Get Your Nickels Together for a Jitney Supper

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

When I was very young, I happened across a copy of Reader’s Digest, and I saw something absolutely mystifying.

On two facing pages, there were all these little line drawings, and under all those were these seemingly unrelated capital letters separated by spaces.

The first row of letters read F-U-N-E-X.

Fun X. Fun X. What in the world?

And right above those letters was a line drawing of a little old man sitting in a restaurant talking to the waiter.

But what was the connection?

I puzzled over this for a long time, and then I finally realized that if you sound out those letters individually,

And if you sound like a little old man, then F-U-N-E-X is…

F-U-N-E-X?

The guy wanted breakfast.

Have you any eggs?

Have you any eggs.

And it goes on and on like that.

The guy finally orders M-N-X.

M-N-X.

M-N-X.

Very good.

Yeah, he wasn’t keeping kosher.

And Grant, it was one of the first inklings I ever had that you can really play with language.

I had something like that.

There was an algebra teacher who had a board in the front of the room that was one of those cloth boards with like the ridges on it, like big corduroy.

Yeah, yeah.

And you’d take these white plastic letters and she would spell out, say, the assignments for the week or the schedule of the things that we were going to do or just some happy message for the day or for the season.

And she was sometimes late coming to class.

And so we would occupy ourselves for a few minutes.

And I took it upon myself to rearrange those letters.

Now, I didn’t know what an anagram was.

I mean, I’m like 12 or 13, right?

I had no idea what an anagram was.

And so I had like these three minutes where I, as fast as possible, had to rearrange these letters to spell something else.

And I would try to do it differently every day.

And, of course, she would come in and rearrange it back and never really knew that I was responsible.

But that was the first time I knew what anagramming was.

I had no idea until then.

And so I was a paperboy.

Did you know that?

No, I didn’t know that.

Yeah, and there were puzzles in the Mexico ledger.

This is Mexico, Missouri.

Every week, and I would solve those in the 15 minutes that it took me to fold all my newspapers

And shove them in my canvas bag before I rode off on my bicycle to throw them on the lawns and

Porches. And those puzzles were a similar kind of experience. Like, wait, somebody is out there

Making puzzles for me to solve? You know, it was the cryptograms and the word searches.

Jumble. Did you do jumble?

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. But the thing was like, it was a constrained environment. I only had

Enough time to solve it until I could

Fold the newspapers because I didn’t have a

Paper to keep for myself. So if I didn’t solve it,

I was done. I was never going to know what the answer

Was, right? So it was both

Of those environments. It’s about like rushing

On deadline to solve puzzles and

That was the start of it for me. Just the idea that

You’re challenging yourself against another

Person or against some kind of time constraint

And winning sometimes,

Losing sometimes, but enjoying it the whole time.

Well, hey, was there a word puzzle that sparked

Your interest in language? Let us know.

Call us at 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Anita. I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Oh, welcome to the program. What can we do for you?

I had an interesting experience last week with a co-worker from the United Kingdom,

And he sent an email with an interesting phrase that I had never heard before.

And when I Googled it, there was absolutely no answer on Google.

So I immediately thought I should call A Way with Words.

Immediately.

Immediately.

What was it?

Well, we had been working on something together, and I got some new information.

And when I sent it to him, he replied to myself and several other people and said,

Please hang fire on this.

It’s a moving target.

And so I assumed, basically from reading the rest of his email, that we needed to stop working on the previous information.

But I had never heard hang fire on this as a phrase.

And when we first discussed it, we weren’t sure if it meant to hurry up or if it meant to not work on it.

Because I was thinking of, you know, light a fire under it.

Would be to move faster.

Okay, so nobody in your office.

I was like, to heck with it.

Okay.

Yeah, it’s definitely not an American term.

Americans might know it, but the British use it far more often than we do.

Hang fire.

Do you know anything about guns?

You know, my grandfather used to build guns.

Aha.

Really?

Did he have any of the old-style muskets with the pans that you put the gunpowder in?

He did.

He built muzzleloaders, like Revolutionary War-era muzzleloaders.

You’re kidding.

Now, did you ever see one of these guns not go off when he thought it was going to go off?

No, I never experienced that.

Because that’s what hang fire comes from.

There’s a certain kind of priming.

It’s like a cotton fiber or a twist maybe even that’s got powder embedded in it.

And you light it, and then it sets off the big charge that fires the gun and pushes the bullet and so forth.

But sometimes that priming doesn’t actually do its job.

It just sits there and fuzzles and sputters and sparkles for a little bit and doesn’t actually set off the gun.

So you’ve got this weapon.

Maybe it’s a cannon.

Maybe it’s a musket that’s not going off, and you’re just waiting for it to go off.

And the fire is literally hanging there.

You’re hanging there waiting for the weapon to go off.

You are hanging fire.

That’s what it comes from.

And so by extension, if something is not likely to happen or isn’t going to come to fruition or for some reason is delayed or needs to be delayed, it is or you are hanging fire.

Okay.

So tell me more about your grandpa, though.

A gunsmith?

That was his hobby.

He would build Revolutionary War era guns and Kentucky long rifles.

