Hard Words Are Hard (episode #1397)

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

On an earlier show, we were talking about words that we mispronounced for years.

And Grant, you confessed to mispronouncing hyperbole.

Hyperbole.

And I admitted that for a long time, I thought the woman’s name was Penelope.

Oh, instead of Penelope.

Exactly.

Well, we heard from lots and lots of listeners about this.

Mike from San Francisco wrote about the word misled.

He writes, my friend had both seen the word in print and heard the word pronounced, but never at the same time.

So when reading to herself, she pronounced it myzled.

Myzled.

Myzled.

I’ve heard a lot of people pronouncing it as mizzled.

And his friend found out only when she was in a classroom where they were all reading from the same book and somebody was reading it aloud.

And then she, you know, had this moment.

Had the dawning moment.

Yes.

And I love this one.

Anne Peter wrote from Wisconsin to say that someone she knows kept talking about a do-wagger.

Oh, instead of a Dowager.

Yeah, she was reading a lot of historical fiction and she picked up this term do-wagger duchess.

Oh, no, the do-wagger duchess. That’s a whole different profession.

Right. And then we got a call from Harley who said that he should have known better because he has a bachelor’s degree in linguistics.

He’s an attorney and has been one for decades, but it wasn’t until he was in his 50s reading something aloud to his wife that he pronounced the word epitome.

And his wife, bless her heart, said, oh, honey, I like how you pronounced epitome as epitome.

And he said, what do you mean?

It’s epitome, right?

I mean, what a great way to connect.

That is a really great way to make a loving correction.

How cute of you to pronounce it.

Well, maybe that’s condescending.

I mean, he was actually enthused about learning a new word.

And I think that’s the great thing about being able to learn a new pronunciation later in life.

When you pick up words from your reading and not from your hearing, then you’re likely to make mistakes.

This is a place to talk about that and a lot of other things related to language and linguistics and speaking and writing well.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Kahani Skydance.

I’m calling from Arcata, California.

All right.

Far northern California, about an hour from the Oregon border.

Yeah, KHSU.

KHSU, right.

Welcome to the show. How can we help?

Almost 40 years ago, I got a divorce, and I did not want to call my husband, my ex-husband, because I always thought that sounded mean and choppy and didn’t dislike the man.

So I made up the word wasband, W-A-S-B-A-N-D.

And that’s what I always use for an ex-husband, although he’s my only one.

And what did he think of that?

I don’t know if he’s even aware of it, to tell you the truth.

Oh, no kidding.

Wusband. W-A-S-B-A-U-D.

And that has a better sound to you than ex-husband?

It does, yes.

Not to you, though, huh?

The ex sounds like striking someone from the list, right?

Yes, it does.

Yeah, it almost sounds like axe.

Oh, yeah.

Yes, exactly.

That’s why I say me and choppy.

Yeah, choppy.

There we go.

Okay, very good.

Yeah.

This word has been coined numerous times over at least the last 20 years.

I can find uses of was-been going back to 1993, as a matter of fact.

Well, this was 1975.

Oh, there we go.

So that’s the earliest citation that I know of then.

But it’s been coined and re-coined because it’s kind of a lot of people have the same problem that you have with ex-husband.

There’s something wrong with it.

It might just be long or awkward to say.

Interestingly, in the 1993 use of the word that I found, the fellow by the name of Ronan Conroy, I believe his name is, wrote a word for the ex-wife as well.

I was just going to ask.

Yeah, he proposed walf.

Actually, he said walf.

I tried to come up with something for that, just on principle.

He wrote that he and his wife used that.

And he says that was-bend and walf are the past tense of the nouns, as if nouns can actually have a past tense.

I love it.

But walf, to me, is not quite as successful as was-bend.

Well, I don’t know what you would use, though.

Walf sounds like a, I don’t know, reminds me of wound or I don’t know.

Yeah, it’s not as kind, I think.

It sounds like a dog.

Yeah.

Yes.

I do like them.

Well, that’s the way some people think about their exes, isn’t it?

Yeah, he didn’t explain why he chose W-O-U-F-E.

I don’t know, just an alternate vowel sound, maybe.

So if you’re married to somebody currently, does that make him your isbind?

Good question.

I’m not married to someone currently, so I have a nobind.

Okay, or some people call their partner their future ex, right?

Oh, my goodness.

I would never go into anything but that in mind.

That’s very cynical.

That’s wise.

Well, Kahana, thank you very much for your contribution.

Thank you for sharing this word with us.

Well, it was a pleasure.

I enjoy your show so very much.

Thank you very much.

We appreciate your calling.

Take care now.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, share your cornages with us.

Did you have a lexical gap that you needed to fill and you made a word for it?

We’d love to hear about it, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, here’s something to say the next time that you’re really hungry and somebody says, are you hungry?

Yeah.

You can say, yeah, I’m hungrier than a woodpecker with a headache.

Right.

That’s really hungry, right?

Yeah, because they get their food by digging in the…

I’m going to explain this joke until it dies.

They look for grubs under bark, and they need to use their head to get it.

They’re banging their head against the tree.

And if they have a headache, they’re not going to feel inclined to go get the grubs.

