If Grandma Had Wheels (episode #1603)

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.

On our Facebook group, David Neal writes that he has a friend in his 80s from North Dakota who loves coffee.

But the thing is that this friend keeps reusing the coffee grounds all day long,

which means that by sunset, the guy is pretty much drinking colored water.

And his friend likes that brew just fine.

He proudly calls it Wabash Coffee.

And Grant, I don’t know, I have strong feelings about this.

Wabash coffee just sounds, to me, hideous.

It’s thrifty.

It is indeed thrifty.

And we’ve talked about this term Wabash before, meaning to add just a little bit of water to something,

to get a little more out of it, to stretch it a little more.

Right. We talked about adding water to ketchup, to Wabashing it, right?

To stretch your ketchup bottle a little bit further, like get the stuff that’s stuck to the side.

Yeah, yeah, or watering down your shampoo.

And it may go back to an old slang use of the word wabash meaning to cheat.

So that might be the connection there.

But in any case, this got me to thinking about weak coffee and all the terms there are out there for that terrible stuff.

Yeah, I posted a bunch of these to the Facebook group.

And Martha, not just in English, but every language, cares a great deal about how good their coffee is.

As a matter of fact, the Japanese have a word which combines the word American with the Dutch word for coffee, which means a weak coffee.

So they are making fun of Americans for having weak coffee, which I guess is often the case around the world.

We are criticized for our coffee.

But you just have to go to the non-chain places in this country to get the really good coffee.

Well, you know, it requires a lot of research, and I’m happy to do it.

Yeah, Blumkenkaffee in German means flower coffee, which is also used for coffee made out of plants that aren’t coffee plants.

Oh.

There’s also warm wet.

Yep.

Yeah, that’s a good branch water, which basically means water from the creek.

Pond water.

Maybe some leaves floating in it.

Yep.

Scared water, which means it was scared to go near the coffee grounds.

Yeah, and I really like the line that Ani DeFranco has in one of her songs about a place where they serve coffee that’s just water dressed in brown.

Water dressed in brown.

That’s lovely.

I love that.

In Brazilian Portuguese slang, they combine the words for tea and coffee, chafé, to mean weak coffee, which I think is very clever.

And in Louisiana French, it’s cholo, which is not the Spanish word cholo.

It’s kind of a corruption of xolo, which means hot water in traditional French.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Okay.

So there’s lots of them.

And there’s many more.

And there’s a couple we can’t say on the air.

Oh, here’s one from the Native American language Hopi.

It’s surkafi, which means tail coffee, referring to the watering down of the last coffee to make it go further.

So it’s literally what this fellow in his 80s is doing.

He’s watering it down to make it just last a little longer.

Well, maybe you’re like me and you’re a huge fan of coffee and you have a term for coffee that just doesn’t measure up.

Let us know, 877-929-9673, or send your thoughts and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey there, this is Tom from Washington, D.C. How are you?

Hi, Tom. Welcome to the show.

So I just recently got back from like a big family reunion, family vacation type deal over in Asheville, North Carolina.

It was my first time there. It was wonderful. It was beautiful. I got to see my whole family,

my immediate family, who haven’t gotten to see each other in ages because of the pandemic and

all that. But we stayed in this beautiful Airbnb that was up on the top of a mountain,

so it had an incredible view. And it was wonderful, except for at some point,

we started having a few different utility issues. The oven wasn’t working well. The AC had frozen.

Over, so it was getting insanely hot over there. And so my dad had to correspond with the Airbnb Behost reported the issues. And she was super gracious, sent out a team of people to help on all these different issues. And, you know, once they had been taken care of, my dad was corresponding with her and said, hey, you know, I’m glad that we got so many of these things worked out. It’s clear that you have, you know, a crack team of maintenance people who were really able to help us out.

And so the woman responds. She’s like, hey, yeah, I’m glad we got to we got to take care this for you. I don’t know about the crack comment, but, you know, I’m glad nonetheless.

And so my dad turns around, looks at me and my sisters, and he’s like, you know, if I say the words crack team, what does that mean to you guys? And this was obvious to us. You know, we gave a thumbs up. We’re like, that’s a good thing. We’re like, we’re happy about that.

And he’s like, yeah, but now he’s in like a text altercation with this woman who like, never heard the phrase before, is interpreting it as something negative. And he has to clarify, it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, this is good. I’m trying to say that, like, these were fast acting people who were really helpful to us.

So that’s why I’m calling. Like, why crack team? What does that mean? And why was it obvious to us and not to somebody else who had heard it before?

Oh, no. So she was thinking crack as in drugs. She was just thinking the worst kind of crack.

