Hector’s Pup (episode #1422)

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.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a call from a guy who wanted a term for his ex-wife’s new husband.

Oh, boy.

Remember that?

I do.

It was a polite term.

You know, I kept getting reminded for days on end because we kept getting emails and tweets about it.

We did.

We did because we asked, right?

Yeah, we did.

They all had a really good relationship.

And so he wanted a positive, cordial word for that.

And we heard from lots of listeners. I think far and away, the suggestion that we heard most was husband-in-law.

Husband-in-law.

Yeah, which sounds very matter-of-fact, right?

Okay.

Right? I like that.

We did hear some suggestions for step-husband.

And then some people looked to software and suggested version 2.0 or an upgrade.

An upgrade. Very good, yeah.

Yeah. And then there were a couple other ones that I really liked.

Jules from San Diego suggested relief pitcher, kind of like that.

And Jeff Chavez suggested stunt double.

Stunt double.

Okay.

Why? I don’t know.

Well, speaking of Y, some people instead of X suggested Y.

I saw a few of those.

Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

Yeah, that’s pretty clever, but I don’t know because it sounds like the other word if it would work, but still clever.

Exactly.

And we did hear from David Heim in Oxford, Connecticut, who asked for another word.

He wanted a word for spouses who separate and then reunite.

Because his oldest friend had divorced his wife.

And then several years later, they got back together, but they’re not married.

So they’re sort of XXs.

XXs.

Yeah, but he wants another term for that.

XXL. XXLovers.

Wait, that sounds like a t-shirt size.

I don’t know.

Triple X. I have no idea.

Well, I guess the point is that English sort of has a paucity of terms for these kinds of things.

We know you’ve coined new words for the odd relationships you have with people in your life.

Maybe you loved them and now you do again, or you don’t love them anymore, or you want to love them.

What’s the word you use? 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chris calling from Burlington, Vermont.

Hi, Chris. How you doing?

Good. How are you?

Excellent.

What’s going on?

Well, I got a phrase here that I used growing up here in Vermont. It’s jesum crow.

Jesum crow.

When do you say it? What’s happening when that’s going on, when that comes out of your mouth?

Usually it could be something used when maybe you’re angry or you’re surprised.

It snowed overnight. You’ll wake up in the morning and look outside and go,

Geez, I’m crowed. Look at all that snow.

And do you ever say it when you’re angry, or is it more an exclamation of wonder?

Yeah, it’s definitely used in anger.

A lot of times used to substitute taking the Lord’s name in vain, if you will.

Right. There we go. You’re on a track there.

Yeah. And Chris, do you have any thoughts about how to spell it? Is it one word, two words?

What I know is two words, and spell J-E-E-Z-U-M, and then crow.

Yeah. If you hadn’t said you were from Vermont, I was going to ask if you were from Vermont,

Because it’s a very common expression there and in northern New York.

And as far as we know, it’s a euphemism for saying Jesus Christ.

Yeah, it’s a minced oath. It’s like Jeepers Creepers or Jiminy Cricket or a whole bunch of those.

Yeah, there are a lot of those exclamations that start with that J sound.

There’s an alternate spelling, which is, in my research, a little more common, J-E-S-U-M, but it’s the same, and it’s also from Vermont.

And they date back to, we find the first printed uses anyway, in the early 1950s.

I found one in 1953. I have no doubt if I looked harder, I would find more earlier.

Yeah, but it kind of marks you from that area.

Yeah, yeah. I grew up here, and it didn’t seem to be a peculiar phrase.

I moved out to Oregon and was working as an archaeologist and said it one day,

And everybody looked at me like I was crazy.

Well, you may be.

Did you dig up something cool?

Yeah, we were looking for prehistoric Native American artifacts

And found a pretty good-sized little arrowhead and said,

Geez, I’m crow, look at this, and everybody got silent and said, what did you say?

They thought this was some kind of obscure archaeological term, huh?

Yeah, it just means gee whiz, gee willikers.

And as Grant said, it’s a minced oath.

All right.

Thanks for calling, Chris.

Glad to help you.

Yeah, thank you.

Have a great day.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

You know, you did this speech recently where I loved it.

We had an audience full of people from around the country where you just started quizzing them and asking if they’d heard things like G’s and Crow.

And when they said, yes, I know that term, you would say, well, I know that you’re from Vermont and you’re from Maine and you’re from Wisconsin.

I was lucky with those guesses.

They were lucky, but their minds were blown.

But this is one of those things we talk about.

When people think we’re all starting to sound alike,

That this country is becoming linguistically homogenous, we aren’t.

We still retain these very regional vocabularies and very regional pronunciations.

Yes, and I remember so many people in that group saying,

Yes, and then I moved across the country, and I used that term just like Chris said.

Yeah, and people looked at you like, yeah, two heads.

Yeah, you just have one of those moments.

Yeah, those two-headed moments.

They always say that.

Zipot, Bilbox moments.

Yeah.

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I just came back from an overnight backpacking trip in the desert,

And I came back with a great souvenir.

