Hot Mess

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.

Let’s say you’re doing a transaction online, and you get to that part where you’re supposed to check the box that says, I have read the terms and conditions. Do you really stop and read the terms and conditions?

No! It’s anti-American. It’s like a novella in there. Who’s going to read that?

I know.

I just bought a piece of software that I’m waiting to use. I’m really excited. I have a project I’m working on.

Right.

No, I’m not reading the book.

Well, it’s not just in this country.

A couple of years ago, a security firm set up a Wi-Fi hotspot in London, and anybody was free to go and use this service, but the terms and conditions included language indicating that the users agreed to sign over their firstborn child, quote, for the duration of eternity.

How many people did it?

How many people clicked the box?

Not that many, but some people did.

I’d be surprised it wasn’t all of them.

Right? I know.

When’s the last time you stopped and read all of those terms and conditions?

Well, maybe the software stuff is easier than the—the Wi-Fi always feels a little dicey.

You don’t know that you’re connecting to a real network, right?

Oh, you’ve trained me about Wi-Fi, yeah.

Yeah, you just don’t know what you’re passing through the traffic.

Yeah.

But where are all those children now?

Good question.

It turns out it was a stunt by a security firm to raise awareness about the importance of reading fine print.

But what’s interesting to me is the term that they use for this sneaky contract language.

They called it the Herod Clause.

Herod, as in the department store?

No, no.

The biblical dude.

The biblical dude.

The bad guy.

H-E-R-O-D.

He’s like the baddest of the bad in the Bible, right?

Oh, he was terrible.

He was the bad guy who ordered the deaths of all the young males in Bethlehem because he’d heard another king was.

Yes, the firstborn.

Yeah.

Okay.

Herod Claus.

Herod Claus.

The world of language is super interesting, and that’s what we talk about on this show.

If you want to find out more, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Send your questions and stories and comments and jokes and everything else to us in email.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary Jo West in Phoenix.

Hello, Mary Jo. Welcome to the show.

Hi.

I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Oh, well, we’re happy to have you on the line. What’s up?

Well, I grew up in the South, and I know you get a lot of grandmother questions, I’m sure, but whenever I’d be doing my homework in the bedroom or anywhere, my grandmother would walk into the room, turn on the light, and say, Mary Jo, it’s dark as Egypt in here.

And I don’t know why she said that.

I understood that she meant the light was off, but dark as Egypt.

Where in the American South were you?

I grew up outside Atlanta, Georgia, in College Park, Georgia, which is where the airport is.

And everybody has to go to the Atlanta airport sometimes in their lives if they fly.

Okay.

And I was going to ask, I mean, I’m a preacher’s kid. Was she a Sunday school going woman?

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, yes.

We went to church several times a week at College Park First Baptist.

And, you know, that was just a big part of our family tradition.

Okay.

Yeah, I bet we know some of the same people because my dad was a Baptist minister.

And that is the root of this expression.

Dark is Egypt is a reference to Moses and Egypt.

And in Exodus 10, you remember the story of the plagues, the 10 plagues, where Moses is trying to get Pharaoh to let my people go and all that?

Oh, of course.

Yes, we learned that in Sunday school over and over as well as in the movie Ten Commandments.

Exactly.

Right, right.

You got your frogs and your lice and your locusts and turning the water into blood and all of that.

But you may remember the next to the last plague, the ninth plague, was darkness.

And remember that, that God sent darkness over Egypt and it was so thick that you couldn’t see anything in front of you.

It was almost some kind of darkness that could be felt as described in Exodus 10.

And so if you’re talking about something being as dark as Egypt, you’re talking about something really, really, really dark.

Well, that just certainly answers the question.

Yes, I’m sure she had a lot of phrases that came from the Bible.

So that clears that up.

Thank you.

There you go.

Well, it’s our pleasure, Mary Jo. Thank you for calling.

All right.

Take care now.

Thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

Call us again sometime.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

You can hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

And you know, we’ve got a really active Facebook group where lots of people goof around and talk about language.

Join us there.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

How are you?

Hi.

Doing fine.

Who’s this?

This is Bill Stone calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hey, Bill. Welcome. What’s up?

What’s going on?

So I’m a business attorney in Dallas, and that means I handle business transactions like helping people buy and sell businesses.

There’s this term that comes up when we work on those transactions as we’re getting near the end, and it’s called down to the lick log.

So I’ve heard it many, many times, and everybody acts like they know what it means, and I kind of know what it means just from context.

But I’ve never really understood where it came from.

It seems to mean that either you’re down to kind of the last few steps before being ready to sign and close, or you’re down to a deadline that you have to make a decision or the deal will die.

And, Bill, do you hear this usually among attorneys or anybody else?

Mostly among attorneys, although attorneys, I’ve heard attorneys use it with their clients.

I’ve used it with mine.

You have.

And do they know what you’re talking about when you say you’re down to the lick log?

I guess.

Well, we’ve got some information on that for sure.

A licked log.

Do you ever run cattle or work on a farm with cattle?

No, I have not.

Well, cattle require salt, and so sometimes you put out a salt block for them.

But in the old days, they would take salt, and they would put it in notched holes on a log lying on the ground.

And what will happen is the cattle will congregate around it.