Oh, yes.

He did a lot of reenactments.

You would do Revolutionary War reenactments and Civil War reenactments.

Oh, how interesting.

Anita, you’ve heard the expression flash in the pan.

I haven’t.

No?

No, if something’s a flash in the pan, it’s like a temporary success or a temporary hit.

Yeah, here to get day gone tomorrow.

But that’s also, Martha brings it up because that’s also from these same kinds of weapons.

The pan, the literal place where you put the gunpowder to set off the weapon.

Yeah, sometimes it would just flash, but it wouldn’t shoot the bullet.

Right.

So we use the expression, flash in the pan.

So maybe I should have asked my uncle what hang fire on this meant.

Oh, it was your uncle?

It wasn’t your grandpa?

No, but it’s his son.

So he spent a lot more time with the making of the guns.

I just would occasionally shoot them.

Oh, really?

So hang fire, there you go, Anita.

It just means for something to be delayed.

Yeah, it kind of all grind to a halt.

Yeah.

So it’s just kind of stuck there.

Yeah, it’s stuck.

Well, I like that expression.

My team is going to be so excited.

We actually wrote it on our board where we meet every day as a thing to learn about.

Excellent.

There you go.

Well, that’s great, Anita.

I’m glad to help.

Give us a call another time when you’ve got something else.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, if you have a question for us, fire away.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Bonnie from San Diego.

Hi, Bonnie. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Bonnie.

Thank you.

Hi. Thank you very much.

Okay, here’s what I’m confused about.

Okay?

I have a flyer in front of me that says,

Space is limited, sign up at the front desk required,

Call up to 24 hours in advance.

So I called before 24 hours in advance,

And she said, oh, no, no, no, no.

That means you have to call after 24 hours in advance.

Well, so my question is up to means, to me, means before that time.

And to her, it meant after that time.

Yeah, that’s strange.

Isn’t that strange?

And then I’m looking at another one that says the gallery is open to the public from 5 p.m.

So it seems to me that it should be from 24 hours in advance.

What do you think?

Or within 24 hours of whatever the thing is.

Was her original language English?

Yes.

It’s on a flyer.

It’s on a flyer from the gym.

Boy.

I wonder if they got a lot of people calling like you did,

Because I don’t think that’s ever really the right use.

Do you?

Yeah, I can’t imagine.

And the reason I asked about that is because prepositions tend to bedevil people who speak English as a second language.

But did this person hold her ground?

Did they say, no, we’re not going to accept reservations before?

That’s right.

She did.

I had to call back.

Oh, my gosh.

Because I would have been confused, too.

To me, if you say call up to 24 hours in advance, it means you can call 48 hours in advance or 72 hours in advance, but you can’t call after 24 hours.

And they meant exactly the opposite.

That’s so weird.

I mean, I get a visual up to 24 hours.

You can see it.

I appreciate what I appreciate.

The only way I could get my mind around that is up to 24 hours means a maximum of 24 hours in advance.

And if she just said that, that might have been that might have worked.

Oh, so maybe she was thinking about it from her deadline out.

Yes, yes.

She was thinking, like, well, I could do 12 hours in advance or do more, which is up to 24 hours in advance.

Yeah, that’s, yeah.

But she might have just said a maximum of 24 hours in advance or no more than 24 hours in advance.

Well, that’s a good lesson for writers in considering your audience.

Think about how they’re looking at it rather than how you’re looking at it.

Right.

Or no more than 24 hours in advance.

Very good.

That would work as well.

That would work too.

Okay.

Well, then I will, you know, one hates to be picky about many things, but I think I’ll be, I think I will point this out to them.

You might do it with flowers.

Or a contribution or something.

Or a contribution or something.

But really, Bonnie, I think this is a perfect example of where somebody’s not being peevish or picky about English.

This is vital.

It’s a true misunderstanding.

It’s a true misunderstanding that has consequences.

Well, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, obviously.

I’d be curious to know how many other people, as Grant said, were calling at the wrong time.

Bonnie, thank you for calling and sharing the misunderstanding.

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Sometimes you just don’t understand, and you’ve got to help the other person not to make that mistake again, right?

Exactly, yes.

You kind of have a responsibility to gently and politely nudge them in the right direction.

Right, and it can be done politely.

Yeah, that’s what I was indicating with the flowers.

It’s not to call and rant.

Bonnie doesn’t sound like the kind of woman who would do that.

No, but I think they should be giving her flowers for calling it to their attention.

Or free membership or free classes or a latte.

Free water wings.

What’s the biggest misunderstanding of language that you’ve heard lately?

Give us a call and tell us about it.

1-877-929-9673.

Or send your befuddlement to words@waywordradio.org.

I saw a new acronym the other day I thought was funny.

Yeah?

Did you know that the POTUS carries a BOTUS?

The POTUS carries a BOTUS?

Okay, the POTUS is the President of the United States.

That’s right.

Does he have a new baby?

No, no.

Baby of the United States?

No, the BOTUS of the President of the United States is his BlackBerry.

President Obama is so obsessed with his BlackBerry that his staff have coined this jokey acronym,

They’re calling it the BOTUS.

