In the Ballpark (episode #1608)

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. A few weeks ago, we talked with Sean in New York City about the expression

Bang out. That’s when you call your boss to say you won’t be coming into work. You bang out sick.

And that prompted a response from British historian Judith Flanders. She told us that in the UK,

The expression bang out is used for a traditional practice in the newspaper industry.

Retiring journalists are banged out on their last walk out of the newspaper building.

And she sent a video of a journalist being banged out.

You see him on his last day of work, and he’s being walked through the massive newspaper building,

First through the printing rooms where the workers are banging metal furniture or machinery.

As he passes, and then in the newsroom itself, reporters bang their desks.

This tradition apparently started in the press room, in the part of the publishing enterprise where the paper was actually printed.

In the Dictionary of English Folklore, it points out that not only did they make a lot of noise,

But sometimes they would cover the departing worker in printing ink and other sticky substances,

And maybe pour flour and feathers on them, and maybe tie them up in a public place.

And they would take heavy metal things and bang them on each other.

And it says they would do it with such a force.

It was as if a dozen blacksmiths had gone suddenly crazy.

And so all these workers in the press room with these giant printing presses all around just making this huge noise.

And those machines on their own already make a giant noise.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So I love this expression, bang out, to bang out a worker in the UK.

I always love these traditions, these bits of hazing for incoming and outgoing workers,

Or when they move from one part of the profession to another, you know, an apprentice becomes a worker,

Somebody who’s elevated to a journeyman.

But I also love the language that goes along with that.

And I know that we have people listening from around the world who have all these delightful terms to share with us.

We’d love it if you would call us and share not only the language of your profession and the hazings and the rituals that go with it,

But the folklore of it too, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And if you can’t reach us by those methods, there are a dozen more to use on our website at waywordradio.org slash contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dexter calling in from San Diego. How are you?

Doing well. Good to talk with you, Dexter. What’s up?

Hi, neighbor.

When I was growing up, my family referred to a type of footwear by the name Zorys.

And these, I came to later know them as flip-flops.

But my whole life as a child, I only knew the word Zorys.

I never heard flip-flop.

And now, since I’ve heard flip-flop, it seems like no one else that I know of calls them Zorys.

And I’m just curious about, is this just a family term?

Where does this come from?

My parents still say Zorys.

It’s always kind of perplexed me that no one else uses this word because I find it more satisfying than foot flops.

So Zorys, that’s Z-O-R-I-S, Zorys.

You know, I think that would be a good sewing.

Well, what have your parents said when you asked them about them calling the footwear Zorys?

They met in Micronesia.

My mom’s from New England and my dad’s from Sacramento and I grew up near Sacramento myself.

But they met, they crossed paths originally in Micronesia on an island called Panape.

And their thought was that the word was derived from a Japanese term maybe, but they weren’t totally sure.

Yes, that’s exactly right.

Anybody who grew up in Hawaii is probably listening to the show nodding along because

The zori is a Japanese word and it basically means grass or straw footwear or sole.

It’s a combination of two words and it’s been in English since the 1820s.

And it’s very common in Hawaii and among Pacific Islanders in general.

Also called go-aheads.

A lot of people know them as that.

So these originally started out as flat footwear, open-backed, also called thong sometimes, not the underwear, just the footwear,

Where you’ve got the big piece that goes between the big toe and the other toes.

And it was borrowed from the grass or straw footwear to the rubber footwear once those became common.

That’s really interesting.

I think it would be so cool if it took over flip-flop because I find flip-flops fun but a little dissatisfying.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I grew up calling them thongs. That was before the thong underwear became well-known. So I still occasionally will come out with that and get strange looks.

Yeah, and speaking of toes, do you ever wear them with socks?

I do, yeah. Sometimes. But just because my toes get really cold.

Okay, T-A-B-I.

There’s a kind of Japanese sock called a tabi that actually fits around.

How do you describe it?

It’s got a pocket for the big toe.

So it’s got one pocket for the big toe and then a separate pocket for all the other toes

So that the thong part of the sandal or the footwear can go right in there with the sock.

So you can wear tabis with your zoris, I guess.

Hobbies with my zoris, like a mitten for my foot.

Yeah, exactly.

Dexter, one other interesting thing.

Not only did English borrow the word zori from the Japanese,

But the Japanese borrowed the word sandal from English.

Huh.

