Highway Robbery (episode #1626)

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. What happens if you depluralize the title of a book?

You get some pretty intriguing titles that suggest some stories that could be really interesting to read. For example, you take Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and that becomes Little Woman. So it’s more than just dropping off the S.

That makes me think of Ralph Cramden talking about his wife. Oh, the little woman.

The grapes of wrath become the grape of wrath, you know, just one very angry grape.

Right, a giant grape that took over Hoboken.

Exactly.

Well, listeners on our Facebook group were talking about this, and they came up with a lot of great examples.

One of my favorites is a crow on the Orient Express.

Oh, clever. A crow on the Orient Express. What would that be about?

That would be about a crow in a little top hat and a cane seeking passage and being refused a dining car.

Walking down the aisle. I can see it.

And how about where the wild thing is?

That’s like something you go to your dermatologist. I’ve got this hair that just itches and I can’t reach it.

Very good.

And how about this one, Lion and Prejudice?

Oh, Lion instead of Pride and Prejudice, kind of like the Murder Crow thing.

Lion and Prejudice, this is sequel number 15 for The Lion King.

Right.

The Lion runs into Prejudice.

Right, and deals with it on this very special ABC episode.

We’d love to hear what books you’ve invented when you make them singular instead of plural.

You can let us know in email words@waywordradio.org.

And heck, we’d love to talk to you about books and language and slang and new words and old.

You can find tons of ways to reach us on our website. That’s waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Emily. I am in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Welcome, Emily. What can we do for you?

Yeah, we were listening to the segment on PR, and we heard you guys talking about the phrases, and there were a bunch of cows.

We were on a long cross-country road trip, and we saw all these windmills, and I was like, oh, holy cow, you know, and my friend Isabel, co-pilot, was like, oh, yeah, I wonder what that comes from, and so we had the right idea to call you guys.

We’re curious, where does the phrase holy cow come from?

Do you have guesses?

I mean, of course, I assume it’s some type of religious thing. I’m pretty sure in India, the cow is seen like as a holy animal. But that’s the biggest guess I’ve got.

Yeah, that’s it.

And that’s usually what people suspect, but they don’t know the details.

The story here is fairly straightforward. Holy cow became an expression of surprise or delight by the early 1900s and was often associated with sports, especially baseball. And that continued for a long time.

Some of our listeners will definitely remember Phil Rizzuto or Harry Coray using holy cow when they were doing baseball’s play-by-play.

But originally what it started out as was a kind of a complicated minced oath, as they’re called, where to avoid swearing or saying Jesus or God or Lord or Christ, you say something else with the same emphatic force.

So you kind of get the relief of almost cursing without actually cursing.

And that last word, Christ, is what’s happening here. Holy cow is a way of saying holy Christ without saying Christ.

And it just so happens, because bovines are sacred in Hinduism, you have that extra meaning there. But it didn’t require that the Hinduism connection exists for holy cow to have its own life as an exclamation, just like holy Moses or holy smoke.

Okay. That makes sense then.

Yeah, and there was, surprisingly, although it was never all that common, using cow, just the word cow alone as an exclamation, substituting for the word God goes back to the 1860s, even before we know holy cow in print.

So that already existed, just a way of, again, suggesting God without saying God.

Cow! It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Yeah, I did not know that that was like another reference for God. That’s interesting.

Oh, there are so many of these minced oaths. I think if you search our website, you’ll probably come up with a good dozen or more segments of the show where we’ve talked about all the different ways we do mild swearing without actually offending anyone.

Right. That’s perfect.

Is that how you do it, Emily?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I was the one in the car screaming, holy cow.

Well, Emily, happy travels.

Yeah. Happy travels. Let’s talk again sometime.

Okay.

Thanks so much, you guys.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye.

Well, we’d be delighted if you called us. 877-929-9673.

Grant, I recently learned the meaning of the term sun grin.

That was a new one on me.

Do you know this one?

Sun grin?

Sun grin?

Is this the way that you squint when you don’t have sunglasses in order to close your eyes but still see a little bit?

That is exactly it.

Oh, it is?

It’s the grimace you make to keep the sun out of your eyes.

Yes, or as the Dictionary of American Regional English defines it, an involuntary squinting expression caused by bright sunlight, a fixed or humorless grin.

So that was the other part that I liked about it is that, you know, even if you’re not in bright sunlight, you know that kind of grin where somebody is just sort of grinning and bearing it.

Resting grin face.

Resting grin face.

Yeah.

But they’re not finding any humor in whatever you’re saying.