Oh, nice.

It might as well be handcuffed to his wrist.

I like that.

Good, right?

BOTUS, yeah.

Very nice.

The BOTUS of the BOTUS.

I wonder what the FLOTUS thinks about that.

The First Lady.

What’s your new language?

What’s something you heard that you want to share?

1-877-929-9673 or send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

How’s your puzzle mojo?

Stay tuned for linguistic hijinks right here on A Way with Words.

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 Poliska.

Hello, Greg.

Hello, Grant.

Welcome to the program, Greg.

Hi, Martha.

What’s up? What do you have for us this week?

Here’s Johnny.

Well, this week we’re doing a quiz that I call name dropping.

But it’s not the kind that you think.

In this quiz, the answer for each set of clues will be a word that has a common first name hidden somewhere in it.

And when that name is removed, the remaining letters spell a new word.

Oh, okay.

So, for example, I might give you a set of clues like the first clue might be a large number of dollars.

And then I would say the second word is a charged particle.

Okay.

And you want to guess at this one?

Billion.

Billion, exactly.

The large number of dollars is a billion.

And the charged particle is the ion.

And the leftover letters is the common name, Bill.

Ooh, name dropping.

Okay.

Exactly.

So you’ll get a two-part clue from me.

And you’re looking basically for a three-part answer, the first word, the second word, and the name that gets dropped from one to make the other.

Okay.

Let’s try it.

So here’s your first one.

The big word is a tie-dyed handkerchief.

The smaller word is a group of musicians.

Okay.

How about bandana and band?

Is that right?

Yep.

Okay.

So Anna is the name.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Bandana.

Oh, very good.

Band, Anna, Band, and Anna.

You got it.

I was starting with trio, but that didn’t go anywhere.

I mean, certainly not in that clue it doesn’t.

Here’s another one.

A certain visitor from space and a shop or store.

Okay.

A certain visitor from space.

So in crossword ease, that means you’re probably going to name him, right?

Well, it’s probably my favorite, right?

My favorite Martian.

Exactly.

Show that was made before some of us were born, I think.

Right.

Probably both of you.

But, and so the word for the shop, the place where you shop is a mart.

So the name is Ian or Ian.

Very good.

Very good.

You know, Martha didn’t quite understand the directions, but as soon as we started the

Puzzle, she’s just like reeling these off.

I’m haptic.

I learn through touch.

She learns by example.

All right.

Here’s another one.

One of the seven deadly sins and the grain that provides more than one-fifth of all calories consumed by humans.

Okay, the name is Ava, and sin is avarice, and then the grain is rice, right?

Rice, very good.

Whoa!

Oh, my avarice, hey.

Very nice, Martha.

You’re kicking ass.

Thank you.

You’re flying through and taking names.

How about adjective for a seasonal laborer and a musical note?

Me.

Yeah, very good.

Me, migrant, and Grant.

And Grant.

Okay, I can’t wait to see what he does with Martha.

Yeah, you know, I tried to find one that worked for Martha.

There just isn’t one.

There are no words that contain Martha in them.

Martha cannot be contained.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Okay, how about L. Ron Hubbard’s religion and facial spasms?

What?

Not to say that one causes the other or anything.

Scientology and tick.

There’s another word for L. Ron Hubbard’s philosophy.

Oh, cybernetic?

Wait a minute.

Cybernetics?

It’s not cybernetics.

Dianetics.

Dianetics.

There we go.

So Diane and Tix, Dianetics.

Diane and Tix.

I haven’t met anybody named Cybern.

All right.

How about an atomic particle and to vote into office?

Electron.

Electron.

Elect.

Elect ion.

Electron and Elect and then Tron.

Oh, Ron.

Ron.

Oh, Ron.

Tron.

Right.

Tron, right?

Yeah.

Tron is a name.

Electron.

Actually, so it breaks into Elect and Ron.

Elect Ron, which was a slogan during a certain presidential campaign.

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Well, maybe it wasn’t, but it could have been.

But it should have been.

Got time for a couple more?

Yeah, just one more.

Let’s try it.

One more.

All right.

How about a musician playing alone and a drunk?

Not Han Solo.

Okay, so Solo, right?

Soloist?

Yeah.

Soloist.

So what are the clues again?

A musician playing alone, soloist, and take a name out of that to get a word for a drunk.

Oh, Lois, out of the middle leaves Sot.

Yes.

Oh, that was tricky.

Okay.

Yeah, I had to have one where the name was stuck in the middle there.

Well, thanks for the quiz, Greg.

It’s my pleasure.

If you’d like to talk about grammar, slang, punctuation, or words and how we use them, now’s the time.

And this is the place, 1-877-929-9673.

That is 1-877-wayword.

Spell it out on your phone.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Holly Hermanson calling in.

Hello, Holly. Where are you calling from?

Charlottesville, Virginia.

Oh, yay, Charlottesville.

Welcome to the program. What can we do you for, Holly?

Here is my question.

I am in my mid-40s now, but as a child growing up,

Whenever my older sister or I experienced an illness,

Say the flu or strep throat or were just sick for some reason,

And as we were coming out of the illness, our mother would give us a special dish of food to rehabilitate.

