Bah, Humblebrag!

Hi, it’s Martha Barnette along with Grant Barrett.

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On with the show.

On with the show.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette. As writers, we look for inspiration wherever we can find it. And that’s why from time to time I go looking for great quotations from other writers. They always give me a lift, especially the funny ones.

Here’s one I wanted to share. This one’s from the writer Douglas Adams about deadlines. You know this one, right? I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. Boy, can I relate to that. I need that as a tattoo.

And a lot of quotations about writing have to do with the painful process that is writing. You know, there’s that one about, oh, it’s no problem. You just sit down at your desk and open a vein or whatever it is. But I like Gloria Steinem’s quote about writing. I do not like to write. I like to have written. I can so relate to that.

I have a couple of quotes. They’re not particularly funny, but they address the issue of what the role of proper grammar is in writing. They both address the point that sometimes we make too much of that at the wrong time in the writing process, right? You pay attention to the grammar kind of in the cleanup stage, not at the writing stage.

Michael Quinan, a British expert on language, he’s got a great site called Worldwide Words, he said this. A writer who fixes too much attention on the correctness of his punctuation or a reader who does the same is missing the point. The job of text is to communicate, not satisfy pedantic rulemakers. Basically, he’s adjusting the priority a little bit, just making sure you’re paying attention to the content a little more than you are the style.

Right, and if you’re writing and you listen to that inner critic and you start to mess with it. Yeah, it’s a roadblock to progress, right? Now, there’s another guy named Stuart Froman. He’s a copywriting pro. He’s in the business of just writing great copy. And he says, perfect grammar, whether written or spoken, never solves a problem except the problem of imperfect grammar. It doesn’t make a person more creative or a better thinker. It can’t turn a bad idea into a good one or an unclear thought into a clear one. It doesn’t guarantee that we will be understood.

In other words, what Stuart Froman is saying is that when you pay attention to your content, you will hand off more to the observer, the reader or the listener than you will if you pay all your attention to the grammar. Well, yeah, you can clean it up later. Yeah, but there can be something that’s perfectly grammatical, but it’s nonsense. Well, yeah, it reminds me of that famous quotation, proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

What are your favorite inspirations when it comes to writing? What’s the advice that you turn to when you want to feel like an inspired writer? 877-929-9673. Or send your favorite quotes about writing to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Juliet calling from Temecula, California. Hi, Juliet. Welcome to the program. Hi. Well, thank you. What can we help you with today?

Well, I bought a tube of fancy French hand cream. And some of the ingredients on the label were in French, including pomegranate. And I noticed that the word for pomegranate in French was grenade, and it looked like the English word grenade. So I remembered that grenadine, like you put in drinks, is made from pomegranate juice, and that got me thinking about this word grenade and pomegranate and what the connection is, because I was thinking about hand grenades, and they kind of do look a little bit like pomegranate. It seems very improbable, but I’m wondering if that’s where the word came from.

Yes, great guess. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. That’s the winner’s bell. I do not believe it. Congratulations. Yes, the word grenade was adopted into English from French, and it originally meant pomegranate, and only later was it applied to that thing that you throw to explode. Because they look the same, as you said. And they both have lots of small little particles inside, right? Doesn’t it mean having seeds or something like that? Yes, yes. It goes back to Latin words that mean an apple full of seeds. It’s related to granular and words like that. And a hand grenade does have a lot of grains of explosives in it. Sometimes it even has little pieces of metal, right? Yeah, yeah.

Have you ever cut open a pomegranate? A grenade? No. Well, I have a pomegranate tree in my backyard. And so when I started thinking about this, I was looking, and the shape is exactly like a grenade. And, you know, that makes sense because the word for apple is pum. So that must be the – Oh, that is so – I cannot believe it. It sounds so unlikely, but I guess unlikely can be true sometimes. Well, cool, Julia. You figured it out. You didn’t need us at all. Well, thank you. Well, I love the verification. I need you to verify so I know that my hunch was right. Oh, that’s so interesting. We are enabling backyard linguists everywhere we go. Thanks, Juliet. Well, thank you so much. Okay, bye-bye.

Always trust your native instincts. Yes. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org and find us everywhere on social media.

There’s nothing I love more than the words of the year season. I know. For you, it’s like Christmas and Arbor Day and Valentine’s all rolled together. And Dictionary Day. Yeah. All rolled into one. For the words of the year, we look for the words that have kind of risen to the top of the foam of the beer, the bubbles that go up to the head, right? That’s beautiful. Yes. And then we take a big gulp. Yes.

And so here are just a few of the words of the year that are on my list for all my different purposes, right? One of them is kind of serious. Crankshaft. It was the codename for Osama bin Laden when the soldiers went in and assassinated him. Oh, it was? Crankshaft? And I think because of the importance of the event, the word itself deserves to be on the list. Definitely.

Did you see the basket brawl? I did not see the basket brawl. B-R-A-W-L? Is that like handbags at dawn? Handbags on the green? People hitting each other? No. Well, kind of, actually. Georgetown went to China to play this, I guess it was an exhibition game with the Chinese team. They had a gigantic fight on the court. Go to YouTube. It’s pretty vivid stuff to watch. The Hoyas? Oh, I didn’t know that. They’re a classy bunch, but somehow maybe it was jet lag. I don’t know, right?

