Idiom’s Delight (episode #1417)

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.

If somebody is born to a life of luxury, they don’t have to work to get where they are. We say that they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, right?

But you know what they say in Sweden?

No, I don’t. Born with a fish in your mouth.

Close. They say that person slid in on a shrimp sandwich.

I mean, they say it in Swedish, but the image is so fabulous, you know? To slide in on a shrimp sandwich.

And why not?

Why not?

Yeah.

I love idioms, Grant.

As you know, I collect them.

And I’ve got another one I’d like to try on you.

Tell me if you can guess what this one is.

It’s from Russian.

And the translation is, when a lobster whistles on top of a mountain.

When pigs fly.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

In Dutch, it’s when the cows are dancing on the ice.

And the idea is, you know, it’s just not going to happen.

In Thailand, what they say instead of when pigs fly is something that translates as one afternoon in your next reincarnation.

Oh, interesting.

And there’s a book about idioms that I always recommend and give to people as gifts.

It’s just light and fun.

And it’s beautifully illustrated.

It’s called Idioms Delight by Suzanne Brock.

I don’t think it’s in print, but it’s worth tracking down.

Awesome.

We’d love to hear your favorite idioms in English or any other language.

877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org, and we’ll take your questions on Twitter at the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Katie. I’m calling from Levittown, Pennsylvania.

Well, hello, Katie. Welcome from Levittown, the famous Levittown.

Oh, yeah, one of the famous Levittowns.

Very cool.

Cool, nice. Welcome.

Yes. I’m calling about a word that I used to use where I grew up near Providence, Rhode Island.

When we were going to play hooky from school, we would say that we were going to bunk, B-U-N-K.

And since I left home, I have never heard it anywhere else, and nobody I knew said they used it growing up.

But then recently I was watching an episode of the British TV show, The IT Crowd, and one of the characters said that he was going to bunk off, meaning to play hooky.

And I was just curious, because I had always assumed it was just a New England thing, and it was just surprising to hear it elsewhere.

Very interesting.

Now, when you played hooky, you didn’t go home and take a nap.

I mean, it’s not that kind of bunk, right?

No.

What would you do?

You know, go to the movies or wherever.

I actually, I was kind of a swear. I never bunked.

But, you know, go to the movies, get ice cream.

Get ice cream.

Which character in the IT crowd was it?

It was Roy.

Okay.

Roy’s Irish, yeah?

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

That makes a little more sense.

Yeah, it does.

It’s funny to have this from a speaker in Rhode Island.

So you’re saying it was pretty widespread in Rhode Island?

It was.

I grew up actually just over the border in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

My mom was from Attleboro close by, and she also said it.

But it seems like, you know, my friends who were from East Providence would also say it.

So I would say that it’s, you know, pretty widespread locally.

There is a really solid entry for bunk, meaning to run off or to escape or to leave in Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

And he takes it back as far as the 1840s to Lincolnshire, which is a part of, you know, the British Isles.

And so we know that there’s a strong history of it there.

It’s still used by modern English speakers throughout the British Isles.

And I am not surprised at all to find it in New England, not in the least.

Yeah, it’s also in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Yeah, I’m not surprised.

Specifically in Rhode Island.

Yeah, there we go.

Pretty cool, right?

Yeah, and it’s interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

I have a friend from India, and just last night she bunked.

Oh, she took off?

Yeah, yeah.

We were taking a wilderness basics course, and she texted me and said, I’m going to bunk.

That’s cool, right?

Yeah.

Oh, that’s funny.

Yeah, I’m surprised to hear it so far back.

Well, language, yeah, it’s got to have roots.

And playing hooky.

That goes back way, way, way far.

Playing hooky has got a tradition, yeah.

I might not see you next week, by the way, Martha.

Oh, yeah?

You’re going to bunk.

You’ll be off getting ice cream.

All right, Katie, so how’s that?

Does it help you out a little bit?

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

Thank you so much.

Sure.

Take care.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye.

Of course, I never bunked.

You never bunk?

No, no.

I might have.

Not even on like senior skip day when it was kind of like unofficially endorsed?

Well, I might have pretended like I had a fever.

Oh, I see.

Always looking.

Yeah.

The pure defiance.

Not from you.

Me?

No.

Not till much later.

Yeah.

I rarely did.

My brother did a lot more of it, though.

Really?

Yeah.

It was one house that we lived in where it was really easy to slip out of the house without being noticed.

Oh, yeah?

He did so much.

I got into so much trouble.

Really?

And you didn’t.

A couple times, but I would rather be home reading a book.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’m going to go out and talk to humans when I have this giant bookshelf here.

They didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

What is wrong with you?

877-929-9673 is the number to call or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

There’s a great Russian idiom that is about somebody with an uneasy conscience.

I think it’s really picturesque.

The thief has a burning hat.

Ooh, it is, right?

Isn’t that great?

Yeah.

Yeah, they’ve got the hat on the head.

They think that they’re fooling everybody, but their hat’s on fire.

Well, isn’t it kind of the inverse of that, though, that they feel like their hat’s on fire, even others can’t tell?

