Who You Calling a Jabroney?

Even though you’re listening to this on podcast and not on the air, you can still call our toll-free number 877-929-9673.

And you can still send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

And you can still find us online at waywordradio.org.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And Grant, I am so bummed.

Oh, what happens?

I have a Winklehawk in my pants.

You have one of the Winklevoss twins in your pants?

No, no, no.

The guys who sued Facebook are in your pants?

I’m not even going to go there.

I have a Winklehawk in my jeans.

Grant, that is an L-shaped tear.

Oh.

Do you ever get that?

I know what you’re talking about.

If you catch it on a nail or something sharp, right?

Right, and it’s perfectly L-shaped, and then you have to snip your…

A Winklehawk.

A Winklehawk.

How do you spell that?

That is W-I-N-K-L-E-H-A-W-K.

And I would not have known of this word except that we got an email from Christine Kuhnert from Delafield, Wisconsin,

Who pointed out that although this word isn’t in all dictionaries, it’s in at least one obscure 19th century dictionary.

And it comes from, apparently, a Dutch term for a carpenter’s L-shaped tool.

Oh, very good.

Like they’re square.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I just, you know, every time I learn a word like this, Grant, it honestly,

It makes me feel connected. It makes me feel the same feeling that I get if I’m hiking along a

Trail and I see that somebody was there before me. You know, there’s just, there’s just something

About somebody seeing something and remarking on it and thinking enough of it to make a word out of

It. And they leave it behind for you. Like the leave a penny, take a penny at the register.

Yeah, yeah.

So now I have a Winklehawk in my pants.

That’s pretty interesting.

It speaks kind of just to the native understanding that we have of language.

Somebody else must have had a need for that.

Yes, yes.

It’s common sense.

Do you know what another word for common sense is?

Common sense.

I feel a little foolish.

I just came across this.

Yeah?

Motherwit, M-O-T-H-E-R-W-I-T.

And it’s the natural ability to cope with everyday life or just common sense.

And I was like, bingo.

Yeah.

There we go.

Motherwit, right?

Well, this is the show where you can talk about Winklehawks and Mother Wit.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lyndra Hyatt.

I’m calling from Indiana.

Where in Indiana?

Windfall, Indiana.

It’s about 50-some miles north.

Are there a lot of apple trees there?

No, not too many.

What’s on your mind?

Well, my husband has this, whenever the school bus stops out front, he says, well, there’s a school hack, and it’s every day during the school year.

I just want to pull my hair out because he doesn’t know what he’s saying, what it means, and neither do I.

It’s become such a joke that my friend that lives in the south end of town will call and tell Jerry, well, the school hack’s on its way, Jerry.

So it’s just, it’s…

So what bothers you is that he says it every day or that he doesn’t know what it means or both?

Or that the school bus stops in front of your house.

Yes, it stops right in front of our house.

We live in a small town and let’s pull the children out.

But no, he doesn’t know what it means and neither do I.

And that he says it every day.

So maybe I can have an answer for him.

Have you considered moving?

No, I hadn’t.

Blockading the street.

Linda’s going to be out there with the trash barrels.

You can’t.

You shot my ass.

I think I’ll put him out on the porch and he can say it out there.

And then, you know, I won’t have to listen to it.

Foam earplugs are really cheap, Linda.

I need to invest in some, right?

Well, Linda, let me ask you.

Are you both born and raised there in Windfall in northeastern Indiana?

Well, my husband has lived in Windfall all of his 66 years.

We went to school here.

I was born a few miles away, but, yes, we’ve always just lived right here.

Mm—

Mm—

Do you think there’s a connection there, Martha?

I sure do.

Well, School Hack is a shortened term.

It comes from Hackney Carriage, which is a kind of carriage that they used to use back in the days

When there were still one-room schoolhouses and really small classes,

But the children came from lots of different places in rural areas.

And I’m fascinated to hear that you’re from Indiana because, you know what,

If you go to Richmond, Indiana, which is what, a little bit south of you?

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

You can go.

This would be a fun trip for you and your husband to go to the museum there

Because there’s a big, beautiful, yellow school hack.

Really?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

They used these in the 19th and early 20th century.

They were precursors of the school bus, and it’s big and bright and yellow,

But it looks sort of like a carriage, and these were horse-drawn carriages.

Oh, that sounds great.

That would be a good anniversary trip.

Yeah, don’t tell him.

Just surprise him.

Of course, he might just say it more.

But it sounds like you will get a little relief from knowing that this is connected to some other older terms.

That ultimately all derive from a horse.

So here’s the quick synopsis.

First, there was a horse known as a hackney, right?

And then the driver of the horse became known as a hackney, sometimes called a hack.

Then the carriage that was pulled by that horse and manned by that driver became known as a hackney or a hack.

And then the automobile, which replaced that carriage, became known as a hackney or a hack.

And the driver of that automobile also became to be called a hack.

And somewhere along the way, a horse that was old and beat up and ready to go to the glue factory became known as a hack.

And then tired old journalists who were really terrible at their craft became known as hacks after the tired old horses.

Right.

And they write hackneyed prose.

It’s all from the same family.

And they write hackneyed prose.

