I’ll Be Your Boo (episode #1380)

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.

Grant, do you remember that conversation that we had a while back about mosquitoes, large bugs that would bite you?

Oh, yes.

Galley nippers.

Galley nippers, right.

Words like that.

Blood suckers.

Blood sucking sparrows.

Blood sucking sparrows.

Something like that.

That’s right.

Yeah.

Well, that inspired a limerick by one of our listeners.

This is from Jackie Bergman.

She’s from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

There is a small bug that I’ve heard. Her whining’s so loud, it’s absurd.

Her bite’s a bad habit.

Her beak she will stab it.

The mosquito, Wisconsin’s state bird.

Nice, right?

That’s very nice.

Do they have a problem with mosquitoes in Wisconsin?

I think they do.

Apparently, certain times of the year anyway.

Well, I got such a kick out of that.

I wrote back to Jackie and thanked her for it.

And she sent me another limerick.

Oh, really? A bonus limerick?

Yes, a bonus limerick.

Wisconsin’s a feast for the eyes.

Our beer, brats, and cheese take first prize.

Among our fine dishes are red cherries, delicious.

But don’t ever eat our cow pies.

That’s true.

Well, funny we should be talking about Wisconsin because we’re going to be talking about Wisconsin talk later in the show.

Oh, great. There’s a lot going on in Wisconsin.

There’s a lot going on.

If you’ve got a question about language, you’ve got something to say, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or put it in an email to wordsinwaywardradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Tricia.

Hi, Tricia. Welcome. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Dallas, Texas today.

All right. Well, how can we help you?

My co-workers are always using the term boo, and I was interested to know where it originated from and how it came to be used as a term of endearment today.

Oh, boo to mean a sweetie.

Like you’re my boo.

Exactly.

Okay. And do you use this or no?

I personally do not.

Okay, great. And now are your friends who use this term, are they African-American?

Yes, many of my co-workers are.

That really conforms to what we know about the history of boo as a term of endearment.

It first pops up really strongly in the mid-90s, although it’s definitely older than that.

It starts showing up in popular songs.

Do you remember the song by the Ghost Town DJs about my boo?

No, I don’t know that song.

I’m not even going to sing it. I can’t sing it.

But it’s part of the chorus.

My boo.

Something like that.

But there were four or five songs that came out in a span of like 18 to 24 months that had my boo either featured prominently in the lyrics or in the title of the song.

I first learned it in the mid-90s as well from an African-American woman, a friend of mine from Brooklyn.

And she used it to refer to her daughter, who she called my boo.

So it’s not just between a man and a woman, or at least it wasn’t at that time.

It could just be a pet name for a child.

Right.

And what we think we know about this term is that it probably comes from a kind of baby talk way of referring to your baby.

So, my baby, my boo, you know, which is like a kind of gradual corruption of all these little pet names and the ways that you might talk baby talk or say sweet things in an affected voice to someone that you love or someone that you’re sweet on.

Someone else had mentioned maybe that it came from boobala.

Oh, from the Yiddish for, what is it, grandmother?

Grandma.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Or boobie.

Boobie.

Possibly.

I also think that some people have thought that maybe it comes from Sally in the Peanuts cartoon by Charles Schultz.

She called…

Yeah, I know Sally.

Yeah, she called her sweetie my sweet baboo.

Yeah.

It’s possible.

These are all possibles, but the more likely one is just a slow transformation of the word baby.

Well, and plus it works, right?

I mean, it’s such a great term of affection.

Yeah, my boo.

Yeah, my boo.

So we’re coming on probably, it’s probably more than 20 years old at this point.

We probably, if we looked really hard, we could find it in the late 1980s in the speech of African Americans, in the songs, in the books, and the other written artifacts of American life.

That’s very interesting. So what song did you say was when we started hearing it?

Well, the biggest hit that had My Boo in it was by the Ghost Town DJs, and it was called My Boo.

And I think it was 95 or 96. You can find it on YouTube.

It’s a pretty good song, too, Ash, and it’s not a bad song to bust a move to.

I mean, it’s a little romantic and a little sweet, but it’s, you know, it’s not really a prom song.

Maybe it is, actually.

I don’t know.

What do I know about proms at this age?

That’s very interesting.

I’ll be happy to share that with everyone.

Yeah, it’s a good one to blast that.

You’ll get some people dancing and singing because it was a fairly large, a fairly well-known song at the time.

Yeah, you might want to do it late Friday afternoon.

Yeah, when you’re all thinking about the weekend.

Well, thank you very much.

You’re welcome.

Tricia, thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I want to be your lady, baby.

Every game is on.

Give me a call, boo.

Your love is strong.

I’ll do you.

877-929-9673.

Or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, suppose I’m giving you directions to my office and I say, look for the parking ramp and leave your car there.

Oh, you can’t leave it on the ramp.

Exactly.

Because it would block the other cars.

Exactly.

If somebody said that to me, I’d be, yeah, thinking the very same thing.

But apparently a parking ramp in parts of Wisconsin is a parking garage, what we call a parking garage or a parking structure.

Oh, interesting.

Is it because the floors are at an angle?

I think so.

Okay.

Parking ramp.

Yeah, no, because it sounds wrong to me.

It sounds wrong to me, too.

No, but they get it, and they understand each other, and they’re all good.

They do.

They do.