That’s what an uneasy conscious is about.

Oh, it’s burning inside the crown.

You know when you’ve got new shoes and they’re really killing your feet and you feel like it’s evident?

But you’re the only one who knows.

Maybe that’s it.

Maybe we can make a new idiom out of that.

Yeah?

When you have a burning secret, it’s like, his shoes are too tight.

Oh, I like that.

I like that.

Maybe this is how idioms get started.

This is a show about language and how we use it.

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Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carol calling from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Carol. Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

When I was a little girl, I have two sisters.

If something happened to my sisters or myself, if we fell and scratched a knee or scratched an elbow, my father would say as we were weeping, don’t worry, it will be better before you’re married.

Which, of course, we would respond to, but Daddy, what happens if we don’t get married?

But he said this repeatedly, and we have no idea where it came from.

I like that.

That’s great.

So you’re carrying on, you’re like crying maybe a little too much, kind of like a soccer player pretending to be injured, right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

You know, we’re just in a puddle of tears, and his response is not to worry.

It’ll be better before you’re married.

Because if you were about to be married, like having a giant scab on your knee might be a problem.

Exactly.

You wouldn’t look good in your wedding day.

But you’re like seven.

You’re not like 27.

About to be married.

Oh, man.

Is that classic deflection?

I mean, you stopped thinking about your knee, right?

You started thinking about your chances.

Oh, that’s possible.

Yes, we did.

We were always, yes, yes, we moved on to think about our chances.

But the point is, it’s not a life-threatening injury.

You’re going to survive.

It’s not a big deal.

Zip it, right?

That’s basically what he’s saying?

Yes.

I mean, you think sympathetic, but basically get over it.

Yeah.

It’ll be better before you’re married.

I love it.

You know, are you from, do you have Irish heritage?

Perhaps.

So he’s from Ireland.

That’s so interesting.

Oh, there we go.

There we go.

Oh, interesting.

I don’t know where I picked it up.

Maybe there’s the Tania French, Tanya French.

How do you say her name?

Anyway, there’s some Irish detective novels I’ve been reading.

I wonder if I picked it up there.

It’s because the Irish use this more widely than Americans,

But obviously we have such an Irish-American heritage here.

I’m not surprised to find it kind of pockmarking the map of the United States

In terms of people who use it.

But it is well-known in Ireland.

To me, and I have Boston Irish on one branch of my family, it’s the kind of humor that they would use.

You give people a hard time for being less than strong, really.

I mean, when they’re down, you give them a little kick, actually.

Skin the other knee.

Skin the other knee. I don’t know.

But in my mind, that’s what I’m thinking.

Does that mean anything at all to you, Carol?

You know, he is Irish.

He came from Ireland in the 50s as a young man.

And he didn’t have a lot of Irish sayings left in him, but it does make sense.

I mean, you know, they’re a hardy people.

They survived rough times.

And, you know, I’ve never heard one of his siblings, who many of them stayed in Ireland, use it.

But I bet they did.

So he’s around still?

No, unfortunately he passed away a few years ago.

But, you know, most of my family is in Ireland, so I’m 100% Irish.

My mother also came from Ireland.

And they came here and immediately went to Miami, which is not your traditional Irish path.

No, no.

There should have been a stopover in Brooklyn or something, right?

You know, or Boston, right?

Yeah.

No, but they went to Miami.

So I got to grow up in Miami, which was always a lot of fun.

And, Carol, do you use the expression yourself now?

Of course.

Okay.

All right.

You know, when I would say it to my son, he would look at me like, what are you talking about, Mary?

But, you know, my sisters and I, and we’re in our 50s, we say it to each other when something goes wrong.

Right.

Interesting.

And we’re married.

I was going to say, what happens after you’re married?

Oh, yeah.

You could still use it.

Yeah.

And there’s a memory of your father attached to it, right?

Oh, that’s really sweet.

That is sweet.

It’ll be better before you’re married.

Yeah, so it works with teenage boys, too, right?

I was going to say, I have a seven-year-old who doesn’t even know what’s coming.

I’m going to drop that on him, Carol.

You’re going to start using it.

Thank you so much.

I hope we helped a little bit.

Yeah, it probably comes from his Irish heritage.

It is widespread.

That’s about the most we know.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure.

Thanks, Carol.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Love the show.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Well, we’ve talked about this before.

You know, there are the things that a dictionary says about a word or a phrase,

Kind of the meaning and the pronunciation, maybe the etymology.

But what it doesn’t include is this whole cultural notion that goes along with it.

And it doesn’t have your personal reflections.

Wouldn’t you love to have a dictionary that had a few lines after every entry

So you could write your own notes about that entry?

And it’s kind of what Carol shared with us, her own notes about this particular part of language.

Right, a dictionary with heart.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s awesome.

That’s beautiful.

Let’s go do that.

How can we do that?

See you later, guys.

Is there an app for that?

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

You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at the handle Wayword.

A long time ago on my old double-toned dictionary, I did an entry for self-licking ice cream cone.

Do you remember this?

I do.