And now as an adult, I recognize that that dish is milk toast.

But growing up, we were always told that it was time for our graveyard stew.

Oh, my.

And a big fuss was not made about the name.

I did not know there was anything unusual about graveyard stew.

I assumed everybody got that as they were coming out of an illness.

And as an adult, I realized I’ve never, ever heard anybody else use that term.

And I’m just curious whether it was something maybe my family made up a few generations ago,

The name, or whether indeed it’s the name of a way of preparing milk toast.

Well, now, Holly, tell us how the toast was prepared.

Well, let’s see.

You start off with a piece of toast, and you pour some hot milk or warmed milk over it.

For some flavor, there was usually butter, salt, and pepper.

And that was given to us to kind of nurse us back to being able to take some fluid

Or make sure that we could keep it down and get us some nourishment.

And then the next step was to place a poached egg on the center of the toast in the hot milk with the butter.

And I still to this day remember how wonderful it always tasted, that first bite of semi-solid, warm, buttery, salty food.

And that’s it. Have you ever heard of it?

You know, I’ve got three or four different recipes I can find right here,

And all of them are pretty close to yours.

Not everyone adds the egg, though, at the end.

I’ll be darned.

And some people use saltine crackers instead of toast.

But, yeah, graveyard stew is a thing, as they say.

You’ll find it even in a few specialty dictionaries.

And in literature going back to the late 1800s, people talk about graveyard stew

In exactly the way that you used it and learned it,

Which is it’s something that you eat when you’re sick.

Probably because it’s easy to take down.

A soft toast and a poached egg are pretty easy to swallow, right?

Right.

So I think the idea was that it’s something that’s served to people whose next stop is the graveyard.

Exactly.

I had never thought of that.

As I was pondering why it might be named that,

The only thing my little kid’s brain could come up with is that the round egg on the square toast

Looks a little bit like a tombstone.

Oh, that’s not a bad idea.

That’s what my brain imaged.

It never occurred to me that it might be drawing us back from the very edge of the grave.

Yeah, I think that’s it.

You know, it’s sort of a little morbid humor.

I mean, it’s interesting that you said that your mother gave it to you when you were on the mend.

So it’s sort of this ironic use of it, right?

Yeah.

A few sources recommended as a hangover remedy.

Not a bad idea.

I have a bottle of champagne in my refrigerator.

I could test it tomorrow morning.

Do let us know how that works out.

Thank you both so much for your time.

I feel delighted to finally solve the mystery for myself.

Thank you both.

Bye, Martha.

Bye, Grant.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bring us your linguistic heirlooms, the things you’re wondering about.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can email us about it.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Don Jackson.

Don, where are you calling from?

I’m from Vaughan, Montana, but I’m in the shadow of the Anaconda Smelter Smokestack right now.

The shadow of the Anaconda Smelter Smokestack.

That sounds amazing.

What are you looking at?

It sounds like a big shadow.

We’re setting up a, well, it used to be one of the biggest smoke sticks in the world.

But we’re setting up some vegetation plots to see how some plants will grow in the heavy metals that are contaminating the area around the smelter.

That is hardcore work.

Wow.

So it’s more than just planting greenery.

It’s trying to recover the land, right?

It is.

It’s land rehabilitation, and we call it reclamation research.

Very interesting stuff.

So what’s your question today, Don?

Well, when I first heard that Justice Stevens was retiring, I thought, oh, no, here we go again.

The press and Congress is going to start using that ridiculous phrase that really bugs me.

-oh.

And what would that be?

An up or down vote.

I just think it’s totally ridiculous.

Votes are never up or down, unless maybe you’re mountain climbing or you’re on a ladder and you need to decide which way to go.

It seems like it’s a pretty recent phrase.

Maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but I’ve been around for over five decades.

And it seems like maybe just in the last seven or eight years we started hearing this term.

And I’m wondering where it came from and if there’s any chance of getting it out of the language.

Those are all reasonable questions.

And I think you’ve got a pretty good shot at leaving this call happy.

I think that’s true.

I think that’s true.

So it really bugs you, this up and down vote business.

Yeah, it doesn’t really mean anything.

Are they saying, are we going to send this person up to heaven or down to hell?

Wow.

Well, you know, the funny thing…

I mean, I know the Supreme Court vote is to the higher court or the highest court in the land,

But they’re talking about other votes oftentimes, too.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, the thing about it is that a lot of times when a legislative body is voting on, say, a bill,

They’re not voting on the bill itself or the issue itself.

They’re voting on what to do about it, whether they should table the motion or send it back to committee or amend it or change the wording, something like that.

But an up or down vote is just a yay or nay vote, a yes or no vote on that very issue.

None of the procedural stuff to either side of it.

Up or down and up and down have been synonyms for direct and sort of unceremonious for at least a century.

Right.

So you stand up, cast your vote, and sit down.

Is that what it is?

Well, I don’t know that you necessarily – I’m picturing sort of like Congress looking like whack-a-mole, you know?

Stand up, sit down.