And so they borrowed it at sandaru,

Which refers to the Western-style sandal with the closed back and buckles.

So we’ve done a word swap there.

Japanese to English and English to Japanese.

How about that?

Sandaru.

That’s very peaceful to me.

Yeah, I think that’s nice that the two languages recognized the need for the other words,

Said, can I borrow that?

Well, I appreciate that a lot.

Bandles go to Japan and stories came to us from Japan.

So that solves a mystery for me.

I appreciate that.

Our pleasure.

Thank you for calling and call us again sometime, all right?

Will do.

All right.

Be well.

Have a good day.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Dexter.

Well, if you have a linguistic mystery in your family, we’d love to help you try to solve it.

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

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gail.

Hey, Gail, where are you calling from?

Corning, New York.

Upstate New York.

A ballpark estimate.

Ballpark estimate.

What brought that to mind?

Contractors.

-oh.

And I thought, well, that’s just a way for them to fudge their add-ons, you know, and bills.

It’s just a saying that they throw around sometimes.

So you get a contractor out to do some work.

They give you a ballpark estimate.

And it could be low.

It could be high.

But for some reason, the contractors always go high, don’t they?

Yeah.

There’s always something extra.

And so you were thinking, why do we call this a ballpark estimate?

My second thought was it had something to do with baseball.

And I thought maybe it was before official measurements or something on a field.

But I don’t know.

Maybe it has something to do with the ball.

I don’t know.

I have no idea.

Baseball is definitely in there.

Some reference books incorrectly say that the origins from estimating how many attendees are in the stands at a baseball game, but that is not the origin.

Instead, it’s from the Air Force.

No.

And it still has to do with baseball. It comes from the 1940s when the Air Force started using ballpark to refer to the area of engagement for its fighters.

That is where its aircraft would be involved with the enemy or for its maneuvers, whether they were engaging the enemy or they were just, you know, just flying their aircraft, whether it was in the air or they were dropping bombs or practice runs, that sort of stuff.

So wherever they happened to be working, whatever this large area was, whether it was 100 miles or one mile, that was their ballpark.

And so by the time the satellite era came around, it started being used as the place where satellites or rocket boosters would be dropped in the ocean.

So that would be the ballpark area where they would fall.

And so it left the Air Force and it left NASA and entered mainstream English through politics, actually, and started showing up.

Yeah, in government news stories where government officials say, well, our ballpark estimate for this figure is 200 million.

Because the government officials would work with the military all the time and picked up the term from the military.

And then before you know it, it shows up in everyday language, just talking about general area, you know, something that’s not easily demarcated.

Yeah, isn’t it interesting?

That is interesting that it started with the Air Force.

But where does the baseball come up there in the plains?

Because Americans love baseball.

Just think about it as their playing area.

If you’re in aircraft, it’s kind of like they’re told by their commanders,

You can’t go beyond this area and this area.

This is your stadium, basically.

These are the boundaries that you have to stay within in order to keep this.

This is your playing field.

Baseball has loaned so many words to everyday language.

So I’m not surprised that all this term was borrowed by the Air Force from baseball,

Particularly because the young men who serve in the military probably also played baseball in their spare time.

I would like to look up more baseball sayings than, as you said.

Yeah, well, we always recommend Paul Dixon’s, D-I-C-K-S-O-N, Baseball Dictionary.

It’s up to the third edition now. It is a fantastic book, and it’s highly recommended.

Your library may even have a copy of it.

Yeah, Gail, thanks so much for calling.

Thank you so much.

That’s very interesting.

I love your show.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Thanks, Gail.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or find us from anywhere in the world.

Go to waywordradio.org slash contact, and there are lots of ways to reach out to us.

I stumbled upon a surprisingly useful term the other day, marplot.

Do you know this term, Grant, marplot, M-A-R-P-L-O-T?

It sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t recall it. What is it?

Well, it’s not that common. It refers to someone who frustrates or ruins a plan or undertaking by meddling in it.

So they mar a plot.

Yes, it turns out that in the 17th century, it was fashionable to add the prefix M-A-R to various words.

Mar is into spoil or ruin.

So a mar feast is somebody who ruins your dinner.

A mar joy is somebody who takes away your joy.

And a mar plot is somebody who mars whatever you’re trying to do.

You know, somebody could be a mar plot of your life.

Oh, how about that? Is there an opposite of that?