And they all ultimately come from a horse.

So your husband is maybe the most annoying person in your little town, but he’s on to something.

Well, I have to agree with that.

Both ways.

Well, he’ll be glad to know that, and I will too.

But like I said, it’s become a joke, and it’s not funny.

Well, I hope that’s the most of his sins, Linda.

Oh, I think so. That’s good.

Yeah, and it turns out that Richmond, Indiana was a major manufacturing center for the precursors of the school bus.

So I think you’ve got your anniversary trip all planned out.

I think so, too.

Don’t tell him.

Find a good restaurant.

Get a blindfold.

Load him into the car.

If you have to, knock him out with a ball-peen hammer.

Just get him there.

And when he wakes up, you can show him.

That sounds like that would be a good trip.

I might have to get my friend and take her so she can tag along and she can also see.

Take her on your anniversary trip?

If you do go, let us know how it turns out.

Send us some pictures, will you?

Okay, I will.

Thanks, Linda, for calling.

Oh, thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Take care, Linda.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got a question about language or a dispute with your spouse, call us, 877-929-9673.

We’ll give you advice.

Maybe not good advice, but it will be advice, and there will be lots of it.

And it’s free.

It’s free.

And you can send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Andrew Forte, and I’m from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Andrew. Welcome to the program.

Well, yeah, I listen to the show a lot,

And something I want to call in and kind of see what your favorite ones were,

And the subject is oxymorons.

Mm—

You know, they’re so prevalent, and I hear them all the time,

And I’ve always had kind of a fascination with them,

And just wanted to see your opinions on them

And if you have any favorite ones that I don’t have.

Wow. Well, let’s hear yours.

Some of the ones that, you know, I’m from the South, from Texas, so I hear all the time, you know, that was awfully good.

Awfully good?

Awfully good, and then people say pretty bad or pretty ugly, and, you know, there’s two opposite words that when you put them together mean something completely different.

-huh, -huh.

And the one I use the most that my girlfriend hates is same difference.

Oh, yeah. That drives some people crazy, doesn’t it?

I like that one. Same difference.

Same difference. Six in one, half a dozen in the other.

So oxymoron, this is where you have, within a single expression, two contradictory ideas, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, like jumbo shrimp, that kind of thing.

Right, right.

Jumbo shrimp, almost done.

Found missing.

Yeah, turned up missing.

Required donation, things like that.

Controlled chaos, I hear a lot.

Well, you know, that actually reminds me of the ones that are in Shakespeare.

Shakespeare has them in Romeo and Juliet.

He talks about misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms.

Actually, the whole verse is, can I read this to you?

This is from Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 1.

Oh, heavy lightness, serious vanity,

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,

Still waking sleep that is not what it is,

This love feel I that feel no love in this,

Dust found not laugh.

That’s one long oxymoron.

No, but feather of lead, bright smoke, still waking sleep?

That’s nice.

Cold fire, that’s incredible.

What’s so long?

Yeah, sick health.

Yeah.

I was going to throw mine in.

You can’t compare the box.

I’m going to compete with that.

He’s in his own class.

I know, I can’t.

I can’t.

But I’ll try.

How about, this wasn’t even around in his time, how about airline food?

Oh, I see.

You’re going for the joke.

I could clean boy.

Clean boy?

I have one of those so-called clean boys.

Or another favorite of mine is productivity committee.

That’s funny.

Nice.

Yeah.

So what turned you into a fan of oxymorons, from the Greek for pointedly foolish, by the way?

You know, honestly, I don’t know.

It’s one of those things, I think, growing up, I’d always hear them, and, you know, you hear them all the time.

Like, when they talk about zombie movies, especially, you hear living dead.

Oh, sure, yeah.

I mean, it’s just so funny how prevalent they are, and, you know, people don’t necessarily seem to notice them.

Yeah, they’re an important part of speech, though, aren’t they?

They give color and life, speaking of dead.

To our language.

I don’t think we could do without them.

I could do without free gift.

What in the world?

Well, I think we should ask our listeners

To call in with their favorites.

Sure, yeah.

Send along your favorites.

That’d be great.

I’d love to hear them.

What are your favorite oxymorons?

877-929-9673

Or send them an email to

Words@waywordradio.org.

Andrew, thank you so much

For giving us a call today.

Thanks, Grant.

Okay, bye-bye.

Take care.

Have a good day.

Grant, that was a great call.

I think that’s going to be an instant classic.

I mean, what a goofy expression when you think about it.

Instant classic?

Wait.

It’s like green blackberries, right?

Well, let us know your oxymorons.

Send them to words@waywordradio.org.

You know Lynn Murphy, who runs the blog Separated by a Common Language?

Yes, about English.

She talks about the differences between the different Englishes in the world,

Particularly British versus American.

Yes.

She mentioned something in Twitter that I did not know,

Which is that in the U.K. They sometimes count seconds differently.

Of course. I mean, it makes sense.

We say in the United States, most of us say one 1,000, two 1,000, right?

I say one Mississippi.

Right. We would say Mississippi because it’s an American river

And this is an American continent. We’re Americans.

But did you know that some people there say one elephant, two elephant, three elephant?