But this is jargon.

This is part of their business.

This is why they’ve got that term.

And then the journalists pick it up, and then it sounds freaky to us because we’re outsiders.

Right.

Right.

We think vote yes or no.

Right.

Right.

But you can vote yes or no on various aspects of an issue of a bill, about what to do about it or whether we should all break for lunch or something.

But the yes or no, the up or down is like a yes or no on the very bill itself or the very issue itself or the very person who’s been nominated.

Right, because their voting rules are so strange that they may have a vote on whether or not to vote on a vote.

Well, it depends on what the meaning of vote is.

Yeah, yeah.

Don, does that make sense?

That maybe it does have a more specific meaning inside their jargony world.

Yeah, I understand it’s usually a for or against vote,

But it just seems like a total misnomer to me.

Yeah, I know.

When they were talking about the health care bill,

They kept talking about an up or down vote on that, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Thank you for calling and sharing a little bit of your world with us.

Oh, you bet.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

Okay, bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye, Don.

Bye-bye.

Well, you know, we’re open to peeving.

If you’ve got something to peeve about, 1-877-929-9673.

Is language going to hell in a handbasket?

Oh, leave it to peever.

Let us know.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, you know about the trend of young people shortening words?

Sure.

So that totally becomes totes?

Totes, yep.

Well, what happens when they short it, it becomes so entrenched that sometimes they make it longer.

Oh, really?

I heard this the other day.

So you say, that’s a really great shirt.

And I say totes, right?

Right.

And then if you agree with me, you’re going to respond and say totes my goats.

Totes my goats.

You like that?

I love it.

So that means very much totally, very totally, completely totally.

Can you say that?

Totes my goats.

I love it.

I love it.

It’s not really native, though, to us, is it?

It’s about 20 years younger.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I wouldn’t know how to spell it either.

New slang, new words.

You’ve got something to share?

1-877-929-9673 or send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jamie and I’m calling from Carlsbad, California.

Well, hello, Jamie. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Jamie.

Hi, how are you doing?

Super duper. What can we do for you?

My husband and I were having a lively political debate a couple nights ago.

And we were talking, and I said, that is a bald-faced lie.

And he said, I think you mean bold-faced lie.

So needless to say, the political conversation stopped,

And we kind of got into a little discussion about whether it was bald-faced lie or bold-faced lie.

Nice move by your husband there.

Sounds vigorous, though. What kind of fighting was this? Was it physical?

You know, you’re calling each other liars.

Not us, but maybe a certain politician.

OK, so you’re arguing for bald faced.

Yes. B-A-L-D, like bald head.

And he was arguing for bold, like as in bold type or bold action.

So. Oh, OK. OK.

And then I was thinking, well, maybe I was just saying bold.

It was like a southern drawl or something.

So I’m not sure.

You know, when I hear boldface lie, I always think of typeface, you know?

Yeah.

Like maybe a boldface lie is pretty bad, but then a boldface italicized, underlined,

Times New Roman lie with 72-point fonts.

Exactly.

And I think that’s what my husband was thinking.

But I was pretty sure it was baldface, but who knows?

And that is the more common version of it, although you do hear bold-faced a whole lot.

There are some sticklers who will say it is bald-faced instead of bold-faced.

But you know what?

The fact is that they both go back to an earlier version that’s neither one of those, which is bare-faced.

Huh.

Yeah, which hundreds of years ago meant sort of open and unconcealed and shameless, that kind of thing.

Interesting.

And then especially in this country, it ended up being bald-faced, but a lot of people say bald-faced.

Yeah, because it’s that bald meaning, which means undisguised or uncovered, right?

So you haven’t even made any effort whatsoever to hide your lie.

You’re going to tell the lie without even trying.

Right.

Okay.

So which one of us was right?

You are slightly more correct in a very formal sense,

But your husband is also correct because he joins the masses in using bold-faced.

Okay.

So we’re both right.

I like that.

Yeah, you’re more right than he is.

But you can both jointly condemn the politician you’re talking about.

Okay.

Yeah, you both agreed about that.

We did.

We did.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, thanks so much.

Oh, sure.

Our pleasure.

All right.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Jamie.

Bye-bye.

I’ve got to tell you, the phone lines are open.

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

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, I saw that you linked to something on our Facebook page the other day.

You did?

Yeah, it was that story by Randall Strauss in the New York Times about Twitter.

And he’s talking about Twitter, this short messaging service, in terms of history and how things are being recorded there that we’ll want to know later.

Oh, right, right. Data mining.

Right, data mining. Well, the Library of Congress will keep a big file of it.

I’m sure that archive.org will keep a file of it.

Other people will keep it and mine it and do stuff with it.

And what’s interesting to me is I think it’s nice to see somebody in a big place like the New York Times get it.

Because as far as you and I are concerned, Twitter is an incredibly useful tool.

It’s not just about communicating with friends, right?

It’s not just about tuna sandwiches for lunch.

No, no, no.

I mean, obviously, it depends on who you’re following.

But if you’re following your friends, you’re getting personal messages.

If you’re following famous people, you get a little bit of marketing stuff.