I’ll have a few more Words of the Year later, but if you want to share some of your Words of the Year candidates, send them to me, words@waywordradio.org, or call us on the phone, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ariana from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Ariana. How are you doing?

Hey.

Doing well. How are you?

Oh, we’re all great here.

What’s going on?

Well, I’ve been watching a lot of football recently because we’re really right in the middle of football season.

And there’s always things that the announcers say that sort of bother me.

And they sort of, it depends, you know, from season to season what they are.

But recently I’ve been hearing a lot of the word multiple used in a weird way.

So, for example, they’ll say, they’ll call a team multiple.

Like the Patriots offense is very multiple.

Or that player is very multiple.

And that just seems weird to me.

It seems weird to me, too.

What do they mean by it?

I think what they mean is that they have, like, multiple, like, for example, they’d say that an offense is multiple, meaning that they have multiple attacks.

Or they have multiple, you know, threats.

Or that, like, you know, a quarterback who can pass and throw is multiple because he can do multiple things.

So he’s a multiple threat.

That’s right.

Okay.

Interesting.

Yeah, multiple in that use goes back at least 50 years.

It used to be that you would just describe a multiple offense or a multiple defense,

And it meant that a team had a variety of formations that they could use to win,

You know, to get control or to score and that sort of thing.

But you’re suggesting that it’s gone just a little bit further than that,

And now they describe the team itself as being multiple or a player even as being multiple?

That’s what I’ve heard. It seems a little weird to me.

It’s okay. It is okay because multiple as an adjective can mean varied

Or having a lot of components or parts,

And that’s what’s being said here, right?

Yeah.

And it’s odd also because it’s jargon.

It’s new to you.

It’s inside language from this sport.

Football or any sport is basically a gigantic in-group, as they say in linguistics, of people with one like interest.

And they have all this, like, cohesive language that they speak to each other that is strange and weird to outsiders.

And you found a piece of it.

Exactly.

Ariana, I mean, Grant has many, many talents.

I do?

Yeah, but I wouldn’t call it.

Please list them.

It would take too long.

But I would never call you multiple.

No, no.

I might start now.

So it’s limited to sport.

I mean, it’s not even in soccer, right?

Interesting.

Not that I know.

I don’t think so.

Not as far as I know.

Interesting.

Well, Ariana, you must be hearing a lot of language.

Is there anything else that jumps out at you?

The other thing that has come up a lot this season, and this season in particular,

Because I’ve been watching for a couple seasons, and I get the hang of some of the terms,

But this one has totally just cropped up, and the term is pick six.

So when I first heard it, I thought it was very clever because what it refers to is an interception that’s returned for a touchdown.

An interception is a pick, and then when you return it for a touchdown, you score six points.

So pick six.

Makes perfect sense.

I thought it was kind of clever.

And then I heard it again and again and again.

And then every time that there was any opportunity to say something like that, it comes up.

So like every broadcast, you’d hear this at least, you know, many more times than you would actually have interceptions.

Just because they like saying it.

They like saying it.

And so when I first read it, I was like, oh, that’s kind of clever.

And I asked my husband about it, and he was like, oh, yeah, I think that’s been around for a little while.

He says that he’s read about it when he was reading sports blogs a couple years ago.

But all of a sudden this year, it’s just kind of exploded.

It’s multiple.

Yeah, it is multiple.

So I’m just wondering where it came from.

I’m going to put on my white coat and my stethoscope and diagnose you with a couple of illnesses.

And they are perhaps the recency illusion and the frequency illusion.

Okay.

Oh, my God. You better lie down.

I know. It’s actually wine and chocolate and cake are the cures.

So that’s good.

But what happens is we hear something that strikes us as novel or interesting.

And then our brain is somehow heightened to this.

And it’s kind of in our forefront.

And it’s like it kind of dominates our language filter.

And everywhere we go, we notice every instance of it.

And it seems to be more recent or more frequent than it really is.

Pick six has been around at least 20 years, probably more than that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I’ve never heard it.

Yeah, it’s pretty standard stuff in the business because, frankly, it’s an exciting moment in a football game when there’s an interception and they score on the interception.

It’s amazing.

So it always gets talked about when it happens.

But the reason that you’re noticing it, A, you’re new to football, and B, you’ve got this new, shall we call it a fascination with football language.

And so I think that you’re just a little, you know, it’s, you know,

You’re just more attuned to it now.

It’s like when you have a baby.

I don’t know if you have children, but when you do, your brain suddenly becomes babified and everything is about the baby.

Everything that you say, do, see, buy, hear, read, all of it is about the baby.

It’s kind of like that, only in a small dose.

Are you sure it’s not actually more frequent?

No, I’m not sure.

But it doesn’t look like it.

I mean, I’d have to look at the stats and sports are stats, Rich.

Somebody could tell us if there are more pick sixes than there used to be.

And then that would mean probably more language about it.

Well, I hope, Arianna, I hope we helped you a little bit with this.