Really?

Yeah.

Maybe most of them.

I had no idea.

Never heard of that.

Wow.

Who knew that there were other ways to count the seconds?

I don’t know.

And I wonder what it is in other languages, too.

Right.

There’s got to be something in every language.

Yeah.

Well, how do you count the seconds in your language or where you’re from?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

A word puzzle and your language questions coming up.

Stick around.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined once again by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Hello, Greg.

Greg.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

Have you made up a quiz?

I made up a quiz.

I did.

Actually, we’re going to play with what I call welded palindromes.

Welded palindromes.

Goodness.

There are two word phrases which spell the same forwards and backwards.

Oh, nice.

Two word phrases that are the same forward and backward.

Yes.

I like to call a phrase like this a word row.

Here’s an example for you in case you don’t remember these.

It’s how you keep Simba from squeaking.

Simba from squeaking.

So that would be a lion something?

Yeah.

Lion oil.

Lion oil.

Exactly.

Lion oil.

Lion oil.

Nice.

Okay.

Speaking of animals, this is the place where animal fluids are on display.

Animal.

Zoo ooze?

Yeah, the other way around.

Ooze zoo.

It’s the ooze zoo, yes.

Same forwards and backwards.

How about Shakespeare’s olive brown clothing?

Shakespeare’s olive brown clothing.

Bard drab?

Bard drab, yes.

Here’s one I hope we get to celebrate someday.

Your first appearance on the telly.

First appearance on the telly.

That’s the television.

How about tube debut?

Your tube debut, exactly.

Well done, Martha.

I think that’s three for Martha.

Hey!

We don’t click score.

The King’s Beer.

Royal.

Lager.

Yeah.

Regal Lager.

Regal Lager.

Very good.

Golly.

How about this?

The lower half of a slogan.

The lower half of a slogan.

Oh.

The lower.

Motto bottom?

The motto bottom.

Oh, very good.

Absolutely.

Oh, that’s nice.

Motto bottom.

And the Indianapolis basketball game summary.

This is a sports question, obviously.

Indy something?

Hoosier.

Now, what is the professional sports team from Indianapolis?

Oh, thanks.

Pacer recap.

Oh, very good.

Yes, a Pacer recap.

I’m thinking Colts block.

That’s football, Martha.

The ball is a little more ovoid and funny shaped.

Right, right, right.

They have those hoops and stuff.

But here’s one that you’ll get, Martha.

Yes?

A Greek god on an Egyptian canal.

Oh, that would be very nice.

Zeus Suez.

Yeah, so I’m thinking the Suez Zeus.

It’s not the Athens Zeus.

This is the Suez Zeus.

Right.

All right, I’ve got a few more that are some of my favorites here.

Books that are published again, but this time more like Cat in the Hat.

Seuss.

I don’t know.

Seuss something.

Yep.

Is reissues the word?

Reissues is the second word.

So just write it backwards.

Oh, Seussier?

Seussier reissues.

Seussier reissues.

I see.

That book was great, but when it comes out again, we want it to be Seussier.

All right.

I’ll give you one more to send you away.

This is the famous Dust Bowl watch brand.

The Dust Bowl watch brand.

Okay.

The Oki something?

Yep.

Oki, really?

Yeah.

Oh.

Oki Seiko.

The Oki Seiko.

Exactly.

Wow.

Grapes of Wrath.

They were all checking their Oki Seikos.

Ma Joad, are we there yet?

Oh, man, Greg.

This is pretty good, Greg.

That was a workout.

We like to keep your brains limber.

If you’ve got a question about language, words, grammar, spelling,

Or if you’ve got a puzzle that you’d like us to try,

Give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or send whatever you’ve got to say, an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Justin calling from Indianapolis.

Hi, Justin.

Hey, Justin, what’s up?

Hi, guys, how are you doing today?

Super.

Great.

And yourself?

Doing very well.

Doing very well.

A little rainy here, but that’s all right.

Yeah, yeah.

How can we help you?

Well, I had a question for you guys.

A long time ago, I was cleaning out my grandpa’s basement with him,

And there was like a plaque that he had above his desk that read,

Your father’s mustache.

And when I asked him about it, he said that was kind of a phrase akin to like,

Go jump in the lake or a pish-posh.

He’d say, oh, your father’s mustache.

And I’ve tried to use it once or twice, and I’ve gotten some eyebrow raises from my friends.

So, A, I’m wondering if I’m using it correctly and if he told me correctly,

And B, I’m wondering where it came from.

Justin, I’m curious about this plaque.

Me too.

Did it have hair on it?

Was it a mustache?

What else was on it?

It had a nice detailed picture of a nice twisty mustache underneath, I believe.

Was there a date or a name of a club or a group or anything on there?

No, it was actually really simple.

It looked like it was homemade or something like that.

Oh, I see.

I cannot remember if it was carved.

This was when I was about 10 years old.

Interesting.

Yeah.

There’s some history here.

There was a time in America, 1930s, 40s, 50s, when you could say, well, you would say it with a Brooklyn accent.

You would say, your father’s mustache, as a way of dismissing somebody.

And this is at least from the 1930s, maybe a little earlier.