Yeah, sure. You crack your head. You know, there’s no one’s ever no one’s ever liked the word crack before in this context.

And yet to us, it was a positive thing.

Yeah, because you were using it in a perfectly legitimate way. I mean, crack in that sense means first rate or excellent or top notch. I mean, if you’re a crack shot with a rifle, you know, you can hit that target.

Yeah, you know, crack regiment of an army is a really, really good one.

And what’s really interesting about this term is that it may come from an old sense of crack, meaning to boast.

And in the 14th century, we hear people talk about boasting and cracking.

And that’s why we get the expression, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

It has to do with boasting.

And by the 18th century, it came to mean something, you know, you could describe something wonderful that’s smart or sharp.

It’s crack.

Or you could even say it’s the crack or all the crack.

So, yeah, perfectly legitimate sense.

Well, thank you so much for the information.

You’ve been very helpful and I can report back.

Tom, thanks for sharing the story.

By the way, like Martha said, the crack regiment or crack team goes back to the 1700s.

So your dad had hundreds of years of usage behind him.

I won’t let him know that.

I’m not going to say that he’s a long line of linguists or anything.

That’s not his background.

Oh, I see.

Don’t over-equip him with another tool.

Yeah, exactly.

I don’t want to touch getting too big.

He’s like, yeah, no, I’m Shakespeare myself.

Like, no, Dad, I promise you, you’re not.

All right, take care, Tom.

Be well.

Thanks so much.

Have a good one.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Indeed.

Good crack here.

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

Hello.

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Mia.

I’m calling from Sumter, South Carolina.

Sumter.

Hello.

Welcome to the show, Mia.

What’s up?

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about good old lexical gaps.

And the favorite one of mine, or I guess the least favorite one of mine, is that there’s not a word, at least that I’m aware of, for an adult child that is gender neutral.

So, you know, you can say my son or my daughter, and that doesn’t imply any age at all.

But if my mom wanted to talk about me, there’s really not another word that she could say other than my kid or my child.

And that is weird to me.

So you’re looking for a single word because for some reason a single word feels better than a double word?

Like adult child just won’t work?

Yeah, it just doesn’t sound right. It seems like an oxymoron.

Maybe. You know, child has more than one meaning, like a lot of English words.

Yeah, but I understand what you’re saying. I think this is a frustration for a lot of people.

How do you designate that person and when do you start designating that person?

What about grown child?

What do you think about that?

Grown child, maybe slightly better, but I just wish there was like a one word situation.

Because it’s like, to me, if somebody says my child, I mean, I guess you can infer based on the age of the person, how old the child might be that they’re talking about.

But I’m always going to default to that is somebody who is probably under the age of 13.

Because after that, it would be, you know, adolescent and then adult.

Right.

Right. That’s a tough one, right? I mean, you have like a minor child, you know, my child who’s a minor, but you don’t have major child. I mean, I think part of it is when do you start counting that person as an adult too? You know, if they’re living at home with you in their 20s or whatever, are they an adult child?

And then if you said, yes, my adult, my adult who lives with me, that’s a weird thing.

Yeah, exactly.

It doesn’t work that way.

Yeah. And I think I’ve asked a lot of friends about this. I’ve asked all over because it’s something that was really like stuck in my brain. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And the only answer that I was getting from people that I know was spawn. And I was like, that’s really weird.

Yeah. Are we fish?

That’s not something that you would want to use in everyday conversation.

Right. Right. I mean, there’s spawn, there’s progeny, there’s offspring, there’s issue or fruit of your loins. I don’t think that’s going to work either.

No. Yeah, everything is loaded or clunky or awkward or inappropriate.

All of this, because this topic has been discussed. We’ve talked about it. It’s been 10 years, I think, on the show.

But Mia, did you, since you’ve done the field work, did you come across something that appealed to you?

Nothing that, I mean, I think offspring is like maybe the best one, but it still feels weird.

So I’m proposing that we work on a new word here.

I think we should go the route of like nibbling, which I also think is gross and weird.

Don’t like that word for gender neutral.

These are nephew.

One term we haven’t mentioned yet, which often comes up in this conversation is kidult.

Kid, adult, combined.

Yeah, I think we can dispense with that one.

I usually see that one in relation to adults who are more interested in childlike things, though.

Right.

They watch like kids shows.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My Little Pony or whatever.

I’ve never heard of that before.

That’s the first encounter I’ve had with that word.

Yeah, it’s been around since the 50s, believe it or not.

Really?

Yep.

K-I-D-U-L-T, kiddlet.

