Jacked-Up

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, who’s this?

My name is Savannah. I’m calling from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Savannah. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Grant. Thank you.

Well, I’ve been listening to your show for a long time, and I’ve always wanted to call in,

But I didn’t have a very good reason to until recently.

My husband and I often listen to the podcast while cooking,

And one day we were listening to a podcast right after we’d had an interesting language conversation,

Which happens all the time. He recently immigrated from South Africa. We often talk about the

Differences in our languages. But this is a situation where I think he actually might,

His interpretation makes more sense. So we are calling to ask about the meaning of the phrase

Jacked up. In the US, or commonly, I use it to mean something is messed up, it’s not working as

Intended. So the conversation we were having was, John said, you know, the metro in D.C. Is really

Jacked up. I said, I know it hardly ever is running on time. It seems like they’re constantly doing

Track work. You know, it has a lot of problems for major public transportation. And he said, no,

I meant like, it’s great. It’s a cut above the rest. You know, like when you jack up a car,

It’s, you know, better a cut above. And so we both could agree that the metro was jacked up,

But we had totally different interpretations of what that phrase meant.

So jacked up.

So your take is it sucks.

His take is it’s great.

You both think it’s jacked up.

Yeah.

Well, and then, of course, there’s the use.

We had this conversation with some friends who pointed out that it can also be in reference to a person.

You could say somebody is jacked up to mean that they’re also like a bodybuilder and their body is really jacked up,

Or that they’re jacked up on something, like they’re jacked up on drugs or on caffeine.

And I don’t know if there’s any relation between that use of the term and the way that we were using it.

And is your husband around?

He is.

Can we get his take on it?

Of course.

Hi, Martha and Grant. It’s John here. How are you?

John?

Hi.

Hi, welcome.

Hey, how are you doing?

Thank you very much. Very well yourself. Can’t complain.

Welcome to the show and welcome to this country.

Yes, thank you very much for having a fantastic time so far.

Excellent.

So your take on Jacked Up is different from hers.

Absolutely.

As you say, I mean, Savannah was telling you the story behind it,

And we could both agree that the Metro was jacked up.

In my experience coming from South Africa,

We definitely use it very colloquially and sort of in the context that you’ve raised your game

Or you’ve really stepped up to the plate to really sort of outperform yourself.

Interesting.

And so, you know, when I came through to the U.S., I was very impressed with the public transport system

And thought that everything was very jacked up, and she agreed with me.

Well, what we’ve got here is something known as polysemy, P-O-L-Y-S-E-M-Y.

That means that words in English often have more than one meaning.

And jack is a very, how should we put this, a very successful polysemus word.

Wow.

And particularly when it’s paired with prepositions, where one preposition can completely change the meaning.

You can have opposites, you can have antonyms, you can have synonyms, what have you.

So in this particular case, you’re both right, because both of these meanings exist in a wide variety of dialects of English.

To jack up literally means to raise it up, just as you would jack up a car.

But even more likely, before the automobile, you had jacks where you would jack up, say, buildings on a lot.

Or you would jack up farm equipment in order to work on it.

You would jack up, it was a wide variety of things that you would jack up,

But you were literally raising this stuff up because that’s where it needed to be

Or because you needed to work on it or get underneath it.

But the jacked up that we have that is a negative is probably related to words like hijack and blackjack.

These are where you accost somebody or you confront them, where you are jacking them over.

You’re literally doing something negative to them by taking from them or cheating them or beating them.

But like you can actually jack somebody up against the wall.

That means you push them against the wall and you start pummeling them.

You’re jacking them up.

And so these two meanings of jack exist side by side and they’re only apparent through context.

And English is a mongrel language and we’re able to figure this out because of context.

So you’re both good.

I love these cross-cultural confrontations.

Do you often have these, John?

Do you and your wife often?

Constantly.

Especially about pronunciation.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I assume that coming to the U.S., one of the easiest sort of transitions would be the English language.

But it has, you know, proven absolute mystery.

And daily we’re coming across examples where, you know, like Jacked Up, we have entirely different answers to the questions.

What else have you encountered?

In South Africa, we would talk about just now and now now being terms of time.

Drives me crazy when he says, I’ll be there now, and then he shows up 45 minutes later.

And what’s the difference between just now and now now?

Well, just now may mean anything from half an hour to entirely blowing you off.

You know, I’m not going to do it for you at all.

Whereas now now would be within the next 10, 15 minutes.

Oh, really?

And now would be in the exact present time.

I love that.

Never a dull moment at your house.

I love now now.

That’s a case of emphatic reduplication where you say something twice to mean that you mean the ultimate or utmost meaning of that word.

Like now actually means this very second.

Yeah.

Oh, this is all really interesting.

I heard you say blow it off.

Did you get that from your American wife?

Yep.

Because that’s not very widespread in South African English.

No, it’s not.

Interesting.

And you two have to keep us updated.

We want to know how this marriage is going.

Yeah, call us with more.

Well, we love that we are both right.

Yes, so you both have to buy each other dinner.

And you’re both word nerds.

That’s fantastic.

This is going to work out really well.

Well, it was wonderful to talk to you both.

Savannah, John, thank you so much for telling us about your life.

And do please send us some more of this stuff in email.

This is really interesting.

We will.

Thank you so much.

Take care, Dan.

Absolutely.

And thank you very much for having us on the show.

I really appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye.

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Email words@waywordradio.org.