Eric Partridge, the well-known, at least in my circle, slang lexicographer, has written a little bit about this in his book of catchphrases.

And he also mentions in there that Woody Herman, the jazz composer and conductor, had a big hit in 1945, a song called Your Father’s Mustache.

And if you watch this on YouTube, there’s a video of it, I think it was recorded years later, that the announcer, he says something like,

And now that Brooklyn folk song, Ya Fata’s Mustache.

And so he’s specific.

And more than one source has specifically connected it to Brooklyn, New York, and specifically mentioned that that’s how you pronounce it.

And you will often find it spelled F-A-D-D-E-R or F-A-D-D-A or F-A-D-D-A-H and not F-A-T-H-E-R.

So it’s Ya Fata’s Mustache, like that, right?

Ya Fata’s Mustache.

Okay, yeah.

And it’s like the modern equivalent would be, your mama wears combat boots.

Right?

Okay.

You’ve heard that one, right?

Absolutely, I have.

Yeah, your mother, okay.

So when I pull this out of my handbag, I need to cop my Brooklyn accent.

Yeah, yeah.

Somebody says something kind of unbelievable or they’re like,

They challenge you in a way that you find repugnant and you just say,

Your father’s mustache.

Okay, perfect.

There we go.

Excellent.

Thank you, guys.

Yeah, sure.

Our pleasure.

You’ll probably still get eye raises, though.

Eyebrows will still go up.

I have a mustache, too. And my dad wears a mustache, so it’s one of those things where it’s actually true if someone turns it back on me if they’re listening to this.

Okay.

But I don’t know how it got on that plaque, but maybe it was a joke between friends?

I’m assuming it’s some sort of white elephant gag gift they passed around at some sort of party, and he ended up with it and hung it up in the basement.

One interesting side note that at some point, I believe it was in the 60s or the 70s, there was a legal case involving that expression, your father’s mustache, because it was being used by a chain of barbershops.

Really?

And I think there was some dispute as to whether or not that should be permitted, and the court said it was okay.

Oh, yeah.

That is an interesting tidbit.

That’s very cool.

I’m going to let my grandpa know that.

He’ll be completely tickled by that.

Thanks for calling, dude.

Hey, thank you guys so much.

Have a great day now.

Sure, bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Justin.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you found a linguistic heirloom and brushed it off.

Or a literal heirloom.

Or a literal heirloom.

Old plaque from your grandma or grandpa.

Brush it off, read what it says, and give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Or send Martha email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I am Megan from Green Bay.

Hi, Megan.

Hi, Megan.

Welcome to the program.

Hello.

I am calling about a word that I say that is a combination of two different words.

And the word I always say is frustrated.

And it’s a combination of flustered and frustrated.

And it drives my husband crazy.

Why? Why does he mind?

I don’t know.

I think it’s just he’s very good at grammar and English.

And I tend to forget words and mix them up and just not really care as much.

What’s his complaint, though?

Oh, that it’s not really a word, that I’m combining those two words together.

So he said I need to say one or the other.

I can’t combine the two into frustrated like I do.

It frustrates him when I do that.

Is he pretending to be confused, or is he genuinely confused?

No, he’s not confused.

So this is a dispute between the two of you?

Well, between him and other people that I work with and hang out with,

They call them Meganisms because I tend to make up sayings and words.

Okay.

I want to give you a whole new perspective before we answer your question.

Megan, you’re an innovator.

You’re forward thinking.

You come up with new ideas.

Exactly.

You’re an inventor.

Right.

That’s my philosophy here.

Well, and Megan, on the other hand, you’re also carrying on a long tradition.

Yep, that’s right.

This word has been around since at least the early 1700s.

Wow.

Hundreds of years.

Yeah.

And so take that information, go back to your husband and your so-called friends and say, in your face.

I might have to mix it up and make it more inventive, though, and say, like, in your ear, you know.

That’s a different thing altogether.

Yes.

Yeah. Now, it isn’t always regarded as standard English.

Right, right.

But you can find it in old texts back in the early 18th century.

And there’s some thought that it might not be a combination of frustrate and fluster,

But from flusterate, which is another word.

Yeah.

I’m all flusterated.

Yeah, which is directly connected to the origin of frustrate.

And they may have the same etymological root, just different paths.

Very interesting.

The word has been used in dialects of English in the UK for centuries.

There’s no harm in it.

As Martha said, the dictionaries do sometimes mark it as jocular,

Which means you’re probably not going to use it if you’re writing a speech for the president.

But if you’re speaking in meganisms, you’re fine.

Exactly.

I would say I was a jocular meganism person.

Meganisms are the new wave.

Everybody’s doing it.

It’s the new future of the world.

We’re all going to be talking mechanisms in a few years.

That sounds great.

So write your dictionary and spread it around so everyone can talk like you.

Megan, you’re fine with flustrate, okay?

Great. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Keep it to informal circumstances and you’ll be cool.

All right. Great. Thank you for all your help.

All right. Cheers.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Boy, is her family going to be flustrated.

-oh.

Marriage counselors on the air.

You know, I have to say I ran across the word refudiate the other day.