And that got me to thinking about other terms for parking garages.

I mean, that’s what I say.

But you can also say a parking deck in parts of the world or a parkade.

Or in the U.K., it’s a multi-story car park.

They say car park, though, right?

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

This is Corey calling from Lexington, Kentucky.

Hey, Corey.

Hi, Corey.

How are you doing?

How are things in the bluegrass?

We’re great, thank you.

Well, I’m a pastor, and so I have a question about words that are used to describe church architecture.

So when I was studying church history in seminary, we learned about the building of the great cathedrals and the names for the different parts of the building, you know, the nave, the app, the transept, etc.

And it seems like none of those words made it into the common vocabulary, or at least they haven’t survived in common use.

I mean, I don’t go to the hardware store looking for a hammer and get told, oh yeah, we keep those in the nave, you know.

Right.

Well, nave itself goes back to Latin, correct, for ship, like navigate.

Okay.

Because it’s sort of that shape.

I guess that kind of gets at my question, is that these words almost seem peculiar to a particular type of religious architecture.

But one of the descriptors I’ve noticed has survived, at least in the circles I run in.

And I’m curious about its origin.

It’s the word narthex.

So the church I pastor, it’s not a cathedral by any means, but we still call the area leading into the sanctuary a narthex.

And not all the congregations on board with that.

When I tell someone that, you know, look in the narthex, they’ll scratch their head until I finally say, I mean the foyer, and then they’ll get what I’m talking about.

But where do we get, I’m curious as to where we get the word narthex and why it has survived, at least to some extent, while other words that we have used to describe church architecture maybe have diminished more.

And is narthex still a commonly used term,

Or is that my own, you know, idiosyncrasy that I’m just refusing to let go of?

Oh, that’s really interesting.

May I ask what denomination you pass?

Yes, we’re Christian Church Disciples of Christ, a mainline Protestant denomination.

Okay.

Very interesting, because I grew up in a Baptist church just down the road from you in Louisville.

Okay.

I was thinking you were from this part of the country.

Yes.

Yes.

And we never used the term narthex.

Really?

Never, ever, ever.

Interesting.

What did you use instead?

We used either lobby, or sometimes if we wanted to be fancy, we would say vestibule.

But usually it was lobby.

Interestingly enough, when I was 12, we moved to central Florida for a year.

And so I attended a Baptist church there.

And the first time I heard the pastor say, it’ll be out in the narthex, I thought, he’s mispronouncing north.

Northeast or something.

That’s the reaction I get a lot, too.

Really?

What are you talking about, narthex?

Yeah, yeah.

And people think maybe it has something to do with north, right?

Or at least I did.

But, yeah, it’s curious because narthex was a very specific term in the early Christian church for that area in the front of a church that was sort of separated by latticework.

And it was where the penitents went and they weren’t allowed to go into the regular part of the building.

And now it’s lost that specificity, obviously.

I mean, you may have penitents in your narthex, but you also have penitents.

We probably need more than what we have.

Exactly.

You also have them in the sanctuary.

Right.

Yeah.

So it’s a term that used to be much more specific than it is now.

Okay.

And it’s interesting that you’re having this problem in your,

I don’t know if it’s a problem, but,

Or would you call it a problem in your congregation?

No, I don’t think it’s a problem.

It’s a problem more of just sort of a gap in communication and understanding.

I don’t know why I feel like I’m compelled to hold on to calling that area the narthex.

The foyer, maybe because foyer doesn’t sound sacred enough.

I mean, a foyer is a place where you wipe your feet,

And that’s not what we want people doing in our narthex.

Yeah, you don’t want people wiping their feet in your narthex.

Right.

There’s a sacredness to it, and that’s why I wondered if the words didn’t catch on as much in more common vocabulary,

Because there was sort of a sacredness or a set of partners to the words that meant that they should be reserved to talk about more religious or sacred architecture,

As opposed to, you know, someone’s house or a grocery store.

Well, that’s interesting, too, because, as I said, we used lobby when I was growing up, and that’s sort of a generic kind of term.

That could be at a movie theater or something.

Right. So where does the word narthex come from? Does it have an origin that makes sense?

No.

Okay, good.

I mean, the Greek word narthex means giant fennel, which is…

Fennel, like the ingredient that tastes like anise.

Yeah, the ingredient, but the plant is this long-stemmed plant.

Yeah, we have some that here in California grows in the wild, actually.

Yeah, okay, giant fennel.

But there are different theories about why that might be connected with that.

They’re long and hollow, the stems, so it could have something to do with that.

In ancient Greek, it was also a reference to the schoolmaster’s cane that the schoolmaster might discipline people with.

So maybe that has something to do with the penitents, but we’re not sure.

I see. So that’s where it would happen.

And then another use of it is in making boxes, like I guess weaving them or something.

And the box shape there may have something to do with narthex.

So that’s why I say we don’t really have a good explanation for that word.

Well, interesting that it’s connected, because I would connect it to sort of its spatial location within the church architecture,

But you’re saying it could be more tied to the activity or the people that would inhabit that space as opposed to where it was located.

Yeah, that’s a good way to describe it.

When you’re talking about centuries of change here as well, you’ve got a term of art that’s a very specific church architecture has its own jargon.

Some of that occasionally leaks out to the general population.

I’d keep using it, though, if I were you.

Would you?