No, this is wonderful.

Thank you so much.

The best remedy for all this language stuff, by the way, is just to not watch football.

Turn down the sound.

Well, that’ll happen soon enough.

You know, it’s football season.

I got to immerse myself, and then it’ll be over.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Another great quote about writing, this one from Burton Rasko.

I don’t know who that is.

Do you, Grant?

Never heard of him.

Well, he’s a smart guy because what he says is,

That’s a good point. Yeah, absolutely can relate to that.

Or a good excuse.

A good excuse.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send them an email, words@waywordradio.org.

A word quiz and more of your calls about language. Stay with us.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

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

Hello, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, John.

It’s John Chaneski.

Yes, it’s me.

John, what are you doing over there?

What have you been up to these days?

Well, you know what?

I’ve been working on something very interesting lately.

I promised you guys I’d let you in a little something.

I have been working on a show with NPR for about a year now.

Oh, really?

A brand new game show, a brand new program called Ask Me Another.

Ask Me Another.

Yes.

We’ve taped a couple of pilots, and we’re going to be taping some new shows

In the new year, some 13 shows you’ve been budgeted for.

So you can find it on Facebook.

And also there’s a Twitter feed, NPR, Ask Me Another,

And get up to speed on what we’re doing.

You know, we’re tearing up over here, John.

We feel like our little boy’s growing up.

I had to have one of these days, Ma.

But are you still working for us?

Do you still have a quiz in your pocket?

Yes, I do.

I want to get to it.

All right.

Good.

It’s called Takeoffs 2 because I introduced you guys a few moons ago

To a kind of wordplay that we’ve come to call takeoffs.

And that’s when you take off the first letter of a word,

Leaving behind a new word.

It’s fairly simple.

Okay.

Good.

I’ll give you a short sentence with two words missing.

One of the words is the same as the other, except that it’s missing the first letter.

Okay.

For example, if I said, if you’re the best man, you had better make sure that you blank the blank. Can you guess the two words that go in those blanks?

Bring the ring. Bring the ring. Bring the ring. Yes. Bring the ring.

Okay. To make things easier, I’ll even tell you the length of the longer word.

Okay. In this first group, the longer word comes first. Here we go.

In the first chapter of Moby Dick, Ishmael had to blank up his courage and join the blank. Five letters.

Screw up his courage and join the crew. That’s right. Oh, nice. Screw up and crew. Very good.

Here’s the next one. The castle window was very blank, but Robin Hood’s blank sailed right through.

Narrow and arrow. Narrow and arrow. Another one from Martha. Nice work. Thank you.

Here’s one for you California people, you drivers. Curb your blank or you will find that road rage can lead to certain blank.

Curb your anger or road rage can lead to certain danger. Very good. Nice. A little PSA from A Way with Words. You’re right.

Here’s another. When I find myself in dire blank, I remain focused. It’s one of my better blank.

Straits and traits. Good. Yes, straights and traits.

The blank that belonged to Columbus’s navigator is surprisingly still blank. I’ll admit this one’s kind of tough.

Oh, sextant and extant. Oh, good. Sextant and extant, yes.

Now, the following are what we call progressive takeoffs. Three words are replaced. So remove a letter from the first word to get the second word. Remove a letter from the second word to get the third word. In other words, from longest to shortest.

Here we go. Okay. I’ve been in the barber blank for an hour. My blank looks great, but it’s time to come up for a blank.

So chair, hair, and air. Yes, chair, hair, and air. Good.

I often hit my head in the shower blank because I’m so blank, and that’s blank.

Stall, tall, and all. This is the story of your life, John. That’s right. It is the story of my life.

Here’s the last one, okay? Blank don’t tell me our store lost its blank. It will really interfere with my life of blank.

So please and lease and ease. Oh, gosh, Grant. How do you do that?

Please don’t tell me our star lost its lease. It will really interfere with my life of ease. Excellent. Well done, Grant.

John, that was great. Thanks, Martha. This was a lot of fun. Ask me another.

Oh, no, wait. That’s the name of your new show. Yeah, congratulations on your new show. We’ll put a link to John’s new show on our website. We’ll just make sure the word gets around.

Thanks, John. Really appreciate it. That’s terrific. Thank you, Grant.

And for you, our listeners, the number to call is 877-929-9673, or you can send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Christy. I’m calling from a very small hamlet called Eagle Bridge, and it’s in New York. It’s right outside of Cambridge.

Eagle Bridge, New York, a small hamlet. I’m thinking of thatched roofs and a little bubbling brook and, like, sheep grazing on the commons.

You got it, except it’s goats. Oh, goats. Okay, very good. How can we help you today, Christy?

Well, as a child growing up, we always had these insects in our house, and my mother referred to them as earwigs. And as I grew up, I assumed everyone knew what they were called, but I was wrong in assuming that.

No one seems to know what these insects are called, and we just moved to this new home, and we had a ton of them while we were cleaning out the windowsills. They would fall out.

And I would say, oh, those are earwigs, and show the children and my fiancé and family members that were helping us paint. And everyone laughed and said, no, there isn’t an insect called an earwig. And what do they go in your ear or do they wear wigs?