They’ll come every now and again, and it’s pretty much a good place to find your cattle when you’re looking for your cattle if you’ve got a big spread.

They’re over at the licked log, huh?

Yeah, they’re over at the licked log.

Pretty much cattle are going to check in there every couple days or so.

What that means is it became also a place for humans to say, I will meet you at the lick log.

This is a place that you could find somebody.

And also, sometimes it was a place where you would go to make those big decisions.

You’d say, I will see you at the lick log, and we will settle this.

Like, am I going to sell you the 20 acres that you want?

Are we going to swap cattle?

Am I going to permit you to marry my daughter or whatever the case may be?

As far back as Davy Crockett’s writing in 1834, you will find Licklog kind of used in this way as a place where a final decision was going to be made.

You would go and gather there because it was a place that everybody knew, and you knew it because the cattle knew it, and you would follow the cattle.

Yeah, and you’d make the call.

How interesting.

That’s so strange that they would wander out into the pasture somewhere.

When I heard the term lick log, I always kind of thought of like a salt block or salt lick.

I think sometimes they call it.

But I didn’t know that they were associated with logs.

It’s strange, though, that they would wander out into a field somewhere to do that.

Well, they don’t wander. The humans place the log there with the salt on it.

And you do that, it keeps your cattle close, particularly if you’ve got no fence or if you’ve got a giant amount of acres.

But I’m saying it’s so interesting that humans would say, we’re going to meet at the lick log to do this.

Why don’t they meet in the tavern?

Well, that’s what I was trying to kind of say.

It’s a known place.

It’s almost a neutral ground.

It’s a known place because you constantly monitor your cattle so they’re not rustled or they don’t fall into a ravine or the coyotes don’t get them, that sort of thing.

So the Licklog isn’t just a passing place.

It’s something you’re very familiar with.

Well, I wonder if it could be the metaphor of all the cattle meeting themselves.

Yeah, that’s true.

It’s like we’re like the cattle.

Yeah, humans is another animal all congregating together.

Yeah, but they would literally meet at the Licklog.

They would actually physically be there, and then later it became metaphorical.

And now you’re using it as an attorney, and it’s distanced from its roots.

That’s a fantastic story.

Yeah, I’ve only heard that from Texans.

Yeah, it is mostly Texan, as a matter of fact.

But like I say, it does go back to Davy Crockett.

And you’ll find pockets of it here and there throughout the South.

Well, that is fascinating. I appreciate the information.

Yeah, our pleasure. Thanks for calling, Bill.

Yeah, thanks for calling, Bill.

Okay. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk with us about language.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Super, who’s this?

This is Karen Levesque, and I’m calling from Tallahassee, Florida.

Hi, Karen. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Karen.

What’s up?

I am calling about a phrase that my grandmother uses.

She is 92 years old and from New Hampshire, grew up in rural New Hampshire.

And she uses the phrase, not quite cricket.

And she uses that when someone has done something, you know, not really illegal, but they’ve done something that is not right.

And so she’d say, you know, well, that’s not quite cricket.

And I was just wondering where this phrase, you know, came from.

So you’re wondering if it has to do with insects?

I know there’s the sport, you know, cricket as well, but I just can’t imagine that growing up on a farm in New Hampshire, you have, you know, some sort of reference to a game that, you know, played so far away.

So I just, I’ve never heard anyone else use it besides her and my grandfather.

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

Did she ever spend any time in the UK, maybe during the war?

Well, my grandfather was a lineman in World War II.

He was over in Europe, but he wasn’t in England or something where I’d picture them playing that game.

Okay.

Yes, it does have to do with the world’s second most popular sport.

Second most?

Yes.

Oh, after hockey, right?

After figuring out etymologies.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, it actually has to do with cricket, the sport.

Especially in the Victorian era, cricket was known as a game of great sportsmanship and and almost manners, and and players were expected to abide by what they called the spirit of the game.

You know, you had these people in these very neat white uniforms and and being all sportsmanlike and gentlemanly.

And so if something wasn’t cricket or wasn’t quite cricket, then somebody wasn’t playing by the rules.

Well, they weren’t playing by the spirit, right?

The spirit, yes.

Yes, the courtesy, the sportsmanship.

Obey the rules, but not the spirit.

Yes, exactly.

Okay. Yes, it’s a less genteel game now.

But especially in the Victorian era.

Is it common to certain parts of the United States that they would use this phrase?

Because, you know, now I live in the South, and I’ve never heard it, you know, uttered down here.

Yeah, I’m not sure it’s a regional component so much as just what your affinity is.

I mean, my mother was from the South and she said it all the time, but then she was a big Anglophile.

I teach, you know, third graders and sometimes they say it to them and they look at me like I’m crazy.

And it’s just one of those phrases that’s in my head.

And I’m saying it, but I really didn’t know where it came from.

You’re saying it to third graders. I bet they’re picturing Jiminy on their shoulder.

Probably. They’re staring at me.

Yeah, which I could, yeah, if I were a little kid, that’s what I would think, that it was Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder telling me not to do something.

It would only take one point of contact to pick up the term.

Maybe she read a Dorothy Sayers novel or particularly loved a particular British movie or had a British radio show that she liked to listen to or something.

Okay. It could have been an author.