What is it?

Well, you’re not supposed to pick things up and take them out,

But I came back with a fabulous word that I’d never heard before.

I was thinking pictures or a little pinch of sand or something like that.

No pinch of sand, no broken pottery.

We don’t do that.

But I came back with the word triboluminescence.

Triboluminescence.

The last part seems clear to me, but I don’t know what the tribo is.

Exactly.

What is that?

I knew what it was as soon as I heard it because it comes from the Greek word meaning to rub.

If you’re in a dark place and you take two pieces of quartz and rub them together really fast, then they kind of glow.

You see these little sparks.

And the tribo, as I said, is from Greek to rub.

And I got all excited when I learned this word from a fellow camper because it’s related to the word diatribe,

Which goes back to the idea of just sort of wearing somebody down with a lecture.

And it’s the same scientific phenomenon that happens.

Have you ever gone into a dark room and broken wintergreen lifesavers and see the little sparks?

It’s the same principle.

That’s super interesting.

So you were in the desert rubbing courts together?

Yes, around the campfire.

Was this some kind of ritual?

Were you praying to some kind of gods or something?

No, no.

It was just demonstrating that little tribal luminescence.

Tribal luminescence.

It’s such a beautiful word.

You know, it sparks created by friction.

Now, if that’s not the title of a poetry collection, somebody please write that.

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And you can find us on Twitter with the handle WayWord.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Scott. I’m calling from Haymarket, Virginia.

Haymarket, Virginia. Where is that?

So Haymarket, Virginia is in northern Virginia, kind of outside the normal Fairfax boundaries.

We’re in Prince William County.

Okay. All right. Well, welcome to the show, Scott. How can we help you?

So I want to talk to you about a word. I’m not originally from Haymarket, Virginia.

I’m from southwestern Virginia, the coal-filled Appalachian, Virginia.

Oh, yeah.

And growing up, my family would use the word founder, and they would use it in a very specific way,

Meaning, as I understand it, that I’ve eaten so much of something that I no longer want it.

It’s no longer tasty to me.

So if I’ve eaten a lot of chocolate cake, I would say I’ve really foundered on this chocolate cake.

And I assumed everyone used that, of course.

And I moved to Northern Virginia and became a teacher up here, and I was using it with a colleague a couple years ago.

And she stopped me and said, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

What is that word?

And I realized, I’ve asked another folks, that no one up here used it much.

And then that got me really curious.

I started kind of digging around, and I discovered it seems to be an Appalachian word.

But I found other folks up here in Northern Virginia that actually use it,

But they use it in what I think might be the original sense, which was with horses.

So there’s kind of horse country up here.

And I understand horses, when they eat so much that they get sick and maybe even die,

If you give a horse unlimited amounts of grain, it will eat itself instead.

That’s called foundering.

Yeah, that’s it.

You’ve nailed it, Scott.

That’s exactly it.

Awesome.

Like, how has that gotten to Appalachia as a cultural thing?

Because I don’t think any of us that used it growing up had the connection with horses,

Even though maybe the people who started it had a stronger connection that was part of their life.

Is that something that’s unique to Appalachia, or is that like a rural thing or a southern thing?

It’s not unique to Appalachia.

I wouldn’t call it rural so much as agriculture related or, again, related to places that are traditionally closer to the land, more animal husbandry and that sort of thing.

When you look at uses of founder to refer to eat too much, it’s so often horses who’ve done things like found their way into an apple orchard and gorge themselves on unripe apples.

So not only are they completely full, but they’re sick from the green apples and it causes problems in their GI tract and so forth.

And you’ll find also references is in the late 1800s, although the term dates at least to the 1860s applied to humans and animals, you’ll find it talking about hungry young kids who come into the house and have way too much of whatever is on the table and just, you know, they’re just sick from eating so much.

I think it’s a natural outgrowth from that to compare ourselves to animals.

We are animals after all, but it’s not that big of a jump.

But it appears mainly in, I hesitate to say rural because in horsey parts of the country that I don’t think of as rural because they’re so close to suburban areas or urban areas even, they still use this term.

The dictionaries all say it’s standard to say that an animal foundered when it ate too much and was debilitated as a result.

But, I mean, did you grow up saying I foundered on too much apple pie at the table?

Unfortunately, yes.

I did foundered on quite a few things.

Yeah, yeah.

And I would advocate, I’m going to use your national platform here, I think we should all use founder.

Like, it’s a perfectly good word, and I don’t have another word to use for that.

You know, I’m in situations, and I’ll say, I really foundered on this thing I’m eating.

I don’t want it anymore.

It’s the sensation of not really being hungry for this particular item or that.

And you’re suffering as a result.

Is that right?

Is that part of the meaning?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, you know, it’s always kind of a humorous thing.

I think every time that I use founder, I’m pointing out that, you know, how ridiculous I am that I’ve eaten so much cake that I don’t want any more cake.

Yeah, I’ve heard people say I’ve had an elegant sufficiency of this or I’ve been sufficiently suffocated.