And so there were lots of jokes about, you know, and as a child, I always thought that they would climb in my ear. And that was what they did. So I’m really unsure, and no one believes me that there is such a thing as an earwig.

You’re kidding. No, I’m not kidding. Absolutely. You’re right. You’re 100% right. Be steadfast in your resolve. Good. Great. I’m always looking right. That always feels nice. Congratulations.

Well, now, Christy, describe for us what these little critters look like. They’re dark brown, and they have a narrow body, and they almost look like a weasel, but an insect. They’re little and thin.

Well, they’re not little. A weasel. I kind of. I don’t know. I know it’s really a weasel-like insect, but I mean they’re long and thin, and they don’t have any other structure really except for these long, pincher-like objects coming out of their behind area.

Wait, out of their behind? Yeah, on their backside, like the end of them. That is absolutely an earwig. Yes, yes. Earwig. E-A-R-W-I-G, ear wig.

Yes. This is not something that you wear on your ear when you want more ear hair. No. No, and they don’t make wigs in your ear either. No, no, no.

I mean, there’s all kinds of folklore about them crawling into your ear and eating your brain. No, and laying eggs inside your skull and hatching. Yes, and they don’t do any of that, do they? No, they don’t. It’s all false.

No, no, no, not to worry. I hope not. Yeah, the weird part about the word earwig is that wig word, as you pointed out, and it comes from an old English word that sounded something like widja. That just means insect.

So it’s an ear insect, and you see similar words in German and French, but the idea is that they crawl into your ear at night and do bad things.

So the wig has nothing to do with the hairpiece? Nothing. Oh, very good. Nothing. They’ve always looked like long fireflies to me without the lights on their butts.

Oh, yeah, that could work, too. I bet that’s a lot easier for people to understand that are listening than the weasel description. Because that’s a little harder to – they don’t have fur.

What do the other people call it? They don’t have a name for it. They don’t. They do now. They mock you. They have a paucity vocabulary, and then they deride you for having the word for the thing that they can’t name?

I think earwings have been eating their brains, obviously. Thanks for calling. I’m so glad that we were able to help you and validate your vocabulary.

Thanks. And I will continue to rub it in everyone’s faces. There you go. I was so right. I was so right.

Well, I do say that you could be a sore winner, but okay. Just for a little while. Thanks, Christy. I really appreciate it. Oh, sure. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks. Call us, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Yes, my name is Josh from Indianapolis, Indiana. Hi, Josh. Hey, Josh, what’s up?

Howdy. Just kind of following up about your program the other week about auctioneers and speaking so quickly. Mm—

Yeah. One of the interesting things, I mean, I grew up in kind of the auction world. My father was an auctioneer for a little over 20 years, and actually this year he sold his auction barn that he had his business at.

And you guys touched on some really great facts last week. One of the things that, Martha, you were talking about the idea of it starting in the Civil War, the history behind with the Civil War when the different armies would basically capture property and land.

The only individuals in the armies that were allowed to sell all of the property and the goods were those of the rank of colonel. And that’s how actually today auctioneers get their title, very unofficial, of course, but they’re actually known by the title of Colonel.

Right. Interesting. You may hear that at an auction where a ring person will call the auctioneer Colonel. Right. Huh. I did not know that.

It’s an interesting bit of fact, like the difference, like you guys were talking about, between here and other countries. And a lot of individuals think that auctioneers are actually talking very fast, when in truth most of it is contraction, just like we would contract, you know, would not into wouldn’t.

What auctioneers tend to do as we’re, you know, learning the technique of doing the auctioneer’s chant or the roll, as they call it, what they do is they start kind of chopping out syllables and kind of bringing words together to create almost like a euphonic sound, something that’s pleasing to the ear.

So they’re not really as much talking fast as they are making something that’s, in a sense, rhythmic, like almost as if a rapper or like a slam poet would make it sound really, really good in the ear. And it’s actually a fun process.

That’s one of the big practices as an auctioneer that we have to go through is learning our numbers and those filler phrases, which is anything but the numbers.

Josh, you said we, so you’re an auctioneer yourself?

I actually did it alongside my father for about 15 years or so.

Oh, how cool.

Well, we’ve got to hear some.

So Grant’s going to come to your house and be witty and charming at a dinner party. How would you auction him off to people across the world?

Well, after you go through that description and kind of tell all the high points and avoid the low points, then you usually start by kind of getting the audience to really know what the first bit is, which would be like, here do I hit a $100 bid, $100 bid, now two, $100 bid, now two, now two, $200 bid, now three, two, put him at three, put him at three, put him at three, $200 bid, now three, now two and a half.

You try to know what your crowd’s going to bid and then get them kind of motivated and sometimes slip in some filler phrases like, you’ve got to be the bidder to be the buyer. That’s another one a lot of auctioneers use.

I’ve heard that one.

Get them motivated, go, oh, I’ve got to be the bidder to be the buyer. You’re not going to get it unless you put your hand up in the air.

So, Josh, if you were going to tell us one thing that no one knows about auctioneering, what would it be?

One thing that nobody knows about auctioneering? Maybe the thing that they should know.