But also, they’ll tell you some of their inside life.

But the thing is, there’s information stored in these apparently meaningless messages, right?

In bulk, Twitter is incredibly useful.

It’s a place where you can observe the brightest minds of our day having conversations with each other, right?

Yeah, 140-character conversations, right?

You know, and often they’re linking to their own blog or to news stories that they’ve written or places that they’ve appeared in radio and television where they all explain their 140-character ideas at length, right?

Let’s just turn it around.

Imagine that Isaac Newton was alive today, right?

And you could observe him working out the principles of physics in real time.

That’s kind of what we’re seeing here.

Oh, wow. Tweeting about all that.

Yeah, imagine that.

That’s really cool.

And it doesn’t diminish the discoveries that he made, right?

Right. You’re watching him in real time, though.

You’re watching him figure it out, make mistakes.

It’s everybody. We’re watching media change before our eyes.

People like Jay Rosen at NYU, he’s constantly tweeting about new forms of media, right?

And I think that Randall Strauss in New York Times kind of got it in terms of linguistics as well.

There’s a fellow by the name of David Bammen at Tufts University who’s created a new website called Lexicalist, L-E-X-I-C-A-L-I-S-T.com, Lexicalist.com.

And what he’s done is use the information stored in Twitter, such as the location, like when Martha’s in San Diego, so everything she sends out is kind of located in San Diego,

To show that there are regional differences in things like the pronunciation or the spelling of the word bro, short for brother.

In parts of the country, they’re more likely to say bra.

And he can show on a map that Twitter has this evidence.

He can do linguistic research.

Oh, wow.

Based on the body of Twitter.

Twitter, that kind of conversation is easy to pass off as irrelevant.

But in the real data, there’s evidence that people talk a different way in other parts of the country.

They use different words, different pronunciations.

They say different things about different subjects.

And it’s a great example of why I would never want this to go away.

How interesting.

So instead of linguists walking around with tape recorders and microphones or digital recorders.

There’s still always be room for that.

Always a need for that.

Yeah, but they actually have this whole other thing to analyze.

That’s right.

That’s what you’re saying.

That’s right.

A new database that’s kind of made on the fly by people who are unselfconsciously recording in text form their character.

Their dialect, their ideolect, their language, they’re showing language change.

And in 10 or 20 years, when we look at this over time, we’ll find out even more about how language changes.

That’s very cool.

Well, if you want to let us know what you’re thinking, you can always communicate with us the old-fashioned way,

1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Keith from Pendleton, Indiana.

Hi, Keith. Welcome to the program.

Hello.

I’m excited to be on.

Well, we’re excited to talk to you. What’s on your mind?

Well, I live in an area that’s kind of at the edge of the city, so it bumps up against a rural area.

And I came across a term recently that I had never heard, and the first people I thought to ask about it was you.

Oh, yes, please, right away.

Okay.

The term is Jitney dinner or Jitney supper, and it’s spelled J-I-T-N-E-Y.

Mm—

Mm—

And I can’t find anything that connects it to, this is a rural area,

And there’s a lot of people who have verb nouns and things like that here,

But I couldn’t find any history on this word.

Where did you find it?

Where did you run across it?

My wife used it in a conversation.

She just said something, well, that sounds like a Jitney supper, and I asked her what that is,

And she said, well, I don’t know, it just sounds like it is.

Yeah, sometimes you just know what a word means, right?

And she did relate it back a little bit.

She said that her family had used it pretty consistently,

And it regularly had to do with suppers at the church or dinners at the church.

So I don’t know whether Jitney has to do with an ecumenical or church thing or what.

And have you ever been to a church supper or a Jitney supper or something like that?

No, I’ve never been to one.

I don’t know that the term floats around much today.

It seems like it was more used in the last generation.

And when I say that, I’m about 50.

So those people who are 60, 70, and 80, they use it more than my generation would.

Okay.

Oh, well, you’re really missing out if you’ve never been to a church supper.

I mean.

Well, I’ve been to church suppers, not jitney ones.

Where they serve jitney, right?

Or whatever this is.

I would like some chutney on my jitney, please.

A little chutney on the jitney, yes.

Okay.

Well, I’m just saying that because you’re evoking for me these fabulous memories of dinners on the ground.

You know, because all the church ladies, they want to do their best, right, to show off for everybody else.

So, you know, they bring potato salad to die for.

I will say that there’s nothing like church pies.

So I’m with you on that part.

Church pies.

You mean that’s a pie that you bring to a church supper?

Yes, all of those pies that the ladies bake.

I mean, they’re unreal.

Right, right.

And they’re just laid out there.

It’s the bounty as well.

Just the bounty, like a couple dozen pies sitting there.

Cornucopia.

Right.

And everybody’s trying to outdo each other and salads and potatoes au gratin and where I’m from, garlic grits.

Garlic grits.

Garlic cheese grits.

Do y’all have that?

No way.

Yes, way.

Chicken and noodles here.

Lots of chicken and noodles.

Chicken and, oh, right.

Beef and noodles.

Yeah, too.

But a church supper isn’t automatically a jitney supper, right?