Somebody who helps you with the plot with the opposite of mar to enable or to improve.

I’m betting our listeners could come up with one.

I’m not coming up with one right off the top of my head.

A prop plot?

A prop plot.

I’ll prop you up.

Prop plot.

Fizz, fizz.

Oh, what a relief it is.

877-929-9673.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And from out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse silver.

The Lone Ranger rides it.

Oh, no, wait.

It’s John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

I am often mistaken.

Not for the Lone Ranger, but for the great horse silver.

Very much so, yeah.

That was your thundering hoofbeats.

Yeah, those are my thundering hoofbeats, indeed.

So I was going to talk to you guys about game shows.

You know, people are always asking me, well, what game shows do you like?

You work on game shows.

One of my favorite game shows is the college humor series, Actually.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but the premise of the show is that host Mike Trapp

Reads out a series of facts about various geeky subjects.

But there’s always a mistake in each one of the facts.

And players have to ring in and correct him.

But they have to preface their correction with, actually,

Because that’s what geeks like to do, is correct people.

So this game is a tribute to actually, in which I’ll read a sentence, and you tell me where I’ve gone wrong.

But the answer will always rhyme with

For example, if I said, in rugby, play is frequently restarted with several players locking arms and gathering together in a formation called a huddle.

You would say, actually.

Scrum.

Yes.

Or I would say scrum, actually.

Scrum, actually, yes.

Really good.

I think you’re up to speed.

Terrific.

Here’s the first one.

In 1927, Chicago’s Cubs Park was renamed Wrigley Field in honor of William Wrigley Jr.,

Whose baked bean company made him his fortune.

Gum, actually.

Yes, gum, actually.

I think it’d be better if you actually, and then gum, actually.

Actually, gum, actually.

Do we have to say it in a snotty tone?

Please do.

As snotty as possible.

My cousin Ringo plays the tambourine in a band,

Which is funny because a tambourine is typically classified as a kind of bell.

Actually, drum, actually.

Yes, it’s a drum, actually.

Speaking of music, it’s important that you blow very forcefully when you play the kazoo.

Actually, hum, actually.

Yes, you’re supposed to hum when you play a kazoo, not blow.

Florence Williams was saving a pair of peaches in the fridge,

And when her husband, William Carlos Williams, took them,

It inspired his poem, This Is Just to Say.

Nice.

Go for it, Martha.

Actually, plums, actually.

Yes, plums, actually.

Man, your plants are thriving so well.

You certainly have a green hand.

Oh, what could it be?

Actually, thumb, actually.

Actually, you’re right.

Actually, finally, it was so scary when the giant chased after Jack,

Chanting, fee, fi, fo, fun, I smell the blood of an Englishman.

Actually, FUM actually.

FUM actually, yes.

And on this sort of English thing, we’ll end this talking about English.

You guys are great.

Actually, you were fantastic.

Thanks, John.

We really appreciate it.

And we’ll see you next week.

Give our best to the family, will you?

Thank you.

You too.

Talk to you then.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Besides goofing around with John Chaneski each week, we talk about language on the show.

And we’d love to hear from you.

877-929-9673.

Words@waywordradio.org, and you can find a dozen other ways to reach us on our website

At waywordradio.org slash contact. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi there, this is Pam.

Hi, Pam. Where are you? I am in Beaufort, South Carolina. Beautiful Beaufort. Well,

Welcome to the show. Well, it seems that my husband, who is from Minnesota,

Played a different playground game than the rest of the planet, or at least it seems that way to me.

But the game known to us here in South Carolina as Duck, Duck, Goose,

In Minnesota it’s referred to as Duck, Duck, Gray Duck.

-huh. And describe this game for it.

Well, it’s the old game where everyone is squatting in a little circle,

And one person is it.

And it goes around touching heads.

And if you’re in South Carolina, you hit each little head and say, duck, duck.

And then you pick the person you’re going to tag.

You would say, goose.

And then you run around the circle, and they run behind you,

And you try to get to their empty spot before they do.

And then they would pick the next it.

But in Minnesota, when you’re tagging someone, you tag them as a gray duck.

So I was just curious about the origins of that variation.

And one other question for you, Pam.

Does he have a particular sense of, oh, I don’t know, superiority about his version of the game?

Of course he does.

We all do when it comes to our childhood memories.

That’s right.