Well, okay, the thing that they should know is that depending upon the state in which you live, there are certain states that are what are known as absolute auctions, which means that no matter what, everything at that auction must transfer ownership from an owner to a new buyer or a new owner.

Those are dangerous states to go to auctions because that’s where you see a lot of what’s known as chandelier bidding.

Chandelier bids basically is raising a price even though there’s no bid. You know, I’m at $75, what do you give $80? $75, what do you give $80? $80, now $90.

Well, there was no $80 bid. The auctioneer made it up, and that’s called a chandelier bid. And that’s dangerous because as the bidder, you don’t know.

You know, you’re looking around the crowd like, I didn’t see anybody raise their hand.

I was just going to say, Josh, I’m standing here hugging myself, and I’m realizing that I’m afraid that you’re going to call on me, that you’re going to think that I’ve made a bid and I haven’t.

That is kind of another big fear that people have when they go to an auction is that the auctioneer is going to take every little hand twitch and eye wink and that kind of thing.

One of the things that my father always used at his auction was it’s cheaper to kiss somebody than wave at them at an auction.

But most auctioneers aren’t really going to take your bid unless you mean it.

I mean, they might take it accidentally, but they’re going to correct it. For the most part, you have to really definitively bid with a card or nodding of your head or waving your hand.

Yeah, it is cheaper to kiss somebody than wave at them a dog.

I’m stealing that.

Love it.

Josh, this is fantastic.

I’m enlightened and I’m informed.

Glad to hear it.

Glad to hear it.

It’s been a pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

We can’t go much further into our Words of the Year discussion without mentioning Occupy, as in Occupy Wall Street or Occupy San Diego or Occupy Oakland and so on and so forth.

One of the things that happened in Zuccotti Square near Wall Street was something called Zuccotti Lung.

Yeah. And this was an illness that was being passed around from person to person because of all these people working and sleeping and protesting in close quarters. Zuccotti lung.

It’s like kennel cough only for.

Yeah, for protesters.

Zuccotti lung. And you can send your words for your candidates to words@waywordradio.org.

Call us on the phone at 877-929-9673 or share them in social media on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. This is Jody Harper. I’m calling from Alabama.

I’m Dothan, Alabama.

Dothan?

That’s right.

Welcome to the program. How can we help?

Well, I have a word that I’ve always wondered about that my grandfather used to use, and it made us laugh hysterically about it when we really thought about it when I was in high school.

Every once in a while, my grandfather would use the word, and he would say, don’t get in a defugality.

And I never really thought that was a real word.

I thought he was either mispronouncing the word difficulty or he had merged the word fugue with some other word.

I really, I wasn’t sure what he meant, but it was just one of those funny things where it’s that one, I’d never heard anybody else use the word.

That is great.

Where do you think he picked that up, defugality?

I don’t know.

He was a sea captain.

He was in the Merchant Marine.

He was an airline navigator.

He had some pretty big adventures in life.

Did he say DeFuglitee as kind of a joke or in an ironic way or with a little bit of a laugh?

I don’t know.

He had a really refined sense of humor.

He gave everyone that came into our house some sort of very ironic or sarcastic nickname.

So we had a family friend who would come over, and he didn’t always really work real hard as far as we could tell, but he loved to go to the YMCA and work out.

And he was very physically fit.

And whenever he was coming over, my grandfather would say, oh, here comes medicine ball.

And by the term that was used around me, this man was actually a pretty good beer drinker and had a pretty good beer belly.

I always thought about the medicine ball being under his shirt.

So it sounds to me like your grandfather had a nice sense of humor.

And the reason I asked about that is that this word, difficulty, and it is the regular word difficulty with an intentional mispronunciation, has one entry in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

And I can find this word with this kind of sound or this kind of spelling as far back as 1931 in a Dashiell Hammett story, the glass key.

And so it does exist.

And it is usually either, A, a joking way to say the word.

Either you’re kind of making fun of the fact that people pronounce it funny.

They don’t know that they’re saying difficulty, you know.

Right.

Or you’re saying it funny on purpose just to kind of, like, take a little bit of the sting out of your situation.

Right?

Something bad is happening.

Oh, I’m in a bit of a difficulty here.

Right?

But also you can find it used sometimes to represent the really uncouth or uneducated speech of certain kinds of people.

Like in the Dashiell Hammett story, it’s these meathead tough guys who use this word.

And so it’s spelled something like D-E-F-U-D-F-U-G-L-T or something like that.

Lots of different ways, right?

Yeah, lots of.

D-E-F-E-W-G-L-T-Y is one of them or D-I-F-F-U-C-A-L-T-Y.

So, Grant, it reminds me of that phone call that we had from, was it a bus driver in the Midwest who always used the word skidooly instead of schedule?

Right.

It sounds like an intentional mispronunciation like that.

Yes, it sounds exactly like that, like somebody’s intentionally saying the word incorrectly.

They’re pretending to be ignorant, but they’re actually quite intelligent.

And, Jodi, I would tell you that if you want to look online, look for the D-E-F-U-G-A-L-T-Y spelling, because there’s a whole discussion on one of the language blogs called Language Hat.