Yeah, I think I would.

I want to.

And throw in a few more.

Just Google terms.

Well, I still talk about the chancel, and people call it the stage,

Which, again, feels like almost a perversion of what it is,

Because, gosh, it’s a sanctuary.

We don’t have stages, you know.

Maybe I’ll do a building campaign to add an apps and a nave

And see if we can get people to buy into that.

Well, whatever gets them in there, right?

I guess so.

That’s right.

Whatever brings the penitents into the narthex, we’ll go for it.

Corey, thank you very much for your call.

Yeah, thanks for the help.

I really appreciate talking with you all and love the show.

Thanks so much.

Great.

Thank you, Corey.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Grant, here’s a Wisconsin term I didn’t know.

Sweet soup.

Sweet soup.

Yeah, I had no idea what this was, but it’s cherry or raspberry juice mixed with prunes and raisins and tapioca.

Sweet soup.

Wow.

Yeah, when I first saw that term, I thought it was some kind of metaphor.

Sweet soup.

That sounds really good.

What a nice combo.

Good flavors there all around.

If you know the recipe, send it to us.

words@waywordradio.org.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And hey, who’s that handsome fella?

It’s John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

Hello, John.

Hey, John.

Hey, it’s me over here, guys.

Here I am.

Step up to the mic, buddy.

You can barely see me, I guess.

Nice hat.

You know, guys, it’s been a while since we’ve chatted about the NPL.

That’s the National Puzzlers League.

It’s a century-plus old organization of word puzzle lovers who are located all over the U.S. and even the world.

I’m a member.

My wife is a member.

Lots of my friends.

The monthly magazine of the NPL is the Enigma, and it features dozens of different puzzles.

But the puzzle type of choice is one unique to the NPL.

It’s called a flat.

A flat.

A flat is basically a short verse with one or more words redacted, usually with a Q word,

And you have to figure out the redacted words from clues in the verse.

And each flat also figures a particular sort of wordplay.

Oh, okay.

For example, here’s a short one.

If I want to watch The Wizard of Blank, I have to turn my TV blank.

Ahs and on?

Yeah, ahs and on.

We call that a last letter change.

Okay.

You take the first word, the first blank, change its last letter, and you get the second redacted word.

The answer, ahs and ahs.

Very, very simple.

So they won’t always be two-letter words, though.

No, no.

They won’t always be two-letter words.

Will it always be the last letter?

Letters?

No, it won’t always be the last letter.

We’re going to do a couple of different, there’s not very many, but we’re going to do a couple of different flats, different kinds of wordplay.

And I will tell you the enumeration, which is one of the big clues in a flat is how many letters are in the words and the answers.

Okay.

Okay.

Good.

I’m going to give you some two-line flats.

Since there’s not a lot of context clues in two lines, at least one word in each answer will have something to do with the movie The Wizard of Oz.

Oh, okay.

Just something we all know about.

All right.

You might want to start writing down different things you know about The Wizard of Oz.

Okay.

Here we go.

Again, this is a first letter change instead of a last letter change.

Five letters.

The blank throws a fireball.

Scarecrows nearly fried.

It’s a good thing that her blank was high and outside.

Witch and pitch.

Yes, witch and pitch.

Oh, high and outside.

Okay.

You can see.

Very good.

Okay.

This one’s a first sound change.

So it necessarily doesn’t work out with the letters, okay?

First sound change.

The Wizard of Oz, I watch it blank.

You see, I’m obsessed with the Tin Man, Jack Blank.

Oh.

Daley and Haley.

I was going to say.

Yes, Daley and Haley.

You can see where that’s not a first letter change, because if you change the first H, it’s spelled different. So very good.

Here’s another. This one’s just a letter change. That means one of the letters inside the word is changed. Five letters. The scarecrow wants a blank, it’s true. But for fighting the winkies, some blank will do. He wants a brain. Brawn? Yes, brain and brawn. Very good. The winkies.

Okay, this one’s also a letter change. This one’s four letters. If the lion lacks courage, why does he leave his blank? For a plot hole like that, I can’t blame Bert blank. Why does he leave his lair in Bert Lar? Yes, very good. Nice.

Now, we call this one a takeoff. It means take off the first letter. Okay? Just remove the first letter from the first word, and you get the second word. Now that Dorothy’s gone through some terrible things, her blank M won’t blank her apron strings. Auntie. And. Untie. Yes, Annie M won’t untie her apron strings. It’s good. A little overprotective. Okay.

Okay, here’s the last one. This one is a final sound deletion. Again, the spelling doesn’t work out. It’s just the final sound. The blank city is a wonderland. Its people are saucy. I think it’s even got a restaurant by Chef Blank Lagasse. Emerald. Emerald and emerald. Emerald and emerald. Very good. Final sound deletion.

So that’s the National Puzzlers League, and they are at what web address? Puzzlers.org. Thanks, John. Really appreciate it. We’ll talk to you next week, all right? Thank you, guys. That was fun. Bye-bye. Take care.