I will never founder on your program.

Hey, that’s great.

That’s great.

Yeah, there’s hundreds of episodes of DeGorge online, all right?

Great.

Thanks, Scott.

Take care now.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

What unusual expressions are you hearing where you live?

Call us about them.

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

I hope you’ll forgive me, but there was a discussion on Metafilter recently about farting.

And there were a couple of terms that came up that I thought were worth sharing.

One of the users says that their grandmother used to call it making a little wish.

Oh, I like that.

That’s sweet.

That’s gentle, right?

That’s pretty nice.

Yeah.

I’d have a wish afterwards.

And then someone else said you could call it a love puff.

That’s very sweet.

And so the whole discussion is about when you’re comfortable with flatulence in front of your romantic partner.

I was going to say, it sort of depends on the puffer, doesn’t it?

It totally does.

Yeah.

I won’t tell you what a Dutch oven is, but you should Google it, too.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Do people talk funny out your way?

Tell us the whole story as A Way with Words continues.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us now from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hey, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hey, bud.

What’s up?

Well, you know, I recently renewed my membership in the National Puzzlers League.

Good.

Okay, yeah.

I thought since we haven’t talked about them in a while, we could do a quiz based on some wordplay that is found in the NPL newsletter, The Enigma.

Okay, cool.

All right.

Let’s do it.

Now, as you know, The Enigma, they have these little puzzles, special puzzles called flats.

They’re little verses, and each one has a particular different kind of wordplay inside it.

Now, this one is called a head-to-tail shift.

A head-to-tail shift is when you take a word, you take the first letter of that word and place it at the end of the word, making a new word.

Okay.

Okay?

For example, take the word rove, move the first letter R to the end of the word, and you get over.

Over.

Now, that’s a pretty basic head-to-tail shift.

All right.

Good.

Now, I’ll give you a sentence with two words missing, and you supply the missing words, and those will be a head-to-tail shift.

Oh, cool.

Okay.

Here we go.

My dearest darling, there is no one on blank to whom I would rather give my blank.

Earth, heart.

Earth and heart, yes.

Very good.

Very good, Grant.

Nicely done.

It is recommended that the duelists take ten blank so that there is enough blank between them.

Paces and space.

Paces and space, yes, very good.

When her boyfriend presented her with the blank, she displayed a triumphant blank.

Ring and grin.

Ring and grin, very good.

You blank to know that it’s only the most insecure boys who talk so blank.

Talk so bold, loud.

Tough ought.

You ought to know.

Oh, there we go.

Perfect.

There we go.

Ought and tough.

The love god blank inspired me to give you this red blank.

Eros and rose.

Eros and rose.

Very good.

Martha, you’re killing it.

My guesses about this puzzle are running blank.

Maybe you can give me a blank?

Hint.

-huh.

Thin and hint.

Thin and hint.

Thin and hint.

Way to go, team.

I told my southern cousins, that will be one tough battle.

Blank will definitely need a blank in that fight.

Y’all will definitely need an ally.

You’re talking my language there.

There you go, Martha.

Y’all an ally.

In the NPL, we usually ignore punctuation.

I figured.

It really blanked my heart to see Grandma greeted by a blank of loving relatives.

It’s not broke, is it?

No.

No.

It hurt.

Worms.

Swarm.

Oh, worms.

Worms and swarm.

Very good, Grant.

Nicely done.

If you’re going to just let your air rifle blank off your arm like that,

Make sure it’s blank away from me.

Glance, pointed, directed, dangle, angled.

Yes, dangle and angled.

Finally, now this one’s a little tough.

It’s kind of weird.

At the aquarium, a rank odor seems to blank from the tank holding the marine mammal the blank.

Okay, how many can there be?

Manatee.

It’s funny.

Otter and…

Emanate and manatee.

Oh, there we go.

Yes, that’s it.

Emanate.

Otter and rotten are one letter off, unfortunately.

I was sitting here doodling with that.

Different flat type.

That’s great.

You’ve got emanate and manatee.

My advice is if there’s a rank odor emanating from your manatee, have that checked.

Just a little public service announcement, please.

Is that it?

Did we win?

Check your manatee.

That’s it.

Yes.

You guys did fantastic.

Nice work.

John, thanks so much for the quiz.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks, guys.

Talk to you next week.

Bye, John.

This is the show about words and language and how we use it.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Dee Dee Bonwit. I’m calling you from Greenville, Tennessee.

Greenville, Tennessee. Is that in the east?

Very far east, yes.

Oh, near the Smokies.

Yeah.

All right.

In the shadow of.

Oh, great. Well, what would you like to talk with us about?

Well, I had heard a word used the other day. I was watching a movie. I was watching that movie, Gone Girl.

And the detective in the movie used the word meta, M-E-T-A.

So, of course, I know several words that start with meta.

But I don’t know the word meta, so I looked it up on my dictionary app, and it wasn’t in there.

So I thought you all might have an answer for me.

Dee Dee, do you remember the context in which it was used?