Yes.

No, I ran across the word repudiate.

Oh, see, you’re already confused about it.

See, I’m already doing it.

I ran across the word repudiate and I thought, wait, that’s not right.

You know, it’s like teachers who grade too many spelling tests and then they can’t remember how a word is spelled.

The Palinism, the blend made by Sarah Palin, is surprisingly contagious.

It’s sticky, isn’t it?

It is very sticky.

And no matter what people said about it being hideous and a misrepresentation of the beauty of English or whatever kinds of like long, drawn out complaints they have, it’s actually useful.

And it actually carries meaning.

So I’m not going to endorse it.

But let me just say I can understand if a word like flustrate or refudiate is a little catchy and a little contagious.

And you find yourself coming out of your keyboard like, whoa.

So if a language question has you flustrated, see, it’s great.

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

And if you just can’t wait for an answer, find us on Facebook at Wayword Radio.

All right, here’s a stumper for you, I hope.

Okay.

What does the word leukomelanus mean?

Leukomelanus?

Would that be like L-E-U-C-O?

Something like that?

Okay, so the first part is Greek for white.

Right, like leukocytes in the blood, right?

White blood cells.

Yeah, and the melano would be like black, dark, like melanin.

Melancholy.

Right, yeah.

So something that’s black and white?

Is it like a zebra?

No.

An Oreo?

It’s a person who has a fair complexion with dark hair, like Snow White.

She has very pale skin, but dark hair.

Elizabeth Taylor.

Yeah.

Well, I don’t know.

The purple eyes kind of throw it.

Violet eyes.

Leucomelanus.

I love that.

It’s kind of beautiful, but when you break it down and there’s, I don’t know.

Does it work for you?

Absolutely.

Veronica in the Archie comics always worked for me.

With a little blue in her hair.

Call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673,

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jesse from Fort Worth, Texas.

Hello, Jesse. Welcome.

Hi, Jesse. Welcome to the program.

Well, I had emailed in with a saying that I picked up a while back.

I don’t even really know where I heard it from.

It was not my pig, not my farm.

That’s another way of saying, you know, not my problem,

Or I don’t want to get involved or keep me out of this or whatever.

Right, I don’t have a dog in that fight or a horse in that race, that sort of thing?

Yeah, basically.

Huh.

And where have you been hearing this?

Well, you know, honestly, I don’t even remember where in the world I heard it the first time,

And I remember hearing it, and it was really funny.

I said it a couple of times, not my pig, not my farm, and, you know, just kind of varied it a little bit.

I have a good friend that’s a big hunter, and we spun it for him, saying, not my deer, not my leaf.

People that like cats, you know, not my cat, not my box.

And so we’ve done it.

I like that one, not my cat, not my box.

Yeah, not my dog, not my yard, not my dog, not my hunt, whatever, pick it.

Not my duck, not my pond.

Yeah, exactly.

And so, you know, sometimes it doesn’t roll off all the way.

So we just kind of shorten it to not my pig.

So that’s pretty much all we’ve said for a couple of years now.

I just say, well, something happens or comes up and we say, well, not my pig.

And so, Jesse, you travel a lot, I gather, then?

You might have heard this anywhere.

I have traveled in the past a lot.

I haven’t so much recently, but I have.

Did you ever read the Douglas Adams books,

The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy trilogy?

I did not. No, I haven’t heard of that.

He makes all this funny science fiction stuff in there.

And one of the things he comes up with is the idea that there’s something called an SEP field,

Which is a somebody else’s problem field that surrounds things that people don’t want to deal with.

Like you can land a rocket ship right in the middle of a soccer match,

And nobody will notice it because it’s not their problem.

Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

I know the concept.

He was great that way.

He’s well missed, and the books are still worth a laugh.

But I don’t know anything about the history of Not My Pig, Not My Farm.

Well, it’s not your pig.

It’s not my pig, really.

Well, I’ve Googled it, too.

Not my word, not my dictionary.

I’ve Googled it, too, and cannot find really where it originated.

I can’t even find where I heard it from.

Like I said, I just heard it somewhere a few years ago.

I can’t remember where.

And it just struck me really funny.

I love it.

I think this is a great candidate to put the call out and ask our other listeners to let us know if they know a specific case of this word being used, say, in the last few decades or even earlier.

Is it a book or a movie or did they see it on a television show?

Yeah.

Find it in a magazine article.

Maybe we can get a little bit of history on this concept.

Yeah, because clearly it’s not just you and your friends.

I’m looking online right now and there are plenty of examples of it.

But nothing meaty, right?

Yeah.

Really substantial where we can kind of get a hook in it

And say, okay, let’s follow this as far as it goes.

And I love the construct.

I mean, you could play with that all day.

Not my cheddar, not my cheese ball.

Yeah, not my fish, not my tank,

Not my bird, not my cage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m liking this. I’m liking this.

Not my baby, not my marriage. No, wait. That doesn’t work.

I think that gets into other things.

Not my wife.

Oh, wait. Sorry, honey.

Jesse, thanks for calling today.

If we come up with anything new, we’ll send it along, all right?

Very good.

Thank you.

Take care.