So a self-licking ice cream cone, this is used in government and like in D.C.

And kind of where it crosses over into the military for a project that exists only to support itself.

Self, right.

Yeah.

So it’s a thing that only exists in order to sustain its own existence.

Christy French posted something on our Facebook page asking if anyone knew the term self-eating watermelon.

It turns out it’s the same thing.

Yeah, so it’s a variation of the same thing.

And there’s also a self-licking lollipop.

And it’s all kind of used as a derogatory way to talk about something like there’s no end results to that project except for funding that project.

We know projects like that, yes.

Yes, I assume Washington has a lot of them.

Thanks, Christy, for turning me on to that because I didn’t know about that variation.

I really appreciate it.

We have lots of great conversations going on on our Facebook page and our Facebook group.

We’re also talking with you on Twitter, at WayWord.

And you can call us, 877-929-9673, or send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Share your thoughts about language as Way With Words continues.

Thank you.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

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

Hello.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, John.

What’s up, buddy?

I’m ready to use some language.

Let’s use it.

Use some language.

You know, we talked a while ago about super vocalics.

Do you remember when we talked about super vocalics?

No.

Those are words or phrases that contain each of the vowels, A-E-I-O-U, just once.

Oh, right.

Just once.

I have a couple of friends who are really into this.

Of course, I have a lot of puzzle and word friends, and they even have a Facebook page dedicated to it.

For example, the word super vocalics is a super vocalic.

It has a U and E and O and A and I.

Right.

Okay.

Our puzzle today is I’ll give you a clue to a super vocalic.

For example, this one.

In the movie Star Wars, Luke famously lives with his aunt and uncle on this kind of facility that apparently harvests the dew off of things.

You might say, do you happen to know what that was?

Moisture farm?

Yes, a moisture farm.

Wow, okay.

Moisture farm has O-I-U-E and A.

That’s a super vocalic.

Oh, wow.

That one’s a little tougher than some of the others, but I saved it for the example.

Okay, great.

Okay, let’s try some.

Here we go.

Before you visit Austin or San Antonio or Dallas, you might want to consult the bureau that’s in charge of this.

Okay, so it’s not tourism.

Yeah, that’s one of the words.

Is it?

Oh, it is?

Yeah.

Texas Tourism?

Yes, Texas Tourism.

Texas Tourism Bureau.

Okay.

No, no, just Texas Tourism Bureau.

I don’t even know if there is a Texas Tourism Bureau.

Gotcha.

It could be a committee.

Texas Tourism is a super vocalic.

E-A-O-U-N-I.

Very good.

Who knew?

Here’s the next.

This is a series of platform video games created by Nintendo featuring their famous plumber character.

Super Mario.

Super Mario.

Very good.

Super vocalic.

Super Mario.

Super vocalic.

Now, if you have too much stuff, you can put some of your stuff in a facility that has these rooms where you store stuff.

Well, it’s a storage.

Yeah, there’s two E’s in that.

Storage.

What do we call it?

A storage.

Unit.

Yes, a storage unit.

Very nice.

This infant animal is so, so, so cute, but be prepared for when it grows up and gets all prickly.

Pot?

Oh, no.

It’s not a hedgehog?

Porcupine baby.

Porcupine baby or baby porcupine.

Really?

Yes, baby porcupine, super vocalic.

All right.

When someone shares their concerns, this common verbal response basically lets them know that, yes, my ears work.

Acoustic.

I hear you.

I hear you.

I hear you is right.

That’s a really tiny, very short super vocalic.

It’s got only just eight letters, and it’s got all the vowels, even Y.

Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain, Pelennor, and Tristan are all these.

Knights of the…

No, that doesn’t work.

We need to get rid of the…

Of the…

Just switch it around.

Round table knights.

Yes, round table knights.

Very good.

This huge organization, you can describe it by the super vocalic, it’s run by a pope.

Catholic Church?

Say again.

Catholic Church?

Missing an E.

Catholic…

The Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church is right.

Sorry, you have to jump through that hoop there.

But yeah, we needed the E.

He only appeared in a few episodes,

But this character from the TV show Seinfeld was very popular.

And based on a real New York restaurateur.

The Soup Nazi.

The Soup Nazi.

It’s a super vocalic.

Yes, very good.

You guys did fantastic on those super vocalics.

Well, thank you, John.

Thanks, John.

Take care now.

Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.

And if you want to talk about any kind of language, super vocalic or otherwise, call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Swaroop calling from Flower Mound, Texas.

How are you doing?

Great. Nice to talk to you.

Hi.

Hello. Very excited to be on this show and long-time listener, first-time caller.

Excellent.

As they say.

We’re delighted to have you. How can we help you?

I’ve been hearing the word tips, which we give in a hotel or to a bellboy or in return for service.

I was always wondering whether it was an acronym or is it a short for something, a longer word.

Wanted to find out, because I’ve heard that it can be an acronym as well.

So wanted to find from the experts.

Okay, so you’ve heard the acronym story, and what is that exactly?

My wife says it’s to insure prompt service, and I think it is thanks and payment.

Oh, I haven’t heard that one.

