Keep Your Tail Over the Dashboard

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

And I’m Grant Barrett. Martha, I was reading the newspaper.

Yeah?

From 1931.

Catching up, are you?

Catching up. Catching up on my underworld lingo.

Yeah, but ways to go.

Well, there was a great article in November of 1931 written by a fellow by the name of Ben Kendall.

And he was a police reporter who got a little entangled with the wrong side of the law.

So I think this slang is good.

He had started out in Chicago, moved to L.A.

And along the way, he picked up a lot of curious language, and he’s put it in print here.

And what’s really interesting, there’s two things about this list.

One, a lot of this stuff is still with us.

And two, in a lot of cases, he’s one of the earliest people to put this language in print.

So we have, for example, he talks about McGimper.

Do you know what a McGimper is?

McGimper.

Was that an early version of MacGyver?

I don’t know.

Somebody who invented things?

It’s a pimp or a procurer.

He uses it in this sentence.

She would go straight if it wasn’t for that McGimper who knocks her for a loop when she don’t bring in the Giedas.

And we’ll talk a little bit about Giedas later in the program.

Okay.

And how about this one?

Well, you know what a chiseler is, right?

Somebody who chisels off money, right?

Yeah.

A cheat? Yep. Ben Kendall defines

It as a petty grafter or a

Borrower or a price cutter. This guy’s

Always looking for a deal, right? Or a little

Extra money for his pocket. It’s interesting

That he felt compelled to put that in a newspaper

Article. Right. It shows you that

It wasn’t mainstream at the time, right? Right.

For example, glom,

To steal or to take, is in his glossary. That

Means at the time, he would think that

Most people wouldn’t know the term.

He really is kind of putting this stuff in print

At a time when, looking back

On it, it made a difference. Well, this list sounds

Like a lot of fun, we should link to it on our

Website. Of course, yeah. We’ll put some good

Samples of it. Okay, sounds great.

And if you want to talk about underworld slang

Or overused jargon, or if you have a

Question about grammar or punctuation or

Old family sayings or the origin of a word,

Call us. 1-877—

929-9673

Or send an email to words at

Waywordradio.org

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Lauren.

I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Well, hello, Lauren. Welcome to the program.

Hiya.

Hi. Thanks. I’m great.

So I have a question about a word that my friend and I were having an argument about.

Okay.

And the word is vomitorium.

Vomitorium.

Yes. And I’m a theater person, and I remember in high school learning that it had to do with the space between audiences or something like that.

And he seemed to believe that it had to do something with Greeks or Romans purging themselves after a feast.

So I was just wondering if there was any truth to that.

Aha.

You mean a vomitorium is a place where people en masse would barf?

That’s what he thinks.

I don’t think so because I distinctly remember learning this word because it’s so, you know, out there.

Yeah, it’s good.

Ear-catching, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. Well, yeah, Lauren, I mean, as much as I am delighting in the

Mental image of an ancient Roman real estate agent walking a family through a new villa or

Or McVilla and saying, here’s the banquet room and over here we have your deluxe vomitorium where you

And the children can go hurl between courses.

No, you’re going to have to tell your friend that.

We’re sorry, but the Romans did not have a special place where you could go and throw up.

Not that they didn’t.

They did have a practice of, you know, they figured the more the merrier,

And so they would make room for more grapes and other things.

So they would vomit on a regular basis.

Many of them would at these big parties, but they didn’t have a special room for it.

I mean, gross.

Imagine designating a special room in your house for that.

Yeah, that would not be that great.

What would you do?

Just step out back to the loo then?

Go to the street in the gutter?

Yeah.

You know, just excuse yourself.

Say, I have to go see a man about a chariot or something, and then just go outside, I guess.

But no, you’re absolutely right, Lauren.

And you’ve had experience with theater?

Yes.

Would you say?

-huh.

I happen to know people who work with building stadiums, and they use this word as well.

In modern stadiums, right?

Yeah, modern. I’m not that old, Grant.

But yeah, they used the vomitoriums in the original Roman Colosseum, which could empty itself of people very, very quickly.

I think, what, 50,000 people in 15 minutes or something.

They could get them out because they had a lot of those vomitoriums, or in Latin, vomitoria.

And the idea was this sort of metaphor of architectural purging, I guess you would say.

But as I was saying, I know people these days who work with building stadiums, and they’ll say, where are we going to put the VOMs or the Vomitories?

But it’s about an outflow, just like vomiting from the mouth is about an outflow, right?

No, but that’s the etymological relationship there between vomit out of the mouth and a Vomitorium as a place of mass exit.

Yes, exactly.

Well, it’s a great question.

Thanks for calling, Lauren.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Bye-bye.

It could be worse.

They could call it something worse than a vomitory, but let’s not go there.