No, not automatically.

Although there’s some overlap, right?

If we draw the Venn diagram, there’s going to be some.

So break this down for me.

Jitney is?

Well, Jitney originally was a five-cent piece, a nickel.

Aha.

Right?

Right.

And we don’t know where that word comes from, Jitney.

But it got applied to a lot of different things.

People referred to buses that took a five-cent piece for travel.

Well, they still have Jitney buses in New York.

You take the Jitney from Manhattan to the Hamptons if you’re going to spend the weekend out there.

Oh, is that right?

They still call it that.

And some of the company name is the Jitney bus line or whatever, the Jitney coach.

Right, but it costs more than a nickel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the name has been transferred, so now it means the bus rather than the fair.

Right.

And so a Jitney Supper is a kind of fundraising dinner where you pay a Jitney or a nickel for every scoop of whatever those great things are that you get or every slice of pie.

Only it’s probably more than a nickel these days.

But it’s a way to raise money.

So a nickel at a time for every scoop that you get.

And then the church makes their money or whatever the organization is.

And that’s in that way, if you’re a glutton, you pay more.

All those pies we’re talking about, right?

So a whole pie would cost you a couple bucks at least.

That’s right.

That’s right.

It’s like a diamond dip dinner.

That’s another version of it.

Diamond dip.

Yeah.

I love that.

That makes so much sense.

It really does because I knew it had to do with a monetary term, but to apply it to a fundraiser at a church because churches are always needing to raise funds.

Oh, sure.

So that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s a good idea, isn’t it?

Well, we may go back to it.

Yeah, these days your jitney might need to be defined as five bucks, though, instead of five cents.

And I’m a pastor, so I’m thinking now that I know what it is, I’m going back to this term.

Oh, well, very good, Keith.

That’s just the trick.

There you go.

You’re going to have that new education building built in no time.

No time at all with these jitney suppers.

Well, save a pew for us, will you?

We sure will.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for calling.

Okay.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Doing well. Who’s this?

My name is Mike Kadeen. I’m calling from Seattle.

All right. Well, what’s going on?

Well, it was a couple of weeks ago. I was listening to the show, and you got a caller from Juneau, Alaska.

And I had grown up in Alaska, and I was curious about something that Grant had said.

She had said that the caller had used Alaskan vowels,

And I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

Because when I was growing up in Alaska, most everybody came from somewhere else.

I was one of the few people who was actually born there other than natives.

And everybody just seemed to have their own accents from somewhere else,

And I didn’t really think there was a specifically Alaskan accent.

And I was wondering, is there one now?

And it’s been a few decades since I’ve lived there.

Or do people kind of get the same accents their parents have,

Or do they pick it up from the people that they’re around?

All good questions. Great questions. Yeah. Fantastic.

Of course, when Sarah Palin popped onto the political scene,

This was something that was widely discussed because she’s got such a,

I don’t know, a distinctive sound to her.

Which is just a great linguistic exercise to listen to her speech

And try to figure out where she’s from and the characteristic of her language.

Yeah, and she doesn’t much sound like you.

No, not at all.

And she doesn’t sound like the Alaskans I grew up with.

Of course, it’s a different part of the state.

Right.

But you’re both sort of in the southeast, right?

Well, she grew up in Wasilla, which is north of Anchorage.

Okay.

And I grew up, in fact, same age.

I grew up in Sitka, which is southeast.

Okay.

And her accent sounds more like an upper Midwest to me.

In Alaska.

Well, the Upper Midwest

Shares some features with Canadian English.

It’s called Canadian Raising. You might have heard us

Talk about this on another show, where the

Vowels are modified a little bit. I won’t go into

The linguistic explanation, but they do

Some different things with their vowels that give it

That distinctive…

You almost want to parody it. I mean, actually,

Sarah Palin is pretty easy to parody because

Her vowels are so distinctive.

But Alaska shares a lot of

Language features with Canada,

Particularly Western Canada. Even though

A lot of people in Alaska for somewhere else.

I’ll often find people who claim,

They swear up and down that Alaskans

Sound like Texans because so many Texans

Are in Alaska because of oil

And the like.

You don’t find it when you do the linguistic

Research. In short, Alaska

Has a lot of different language pockets.

Generally,

People do things like modify

Their vowels to be a little more raised,

As they’re called. They drop the G

Off of ing words.

She does this, particularly when she’s not in a very formal interview,

When she’s just giving a regular speech or having a regular conversation.

Sarah Palin does it.

And a few other features.

And to answer another one of your questions, yes, your parents influence how you speak,

But your peer groups influence you even more.

And if you’re from the outside, your speech is going to change to match the locals.

Right.

Yeah.

Huh.

Well, I hope that’s helped some, Michael.

Do you feel like you got an answer?

Oh, yeah.

It’s very informative.

Okay, super.

Thank you so much for calling.

Thanks, I love your show.

I listen to it all the time.

Thanks.

That’s nice to hear.

Thanks, Mike.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

All right.

We’ll talk to you later.

Bye.

Canadian raising.

We’ll point those links out again.

I’ll put them on the website already.