Well, Pam, the reason I asked about whether he has a sense of superiority about this game is that it is this version, Duck Duck Gray Duck, is associated almost exclusively with Minnesota.

Some Minnesotans will tell you that their version is adapted from a similar Swedish game.

They have a lot of pride in what’s supposedly a Swedish tradition,

But I’ve never talked to a Swede who is familiar with that particular game, Duck, Duck, Gray Duck.

I have Swedish acquaintances and know Swedes, and if it exists, they don’t know it.

One other clue about the Minnesota version of the game is that there is a version of it

That is recorded in a book from the 1940s.

It was by a pair of Minnesota educators.

Yeah, that’s right.

It’s Education in the Kindergarten.

The second edition was from 1948.

The first edition, 1936, by Josephine Foster and Neath Headley, both of the University of Minnesota.

And they’re both involved in pedagogy.

And I don’t know if the first edition has it, but the second edition definitely has this whole explanation of Duck, Duck, Gray Duck.

With the version where if the child who is chased is caught

Before he can get back to his place in the circle,

He has to go in the middle of the circle squatting like a duck

Until the game is finished.

So that could be why a whole generation of Minnesotans

Started playing it that way.

Yeah, can you imagine?

From 48 onward or even 36 onward,

That is many decades of people learning this one version of the game.

If this book became the game textbook for school teachers across the state of Minnesota

When they were figuring out games to play with their kids, I could see that being a good reason.

That’s interesting, isn’t it?

So, Pam, what version does get played in your house?

I think we pretty much agreed just to leave that one on the shelf and play Parcheesi or something like that instead.

Then we don’t have to argue about it.

Mm-Musical chairs, something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, Pam, we don’t know why, so there you go. We don’t know either. Your husband doesn’t know,

And we don’t know. Okay.

But our theory is that this book, Education in the Kindergarten by Josephine Foster and

Neith Headley of the University of Minnesota may have made this game, this particular version of

The game, well-known and widespread in Minnesota.

Well, I’m going to have to get a copy of that book and see what else I can analyze from there as well.

Well, let us know what you find out, okay?

Okay.

Thank you so much for your work on this.

All right. Take care now.

Sure thing.

Take care. You too. Bye-bye.

Well, maybe you’ve played Duck, Duck, Gray Duck or a different version altogether.

We’d love to hear about it.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

You can always leave a voicemail at that number.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We’ve talked before about how in Argentina,

Somebody who’s miserly is said to have a crocodile in their pocket.

Or in France, you have a sea urchin.

Or in Brazil, you have a scorpion.

It’s whatever that thing is that’s in your pocket

That’s so sharp that you don’t stick your hand in your pocket to get your wallet and pay a bill.

It’s a term for somebody who’s miserly, a tightwad.

And Bob from Minnesota left us a voicemail about the term that he uses, alligator arms.

Oh, yeah.

Alligator arms.

You know, the bill comes to the middle of the table and you have alligator arms.

You just can’t reach it.

Too short, like T-Rex arms, right?

Yeah.

Short-armed.

That’s another term for it.

He’s short-armed, can’t reach his pockets.

words@waywordradio.org, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Jacob B. Craft.

I’m in Frankfort, Kentucky.

And I had a question about a phrase that my mother would use when I was little.

Oh, yes, please.

All right. Picture this.

You’re a child growing up in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.

You get up in the morning, you go outside, and you look at the hillside across the road,

And you see fog forming on the side of it.

And the adult parent next to you turns over and says,

Looks like the groundhogs are making coffee.

I got it. I can picture that.

And Jacob, was that your experience?

My mother would tell me that, but really it was more her experience.

She grew up in Houston, Kentucky, and her family would use it as a common saying.

But I’ve only ever really heard it from her.

So I kind of want to know where that originated.

Sure. I mean, what a lovely poetic phrase, right?

I mean, just imagine these groundhogs getting up before you do and rubbing their eyes and boiling up a pot of water for coffee and that steam is rising.

Right.

It must be a very cute picture painted.

Well, yeah.

And the way that they rise up over the mountains there.

I love this expression, Jacob.

You know who wrote beautifully about this was the great Kentucky writer Jesse Stewart.

Back in 1954, when he was Kentucky’s poet laureate, he published this essay about a train ride that he often took that ran from Washington, D.C. To Cincinnati, and it passed through the Appalachian Mountains.