Let’s go to your phone and call us, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

My name is John Cuzzoli.

I’m a ceramic artist from Stanford, Connecticut.

Hi, John.

Welcome.

Hi, John.

So, I use the word bisque nearly every day, and the more I think about it, the more the word bothers me.

The word bisque?

Bisque.

And you’re not ordering soup every day?

No.

Okay. Tell us why this word bothers you.

The word means so many different things. It has many definitions, and I can’t quite figure out how it came to mean an unglazed piece of ceramic work.

-huh.

Yeah, it’s kind of crazy-making, isn’t it?

How many different definitions it has.

Yeah, it’s got a ton of them.

Let’s just separate two of the major paths right now

And just say that the bisque shellfish soup is unrelated etymologically to all the other bisques, okay?

Okay.

When I was in the Louvre, Europe, I guess they don’t call it bisque.

They call it biscuit.

Mm—

But still, either word just doesn’t make any sense to me.

No, no, no, you’re on top of it.

You mean the pottery?

The pottery, right?

The pottery.

Well, OK, bisque in pottery making is also sometimes still called a biscuit in English, not just in French.

Do you use that? Do you know anybody that uses that?

No, everybody, all the ceramic people I know, we all call it bisque.

Well, the bisque is a shorter form of biscuit, and it comes ultimately from Old French biscuit, B-E-S-Q-U-I-T, or biscuit, which means twice cooked.

So it’s about the process, you know, because you do, first you harden it and then you glaze it, right?

So you cook it twice.

Usually bisque is that it’s only done once.

Oh, really? Is that true?

Yep.

The first firing, when you load it up, you put the raw clay into the kiln,

And the first firing that’s done to a lower temperature is the bisque firing.

Okay.

Right, okay.

But the thing is, there’s still a history there, a connection between the cooking.

So maybe the count is off historically.

I mean, this word here is hundreds of years old, so it’s had plenty of time to change.

But it’s still about the cooking, right?

It’s about the cooking of something.

And then there’s the natural borrowing from French into English,

And then the corruption of the word from biscuit into bisque.

And then we also have the other offshoot, which is the color bisque,

Which is a pink to yellowish-brown color, which comes much later, much, much later.

And it refers to the unfinished, unglazed look of some ceramics or pottery.

So, John, so the bisque is the pottery that actually comes out of the kiln, right?

And it’s unglazed and all that.

And then you glaze it, and then do you put it back in and cook it some more?

Exactly, to a hotter temperature.

Okay.

So maybe it’s ultimately cooked twice.

Sort of like biscotti.

That’s what I was just going to say.

It will make me hungry now when I work with it.

Yeah, they’re definitely all connected.

The biscotti and bisque and biscuit are all connected etymologically.

It’s a nice little tangle, a pleasant tangle, I think, of really interesting tactile things like pottery

And really interesting yummy things like food.

Yeah, and Zweibach.

Did you ever eat those little things when you were a kid?

That’s twice cooked as well?

Yeah, in German, I think.

How about that?

How about them apples?

How about them apples?

Well, thank you very much.

Thanks for calling, John.

We’re glad to take your call.

Excellent.

Thanks so much, John.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Language is interesting.

There should be a show where they talk about these connections.

There should be, and they could have a whole line of bobble-headed serenity.

And then they could have the phone number, 1-877-929-9673,

And then possibly people could call to ask them language questions.

Yes, or they could email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Rachel calling from Texas.

Well, hello, Rachel. Where in Texas are you? It’s a big place.

Oh, in Dallas, Dallas area.

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

Well, I had a question that came to me about a week ago.

I wanted to know what is the origin of the word beret,

And how does it relate to the word tam,

Which also describes the same style of hat,

Because I wore one to work, and I had people call it both things,

And I work in retail, and I was surprised by that, and I didn’t really know what the origin of those words were or if they were related.

Well, yeah, we can help you with that.

Beret is, frankly, kind of a boring word.

It just goes back to a Latin word that means a hooded coat and came to us through French, ultimately.

I think the Latin word was birus, meaning a large hooded cloak.

But the cool word here, Rachel, is tam.

The cool thing about tam is that it goes all the way back to Scotland, and it was popularized by a poem by the poet Robert Burns.

You know the guy who wrote Auld Lang Syne?

Mm—

Mm—

He wrote this poem in 1791 called Tam O’Shanter, and that’s the Scottish version of what would be Tom O’Shanter, this guy Tom from Shanter.

It’s kind of this wild, hallucinatory story about this guy, Tam, who goes to work and then on the way home, well, the guy stops at a pub.

And you know what happens at a pub.

He just drinks and drinks and drinks and drinks with his buddies and his wife is tapping her foot waiting at home.