Then absolutely not.

They’re going to fast that day.

Poor woodpeckers.

I know.

Hungrier than a woodpecker with a headache.

Well, we’re hungry to hear from you.

877-929-9673.

Or send us email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Franklin Reisner calling from Indianapolis.

Hello.

Welcome to the show, Franklin.

How can we help?

Well, I have a question about the use of a term.

The word is inertia.

And my question has to do with its common language use.

This has come up several times.

My wife of 20 years and I are often using this term, and we use it, I guess, in opposite ways or what seems like opposite meanings.

So I’d like to find out who’s using it right, or are we both using it right?

Oh.

Yeah. Okay, let’s hear it.

So I have a little bit of science background from years ago, and my understanding of inertia is that as a physics term, a body in motion tends to stay in motion, a body at rest tends to stay at rest.

So the example in common language would be, say my son has a chore to do, has a task we’ve asked and it hasn’t gotten done.

And I might say, you know, he just needs to get some inertia, you know, in the same way as we might say, once begun is half done.

Just get started and he’ll get that task done.

My wife would say he needs to overcome inertia and get started and go do his chore.

So they seem to be saying the opposite things.

Quite a puzzle here.

Anything on the line?

We always ask this just in case.

Is dinner or chores or a date night on the line here?

Any kind of money changing plans?

Well, I guess bragging rights.

Bragging rights.

Bragging rights.

Okay.

And what does the son get out of this?

I think he’s going to get satisfaction in particular if he finds out that one of us hasn’t been using the word correctly.

You specified at the top of the call that you were talking about the common definition, and it’s so important.

Because in English, we often take scientific terms that are very specific, and we generalize them, and maybe even shift the meaning so far away that the scientists wouldn’t recognize it.

And it’s a little bit what’s happened here.

You were right about the scientific definition, right, Martha?

It’s the tendency of things to continue what they were doing unless they’re acted upon by an outside force, right?

I think that’s fair.

So in science, if something’s moving, it will probably continue moving unless something else acts upon it.

If it’s sitting still, it will probably continue to sit still unless something else on the outside acts on it right here.

But in the common meaning, and this is where all the dictionaries tend to agree, only one part of that definition is stuck around.

And that’s, it’s more or less makes inertia a synonym with inertness, which is you’re just sitting there like a lump.

Your inertia is the tendency to stay there doing nothing and not the active sense of it, which is once you get going, you’re going to continue to go.

Although I like that.

I think it’s perfectly fine.

It’s just I can understand the point of confusion in your house.

Yes.

So, so honestly, I suspected that was the case.

So what you’re telling me is my use is not the proper common use and that my wife’s use is more the common use of the word inertia.

Yeah, hers is the more common.

Vastly more common.

Vastly more common.

I’m sure there are people who use it as you do.

But in general, when we’re not talking in a scientific way, we mean the tendency to do nothing.

Oh, boy.

Okay, well, I’ll own up to that.

Yeah.

Well, it’s sort of like Quantum Leap, right?

Because a quantum leap is a teeny, teeny, tiny little thing, right?

I mean, it’s like an electron or something, right?

But when we talk about a quantum leap, we’re talking about something enormous, usually.

That’s a great example of a scientific usage, which is really far from the source and probably never going back.

They will never reconcile.

Yeah, so you can use it that way with your scientist buddies, I guess.

But with the rest of us.

We could probably compile a whole language of common usage that would just, like, ruffle the feathers of scientists everywhere, right?

I suppose so.

Franklin, thank you so much for calling.

Okay, I enjoyed it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I’m surprised to see here.

I did not realize that inert and inertia have as one of their roots A-R-S from the Latin.

Yes.

Meaning art or skill.

So it means a lack of skill or lack of art.

Very interesting.

I didn’t know that was there.

I didn’t recognize the root and the E-R-T.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I’ve always said overcome inertia.

Overcome inertia, right, which is the tendency to sit there and do nothing, right?

Yes.

Which is kind of the human condition, isn’t it?

Mine before coffee, for sure.

Before coffee.

877-929-9673 is the number to call if you want to talk about language.

Or send us your questions and stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

I found another great casualism for wondering if it’s raining outside.

Okay.

It’s, let’s call in the dogs and see if they’re wet.

Let’s call in the dogs and see if they’re wet.

Nice.

You’re in your easy chair.

You’ve got a cold drink or a coffee and just not inclined to get up and take your feet off the ottoman.

How’s the weather?

Let’s call in the dogs and see if they’re wet.

877-929-9673.

More slingin’ slang in just a minute. Stay with us.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And look who it is, knocking his head on the doorway once again.

It’s John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

I have yet to figure out how to use the door properly.

What do you got there, Quizman?

This here in my hands, this is a quiz.

I decided we should play the license plate game again.

What do you say?

Okay.

It’s about time to hit the road.

Of course, there are lots of car games and license plate games,

But our favorite is when I give you three letters from a license plate

And you give me any word that contains those three letters in order,

Not necessarily consecutively.

Oh, boy.

Right.

Now, I’d like to give you style points for a shorter word.

Okay, good.

When you play in a car, you probably play longest word wins,

But then, you know, you can just add suffixes and where’s the fun in that?