And he writes, look to the mountains above the high river walls, and you will never see so many small white clouds just sitting up there on props of bright morning wind.

Maybe you’ve never heard the old mountain superstition connected with these small white clouds.

I was told by an old man once that under these little early morning clouds, the groundhogs are making their coffee.

So he was writing about, nobody writes about that part of the country like Jesse Stewart does.

And he was writing about this old mountain superstition that you don’t hear about a whole lot these days.

But I think that’s such a lovely version of it, don’t you think?

It is. That’s very poetic.

Yeah, it’s not just your family, but it is common in Appalachia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio River Valley, probably some other places.

But those are the places where people have reported knowing it in their families or having heard it from others.

It makes sense that it would be probably localized to where you would actually have mountains.

And groundhogs.

And Jacob, do you use this expression yourself now?

Did you pick it up and you’re carrying it on?

I’ve used it probably a couple times.

I work outside a lot.

I’m a biologist.

And I think with some of my coworkers, I’ve said it.

And I think that maybe the last time I did, some of them looked at me and were like, what?

Who’s talking about?

The groundhogs are making coffee.

Yeah, self-explanatory.

Thank you for sharing that saying with us, Jacob.

We appreciate it.

I’m sure we’ll hear from others who know it or have their own variants.

Well, thank you for telling me about it.

All right.

Take care now.

All right.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Jacob.

There’s folklore all around us, and it’s interwoven with the language we speak.

Share yours with us, and we’ll share it with the world, 877-929-9673,

Or find more than a dozen ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org slash contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Ashley. I’m from Danville, Kentucky.

But I lived overseas in Australia for a few years,

And there’s this saying that I picked up there that everyone here asks me what I mean when I say it.

It’s when you’re really full after dinner, after Thanksgiving dinner especially, you say, oh, full is a goog.

And I’m really curious what a goog is.

Full is a goog? How would you spell that last word?

I believe it’s spelled G-O-O-G.

This is 100% in Australianism. Absolutely.

Although originally it’s from Scots, but this is completely in Australianism.

And yeah, full as a gog is desperately in Austroianism.

It just means very full.

And a gog is an egg.

EGG, like a chicken’s egg.

Yeah, you might even hear them say sometimes full as an egg.

And yeah, so it’s about being full, full of food, but also it can mean drunk or very drunk.

So if somebody is walking out of a bar, kind of unsteady, a little tipsy, you might say,

Oh, he’s full as a goog.

You need to get him a cab, get him a taxi.

That makes sense, too, yeah.

I say it.

I have two twin daughters that are about a year old,

And they eat, and their little bellies get tight,

And I’m like, oh, he’s full as a goog.

Yeah, with their little bellies looking exactly like a goog,

Like an ostrich goog.

My husband looks at me like, what are you talking about?

You know, it originally was a Scots dialect word for goggy or googie.

It’s a children’s word or was a children’s word for egg.

It’s self probably from the Irish Gaelic or the Scots Gaelic words for egg.

In fact, some people might know gooseberries as goose gogs.

That gog there is the same word, meaning goose egg.

I love learning this stuff. It’s so fun.

Oh, yeah, the Australians, they hold up their side when it comes to expressions on language.

Oh, no kidding.

They’re quite good at it.

I’ve asked you a million questions.

Oh, yes, please.

We don’t talk about Australian English quite enough.

They’ve got some good stuff here, and I’ve got a big stack of Australian dictionaries.

Oh, don’t they call chickens chooks?

Well, they can sometimes.

So chookgoogs?

You’ll find that in the United States now and again, too, yeah.

Full as a chookgoog.

Yeah.

That’s really full.

Ashley, thank you so much for your call.

We appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you, guys.

I enjoyed it.

All right, take care.

Our pleasure.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Of course, the Australians have other expressions, meaning full is something like full is a fart,

Full is a boot, full is a tick.

Oh, they’re very colorful.

Aren’t they?

Yeah, and we have a lot of podcast listeners in Australia.

I would love to hear from more of them.

Yeah, there’s tons of great stuff.

We speak the same language, but we don’t.

Strangely.

We’d love to talk about all those expressions with you,

And you can always find ways to reach us.

Go to waywordradio.org slash contact.

We got an email from Whitney Quisenberry,

Who was responding to our conversation about tchotchkes,

You know, those little knickknacks.

Whitney says, did you know in England they’re also called piff-paff?