And then he leaves in the dead of night and he comes across this scene when he’s coming home that is just this almost a horror story.

All these ghoulish creatures and the devil and witches, they’re all dancing around and having this big party.

And to make a long story short, they start chasing him ultimately, and he barely escapes with his life.

And this story is like no other poem I’ve ever read.

It’s kind of horror story and kind of funny and kind of moralistic.

But anyway, in the poem, it talks about Tam O’Shanter riding his trusty horse while holding fast to his good blue bonnet.

And this blue bonnet that he was wearing, when it was portrayed in illustrations, it looked just like a tam, you know, that kind of flat hat.

And that’s what popularized the name Tam for that kind of hat.

And so you think this Burns poem has something to do with the popularity of Tam to refer to that hat?

Yes, yes.

Tam O’Shanter is the longer version of that type of hat.

Wow.

I’m looking forward to reading that poem.

We’ll definitely link to that online.

It’s way cool.

Well, thank you guys so much.

Okay.

You’re welcome.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

And now let the word rumpus start.

It’s a quiz next on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And joining us once again from New York City is John Chaneski.

Come on down.

Hey, it’s me again.

Hi, guys.

Game Master, Game Man, number one quiz boy.

What do you got over there, kitty cat?

All sorts of stuff.

You know, there are not many people I would leave my Facebook playing viral games to hang out with.

But you guys are the ones I am here to play with you guys.

Bejeweled Blitz.

Yeah, Bejeweled Blitz has been taking a lot of my time.

But I’m here, so let’s get through this so I can get home and play.

This is another game.

It’s a puzzle that I call Three and a Match.

It’s a puzzle that’s kind of familiar to you guys, but with a little twist.

I’ll give you three words that are each part of a two-word phrase or title.

Now, we’ve done this before.

For example, if I said boxing, finger, key, what word goes with those?

Oh, like ring.

Ring, right.

Boxing ring, ring finger, key ring.

Oh.

Now, the difference today is that the three words will be matched with three different words,

All of which fit a certain category.

For example, if I say coat, court, and ear, can you guess what kind of words make phrases with those?

Coat, court, and ear.

Yeah.

I’ll give you the category.

Vegetables.

A two-word phrase that has a – like cauliflower?

That’s it.

Cauliflower ear.

Now you’ve got two others to go.

Quart and coat.

A vegetable.

Squash.

Right.

Squash, quart.

Oh, okay.

And how about the coat?

Coat is P.

Yeah.

Oh, excellent, Grant.

P coat, right.

I almost stepped on you there, but you got it.

P coat, squash, quart, cauliflower ear.

Okay.

Let’s try some more.

Just guess the category if you can, but if you need it, I’ll give you the category,

And then you can give me the words, okay?

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Here we go.

Muffin, cheese, fries.

Mmm, lunch.

Well, yeah, that’s…

Muffin, cheese, fries.

So French fries is kind of easy, probably, right?

Yeah, French fries.

Okay.

And you can have French cheese, but it’s not going to be the same word, right?

Right, it’s not the same word.

And French suggests what category?

So English muffin, French fries, and Swiss cheese.

Very good.

English muffin, Swiss cheese, French fries.

The category, nationalities.

There you go.

Nationalities.

Okay.

Good.

That’s nice and easy.

Okay.

Here’s the second one.

Electric, casting, periodic.

So periodic is kind of a giveaway there, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Periodic table.

Table.

-huh.

Casting couch.

Right.

And electric chair.

Very good.

-huh.

Furniture.

The category is furniture.

Furniture.

Yes.

Good.

Now, one of these, I’ve got to warn you, is a proper name, as if you couldn’t guess.

Fisted, barrel, Kevin.

Fisted, barrel, Kevin.

How about pork barrel and Kevin Bacon?

Very good.

And?

Ham-fisted.

Ham-fisted.

Good.

Pig products.

Good going.

Thank you, Kevin Bacon, wherever you are.

Yes.

Here’s the next.

He’s just a couple of degrees away.

That’s true.

He’s right nearby.

Right.

At least six.

Bum, bottom, club.

I went there once.

The bum, bottom, club?

I think it’s closed.

Let’s see.

Rock, bottom.

Rock, bottom.

Rock, bottom.

Is good.

Is yes.

Is right.

Rock.

So what kind of categories would that word fit in?

Could be a kind of music.

Yeah, go that way.

Okay, go that way.

Just saying.

So it’s not bum pop.

It’s.

Oh, bum rap.

Bum rap is right.

Oh, golly.

Rock bottom bum rap and blank club.

Country.

Country.

Yes, country club.

Good one.

That should have been easier.

Should have been, yeah.

But it was a fun little trip up the hill.

What’s wrong with us?

All right.

Said Sisyphus.