Right.

Here comes the first car.

Okay.

R-M-H.

R-M-H.

R-M-H.

Yeah.

How about wormhole?

Wormhole’s great.

Wormhole is good.

Oh, nice.

It’s long, though.

Eight-letter word.

That’s okay.

I had a couple of sevens and I had one six-letter word.

How about arm and hammer?

All right.

I give you extra style points for brand names and whatnot.

Okay, we’ll give you wormhole, and I’ll give you the ones I had.

I had, well, armhole, actually, is seven.

Triumph.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Rematch.

My six-letter word is warmth.

Ooh, nice.

Warmth, yeah.

Very good.

Okay, so, so far, I am winning.

All right.

Says the man who had ages to put the quiz together.

And has the answers in front of him.

Here comes the next car.

Let’s see.

I can see.

I think it’s a Tennessee license plate.

Okay.

Z-I-H.

Zilch.

Zilch.

Zilch.

Grant’s right in with a zilch.

Yeah, Zenith is not going to work.

And Zenith’s a good six.

Very good.

I had Azimuth.

Azimuth by seven.

Yes, very good.

I had Zither also working.

Oh, very good.

Very good.

I also found Zilla.

As in Godzilla or Bridezilla?

What?

As in an administrative district in India.

Oh, never heard of it.

How do you spell that?

A Z-I-L-L-A or a Z-I-L-L-A-H.

I guess I would never pass my Indian Civil Service exam.

Do not know that word.

Yeah.

I guess you’ve guessed by now I threw a couple of obscure ones.

Oh, yeah, but those are fun.

Just for fun.

Yeah, that’s why.

That’s why.

Okay.

Here comes another one.

Y-P-H.

Y.

Oh.

Y.

P.

Sylph.

Sylph.

Very good.

Five-letter word.

Yeah.

I don’t think I have anything shorter than that.

And lymph.

Oh, lymph.

Yeah.

Very good.

Lymph, nymph.

Oh, yeah.

Yield Patrick Harris.

Glyph.

Glyph.

Glyph.

Cipher.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Let’s look at this car coming up.

He’s got his license plate.

PVC.

Oh, look at that.

Look at the pipe.

Prevaricate, but that’s too long.

Prevacation.

Nice long word, though.

Yeah.

Again, nice little insight as to Martha’s psyche.

What?

Barricading about our pre-vacation.

That’s right.

Province.

Province is good.

That’s my eight.

I have a six and a seven, though.

Yeah, a six and a seven.

Okay, let’s throw it out to the listeners.

Listeners, what do you got?

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Yes, pelvic is good for a six.

Yes.

What’s that you say?

Privacy?

Yes, privacy is a good seven.

Yes.

Very good.

Very nice.

Okay, let’s pull this car over and stop and get some ice cream,

Because I’m done.

All right, John.

Thank you.

That was quite a workout.

I don’t think I did that well on this one.

No, but you guys did great, and it was a lot of fun.

Thank you.

My pleasure.

Thanks, John.

We’ll see you guys next time.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Language.

It’s a strange beast.

Call us.

We’ll talk about it.

877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And you can find us on Facebook and Twitter and SoundCloud and iTunes and Swell and a ton

Of other audio apps, including Stitcher and I don’t even know all.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, Martha and Grant.

This is Nathan, originally raised in San Diego, but now in Portland going to grad school.

Portland, Oregon?

Portland, Oregon.

That’s right.

Hi, Nathan.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks.

I’m so excited to be on.

A while back, some friends of mine, some classmates and I were having dinner, and we all had our

Smartphones out, and we all got an email at the same time that led to a discussion about

Email pet peeves, and I was curious to get your opinion on some of them.

Sure.

So one of the professors at our school had sent out an email,

And unknowing to him but pretty obvious to us,

He had accidentally sent a reply all to everyone on campus.

And it was a bit of an email gap, not too big of a deal.

He didn’t say anything horrible.

But the email that we got while we were sitting there having dinner was an apology from him.

He sent it again to the whole campus, and he said,

Professor so-and-so would like to recall the message, and then he gave the subject line.

And I just thought that was kind of silly.

And it kind of, but I’ve seen that a few times here on campus.

I mean, can you take things back on the internet?

Outlook allows you to unsend a message if it’s attached to an Exchange server.

And you can actually send a message using Outlook.

And as long as it’s not read by a client on the other end, you can actually recall it.

And so what it does is it sends a message to the Outlook client that says something about recalling the message and will yank it back if it’s unread.

And you may never even see the original message nor the recall.

However, if you have read the message, you will probably see the recall message.

Oh, okay.

So that might be what he did.

My co-host is not only a lexicographer, he is an IT guy.

Well, I know that.

Literally.

I thought these would be some great things to talk about.

God help me because I’d much rather have other things in my brain than knowing how exchange works.

He has a lot in there.

Well, that is, we are on an exchange, and I’ve seen it so many times that that would make sense.

The other thing that I see a lot is when people attach a file, so they’re sending out an email,

And they end up, they write almost invariably, please find attached.

Oh.

And to me, being a digital native, I guess, I find that kind of ridiculous,

And for some reason it really grates on me.