But you don’t want to go there, do you?

And it’s more often used in the entertainment industry and not so much in everyday language.

Yeah, I feel like the closest we get to this is, unfortunately, the term adult child.

It really seemed to take off in the 1970s in this country when there was a lot of publicity and research about adult children of alcoholics, you know, ACOA or ACA.

And it’s been a handy term in psychological circles, but I agree with you.

I think it feels clunky, and you hear the word adult, and you’re prepared for something besides somebody who’s not an adult.

One proposal that I have might be the other direction, which is just to get more wordy and brag a little bit.

Just kind of go the proud parent route and say, my child, the psychotherapist.

Or my child, the general in the army.

Or my child, the oceanographer.

Perfect.

I will request that my parents only refer to me as my child, the pet photographer from now on.

There we go.

My child, the pet photographer.

Perfect.

Mia, we’re going to get a lot of response to this.

We always do when we talk about this particular lexical gap.

But thank you for bringing it up and lots of good talk here on this.

Thanks so much.

Thanks so much for having me.

Bye, Mia.

Bye-bye.

What’s a great one-word way to refer to adult children?

Let us know and we’ll let Mia know.

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Email words@waywordradio.org.

Or tell us on Twitter @wayword.

More about what you say and why you say it.

Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined.

Who is that guy?

He’s got shades, a hat, a trench coat.

He’s passing secret information.

Oh, it’s John Chaneski with the week’s quiz.

I’m so glad you recognize me after all these years because I have this puzzle and I have no other place to do it but here.

So here we go.

Now, I know that in the social media spaces of A Way with Words, such as our very lively Facebook group,

Peeves are frowned upon, but I want to discuss something that annoys me.

It has to do with alliteration.

Now, Webster’s defines alliteration as the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more words,

Such as wild and woolly or threatening throngs.

But sometimes people consider alliteration to be any two words that begin with the same letter,

No matter how they sound.

I call this illiteration.

Two words that are alliterative if they begin with the same letter but not the same sound.

For example, there’s a certain kind of furniture.

It’s a seat with vertical spindles in the back,

And apparently it was often used by the guy in charge of his ship.

It’s a captain’s chair.

They begin with the same letter, but that’s not alliteration.

It’s illiteration.

Now, I’m going to give you guys clues to a two-word phrase that is not alliterative, but is illiterative.

Ready to go?

Yes.

Ready.

All right, let’s try it.

Here’s the first one.

It’s an establishment where they will sell you a PB&J or a BLT or a nice pastrami on rye.

It is a sandwich shop.

Yes, sandwich shop. It’s close. It’s close to alliteration, but it’s not.

Now, my family had one of these.

It’s a storage box lined with aromatic wood that’s supposed to discourage moths and other pests.

Ooh, a cedar chest.

Cedar chest, yes. CC, but not alliteration.

You’ve spent years studying mental health issues.

You’ve graduated college and are ready to hang out your shingle.

All you need now are patients.

Best of luck, doctor, in your new…

Professional psychiatry.

Just about any combination of that works, yes.

Psychiatry practice is just fine for PP.

Oh, I see.

I was going to say professional psychiatrist, but you can say 73 in a row.

Again, that’s perfectly fine by me, sure.

Sokatoa for the trigonometric functions or PEMDAS for the order of operations, for example.

Mnemonic numbers?

Ooh.

What kind of mnemonics?

Mnemonic memories are…

What specific area are we talking about?

Mathematical.

Yeah.

Mathematical mnemonics.

Yes, that’s your M-M’s.

Now, Abe Lincoln had a reputation for telling the truth, but right behind him in second place is President Truman, who just barely got edged out for what nickname?

Honest Harry?

That’s it.

That’s it.

You got it.

Honest Harry.

Two H’s.

They don’t sound the same.

Honest Harry.

Now, four times a year, my mom changes the decoration on her front door.

Now, once autumn is over, she places a leafy circle made of boughs of holly on it.

What does she call it?

A winter wreath.

Yes, her winter wreath.

Two W’s, two different sounds.

That’s all about alliteration.

John, that was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Oh, you guys did great.

All right.

Take care.

Give our best to the family.

You too.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Well, all you listening language lovers, we’d love to hear from you.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your alliterative emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hey there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name’s Yvette Matthews, and I’m from Bismarck, North Dakota.

Hi.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Yes, I was more interested in, like, the psychology behind saying certain words.

Some words you say are so pleasurable to say, and I was just more interested in why some words were more pleasurable to say than others.

Okay, well, you’re going to have to tell us what those words are for you.