Oh, boy. I was afraid you’d ask that.

That’s okay.

I’ll have to go back and watch the movie again.

We’re pretty sure we know what you’re talking about, so we can probably come up with some examples of our own.

So if Martha and I are out for ice cream, and we’re talking about this ice cream store,

And she’s got a big scoop of vanilla, and I’ve got a big scoop of chocolate,

And she starts to talk about what other people are saying about us

As we’re sitting there eating our ice cream.

And then we switch.

And then Martha says, and now they’ve just said,

Why did they switch their ice cream?

They’re coming with all these conspiracies.

She is talking about the meta-narrative.

She is actually giving the meta-narrative about us.

So meta is self-referential.

You are talking about the thing that is being talked about.

Or the thing being talked about is talking about itself.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Sometimes it’s kind of used just to mean the bird’s eye view or the big picture view or the umbrella view or the parachute view, whatever you want to call it.

So you’re looking at something as if you are removed from the subject and actually aren’t a participant in what is happening.

That’s meta.

Oh.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I know this term because there’s a website that I’ve been a member of for a long time, a part of the community, and it’s called Metafilter, Metafilter.com, which is a discussion forum.

And the whole point of this was this was a place where people could go to discuss the things that were happening in their world, be it a news item or be it something personal or just a hobby or a pastime or something like that.

Yeah, and meta itself is a Greek preposition that means either beside or after.

So you’ll find it in words like metaphysics, metaphysical, and so forth.

But the new word is a little different.

It is an adjective.

And you will frequently find it with an intensifier like so.

It’s so meta because it’s a slang and colloquial and far removed from the academic world.

Right.

And that was the way it was used.

It was that very meta.

Yeah, very meta.

Yeah, very, very, very common to do that.

But again, yeah, self-referential talk.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thanks for calling, Didi.

Bye-bye.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Speaking of meta, I went to Chula Vista, California, to give a talk at a library.

And I knew I was in the right place when I pulled into the parking lot and saw a bumper sticker that said,

Metaphors be with you.

It made me feel right at home.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673,

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

We had a call a couple of weeks ago about the expression that this woman used,

All done, clappy hands.

Remember that?

That sort of gesture that you do when you’re all finished.

Like you’re brushing the dust off your hands.

Yes, yes.

You’ve done a job well.

And a lot of people reminded us that there’s a term that’s used more in Britain that goes done and dusted.

Done and dusted.

Yes.

Oh, yeah, that’s right.

It means sort of the same thing.

Yeah, I’ve heard that one.

Done and dusted.

Maybe on the British building shows, which I sometimes watch.

Oh, okay.

They’ll take a house and renovate it and resell it for a million pounds.

Done and dusted, yes.

877-929-9673. Email words at raywardradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, is this Grant?

This is Grant. Who am I talking to?

Hi, this is Gordon. I’m in Bethany, Connecticut.

Hi, Gordon. Welcome to the program.

Hello, Gordon. This is Martha.

Hi, Martha.

Hi.

What’s going on?

I’m calling because I’ve been hearing an interesting phrase in meetings quite frequently,

And I’ve heard three different iterations of it,

And I was curious about which is the most appropriate or which is the most common one so that I’d be most understood should I use it.

Okay.

So when someone’s in a meeting and they’re describing how they want to focus in really acutely and finely on something,

I’ve heard them say, I want to zone in on it or hone in on it or home in on it.

So zone, hone, and home.

So it’s Z-O-N-E, H-O-N-E, or H-O-M-E.

Okay. And which one do you hear most?

I would have to say I hear zone most.

Really?

Interesting.

Oh, that’s interesting. And what kind of work is it?

I’m a teacher.

Interesting. Because of home in, hone in, and zone in, zone in, at least in the written record, is far, far less common than the others.

That’s really interesting.

I wonder if it’s a, were you going to say the same thing I was going to say?

I think I was.

A combination of zero in and hone in?

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking here.

Yeah.

Because that’s the unmentioned one.

Zero in on something means to target it, you know.

Yeah, which is far, yeah, zero in on is far more common than any of those.

Right.

And it goes back to World War II and the military use of zero in on, meaning fixing a target accurately.

Wow. But for home and hone, I think we’ve tackled this one before. This is a common confusion, isn’t it?

Mm-Yes, yes. Home in is the original term, like homing pigeons, finding your way home. But hone in makes sense, doesn’t it?

Because we think about sharpening a knife or sharpening a spear or something to a fine point.

Right.

That seems to metaphorically fit, like coming to a point or coming exactly to a place you want to be.

Yeah, so although sticklers will say home in is correct and hone in came later, they’re almost interchangeable now, I think.

Yeah, they pretty much are home and hone.

And the fact that they sound so much like makes them easy to confuse anyway.

Yeah, but I’m really interested to hear that you’ve been hearing zone in on.

Is it only these teachers or are there other people who do this, zone in?

Primarily teachers, actually.

And when they say zone in, do you zone out?

You know, I could be a language curmudgeon, but I’m trying to not be.