Huh. Which part of it grates on you?

I think the way they phrase it, please find attach, as if they’re asking you to please look for this attach.

Oh, my God.

Where could it be?

I would say, hey, I’ve attached this.

How old are you, Nathan?

You’re making me feel old.

I totally do that.

I’m in my early 30s.

All right.

I’m in my 40s.

Nathan, if it’s any comfort to you, there have been language mavens who have complained about this enclosed please find business back in the 1920s and 1930s.

And they’re still complaining.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

I’m looking at one that says,

When you read a letter that sounds as if it were a compendium of pat expressions

From some musty old letter book of the goose quill period,

Do you feel you’re communing with the writer’s mind?

On the contrary, if you have a discerning mind,

You know that you are merely getting a reflex from one who lacks taste and good mental digestion.

That sounds as bad as a thing they’re condemning.

Well, here’s one.

It says, if you use it, you will sound bored or even worse, boring.

And I think that is a damning statement.

So I guess I’ve got to stop using Please Find It Closed.

Oh, no.

Grant, it’s quaint when you say it.

Is it?

Well, I’ve got to say, though, in general, most style guides make it plain that if you were writing a business letter to a stranger,

You should adopt the most formality that you’re capable of that doesn’t seem to be over the top.

So it’s kind of expected.

I make it more personal.

I say, I’ve attached the document.

Yeah.

Which sounds…

I love it.

You like that.

You love it.

I do, yeah.

I’m okay with I’ve attached.

I have attached.

Or here is.

Here is.

But I think anything more than that is just fluffy.

Well, Nathan, I know because we are all email users these days,

It seems like most jobs amount to 90% email in the modern era.

I know we’ll get a lot of comments about this stuff.

So stay tuned, all right?

Well, thank you so much.

It’s been great talking to you.

All right.

Take care, Nathan.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Email us your questions and comments about language to words@waywordradio.org.

And you can always call us at 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how’s it going?

Super duper. Who’s this?

This is Molly from Moscow, Idaho.

Hi, Molly. Welcome to the show.

What’s cooking?

Well, I had a question.

My grandpa and all of his brothers have lots of colorful sayings that have trickled down to all their children.

And I have a couple of really good ones that I haven’t really heard anywhere else, and I was wondering about them.

One of them is I have a cousin, one of my great uncle’s sons, that always says,

I feel like I’ve been ironing all night in high heels.

Wait, his son says that?

Usually something a guy says.

Oh, no kidding.

I feel like I’ve been ironing all night in high heels.

And this means that he’s super tired?

I’m super exhausted.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Right.

Yeah.

It would be terrible.

Yes, it would.

And another one of my great uncles, he always used to say that he’d been to more than one

County fair and goat roping.

Mm—

Mm—

To mean that, you know, he’d been around.

Right.

Yeah.

Goat rope is a, or goat rodeo.

Those expressions are widely used, particularly in the West, to mean a crazy, chaotic situation or a giant mess.

So just something that’s really disorganized.

Yeah.

And if you’ve been to one of those, then you’re more sophisticated than the folks back home, right?

Interesting.

But you’ve never heard the ironing all night and high heels before?

No, but that thing is transparent.

I can figure that one out pretty quick.

Yeah, I don’t recommend it.

I have ironed.

I haven’t worn the high heels, but I have ironed.

If you only knew, Grant.

It’s pretty great.

They all have a pretty good tradition of colorful things.

That’s for sure.

That’s great.

And so these are widespread throughout your family in Idaho?

No, like everyone has their couple of ones that they say.

Kind of like their own personal catchphrases.

Yes.

Yes, for sure.

What’s yours?

I like to tell people that they’re a cherry lifesaver because cherries are the best lifesavers.

Oh, you think?

They’re not just a lifesaver.

They’re a cherry lifesaver.

That’s nice.

Now, Molly, what leads you to be so observant about the language of other people?

I have a semester of my master’s in linguistics, and I aspire to finish it one day.

Okay.

And this keeps it light, keeps it fun?

Yes.

I really like language.

I like observing accents a lot.

Yeah, it’s interesting.

I have one friend that’s from Cincinnati, and I can definitely hear his accent,

But everyone else thinks I’m crazy that he doesn’t have an accent.

But I can hear it in the vowels.

It’s right there.

Molly, you’ve got a ton of great stuff here.

Anything else for us before we go?

I don’t think I’m going to shoehorn anything else into this.

Thank you.

Well, you keep our phone number handy.

Give us a call another time when you come up with some more, all right?

Okay, thanks a lot.

And good luck with your studies.

Thanks.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Well, this is a nation of colorful expressions,

And this is the place where we love to hear about them.

So share yours no matter where you’re from.

Just make them radio safe.

877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, we were talking earlier about mispronounced words.

For Pat Autry, the word was indicted, which Pat always read as indicted.

Pat read a lot of hardy boys and the police chief was always indicting someone.

Yes, same for me.

Oh, really?

Yeah, and it wasn’t until I started reading the newspaper regularly and listening to the radio, like, you know, getting adult news that I’m like, oh, the connection was made.

Why would that long eye be there?

Yeah, indicted instead of indicted.