Not at all.

They’re looking at you with a sun grin.

English is robust and plentiful.

And we’d love to talk to you about your part of it.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673. That’s toll free in the United States and Canada.

And if you’re somewhere else in the world, there are other ways to reach us.

You can find them on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, hello, good morning. This is Rebecca. I’m calling from Wisconsin.

I have a word. And the back story is I was in the kitchen putting away leftovers with my husband. And I said to him, I’ve got a little nurdle of meatloaf here. Should I, you know, stick it in the fridge or give it to the dog?

And he laughed and he said, do you know, you are the only person I’ve ever heard use that word. And I said, what word? And he said, nurdle. I was like, no, that can’t be right. I use it all the time.

So I started to ask my family, my friends. And as it turns out, I could not find a single person who uses that word. And then I thought, I got a little paranoid. I thought, is it even a word? Did I make it up? I’m not that clever.

So I just would like to know if you know the word nurdle and where it comes from.

Rebecca, we can assure you that you’re not alone. You’re not the only nerd who uses nurdle.

Good, good. I am not the only person on the planet.

No, no, no. And this is a safe space for people like you, Rebecca.

Good.

But I should ask, how are you spelling it?

I spell it N-E-R-D-L-E.

Okay. N-E-R-D-L-E. Because a lot of people spell it N-U-R-D-L-E.

You can find examples of people using the word nurdle for bits of styrofoam packing material, little crusty bits of something, little greebles you find in your pocket.

Some people use the term for, you know, just a thingamabob, a what’s it, a dumaflatchy.

You might also hear the word nurdle used more often now with the U spelling, N-U-R-D-L-E, to denote little pellets that are used in the production of plastic.

They’re about the size of a pea or a lentil. And that’s showing up in the news a whole lot more because it turns out that that kind of nurdle is a huge source of pollution.

Oh.

Yeah, sometimes like container ships will sink and billions of them will be released into the ocean. They’ll show up in the bodies of sea creatures and the surfaces of them collect harmful bacteria and then they pile up on the beaches. They’re just bad news.

And one more use of the word nurdle that might be related since the 1960s or so. It’s been used to denote that waved-shaped dab of toothpaste that you put on your toothbrush.

Oh, that’s a nurdle.

That is a nurdle.

That’s a nurdle.

Yeah, we probably have listeners who are old enough to remember Vote Toothpaste, which was sold in the 1960s.

And they would advertise that by saying, put a nurdle of vote on your toothbrush.

How about that?

Well, I’m old enough to remember it, but I don’t remember it.

But that’s, see, that’s always something, for me, it’s always something kind of gloppy or soft, you know, but not liquid.

You can have a nurdle of ice cream, but you couldn’t have a nurdle of milk.

So, yeah, that fits with the toothpaste thing, kind of squishy.

Yeah, so we don’t know the origin of it, but maybe some ad executive came up with a nurdle of toothpaste,

And it took off from there.

We don’t really know.

One theory about it is that it comes as a kind of corrupted pronunciation of the word nodule,

N-O-D-U-L-E, meaning a knot or a knob or a round thing.

That would make sense.

I just have to educate my family and friends, you know, so they use it too,

Because it’s a very useful word.

Indeed.

Yeah, whether you’re talking about little food scraps or toothpaste or whatever.

We appreciate your call and your time, Rebecca. Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

All right. Be well. Take care.

Take care. Bye.

You know, Grant, there was actually a lawsuit involving the word nurdle that was between two toothpaste companies.

And they actually define what a nurdle is in the text of this lawsuit.

It defines nurdle as a small amount of toothpaste akin to what consumers would use when brushing their teeth.

Because you may remember Aquafresh, the toothpaste, has a picture of a toothbrush with a nurdle on it.

Right, that weighty-shaped, S-shaped thing.

Right.

And they were accusing Colgate of co-opting that image.

And so there was a fight in court, I think around 2010.

Around the appearance of toothpaste on a toothbrush.

Yes, yes.

And a slogan that they used.

The world knows no boundaries when it comes to nonsense that we consume about.

Nerdles.

This is the place to get your nerdles satisfied.

You got a little nerdle of information that you want to know.

We are loaded with nerdles.

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

More about what you say and why you say it. Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Paridon.

Here he is, John Janeski, our quiz guy, wearing a T-shirt that says,

I went to where and all I got was this lousy T-shirt?

I went crazy and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.

That’s it, yeah.

Actually, where I went to was the science museum, and I got inspired.

It’s science time.