She does read pretty widely, so maybe she did pick it up there.

I never think to ask her when I’m with her because it just doesn’t come up, but it would be interesting to know where she first heard it and if she’s been using it her whole life.

Yeah, that’d be a good discussion.

Thank you for your call, and I just want to say thank you to you because you’re a teacher.

And you guys do the hard work. Yay.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. We do it because we love it, so thank you.

Take care, Karen. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

877-929—9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Hit us up on Twitter at the handle WayWord, or talk to us on Facebook.

Your questions and more musings about language 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 Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And hey, look who it is, this handsome guy.

It’s John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

I thought there was a handsome guy standing behind me.

Yeah, it’s me.

No, you’re doing quizzes coming out of your pockets.

All these quizzes just flowing out of my pockets.

Tucked into the band of your fedora.

I’m going to put this one on my little board here, and I’m going to start reading it.

It goes like this.

It’s time once again for limericks celebrating the things we were interested in last year.

Okay.

All right.

I’ll start the limerick in about four and a half lines and you guys finish it.

All right?

Okay.

Now, sometimes it’s one word or two or three when appropriate.

Here we go.

Things that we were interested in 2015.

Now, this one has three blanks and you must fill in all three blanks.

The web was a chatter-filled mess.

It even appeared in the press when brother fought brother over what is the color of a weird little blank and blank blank.

Gold and blue dress.

Yes.

Blue and gold dress?

It’s white and gold dress or black and blue dress.

Either was fine.

Depending on whoever.

White and blue dress.

I think anybody saw that.

What?

That’s what I saw.

It was either white and gold or black and blue.

This one has two blanks.

I’m considered a sad party pooper, but I stayed up all night like a trooper.

And I don’t mean to gripe, but despite lunar hype, I don’t think that the blank was so blank.

Super.

The full moon was so super?

Yeah, I don’t think that the moon was so super.

Remember the super moon?

Super moon, yeah.

How quickly we forget the thing that won’t come along again until 2033.

Right.

This one just has one blank.

The Supreme Court hears marriage defenders, yet in June its decision it renders,

Happy people get married, but it leaves me quite harried, for I must go out and buy twice the…

Blenders.

Blenders, right.

Why won’t anybody think of me?

Now I have to go out and buy twice as many presents.

This next one has three blanks.

The fans cheered and lifted their drinks and engaged in such happy hijinks

When Abrams declared, you don’t have to be scared.

The next film has no blank, blank, blank.

George R. Binks.

George R. Binks is right.

Me so glad I’m not in film.

Wow, that’s pretty good.

Okay, here’s our last one.

One blank.

Paranoia is on the increase.

There’s no need to call the police.

Take a look at the gear, you don’t have to fear.

A teen and his homemade…

Clock.

Time piece.

Time piece.

Timepiece rhymes.

Yes.

Ahmad Muhammad.

And his…

His homemade clock.

Well those are some of the more interesting things from last year that we could talk about.

Thank you John.

Thank you Grant.

Thank you Martha.

Give our best to the family.

Alright.

Bye John.

Take care now.

Bye bye.

This is a show about words and language.

And we goof off just a little bit.

If you’d like to have fun with us, give us a call.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Talk to us on Twitter under the handle Wayword.

Or talk to us on Facebook where thousands of other listeners are talking about language every single day.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sarah from Indianapolis.

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

What’s up?

So I work at a high school on the south side of Indianapolis, and there’s a word that my students use pretty regularly, a word that I’ve heard before, finesse.

But the way that they use it is not a way that I was familiar with previously.

Finesse?

Finesse, which in my understanding is called F-I-N-E-S-S-E, although I’ve never seen it written down the way that they use it.

So they use the word finesse to mean to steal.

Give me a sentence here, a conversation that would happen.

Yeah, so yesterday a student left his cell phone in my classroom, and in the next period another student found it and said, man, I was about to finesse that, meaning I was about to take it.

Oh, finesse.

Well, that’s a really interesting word.

If you look in the New Oxford American Dictionary, the main definition is something like to do something in a subtle or delicate manner, which I think is, for most of us, what we think of when we think of finesse.

But there is a second definition marked as chiefly North American that says, slyly attempt to avoid blame or censure.

And although that doesn’t apply exactly to what you’re talking about, there is a long history dating at least to the 1950s of finesse being related to being cunningly kind of sly, just doing things with an intent to deceive.

And if you look at rapgenius.com, which is a great place to get a handle on a lot of slang, you look up finesse, you will find that it is all over the place.

But almost always, there’s three things happening.

One is it’s a slightly devious, sly, cunning thing.

Two is it’s almost never about your personal style as much as about the style that you need in order to accomplish your goals.

So, for example, if I needed to steal a cell phone, that would apply or take back a cell phone.

And the third thing that’s happening with finesse, they definitely do not mean it like in the straight-up main definition of finesse to do something in a subtle or delicate manner.

They mean to do it in a sly or cunning manner.

And so it’s often used as a verb then?

Yeah, yeah.

I’ve seen it as a verb.

Definitely is a verb.

And I don’t know that that’s exactly the situation that you’re talking about, but the way that you present it to me, he might have meant more to take his phone in a cunning manner more than he meant to steal his phone.