If you’d like to talk about language, call us 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words. Hey. Hey. How are you all? This is Steve from Thomasville, Georgia. Well, hey, Steve. Hi, Steve. What’s up? Well, I’ve lived here 36 years. I moved here from South Florida. I noticed an interesting exclamation that people used around here. I first heard it with my father-in-law and then several contractors and older carpenters. And I was working with my father-in-law one day, 30-something years ago, and things weren’t going right, and he suddenly exclaimed, I’ll be John Brown. And I’m somewhat of a history buff. I thought for a minute, and I asked him why he used that. He said, I don’t know, my daddy used it. And I heard two of my bossmen, contractors, use it and other older carpenters. I haven’t heard it in several years, but it just killed me that people were using this abolitionist revolutionary’s name as basically as a swear word.

Oh, yeah, exactly. And I asked each one of them if they knew who John Brown was, and they didn’t. 154 years after Harper’s Ferry, people are still using his name as a swear word. And Steve, did they say, I’ll be John Browned or John Brown? I believe it was said both ways. Okay. I believe it was said both ways. I haven’t heard it in some time over the years. The older generation has, you know, not around as much, and I haven’t heard it as much. So it seems to be dying out.

You’re on the right track here with this. The history of this expression does go back to Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, when John Brown, who was an abolitionist, he was apparently, to judge by the paintings, a giant white man with a big beard who he raided a government arsenal with the intention of arming slaves so they could carry out a revolt. And he was caught and hanged. And so depending on which side you were on, you may or may not have used John Brown as a swear word. And it was euphemistic for two things. Either I’ll be hanged, meaning I’m as surprised if I were hanged, or I’ll be damned. Because the assumption was that John Brown had done not only a fence against the government, but he’d done a defense against humanity by trying to arm slaves. And so it represents a certain old-fashioned political point of view.

I’m not surprised that this far along that people haven’t kept up with the history of John Brown and who he was and why they’ve got this kind of euphemized swear word coming out of their mouths. It’s a mild oath, really. It’s not even a swear. Oh, yeah. I understand perfectly, but it’s just that… It just tickled me that not one of the persons who used it knew who he was. And that’s the language. You know, the history of a word doesn’t travel as baggage with the word itself. It’s just like the world’s worst airport. The bags are soon separated from the passenger. Language is the world’s worst airport.

That’s great. It kind of frowns on our school system that people can’t remember important parts of history. Because John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and his subsequent execution proceeded and perhaps pushed along the succession of the southern states. Yeah, absolutely. It was a catalyzing event. In 1859, we’re talking a precipitous event. By that, I mean an event in which either side could crystallize its own points of view and rally its own supporters to support the pro or the against. Definitely. I can’t even think of a modern political performer who’s been as catalyzing as that. Perhaps, maybe it’s too early to say, Edward Snowden could be seen as somebody who’s supposedly committing a crime against the government from one point of view, but on the other point of view, he is exposing the government as this malicious actor.

Yeah, it’d be great to have the perspective of 150 years, right? I know, yeah. 150 years from now, will we even remember Snowden? I don’t know. But John Brown, there were songs about him. I mean, you could not have not heard his name every week of your life for the next 50 years. He was a constant topic of discussion even long after the Civil War was settled, even long after. His body was lying moldering in the grave, right? Steve, thanks so much for calling. It was my pleasure. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi there. This is Jean Zengali. I have a question. Hi, Jean. Where are you calling from? Calling from Sharon, Pennsylvania, Penn State Shenango, where I teach theater. Oh, fantastic. In my mind, a theater-related question. Okay, let’s hear it. There’s an expression that they’re handling it like a trooper, T-R-O-U-P-E-R, in my mind, coming from like a theater troupe, T-R-O-U-P-E. But I’ve also seen it T-R-O-O-P-E-R. And I was just wondering, how did we get two expressions and how did they apply to each other? That sort of thing.

Yeah, it’s interesting, Jean, because they could both mean sort of the same thing, right? Yeah, and they’ve been used interchangeably. And in my mind, the T-R-O-O-P is like, you know, military, and the other is like an acting troop. And I get the one, but not quite as much the other. So it’s a real positive expression, right, if you say she’s a real trooper. Yeah, it’s somebody who’s a real team player who gets out there and tries really hard, that kind of thing. Right.

In fact, the thing that sticks in my mind most for the trooper, T-R-O-U-P-E-R, is Mary Martin singing My Heart Belongs to Daddy while her dad’s in the hospital dying. And she muffles through with the performance and lights up the light for the audience. So that’s what I’ve got in my mind. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s a great description. It’s somebody who embodies that expression, the show must go on, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And traditionally, it is troupe in the sense of a theatrical troupe, right? Okay. O-U-P, right? Okay. That is the predominant then.

Yeah, although the other one is catching up, and it makes sense because you think of somebody who’s in your troupe and somebody that’s a real good support for you. Well, it’s not just catching up. It’s past it. It’s used by a frequency of about three to one. People spell it O-O-P instead of O-U-P. But T-R-O-U-P-E-R is the preferred spelling still. Yeah, traditionally. Okay. So it’s becoming much more common to see it written T-R-O-O-P, but the O-U is still the gold standard.

Yeah, that’s a fair way of putting it. So Grant, would we say that either way is okay then? Depends if your editor is a stickler or not. You’re safe with T-R-O-U-P-E-R. For sure. Almost nobody except a copy editor will notice if you spell it T-R-O-O-P-E-R. And there’s no meaning lost if you spell it the other way either. It still does exactly the same job in a sentence.

Okay. Thanks, Gene. Gene, thanks for calling. Bye-bye. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673.