As in, my grandmother’s corner cupboard is packed with piff-paff from her holidays.

Piff-paff.

Yeah, I’ve always thought of that term as a term for jargon.

You know, sort of, it comes from the interjection, piff, you know, just poof.

Piff-paff.

Oh, I like that.

That also sounds like the name of a baby dragon.

Little piff-paff with his puff of smoke.

Love it. Send us your Piff Path.

877-929-9673.

This show is about language seen through family, history, and culture.

Stay tuned.

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.

The recording artist Prince was astonishingly prolific.

By the time he died in 2016, he’d already recorded enough songs to release a new album every six months for the next 40 years.

And you know who else was astonishingly prolific? Charles Dickens.

Amazingly, he was usually writing more than one novel at a time, and ultimately he wrote some four million words.

The British novelist Nick Hornby has written a book that links those two.

It’s called Dickens and Prince, A Particular Kind of Genius.

And Grant, this book reads a little bit like those compare and contrast essays that you might have been assigned in college.

And there are some intriguing parallels.

Both men were born into poverty.

Both of them died before the age of 59.

And during their short lives, the creativity just poured out of them.

It was unstoppable.

So the book actually ends up being a meditation on creativity itself.

Where does creativity come from? How do you nurture it? How do you care for it? And the other thing

That this book has made me do is to re-examine my own relationship with perfectionism when it comes

To writing. Because I’ve always valued polishing a piece of writing word by word, sentence by

Sentence. But this book really makes you think about how much polishing is actually worth it.

When does a piece of writing get to the point where you should just stop and let it go?

How much better does work end up if you spend another hour or another day or another week on it?

And I have to admit, it’s made me question, when does polishing become procrastinating?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I love this.

It reminds me of the talks that I would have with interns when I was a lexicographer.

I would talk to them in the first week about the difference between perfection and good enough.

Exactly what you were talking about.

And how perfection was the enemy of a lexicographer because we did not have the time.

Did not have the resources.

There was no perfect.

You would never finish looking up the history of a word.

You simply had to be satisfied that you had approached the ultimate answer.

You had approached the perfect definition.

You had approached the truth. You had approached enough. And then you had to leave it because there was so much, there was an infinite amount of work to do.

Yes. And deadlines.

Prince I know somewhat more about than Dickens.

And I think what I’ve learned about Prince outside of reading the article in Esquire that was an interview with Nick Hornby about this book is that was Prince’s thing.

He had to be satisfied with good enough because he had that infinite amount of creativity.

He had to go on to the next thing because there was so much more he wanted to do.

Exactly.

Perfectionism gets in the way of the next thing. If perfectionism is an excuse for you to allow

Your fear of failure to get in the way, then you’ve got a problem. So a lot of times perfection

Is an excuse not to put your work out there. And then when we look at Dickens, and Dickens,

You know, he had his critics. Sure. But he knew what his audience wanted. And so when he would

Serialize his work and put it out there in the newspapers, people would poo-poo that. And that

Was why he worked on multiple books at a time is because he was trying to sell it. He was trying to

Get it out there in multiple markets in multiple ways. I love the idea of this book. And I’m

Encouraged that you immediately thought about this and the idea of writing and language and

Literature. And I’m looking forward to hearing other people’s thoughts on it. What is it again?

It’s called Dickens and Prince, A Particular Kind of Genius, and it’s by Nick Hornby.

Share your thoughts on your creative process, words@waywordradio.org,

Or find a dozen other ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org slash contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Anne, and I have with me Amina, and we’re calling from Jacksonville, Florida.

Anne and Amina.

From Jacksonville, welcome to the show.

What’s on your mind?

Thank you.

We called because we wanted to talk about when you say jinx.

I don’t know if you have ever said the same thing at the same time,

But when two people say the same exact thing at the same time,

We say jinx.

And for my daughter, at her school, the way you break the jinx is,

How do you break the jinx?

So basically, the person has to knock on wood first.

And basically another person has to say their name three times before they can talk again.

Oh, wow.

So we’ve heard like different ways.

Some people will say a pinch or a post, you owe me a Coke, or you owe me a coconut.

I’ve heard you owe me a soda.

So we were just curious about how that started, like why people say jinx when they talk at the same time with the same words.

And I would also like to know, what is the original use of jinx?

Oh, wow, good.