Where there are all these different people talking about how their families used it.

So it wasn’t just your grandpa.

Okay, great.

Well, I could tell you lots of stories.

He did all sorts of things.

Well, you’ll have to call again then.

All right.

Take care of yourself now.

Good talking with you.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Okay, bye-bye.

Best of luck.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

877-929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, and on Twitter and Facebook.

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Ladies.

Now, what’s your instant reaction when you hear that word?

Are you fine with the word ladies or does it bother you?

Because a lot of women find it offensive.

And the question of why was recently the subject of a lively discussion on the website Ask Metafilter.

So, Grant and I asked the same question on our Facebook page.

And boy, howdy, Grant.

Did we get a lot of response.

A lot of people said that the word ladies carries for them a whiff of a time when lady meant, you know, somebody prim and proper, a delicate creature subject to the vapors and the object of subtle or not so subtle condescension, especially if a guy is using the word.

One of our listeners, Deborah Swain, wrote on the Facebook page,

I quickly stereotype the speaker as out of date and patronizing, I think.

I should probably be a bit more forbearing.

But, she adds, I’m old enough to remember when it was a very common and patronizing term of address.

Others wrote that even if a woman uses the word ladies, it’s still charged.

One listener said, I was yelled at viciously by a co-worker because I, a woman, addressed her team, all women, as ladies over email.

She also yelled at my boss for allowing me to be so rude.

She asked me if I’d address a group of men as hey men.

No, I said, but I’d address them as gentlemen.

And it got me to thinking, Grant, if a female friend of mine is trying to organize a group of us and says, okay, listen up, ladies, I’m not going to be bothered.

If the singer Beyonce is calling out to all the single ladies, I’m not going to be bothered by that.

But if a male colleague struts into the room and addresses a group of us, says, ladies, we need to do this or that, he does so at his own peril.

And there’s no problem with ladies and gentlemen, as the announcer says at the top of a show, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Elvis Presley.

There’s no problem with that, right?

No, no. But, you know, if I see the word ladies on a bathroom door, there’s some part of me that thinks, oh, I should be wearing a dress.

So how do you address a group of women? Gals? Hey, females?

Well, I think it does depend on the context and who’s doing the speaking, right?

Because that one listener was saying that she got yelled at viciously by another woman.

Right.

I guess more and more I’m tempted to say something like, hello, all, or hey, everybody.

Something generic and genderless.

Yeah. Have we lost something, though, if we’re doing that?

Maybe we have.

Particularly if you’ve got a message specifically for women who are in the midst of a group of men, right?

Yeah, I wouldn’t say hello.

So we’ve got a room full of employees, half women, half men.

How do you address just the female half and make sure that they know that it’s for them and not for the men?

Great question.

You know, we did have one interesting post from Andrew Evans on the Facebook page.

And he says, if more people had military experience, there would be fewer objections to ladies.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, is a common thing I say when just walking down the hall past groups of officers.

If I were to say something like, good morning, gentlemen and females, I can only imagine the equal opportunity complaints.

Right.

If not legal charges for disrespect of commissioned officers.

So it really is a problem.

How do we handle that?

877-929-9673 or send your opinions and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi there.

This is Joanna from Carlsbad.

Hi, Joanna. Welcome.

Hey, how are you doing?

I’m good, thanks.

I have a question about the use of words in the English language,

And I am from England, and I’ve been here for 10 years,

And although we speak the same language,

I find that the use of words is very, very different,

And so I often feel a real longing to be able to express, you know,

Some nuance or something that makes me laugh,

And I can’t find the words.

Because I find that Americans use words so differently.

And so I have a couple of words that I would love to throw out there

To see if you could help me find the replacement word in America.

Oh, sure.

Great.

So I’ve got quite a few words, but I’ll just start with one.

One would be cheeky.

And if I could use that, I’d love to use that more,

But it often just falls completely flat.

Cheeky.

Yeah.

Cheeky would be, I would say, oh, she was a cheeky wee thing.

Or I say to my children, don’t be so cheeky,

Or I was just being cheeky.

And I feel that the American equivalent would be sort of

Facetious or irreverent,

But it still doesn’t capture the real nuance of the word cheeky.

Well, tell us what you think the real nuance of the word cheeky is.

It’s almost so difficult to describe.

And I’ve put this out to my English friends and my sister,

Who’s just moved in.

She is, we’re in a pickle, and my husband, who’s American,

I’ve been married for 10 years, doesn’t have the answer either.

Cheeky would be, I suppose, a little sarcastic,

But in a really, in a very endearing or spirited way.

And it’s not completely negative.

It’s not something that’s going to get you into big trouble.

Cheeky’s not really negative at all, and I think that’s the connotation.

It’s really more of an endearing way of being.

I think of a schoolboy hitting on an older woman, right?

She might say, oh, you cheeky lad, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So on one hand, he gets a little bit of a reprimand for shooting above his station.

On the other hand, he gets points for bravery.

Exactly.

But it could also, the Americans use words, I think, more literally.

And also we use, in England, we would use cheeky in many ways.

So we’d say, you know, he was being a cheeky wee boy.