Just have a few more.

Here we go.

Cotton Dancing Knife.

Cotton Dancing Knife.

Okay, we’re going to get this in two seconds.

Cotton Dancing Knife.

Jack Knife.

Jack Knife, right.

John Dancing, no.

Jack Knife.

King Cotton.

Dancing Queen.

Dancing Queen, very good.

Oh, beautiful.

Nice.

A triple for Martha.

Very good.

The category is cards, face cards.

Here’s the next one.

Money, closet, goggles.

Money, closet, goggles.

Beer goggles, beer goggles?

Beer goggles is right.

Beer goggles, beer money, and beer closet.

Everything’s beer to you, Grant.

Maybe it’s water, closet, beer goggles.

Right.

Water, closet, beer goggles, and?

Lunch money, mad money, money.

Milk, milk money.

Milk money is correct.

Yes, very good.

Milk money, water closet, beer goggles.

Okay.

And here’s the last one.

Oh, those magic words.

Shattering, second, cease.

Shattering, second, cease?

Cease, as in C-E-A-S-E.

That’s right.

Okay, so earth shattering.

Earth shattering.

Cease fire.

Cease fire.

Second wind.

Second wind, very good.

Earth, wind, and fire.

Nice, guys.

That was it, you guys.

You were fantastic.

Good work.

Oh, man, what a great game.

It’s all due to the quiz writer.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Bow, bow.

John, we’ll see you next time real soon.

See you soon.

If you want to talk about language or quizzes or puzzles or anything like that,

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673,

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marla calling from San Diego.

Well, welcome to the program, Marla.

Thank you.

What’s going on?

I just had a question for you guys.

My dad and I had been curious about the phrase brand new.

I came across it while I was reading Frank L. Baum’s book, The Wizard of Oz,

And I saw a reference to brand new without the D on the end,

And I was wondering if that is indeed the same phrase

Or if they’re different in where it originally came from.

Aha. Yeah, L. Frank Baum.

Yeah, and tell us about the passage where he uses brand new.

It’s in reference to the scarecrow.

After the scarecrow gets his head all sorted out by the wizard,

And it’s said to be his head is brand new,

Isn’t full of new bran, because it was stuffed with straw.

Right.

And you know, the thing about Balm, I don’t know if you noticed it,

But he’s a big punster.

Mm—

Yes.

Like, for example, the first time that Dorothy meets this scarecrow,

I don’t know if you noticed this,

But when she meets this scarecrow,

The line is something like,

Good day, he said, with a rather husky voice.

Yes.

Hardy har.

So brand new, there’s three meanings there then, right?

Well, it’s pretty clever.

I mean, he’s saying he’s got brand new bran in his head, right?

Brand new brains.

Brand new brains, right.

So it’s bran, brand, and brains that he’s making the joke about.

Yeah, it’s pretty clever.

Plus needles and pins because he’s now really sharp.

Yeah, I mean, he’s a real punster, that L. Frank Baum.

So brand new there then is the same brand new.

It’s just he modified a little bit to make a joke.

Yeah, except—

Oh, so it was around before then.

Oh, sure, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

A lot of people mistake it as brand new and use it that way.

But the original sense of the word and the predominant sense is brand new.

And the brand in that sense goes back to the use of brand many, many years ago, centuries ago,

To mean a freshly burning piece of wood, a piece of wood that’s pulled directly out of the fire.

So if something’s brand new, then it’s as new as a brand.

It hasn’t even cooled off yet.

So, Marla, does that help?

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

I know my dad and I will be very pleased to finally have an answer to that perplexing question.

Well, you’re welcome.

And just pay no attention to the two words behind the curtain.

Behind the radio.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I read all those books when I was a kid.

I remember getting them off the bookmobile in the third grade.

Really?

Mm—

Really?

I’m looking forward to sharing them with my son.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you realize he was such a big punster?

I didn’t at the time.

It all went right over my head.

I was interested in the characters, you know, in the story.

Yeah, everybody thinks J.K. Rowling was the first.

Because, you know, eight-year-olds aren’t all that great at picking up on puns.

Yeah, but what a great story.

What a great series of stories.

Well, if you’ve read something in a book and it’s left you puzzled, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673 or send an email.

Our address is words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, the other day on the American Dialect Society listserv, I saw an irresistible email message.

It was titled, Kinky Sex with Electronic Devices.

-oh.

Wait a second.

I’ll cover your ears.

Who says linguists aren’t fun?

Leave the radio on, though.

So, of course, I had to open this one up.

But it was a message from a linguist observing that in an article on a recent increase in burglaries of unlocked cars in northeastern Massachusetts,

One finds that, quote, thieves made out with global positioning system devices, cell phones, and laptops.

What a difference a preposition makes, right?