One of the key elements of living things is how cells divide into more cells,

And all of this is going on inside you right now.

Let’s take that idea and apply it to words.

We’ll start with a simple three-letter word like cot, C-O-T.

Now, if the vowel inside it divides, we’ll get the word coot.

Any old coot will tell you that.

I’ll give you a sentence that will clue two words.

One is a word with a single vowel inside it.

The other is the same word with a double version of that same vowel.

Now, words like let and leet, but we won’t use versions of the same word like met and meet.

That’s cheating.

Now, bear in mind, the vowel that will split in these words is either an E or an O.

The only word I could find with a vowel A that could split is nah.

So, nah.

We’re just using E and O.

Yeah, it doesn’t work.

Here we go.

When I was a kid in the 50s, we’d go to a dance or play ring toss.

Go to a dance or play ring toss.

You’d go to a hop and toss hoops.

Yes, a hoop and a hop.

Hop and hoop.

There we go.

We divide the O.

If he invites you aboard his sailboat, just look out.

The food is awful.

If he invites you aboard his sailboat, just look out.

The food is awful.

Yeah.

So an E or an O word.

Sailboat.

Sloop and slop.

Oh, good one.

Yes, the slop is aboard the sloop.

Very good.

Yeah, it’s some milestone when your little girl reaches double digits, but just wait three years.

Ten and teen.

Yes, ten and teen. Very good.

Look, this tree has deteriorated so much we’ll have to dig it out from all the way underground.

Oh, rot and root.

Yes, rot and root. Very good.

My toddler has so much get up and go, I’m a little suspicious if I hear nary a sound from their room.

Nary a sound from their room.

Which would be a peep, and he’s got a lot of pep.

Yes, get up and go is pep, and then nary a sound.

Sound is peep.

That’s usually what you hear from a toddler’s room.

And finally, my shirt came with that little thing on the back to let you hang it on your locker.

I hate that.

I’m going to cut it right off.

Oh.

Lop the loop.

You’re going to lop the loop.

Yes.

Very good.

You’re going to lop that loop.

Very good.

John, thank you so much for jumping through the hoops to hop on with us.

Really appreciate it.

Oh, very nice.

Thank you, guys.

I’ll see you next time.

Bye-bye.

You doubled our fun.

And you can double your fun by calling us, 877-929-9673.

We talk about all kinds of language.

So give us a call or send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi Martha. Hello, Grant.

Hello, who’s this?

My name’s Lizzie. I’m calling from Bromsgrove, the Midlands in England.

That’s great to talk with you. What’s on your mind today, Lizzie?

Well, I was interested in a certain phrase that I first heard when I moved to Yorkshire.

I was near Leeds for about 10 years and my friends, because we were young professionals and barely had a sofa between us, if somebody took your nice warm spot on the sofa when you meant to make a cup of tea, they would say, would you jump in my grave as quick?

And I thought that was an interesting expression, but I’d never heard it from Stratford-upon-Avon where I was born and grew up.

And obviously it’s rhetorical, and the answer is no, I wouldn’t jump in your grave at all.

But I can’t, I don’t know, because obviously a sofa is a lovely, warm, comfortable spot,

Whereas a grave is not.

But I don’t know if you’re supposed to jump in the grave because you love them so much,

And it would be okay if you take my seat if you love me that much that you would jump in my grave.

I don’t know.

So I thought you guys might.

So I’m hearing a little bit of a tone of how dare you take my spot.

Exactly. Yes, it’s very bad.

Yes.

Oh, it’s funny.

That expression has never really been all that common,

But it is British, and it’s also American.

You will find it on both sides of the Atlantic.

Does that mean that it’s old, then?

Yeah, yeah, as early as 1919.

I found it in an Irish newspaper.

So it looks like it’s not specific to Yorkshire,

Because you do find it in Scotland and Ireland

And sprinkled throughout the United Kingdom,

And you find it sprinkled throughout the United States,

But just never really that common.

I do see it show up in fiction in the last 20 years,

Mostly American fiction,

And it looks like they probably have just borrowed it

From a book of idioms or sayings or something

To give some color to their writing.

But you would find it, if you ever saw the movie,

Hot Fuzz.

Yes, yes.

Love it.

This expression is used in the movie Hot Fuzz, which is a great movie.

And the book by Jojo Moyes, Me Before You, which was very well received, got great reviews.

She uses it as well.

So it’s not specific to Yorkshire and not specific to sofas either, right?

No, any place that you vacated and somebody else tries to take.