Right.

That’s a big one.

I bet we got a lot of people who have that one.

I bet we do, too.

And we’d love to hear your thoughts about any aspect of language, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, this is Jeff Raymer in Grapevine.

Grapevine what?

Oh, Texas.

Texas, hello, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Texans, man, they always think everyone knows where they’re from.

Well, yeah, don’t you?

I do know Grapevine now that you mention it.

What’s on your mind, Jeff? How can we help?

This morning, I was out in the garden,

And I was planting things such as tomatoes,

Or tomatoes, depending on how you want to say it.

Tomatoes?

However, I was not planting such things as potatoes or potatoes.

And this is the thing that I’ve called you about because it just drives me batty.

I hear even journalists saying it that way.

During my tenure at NPR, I covered such stories as.

But I contend that they should say, I covered stories such as.

Am I wrong about this?

So you don’t like the such and the as being broken up?

I don’t.

Jeff, it’s interesting that you mentioned journalists, actually, because when I worked at a daily newspaper in Kentucky, the state’s largest newspaper, years ago, this edict came down.

And I don’t know if it was the AP style book or just something in-house, but they told us that we had to separate those words all of a sudden.

Oh, you had to put something between such and as.

Yes. And it felt really weird to me, Jeff.

Yeah.

You were required to say something like, I remember such things as pet rocks, dilly boppers, and mood rings, right?

So it’s such things as, or I remember such fads as, or I remember such people as.

Yes.

Or it’s not, I remember people such as Martha, Grant, and Jeff.

Exactly.

Interesting.

And it was really strange because I tried to train myself to do that, but if I slipped up, the copy editors always changed it.

Really interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds like a—

In the sentence that you said there, isn’t the object the people?

I remember people.

Don’t you remember people?

You don’t remember such.

Right.

Such is behaving as a determiner.

It’s almost an adjective here.

So such is actually modifying the things of the people.

When you have such noun as, that noun is being modified by such.

Such is a really crazy word, and it doesn’t have more than one use.

It’s got, I think it’s like five different uses in English.

And you’ve got to be really careful.

And sometimes they’re hard to separate out.

So in this particular case.

And so to go further up the conversation tree and kind of look at the bird’s eye view here.

Martha, I would say that either use is fine.

I would say that either use is fine.

Either, either.

We pronounce that word differently and both are fine.

But I have seen people talk about having been taught that only one of them was correct.

Yeah.

That you should say, you ought to listen to such composers as Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms.

That sounds a little stilted to me.

It sounds stilted to me, and it’s breaking up that idiomatic use of such as.

I’ve got to say, Jeff, I kind of like the sound to my ears, things such as rocks, pets, and cars.

I much prefer that. It sounds more natural to me.

But I think the other thing that we’re talking about here is the question of whether there is some kind of fine, subtle distinction.

To the best of my knowledge, even the most prickly of usage mavens doesn’t rail against such as, either form of such as, broken up or as a unit.

Yeah, I’m not talking so much about usage mavens, but is there a subtle difference between saying,

I think you should listen to such composers as Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach,

As opposed to, I think you should listen to renowned composers such as.

Are you talking more about the composers?

Are you talking about the individual components of that list?

Interesting.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, there’s a little more specific.

A little bit, but it’s such a fine distinction.

Yeah, and punctuation.

You know, Jeff, what about the punctuation here?

Oh, no.

I’m feeling like a comma would add some clarity here,

Depending on which kind of such as you wanted to use.

Are you familiar with that joke, let’s eat, grandma?

Yeah.

The punctuation is very important here.

That’s right.

You want that comma after eat, for sure.

Right.

I want to hear from English teachers, and I know we have a slew of them.

Are you still teaching a rule?

Are you teaching a rule at all about such as and whether or not it should or should not be broken up?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

And I also want to hear from journalists and their editors, particularly their copy editors.

Do you have an in-house rule about this?

Send it to email, words@waywordradio.org.

Jeff, we’re going to get to the bottom of this, all right?

Thanks.

You guys are awesome.

I love you.

You’re doing our best.

Thank you very much.

I’m excited you asked the question.

I can’t wait to hear the answers.

Me too.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

That number again is 877-929-9673.

Did you know there’s a dialect of English called PU?

Yes.

Yeah, police umbrella.

Or actually, I should say police umbrella.

Mm—

The kind of people say cement in Detroit.

-huh.

Right?

Right.

It’s just the emphasis is on a different syllable than you might typically encounter in mainstream English.

Indeed.

And so in the dialect world, in the language world, we call that the P slash U dialect to kind of emphasize those types of people.

It’s Southerners.

A lot of African American English actually has this feature,

Occasionally sprinkled throughout the rest of the country.

So it’s an accent on the first syllable.

Yeah, where ordinarily you’d expect it in the second syllable.

They actually slip around like that, don’t they?

Yeah, they sure do.

I have one aspect of the P-U dialect.

I say TV.

Do you really?

Instead of TV.

Interesting.

And I don’t know if I picked it up just by goofing around with language.

My father has some of it, so I probably picked that from him.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

On TV.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

More stories about what we say and why we say it.