Instead of making off with, I see.

That’s pretty funny.

Is there a word for opening an email and you’re really disappointed by the content?

I don’t know.

That’s a nice giggle there.

Yeah, yeah, but anyway.

If you’d like to share a funny copyediting error with us, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673,

Or send your media bloopers to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, guys.

This is Fred calling from San Diego.

Hi, Fred.

How are you doing?

Doing very well. I’m calling because I used to be a naval flight officer, which is a guy in the aircraft responsible for things like navigation, weapons, and things like that.

Occasionally I would be asked, why do they call the place where the crew sits the cockpit?

So I never had a great answer, but my thought was that lots of aviation terms are borrowed from naval terms.

And I know that on a sailboat, that the cockpit is the area of the boat where the helm is located.

That’s where you steer it from.

Normally in the aft section of the boat, and it’s usually depressed into the deck a bit.

So my thought was that in the days of sail, that when a sailing ship would carry livestock,

That this is the part of the ship where hens and roosters might be kept, and hence the term cockpit.

So I thought, what do you think?

It’s not a bad theory.

There were a couple of interesting points there, too,

To what you had to say about the sailboats.

I didn’t know that about sailboats.

This is what we know about cockpit.

The first use of this term really applies to cockfighting rings.

This is a place where you’d have two roosters battling it out

And people would wager, and usually a pretty rascally bunch.

And then the term came to be used in stage, in theater.

So the area that we now call the pit used to just be called the cockpit,

And it was shortened.

And later it became used for boats and actually ships, I should say.

There’s an orlop deck.

Do you know this term, O-R-L-O-P?

Haven’t heard that one.

Yeah, an orlop deck, it’s probably out of fashion now,

But this was the lowest deck of a ship.

And what’s interesting about what you said about sailboats

Is that the orlop deck could be seen or looked down upon from the upper decks.

And the orlop deck would hold, say, the junior officers,

That’s where their quarters would be, or in times of war,

Because this typically was a terminology for a warship,

This is where the wounded would be treated or even the bodies be stored.

And so, of course, the term cockpit later became used in an aircraft.

And I think what we’re talking about here is an area that can be looked down upon.

If you look at old pictures, say, from the 1700s or the 1800s,

Hogarth, for example, has a very well-known engraving or picture of a cockfighting ring.

There’s always some kind of elevated seating or always some kind of gallery up above

Where you can look down on the action.

So it wasn’t just a flat surface.

And oftentimes it’s round, and parts of ships can be round too.

But I think that we’re just talking about here this area of attention,

And I think you described the helm very much in that way.

It’s a depressed area that’s kind of below some of the other parts of the ship,

And there’s kind of a transfer over the years of this term from place to place,

And it kind of lost some of its meaning over the way.

But from each connecting path, you can still see how it might have transferred.

For example, the helm on a ship becoming the helm on a, or the place of navigation on an airplane makes sense, right?

So Fred had that part right, the idea that it was transferred from a ship.

But I don’t think it had anything to do with the transfer of cattle or animals.

There’s actually not a great, believe it or not, there was not a common way to transfer, except for like really big moves,

When you’re actually like moving whole families or whole communities to a new place.

Transferring animals by ship was not that common,

Except if you were going to eat them along the way.

All right, well, cool. Thanks a lot, guys.

Hey, Fred, thanks for the question.

Hey, great. Bye-bye.

All righty, bye-bye.

Bye now.

If there’s a word from your career that you’d like to talk about,

Whether it’s military or in the business world,

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673,

Or send an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Kay Roburs.

And I’m calling to ask a question about a phrase I heard when I was at a wedding.

Okay.

We were at a wedding reception, and they started proposing toast to the bride and groom.

And it seemed like in unison, like it was a stage play.

Everybody in the room raised their glasses in unison and hollered,

Hear, hear.

And my husband and I looked at each other, and we’d never heard that before.

So I’m wondering where that originates from and where it comes from.

-huh.

Nikki, where did you say you’re from?

I’m from Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Oh, okay.

Apparently we don’t visit enough bars or something.

I don’t know.

Or go to enough weddings.

Wait a minute.

Come on, let’s put the positive spin on that.

Okay, so you’re at this wedding and people are raising their glasses

And they’re saying, here, here.

And are you thinking where, where or what?

Well, yes, it just didn’t seem appropriate.

I mean, we’re all there.

So why were they saying here, here?

I don’t know.

Oh, but it’s a different one.

It’s a different one, isn’t it, Martha?

Yeah.

I thought the same thing for so many years, Kay.

Why is somebody saying here as opposed to there or where or whatever?

But we do actually say there, there now.

We do say there, there.

But this is here, here.

But it’s a different here, here.