Oh, thank you so much.

I’m going to go and watch Hot Fuzz now and see if I can spot the line.

Because I thought I knew every line in that film.

Oh, it’s a good one, right?

Always worth a rewatch.

Thank you so much, both of you.

And keep up the good work.

Love the show.

Thank you so much, Lizzie.

Bye-bye.

Take care. Bye.

We heard from Mick Veeham in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

He wrote us that when he was a teenager, he spent summers working with a handyman from Texas, and that job involved a lot of heavy lifting, literally.

And Mick writes, as we would be getting set to lift some monstrosity of an item, he would say something like, son, get your legs under it.

You don’t want to strain your milk.

And Mick said that he’d never heard that expression before or since, but apparently it’s a thing.

Apparently a lot of people say, you don’t want to strain your milk, don’t strain your milk.

And what do they mean by that? Just the place where your milk goes, the abdomen?

You don’t want to strain your abdominal muscles?

You know, I haven’t been able to figure that one out, except that apparently it’s used by a lot of farmers.

And it might just be a pun on straining your milk, which you do on a dairy farm.

There’s no heavy lifting and you won’t strain your milk if you call us at 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Zach from Tallahassee, Florida.

I just had a question about John Doe.

No idea where that name came from.

It just seems like a funky name to pick out of the blue for an unnamed person.

Where did you pick it up? Why did it come to mind?

Curiosity, I guess.

It is a strange one. And what’s even stranger is how far back it goes, at least to the 1300s.

Wow.

Part of English law, kind of based on the Magna Carta, which was, if you remember, set up in 1215, the year 1215.

There was a need there specifically for witnesses for certain kinds of legal action.

And what happened is by the 1300, there’s a certain kind of land-related legal matter that basically evolved getting your land back, where in order to do it most expeditiously, the John Doe and the name Richard Rowe, R-O-E, were used to make the case with minimal fuss.

So John Doe was used for the plaintiff, the person bringing the suit, and Richard Rowe was used as the defendant.

And sometimes these names were used for witnesses.

And what it meant was that this case could just like kind of sail through the legal process.

Because no real witnesses or defendants were actually named or called.

No evidence was being given.

And the person who should have been named as the defendant wasn’t there to respond.

It was kind of this fishy, scammy way of winning a case.

Because if the person you’re suing doesn’t know that you’re suing them, and you’re using a pseudonym for them in the legal documents, then how are they going to appear to defend themselves?

Wow. I didn’t realize it had such a shady origin.

Oh, totally shady.

I guess, do you have any idea why it was still, I mean, still like Richard Rowe and John Doe?

Oh, yeah, and there are more names, too, and I’ll get to those in a minute.

Well, the loophole was basically closed in the mid-1800s in England, and we inherit a lot of our legal basis from England.

And so those names stuck around, though, to fill in kind of the gap when you don’t know the name of a person, or in order to give them safety or security, you just use John Doe or Richard Rowe in place of their real names, even if you do actually know their name, so that other people can’t pressure them if they’re witnesses or do something evil to them so that they won’t actually continue their suit.

Of course, Jane Doe and Jane Rowe are now used, now that women have the right to bring suits.

But there were other names too, like Peter Poe, P-O-E, which we don’t use anymore.

And if you look in legal books and documents written in Latin from the 1600s, you’ll find these names and more.

So John Doe there is often spelled D-O-O and Richard Rowe is R-O-O.

There’s also John Den and Richard Fenn.

And sometimes they’re very Latinized.

There’s Johannem Do and Richardem Do and Johannes Hunt and Johannes Den and Richard Fenn.

There’s also John Noakes, N-O-A-K-E-S, or John O. Noakes and Tom Stiles.

So lots of these names, most of them no longer use, but they were used in that same way, just to give cover or provide pseudonyms for somebody who wanted them or needed them.

That’s really cool. Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate you guys diving in and getting into the origin of where this came from.

Yeah, our pleasure. Take care. Be well.

All right. You too. Bye now.

Bye, Zach.

Yeah, I find it fascinating that there were so many other names that John Doe just seems to be the one that’s left standing along with Richard Rowe and a couple of others.

That’s really fascinating because I always wondered why in the world would John be named after a female animal?

It made no sense to me.

I think the clues and one of the names that I didn’t say when that was John Hunt.

And so a doe was an incredibly common animal for you to think about and pursue because, you know, food on the table.

So I’m not surprised at all that it might be used.

But you might think it was John Stagg.

John Stagg.

Other than John Doe.

That’s true.