Grant, another Wisconsin term for you.

Do you know what a slippery gem is?

A slippery gem?

No.

A kind of newt?

Candy bar?

You’re closer with the candy bar.

It’s edible.

Oh, slippery gem.

Yeah.

I don’t know.

It’s kind of pickle.

Oh, it is?

Yeah.

Slippery gem.

It’s slippery.

And it means pickle, not just cucumber, because I know in some parts of the country they call cucumbers pickles, even if they’re not pickled.

Usually it’s a cucumber, although sometimes it’s a watermelon rind.

Oh, a slippery gem that’s pickled, and you just eat it up with your lunch.

Okay, great.

Yeah, and apparently that’s mainly in Wisconsin.

That’s a thing.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is David, and I’m calling from Underhill, Vermont.

Hi, David. Welcome. What’s going on?

Have you ever been obsessed with a figure of speech?

Oh, I guess you have.

Occasionally?

Yes.

Multiple times a week.

I have a number of jobs, and one of them is waiting tables, and I had started to notice that when I would ask someone, would you like some more coffee, would you like some more wine, instead of saying no, thank you, they would say, no, I’m good.

Once I became obsessed with this figure of speech, I’ve noticed it everywhere.

Do you want to come over tonight and play some video?

No, I’m good.

Everybody says it all the time.

I can’t, well, maybe not everybody, I can’t remember if I ever heard it when I was a child.

So I’m wondering, when did it start and how did it start?

When and how? Those are big questions.

So here’s what’s happening. You are waiting tables, the food has been delivered, you’re checking in midway through the meal to see if they need more bread or water, that sort of thing.

And they’re like, no, no, I’m good. And that seems new to you.

Usually it’s not, there’s no, no, no.

Oh, okay.

I mean, generally it’s no, you expect to hear no thank you or something like that.

But people just say, I’m good.

Yep, I did that yesterday at the coffee shop.

And you sound, and that means that they’re satisfied.

Everything’s hunky-dory.

It means you don’t want anything else.

I’m satisfied.

That basically means no thank you.

Okay.

And you sound just a little annoyed by this.

Not annoyed, but I became a little obsessed with it.

It’s true.

And started noticing it being used not just in service context, but in all sorts of contexts.

It seems to have replaced no thank you.

It sounds like something that would be hard to pinpoint.

It certainly is very difficult to pinpoint a resurgence of that.

Yeah, and I would also think that it’s probably older than we think.

Oh, yes, that is for sure.

And here’s the infobomb.

It’s that particular use of good to mean that you are satisfied or you are in a, and when you’re not talking about your health, but you are talking about your general state of being, and you use good, goes back hundreds of years.

Oh.

Yeah, about 800 years, actually.

And that surprises a lot of people because it seems so contemporary to say, I’m good when you mean everything about me does not need any further addition or help, right?

That you’re kind of saying, I’m satisfactory.

You’re not saying I’m well because that means I’m healthy or other things.

You’re saying, I’m good, meaning my situation right now is as I want it to be.

I guess, to me, it sounds, dare I say it, a little rude.

Oh, really?

So what you would like is, no, thank you, sir. Everything is fine.

Sometimes when I was waiting tables, I would make fun of my customers, which is actually a good idea.

And how are your tips?

They go up.

Oh, I see.

They like a little banter with their meal.

Exactly.

And the customer will say, would you like some more wine?

No, I’m good.

And I would say, well, I know you’re good. I just wanted to know whether you wanted some more wine.

Oh, do you say that?

I have.

Oh, and your tips actually go up, really?

It’s a long story, but my wife and I met at a restaurant.

Oh, well.

And there’s some pretty crazy things.

And one of them was we did a little survey of our own.

We were either nice or not.

And, indeed, if you keep a little edge to it, your tips go up.

Really? Well, that’s like the classic short story. Who wrote that? Was that a Shirley Jackson story about the old couple where each day they alternate, the man goes out and he’s mean and rude to people all day and the woman goes out and she’s kind and helpful and then the next day they switch and that’s how they keep their lives interesting.

I wouldn’t publish my survey quite yet. I wouldn’t want to cause the demise of waiters and waitresses all over this great country of ours.

Well, there’s no getting away from the fact that I’m good is something that we hear often when you ask somebody about their general condition.

And that’s a thing.

And there’s no getting away from the fact that some people are kind of peevish about that.

And they think something else should be said.

Either it should be something far more polite or it should be I’m well.

I’m of the stance that I’m well is fine there, but I’m good is also just fine.

And we have a long history of I’m good in that situation serving the job of explaining to somebody that nothing further is required.

And it’s not a particular, there’s nothing ungrammatical about it because good has many meanings and many parts of speech.

It could be in this particular case, it could be described as a kind of adverb working along with the verb to be and just doing the job there.

That said, I’m always for a little more politeness in the world.

And perhaps people should work on the thing that they want to say when the waiter comes by at the table.

Just a couple extra words to acknowledge this fellow human being and their need for affirmation that their job is well done.

To me, there’s a personal connection when you’re doing that.

And it’s nice to be acknowledged, but it’s also nice to have your question answered directly.

When your blood pressure is high, give us a call again, all right?

All right.

Thank you, sir.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Let us know about the language from your work, 877-929-9673, or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s another Wisconsin term.

Grant, do you know what a Milwaukee goiter is?