But it’s just really interesting that you’ve been able to track the way those vowels change.

And for a lot of people in the United States, they only hear Canadian raising in the Great Lakes region

Or in the upper western Midwest, you know, around Fargo and the like.

Right.

And so they think of it as belonging to that area, but it’s actually the whole map of those sounds pushes up into Canada.

Interesting.

Or drops down, I should say, from Canada.

From Canada, yeah.

I remember reading, too, that there were a whole lot of Minnesotans that went to Alaska with a work relief program during the Depression.

Oh, very interesting.

I wonder if that has some influence there.

Yeah, I think it would.

Well, we need to write an NEH grant and get some funds to study this.

Or else we need to take a lot more calls from Alaska, which we’d love to do.

If you’d like to call us and talk about Alaskan English or English from anywhere else,

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Harold Miller calling from Chicago.

Hello, Harold.

Hi, Harold. How are things in Chicago?

Are you in O’Hare? You sound like you have some folks behind you there.

No, no, you caught me. I’m outside, actually, but I’ve got a little quiet corner, hopefully.

Oh, okay, great. Well, what’s up?

Well, my mom had a lot of interesting phrases when we were kids.

And I’ve got three sisters, and we all grew up in a military family.

And my mom and dad are from the same part of the state of Arkansas, which is sort of southwest around Nashville, Arkansas.

My mom had all these sort of funny phrases that she would say when we were kids, and we didn’t think anything about it at the time.

But when we all got older and we took these phrases out into our, you know, adult lives, people started looking at us and going, what was that again?

And we realized, you know, at that point that we actually were saying things that people had not heard before,

And it wasn’t common in everybody’s family.

So among the several things my mom said that we thought were odd in retrospect,

One of the most funny was that she had this expression that she would say,

You tend to your own rat killing, which she would say if, you know,

We were asking questions that she didn’t want to answer or if we were bothering somebody or whatever it might be.

It was just sort of a catch-all phrase for mind your own business or behave or whatever.

But, you know, later on, we said, how in the world did that get put together like that?

What does that mean exactly?

To tend to your own rat killing.

Tend to your own rat killing.

You tend to your own rat killing.

How would she say that?

Is this something she yells?

Yeah, it would totally be something she’d yell.

It would be like if you were in another room, she was in another room,

And she heard me, you know, bothering my sisters when they were playing,

She might yell out, hey, you tend to your own rat killing in there.

Or if we wanted to know something she didn’t want to tell us and we badgered her enough,

She’d go, you just tend to your own rat killing.

Oh, my gosh.

You never talked about that expression with her then?

When we were kids, it was so common we never even thought about it.

In fact, I mean, to tell you the truth, now we use it, I use it,

And all my sisters use it in our families, and my kids use it now,

Because once I realized how novel it was and it was funny, then it was sort of like a mockery thing.

But now, to be honest with you, we just use it.

And sometimes we slip up and say it around other people.

And we still get that.

What was that again now?

Ten to your own rat killing.

I love it.

And, you know, you’re part of a larger body of people who’ve used that phrase at least since 1878.

78?

I thought maybe it went back to the plague or something.

But I’m all ears.

Well, it could be.

But in the forms that I’ve been able to find it, the most common form is to go on with your rat killing.

And I find it in Harper’s Magazine from the 1870s.

And it’s used almost the same way, but it’s more about we’re talking, I say something, you say something,

And then I say, well, go on with your rat killing, which means you finish what you’re saying.

Oh, really?

Or you just continue, yeah.

So it’s more about go about your own business.

So it’s kind of related to the way your mother used it, I think.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

I could totally see how that would get, that would transmute into something a little bit more critical.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it’s incredibly evocative, isn’t it?

Oh, yeah.

But who are these people that are killing the rats?

Yeah, well, that’s what we wonder.

It’s like, how did this expression get started?

See, I have a theory about it.

If you care to hear it, I’ll show you what I did.

Let’s have it.

Yeah, let’s have it.

Okay.

After I thought about it, I thought, you know, there must have been a time when one person would complain to their neighbor about their rat problem, perhaps.

So maybe there was a common rat problem.

And if you didn’t keep up with your rat problem, it affected your neighbors, like cockroaches in an apartment building.

Yeah, or moans.

So I thought maybe, you know, if one person would complain to another person about their rat,

And this was common enough that it became common to reply,

You tend to your own rat kill and I’ll tend to mine.

That’s my theory about it.

I like that.

It’s possible.

I don’t find any evidence for that in the historical record.

But I should say that most of the uses of this expression are all used in almost exactly the same way with very little context.

It’s clear from the fiction and the nonfiction that I find that it’s a thing to say,

That they’re quite aware that what is coming out of their mouth is a bit funny or a bit ironic.

People almost always use it in a knowing way.

It’s so delightful to hear it come from your family.

It’s something that you used in the house and from somebody who clearly meant it.

She didn’t want you to actually kill rats.

She wanted you to stop bothering your sisters.

Hey, thanks, Harold.

Harold, thanks for calling today.

Thanks so much. Enjoyed it. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Well, what were the weird expressions you heard growing up?

Call us, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

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