I just don’t know.

By the way, this is a question.

Do you know the Roman equivalent of John Doe and Richard Rowe?

John Doe.

These anonymous names that you use because there’s no point in naming specific people.

They’re just kind of catch-all placeholder names.

Yeah.

One of them was Titius, right?

Right.

Titius, T-I-T-I-U-S, and Saeus, S-E-I-U-S.

And so you will find that in ancient Roman documents where they’re talking about if two men named Titius and Saeus did the following, then they would be prosecuted according to these following rules and laws.

How about that?

There’s often a story behind these everyday words, and it’s not until you ask the question that you can begin to find the answer.

So ask the question of us.

Our phone number is 877-929-9673.

That’s toll-free in the United States and Canada.

And if you’re somewhere else in the world or you want to reach us another way, there are more than a dozen ways to reach us on our website.

Go to waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Abhishek. How are you guys?

Hi, Abhishek. Doing great. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Gaffney, South Carolina.

Gaffney, South Carolina. Well, what can we do for you?

I was talking to one of my friends, Tony. He was moving from his house in Augusta.

And when we were talking about, you know, the logistics of the whole move, and, you know, like I remarked that it usually takes longer to load stuff into like a U-Haul or a box truck, right?

And we were kind of like, yeah, you know, it does take a little longer.

And while saying that, I remarked like, so, yeah, I guess it’s like we are Tetris-ing all these small items in this constrained area, right?

Like packing it all in.

And that kind of got both of us thinking like, hey, I don’t know if that’s a real word, you know, tetrising, but is there another word that can be used in this context where we are packing things in a small area?

And, you know, if there is any other history to it, because I kind of made that up.

I think Tetris-ing is a wonderful word for trying to arrange a whole bunch of things in a small area.

And how long ago was this that you two were doing that?

Yeah, this was about maybe three months ago now.

And, you know, we were kind of talking about it.

And one of the days he remarked, you know, I’ve been thinking about that word and I think it really fits well.

Like, you know, I agree it fits well, but I don’t know if it is right.

Yeah, it literally fits well.

There’s a self-Tetris-ing word.

Yeah, it literally fits well.

Wait, so let’s be clear for everyone who’s maybe not quite getting what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about the video game Tetris, T-E-T-R-I-S, and it’s all about putting cubes together and packing them in so that your stack doesn’t build too close to the top of the screen and you lose.

Right. There are blocks falling down from the top of your screen in different combinations, and you have to combine them as they’re piling up.

And it’s really satisfying, isn’t it, Abhishek, when you get them to click?

Yeah.

It is.

Yeah.

And especially in a moving context.

Absolutely.

You know, you have all these randomly shaped things. There are some in moving boxes, some weird shaped lamps, and, you know, maybe two curtain rods that don’t really fit anywhere. And you sort of figure it all out and then you pack it all in.

It’s a little longer to pack. But when you’re unpacking, it’s a lot easier.

Exactly. Yes.

And I think Tetris-ing is a wonderful word. I asked how long ago you used it because it’s been in use for at least a couple of decades. I know the game itself, Tetris, was invented back in the mid-80s. But what’s happening here is something that linguists call denominalization.

Actually, about one out of every five verbs in English is formed from a noun. And anybody who disagrees with us can phone us or email us or text us. But why disagree? Because it’s going to happen without you.

Yeah.

With or without you.

Yeah.

So, so Tetris-ing, although it hasn’t made it into lots of dictionaries yet, it’s this wonderfully efficient and effective and vivid verb. So you were using a denominal verb. And I think it works really well.

I was using Jenga the other day.

Oh, yeah.

Piling up.

That’s another great game.

Yeah.

Nobody here at the house wanted to take out the recycling, and it just kept, you know, the pile kept getting bigger and bigger, and I just referred to it as our Jenga.

Yeah.

I might use that one next.

There you go.

You know, there was one other meeting of two Tetris that started out very early in the history of people becoming just obsessed with the video game. And this is how after you play the game for a while and you move off into the real world, you want to do the same thing with everything in the real world. You want to consolidate and combine anything and everything just like the Tetris game.

And so you just keep looking at things, even if they’re none of your business, and saying, I could rearrange the shelves of this grocery store a lot better. These canned goods aren’t how they need to be.

Yep.

You start looking at shapes and patterns.

Yeah, so you’re tetracized is a word that you can find even earlier than the meaning of tetracing that we’re talking about. To be tetracized means to have this basic principle, this conceit of the game to overtake your real world view.