Excellent. Thank you.

So I figured I’ll just accept it.

I would rather make friends than enemies, particularly over language.

I do appreciate your pointing this out, Gordon.

I’m going to listen for Zone In on it because I haven’t really heard it.

I’m quite sure that we’re going to hear this everywhere now.

Like when you buy a new car and you see it everywhere.

Yeah, exactly.

It’s true.

Thanks for your call, Gordon. Really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

This is the show where we learn something new every week.

Maybe a dozen things.

A hundred? I don’t know.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

I still have a list of words that I have to look up every single time I run across them.

And the most recent one was ineluctable.

Ineluctable.

Yes.

Related to reluctant somehow.

Oh, well, that was my point.

Oh.

I never made that connection.

But I have this resolution for this year that any time I run across a word like that,

I’m going to look it up once and for all, and I’m really going to pay attention to the etymology.

And indeed, ineluctable goes back to Latin luctare, meaning to struggle.

And so ineluctable has to do with not being able to be avoided.

It’s inevitable, inescapable.

And as you suggested, the same root having to do with struggle is in the word reluctant.

And that’s how I’m going to remember it.

That’s interesting.

So how do you remember?

Do you repeat it to yourself, write it down a bunch of times, put it on index cards, tape it to the bathroom mirror?

I mean, what’s your strategy for remembering these words when you look them up?

Because I know from my dictionary work that one of the most common things that happens to people is they look up a word and 30 seconds later cannot tell you what the definition was.

Oh, right, right.

I mean, this is universal.

Right.

Well, that’s why I’m paying really close attention to the etymology because so often the etymology is this vivid picture of something.

Gotcha.

That’s your demonic.

Yeah, yeah.

So I’m thinking of ineluctable, meaning something that you can’t struggle out of.

Ineluctable.

Yeah.

I mean, it makes perfect sense if you think about it.

It sure does.

877-929-9673.

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Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

This is Bob Schmetz.

I’m calling from Carefree, Arizona.

Carefree, Arizona.

Is this a description or a city?

That’s the name of the town.

Oh, okay.

In the city.

Nice.

2,500 people just north of Scottsdale.

Sounds pretty nice, Bob.

What’s on your mind?

I was listening to your show a couple weeks ago, driving from central Wisconsin to Minneapolis,

And I thought about something my father always used to say.

It was a while back. He’d be 101 today.

But he would use the term Hector’s pup.

And he would use it in kind of an exclamatory or inflammatory or imperative way.

It would be used like Hector’s pup.

I don’t know.

Hector’s pup beats me.

Hector’s pup, do you think we’re rich?

You know, it just would be a filler, but it would be something where he’s unhappy with the situation or wants to make a point.

Hector’s pup.

And did he avoid cursing by any chance?

He seldom have ever cursed.

Because usually the phrase I’ve heard is since Hector was a pup, which means a long, long time ago.

I’ve known Grant since Hector was a pup since a long time ago.

The way he’s using it is much more rare.

And it sounds like a euphemism for heck in that sense, doesn’t it?

A little bit.

It’s a double euphemism, heck for hell.

Yeah.

Hector for heck and heck for hell.

Hector’s pup.

There is a variation of since Hector was a pup, which is since heck was a pup, H-E-C or H-E-C-K.

And we know who Hector was, though, don’t we?

Sure, yeah, from the Iliad.

Yes, and that phrase, since Hector was a pup, goes back to the early 1900s when people were more familiar with those kinds of things.

Although we don’t really know which Hector is referenced in that phrase since Hector was a pup,

Or Hector’s pup for that matter.

You know, I don’t know that the demographics play a role in this at all.

He was raised in a little town outside of northwest side of Milwaukee called Richfield,

And it was populated by basically his family, and they settled it in the late 1800s.

So he didn’t speak English until he went to school.

They would always speak an old German dialect,

Because as people would come over from the old country,

They would just, you know, everyone just sort of spoke a dialect

That they kind of were dead for 100 years.

So I don’t know whether that plays a role in it or not.

It doesn’t sound like it, but that’s the way he would use it.

I never heard him say it since Hector was a pup.

I mean, it would always be Hector’s pup.

Interesting.

Yeah, that’s new on me.

Just as an interjection like that, I didn’t know that one.

That’s pretty cool, though, Bob.

It was his 100th birthday today or his 101st today?

No, actually, my mother, that’s when we were coming back from central Wisconsin for.

My mother just turned 100 on the 20th of February.

And I just, you know, he was a year older, so he’d be 101 if you were a 1st.

Because, again, as Martha said, the earliest uses we know from, I have one from 1903 here.

So that’s a little over 100 years.

It’s pretty cool that his life corresponds to what we know about the printed uses of that term.

Yeah.

But he probably learned it in English.

I don’t think that there’s a Germanic version of this.

I’m pretty sure there isn’t.

I’m not aware of one.

So there’s a little bit more about the expression.

Bob, hope that helps.

Great.

Thanks for sharing, Bob.