I teach biology, and so some of mine are very biological. So, like, my absolute favorite word to say is oval viviparous. It’s an amazing phenomenon found in snakes where they’re egg-laying, but they don’t lay their eggs until they’re ready to hatch. So their eggs stay inside the female, and then she lays them. They never have a shell on them. So it gives me just such a warm feeling to say. Ovoviviparous.

Well, now tell us, do you like the mouthfeel of that word, or is it connected to that phenomenon that you were describing?

I mean, it’s a pretty cool thing to be ovoviviparous.

Yeah. I think it’s just the rhythm, saying that rhythm. It seems like the words that are the most pleasurable for me have sort of an innate rhythm to them, and they just sort of roll off the tongue, and they just make it pleasurable for me to say. So it could mean something else, and you would still go around saying ovoviviparous.

Yes, if I could. This pasta is ovoviviparous.

Yeah. That’s definitely one of the characteristics of words that are fun to say, as you might guess with word people, because they tend to obsess. But there’s been some work done in looking into this, what makes words fun to say, and the natural rhythm in a word, where the stress patterns follow a certain alternating rhythm. That tends to make words a little more fun to say. Stress on the first syllable tends to help. Rhyming or near rhyming. Reliteration helps. And reduplication, where there are multiple syllables in a row that are identical or nearly identical, tends to help. This is why tongue twisters often meet a lot of this criteria, except for being the part where they’re easy to say. Of course, that’s why they’re fun to do, because they feel like they should be really fun to, you know, but they’re not quite there. Our instinct says they should be easy because they have these signals of something fun to say, but then they’re not.

So one tongue twister that some people think is really beautiful, but it’s very difficult to say, and even harder for non-native English speakers to understand, is the sentence, Ted had said that Ed had edited it. But if you say it, Ted had said that Ed had edited it, it’s got a da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You know, and it’s got a rhythm that really is kind of nice.

Yeah, well, you must run into a lot of those as a biologist.

Yeah, so my other fun word to say is a scientific word of a frog in Costa Rica, and it’s Leptodactylus pentodactylus. I only get to say it once a year, and it pleases me to no end to be able to say that the one time a year I talk about the frogs from Costa Rica.

Say it again.

Leptodactylus pentodactylus.

So it’s the smoky jungle frog. That’s very fun to say. That has got rhythm.

Yeah. That just feels nice. And it’s got the alternating very firm consonants, sharp consonants and vowels. That’s another thing that you find in stuff that’s fun to say, at least in English.

Well, Yvette, something tells me that we’re going to hear lots of words from lots of listeners who are sharing their own favorite sounding words or just words that they love to say. So we’re really glad that you shared this one with us, ovoviviparous.

Yes. What’s the frog word again?

Leptodactylus pentodactylus.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. This was so much fun.

All right, take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Well, maybe your word is bamboozle or wackadoo or rope-a-dope or squillion. Whatever your favorite word to say is, give us a call, 877-929-9673. Email it to words@waywordradio.org and attach a voice note from your phone, or tell us on Twitter and attach a video of you saying the word @wayword.

Here’s a great Ethiopian proverb. When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.

Ooh, I love it. Isn’t that a great way of saying there’s strength in numbers, you know, pull together and make something happen?

Evocative. When spiderwebs unite, they can tie up a lion. Yeah, those little filaments, but you get enough of them, you can tie up that beast.

Beautiful. We’re taking your calls and thoughts about language. 877-929-9673 is toll-free in the United States and Canada.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant. My name is Kathy. I’m calling from Wichita, Kansas. The reason I’m calling is because my mom used to have an expression that she would use, and I’ve often wondered where it came from and what the heck it really means. She was kind of an ornery girl, my mom. She would do a little, I think, April Fool Day tricks and things like that. And if you ask her why she did that or say, I can’t believe you did that, she would say, yep, I guess that’s just the kind of hairpin I am. And I always thought, hairpin? What the heck? Does a hairpin have to do with anything? And how can a hairpin be a certain way? So I was just wondering how that expression came to be. That’s just the kind of hairpin I am. H-A-I-R-P-I-N, hairpin.

That’s what I always thought, yes.

I don’t know. If you listen to the show a lot, you’re not going to be surprised. But maybe you will be surprised to find out that this term goes back at least to 1874.

Really?

Yeah, this expression pops up out of the blue in 1874. As just a thing that people start saying. It’s so unexpected that newspapers start commenting on it. There’s a San Francisco newspaper not long after the expression started appearing notes that it’s the latest slang and it has little idea of its origins. And it catches on and it lasts for so long that it appears in an 1889 collection of Americanisms by John Farmer. And he calls it an inane exclamation. And he says, out of season, a short time ago. And he says that originated in New York, but that is just is not the case, according to the evidence.