It was great talking to you guys, and I love the show.

Yeah, take care. We appreciate it.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Yeah, thank you.

877-929-9673.

And if you’re not a phone kind of person, we’ll do WhatsApp too. You can find that on our website at waywordradio.org.

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.

In the late 1800s, an entrepreneur named Fred Harvey started a chain of Harvey House restaurants. These were at railroad stops across the American West. And the waitresses who worked there had a special outfit of long black dresses that were no more than eight inches above the floor, a starched white apron, black stockings and shoes, and a white bow in their hair.

And Judy Garland played one of these waitresses in the 1946 movie, The Harvey Girls. Now, each Harvey girl received six weeks of training. And one of the things that they learned during that training was the cup code.

And it went like this. Once the patrons were seated, the Harvey girl would ask if they preferred coffee, hot tea, milk, or iced tea. And then after that, she’d go around the table and slightly move each diner’s coffee cup. And then she’d leave, and another waitress would immediately arrive. And without even asking, she went around and poured each diner’s preferred drink.

And that’s because the second server was able to read the code left by the first one. And this was the code. If the coffee cup was right side up in its saucer, then the person got coffee. If it was upside down, they got hot tea. If it was upside down but tilted against the saucer, then they got iced tea. And if the cup was placed upside down away from the saucer, then that person was given milk.

And, you know, Grant, that helped ensure efficiency because if you have a train stopping there and it’s disgorging dozens of passengers who have to finish their meal in time to get back on, you want to make sure that you get those people in and out very, very quickly without making them feel rushed.

That’s so amazing.

I love that idea. These secret codes that just belong to the interior of a business that just make things go more smoothly. And we have in regular life, outside of being a Harvey girl, we have codes like that, right? If I turn my wine glass over, that means don’t serve me. Or your coffee, you can turn that over and say don’t serve it.

But also there’s the color coding that comes with caff and decaf coffee on the server’s end. The orange being coded as decaf. Just all these little bits of signals that we can send to relay more information.

Yeah, I’m wondering if there are other codes like that in businesses and workplaces that maybe our listeners could tell us about.

Oh, yeah. We’d love to hear about those secret signals that you pass to coworkers to say a thing without saying a thing.

877-929-9673.

Or tell us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. This is Ryan Farrell from West Bolton, Vermont. How are you guys?

Hi, Ryan. Welcome to the show. We’re doing great.

Both my parents grew up on a farm, and I’m the first generation to not be a farmer. But I still have a little bit of that knowledge that you just kind of learn along the way. And I was thinking about that fact because I was explaining to my kids one time about a harrow. You know, you got plows and tedders and you got harrows. And the job of a harrow is to break up the dirt clods.

And I was thinking to myself that if I was a dirt clod and I went through a harrow, the farmer came along with a harrow, you know, a spring-tooth harrow, a disc harrow, whatever. I would get all beat up and it would be kind of a harrowing experience. And that made me wonder, is there a relationship between the noun of a harrow and the adjective of a harrow?

Yes. Thanks for calling.

But wait, there’s more.

It’s the origin of it. It really is. The idea is that this tool, which has disks or spikes, breaks up the soil. It pulls up roots and rocks. You know, you’re preparing the soil for agriculture. But if you can imagine that happening to you, it would literally cut you. It would literally break you up or break you just as the soil is broken by a harrow.

So that is why it’s called harrowing.

Absolutely.

Which came first? The farming tool, the harrow. There is another harrowing in English, but it’s rarely used. And even though it’s negative and on the surface seems like it could come from the same root as the other harrow or harrowing, it doesn’t. It’s related to the word harry, meaning to harass or chase or attack, bother, annoy, that sort of thing.

But an older use of it is to raid. And in religious context and religious circles, they probably would know of the harrowing of hell, which is a time when Jesus was said to plunder hell and rob it of all of its souls and take them back. But that is a different harrowing. It’s not the same harrowing.

Even though they’re close and even though it’s like this kind of moment in both of them, they’re not the same. English is just, you can’t trust English. You really can’t.

We have yet another harrow for you. Because an old word for harrow is hearse. And that’s where we get to rehearse. It’s literally to rake over.

Whoa.

Going over something again and again. Rake over, turn over. How about them apples?

That’s not at all what I was expecting you to say today, Martha.

Well, I’m full of surprises.

Well, that’s awesome. Thank you guys so much. I love your show. I listen to it so often, and I’m finally getting my kids into it, too.

Oh, that’s great.

Yeah, we have a lot of kid listeners.