And then we were just also wondering, like, about the breaking, the quote unquote breaking of the jinx, like to allow the person to speak again, like, you know, where those differences are.

Is it geographical? Because like I’m originally from New York.

I never heard the you owe me a coconut before now with my daughter going to school in Jacksonville as an example.

So and what did you say when you were a kid when you said the same thing as someone else?

So I remember vaguely it was more like the pinch, the poke.

It had some kind of like violent component to it, unfortunately.

So like you had to punch the person first and like then you were the one who was like in control of the ability to speak again or.

Okay.

I don’t know.

And I grew up in Long Island.

Long Island.

Okay.

And Amina has grown up there in Jacksonville.

Yes.

She’s been here since she was three.

Let’s handle the word jinx first, since that’s a lexical linguistic thing.

It actually comes from the name of a bird, the Latin word for a bird, or actually the Greek word for it originally.

It’s a bird called the rye neck, W-R-Y-N-E-C-K, which was used in a variety of mystical kind of witchy charms and, and I don’t know what to call it, just spells.

It was often said to be involved with magical stuff.

And it was spelled in Latin I-Y-N-X, but that I is often changed to a J because there’s no J in Latin.

And so I before Y can sound like a J.

A modern Latin, it is spelled with a J, J-Y-N-X.

And so when you invoke the J, the jinx, you are invoking that bird, that mystical, magical bird, the jinx.

Oh, cool. We love birds.

How about that?

That’s awesome.

Yeah.

Goes back at least to the 1600s.

Wow.

But the word itself referring to that bird goes back to ancient Greek.

Now, as far as what you say when someone else says the same thing, let me ask Martha here.

Martha, what did you say when you were a kid and you and a friend said exactly the same thing at the same time?

When I was a kid and somebody said the same thing at the same time as I said it, we would say,

Jinx, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, you owe me a Coke if the other person didn’t stop you before you said you owe me a Coke.

Whoever got to 10 first was the one who won.

And let me ask you, did you ever pay out those Cokes?

Oh, heavens no.

Heavens no.

It was just the theoretical Coke, right?

It was just the idea that they were in your debt.

Yeah, yeah.

And I’ve actually never heard, Jinx, you owe me a coconut.

That’s a great version of it.

Yeah, I like that because it just takes the sugary drink right out of it, right?

Yeah.

And I’m also wondering, Amina, what if you’re not anywhere near wood?

What do you do?

How do you knock on wood?

Well, kids tend to, there’s always, if not wood, there’s a table,

There’s a piece of paper and people are like,

Knock on a piece of paper.

Right, because it’s made out of the same thing as wood.

Oh, smart.

Smart, yeah.

I do want to say that there are probably literally

Hundreds of different versions of things that people say

When they say the same thing as someone else.

And just a few of them are,

If two people say the same thing simultaneously,

They shake hands and turn around. Or they say, needles, pins, buffalo skins, what goes up the

Chimney smoke? Or they say, red, blue, needles, pins, Shakespeare, Longfellow. But yet in the UK,

If you say Shakespeare, then it’s bad because then something shakes a spear at you and it’s

Bad luck. And other places you would say different poets. You might say Keats. And Iona and Peter

Opie, the great folklorists, report that in parts of the UK, children would immediately be silent,

And then they would say things like, white rabbits, or you’ll get a letter tomorrow,

Or that’s my letter, and then stamp their foot, or shake hands, or touch wood and whistle.

And so there’s so many of these that people say when they say the same thing as someone else.

There’s no one thing. These kinds of superstitions are widespread and prevalent throughout the world.

But I do want to recommend two books to you if you can find them.

One is the book by Iona and Peter Opie. Martha knows I love this book. I’ve talked about it on the show before.

It is called The Lore and Language of Children.

And the other one is a book that I came across recently and was shocked that I remembered it from my own childhood.

It was published in 1975. It’s a collection of folklore by Duncan Emmerich, and it’s called

The Whim-Wham Book, W-H-I-M, W-H-A-M. And they’re both wonderful books that touch upon

This bit of folklore and many, many other kinds of folklore that you will be delighted

To dig into and just marvel at the creativity of children and humans in general as they just

Come up with all this weird stuff that involves, you know, pinky swears and turning around and

Shouting things up chimneys and sending empty letters to other people, just all this odd stuff.

Great. We love it. It sounds fun. It’s fun to learn about this stuff. Thank you so much.