It’s H-E-A-R.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, the traditional expression was hear him, hear him,

Which is a way of everybody sort of agreeing with what the person just said.

I see.

Give the guy a listen.

Well, they were all agreeing with the toast that they proposed, so I guess that makes sense.

Right. There you go.

Have you ever spent any time in courtrooms?

There’s a similar thing that happens when the bailiff calls out before the judge enters the room.

They’ll often say, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, which is from old French meaning the same thing, here, here.

So, Kay, what do you and your husband say when you clink glasses?

I don’t think we say anything.

You just get right to it, huh?

Yeah.

I don’t think we say anything.

I’m Irish and he’s German, and you’d think we’d come up with something, wouldn’t you?

You would think.

Yes.

You would think.

Okay.

Well, does that help?

It’s hear him, hear him, only you don’t hear the him anymore.

Okay.

I will definitely tell my husband, and the next time I go to a wedding in Milwaukee,

I will definitely wait to hear for hear, hear.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Yes, this has been fun.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling, Kate.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Give us a call if you encountered something weird that everyone else seemed to understand

And you were mystified.

1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-Wayword.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And don’t forget about us on Twitter at the username Wayword.

A while back, Catherine called us from Northern California.

She had a question about the word griage.

Do you know that word, Martha?

I do now.

It’s G-R-I-A-G-E.

And she said that they were giving flu shots at schools and that the griage are the greeters who give information to the families.

She wanted to know if we knew what it meant.

Well, I had to Google it because it’s a brand, well, not that new.

It dates back to about 2002.

But griage is an interesting blend of the word greeter and triage.

So the griage is either the place in the front of the hospital or the disaster site

Or the people who man it who greet anybody who’s coming in who needs help.

So you’re a combination of greeting and a combination of triage.

So you can direct them to a doctor or you can shunt them over to some other department if that’s who they need.

What an interesting word. I hadn’t run across it until we got that question.

You know, seven years counts as brand new in English.

Brand new.

If you want to share a new word with us, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can send your new words to words@waywordradio.org.

More answers to your questions about language.

That’s coming up next on A Way with Words.

Support for A Way with Words comes from Park Manor Suites,

San Diego’s historic old-world-style hotel next to beautiful Balboa Park.

Park Manor Suites, in the center of it all.

Parkmanorsuites.com.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

It’s time for our slang quiz.

And who better to try to solve a linguistic mystery than our guest today?

Writer James Elroy is author of L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia.

His new novel about gangsters, corrupt cops, and conspiracies is called Blood’s a Rover.

James, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hey, it’s good to be here.

Slang me, baby.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So your book, let’s just talk just a second.

The book is called Bloods of Rover.

This is the third book in the series?

It’s the Underworld USA trilogy.

It’s the third in a big political trilogy that covers 1958 to 72.

And, you know, the odd title, Bloods, B-L-O-O-D, apostrophe S, A Rover, is a quote from A.E. Hausman.

Really?

Yeah.

So hence the title, and hence my appearance on your show.

Well, James, I was going to ask.

We usually ask our contestants about their favorite slang term.

Is there one that you can share on us that we can air on public radio?

Well, let’s see.

I will leave four blank spaces that allow everyone to fill in the blanks.

How’s that?

All right.

Let’s hear it.

Dip.

And the last four letters are

Oh, yeah.

A dipstick is five letters.

And that’s what it takes.

And I have a character in Bloods of Rover who is smarter than everyone else,

But a little bit incompetent, and he is routinely referred to as dip,

Mm—

Sounds like you’re going to whoop the pants off this quiz, but let’s see how you do.

Are you ready?

Yes.

All right.

Well, given your background, of course, I’ve tried to find some language that’s kind of from the underworld.

And the books that you write make me think that you probably know all these words, but we’ll see.

Okay.

And so what we’re going to do is I’m going to give you a paragraph or a sentence that contains the word in context.

And maybe I’ll give you some information about it.

And you just kind of tell me what you think it means.

I’m going to give you some choices, A, B, or C.

And your job is just to pick the right meaning for that word.

And if you do need Martha’s help, she’s standing by.

Okay.

The estimable Martha.

The estimable Martha.

The estimable Martha.

Here we go.

This first one is taken from an actual criminal justice manual.

In this example, a cadet is just one week away from becoming a full cop.

The cadet says,

Right.

Last night I was driving home from the academy.

I stopped to get some gas.

Some dude comes running up, flapping his arms, and yelling like crazy about being robbed.

Here I am, sitting in my car with my gun on and my old buzzer staring him right in the face.

I told him to call the cops.

It didn’t hit me until I was a mile away that I was a cop.

So what is the buzzer that should have been so obvious to them both?

Is it A, a badge?

Is it B, the cherries and blueberries on the roof that is the lights?