A Milwaukee goiter?

Is this like chaw between your cheek and gum?

No.

What is it?

It’s also known as a tavern belly.

It’s a beer belly.

A goiter?

A Milwaukee goiter.

A goiter.

877-929-9673.

You talk funny.

More of your voices when we come back.

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.

Grant, earlier in the show you said there’s a lot going on in Wisconsin in terms of language.

And you’re right.

And there aren’t that many books that drill down and look at the language of just one particular state.

But there’s a new one that I’ve really been enjoying.

It’s called Wisconsin Talk.

And it’s by three professors at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

And it’s a scholarly book, but it’s also highly accessible.

And it’s all about the linguistic diversity in the Badger State because, as you know, it’s home to three different dialects of English.

And those dialects are now being enriched by an influx of immigrants who speak Spanish, who speak Hmong and Somali.

And in addition to that, Wisconsin has the largest diversity of American Indian languages east of the Mississippi.

And some of the language of Wisconsin that I really enjoy derives from German.

Because in the 19th century, in the 20th century, Germans were the largest group of immigrants.

And there are a lot of phrases that I really get a kick out of there.

For example, the expression from little on up.

From little on up.

I don’t know that one.

From little on up or from little up.

It means since childhood.

So you might say, I’ve enjoyed asparagus from little on up.

From when I was a little on it, but they have a particular way of phrasing it.

Yeah.

Or if I said to you, Grant, let’s go get some bakery.

Bakery?

Let’s go buy some bakery.

Does that mean baked goods?

Yes, it does.

I mean, to my ear, that means let’s go buy some random building where sweet rolls and bread and those kinds of things are produced, right?

But to say let’s go get some bakery is not uncommon in Wisconsin.

That’s interesting.

Yeah, the dialect map is incredible for Wisconsin.

It’s a great place to go to study language because the things that are happening on the national platform or the national language are reflected in that state.

And you can go there and get a lot of diversity in one place.

And you made a really good point about these two separate generations of immigrants coming into that part of the country.

Maybe they came for agriculture.

Maybe they came for what are now Rust Belt jobs.

But in any case, these waves of immigrants are layering on top of each other and creating new linguistic trends and changes.

I love it.

Yeah.

And you mentioned immigrants coming in to do different kinds of jobs.

In southwest Wisconsin, there are descendants of Cornish miners.

Cornish miners?

Yeah.

And there’s a whole different…

They have their own things going on.

Yeah.

Wisconsin, a language trendsetter, I guess, right?

Yeah.

But we could do this with all 49 states.

And heck, the provinces as well, right?

And I would really recommend this book, Wisconsin Talk, is from the University of Wisconsin Press.

We’ll put a link to it on the website.

If you’ve got something to say about the way people in Wisconsin talk, we’d love to hear it.

877-929-9673

Or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Jane.

I’m calling from a little town about 30 miles east of Tallahassee, Monticello, Florida.

Okay, well…

Jefferson County.

Welcome to the show.

Monticello, Florida.

Welcome.

Thank you.

How can we help you?

Well, I teach school.

I did teach school over here for a number of years, and I heard many times in our community a word that I’ve never heard before.

I’m from Louisville, Kentucky.

I’ve lived in Corpus Christi in Athens, and I’ve never heard this term.

But if a person was asked, do you want any peaches?

They might say, I don’t want an iron.

Or do you have any peaches?

They would say, I don’t have Nairn, or I ain’t not Nairn.

You can figure out what the word means, obviously, but I didn’t know what the origin of that word was.

I wondered if it came from the word Nairn.

I thought maybe y’all could tell me.

Mm-Nairn.

And so how are you spelling Nairn?

I have no earthly idea.

I’ve never seen it in print.

N-A-R-N, I suppose.

Nairn-a-1.

Nairn-a-1.

Is that it?

Are there any peaches left?

Nairn-a-1.

Actually, it’s a contraction of never a one.

Never a one.

Never a one.

And it goes back hundreds of years.

Double negatives were much more common in English early on.

In Old English, they’re really common.

Yeah, and they don’t make a positive.

What they make is an extra negative.

It’s even more negative.

Yeah, yeah.

So we ain’t got nern.

We ain’t got never a one.

So extremely very clear.

We don’t have any at all.

And so this is common in the American South, right?

Yeah, the South of South Midlands.

My grandmother, Winnie, used to say that.

She was a mountain woman who said, you know, nairn and fotched for fetch, past tense.

Fotched, yeah.

Yeah.

So nairn, and it’s related to nary, right, as Jane suggested, right?

Mm—

So nairn or nairn or nary, and am I reading this correctly?

It also exists in some of the dialects in the UK, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, it does.

Wow.

So it has a long, long history.

It is really surprising, if you look in some of the dictionaries of Southern American English, how specific this is to the American South, and how rare it is to hear this outside of the American South, at least in this continent.

Yeah, and I usually see it spelled when it’s spelled N-A-I-R-N.

Nairn.

Does that make sense, Jane?

It makes a lot of sense.

You’ve put up a lot of things, and it doesn’t sound like it’s terribly unusual, although I had never heard it.

Maybe I’ve just not lived in the right part of the country or talked to the right people.

Well, and it could be becoming even more old-fashioned.

It’s possibly one of those terms on the way out.

I don’t know.

And I don’t know where I first heard it.