Our pleasure. Thank you, Anne. Thank you, Amina.

Bye-bye, you guys.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Adding to our list of terms from around the world for weak coffee,

We heard from Oscano in Mexico,

Who says that weak coffee there is sometimes called agua de calcetín, or sock water.

I can imagine.

You just soaked your socks and wrung them out.

That is some stinky water.

Don’t drink that, Oscano.

I’ll send you proper coffee.

There are lots of different ways to reach us no matter where you are in the world.

Go to waywordradio.org slash contact to find out.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant, Martha.

I’m Betty Wooten, and I’m calling from Georgetown, Kentucky,

About an expression that my mother used,

Adam’s off ox, as in,

He didn’t know me from Adam’s off ox.

I’ve never heard anyone else say that.

When I was a child, I thought she was saying Adam’s all fox, which made no sense to me.

Later, I discovered it was Adam’s off ox.

Still made no sense.

I did a little oxen research and found out that in a yoke of oxen, you have a lead ox and an off.

Ox. So I guess the poor off ox is less knowable than the lead. I do not understand this expression,

And I thought perhaps you all might know something about it.

Betty, you’ve already done some really good work on it. You’re exactly right. Adam’s off ox

Refers to the image of somebody using a pair of oxen to pull a plow. And we’ll get back to that

In a second, but it’s worth knowing. Have you ever heard the expression, I don’t know him from Adam?

Yes. Okay. Well, yeah, that expression goes back to at least the 1700s. And of course, that idea

Is, I don’t know him from Adam, that ancestor so distant that you’d never recognize him. If Adam

Walked in to the room, you would have no idea who he was. He’s that distant in history. You wouldn’t

Know who Adam is. And what’s fun about that expression, Betty, is that over the centuries,

People have elaborated on that expression in one way or another. People will say, I don’t know him

From Adam’s house cat, or I don’t know him from Adam’s brother, or Adam’s foot. I don’t know him

From Adam’s pet monkey. I don’t know him from Adam’s Aunt Bessie. So people have fooled around

With that expression. And another way of elaborating it is the one that you used, Adams

Off ox. And as you suggested, it refers to the driver of the ox and walking on the left side

And of a plow or a wagon. And so he’s walking on the left side and the near ox, the one on the left

Is closer to him. He knows better how that ox behaves. And the off ox is the one on the other

Side, the right-hand side. And so if you don’t know somebody from Adam’s ox or Adam’s off ox,

You really, really don’t know them at all. Oh, that’s fun. I love all the variations.

Oh, well, thank you. That’s so interesting. I appreciate learning a little more about this.

Betty, thank you so much for calling us about this. Call us again sometime, will you?

Thank you. I’d love to. Bye-bye.

All right. Take care of yourself.

Thanks, Betty.

We have a toll-free number that works in Canada and the United States. It’s 1-877-929-9673.

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And we’ve got WhatsApp and Skype contacts that you can use from anywhere in the world.

You can also find those on our website at waywordradio.org.

I wanted to get back to the book that we were talking about called Dickens and Prince.

A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby, we talked about how it’s sort of a meditation on

Perfectionism and how that can get in the way of your creativity, but we didn’t really talk about

His pondering their creativity itself and how in the world those two guys or anybody who’s super

Creative ends up being that way. And I wanted to share a line from that book that has stuck with me.

He’s trying to figure out what it was that made both Prince and Charles Dickens so creative,

And he eventually concludes every tiny step of their lives, every single parental decision,

School lesson, friend, uncle, magazine, day out, crush, conversation, shopkeeper, made them that way.

That, I suspect, is the best we’ll ever be able to do.

I really appreciated that notion that we’re all a composite of all of our experiences come together.

Oh, of course.

Yeah, I believe in the uniqueness of people.

But I also believe that in order to step in different streams, you must intentionally seek out those different streams.

Expose yourself purposely and purposefully in a different world than the people around you.

If you were consuming the same things they’re consuming, the media and the experiences, then how can you produce differently than they produce?

You have to consciously seek out a different world than they do in order to be different.

Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts about creativity or perfectionism or a word that’s been rattling around your brain.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Our team includes senior producer Stefanie Levine, engineer and editor Tim Felten, and quiz guide John Chaneski.

We’d love to hear from you, no matter where you are in the world.

Go to waywordradio.org slash contact.

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

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Who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting,

Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.