Okay, thanks.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Every show is free on our website at waywordradio.org.

And you can listen to us on iTunes by podcast.

If you ever need a word meaning abundant with cattle, I have the word for you.

I need that often.

Pecorous, P-E-C-O-R-O-U-S, pecorous.

Pecorous.

It means abounding or abundant with cattle.

Okay.

Lots of cattle.

Like a big farm is pecorous, maybe, that has cattle.

Okay.

Right?

Thank you.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Get on the language bus.

More of your calls as A Way with Words continues.

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More at nu.edu.

And from the fifth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,

10 years in the making with 10,000 new words and sentences.

More at ahdictionary.com.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, we spend a lot of time, maybe too much time in our own lives and on the air talking about the origins of words.

Sometimes we get into expressions, maybe idioms, and occasionally we get into something longer than that.

But there is a whole universe of people out there who find the first uses of quotations.

And this is a great, great field. It’s incredibly interesting.

It’s kind of like what you and I do, at least that one little part of our show.

But they do it strictly for quotations.

So the kind of stuff that you might say the Toastmasters speech or the kind of thing that, you know, somebody might lead with at the top of their article to provide some color and common, you know, that sort of thing.

Well, there’s a newsletter for this, and I want to share it with you because I’ve been getting this now for a year.

It’s fantastic.

It’s called the quote unquote newsletter.

It’s published and edited by Nigel Reese.

He’s British, but he deals with all kinds of quotations from all over the English speaking world.

And just to give you a typical example, there’s a classic joke that he’s been trying to run down and his readers have been trying to run down.

And it goes like this.

There’s a sign about a cat that’s missing and it says, lost, bald, one-eyed ginger Tom, crippled in both back legs, recently castrated, answers to the name of Lucky.

And so these fellas have been trying to track down the first time this joke appeared.

And they may have found it as far back as 1969.

They’re still digging.

But so what they’re taking is these jokes and things, not just the jokes, but the wisdom that passes and the jokes that pass in the form of quotations and trying to determine who really said that.

Now, as you know, Fred Shapiro in his Yale Book of Quotations has done this at length.

Right.

It’s magnificent, isn’t it?

It’s magnificent.

And he was able to overturn many of those quotes that were, you know, people said Mark Twain said it or people said Abraham Lincoln said it.

Or the serenity prayer just a couple of years ago.

That’s right.

Found the first use of it.

And it often turns out there’s a big difference between the person that we thought said it and the person who actually first said it.

Right.

As we always say, sometimes there’s a popularizer and sometimes the coiner.

And often the two are very different.

In any case, there’s another site I want to share with you.

It’s called thequoteinvestigator.com.

And the quote investigator does the kind of same story.

They find a quotation that people are using and passing around and just try to get to the bottom of it.

Who said it? What did they mean? What was the larger context?

Who’s using it now? Very interesting stuff.

It’s a part of language that’s important to speech making and important to writing

Because a lot of our work is about taking these bits of received wisdom

And trying to plug them into our own thoughts, right, to plug them into our own ideas.

And if you’d like to talk about any aspect of language, this is the place.

877-929-9673.

Or you can email us words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha and Grant.

Hi, my name is Michael Dorn.

Hi, Michael.

And I’m calling from Seattle, Washington.

Welcome.

How are things in Seattle?

Well, I’m calling because I have a question about a word that is used in my trade.

I’m a violin maker, and the word is purfling, P-U-R-F-L-I-N-G.

Purfling?

Yeah.

You’re a violin maker.

Well, now, we can’t let you get away without telling us about your profession.

This is fantastic.

I don’t think we’ve ever had a violin maker on the show, have we?

No, no.

I think we had a guitar maker, piano maker, tuba maker, but no violin maker.

Kidding.

So how’d you get into that?

Well, I discovered early on that I loved working with wood and I loved making music.

And violin making seemed like the best way to combine both of my passions.

And so part of the time you’re doing what? You’re purfling?

That’s right. My wife especially loves the verb to purful.

So purfling is a specific kind of inlay on the fronts and backs of violins.

It’s a little black and white line that runs around the edge.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Typically it’s three pieces of wood, black, white, black, glued together,

And then inlaid into a very tiny channel that runs parallel to the edge.

Okay, okay. And does your wife purful with you?

No, no. She does her work and I do my work in my shop.

Oh, okay.

Sounds naughty when you say it like that.

I know, I know. I purful, you purful, you she it purful.

Like that famous postcard, right?

Which one?

The book nerd says to the lovely woman, do you like kipling?

And she says, I don’t know you, naughty boy. I’ve never kipled.

That’s nice. That’s nice.

Well, I am thrilled to know that this is what this thing is called.

And I’m nosing around here.

It looks like it comes from, it goes all the way back to the Latin word for line or thread.

Really?

Filum.

Yeah, yeah.

Which you see in the word filament and in profile, you know, the line around something.

And so it came to us through Middle French, I believe.

Profile, something like that.

So it is that line around the edge of a violin or a guitar, right?

Like around a guitar or the guitar hole?

Is that purfling as well?

Yeah, it would be.

It’s specifically a black-white-black line.

So binding around the edges of guitars often doesn’t count really as purfling.