Stay tuned.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Grant, we had an interesting question on our Facebook page, and I’m wondering about your thoughts.

Okay.

Tiffany Brenner Guerrero wrote,

The first word, if it is one, used in correct context out of our 13-month-old’s mouth was -oh.

Oh.

I see it’s in various dictionaries, but we’re having a fun family debate over whether it should be permanently on the record books as the first.

Curious as to your thoughts.

What do you think?

-oh.

Is -oh the baby’s first word?

Yes.

I mean, if that’s the first one they heard, probably it’s the first word that they recognized in context.

It’s an interjection.

We have a whole category of language that is interjection, exclamation.

Some of it doesn’t fit syntactically into normal sentences because it’s an interjection.

It appears just kind of on its own, kind of as an adjunct to a larger moment.

So, hey, it’s kind of like that.

It’s technically a word, but it behaves as an interjection or exclamation.

So, yeah, totally.

-oh.

And that’s a lot of children’s first word because we teach danger right away.

Okay.

An -oh is the way that you indicate to a child.

Well, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

So Tiffany shouldn’t feel bad about the baby saying -oh first, right?

For a while there, we had a really lovely woman in Brooklyn who was taking care of my son while my wife and I worked.

And Carol was from Trinidad.

And so she taught my son a particular form of that, which is ——

And so this little one-year-old boy would walk over to the very hot radiator in a Brooklyn brownstone apartment

And point at it and then wave his finger in this particular way,

Just like Carol did and go, ——

I don’t know if that’s a word, but the message was received.

There was a semantic concept to it.

That’s fantastic.

Was it his first word?

No, no.

His first word was blue, I believe.

Blue?

Yeah.

Really?

All colors were boo for a long time.

Oh, really?

He loved blueberries.

Okay.

My first word was buh.

Oh, what’s that?

Bird?

Bird.

No, bird.

Bird.

I was pointing at a bird and I said buh.

Nobody was listening when I started talking.

My brother probably heard it and nobody else.

That’s fine.

Well, they’re listening now.

And you can always call us to talk about language.

That number is 877-929-9673.

Or send your questions and comments and stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

Marion Agnew.

Hi, Marion.

Where are you calling from?

Hi, Marion.

I’m calling from Richmond, Virginia.

Well, welcome to the show.

I have always had a problem ever since I became a family member of my son’s family,

And that is, what do I call the mother of my daughter-in-law?

I don’t think there’s a word in English that can name the mother of your daughter-in-law.

You mean a word that expresses the relationship rather than the name of the person.

If I said, if we were, you know, in a social situation, I would say I would like you to meet Joan, who is the mother of my daughter-in-law.

Okay, I would like to have one word that says she’s a member of my family, she’s a friend.

But in other languages, I understand they do have a name for that person.

Yes, indeed. The ones that you hear about most often are from Spanish and Yiddish, I think.

Oh, really?

Yeah, consuegros is a term for those folks, those other folks.

Right, consuegros, sure.

Yeah, you’ve heard that one?

Yeah.

Right, and that actually goes back to a Latin term that means the very same thing.

And then in Yiddish, there’s makatunum.

Have you heard that one?

And that’s for the group of the in-laws altogether, right?

It’s often for the pair, but yeah, the extended family, it can refer to that.

But it’s the mother and father of your child’s spouse.

Yes.

The people you share grandchildren with.

There we go.

If you have grandchildren.

There are words in English for this, but they’re just not widely used.

They’re a little jargony.

Like co-affine, C-O-A-F-F-I-N-E.

But they appear in family therapy texts.

And it’s not the kind of thing that you’d write on the front of a holiday card.

Yeah.

What do you think about that one, Marion?

I think it’s a little complicated.

Co-in-law? What about co-in-law?

But people won’t understand you, right, if you say, oh, she’s my co-in-law.

I don’t think so. It sounds a little industrial to me.

Yeah, and if you lose the hyphen, then it’s coin-law, and that’s weird.

Co-mother-in-law or parent-in-law?

I think I’m going to have to settle for good friend.

There we go.

Good friend.

Perfect, yeah.

That works.

Yeah, well, I suspected there wasn’t a word in English.

Since English is such an agglomeration of so many other languages, you’d think that by now we would have come up with something.

You’re exactly right.

It’s interesting that we’re looking to these sort of romance languages and the older languages for the family togetherness words.

That’s a very good point.

There are various words in some other languages like, what, Tagalog?

Yeah, Tagalog and Korean, Chinese, Polish, German.

I believe that the other mother-in-law of your grandchildren, or the other grandmother of your grandchildren, is die Gegensweiger Mutter.

Chairman.

My pronunciation is terrible.

Die Gegensweiger Mutter.

So go ahead and use that one.

It’s one word.

Well, other mother?

Yeah.

I don’t know.

I think I’ll settle for friend.

That’s good, yeah.

Okay.

Just add her.

Okay, thank you very much.

Allow the mystery to remain.

It’s an issue anyway.

So you’re not taken by consuegro, which you pronounce beautifully.

Consuegro?

Mm—

I kind of like that, but that would only appeal to people who speak Spanish.

That’s the thing.

You still have to explain it every time.

You still have to explain.