Here’s what we do know about probably the origin of that’s just the kind of hairpin I am. Is that it probably refers to the fact that hairpins are bent, B-E-N-T. That is, they’re folded over in the middle. And bent for a long time, to the 1500s, has referred to one’s tendencies. Like you might say one’s tendencies, say, towards food, eating, or your tendency to be athletic, or your tendency to be, I don’t know, amorous when drunk, that sort of thing. And you might say, that’s how I am bent, which is basically the same meaning. And even later, to call someone bent would mean that they were dishonest or crooked or criminal. And so to say, that’s just the kind of hairpin I am, you say, that’s my tendency. That’s just the way I roll. That’s just how I am. That’s my bent.

Yeah, that’s my bent. And so I really think that’s what’s happening here because hairpins have long been referred to as an example of something that’s bent. He’s as bent as a hairpin. You know, meaning he’s crooked. He’s dishonest.

That makes sense. So your mom wasn’t a straight pin. She was a hairpin.

Yeah, she was a hairpin. She was a hairpin. She was, that’s for sure.

So, Kathy, I have to ask, are you carrying on her ornery tradition?

As often as I can. That’s just the kind of hairpin I am.

Well, Kathy, thank you so much for calling and sharing these memories.

Thank you.

Thank you. Take care now.

Bye-bye.

I appreciate it.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John Burrell.

Hi, John. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Hapag, New York. What’s on your mind?

Well, I’m interested in the word proctor. I work as a proctor, and I prefer to call myself an exam administrator. I don’t like the word proctor. I don’t know where it comes from. Everybody seems to know what it means, but it’s a peculiar word. And then, you know, you throw in the proctologist to, what does he have to do with being a proctor? I just thought you guys could shed some light on it.

All right, wait a second here. So you went straight from proctor to proctologist.

Well, I was thinking of the words that might have the same root.

That the only two words I know is proctor and proctologist.

So there you have it.

Well, John, you’ll be relieved to know that proctor and proctologist have nothing to do with each other.

Well, no pun intended, but yes, I am relieved.

You’re relieved.

Well, I’m glad to hear that.

Yeah, we should talk about those two words a little bit.

The word proctor itself is a shortened form of an older English word, procurator, which in the 1300s meant a steward or a manager of a household or a provider.

And it came to us through Old French.

And by the 15th century, the word proctor could mean the business manager of a church or a college.

And by the late 17th century, it was being used in universities in Europe to mean somebody who officiates the kind of thing you’re talking about.

And it ultimately goes back to a Latin word procurator, which means a manager or an overseer.

It’s somebody who cares for or advocates for something.

And it’s related to words like procure, meaning to provide, or proxy, somebody who stands in for somebody else.

And when you’re talking about a proctologist, well, that goes back to a Greek word, proktos, which means anus.

In more prudish translations of Aristophanes, it’ll be translated as arse, but it’s really anus, which is an interesting word itself.

That’s the Latin word for ring.

And if you have an annular eclipse, what you’re talking about is the sun’s light forming a ring around the moon.

And it also shows up in the Spanish word for ring, anillo.

So the good news is that your job has nothing to do with butts.

That’s wonderful news.

But with proctologists, you know, there are all these joking terms within the medical field that I feel obligated to share here.

Obligated, okay.

Okay, I’d love to hear.

Now, this is among the medical professionals themselves.

So proctologists are jokingly referred to as rear admirals by their medical colleagues.

Yeah, John, maybe you could call yourself that.

It’s because they admire all.

And they’re also called comprehensive physicians because they see their patients as a whole.

They certainly do.

If someone gives you proctalgia, it’s a fancy way of saying you paint us in the anus.

Terrific. That’s great.

Well, I really appreciate it.

Well, there you go, John. I hope we cleared this up for you.

You certainly did. And I really appreciate you having me on.

And keep up the great work. Love to listen.

All right. Take care now. Bye, John.

Bye, John.

Thank you. Bye.

Well, whether or not you’re a member of the Rear Admiralty, you can give us a call, 877-929-9673, and talk to us about the language similarities that befuddle and amaze you.

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

Jonathan Saha is an associate professor of history at Durham University in England, and he just published a book that contains one of the great dedications of all time.

Apparently his cat’s name is Toast, T-O-A-S-T, and the dedication page reads simply, for Toast, the cat who was no help at all.

I think anybody who has ever sat at a computer along with a cat in the room knows what we’re talking about.