Okay, okay, very interesting.

And that would kind of ease into it.

Slang is a mess.

Slang is all over the place, and it tends to really wobble back and forth between definitions.

So, Sarah, are you saying it’s pretty widespread among your students?

Yes.

In fact, most of my students know the meaning of finesse as to steal.

They will define it that way, but they don’t know the more common uses of the word.

That’s interesting, right?

That is really one of the definitions of slang, is that the standard meaning is kind of pushed aside for a more narrow meaning to be used among a close group of people.

Yeah, I mean, when I was growing up, I might have said cop, or I know some people say kype.

Kype or cop, yeah.

I typed that.

But maybe that’s passe now.

Maybe it’s all finesse.

Maybe it’s all finesse.

Well, that’s cool.

It sounds like a natural outgrowth from the cunning meanings of finesse.

And I like that it becomes a verb.

Awesome.

Well, they’ll be so excited to hear that.

Well, Sarah, we appreciate the field report.

We always like to hear from teachers who are hearing slang from their students.

Yeah, if you get more from them, by all means, send us an email and tell us about it, all right?

Awesome.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Cheers.

Take care.

Thanks, Sarah.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you work in a classroom, we’ve got kids in your house.

We’d love to hear the slang that they’re using, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s a riddle from an old folklore collection I was going through.

Actually, this riddle was taken from Kirksville, Missouri.

Do you know where it is?

Yeah, sure.

I’m in northeast Missouri.

All right.

This was at the turn of the last century.

See if you can guess the answer since you’re from Missouri.

Okay.

Within a fountain crystal clear, a golden apple doth appear.

No doors or locks to this stronghold, yet thieves break in and steal the gold.

An egg?

Yes.

An egg.

It’s very much like one of the riddles in The Hobbit.

Oh, is it?

Yeah.

Lock and key.

It’s a golden side.

I don’t even remember how it goes, but yeah.

Oh, and it’s an egg?

Yeah.

The answer’s an egg.

Yeah.

Oh.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Huh.

Okay.

No, that’s good.

It’s a pretty poem, right?

Yeah, pretty poem.

Solid riddle, yeah.

Yeah.

Share your riddles with us.

You don’t even have to give us the answers.

We’ll try to figure it out, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, guys.

I’m David Stipek, general manager of KUNR Reno Public Radio on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno.

Wow.

Hello.

Nice to talk to you.

Hey, David.

What’s up?

Well, my question is I find myself writing to a broader audience these days of staff and university colleagues, listeners, donors, all sorts of people with an increasing mix of younger professionals.

And I was writing an email recently and started realizing that I’m possibly using adjectives that are out of date.

And without overthinking this, I was thinking, do the things I want to typically say from the way I communicate, terrific, tremendous,

Is that dating me versus I don’t want to use words like cool or sick or awesome?

I adjust my communication in person or to audiences.

But when I’m writing to larger audiences, I’m finding myself wondering now about how that language is maybe dating my form of communication.

That’s a really good question.

Great question.

So you use words like terrific or outstanding to refer to something great.

Yeah, we had an event that the station put on, and so I was trying to do something afterwards.

And, hey, that was a terrific event or a tremendous event.

And I started thinking, well, great is probably safe, and good job or nice is always probably okay.

But some of my audience, my young professional audience, my own kids in this age group say things like awesome or sick or cool,

And I wouldn’t use that on an email.

But I started wondering at what point does my own communication style start to reveal something about that I’m out of date?

You know, maybe I’m showing my age.

I’m 45, but it doesn’t sound out of date to me, David.

No, it doesn’t to me either.

So words like tremendous, terrific, because what I’m trying not to do here is feel like the mid-50s that I am showing up for work in hipster clothing, trying to fit in somewhere.

But I’m also aware that with mass communication, all the things that I work on,

I am trying to speak to a younger group of listeners, young professionals.

I don’t want to overthink it.

I probably already am.

But in terms of how do you know where those lines are, how words become out of date or out of touch,

It’s not just adjectives.

It’s like punctuation.

I find myself using occasionally more an exclamation mark where I didn’t used to use that because it seems exciting.

And that’s not how I used to write.

So I’m trying to find out where I am and how my communication can be most effective in a changing audience mix.

All right.

Well, here’s what I would do.

And this is what I usually recommend to folks.

First, it’s amazing that you’re asking this question of yourself because so many people just, like,

Spew something out and think that they’re done without really thinking twice about what they’ve said or what they’ve written.

So that’s good.

That’s a big plus for anyone, right?

You’re thinking about your communication.

The second thing is, if you can absorb this new language naturally, if you’re not going out of your way to acquire new adjectives or new slang in order to sprinkle them in your speech and salt your language with the hip new jargon, if you’re not doing that, you’re fine.

If you’re naturally acquiring the language, that’s okay.

You can say awesome or sick if it comes naturally to you, and that’s good.

And you don’t have to worry about the expiration date on this stuff because it will kind of take care of itself.

You will then get feedback from your audience with a quizzical look in their eyes or a smirk or somebody taking you aside even going, yeah, nobody says that’s the bomb anymore.

Probably not very safe to say that anymore.

No, not really.

So it’s kind of a self-correcting process as long, again, you’re acquiring this language naturally, not through some forced flashcard method.