Or is it C, a megaphone?

A badge.

That’s exactly right.

Yeah, and the cool thing about this term is it’s got such a long,

History, and yet it’s still used.

And that quote, by the way, is relatively recent.

I think it’s from the 90s.

It’s still used in the lingo of cops and cadets today.

I did not know that.

It’s what gets you in the door.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s like, exactly.

That’s exactly it.

It’s like, it’s the equivalent.

You hold up that badge.

It’s as if you press the buzzer to release the door lock.

Oh, that’s cool.

Right.

All right.

This next one’s a little harder.

I thought that one might be easy peasy.

Okay.

And as a matter of fact, this next one’s so hard, it actually involves not one mystery

Term, but three.

Okay?

I’m listening.

It’s from a 1956 issue of Billboard magazine.

In a brief blurb called Pipes for Pitchmen, the writer says,

Quote, judging by the folks on hand at the opening of the Knoxville, Tennessee tobacco market,

It looked more like a convention of sheet writers.

He goes on to mention a bunch of names, and then he says,

All were working paper and seemed to be getting the Giedis, no doubt due to the good growing season.

So my question for you is, what does it mean when a, quote, sheet writer works the paper and gets the GEDUS?

That’s G-E-E-T-U-S.

Is it A, when a fake tobacco salesman writes sham contracts to get lots of suckers to make down payments on bundles of tobacco that they’ll never receive?

Right.

Is it B, when a periodical salesman sells a lot of subscriptions?

Or is it C, when a television scriptwriter shops his program ideas to all the cigarette marketing people and lands big, fat program sponsorships?

It’s A.

You think it’s when a fake tobacco salesman writes sham contracts?

Right.

What makes you think that?

It’s a guess.

This kind of southern parlance is beyond my ken, so I’m guessing.

Okay.

I got to tell you, I got to tell you, I spent a great deal of time looking at Billboard magazine.

Google has indexed it and put it online for free.

And there’s some just genius language there from the pitchman and some old style selling that we don’t really do anymore.

And actually, the correct answer was B.

A sheet writer is somebody who sells subscriptions to a sheet or a magazine.

And the GEDUS, sometimes spelled with a D, but G-E-E-T-U-S or G-E-D-U-S or even GEDER, is the money that he makes.

And if he’s working in the paper, that means he’s just getting a lot of deals,

A lot of contracts signed, a lot of subscriptions filled out.

Okay.

So I highly recommend it to you.

Just check it out because there’s so much great stuff.

I mean, I think I could write a book on it because there’s language that’s so crazy.

These guys who are obsessed with selling subscriptions,

And a lot of times they were con men.

A lot of times they were selling subscriptions to magazines that didn’t exist.

Anyway, thanks for playing with us.

This was good.

I’m looking forward to reading the new book.

Bloods of Rover on sale wherever books are sold.

I’ll be better at this game next year.

All right.

Well, when you have your next book, number four in the series?

That’s right.

We’re going to see the word Giedis in there.

No, I have a memoir coming out next year.

You do?

Oh, nice.

Are you finished with it, or can you work in the word Giedis?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I hope you got a lot of Giedis for it.

Shackles.

Shackles.

Shackles.

James Elroy, thank you so much for playing the slang quiz with us today.

Thank you very much.

Thanks a lot, James.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Always.

Bye.

And if you’re puzzling over a linguistic mystery, you can always call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, it’s nice to speak with you. This is Deborah from Indianapolis.

Well, hello, Deborah. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, first of all, I’d like to say that this has been driving me crazy for 10 or 15 years.

Excellent. I mean, not excellent, but we’re glad you called.

I can prescribe a cream for that.

I’ll take that after we go off the read-off.

My question is that I have been looking for a word or a term that was probably used in the 1960s.

It comes from a time when tall buildings were being built in New York City, and we still called them skyscrapers.

And what happened was there was a group of Native Americans, possibly from upper New York State,

And they worked on the high beams and girders absolutely fearlessly as if they were just on the ground.

And I think there was a term for that, but I can’t remember it.

Yeah, we can help you with that.

Oh, absolutely.

And I think you might do a little kicking of yourself, so get your boots ready.

Okay.

And then apply the cream.

Okay.

Deborah, say if this rings a bell, how about the word Skywalker?

Yes.

Absolutely.

Yeah, that’s it.

You’re right.

I can kick myself.

But there’s an interesting history, right, behind these men.

Where did you encounter this word?

And are you remembering it from the 60s or are you remembering it from later?

Yes.

And did you see a movie or documentary or read something about this?

I suspect that I probably read because I’m a big reader.

And I thought it was just, I don’t know, it got my imagination going

That there were these Native Americans and they were up there

And people were afraid to go up that high and they just did it.