Yeah, it reminds me of those pictures that make the rounds every once in a while of ancient manuscripts 1,000, 1,500 years ago that show cats traipsing through ink, leaving their little footprints on manuscripts along the margins.

I should also mention that Dr. Saha studies colonial Myanmar, and his book is titled Colonizing Animals’ Interspecies Empire in Myanmar.

And it’s about how the lives of animals were irrevocably changed by British imperialism.

Oh, so he’s like constantly turning to Toast saying, well, what do you think about that Toast?

And Toast just grooming, licking a paw, staring blankly back.

Send us your favorite book dedications, words@waywordradio.org.

And tag us in your pictures of your cats on Twitter @wayword.

This show’s about language seen through the lens of family, history, and culture.

Stick around for more.

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.

James Augustus Henry Murray was a Scottish autodidact, a teacher, an amateur philologist, and in 1879 he began work on what would become the revered Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary involved a vast collaborative effort, academics and volunteer readers all writing letters to Murray helping to gather information about the use of this word and that.

And he received scores of letters every day, and he wrote many more.

And now, thanks to a project led by Professor Charlotte Brewer of Oxford and research fellow Stephen Turton of Cambridge, you can read those letters for yourself online.

And granted, it’s this rich trove of correspondence with famous writers like Thomas Hardy and George Eliot, as well as with average folks who wrote to praise or to quibble with Murray’s work.

And it’s really fascinating to eavesdrop on Murray and his Victorian correspondence as they wrestle with which words are obscene and how exactly to write about them in a dictionary.

But one of my favorite letters is to an unknown correspondent in 1884, and this correspondent was complaining about the word advertismental.

And Murray writes in part, I have to thank you for your advice.

You will readily apprehend that I receive a good deal of that.

Everybody has his own likes and dislikes in the way of words, and the spirit moves many to communicate them to me.

I suppose it relieves people of some irritation to do so and makes them feel better.

Then later he says, you don’t like advertisemental.

I like it as well as testamental, monumental, sacramental, governmental, fundamental, instrumental, or any other mental, and it is to me a distinct increase of power to the language to be able to say, advert is mental triumphs instead of triumphs in the way of advertising.

But the dictionary does not advise you to say so.

It merely records the fact that such has been said.

And Grant, you can just hear the weariness in his voice, can’t you?

I thought you’d appreciate that.

Yeah, yeah, that’s the life of the lexicographer is just defending your mode of operation.

You’re showing how the language is used rather than demonstrating how it should be used.

Exactly.

I guess we should point out what a scriptorium is.

This was the name that Murray gave to the small shed, at least it started out as a small shed, where he was doing his work, where he was gathering all this information about the English language.

Oh, yeah. There’s pictures of it.

It’s a wonderful space filled with cubbyholes and shelves and all kinds of different cabinetry filled with scripts and manuscripts and papers, everything, recording the citations and all of the work.

It’s just wonderful.

You would just love to take a time machine there.

Oh, yeah, and visit Murray with that long, long beard, right?

Yeah, and all of the people working for him.

It’s a long list of incredible names attached to what was the New English Dictionary and became the Oxford English Dictionary.

Well, you can check out those letters at murrayscriptorium.org.

And we’ll link to that from our website at waywordradio.org.

And you can contact us with your recommendations of things that we should see on the internet that you’d like us to share with the world.

Go to waywordradio.org contact.

You’ll find our phone number, our email address, a way to reach us through Skype, through WhatsApp, and lots of other methods.

We’d love to hear from you.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ben Smitkoff calling from Boston, Massachusetts.

Hi, Ben. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

So I have a two-year-old who one of her favorite things to do is to play with buckles, b-u-c-k-l-e, which is important in just a minute, and I have a bio background and I knew that there’s a word for cheek, buckle, b-u-c-c-a-l, and on a lark I wanted to see if they were related than they were and now I get to my question which is I told this to my father who is a retired physician he said oh that’s interesting but what about the dessert and there’s a New England dessert called the buckle, b-u-c-k-l-e, and I didn’t know, so I figured I’d give you guys a call.

What a delicious question.

Yeah, all these words are connected.

You’re right.

You have a scientific background, did you say?

I do.

I have an undergraduate degree in biology.

Oh, okay.

All right.

So then you know that buccal, B-U-C-C-A-L, has to do with the cheek.

And that goes back to the Latin word for cheek, bucca.

And the Latin word buccala means the cheek strap of a metal helmet.

And on those old metal helmets that Romans used to wear, they’d have little knobs sticking out.

And later, boucle, those little knobs on the cheek strap of a helmet, came to mean the little pointy knob on a shield.