Yeah.

We’ll check in in another hundred years and see if English has acquired something new, all right?

Well, maybe somebody out there in your audience will come up with a word.

Why don’t you just throw it upon the great out there?

Yeah, but we’d still have the problem just with the Spanish word.

We’d still have to teach it to everyone and have to explain it.

It would take a very long time to get it adopted.

Well, if it is a good word, it will be an immediate hit.

Oh, I see.

All right.

That’s just the way things work.

That is bounteous optimism, Marion.

Okay.

Thank you so much for your call today.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

If you’ve got a word for your child’s in-laws, that is, the parents of the person that your child married, if you’ve got a word for that, one word, we’d love to hear it.

877-929-9673. Email it to words@waywordradio.org or start the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Mark Hager calling from Charlottesville, Virginia.

Hi, Mark. Welcome to the show.

Well, I read about a month ago that the SAT will be undergoing some dramatic changes.

For instance, the test will only use words in common usage, and this surprised me, seemed to be contrary to the notion that the breadth of a person’s vocabulary has a strong correlation with measures of success.

My question is simply a query to hear your opinions about the changes in the SAT and, more importantly, the value of a broad vocabulary and the correlation with success.

I’ve personally found that people I’ve met with impressive vocabularies are usually particularly interesting folks.

I agree.

Oh, yeah, I agree with that last statement for sure.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

I’m going to drill right down to what I think the core of your issue is, and that is what you believe to be excluded from the SAT.

And what we know right now is only a list of two words have been given out in a press statement as possible words that would be excluded.

No list of words has been announced.

So we can assume any word that we want wouldn’t be on that list and we can immediately go straight to like thinking that they’re going to make some dumb mistake and leave out a lot of words that people should know.

But we’re just guessing at this point.

Yeah, the words were synthesis and empirical.

That’s right.

If I’m recalling correctly.

Well, no, those are the words that we’re going to include.

Right.

The ones that we’re going to exclude are depreciatory and membranous.

Oh.

So only two words.

And here’s the crux of this, Mark.

If you take these four words, these are the only four words that they’ve talked about.

It’s two that they’re going to exclude and two that they’re going to include.

And these are just examples of the longer list of both.

And you look at these in these large databases of language, the corpora, you find that the synthesis and empirical are highly correlated to academic studies across many disciplines.

And these other two words are so rare that even somebody who reads a lot is unlikely to encounter them more than once every 10 years.

They’re talking about eliminating these words that belong to one discipline that you would never encounter unless you were in that discipline.

And even then, you would only encounter it on very rare occasions.

And that has been the problem. One of the problems with the SAT is it is assumed that you need this very specialized knowledge when it is a general purpose test for a general academic background.

Well, and the head of the college boards was drawn into a discussion about this online.

And he was pointing out that there’s a difference between words that you learn through flashcards and words that you learn because you’re reading Pride and Prejudice, for example.

And it reminds me of the debate over spelling bee words.

You know, some of those words you’re just never going to see again, right?

Or you never saw before.

And the Scrabble words, like this whole vast list of words that you only know because they have high point scores.

But, Mark, overall, I agree with your general concerns.

I don’t think there’s a dumbing down here.

I think there’s a sharpening and a focus.

I do agree that testing has to be taken with a giant grain of salt.

It’s interesting to think how many schools are starting to slowly value the SAT and the ACT less and start to look at a student’s high school record, their extracurricular activities, and their personality, the things that are relayed by their behavior or their essay.

Mark, we’re going to take a look at this probably another year or two from now after the new test has been put in place, and we’ll see how people feel about it.

This isn’t the first time that the SAT has been revised.

I know when they first talked about these changes coming in October of last year, there was a lot of outcry then as well in October of 2013.

And there was a really interesting point made by an SAT tutor.

He wrote, this was in The Atlantic, he said, the SAT reinforces many students’ mistaken belief that writing is an act of inspiration, giving rise to a sudden burst of activity that can be carried out only under extreme pressure.

And for me, that underlies the problem with testing.

It supposes that we are supposed to be able to regurgitate our knowledge in this kind of falsely structured environment that bears no resemblance to the real world.

Yeah. And I think one of the reforms that they’re talking about doing now is having the students make arguments that are more evidence based rather than their own opinion about something like that.

Although the writing, the essay is now optional, right?

Right. It’s optional. It’s optional. But the material that would be in it is different.

Yeah. If you want something to be outraged about, Mark, how about this? They don’t grade on grammar or spelling. They grade on the structure of the essay.

How do they define structure?

Yeah. Do you have a cohesive argument that’s built along an outline that has the intro and the supporting points and the conclusion and so forth?

Well, Mark, we’re going to keep an eye on this and check in with us if you see further signs of deterioration, all right?

Okay. Thanks very much.

All right. Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Mark.

What do you think?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your thoughts and email to words@waywordradio.org.

You know how in some hip-hop songs and albums, and maybe even on the signs for barbershops, they pluralize with a Z instead of an S?

Yes.

You know what that’s called? Z plurals.

That’s the linguistic term for it. It’s a Z plural, where the plural that would be otherwise formed by an S is instead replaced with a Z.