Which one is the right?

Neither one.

Yeah, neither one.

So the question, just to clarify here, the question is the origin of tips.

So if I leave a little money on the pillow for the maid after I check out of the hotel or I get good service at a restaurant and I put some extra bills on the table for the wait staff, that’s what you’re talking about, that kind of tip, right?

Right, exactly.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, the first thing to say is that you should almost always be suspicious of acronym stories.

We haven’t really seen acronyms a whole lot in English until relatively late.

In fact, the word acronym itself didn’t come into English until, I think, the 1940s.

But the word tip goes all the way back at least to the mid-18th century.

And we think it comes from perhaps the slang of thieves, the idea of tipping or tapping, that is, touching somebody, handing something off.

Does that make sense?

So think about the moment at which you pass the money from your hand to, say, the hand of the valet who has handed you back your car keys, right?

There’s this moment where you’re literally giving him the tip.

You’re touching him.

Correct.

You’re folding the note and passing it on to him.

Yes, that’s right.

Yes, makes sense.

So at least it puts the story address at our dinner table tonight.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure, no problem.

Yeah, the acronym stuff is crazy.

They call them bacronyms, actually, in the language trades.

People invent acronyms for words that already existed just because it’s kind of fun to do.

But they’re almost never the true origin story for words.

I mean, it’s like a handful of words that we use every day actually come from back rooms, like a laser.

And there’s just not that many, really, you know?

Oh, so nice to hear that.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, sure.

I really enjoy your show.

Oh, we enjoyed having you on it.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, I was thinking about the word in Spanish for tip is propina, or let’s leave them a little propi.

And I was always curious as to why we say that.

And it goes back to Latin words that literally mean for a drink.

So, you know, here’s a little beer money.

So the pro is the for part and the pino is the drink.

Exactly.

That’s exactly it.

Well, we’ll take your questions about language.

Any question you had or dispute with a spouse about language, something that happened at work, a story to tell, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

And find us on Twitter under the handle Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Here’s a great Portuguese idiom, empurar com a barriga, which literally means to push something with your belly, and what it means is to postpone an important chore.

To push it with your belly.

Not getting very far very fast.

Yeah, I guess I’m just imagining the circumstances.

So this might be when the dresser is loaded down with laundry that’s yet to be folded, and you’re kind of like pushing it out of the way to get to the clean shirt underneath.

Right.

They call it snifferentiation.

Is that what it is?

You know, when you’re like, maybe I can wear these again.

Let me sniff them.

Or you’re in the kitchen.

Dishes are piled and needing to be washed.

And you’re like reaching over them for the one last clean bowl.

Right.

Or you figure, oh, that crust doesn’t make so much difference.

I’ll just put another burrito on top of it.

No!

Too far.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Margarita.

I’m from the Dallas area.

Hi, Margarita.

How are you doing?

Great.

I have a word that I use.

Actually, I have two words I use interchangeably, anyhow and anyways.

And I have been seeing someone and recently, apparently I’ve been using the term more frequently, and I think it’s because I’m more comfortable with them.

So I’m speaking more, using terms that are more natural for me.

But he’s been a wonderful person, a gentleman.

And the only critical thing probably has been that he has said, I don’t like it when you use the word anyhow or anyways.

It makes you sound uneducated and uncultured.

And he’s helping me on that.

But I want to know why I use the word, and I use it as a conclusion to, I will have shared something really deep and profound, and then I’ll get frustrated with all my thoughts crashing, and I’ll say, anyways.

Right.

Or I’ll say, anyhow.

Gotcha.

And I do know how to use the words correctly, but for some reason I use them as a conclusion.

Like, I want to stop talking about what I’m talking about and move on to something new.

And it annoys him.

So problem number two is, is there a different word I can use?

Let’s ask a couple questions about your relationship first.

How annoyed is this guy?

I mean, does he get red-faced?

Does he get sweaty about it?

No, no, no, no, no.

But he comments on it.

And actually, I want to improve my speech.

Okay, good.

That’s a good goal for all of us.

Even Martha and I do that work on our own language, too, believe it or not.

We work on speaking better.

A lot of people use anyhow and anyways, anyways with the S as a filler.

Now, they’re informal.

They’re nonstandard.

Anyways in particular, I know it’s a lot of people.

But they actually do a job.

It’s kind of a functional job.

They’re in the language as what are called discourse markers.

They represent a transition out of a subject or into a subject.

That is literally what you’re doing.

You’re explaining something.

You are winding it up.

Maybe you don’t have a really firm conclusion.

And then you go, anyway, and you kind of just suggest, I’m finished now.

Let’s wrap that thought up.

And there it is in a bundle if you want to respond to it.

And it’s doing a job.

You know, it’s not formal English, but it’s doing some work.

It’s like a transition.

Yeah, it’s a transition.

Now, in formal language, you would never write that, though.

I’m assuming, Margarita, that when you write, you would write at length and you would edit your thoughts in such a way that…

And have a period at the end of my statement.

Yeah.

A firm conclusion, a solid wrap-up.

Formal transition.