Yeah, David, I really like your analogy of language and clothing.

We use it a lot.

You know, you wouldn’t wear a tuxedo to, you know, a volleyball game on the beach and you wouldn’t wear a swimsuit to a job interview.

Except if it were on a beach.

Right.

If you were interviewing for a lifeguard position, I guess.

But I’m thinking about it in terms of clothing.

You know, you might have some particular item of clothing that you’ve picked up that’s maybe a little hipper than other things.

But then wearing a whole hipster outfit to work might look weird on people like you and me.

There’s another thing that I have for you, David, and it’s a completely different direction.

Some months ago, I came across a plug-in for web browsers called Crystal, just like it sounds, C-R-Y-S-T-A-L.

And what it does is analyzes your communications with all your correspondents.

For example, if you use Gmail, it will browse through your Gmail box.

You give it access.

And then when you get an email from somebody, it will pop up a little window on the side that says,

This person likes to be communicated with in the following ways.

It will say something like they are hurried and they will like brief communications

Or they’re like more politeness or they’re like more elaborate kind of speech.

It’s really, really interesting.

I stopped using it after a couple of days because I realized I didn’t need it for the particular audience that I had.

But it might be something to look into, maybe see if the tone of what you’re writing at least is coming close to what Crystal believes it should be.

Well, thank you so much for the insights and the tip on Crystal.

We’ll check that out, and we’ll keep at it, and we’ll keep you posted.

Take care.

Yeah, please do.

Sounds good.

Best of luck to you.

Thanks for the groovy tips.

It’s a great cool talk.

Far out, man.

So awesome.

Yeah, cat’s pajamas.

Rock on.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Oh, that’s interesting because he has so many challenges dealing with all these different media

And all these different constituencies.

I’m thinking about a fundraising seminar I went to once where they said that older donors like a particular kind of font.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, that you need to have serifs.

Yeah, because it’s easier on old eyes.

Yeah, I suppose so.

But, I mean, they’ve done research on this kind of stuff.

I mean, you can really get into the fine-tuning of communication.

But you can also get into over-optimization.

Absolutely.

Or unnecessary pre-optimization where you spend more time sharpening the saw than you do cutting wood, right, as they say.

I didn’t know they say that, but I like that very much.

I think David does probably a lot better than he thinks.

I think so, too.

Don’t you find that when the careful, thoughtful person who considers their own action and their interactions with the world tends to be more successful than they think they are?

877-929-9673.

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Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Thanks for taking my call.

This is Samantha Fajako from Washington, D.C. By way of Massachusetts.

Oh, hello, Samantha.

All right.

By way of Massachusetts.

How’d you do it?

Yes.

On a boat, train, automobile?

All three at some point.

All right.

What’s up?

What’s on your mind?

So I wanted to give you guys a call because I’ve been in Washington, D.C. for a while now,

And I went to undergraduate school and graduate school here.

And while in graduate school, I was in class one day and we were discussing the previous day’s readings.

And it was my turn to give a little overview of what I thought.

And as I was discussing the concepts in the readings, I said, oh, and when I read this chapter, I had a light dawn on marble head moment.

I continued to speak.

And then my professor interrupted and said, you had a what?

So I, again, I had a light dawn on marble head moment.

And I looked around to my classmates being like, come on, guys, you know what I’m talking about.

And blank stares from everybody looking back at me.

That probably felt good.

And I had been saying this expression for years at this point and had never been interrupted by anybody.

So at this point, I realized that nobody had ever known what I was talking about.

And I had to explain what I meant.

So, Samantha, what did you mean by light?

What is it?

Light dawns?

Light dawns on marble head.

Light dawns on marble head.

What that means for me is that you’re completely clueless about something,

And then all of a sudden it clicks in your head,

And you understand everything laid out before you.

But here’s the thing.

You came from Massachusetts, and I think this is significant, right?

Yes, that is what I’m assuming.

So tell us about the Massachusetts connection.

So, I mean, I grew up in Massachusetts.

My entire family still lives there.

And I have always heard this expression being used around my house growing up.

I particularly remember my mom always saying it.

And it’s just something that has always stuck with me and that I would never have thought in a million years was just a Massachusetts thing until this one experience.

So there is a Marblehead, Massachusetts, right?

Yes, there is.

Oh, no, and it’s kind of north of Boston, northeast of Boston.

Some people call it Marblehead.

Marblehead, right, lack of the R there.

And if you look this up, it is almost exclusive to Massachusetts,

Maybe a few of the surrounding states,

But mostly people from Massachusetts say light dawns over Marblehead

Or light dawns on Marblehead or variants of that kind.

Dawn breaks over Marblehead.

And so am I understanding there’s two meanings here?

One is it’s not the most eastern point of Massachusetts,

But it’s way out there in the ocean.

A head is a piece of land,

Is a piece of land that juts out into the ocean.

But the other thing is they’re making a joke

About being dense, right?

Being thick in the head

And something finally penetrating your thick skull, right?

Yes, exactly.

Okay, very good, very good.

Light dawns over a marble head

Means that the thick-headed person

Finally got the information.

Makes sense here.

And growing up, I always pictured in my head a statue.

Okay, yeah.

If my head was made of marble and I had no brains, just marble, and my marble head finally understood something.