Okay.

Well, thanks for the call.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Yep.

Bye-bye.

Well, we’d love to hear your stories and questions about language.

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Or find us on Facebook where we’ve got a really active community.

I just heard from my friend Eduardo who lives in Portugal,

And he often sends me things in Portuguese,

And he just sent me a couple of great idioms that I wanted to share with you.

He explained to me that a Portuguese does not give up.

Instead, he takes his little horse away from the rain.

Isn’t that lovely?

That’s kind of cute.

And in Portuguese, you’re not sexy.

You’re as good as corn.

As good as corn.

I’m thinking like the silky hair of corn for some reason.

Or something valuable.

I don’t know.

I see.

You’re as good as corn.

Is it like American maize?

Is this what we’re talking about?

Are we talking about corn as in generic for grain?

Boa como o milho.

That is sexy, isn’t it?

Sure, why not?

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The address is words@waywordradio.org.

And you can find us on Twitter at the handle WayWord.

More conversation about what we say and how 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.

Here’s a recording of a conversation I’d like you to hear.

Two of these women are sisters, and one of them is a total stranger.

All three of them speak English as their first language.

But in this conversation, they’re using English with a kind of twist.

But let me just say that all of them understand each other perfectly.

Wow. I love it.

How about that?

That’s amazing, right?

Yes.

What is the syllable they’re inserting in those words?

They are inserting the syllables idig.

Idig.

Yes, they’re speaking a form of gibberish that they call idig.

So, for example, the name Grant would be gritagant.

Gritagant.

Yes, but they’re doing that with all the words.

Now, remember, these are sisters who are talking with a woman they’ve never met before who also happens to speak gibberish.

And in this next little clip, one of them says,

Definitely, it’s so weird to hear you speaking gibberish.

It makes me feel like you must be someone from my family.

And the other one says, yeah, me too.

Listen and see if you can hear it.

Did you hear it?

I heard it.

Yeah, wow.

Yeah, it’s really cool, but I can’t imagine being able to speak like that.

How long does the practice take, and is it worth it in the end?

That’s my question, and I don’t know how long it would take.

I think it would be worth it, though.

But you can learn a whole lot more about gibberish in English and a whole lot of different languages

In an article on Schwa Fire, which is an online magazine about language.

That’s schwa-fire.com.

And in this article, writer Jessica Weiss notes that you’ll find forms of gibberish all over the world,

In Spanish-speaking countries, in Pakistan, in Iran, Cambodia.

And she says that there’s no definitive research on gibberish and gender, but it sure seems like it appeals in particular to little girls.

I wonder why that is.

Well, I think that some linguists have talked about the fact that for little girls, they’re all about bonding and relationships.

And women tend to be in the forefront of linguistic innovation just in conversation, right?

So it’s a fascinating.

That’s amazing.

I love the sound of that.

I do, too.

Did you ever do that when you were a kid?

No.

You know, I fooled around with stuff about the same time I was working in ciphers, you know, just trying to figure out puzzles and codes and things.

And this was often presented in Boys Life, was a magazine I subscribed to, as a way to communicate with your siblings so your parents couldn’t tell.

Yeah, secretly.

But it was more trouble to try to recruit my siblings than it was just to tell them things in a whisper, you know?

Yeah.

You had to be getting other kids to cooperate is the hard part.

I know.

I know.

And you’d think they would because sometimes your parents do that.

You know, they speak in their own language.

Right, the highfalutin talk, the big words that you just don’t know yet.

Yeah, or they spell out words that you’re too young to.

Well, we know you’ve got personal languages.

There’s a code you invented.

There’s a speech that you’ve got.

There’s a gibberish that you share with your siblings.

Do call and share it.

We want to hear it.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you guys doing?

Doing well.

Who’s this?

This is David Parker from Canton, New York.

What’s on your mind, David?

All right.

So I’m close to the Canadian border up here, you know, and we have pretty harsh winters.

And as a child growing up, my biggest question, I guess, was, you know, what’s a winter hat called?

Up here, we call it a toque.

Most people call it a beanie or just a straight-up winter hat.

But for me, I moved down south a couple years ago.

And when I told someone, you know, they were wearing a toque, they looked at me like I had like six heads.

So I was just wondering where a toque came from, if that’s proper or is beanie proper.

I’m just kind of curious.

Wait, David, this was your biggest question as a child?

Not why was the sky blue or where do babies come from or is there a Santa Claus?

I am, you know, different strokes for different folks.

Okay.

Gotcha. Okay.

There’s a couple of different layers to this.

Let’s just kind of break them down as quickly as we can.

The Canada reference is totally appropriate because toque, that’s T-U-Q-U-E,

Is a very Canadian word that refers to a knitted hat that you would wear to keep your head warm.

It is a variation of the French word toque, T-O-Q-U-E,

Which refers to several different kinds of hats.

But most people in the world know the toque as the tall white chef hat.

You know, the one that you see like on top of Chef Boyardee?

That’s a toque.

So, tuque is a variant of toque.