And then the old French word for this part that sticks out, the boucle, it’s related to those words, started to apply to a spiked metal ring for holding a belt.

So, you know, you’ve got a little spike sticking out and you put the ring over it and that secures the belt.

And all of those words are related. If you think about buckles and bending, they’re related to the Middle English word, buccalin, which means to bend or warp or arch the body.

And we get the word buckle, meaning to bend under the weight of something or to collapse.

And that seems to be the connection with that kind of dessert that you’re talking about.

And it’s one of many foods that are named for what they do because there’s, I mean, the buckle that you’re talking about, it’s kind of like a cobbler. Is that right?

Yeah, I’ve always known it as like a, almost like a cake, cake batter with a lot of fruit in it.

Yeah, there’s a similar dessert that’s called a slump. It’s kind of the same idea.

So that cobbler buckles and the similar dessert slumps.

There’s also another version of this. It’s very similar called grunt.

Have you heard of that one?

I’ve not heard of that one, no.

Yeah, that’s also a New England dish, and it’s called grunts because of the bubbling sound that the fruit makes when it’s stewed.

All of those desserts are somewhat similar, but there are a lot of words in English, actually, and in other languages, too, that have to do with what the food is said to do.

You know, like bubble and squeak in Britain.

Or shabu-shabu, that Japanese broth that sounds like shabu-shabu when it’s boiling.

So the dessert called buckle, as far as we know, has to do with the way that it just kind of collapses.

So all of those words are connected in kind of weird ways.

Yeah. Thank you so much. I’ll have to tell my father.

A couple other things here. So a buckle, the dessert is kind of like a crumble or a cobbler or a streusel.

Yeah, very similar to that. I’m getting hungry just talking about this.

And you mentioned the grunt. Now, as I understand it, those are also common in the Maritimes in Canada.

And also that is where blueberry buckles in particular are common in the Maritimes.

Blueberry buckles are probably the most common kind of buckle as far as I know.

The other thing is I want to go all the way back to that Latin.

That is, if I remember correctly, the source of the Spanish word boca for mouth.

It could well be.

Yeah, I never thought about that.

But yeah, probably.

Thank you, Ben, for your conversation.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Okay.

Food words are some of our favorite words to talk about.

No matter where you are in the world, email us.

Words@waywordradio.org or go to waywordradio.org/contact to find even more ways to reach out.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Logan. I’m calling from Frankfort, Kentucky. So what’s on your mind, Logan?

So I grew up in Pulaski County here in Kentucky, and I was curious, now that I live in Frankfort and work with a lot of people who aren’t necessarily from, you know, so close to eastern Kentucky.

A lot of times I say words like wasper that, you know, kind of catches them off guard.

And so I got to thinking one day about that word wasper and was curious, I guess, you know, why it regionally, I guess, got elongated with the instead of wasp like everybody wants to hear.

So you use wasper to refer to the insect with the stinger?

Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Okay.

And are you the only person you know that says that?

I know a number of other people.

When I was growing up in Pulaski County, wasper was, I didn’t realize that, you know, until I learned about colloquialisms later in life that, you know, that everybody didn’t use the word wasper.

That was total commonplace to me.

And so I’ve asked people from, you know, around Pulaski and up through eastern Kentucky, and it’s a little spotty, it seems, you know, who uses the word wasper and who doesn’t.

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Eastern Kentucky is exactly where I would expect to find that.

The various linguistic atlases and fieldwork on dialects and bits of research done, and even just folklore collected and novels that have been written have found that wasper is far more common in eastern Kentucky, parts of Tennessee, and North Carolina.

Kind of where those states meet.

You could just draw a big circle, maybe 150, 200 miles or so.

There are some reports of other states, but that’s kind of the main place where people would say wasper.

It’s recorded in print as far back as the 1940s, but I have no doubt that it’s much, much older than that.

It’s often the way with these things where they’re far older than when they first show up in print.

Now, as to the why, well, with these dialect pronunciations, the why is not something that we can usually say.

It just is the way people speak.

It may have something to do with the heritage of the people, where they come from.

There’s a lot of settlement history there, people from a particular part of the UK.

And I note that in the UK, jasper can mean wasp, but I don’t know that the jasper is earlier than the wasper in the US.

They may be unrelated, might be just a coincidence.

So I’m not really sure.

But the gets added to some words in that area.

Yeah, bill folder instead of bill fold.

You know anybody that says that, Logan?

No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say billfolder.

That would be a new one to me, I believe.

What about musicianer instead of musician?

No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that either.

Yeah, they’re both less common.