Right.

But I didn’t make the connection between Marblehead and Massachusetts.

Yeah.

So it is related to the city.

Actually, it’s not a city.

What do you call that?

It’s some district, a town maybe, which is near Salem if you’re trying to orient it in your brain, everybody.

And it definitely is a reference to the town.

It’s a regionalism.

It doesn’t much get beyond Massachusetts.

It goes back at least as far as the 1960s.

I would not be surprised to find that it’s older.

It’s a good one, Samantha.

I don’t know much more about it except for those things.

Thank you for sharing.

I wish we had more for you, but it’s enough that we get this out in the world so that other people can use it.

Yes, thank you.

Our pleasure.

Now I won’t be looked at funny.

No, never.

That’s true.

Own it.

Be who you are.

Take care, Samantha.

Thanks, Samantha.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org and hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

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. Imagine that you’re the last living speaker of a dying language. What do you miss talking about in your native tongue? What memories of childhood do those words evoke? Those are among the questions that are raised by a play called Precious Little.

I saw it here in San Diego at Diversionary Theater presented by Intermission Productions. And without giving too much away, the play is about, among other things, a linguist, an elderly speaker of a dying language from somewhere in Russia, and a gorilla.

And there’s a passage where the linguist is recording the elderly woman counting to 20 in her own language. The playwright Madeline George made up that language, but it still feels very much like a real one. And with her permission, I wanted to share this moment in the play.

Picture an elderly woman as she sits in front of a microphone, counting to 20 in the language of her childhood. Pink berries. Kume shatkumne. Blue birds on a white plate. Nel to shatkumne. My mother cutting the bread with her steel knife. Vishto shatkumne. Lace curtains. White geraniums. Black virgin in the corner. The teacher hitting my knuckles when I said the wrong word. The boys in the reeds by the river with the frog. My father building a fire in the forest, cooking potatoes in the coals. Seish to shatkumne. In the winter, the police pounding on the door before dawn. My father thrown into the back of the truck. My mother on her knees by the stove, sobbing. My burned hand, the dead child lying in the box in the church. Emto shatkumne.

In the springtime, fishing on the footbridge with thread. Kahesto shatkumne. Sweeping the yard with twigs. Uuhesto shatkumne. Tea eggs at Easter. Kakskumne. Birch buds. Tender chives. Mushrooms at the bases of poplar trees. Light snow through pine branches, cranberries coated in crystal sugar.

Wow, that’s very impressive. Completely sounds like a real language. Doesn’t it? And it gets to the heart of the issue of why we should try to preserve languages that are disappearing, and it’s happening every year. And it’s not just so much that those languages are attached permanently to culture, but it’s also that they’re attached to history. And sometimes the history of a moment is as important as the history of a nation, right? The history of one person and their encounters with their family or their encounters with daily life.

Yeah. And there’s something so beautiful about that passage about how words that are that fundamental to a person, they just bypass the cortex, go right to your limbic system. It’s such a sensuous, sensuous. I particularly like the mushrooms at the foot of a poplar tree.

I can see that. I can envision it as you read it and know what that moment is like to have that aha moment. Yeah. I found them. Here they are. Great, great. Well, I really wanted to share that with you. And the play again is? Is Precious Little by Madeline George. Thank you very much, Martha. That’s wonderful. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words. Hi. My name is Vanessa, and I am calling from Dallas, Texas. Hello, Vanessa. Welcome. Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be talking with y’all. Outstanding. What can we do for you?

Well, okay. So my daughter and I are riding around, and there’s a car in front of us that has a license plate, and the license plate reads hot mess. Now, this is a term I’ve used with my daughter before. I’ve said it to friends, but I don’t know what it means. And I only realized that after my daughter asked me, what’s a hot mess? What is that? And so I figured I’d call you guys to get a little bit of insight.

Oh, boy. A hot mess. Now, where are you from exactly? I’m from Dallas. And I bet you hear that term a lot. I first heard it from Martha. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah.

Years ago, you used it in the studio.

Was that describing myself?

Probably.

Are you serious?

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think I learned it from you right here in this very room.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, I got to tell you, there’s a couple different interpretations of hot mess.

One of them is that it’s a person who, despite their personal chaos, despite all the madness that surrounds them, like they’re involved in a lot of things and a lot of balls are being dropped and deadlines aren’t being met and goals are not being achieved.

Despite all that, they’re still a friend or a romantic partner or somebody that you want to hang around with.

Somebody who maybe is attractive.

So that’s one version.

So that’s taking the slang definition of hot.

Somebody who is attractive despite the messiness in their life.

Now, the problem with that though is I think that’s actually an added on interpretation that came later in the history of the slang term hot mess, because for a lot of people, hot mess is what you have.

Imagine that you’ve got a big pot of hot chili, and you drop it on the kitchen floor.

It’s a giant mess, and you can’t even clean it up because it’s hot.

It’s steaming hot.

And so you’ve just got to wait for it to cool.

And that is the worst kind of mess you can possibly have, is a mess that can’t even be fixed, can’t even be solved.

So it could be good, and it could be bad.

Yeah.

I’m trying to remember how I used it.

It sounds like you’re using it with affection, though, when you’re talking to your daughter.