But when we’re speaking aloud, it’s really hard to do that.

So my suggestion, Margarita, would be to try to transform that into a question.

What do you think?

Oh, does that get on?

I like that.

Does that make sense?

Or even just the simple, you can try, do you know what I mean?

But you’ve got to be careful with that one because that one can also become, you know what I mean?

You know what I mean?

It can become a real crutch.

But find maybe six or seven really brief small questions that formally throw the question back to the listener or the conversation participant, throws it out into their lap so that they know the conversation is theirs.

I love it.

That is awesome.

That’s good.

And I want to hear back from you about, first of all, how this relationship goes.

And second, how this goes.

If you’re able to get to the place where you’re comfortable with having dropped most of those any hows and any ways.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure.

I love the accountability.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

You know the thing, Margarita, though?

We are so appreciative of people who are trying to improve their writing and their speaking.

Because this is how we all become better communicators.

It’s a really fundamental thing that’s easy to do.

But some people just never take the chance or even take the risk of being wrong about it or not being able to pull it off very easily, and you’re doing that.

So yay for you.

Well, thanks a lot for calling.

Take care now, all right? Good luck.

Okay, thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

We love solving your relationship problems when it comes to language.

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

And you can find us on Facebook and on Twitter with the handle Wayword.

In English, if you have a friend who’s just ended a romantic relationship, you might reassure her, you know, there are lots more fish in the sea, right?

In Thailand, they say, oh, don’t worry.

The land is not so small as a prune leaf.

Oh, nice. Okay.

That makes you feel better, right?

Yes, right.

The land is big.

That’s right.

The land is big.

I didn’t know prune leaves were small.

Don’t even think about prune leaves.

Okay, yeah, don’t think about that.

877-929-9673, Twitter, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Aaron.

I’m calling from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Hi, Aaron.

Welcome to the program.

Hey, Aaron.

Hello.

What’s going on?

Not much.

I have a question about a phrase my dad has used for as long as I can remember.

The phrase goes, he’s got blank, fill in the blank, he’s got more blank than Carter’s got pills.

And he’ll use that sometimes as like a good thing or a bad thing, like you’ve got more excuses than Carter’s got pills, or he’s got more money than Carter has pills.

So he uses it kind of all sorts of different ways.

And I guess I was curious to see where that came from.

You have any ideas?

I honestly don’t.

And my dad is the oldest of five brothers, and none of his brothers, my uncles, use that phrase.

I’ve never heard anybody else use that phrase.

And when I asked my dad about it, he’s not even really sure.

He thinks he may have gotten it from his father, my grandfather.

Interesting.

Okay, well, that’s quite possible.

And we can tell you that it comes from an old product called Carter’s Little Liver Pills.

Okay.

These were pills that were formulated back in the 1860s by one Samuel J. Carter of Erie, Pennsylvania.

Yeah, and they were massively advertised and distributed.

And it was kind of a patent medicine that was supposed to cure what ails you, whether it’s headache or constipation.

It was really, really popular.

And in fact, I can remember seeing old television ads for them.

They come in these little bottles and they’re little bitty pills.

So they were like almost like a snake oil salesman type thing.

It’s interesting that you bring that up because originally they were called Carter’s Little Liver Pills.

But in the 1950s, the Federal Trade Commission went after them and made them change the name to Carter’s Little Pills.

They were so successful in the 1880s that this is really, you can just imagine billboards painted on the sides of buildings and big ads in the newspapers.

And by 1913, the expression, you have more money than Carter has pills, was pretty standard.

And then the word money started to be replaced, as Martha was saying.

Did your father ever use the version of he has more money than Carter has pills?

Yeah, he’s used that phrase before.

But yeah, he uses it, the first part there can be used interchangeably.

And like I said, sometimes it can be if he’s upset with me or one of my brothers and says we haven’t done a good enough job for him.

And he might say, well, you’ve got more excuses than Carter’s got pills if he didn’t mow the lawn when we were supposed to.

And so he uses it.

I mean, what you might say about him is he’s got more colloquialisms than Carter has.

Very good.

Hey, Aaron, I’m going to give you some advice for a good time, okay?

Okay.

All right, go on YouTube and look for commercials for Carter’s Little Pills.

Because they’re like, you know, they’re from the 60s and they’re black and white.

And there’s this really authoritative looking guy there talking about keeping you regular with Carter’s Little Pills.

And he’s got all these official charts.

And he’s just totally mansplaining the whole thing about how digestion works.

It’s really funny.

So I would recommend that.

Going on YouTube is always dangerous because you can easily do a deep dive.

That is true.

But it always ends in cats, so that’s okay.

That’s true.

I’ll have to make sure I’m not at work when I do that.

All right.

Well, Aaron, we hope that helped.

Thanks, buddy.

All right.

Thank you very much, Martha and Grant.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye.

Well, we’ve got more answers than Carter has pills.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And try us on Twitter under the handle Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

We’ve talked before on the show about pangrams.

Those are statements that have every single letter of the alphabet in them, preferably short.

Right.