And both of these words are related to Spanish and Italian words meaning to be made of silk or silk fabric.

Because there are similar words in those languages.

This is according to the Le Petit Robert dictionary.

Now, that’s interesting and I love that.

But I really want to talk about beanie.

Because when I moved to California, and I don’t know why they do it,

But people here sometimes wear knitted hats even when it’s 80 degrees outside.

It’s a style thing, I guess.

I don’t really understand it.

But they call them beanies.

I never, ever, ever, never, ever heard beanie referring to that kind of hat when I lived in Missouri or when I lived in New York City.

Never.

Really?

Not once.

Ever.

And when it came to California, it is the dominant word for that headgear.

So what I did was I created a survey and I put it on the radio show website.

It’s called the Great Knitted Hat Survey.

And I’ve got pictures of hats with a lot of different answers.

And you can go there now, look for the Great Knitted Hat Survey, and take that survey.

And so I’ve got almost a thousand answers at this point to figure out what’s happening with toque and toque and beanie and sock hat and watch cap and skull cap.

Because in my world, beanie is the small skull cap made out of triangular shapes, pieces of fabric that maybe has a button or a propeller in the middle, maybe even a little poof ball.

Yes.

Yeah. Let me ask you, does a toque have a puff ball at the top of it, a little ball or no?

Well, again, that’s kind of like just a style hat.

If it was like little ear flaps and a little ball on top, I’d still call that a toque.

It could also be what most people would call kind of like a skull cap,

Like just a very form-fitting hat that just goes just above your ear, just over your ears.

And that’s a toque to me, and it’s always been a toque.

And then when I’ve heard Beanie, I just looked at them like they were crazy.

You sound like a young man. How old are you?

Yeah, I’m only 26.

Okay, so here’s the thing I discovered I think is true,

That beanie for a kind of knitted hat that keeps your head warm tends to skew super young, like people under 30 and mainly on the West Coast.

But it has made its way eastward to the north through sports, through skating and surfing in particular, but also other kinds of sports.

And it has traveled in all the popular ways that language travels through cool kids and the cool musicians and the cool sports figures and so forth.

So, David, now you know Grant’s biggest question as an adult.

He put a whole survey online, got thousands of results.

Less than a thousand, but yeah, lots of results.

But I’m hoping with this, you’ve given us an opening to talk about.

I’m hoping people will go find the Great Knitted Hat survey.

Just Google that.

It’ll be the first response.

Well, there you go, David.

I hope that helps some.

So, Tuke, you’re fine with.

It’s very Canadian.

I’m not surprised that they use it in Canton, New York,

Given that you guys are a stone’s throw from the border.

Well, yeah, no, it definitely answers my question.

And I’m happy to know it.

Okay.

Cool. Take care, man.

Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call

If you want to talk about language

Or you can send us an email

To words@waywordradio.org

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

In Germany, if you ask someone for a date

And they don’t want to go out with you.

They don’t turn you down.

They give you a basket.

An actual basket?

Yeah, I’m always carrying baskets in Germany.

You know, just for…

No, the phrase is einen Korpgeben.

And it means to give you a basket.

There was a medieval legend about a woman

Who was being courted by this guy

Who wanted to marry her.

And she lived in a castle

And there was a window

And instead of letting her hair down like Rapunzel,

She let down a basket.

And he was supposed to get in the basket

And she was going to haul him up.

It so happened that she decided to turn him down

And so she hauled up the basket halfway

And left him hanging there all night

So that he was made fun of in the morning.

Oh.

Yeah, so if you’re given a basket

When you ask somebody out in Germany,

It means you’ve been turned down.

Well, don’t turn us down.

The invitation’s open, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

The handle Wayword on Twitter.

And we have a really active Facebook group.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hello.

This is John Davis calling from Sparks, Nevada.

Hi, John.

Welcome.

Hi, John.

How are you doing?

Good, thanks.

I’m interested in the word ought.

My dad used it a lot.

He was born in 1900, and when you asked him when he was born, he said ought, ought.

He used it generally quite a bit.

He was from Tennessee.

I was interested and looked it up in a couple of good dictionaries, OED and the Websters,

And couldn’t find it, but I was spelling it with an O.

And then when I realized it, I tried to spell it with an A and found it.

Ought, meaning zero.

Or nothing, right.

Meaning zero.

Most Americans would know it in the designation for weapons, like 30-06.

Right.

Which is 30.06, if you look at it as numerals.

Yeah, it’s interesting.

It probably comes to us as a misdivision, which is when people heard a not,

Because a not, N-O-U-G-H-T, also means a zero or nothing.

And they heard it as two words, but A-N space O-U-G-H-T.

So an ought.

This has only happened a few times in English.

It happened with napron, which became an apron.

You know, the garment you might wear in the kitchen or the tool shop when you’re working to protect your clothes.

And it happened with the snake.

It used to be a natter, and now it’s an adder, A-D-D-E-R.

And it’s really interesting to think about it.