Well, I am.

I mean, for us, it’s just funny.

Like, it’s just a funny way to describe someone who, you’re right, who’s got, like, a whole lot of chaos going on, but, you know, you still care about her.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there’s affection in there.

I think there is.

Usually when I hear it, it’s kind of the nicer version of the, well, bless her heart.

It’s just a little nicer.

It’s just like, oh, you know, isn’t she just a miss?

Well, I was going to say that.

But you invite her over anyway, even though she’s a mess.

And it’s maybe intensified by the hot then, because I can remember my entire childhood being called a mess.

And it wasn’t because I was messy.

It was like, oh, that Martha Ann, she’s a mess.

You just got your hands and everything and nothing’s quite working out.

Yeah, but that is affectionate.

But I feel like I’ve heard hot mess also used in a sort of derogatory way.

Like this person is just a wreck.

Let me ask the both of you.

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard it applied to a man.

Huh.

I can’t think of a time that I would have ever used it on a man either.

I mean, I’ve never said to my husband, oh, you are a hot mess.

I think it may be gendered.

I don’t have enough evidence for this, but my intuition says that it’s gendered as female.

That’s interesting.

Which is kind of like the worst way that English behaves when it always, so many of the negatives apply to women, right?

Yes.

And then, you know, like I have heard it applied to women before, like maybe a couple of girls talking about someone else, which is not a good situation.

But, you know, one girl will say to another, oh, she is just a hot mess.

And not in a cute, fun way, like I would mean that with my daughter.

Right, exactly.

Yes, yes.

That’s what I was saying is I’ve heard it that way.

Was it a woman driving the car with the hot mess license plate?

It was a woman.

It was a woman.

And so she has this license plate that says hot mess, and the license plate cover, you know, the border around the plate is animal print, and the front of her car has big eyelashes attached to the headlights.

So maybe, like, that’s just her self-description, and she is just proud to be a hot mess.

She’s owning it.

Yeah, hot mess pride.

The reason I, early on when I asked where you were from, I just wanted to know because it is definitely a southern term.

It’s far more common in the American South.

Is it? Okay.

Far more common.

All right.

But, I mean, it percolates, though, because, you know, people watch the same TV,

And Southern folks will use it on a show.

Mm-Mm—

All right. Well, cool. I hope we’ve enlightened you a little bit.

You’ve certainly enlightened us.

Sure. I’m excited to get a little bit of background on it.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, our pleasure.

By the way, it’s at least 10 years old, maybe even 15.

Mm—

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s older than that, but that’s as far back as I could take it.

Yeah.

How interesting.

Vanessa, it’s great to talk with you.

Great to talk with y’all, too.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You too.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

In an earlier show, we were talking about sternutation, that is, sneezing.

And that prompted Faye Terry Silver of Marshfield, Vermont, to call us and leave a voicemail.

She said, my grandmother used to always say after someone sneezed, sneezing to the truth.

Sneezing to the truth? Nope, never heard it.

Sneezing to the truth. Well, I called her back to find out if she had any Yiddish in her heritage and sure enough, she does.

And this comes from a Yiddish expression that sounds something like gnosim tzum emis, which is sneezing to the truth or the sneeze confirmed the truth or sneezing on the truth.

That is the belief that if I’m talking and you sneeze, that confirms that what I was saying was actually true.

Okay, nice.

Isn’t that cool?

Yeah, that’s very good.

Yeah.

Sneezing to the truth.

Sneezing to the truth.

Sternutation to the truth.

That’s right.

We’d love to hear your stories about language, so call us, 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Suzanne Wooten from McKinney, Texas.

Hi, Suzanne.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

Thank you.

Thanks.

I had a situation come up in my office regarding an expression I use, and no one in my building had heard it before.

So it made me wonder, A, where did I even pick it up?

And B, if what I thought the mean was accurate, if I was using it correctly.

And basically what I had said was we were talking about someone complaining about not having any money.

And I had said, well, gosh, doesn’t it get old hearing them poor-mouthing all the time?

And everyone just looked at me, what does that mean?

And they range from probably 30s to 50s.

The majority of the people are from Texas.

One person’s from Seattle, and I’m originally from Illinois.

So I explained it.

They all understood what I would have meant, but no one had ever heard the expression.

How did you explain it?

Well, what I said was I’ve always used it as someone who gripes about not having money when they do, or they spend money anyway.

So someone who’s either cheap or just likes to complain that they’re poor.

You know, I can’t afford lunch. I’m poor.

And then I went home and talked to my husband, who is from Germany originally, but very much in love with the English language.

And he said, no, no, it doesn’t mean that.

It’s a general denigration of people or things or whatever.

It’s used very generally.

Poor-mouthing.

You can poor-mouth anything.

And so we have that debate as well.

So where did it come from and who’s right?

Well, you’re right.

I think he might be confusing it with bad mouth, to bad mouth something.

But poor mouthing since the 1850s has meant, as you said, when somebody is moaning and complaining because they don’t have enough money, and then the next day you’re like, well, you got new shoes and a new jacket.

Right.

Or it’s somebody who just will not leave well enough.

They keep complaining about their poor luck and misfortune and lack of money, but they don’t do anything to fix it.

Oh, good.