And in fact, there’s a whole Twitter feed called Pangram Tweets that finds them when they accidentally occur.

People don’t know they’re making them, but they’re out there.

Yes.

Here’s another great one I just saw the other day.

I always feel like the clerk at the liquor store is judging me when she has to get a moving box to pack all my booze up.

Oh, I was waiting for the Z and there it was at the end of the sentence.

That’s beautiful.

Isn’t that great?

You wrote that.

No, I didn’t.

I didn’t.

They find these things randomly and I just, I get the biggest, it’s just sort of this weirdly mesmerizing feed that just takes your mind all these different places.

The Zen of the internet.

877-929-9673.

Send your pangrams to us on Twitter to the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

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.

If you have a baby on the way and you’re searching for a name, well, there’s an app for that.

It’s by a company called NameTrix.

And they’ve done some interesting research, Grant, where they crunched some data.

And they found that for any given profession, certain names tend to crop up more often than in the general population.

Like, for example, geologists tend to have more Leonards.

Leonards.

Isn’t that weird?

So they’ll still have a lot of Johns and Mikes, but Leonards are far more represented in that field than they should be statistically.

Yes.

And it doesn’t mean that if you name your baby Leonard, he’s going to grow up to be a geologist.

Right.

They also found that surgeons tend to have an unusually high number of Hollies, women named Holly.

Isn’t that odd?

And I don’t know what to make of that.

It’s really interesting, right?

I mean, this touches on the topic of nominative determinism, which is if you did name your son Stone Quarry, maybe he would become a geologist, right?

Right.

And when you find the weather people whose name is Windy Hills or something, and she was a meteorologist.

So nominative determinism is when your name somehow seems to be the thing driving you toward a profession.

It’s really strange, isn’t it?

It is strange.

I was looking online at the chart that they created based on this data, and it says that Martha tends to be heavily represented among interior designers.

Martha is overrepresented in interior designers.

Yes, and so that makes me a little bit skeptical because if you’ve ever seen where I live.

Never been to the cave, looking forward to it.

The woman cave, the nerd cave.

Well, yeah, this is really interesting.

And, you know, my mother had a doctor.

His name was Dr. Payne, Payne with a Y.

I had a doctor hurt.

I had a podiatrist named Dr. Hurt.

I love these.

Grant doesn’t pop up on any of these lists, right?

No, I was looking for it.

I think you’re sui generis.

Oh, thank you very much.

Well, we love funny stories about names just kind of accidentally matching professions and what people do for fun.

Give us a call and tell us about them.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, Grant.

Hi, who is this?

This is Paula Raymond calling from Austin, Texas.

Hi, Paula. Welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Hello, Paula. What can we help you with?

I wanted to talk with y’all about a video I recently watched about this large town in northern Sweden called Umeå.

And there, instead of saying the word yes or ya, they just make a very unusual sound.

And it sounds as if you’re taking a quick sip through a straw or saying the word shoop, like S-H-O-O-P, but inwards.

It’s kind of like, and I thought it was a really strange sound to use instead of saying just the word yes.

So it means yes. It has semantic content.

It does, yes. All the locals said that that’s exactly what they say rather than using the actual word yes or ya.

And why were you watching the video?

It popped up on a feed I was looking at, and it just said one of the most unusual sounds that they use in Sweden.

So I was curious as to what they were talking about.

Yeah, that’s called the pulmonic ingressive.

Yeah, you hear it in Sweden, and you hear it in a lot of other places.

Actually, throughout the world, actually.

It appears in languages on all the continents where people have presences.

Yeah.

Okay.

So is it just unique to English speakers’ ears because we’re not used to that type of sound, maybe?

Actually, you hear something similar in Maine.

I have a friend who says that in parts of Maine, people will answer a question with, yeah, yeah, like that.

Oh, interesting. I haven’t heard of that.

Yeah. So it has meaning, that kind of rapid intake of air, but it messes people up when they hear it for the first time, right?

Yes, definitely. And I’ve shared it with co-workers and friends and they all think it’s an extremely bizarre concept.

Yeah. And you know what’s really interesting is there was a study done once in, I think, 2003 of people in Sweden who were trying to make travel reservations on the phone.

And they would use it if they were dealing with a regular person, but they wouldn’t use it if they were dealing with an automated system.

And that tells us that it has some kind of human communication element there.

Right. It’s marked as informal.

And so you probably put on your best English for the machines, right?

So you’d be understood.

Yes, exactly.

So it’s not really that different from other languages, because I guess in English we do that too, you were saying.

It’s less common, yeah.

And the Irish do it as well.

You’ll find it throughout Scandinavia, parts of Africa.

It just pops up here and there.

Argentina, even.

Argentina.

There’s a guy by the name of Robert Eklund, E-K-L-U-N-D, who’s done a lot of work on this.

And he proposes that it’s what he calls the neglected universal, meaning that here until recently, this has not been noticed as a common form of sound being produced by the human mouth and isn’t usually cataloged as one of the possible sounds to be included in the world’s languages.

And that’s kind of a mistake from his perspective.

So he’s got a really great website at ingressivespeech.info with tons of academic information about this.