Lot of families listening together and we appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today, Ryan.

Thank you both. All right, be well. Thanks for calling. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I love that so rehearse.

Means to rake over, to re-rake, to like, yeah, that’s very good. I love that etymology. Who knew? We should

Do a show about it. Oh, that’s a great idea. Oh, maybe we could start with having folks call us

877-929-9673 or send your stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

We had a conversation a while ago about the confusion of losing an entire day when you’re

Traveling between time zones. You remember that one, Grant? Yeah, yeah, just how to explain that.

How do you do past and future when you’ve lost a day?

Right.

And people were trying to come up with different words for that feeling.

And some people suggested groundhogging or deja noon.

That prompted a call from Quincy Howard, who had a suggestion that actually she made up in her sleep.

She has an app that records her when she’s sleep talking and she goes back and listens to it the next day.

And apparently in her sleep she just came up with the term time-boggling, which I love. Time-boggling.

I want to know what else Quincy says in her sleep, but time-boggling I think is perfect.

Yeah, i I took a time-boggling trip to Japan. Yes, right. I don’t have to get specific about it, but

You just know that the length of the trip and crossing the date line was very confusing.

You can talk to us on social media. We’re on all the big platforms and a bunch of small ones.

Find those links and addresses on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. It’s Damon from Longmont, Colorado.

Longmont, Colorado. Hi, Damon.

So recently I was on a little road trip up here in the mountains and I stopped to get gas.

And this older gentleman was talking to me while we were gassing up and he started talking about the gas prices.

And he said, you know, it’s highway robbery what they’re charging us up here.

And, you know, I knew what he meant.

And I’ve heard the term highway robbery used many times before.

But it got me thinking as to why we call it highway robbery.

Like, is it because when you’re traveling, the gas stations know that they kind of have a captive audience so they can charge whatever they want?

Or is there kind of a, because there’s kind of a nuance to the term that means you have to pay like you don’t have a choice.

But then I wondered if it went maybe even farther back than just traveling by car to, like, when people would have to travel by carriage through the countryside and risk, you know, robbery out in the wilds of the woods, like you’d see in an old Robin Hood movie or Western.

But what I concluded was that, if anyone knows, it’s Martha and Grant.

So here I am.

You’re right.

It’s way older than gas stations.

It does indeed go back centuries.

The term highway robbery has its roots in the late 1600s.

And as you suggested, yes, this was a time when the highways in and out of London and other towns were very poorly lit.

You know, there’s no artificial light at all and they lacked policing.

And so if you traveled outside the city at night, you were taking a tremendous risk.

And at that time, there were highway robbers who would ride up on horseback and they’d point a pistol at you and demand your money.

And I’m going to get back to that demand in a second.

But I wanted to tell you about these robbers.

They were considered a higher class of criminals than the folks in the city.

They weren’t just involved in petty thievery or coming up behind you and mugging you on the street.

These were robbers on horseback, and they were daring and confrontational, and a lot of them were flamboyant.

And in the 17th and 18th centuries, they became these objects of kind of fascination and figures of romance.

And there were ballads and plays and poems written about them.

And it had to do in part with the fact that they had something of a code of honor.

They aspired to be the gentlemen of the road or the knights of the road.

And they usually let their victims go after robbing them if they turned over their valuables.

And usually they left poorer folks alone and robbed the wealthy folk, the folk who could travel outside of the city.

You know, a corrupt innkeeper might tip off a highwayman and say, you know, this wealthy family is going to be traveling by night toward Brighton or such and such a place.

And so you can take advantage of them then.

And so this term highway robbery arose very shortly thereafter.

The first term was highway robber, then highway robbery.

And I mentioned the phrase that they used when they stopped a carriage.

And this is really cool because they would point a pistol at the occupants and say, stand and deliver.

And sometimes they would say, your money or your life.

Those phrases go back to that.

And later, by the late 1700s, there was so much associated with the term highway robbery that it came to have this more general meaning of just an outrageously high fee.

There was so much mythology around this term.

And so it came to mean blatantly overcharging.

Good to know.

Now I know next time I’m getting gas

That I’m being robbed by a higher, more noble robber.

Well, I wouldn’t go that far.

I wouldn’t go that far, Damon.

But I tell you, I used the term highway robbery

Just this past week when I was paying for parking

In downtown San Diego.

The words came out of my mouth

And it’s kind of amazing that it goes back

Hundreds and hundreds of years.

That is really cool to know.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you.

Thanks for calling.

Call us again sometime, Damon.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Be well.