Well, I’m right.

So mark one for me.

Kind of blaming their circumstances rather than their own effort.

Okay.

So is it a regional question?

It started out as regional.

The Dictionary of American Regional English actually says very specifically that it started out as regional from the American South but is now widespread.

We’ve got it in Ohio.

We’ve got it obviously in Illinois since that’s where you’re from and throughout the United States.

However, it’s not common, but it is widespread, if that makes sense.

Okay.

Yeah, I just could not figure out where it is.

I’ve just always known it and used it, and I have no clue where it came from.

Yeah.

Well, great. At least I know I’m right. And now I’m not as crazy as I thought I was.

It is accurate, and I’m using it in the right way.

Yeah, yeah.

You won that argument with your husband.

Thank you, Suzanne. Appreciate the call.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Cheers now. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

You can also find us on Twitter. Our handle is WayWord.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi. Hi, this is Travis Cooper calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi, Travis. How are you doing?

Hi, Travis.

I’m doing okay. How are you guys?

Super duper. What’s cooking?

Well, I was listening to your show a couple of weeks ago, and it dawned on me that throughout my life, my dad, when I was younger and even to this day, and I’m 29 years old, he’ll be eating an apple, and he gets done eating his apple.

He’s got this apple core in his hand, and he says, apple core, Baltimore. Who’s your friend?

And if you don’t answer fast enough, he whips the apple core at you.

And I’ve asked plenty of people if they’ve ever had that experience or anything like that.

And they say, no, man, your dad’s really weird.

And actually, I just found out.

I was telling people that I call in on the radio show.

And actually, something like that was on the Woody Guthrie show back in the day.

But no one ever threw the apple core at anybody.

They would just say, apple core, Baltimore. Who’s your friend?

The Woody Guthrie show?

He had a TV show?

I’m sorry.

What is it?

Not the Woody Guthrie show.

Woody Woodpecker.

Andy Griffin.

Howdy Doody.

Andy Griffin Show.

Yeah, that’s the one.

I don’t know why I said Woody Guthrie.

But, yeah, so I could never really get any solid answer where that came from.

I even asked my dad. He doesn’t even know where he got it.

Nice.

Nice.

Yeah.

Well, your dad isn’t the only one for sure.

No.

I mean, he may be weird, but.

A little mean.

Yeah, I think it was popularized by a couple of Disney cartoons.

What?

Yeah.

There was one in 1952, the Donald Duck one.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You see that?

And we talked about this before.

Chip and Dale had one too, right?

Right.

And I’ve heard of other people doing that.

Like if there’s several people in the room, you might say you get down to the core of the apple and you say apple core.

And somebody says Baltimore.

And then you say to the Baltimore person, you say, who’s your friend?

And then they name somebody else in the room and you throw the apple core at that person.

Wow.

It’s very much a kid’s game, though, not an adult’s game, right?

Well, yeah.

Yeah, a good excuse to throw things at people.

There is another version of it that goes, applecore, bite no more, in the snout, point him out, which is the same idea.

Then you throw it.

Somebody gets hit in the end with an applecore.

Yeah.

We know that at least it goes back to the 1930s when it was recorded in the folklore that was collected by the Works Progress Administration.

They had all these field workers out there.

But the thing with folklore in general is that it tends never to have a true origin story, many false origins.

So we don’t know.

But we just know that it at least goes back to the 1930s.

And there’s a new resurgence in the 1950s, like Martha was saying when it pops up in cartoons, Andy Griffith’s show, so on and so forth.

You’ll frequently find it in novels as a little bit of childhood color.

But I don’t know that children actually much do it anymore.

I almost wonder if the Baltimore is a variation on the bite no more.

Yeah, they sound a lot alike, don’t they?

I wonder if maybe Bighten Amore turned into Baltimore.

That’s what I’m wondering, yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for a little bit of clarity on that.

And I’ll get back to my dad on that.

I’m sure he’ll be, you know, interested to hear about that too.

So I like you guys’ show.

I appreciate what you do.

And thank you for your time.

Oh, it’s our pleasure, Travis.

Thank you for calling.

Yeah, I would be eating an apple when you tell your dad about this.

It sounds like a great way to do it.

I think I’ll do that.

All right, bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Send us everything in email to words@waywordradio.org

Or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

You know, we were talking earlier about the term hot mess,

And I was saying that I was always called a mess growing up in Kentucky.

And sure enough, I’m looking at the Dictionary of American Regional English, which says one of the definitions, chiefly in the South Midlands, for a mess is a witty, clever, or mischievous person.

And there’s some great references here.

Mess.

This is from Alabama.

Usually affectionate or approving, mischievous, a jokester.

That child’s a mess.

That’s exactly the way I was said.

I can imagine little Martha Ann.

Little Martha Ann.

Sassing back.

Giving everyone a hard time with their big ideas.

She’s a mess.

That’s right.

She’s a mess.

Affection, admiration, especially for a child and infant.

But clever without being wicked.

I like that part of it, right?

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

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This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen to each other

And the way we think about language.

And you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine,

Director Colin Tedeschi, and editor Tim Felten in San Diego.

In New York, we thank production wizard James Ramsey, quiz guide John Chaneski,

And that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

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

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Bye-bye.

So long.

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