Okay, I’ll need to look at that.

Yeah, so it’s Robert Eklund, E-K-L-U-N-D, and it’s ingressivespeech.info.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you.

All right. Well, thanks for calling.

Thank you so much. That was really interesting.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Y’all as well. Bye.

It is really interesting, right?

Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting that sometimes it’s words themselves, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, or just the sound of the pulmonic, like pulmonary, like your lungs.

Yeah, we don’t quite have it in mainstream English, but we might do a sharp intake of breath to indicate a kind of a wincing emotion.

Like if somebody’s about to touch the hot stove or about to do something dangerous, you do a sharp intake of breath.

But that’s more of an interjection and just an emotional response than it has meaning at all.

It’s almost like tsk-tsk, isn’t it?

Maybe.

There’s a few sounds that we have.

Where’s the dictionary of sounds?

Of sounds.

We need a dictionary of sounds.

Where they have meaning on their own without being, you know.

All right.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

There’s some great idioms in the Thai language.

I love this one.

It translates.

You must go to the restroom. The restroom won’t come to find you.

Isn’t that great?

It’s like Muhammad in the Mountain, right?

Yes, exactly. You got to do it yourself, right?

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how you doing? This is Pete from Indianapolis.

Hey, Pete.

Hi, Pete. What’s going on?

Not too much. Thanks for having me on the show, guys.

Yeah, sure. No problem. What’s on your mind?

Well, I have a phrase that my dad used to tell me, he still tells me, and it kind of goes back from when I was a kid growing up in Indianapolis.

And he actually used to use it when he was a kid.

So every time that he used to repair something or do yard work or when he was baking some sort of bread or finishing a project, if it was a perfect job, he would always say, just like New York.

So I use the term now, and I’m working on a project or finishing a project, and when it looks really great, I said, looks just like New York.

So I’m kind of curious on where this phrase came from.

To me, it seems like it would mean it looks perfect.

So maybe you guys can help me out with this.

Wow.

That’s a new one on me.

Give me a little bit more.

Your father was not from Indianapolis?

East Coast, actually.

He grew up in the East Coast.

Okay.

I asked him about this, and he said that he got the phrase from an old man who he used to work with at a golf course.

He repaired all the lawnmowers and did maintenance yard, yard work around the golf course.

And every time this old fellow would finish a project, he would say, looks just like New York.

So he got it from an old guy in the East Coast.

Interesting. And so was this when he was on the East Coast or already in Indianapolis?

This was when he was on the East Coast.

My parents grew up in Connecticut on the East Coast.

It was the 1950s then?

Yes.

Yeah, because I got nothing here.

I don’t know this as a catchphrase or a famous line from a movie, nor as a famous line from a book, nor as an advertising slogan.

I just got nothing.

I just wonder if it’s New York being the pinnacle of everything, you know, the greatest city in the world and all of that, and a place that people outside of New York might aspire to go to.

When you mentioned Indianapolis, I was thinking about in the past we’ve had calls from Indiana about that dish, Turkey Manhattan.

I don’t know if, did you ever have that?

Yes, I’ve had that before.

You have.

Okay, tell me what that has in it.

Yeah, what is Turkey Manhattan?

Turkey Manhattan to me is a couple slices of bread and turkey and gravy on top.

Yeah, yeah.

So not that fancy, but given a fancy name.

And I’m wondering if maybe there’s a connection there.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

You know, this fancy place, this idealized place.

When we think about the origins of the expression, the Big Apple, that came out of the racetracks in New Orleans among African Americans.

And the idea was that everybody wanted to race in New York and it was seen as the big prize, the special thing, the polished fruit, so to speak.

But you know what I’m going to do?

I’m going to fire up the sirens and the lights and throw this out to the listeners and just see if anybody else uses this expression this way or has heard it this way.

I don’t think they’re going to get much out of just Googling it.

So if you know of or use yourself the expression, just like New York, to mean that something is cool, awesome, great, or good when you’re done with it, let us know, 877-929-9673, or tell us about it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

So we’ll see what we get, Pete, all right?

Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Yeah, sure. Take care. Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

All right. Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

I could see it just being the epitome of everything.

I mean, don’t you think about New York that way? Ex-New Yorker, Grant?

It is a place that people aspire to go and live and be excellent, be the best version of themselves.

Yeah, I think that may be all it is.

It could be. But my question is, where and why?

Is it just this one guy at a golf course in the 1950s?

Or was it a catchphrase in the 1950s that everyone knew has just fallen out of favor?

Let us know, 877-929-9673.

Or send any kind of question or story at all about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s a word I’ve been tracking, doocracy.

Do you know this?

Doocracy?

Yes.

No.

D-O hyphenocracy.

It seems to be associated with the Occupy movement.

And it’s a system of management or government in which those who do get to decide what’s done.

For example, all of you all are standing around wondering what color you’re going to paint the bike shed or whatever.

Right.

And it’s the people who pick up the paint and say, we’re going to do it this way.

Right.

Yeah, that’s a duocracy.

A lot of life is like that, right?