Okay, so is that Z-P-L-U-R-A-L-Z?

Yeah, sure, why not?

So if you’re talking about my dogs and you spell it D-A-W-G-Z, that’s a Z plural.

Z plural.

But it behaves exactly the same as an S plural.

It’s just a different spelling choice that more accurately represents the sound there, the Z sound that we’re getting instead of a Z.

They’re the S sound.

Okay.

So Z plural.

So the next time you see that, know that linguists are on top of that, and they have a name for it, and they’re cataloging them.

Z plurals.

I love when that happens.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Justin from Manitowoc calling.

From where?

Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

Welcome to the show, Justin.

I actually have two questions for you guys.

I recently moved from Green Bay, Wisconsin, down to Manitowoc, and apparently there’s a couple regional phrases that I’ve never heard before.

Oh, that’s good.

So you know how like some local fire departments for fundraisers will have like a barbecue or a cookout, that kind of deal.

Yeah.

Right.

Over here, that’s called a fry-out.

A fry-out.

Fry-out.

So what part of the state are we talking about? Is it southwest?

We’re actually right on Lake Michigan.

Okay.

And so what other big cities are near there?

Shboygan’s south of us.

Green Bay is north of us.

Shboygan’s.

How far south?

Between both of them.

How far south is Sheboygan?

About 30 minutes.

Okay.

Okay.

Interesting.

So a fry-out, and this is exactly like a regular barbecue, or is there something different?

From what I’ve heard, it’s exactly like what I would call a barbecue.

So what kind of food gets cooked on what?

Hamburgers, brats, stuff like that on a grill.

On a grill.

Yeah.

So a grill with open flame underneath, right?

That’s what my understanding of it is, yes.

Okay.

So it’s not fried in a pan.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

One theory that I’ve seen is the reason it’s called a fry-out or just a fry is that the sausages and brats that used to be cooked in the kitchen, you would kind of technically fry them in a pan.

They’re lying in a pan, kind of frying there on a surface.

And when you bring them outside, even though the instrumentation is different, they still called it a fry.

So the word came with the food, even though it didn’t apply much anymore.

Interesting.

So it’s more about the out than the fry.

Yeah, the fry.

As long as the taste is good, right?

Yeah.

The other thing is also food-related.

Oh, yes, please.

You know, like a Sloppy Joe sandwich.

I’ve actually heard it a lot of times referred to as a hot tamale sandwich over here.

Hot tamale sandwich?

Yes.

Is this spicy?

I haven’t noticed a difference.

Okay.

And have you, what does it have in it exactly?

I want to say it’s just your standard Sloppy Joe.

Well, Sloppy Joe can mean different things. What’s your definition of a Sloppy Joe?

Is it like a spoon burger?

What the heck is a spoon burger?

I think it’s like a sloppy joe.

Oh, right.

That’s like a hot tamale.

I guess everybody’s got their own name for something like that.

Right?

It’s different from a made right because there’s no sauce on it.

No made right, right?

Exactly.

So, Justin, what’s your recipe for sloppy joe?

Manwich.

Okay.

So it’s a red tomato sauce and ground beef that’s been cooked with the grease drained off, right?

Correct.

Okay.

Okay.

And there they call them hot tamales.

Yeah.

What’s going on in Sheboygan over there?

Oh, you don’t want to know.

What is the rest of the country referred to a hot tamale as?

Well, a hot tamale is the Mexican dish.

I mean, we’ve kind of Americanized it a little bit.

So there’s, what is it, a corn tortina or masa tortilla and a sauce with shredded meat inside?

Or sometimes it’s in the corn leaves.

Corn leaves, there we go, yeah.

Okay.

So maybe the hot tamale, they’re thinking of it being kind of that put in a bun.

You know, the inside of a hot tamale being put in a bun.

I could see that where they might have just extrapolated a little bit or maybe even a tiny bit misunderstood and just made their own version of it.

Yeah.

We don’t have tortillas here.

Let’s use a bun.

We don’t have the corn.

Just keep replacing all the ingredients until it’s very different.

Well, yeah.

I don’t imagine us not having corn husks.

Corn husks.

There’s lots of worms.

That’s what I meant.

Corn husk.

A couple of these charms seem to be really associated very strongly with Cheborgan.

They are used elsewhere in Wisconsin and even maybe a little bit in some surrounding states, but very closely allied with Sheboygan and the people who live there.

Sheboyganites, I guess.

Sheboygians.

I think we need to hear from the folks in Sheboygan.

What are you eating and why?

Justin, you are now our man near Sheboygan.

You must report on food words as you encounter them, all right?

I will do so.

Okay, very good.

Thank you very much, all right?

All right.

Take care now.

Eat well.

Bye-bye.

What is the weird food they eat in your town? Let us know. 877-929-9673 or send the recipe in email to words@waywordradio.org.

That’s all for today’s broadcast, but don’t wait till next week to chat with us on Facebook and Twitter.

And you can find us on iTunes or SoundCloud.

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The show is directed and edited this week by Tim Felten.

We have production help from James Ramsey.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning and better human communication.

This show is coming to you from the Track Recording Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. So long.

Bye-bye.

Tomato and I like tomato, potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

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