I certainly did so much reading of authors like Faulkner and Twain that I no doubt read it as a boy, so I don’t even know if my family in Missouri says it.

I don’t know.

Well, thank you very much for all your information.

Our pleasure.

We’re glad to help.

Thanks for calling.

Good luck down there.

Goodbye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lola in Seattle.

Hey, Lola, welcome.

How are you doing?

I’m hoping that you can find the origins of a phrase that my mother used and still uses as far as I know.

She uses this phrase, the chod rosin, and I grew up hearing it.

I should use it to talk about someone, a person, that was sort of the be-all and end-all, like, well, aren’t you the chod rosin?

Or when I was a kid, I thought he was the chod rosin, she would say.

Okay.

As a compliment?

As a compliment, then, not sarcastically.

Well, yeah, she, yeah, I guess so.

Yeah, it’s a positive thing, although she can, you know, use it sarcastically, too.

And where was she from?

Well, she grew up in Missouri, on the southern border of Missouri in the Ozarks.

Okay.

On the west to southwest corner, kind of?

Yeah, but she’s lived in a bunch of other places, too, so I’m not sure where she picked it up.

Okay, and do you know what rosin is?

Well, that’s the thing.

When I was a kid, the words themselves might as well have been nonsense to me.

But I asked her about it at some point, and she said, I asked her, where did that come from?

And she said, I think it must have to do with sap that’s sweet.

And so it’s like a treat, you know?

Mm-Exactly.

You know, like when she was a kid, she remembers chewing sap from certain trees that was very sweet.

But she wasn’t sure.

That was just a theory she had.

That is exactly right.

So let’s break this down.

Chawed rosin, and we’ll talk about rosin in a second, but chawed just means chewed.

It’s a dialect form of chewed.

And then rosin is another name for the sap that comes out of like sweet gum trees.

If you peel off the bark, the sap will come out.

It’ll harden a little bit, and you just break off that hardened sap.

It’s still tacky.

And you chew on it, and it’s a sweet treat.

And in a time and a place when sugar was expensive or almost altogether unknown, that and chewing on sugar cane were about the best sugar that you could get if you were a kid.

Or chewing on the stalks of corn, too, the white part, you know, where it’s super sweet.

But in any case, that was considered a special treat for children to chew on that, and maybe it wasn’t approved by the parents.

Sometimes people talk about chad rosin as a derogatory term, and it means that you were low class because you thought chad, rosin was the end all be all of the world.

-huh.

Yeah.

Rosin chow.

Yeah, rosin chow, and sometimes used in a derogatory way.

The reason I said we’ll talk about rosin in a second is some folks say rossum or rossum or rossing.

And you’ll find all of these pronunciations throughout the American South and Midlands and that sort of thing.

It’s not altogether that common as an expression outside of the American South.

And I do count Southwest Missouri as the American South.

It definitely has some of the linguistic traditions of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas.

See, I’ve never heard anyone use it but my mother.

But it is an expression that’s used by other people.

Oh, definitely.

Yeah, definitely.

Chod Rosin, probably at least 100, maybe 150 years of recorded use of that expression.

And as a phrase, Chod Rosin as a phrase.

Yeah, and one bit of folklore that I saw said that my informants were the chad rossam, a dialect term which means better than the best.

All that and a bag of chips.

Yeah, something like that.

You know, when I was a kid and I asked her, what does that mean?

I was just little.

She said, oh, it’s like the bee’s knees or the cat’s pajamas, which was entirely unhelpful.

Yeah, Chad Rossam.

But it’s exactly the same sort of thing.

It’s this abstracted expression which is kind of removed from its origins.

And so it’s a little opaque to understand if you weren’t somebody who ever chewed the rosin from a tree.

Right.

So there you go.

That’s it, Lola.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I bet coming from southwest Missouri, she’s got a ton of those.

I’ve got family from all around that part of Missouri.

And, you know, some of them have lived there for 150, 200 years, and they’ve got tons of this Ozark or hillbilly speech.

Yeah, my Ozark relatives are the cleverest conversationalists for sure.

Yeah.

Cool.

We’ll call us with some more sometime.

All right.

Thanks, Lola.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

You know, we do love it, these special encounters that happen between generations where grandma or mother says something and the children or the grandchildren just don’t get it.

We’re here to sort it out, 877-929-9673.

Or tell us about it in an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, here’s another linguistic oddity that’s primarily in Wisconsin.

You and I played Mother May I, right, as a kid?

You know what they say in Wisconsin?

What?

Captain May I.

Captain May I.

Oh, interesting.

They’re more official than we are.

Same rules, though?

Yeah.

There’s one person in charge?

Yeah, same game.

Same game, but for some reason it’s captain.

So you get a command, you’re told to do something, and before you can do it, you have to ask for permission to do it, right?

Yep.

And if you fail to use their name and say, Mother, may I take three giant steps?

Right.

Then you’re out.

I wonder if you salute in Wisconsin.

Or you have to march like a soldier or something.

Let us know.

877-929-9673.

Or send your stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

This is Dave from Indianapolis.

Welcome, Dave.

What can we do for you?

What’s up, buddy?

I have a question for you about a word that I’ve been using.

It’s the word toodles.

I had an aunt that used it occasionally, and I’ve gotten to use it, and people just look at me like I’m crazy.

They do.