Right, right.

The carpers and the complainers who stand around, they don’t just need to move a little faster.

The doers get it done.

Move over, get out of the way.

It’s the rule by the doers, duocracy.

Duocracy.

Yeah.

Well, do give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Daniel from Sheridan, Wyoming.

Welcome to the show, Daniel.

How can we help?

Well, I’ve got a question about some jargon that I learned out in Philadelphia.

Okay.

Okay.

And that is the word John.

John.

J-A-W-N.

Oh, my goodness.

J-A-W-N.

It had to be John, right? It couldn’t be a food word.

It couldn’t be, no. There’s lots of strange words out there, but this one in particular I thought was odd.

What were you doing in Philadelphia where you picked up the word John?

I lived out there for a couple of years, actually.

Okay.

Okay, so tell us about this word. What kind of context did you hear it in?

I think most often it’s kind of a placeholder for thing, but it seems kind of wide and arbitrary.

So I guess, for example, I worked with a moving company out there, and if we were getting ready to move a couch, I could ask my co-worker, we’re going to move this couch, you know, go get the john and we’ll cover it up, which would mean the couch cover.

Yeah, that’s consistent with what I’ve heard as well.

And it’s used to such a degree in Philadelphia now that they kind of almost have an ownership on it.

But there are people in New Jersey who use it and throughout Pennsylvania.

But it’s what I call the Chamber of Commerce words.

And it becomes so known as a word belonging to a place that everyone kind of keeps reinforcing its use by continuing to use it because they’re from that place.

It’s very weird.

But that’s how we behave with language.

And it probably, get this, Daniel, it probably comes from the word joint, J-O-I-N-T.

Do you ever watch any Spike Lee films?

Well, sure.

On the beginning of the films, he’ll put the credits that say, you know, whatever, Mississippi Masala, a Spike Lee joint.

And what he means is it’s a Spike Lee project, a Spike Lee thing, a Spike Lee show.

And so there’s got this word joint existing throughout the Northeast since the early 1980s to mean a thing, a show, a production, a group, a crew, a team, all these different kind of variety of things.

And it becomes corrupted through the lanition of the final sound.

That T sound is kind of joint or jaunt.

And it becomes John.

This is the theory.

And this is a normal kind of English slang process where a word becomes corrupted.

And so it’s got similar meanings as John as joint, but it’s just pronounced differently.

Oh, that’s interesting.

Yeah, right?

How old is that then?

Early 80s.

How old is joint and how old is John?

Early 80s.

Yeah, this particular use of joint is at least the early 80s.

And John is a little older than that.

I found a John as early as 1992.

I’m sure it’s much older than that.

It’s just that it takes a while for slang to show up in print.

Huh.

That’s really interesting.

Yeah, I thought so too.

And again, there’s just a huge sense of ownership with that word.

People from Philadelphia in particular feel like if somebody’s using that word incorrectly on a scripted television show or movies, boy, the comment section just explodes.

They just get crazy about how the injustice has been done to this slang word.

It’s pretty funny.

It was one that I didn’t feel comfortable using out there until I had been there for a while either.

And I usually use it kind of tongue-in-cheek, which I think most people do out there now as well.

It’s really interesting.

And so do you use it in Wyoming now?

No, I do not use it in Wyoming.

I’m going to leave that one in Philly, I think.

All right.

Well, cheers, Daniel.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks so much, guys.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Language is some crazy stuff, Martha.

It’s some crazy stuff.

And you use the word lenition.

I’m hearing the Latin word for soft in there.

L-E-N-I-T-I-O-N.

I love doing that.

Just talk about something like slang and throw in the jargon too.

Yeah, lenition.

So joint, kind of the T sound, becomes softer and it becomes join or john, something like that.

And it gets quickly corrupted because it’s primarily transmitted mouth to ear.

Right.

This is what we know from English.

When words are transmitted off of paper, they corrupt very fast.

Very quickly, yeah.

Yeah.

877-929-9673 is the number to call.

We’d love to hear from you.

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

A couple of Latvian expressions I like.

They translate as, did a bear stomp on your ear? Which means you don’t have an ear for music. You can’t sing.

Did a bear, yes, okay.

Did a bear stomp on your ear?

And another one is that if you’re talking nonsense or you’re lying, you’re blowing little ducks.

Blowing, like they’re cracking, making little cracking noises?

I don’t know.

It’s like, I don’t know.

I pictured downy feathers flying, you know, just blowing little ducks.

That’s Latvian?

Yeah.

Latvian.

I’m going to Latvia to find out more.

Are you?

Yeah, if you want to find out more about language, though, this is the show.

877-929-9673.

Or send us an email whenever you want to words@waywordradio.org.

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

Coming to you from the Track Recording Center at Studio West in San Diego, California, I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Thanks for listening.

Bye-bye.

So long.

Tomato, potato, potato, tomato, tomato, let’s call the whole thing off.

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

And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.

So if you like pajamas and I like pajamas, I’ll wear pajamas and give up pajamas.

For we know we need each other, so we better call the calling of R.

Let’s call the whole thing R.