But you could also say, no, that was just cheeky.

And you could use it in a more, you know, if somebody was trying to be, you know, a little bit rude or somebody in the shop was trying to push in line.

You could say, that’s just cheeky.

Right.

You could be.

It’s all, it’s very subtle.

Yes, that is the nature of English, isn’t it?

I would agree that there’s no perfect synonym for cheeky.

And I’d also agree that you have zeroed in perfectly on a word that is very British and hardly American at all.

If we know it, we know it from British media.

Yes. Okay.

I still try to use it, and I’m not giving up.

No, you should, by all means.

It’s got flavor to it.

It would make you distinct among Americans, won’t it?

Well, yeah, but I would like to know.

I do feel a real sense of longing to be able to have,

Not only to be able to use those types of words,

But to have other people sort of banter with me.

You know, people ask me sometimes, you know,

What do I miss most about England?

And I often think it’s not the rain, it’s not the pubs, it’s not the English dinners, you know.

And it’s my friends and family, but more than anything, it’s the language and the use of words,

And I miss that chat, you know, that sort of, the bits in between, the grey, the grey areas,

That I just can’t recreate.

Yes.

Sometimes I say the word naff.

My husband bought me a little love heart necklace, and it had little diamonds around it.

And it really wasn’t my style.

And he could see in my face that I wasn’t too keen.

And keen is another word that I use a lot.

And he said, do you not like it?

Is it not your taste?

And I knew you’d be hurt.

And I said, no, it’s just a little bit twee.

And I could see that he didn’t really get what I was saying,

But there was no other way to describe it.

What would you use for twee?

Well, the other word that you mentioned, naff, N-A-F-F,

I know that, but I learned it from two British women

When I was traveling in South America like 15 years ago,

And it was brand new to me then.

But it’s such a great word.

It is.

It means a little bit like chintzy or cheesy or a little crappy maybe, right?

Chintzy would be a good replacement for now.

But Tui, I know Tui from music reviewers

Because they love to use it to describe albums that are just a little too precious.

Yeah, precious is a great way to describe Tui,

But Tui is even more flowery than precious.

Joanna, I appreciate your predicament.

As someone who’s traveled around the world and has lived in countries for a time where people don’t speak like I do,

I know what you’re talking about.

But I would argue that that kind of conversation can be had.

Really?

You have to keep searching for it.

I would suggest you start in the bookstores, and you will find very literate people with big vocabularies

Who will love to talk to you at length about anything that you choose.

I have to say that I appreciate your novelty and the kind of charm that you have, Joanna.

So thank you so much for calling and sharing some of that with us and our listeners.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

Tell us about your language experiences.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Philip from Plano.

Hi, Philip from Plano, Texas, I presume.

That would be correct.

Welcome to the program, Philip.

Well, you know, my father was a great Shakespearean

And always worked Shakespearean phrases into the stuff he said.

And I can always understand everything contextually, but it occurred to me that I don’t know what a whole lot of the stuff actually meant.

And you guys are the experts, so I decided to come to you.

In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth says, screw your courage to the sticking place.

And I’m interested in what the heck is the sticking place.

Do you have any guesses?

Well, you know, I was thinking about it, and I had this mental image of this giant medieval bulletin board.

And the big guy on campus would post a proclamation saying,

I’m the bravest guy in town, and I can prove it to anybody.

It was like a challenge.

And then I realized that nobody back then could read.

So I was back to square one.

-huh. Okay. All right. Well, that’s a pretty good guess.

And we have to guess at this one. We’re not entirely sure.

But this is the scene where Lady Macbeth is urging Macbeth to go ahead with the murder, right?

Yes.

Behind every great man, there is a great woman.

Right, right.

Inciting him to murder.

Yeah, yeah.

And she’s nagging him, conjoling him.

And then she says, screw your courage to the sticking place or the sticking point.

Right.

And the best guesses that we have are that it either has to do with tightening the string of a crossbow to the point where it’s about to be poised to…

Oh, so these are like the kind of bows that actually had the crank, where you’d crank it rather than pull it back with your hands?

I think so, or it has something to do with…

And so there’s actually a screw in there turning the gears, right?

I think that’s true.

I can’t remember what the piece was called, but it took about a week to wind it up.

Yeah, but it could go an amazing distance, right?

And it would fly with great force.

Yes.

And anything it hit would stay down.

Right.

Yeah.

That, to me, is the most likely, that it has something to do with how a crossbow works

And getting it to that point where it’s just poised to do damage and there’s no point of return.

The other explanation that I’ve seen is that it somehow has to do with tuning a musical instrument,

Which doesn’t make as much sense to me.

No, it doesn’t.

You know, like you tune a lute and you turn the little peg and you screw it right to the end.

Yeah, I think exactly the right point.

The connection to a violent weapon probably, right, that seems a little more appropriate to the scene.

Yeah, yeah.

But it’s been an object of a lot of speculation.

Yeah, it’s in footnotes in all the annotated Shakespeare’s.

They all have some speculation, but they basically borrow from each other.

We don’t know.

Shakespeare didn’t leave notes for this sort of thing.

