re saying that the kind of rooting that animals do when, say, pigs are looking for acorns or that sort of thing, their nose is to the ground and they’re looking for food.

Yeah, very, very enthusiastically and noisily.

Right.

So that’s more or less how we get the rooting for the home team?

That’s my suspicion, but as Terry said, it’s hard to sort out all those roots of root.

Do you have a different theory?

Well, so I think there are two roots that we’re talking about here with different roots, so to speak, different word origins, right?

So one of the roots, say on a plant, comes from the Latin radix, R-A-D-I-A-X, right?

But the Australian root, which means to have sex more or less, it’s almost always used by men in reference to having sex with somebody else or wanting to have sex with someone else.

And it comes from a much older noun form of root, which means penis.

And as you probably know as an adult woman, and we’re not going to giggle about this, but the language is just filled with synonyms for the sexual organs and that’s just one of many of them.

Okay.

Well, and it still doesn’t quite say, well, where does that word rooting for the home team when it’s used as a fan?

Most etymologies are kind of mysterious, but as Martha was saying, it probably comes from a fanatic, which is the original form of the word fan, for a team is very aggressive and very crazy and very crazed.

And they look— have you ever seen a pig root for acorns?

It’s not a passive affair.

It’s almost violent.

A pig will knock you down and eat your arm on the way to getting acorns out of— from under the, you know, the must of the layer of leaves and bracken and whatever else is on the ground.

Great.

That was very beautifully said.

I was going to say, do you have a close and personal experience with this?

Very much so.

I remember we had a gigantic oak tree in the yard of one of the houses we lived in.

We had some pigs in the back.

And it was massive.

It took two or three of us children to put our arms around it.

And the acorns that it dropped were just a little smaller than limes.

They were pretty big around.

And so our father would have us collect those and take them out back to the hogs and dump them in the trough.

And you, I don’t know, you’d have thought you were putting their favorite drug in there.

They were crazy for acorns.

And so— and they would just— they would knock the trough over looking for that one last bit of acorn that might have fallen out.

So— oh my gosh.

Well, that sounds like Cubs fans.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, exactly.

That sounds a lot like Cubs fans.

Well, yeah.

Think about the crazy guys with the colored hair and the painted chest and who were shouting into their horse, right?

Absolutely.

I mean, that is the kind of enthusiasm that we’re talking about here.

So I could see how that might—I mean, this is guesswork still.

Because like most words, we’re not 100% sure that’s what it means.

But there is—we can see in our minds how the connection might exist, right?

Right.

Yeah, it works for me.

And maybe I’ll get some extra credit for finding out the answer to that one.

I hope so.

Let us know.

OK.

Take care.

Thank you.

If you’ve got a question about something that’s confusing, if you’d like us to help you separate the different Englishes in your mind, by all means, send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Give us a call to 1-877-929-9673 or drop a line on the discussion form at waywordradio.org/discussion.

That’s our show for this week.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can always leave us a message anytime, day or night.

Call 1-877-929-9673.

You can also email your questions to words@waywordradio.org or join in the conversation with your fellow word lovers right now on our discussion forum.

That’s at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also engineered our theme music.

Kurt Konin produced it.

We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdasian.

From the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett.

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

Later.

Ciao.

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

And oh, if we have a part that would break my heart.

So I say, “Oyster,” you say, “Oyster.”

I’m not gonna stop eating oysters just ’cause you say oysters.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

Let’s call the whole thing off. (jazz music)