But the whole thing is messed up even more because we have ought, A-U-G-H-T, which mostly means anything.

Like you might say, he didn’t know ought about baking.

You mean he didn’t know anything about baking, but it’s used in negative constructions.

So ought takes a negative kind of value.

Does that make some sense?

Yeah, that’s very interesting.

When I think about it, he did use the term ought.

He used the ought as well as ought?

Yes.

Okay.

Was he American?

He was born and reared in Tennessee.

Tennessee.

Okay.

Interesting.

Now, it’s funny.

I think of people from the early 1900s as using the word ought.

When the 2000s came around, we heard some people try to revive it, but it always seemed pretentious.

And it didn’t seem natural.

No, not authentic at all.

But yeah, that’s cool.

Yeah.

Well, John, glad to help you out with a little bit of history behind the term.

Thanks very much.

I love your etymology on the air.

Thank you very much.

Great.

Take care now.

Good talking with you, John.

Bye-bye.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

I know I’m years behind on this, but I thought it was worth sharing.

I’ve been paying attention to slang on vine and yik-yak recently.

These are different ways of communicating on cell phones.

And I keep seeing I feel you fam show up.

It’s I feel you, sometimes spelled with just the letter U and fam F-A-M.

And it’s what you say to someone who has done something or have dressed a certain way or behaved a certain way that’s like you.

And so you’re saying that you feel like you’re family with them more or less.

So they’re your fam, even though they’re not related to you.

It’s just like you guys are from the same circles, the same type of person.

So let’s say that you.

Barely make it to school, you’re still wearing yesterday’s sweatpants, you forgot all your books, your hair’s a mess, and I’m feeling the same way, I would write on your post,

I might be like, I feel you, fam.

It’s nice, right?

I like it very much.

Yeah, I’m about 10 years behind on that, but whatever.

Really?

It’s worth sharing.

Oh, wow.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Vaughn from Danville, Kentucky.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Well, I was raised up north, and when I was a teenager, my brother married a girl from Selma, Alabama.

And, you know, she was cute as a bug but had a lot of colloquialisms.

And one of them that she used consistently was she would say, oh, we were going to town, we were cutting a rusty.

Or, you know, so-and-so was doing this, and they were cutting a rusty.

And I thought that was just a real, I mean, I kind of had the idea that they were going faster, they were really getting after it,

But just never had heard that expression anywhere, really, but from her or from that area of Alabama.

And I just thought that was, I wonder where that came from.

Yeah, that’s fabulous. A rusty.

A rusty. So there’s a connected history here to some other words that you probably know.

Rusty as a noun in American English is pretty rare at this point, but it just means a prank or some wild behavior or something outrageous that you might do.

It could even just be something as simple as shouting out naughty words or pulling a trick on somebody.

So a rusty is just doing something that’s just not usually permitted or considered proper.

But where rusty comes from is the word resty with an E, R-E-S-T-Y.

And that word is related to restive.

If you have a restive sleep, R-E-S-T-I-V-E, it means you’re tossing and turning, you’re fidgeting.

It’s not a calm sleep at all.

Yeah, you’re not really getting rest.

You’re not really getting rest.

And what happened with the word restive, originally restive applied to horses,

It underwent what one of the dictionary calls a reversal, where originally it meant just standing stock still.

But if you’ve ever seen a horse stand still, their flanks and their muscles will do this quivering thing.

It looks like they’ve got pent-up energy they need to get out or maybe they want to shake off the flies.

It flipped and restive came to mean fidgety or active or just looking like you needed to get out and run.

And that later became applied to people.

It underwent this transformation when it became a noun to refer to an act of, let’s say, running or being aggressive or being really full of motion and life and vitality and pranks and so forth.

Interesting.

It’s a strange path, though, isn’t it?

Yes, very strange.

Well, there you go.

It goes back about 200 years, the noun form of rusty.

And originally comes out probably from horses and dealing with animals.

So is it used anywhere else in the states?

Yeah, it’s found throughout the south, mainly Tennessee, Kentucky.

Occasionally it will pop up in places north of the Ohio River, but usually it’s the southern states.

Yeah, so I’m not surprised the person from Alabama was saying it.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

Very interesting.

Cool.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Take care now.

All right.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye-bye.

This is a show where it’s not rare to find that a word has a 200-year history with twists and turns.

Call us to find out more, 877-929-9673, email words@waywordradio.org, or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

You know when somebody thinks they’re the bee’s knees, they just think they’re God’s gift to whatever.

Yeah, kind of full of themselves.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There’s a great expression that comes from Northern Ireland that goes, she thinks she’s no goat’s toe.

No goat’s toe. I can’t even begin to think out the reason why that’s the expression.

I’m thinking it’s a goat’s toe would be sort of low and mean and dirty.

Touches the ground.

Dirty, and she’s no goat’s toe.

That was sent to us by Karen Dilla of Vancouver, Canada.

Thanks, Karen.

If you’ve got one to send us, the email address is words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty path.

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Human communication. The show’s coming to you

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Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye-bye.

So long.