And some of the language of his contemporaries, he’s the only one of his time who uses this particular expression in this particular way.

Yeah, we might talk today about screwing up your courage to do something.

But otherwise, not really.

So basically, we could just go with it means be brave.

Yes.

Yeah.

Most of yourself.

Yeah.

Buck up a little bit.

Man up.

Yeah, man up.

Cowboy up.

Yeah, cowboy up.

Here we go.

That’s the best we can do.

Otherwise, it’s a big fat origin unknown.

All right.

Well, thank you so very much.

I very much appreciate it.

Our pleasure, Philip.

Thank you.

Great talking with you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us on the telephone, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, you remember when we were talking about optimism and pessimism and whether if you have a trash can that’s half full, are you an optimist or a pessimist?

Yes.

Remember that one?

We got some great responses about that.

Madeline Hervey wrote from Dallas, Texas, to say,

The trash can half-full describer is neither a pessimist nor an optimist.

They’re a realist.

Very good.

And it brought up an interesting point for Andy Sager, who lives in Plattsburgh, New York.

He said,

That discussion led me to think about the recent commercial for the new iPhone’s Siri.

In the commercial, a businesswoman asks her phone,

How does my day look?

And Siri, the computerized assistant in the new iPhone, responds,

Not too bad. You only have two meetings.

And Andy wonders, I wonder how does Siri know that that’s a good thing?

Maybe two meetings is bad.

And maybe they’re long meetings.

Yeah.

Maybe it’s like two four-hour meetings.

Yeah, I think Siri’s getting a little full of herself.

Anyway, share your thoughts with us in email, words@waywordradio.org,

Or you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Amy Wakefield. I’m calling from Deer River, New York.

Hi, Amy. Welcome.

Hey, welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What you got on your mind?

Well, a few years ago, my daughter got off the phone with her friend,

And I said, how’s your friend?

And she said, well, she’s basically bragging by complaining.

And I knew exactly what she meant.

And I think in this case, she had a lot of college applications,

And she was overwhelmed with good offers, and she just didn’t know what to do.

Oh, oh.

So my daughter was kind of set up with that.

Right.

Poor thing.

Oh, Harvard and Yale both want me.

Whatever shall I do?

Exactly, exactly.

And my question was, is there a word for that?

There is a word for that.

Besides wanting to smack the person?

Right.

Irritating.

The word is humblebrag.

And it’s actually a relatively recent coinage.

Humble plus brag.

Together is one word.

Like bah humblebrag?

Well, humble is like you’re pretending to be humble, but you’re actually bragging.

I like it.

This has come up just this year in full force because there’s a Twitter hashtag called

Humble brag, where when you see somebody who’s doing this in Twitter, that is, they pretend

To be complaining, but they’re actually saying something that makes them look good.

Like, oh, I just hate waiting for my turn on the David Letterman show.

It’s so tiresome back here in the green room.

Things like that.

Or this Oscar is so heavy.

Yeah.

Now where am I going to put this other Oscar?

My mantles are already full.

I’m going to have to buy a new house.

Oh, this diamond.

And so there’s a writer, a stand-up comedian named Harris Whittles.

Harris?

Harris Whittles is a stand-up comedian on the NBC show Parks and Recreation, and he’s a writer for the show.

And he created a Twitter feed called Humblebrag.

And all he does, or whoever runs the feed, is retweet these Humblebrags.

And there’s some great ones here.

Paris Hilton, this is one of her tweets.

So annoying, the airline lost one of my suitcases.

The one that had all my shoes in it.

You know?

Perfect.

Ariana Huffington, about to take off from Milan to Istanbul, and none of my three Blackberries are working.

Oh.

Yeah, we feel the pain.

I’ve got a couple more for you, all right?

Ludacris, the hip-hop star.

You fly in a private plane for special privileges only to find out that President Obama shut down DFW Airport, so now I have to fly to another one.

Oh, the humanity.

And these are what you’re talking about, right?

This is kind of what your daughter’s friend was doing.

Yeah, though it’s funny because to me humble is a rather nice word.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s, I don’t know.

It doesn’t seem exactly the same as complaining, but it does capture the spirit.

But it’s definitely, you’re really bragging, but you’re trying to pass it off as a problem.

Right.

Right, yeah.

Maybe kvetch brag.

Kvetch brag.

I don’t know.

Humble brag has legs, though.

I don’t know if we’ll be able to wipe that one off the face of the earth.

I like it.

Maybe other folks have other words for it, maybe involving tiny violins or something.

Maybe we should put the word out.

That’s more of a hand gesture, I guess.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that’s certainly a great word.

You’re not completely convinced that that’s the one you want, though, right?

Well, I’ll have to think about it.

Okay.

It sounds good.

Yeah, see what your daughter says.

Okay, well, that might replace bragging by complaining in our family.

Humble brag.

I like it.

Well, Amy, thanks for calling.

Well, it was fun.

Thank you.

Thanks, Amy. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, what word has you puzzled?

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

Things have come to a pretty path.

Well, as they say about opera, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.

So, Grant, what you got?

A big thanks to all of this week’s callers.

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Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye-bye.

Aloha.