Let me ask you, have you ever heard anybody, instead of saying wasper, saying wasp?

It would look like W-A-S-T.

Well, I’ve not heard wasp, but I’ll tell you what kind of deviates a little bit more that I’ve heard is warsper.

With an extra R thrown in there, kind of like, you know, I hear a lot of old folks say warsh and things like water.

So I hear that extra R get added occasionally.

Yeah, that has been recorded as well.

That warsper, as a matter of fact, is one that shows up in the dialect dictionaries for sure, that R insertion.

And all of these things happen as a natural function of just the way the sounds appear in the mouth.

So when you have a wasp, that S and P are hard to pronounce together.

And one interesting thing is that wasper sometimes, for some people, is only in the plural and not the singular.

That wasper would mean more than one wasp and not a single wasp.

Well, that’s funny because I’ve had a couple of people that I work with that aren’t from the area agree that in the plural, waspers instead of wasps, it just rolls off the tongue better.

And feels a little better to say.

Yeah, because WASPs, because the SPS is hard to say, but WASPers is easier to say.

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

Well, Logan, thank you so much for the call.

We really appreciate it.

If anything else occurs to you from Pulaski County, we would love to take your call again.

All right.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Be well.

Good talking with you.

All right.

Good talking with you all.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, and tell us about the language where you live.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hi, my name is Katya Hilton, and I’m calling from Jacksonville, Florida.

Welcome, Katya.

Hi, Katya.

So, yes, I’m calling because the other day you guys had people on that were talking about sayings from other countries and how they do or do not translate into English, and it reminded me of a very funny saying in German that my brother and I don’t think is funny, but my parents think is hilarious.

And what it is is when my family, when you talk to them about if something were some way,

Like if I had this or if I had that, my mother always says,

When Oma Reeda hete verzi in omnibus.

And the exact translation is, if grandma had wheels, she would be a bus.

And the first time we heard it, my brother and I were like, what?

That doesn’t make any sense.

And my mother had to explain it to me.

And then I said, oh, I get it.

You mean like if I had ham, I’d make a ham and cheese sandwich if I had cheese.

And there’s a long silence and my mother’s like, what?

Was?

And so the meaning is the same, but the literal translations just do not cross in German.

Wait, is your ham and cheese one a saying?

Because I’ve never heard that and that is hilarious.

Oh, you haven’t heard that?

See, I thought that I like that saying.

I hear that a lot.

Oh, I love that one.

Let’s hear that again.

Sure.

Like, if I had ham, I’d make a ham and cheese sandwich if I had cheese.

That’s one that my husband said a lot.

He says that a lot.

But all these are about wishing for things that aren’t happening and probably can’t happen.

All right.

So I’ve done some digging on this.

Actually, we had somebody ask about this on Twitter in July.

And I have found it in Spanish as far as 1915, Dutch, 1932, Portuguese, 1936, Italian, and Yiddish.

And I bet it’s in other European languages.

All versions of this.

The Spanish version I found in 1912.

If my aunt, instead of skirts, had wheels, she wouldn’t be my aunt.

She’d be a bicycle.

Wow.

But in English, there’s nothing like it.

There’s no saying like that.

Believe it or not, has borrowed directly from the German.

All of the earliest uses we know of in English were translated from German.

So they were like German books, many of them from the 1880s about Bismarck, translated directly from the German into English.

And so that’s how it entered English, was from the German.

The earliest one I found in German was from 1876.

So it’s about the aunt rather than the grandmother.

And actually the person who’s being talked about around the world and all these variations changes.

So it could be an aunt, a grandma, a mother-in-law.

It’s almost always a woman.

And the vehicle changes too.

It’s a bus, a bicycle, a cart, an ox cart, a tea cart, a shopping cart, a trolley, a tram, a cable car, a motorcycle, a wagon, an automobile, or a carriage.

So there’s a lot of variations on this around the world over the last 100 plus years.

See, I had no idea this was even a thing anywhere else.

I was even wondering if my family had made it up.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

This is a long tradition.

You guys are firmly in a long tradition.

You wear it proudly.

You should put this on shirts and you’ll have many people recognize it.

I will have to tell my mom that we won’t think her saying is so stupid anymore.

No, yeah.

It goes back to the 1870s, at least as early as the 1870s.

Wow.

She’ll be thrilled to hear that.

But Katya, thank you for sharing inside your family’s history and memories.

We really appreciate it.

Well, thank you.

This has been very, very interesting.

I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.

Our pleasure.

Thanks for calling.

All right.

Thank you so much.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

We’d love to hear other examples of this kind of humor,

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I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

Thank you.