But the purfling around the sound hole would be called purfling.

I think I’ve also heard it used in furniture making, cabinet making.

Sometimes they’ll inlay just a line around the edge of a tabletop or on a table leg or something.

So that makes a lot of sense that it has to do with coming from the word for the line.

Right, right.

Yeah, relative of profile.

And you see it in sewing, too, embroidery and that kind of thing.

I love the relationship it has with profile.

They could have been the same word.

They’re twins.

They have exactly the same etymological root.

But perfil is so much more fun to say.

That’s true.

We always love it when people bring us jargon from their work.

Absolutely.

So perfling.

Well, thank you very much, Grant and Martha.

I appreciate your help today.

All right.

Okay.

Happy perfling.

Take care, Michael.

Bye-bye.

Call us and talk to us about the jargon of your trade, the words that you use and maybe don’t know what they mean or where they come from.

877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, you were talking earlier about QuoteInvestigator.com, and it is really a wealth of information.

I had always thought that Dorothy Parker was the one who, when somebody was complimenting a woman for being outspoken, Dorothy Parker said, outspoken by whom?

But apparently it’s much earlier than that.

Quoteidentifier.com.

Love it.

That’s fantastic.

Share your little jokes and riposte and jabs and jibes, 877-929-9673,

Or send your funny stuff to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Linda Beckman. I’m from La Mesa, California.

Hi, Linda. Welcome.

Hi, Linda.

Thank you. Hi.

Well, I have a funny, well, kind of funny to me question.

I was at the gym the other day, and the trainer pointed to my deltoids and said,

Look at those guns.

Well, in my case, it’s like probably a bump, but anyway.

But I don’t really know what that means.

I came home and, you know, went online and I saw that it was like a slang in the U.K.,

But I really didn’t get where that came from.

He pointed to your, was it a man or a woman, your trainer?

A woman.

She pointed to your deltoids?

My upper arm.

Your biceps.

Bicep.

I’m sorry.

My bicep.

Okay.

I was going to say because the deltoids are the ones that are above your shoulder blades on your back.

I’m sorry.

That’s all right.

That’s all right.

I was just like, oh, hey, new meaningless length term.

Yeah.

I was excited to get ready to make some notes here.

I’m like, boy, this is moving faster than I thought.

His glasses are steaming up.

So let’s talk about your body.

So you’re doing well.

Your trainer likes the way you’re moving and points out your guns on your arms.

These are your bicep muscles.

You got a little bit of a bump there, and you did a little digging and found that guns has something to do with the U.K.

Where did you find that information?

I just typed in on the Internet.

I said, what guns and biceps?

Question mark, question mark.

Right, right.

I ask because I don’t think there’s a particularly British component to it.

It’s fairly common in the U.S.

It has been for a couple decades.

You’ll find it being used in American sports without any kind of suggestion at all that it was borrowed from cricket or whatever they play in the UK.

I feel like I’ve just heard it more recently, though.

I mean, maybe that’s, you know.

You may have.

I’ve seen it in movies even, in television shows.

It’s a certain kind of thing that people joke about in the office.

I’ve seen it.

But there’s a suggestion, one suggestion that I saw from a fairly reliable source.

And this is Jonathan Green, the slang lexicographer,

Is that perhaps it has something to do with American baseball,

Referring to the thrower’s arm as his gun.

Oh, that would make sense.

So it’s also the arm.

It directly connects it to sports in a context where a fit body is important.

Our tools are natural extensions of our arms.

The fist is sometimes called the hammer,

And we have all these different ways of referring to our arms

That aren’t really about them being body parts as much as them being tools.

So there’s a suggestion in the 1920s.

It came up.

People started talking about their gun, particularly when it became important that pitchers stopped trying to pitch the ball in a way where the batters could hit it.

I don’t know if you realize this, but in baseball, they used to try to pitch it in such a way so the batter could hit it.

What?

Yeah.

Really?

So once speed became more important, perhaps the idea of this arm firing out this white leather-covered bullet became more important.

It was natural to call it a gun because they’re popping this thing out at an average of 86 miles per hour, right?

Wow.

So maybe that’s where it comes from.

I’m not 100% sure of that, but I wouldn’t be surprised because baseball is given so much to the American language.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is another case.

So no military connection, no bearing arms.

We’re a gun-bearing culture, basically.

So guns and baseball kind of go together, right?

A little bit of narcissism as well.

I’ll throw you in there.

Here we go.

And Linda, you’re going to be bearing bigger and bigger guns, I guess, huh?

I don’t know.

Just a little stronger would be better.

Okay, well, thank you so much for your information.

Our pleasure.

Thanks for calling.

Good talking with you.

All right, be well.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

So did somebody say something to you that made you say,

I wonder where that comes from?

Call us 877-929-9673 or fire up your computer and send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

There’s a great Russian expression that translates as, I am going there where the czar goes on foot.

To the bathroom.

Exactly.

Isn’t that great?

That was sent to us by Tom Williams in Provo, Utah.

I love that.

It’s kind of a parallel with we all put our pants on one other time, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Just to show that somebody’s a common person, right?

Exactly.

I love that.