It’s kind of a see-you-later, a toodles, and I was just wondering what the background of that word is.

Any idea where you picked it up besides your aunt?

I mean, did anyone else say it?

Was it a particular context?

No, she would say it occasionally, just occasionally when she was leaving, and, you know, until next time, kind of.

Was she American?

That’s the only place I’ve heard it.

And I started using it with a lot of other people, and they just kind of look at me like I’m crazy.

Maybe they want you to stay longer.

Yeah, that’s it.

That’d be great.

Dave, was she American? An American aunt?

Yes.

Okay.

Huh.

Do you use that, Martha?

Toodles.

To say goodbye?

No.

I mean, it seems sort of, I don’t know.

It does seem like the thing a great aunt would say.

Maybe. Yeah, maybe a great aunt from Britain.

Yeah. Do you ever say the longer form toodaloo?

Well, occasionally she would say toodaloo.

Okay.

But usually it was just, you know, the shortened form, toodles.

So, Dave, none of your friends are picking this up.

No, but my family, well, some of them are.

Well, they are.

And my boys, who are both in college, will often, when they’re leaving, will say, okay, toodles.

And other people just roll their eyes at me.

Are they real big burly guys?

I mean, I think it’s…

Pretty much so.

Okay.

Even better.

That’s even better.

Yeah, because it’s marked…

When I hear it, I think of it as being mainly a feminine use.

Yeah, or maybe Casper Milk Toast or somebody.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so…

I’m going to have to stop using it there.

No!

Go for it.

No, no.

Cognitive dissonance is fun.

Yes.

You’ve got to prize those moments when the people around you are befuddled and you are perfectly in your right to say a word.

Yes.

Well, that’s what makes it so much fun.

Exactly.

We don’t know how to respond sometimes.

So toodles, it’s either T-O-T-T-L-E-S or T-O-O-D-L-E-S.

It’s a shortened form of toodle-oo with both spellings, and there are a variety of other variations on this as well.

And there’s three prevailing theories about the origin.

The first one we’ll dismiss right away because there’s no evidence to support it, and that it comes from the French for a tout à l’heure.

A tout à l’heure.

See you later.

Yeah.

At a later hour, basically, is what it means.

The second origin is far more likely, and this is that it comes from dialect, an English dialect word, toddle, or meaning to walk or to amble or to move at a leisurely pace.

And the reason this is more likely is because we have tons of written citations for this throughout the centuries of people using this in leave-taking.

That’s the jargon we use when we study conversation.

Leave-taking is this particular kind of human way that we bid each other adieu.

And we’re very kind of programmatic about it.

You say X and I say Y and you say Z and then we leave.

And so toddle off or toddle off, toddle on.

You know, we have this particular history, and particularly among the Scots to use that.

Like toddler then.

Yeah, like toddler, but it doesn’t suggest that you’re moving in a childlike way exactly.

It just might mean you’re going to mosey along.

Yeah.

So that’s a really strong theory because we’ve got written evidence and we can see the transformation and we can see the pronunciation change in the variety of spellings that we have.

So that’s really important when we’re studying the history of a word.

And then the other one is that it might come from the sound of a car horn.

And it’s no coincidence that toodaloo starts to appear about the time that the automobile becomes far more common.

And you see it appear in writing.

And toodle is a way that the car horn has been represented in print a lot, particularly in the early days when the car horn was exterior and it was this mechanical thing where you pressed the bulb and it made the…

Something like that.

Right.

That’s better than -oo-go.

I like that, yeah.

Imagine if that were the word.

I’ll -oo-go you later.

Then you’d really get crazy looks.

So it’s very appropriate to use it as a departure comment.

Yeah, so it’s totally appropriate for you to use it.

It’s legitimate English.

It’s got a long history of more than 100 years.

You’re good to go on it, except it’s a little archaic.

I even use it at the end of an email.

I’ll put toodles.

It’s a little like it’s incredibly informal.

Okay, so you’re that guy.

You’re that toodles guy.

I am.

Okay, all right.

With guiltiest jars.

When you’re writing a letter to your bank, I don’t recommend that as a closing.

I do.

It’ll get their attention.

It does.

It gets everybody’s attention.

It’s great.

Well, Dave, we have to say goodbye to you.

Ta-ta for now.

Yeah.

I’m trembling with anticipation.

Thanks for the information.

Pip-pip, Dave.

Thanks.

All right.

Toodles.

Bye-bye.

That’s what I was waiting for.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care now.

877-929-9673.

Grant, do you know what a Christmas fool is?

Me.

I don’t know.

What’s a Christmas fool?

It sort of sounds like somebody who overdoes it at the office party, doesn’t it?

It’s not, though.

The guy with the lampshade.

Is it a kind of pudding?

No, but that was what I was thinking it was, but it’s not that either.

What is it?

Christmas fooling is a Norwegian tradition in Wisconsin, and it’s young people going from house to house, dressed up in costumes and visiting with people.

It’s sort of like trick-or-treat, only sounds nicer.

No pranks.

You get invited in to share food and drink.

Oh, interesting, the Christmas fool.

And so they do this in Wisconsin.

Yeah.

Still.

Well, I think it’s maybe dying out.

Yeah, but it’s a direct translation of Norwegian.

Christmas Fool. I like it.

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Email words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

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The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Adios.

Ciao.

Thank you.