You are welcome to call us up and see what we can say about what you say.

877-929-9673.

We heard from Brent Williams, who says that his grandmother from Kentucky was fond of the phrase, your feet don’t fit a limb.

As in a limb of being one of your legs?

No.

Or a limb on a tree?

A limb on a tree.

It was her response whenever anyone said, who, me?

And Brent says, it took me and my brothers an embarrassing amount of time to realize that it was a reference to an owl.

You know, you say, who, me?

Oh, gotcha.

I looked this up.

This is actually a phrase that plenty of people use.

When somebody says, who? Me?

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tammy. I’m calling from Atlanta.

Welcome to the show, Tammy. What can we do for you?

Well, my father-in-law, who is 97 years old, he’s a World War II vet.

He grew up in Louisiana, and he has all these one-liners that just baffle me.

So he’s got this phrase that he says quite a bit to me, and it is,

Too much sugar for a dime.

Too much sugar for a dime.

Too much sugar for a dime.

He says, that’s too much sugar for a dime.

And I’m like, what do you mean by that?

And then he’d say, well, that’s just what my mama says.

He says, that’s just too much sugar for a dime.

And my husband and I have tried to talk about it with him and have him explain it.

And he just can’t seem to give us a good, well, one that makes sense, a meaning that makes sense to me.

So I’m hoping you can help.

And do you have a guess what that means?

Well, contextually, I will be saying to him, like, you know, I’m going to be doing this, that, and the other thing.

And he says, oh, that’s just too much sugar for a dime.

And I’m like, when I think about it, I’d like to think I’m an educated woman.

When I think about it, it’s like, well, maybe it’s just too much bother for what it’s worth.

Or, you know, you’re putting too much into it and you’re not going to get much reward from it.

Yes.

But to me, if I’m paying a dime, I’m a sugar sweet freak.

So too much sugar for a dime is a really, can you get too much sugar for a dime?

I don’t know.

Because I love food.

It depends whether or not you’re the merchant who has to fork it over for the small amount of money.

That is a different perspective.

Yes, it is.

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

But meaning is right. My meaning is correct.

Yeah, it’s the idea that something’s more trouble than it’s worth.

It’s an odd phrase in that it’s sort of opaque, as you suggested.

But I think most people use it to mean that something’s more trouble than it’s worth.

And variations of it are too much sugar for a cent or too much sugar for a nickel.

But I think the more common one is too much sugar for a dime.

But I will say that there are some people who use too much sugar for a dime to express skepticism.

You know, something’s just too, too.

It’s unbelievable and you can’t trust it.

And it’s an old expression.

It goes back to the 19th century in this country.

Yeah, 1830s is where I found it in the form too much sugar stick for a scent.

So sugar stick is just a kind of candy.

Yeah, for a scent.

So that’s where it kind of goes back in the 30s.

Yeah, you will find dime, cent, nickel, penny, or even shilling used in the expression.

Well, he was born in 1926.

So he’s seen a lot and he’s lived a lot.

And he’s got so many.

And I’m from the north.

So I’m not used to all these southern phrases.

And he’s got so many hair on a frog and something.

He’s got so many little one-liners that he says to me that I can’t keep up with them all.

But that’s the one that he says the most often.

Have you heard the one about a hair on a frog?

Yeah, yeah.

Grant and I are feeling finer than frog’s hair.

There you go.

That’s it.

Finer than frog hair.

I’m like, frogs don’t even have hair.

What are you talking about?

There we go.

So we’re super fine.

Exactly.

He’s a smart guy, Tammy.

He’s a smart guy.

Oh, I’ll start writing them down, and I’ll be emailing them into you or sending them into you because they are – he is full of them.

He’s full of them.

I’m just going to have to write them down.

Okay.

Tammy, thank you so much for sharing this one with us.

We really appreciate it.

Well, thank you for helping me figure it out.

All right.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

1-877-929-9673.

After our conversation about funny names for streets and roads,

We had a voicemail from Hannah Fargiora, and Hannah points out that in Philadelphia they have Road Street.

Now that’s spelled R-H-O-A-D-S, Street, Rhodes Street, but they also have Street Road.

That must be so confusing.

I’m imagining a male person’s first day on the job.

Yeah.

Are you kidding?

Are you guys, is this a hazing ritual?

Yeah.

Send us email, words@waywordradio.org.

Our team includes senior producer Stefanie Levine, engineer and editor Tim Felten, and quiz guide John Chaneski.

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Or send your thoughts to words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.,

A nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.