Where the czar goes on foot.

Pretty good.

Well, if you’ve come across a cool foreign phrase and would like to share it with us,

You can do that at words@waywordradio.org, or you can call us 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nate.

I’m calling from Blacksburg, Virginia.

Nate.

Hi, Nate. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

I have a question.

A couple years ago, I was a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

And in one episode, Thor the Wrestler calls Larry a jabroni.

And that word kind of stuck with me.

And then I was watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and they used the word again.

And here in southwest Virginia, nobody uses that word.

Nobody at all.

I’ve never heard it before.

Yeah, I think it’s a funny word.

In fact, it really cracks me up.

I use it.

It’s not vulgar or anything, so you can kind of say it around people.

But nobody knows what it means, and I’m curious, what is the origin of that word?

And, Nate, how would you use it in a sentence?

Well, let’s say I went to get an iced tea from a drive-thru window,

And they didn’t put a straw with the tea.

I might say, well, that jabroni forgot my straw.

And you have to swing back around and go back in.

So it kind of means a knucklehead or a stupid fellow, right?

Right.

And any idea how to spell that word, jabroni?

That was going to be actually my follow-up question was,

What do you think the spelling of that word is?

If it’s G-E-B-R-O-N-I or I really don’t know.

This is a word that is in all the slang dictionaries,

And I’ve actually answered questions about this before,

And I know of at least 15 different spellings of the word.

Wow.

In print, mind you, from a wide variety of sources,

Including newspapers and books and stuff.

Here’s the really interesting thing about this.

It’s used in professional wrestling to mean kind of a chump, right?

Okay.

The jabroni is like the guy who has to lose.

He’s the heel.

I think that’s what they call it.

He’s the guy who is not the cute one, as they say.

He’s the one who’s supposed to lose the match.

So he’s the designated loser.

Yeah, he’s the designated.

You know, when the wrestling roadshows make their tour, sometimes they’ll bring in local talents to play with the superstar.

And the superstar is inevitably going to win.

The local guy who’s going to lose but is there to kind of like to build up his own reputation is the jabroni.

Right.

But this word actually goes back to the 1920s.

And there’s strong evidence that suggests it comes from a word for Italian-Americans or other immigrants, people who are fresh off the boat, FOB as they say.

Who might have used a dialect word in Italian to mean ham from the Milanese dialect, right?

So it’s possible that it comes from, it’s the strongest evidence that we have.

And you find it used again and again and again since the 1920s, 1921 to be exact,

To refer to somebody who is either a rube or a loser or somebody who’s like on the out,

Somebody who’s out of favor, somebody who’s disreputable.

It’s always got a negative connotation about this.

It’s always the other guy.

You almost never call yourself a jabroni, right?

Right, right.

So you’re just a big old smelly ham.

Yeah, it could be.

Yeah, exactly.

And what is the most common spelling of it?

Good question.

Is there any way to know that?

In the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, which is a dictionary that is widely respected among lexicographers,

The spelling given at the head word, that is the first bold word, is J-I-B-O-N-E-Y.

But in the Dictionary of American Regional English, the first spelling is J-A-B-R-O-N-I-E, jabroni.

So sometimes there’s an R in there and sometimes there isn’t.

Okay.

One of the things I wondered was maybe if this actually traced back to a specific individual, you know.

Joe Jabroni?

Yeah.

Somebody like that who just, you know, did something unfortunate around a group of people and just took off.

I think you have a future in etymology, Nate.

That’s pretty good.

As far as we know, there’s no individual.

It’s interesting, though, the first, I think it’s four uses you can find of this term,

And actually with the same spelling, come from Variety magazine.

In 1921 and 1922, the first sentence is actually, it says,

This jaboni comes back with, sorry, this is a five-story building and we ain’t got no sixth floor.

It sounds like a variety word, you know.

Bafo.

Jabroni.

Okay.

Wow, well, that was great.

Yeah.

All right.

Thanks for calling, dude.

Thank you.

Enjoyed it.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Grant, you big jabroni.

I love that.

A little bit of a hand.

I am so stealing that.

What’s the words you heard from the thing that you like to do?

Every past…

Call us, you jabronis.

Every pastime has its slang.

Every job has its jargon.

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

So a decade is 10 years.

A century is 100 years.

Do you know the word for five years?

Five years.

Five years.

Lustrum.

Lustrum.

L-U-S-T-R-U-M.

I have no idea why it’s called that.

Why wouldn’t we have a word for five years, right?

I think it’s Latin.

Probably.

With the ending, you’d think, right?

The U-M?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you have a decade.

But a decade is two lustra?

Lustrums?

Well, I think we just do the English plural, right?

Yeah, I guess so.

A lustrum is five years.

I did not know that.

That’s very nice.

Let’s talk about that in another lustrum.

Okay.

Another five years.

Share your words that you didn’t know and just found.

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

That’s our show for this week.

Don’t forget, you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

Call us at 877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also chooses our music.

Josette Herdell, Jennifer Powell, and James Ramsey help with production.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit organization.

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

You can find our discussion forum, free podcast, and more information on our website at waywordradio.org.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Dasvidanya.

Adios.

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