And they were kind of a unit or a team and they worked together.

And I think it just got my imagination.

I could almost see them up there.

Well, let me ask you, do you know the writing of Joseph Mitchell?

He was a New Yorker writer.

A lot of his stuff was collected in a book called Up in the Old Hotel,

And one of his stories is called The Mohawks in High Steel,

And it is brilliant.

It is fantastic writing.

It’s the kind of writing that any one of us would kill to be able to do,

And he describes exactly what you’re talking about.

These men from these Native American tribes in upstate New York

Who came to New York City to help build the tallest buildings,

Including the World Trade Center, as a matter of fact.

But I asked her whether or not you were,

You remembered if you got it from a book or movie,

Because there was a short film, a short documentary in 1965,

Also called High Steel.

And you can actually find it online at the website

Of the National Film Board of Canada.

And it’s about 16 minutes.

Well, I didn’t look there.

Yeah.

Another reason I could get myself.

We’ll make it easy for you and put a link on our website.

But it’s from 1965, and you said you remembered it from the 60s,

So I wondered if somehow you’d seen that documentary too.

But there’s a ton of, you know, even NPR has done a segment for the program

Called Lost and Found Sound about these men, and it’s all incredibly interesting.

They do things that I wouldn’t have the guts to do.

Oh, really? Yes, absolutely.

So, Deborah, thank you so much for your call. I’m glad we were able to help.

You have solved something that has been driving me nuts for years.

Oh, I appreciate it very much.

Glad we could scratch that itch, Debra.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

If you’ve got an itch that needs to be scratched, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673 or 1-877-Wayword,

Or send it to us in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Kathleen Elberson, and I’m calling from Grayson County College in Sherman, Texas.

Well, hello, Kathleen.

Welcome to the program.

Hi, thank you.

My question was concerning a phrase that one of my coworkers used a couple of weeks ago.

I was coming back from class, and one of my students had gotten upset about something.

I don’t remember what.

And I was saying, oh, my gosh, you know, he was so upset.

And my coworker said, oh, did he have his tail over the dashboard?

And, of course, I said, what?

Because that’s a very strange phrase.

And she said, oh, that must be she’s from Oklahoma.

And she said that everybody there would say that if they meant that someone was upset.

Oh, interesting.

Oklahoma then.

Yes.

Yeah, it’s a weird phrase, isn’t it?

I mean, when you think of somebody with their tail over the dashboard, I think of somebody.

You’re in the driver’s seat and your passenger is mooning everybody.

Yeah, exactly.

I didn’t think of that.

All right, Kathleen and I thought of that, right?

Yes.

Or did you?

Yeah.

Actually, I thought of a dog, like a local retriever with his tail wagging.

Oh, okay, his head out the window, of course, with his tail hanging out.

So tail over the dashboard meant that he had his dander up or something like that?

Yeah, upset.

He was upset.

Oh, that’s interesting because usually I’ve heard this phrase used to mean somebody who’s perky and kind of high-spirited.

So I could see where it might have morphed into being upset.

But the original sense of this is being perky.

And the key here, Kathleen, is that a dashboard hasn’t always been a dashboard in the way we think of it.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, this word goes all the way back to the mid-19th century.

And in the mid-19th century, this is the horse and buggy days, right?

And the dashboard was the thing up in the front where the driver put his feet,

And it prevented dirt and mud from coming up and splashing.

Oh, my gosh.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, so dash had a different sense back then.

So when we’re talking about tails over dashboards, we’re talking about horse butts.

Oh, my gosh.

How about them apples?

Oh, that is awesome.

Yeah, so if a horse has her tail up over the dashboard, she’s perky perky.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, so her spirits are up in general.

You’ll find that tail over the dashboard has been used in a variety of ways,

But usually it indicates an excess of some kind of emotion.

Oh, wow.

There’s a quote from 1880 that I really love.

It says it’s also safe to prognosticate that for the next few weeks, crime will not have its tail over the dashboard so extensively as heretofore, meaning that crime will be accelerated or there will be a lot of it.

Oh, my gosh.

I would never have thought.

Kathleen, you kind of sound like your tail is up over the dashboard.

Yeah, it sort of is.

I’m thinking this is pretty cool.

I never, ever would have guessed that that’s where that was coming from.

How about that?

Take that back to Oklahoma and school her a little bit, will you?

I will. I will.

Well, thanks for calling, Kathleen.

Oh, thank you very much.

Cheers to you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

I’ve also seen it as keep your head high and your tail over the dashboard.

Or as Casey Kasem used to say, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the scars, or whatever it was he said.

Well, I love those phrases where the old sense is completely invisible to us.

Mm—

That happens more often than you’d like to think, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It’s always a great surprise.

Well, if you have a question about language, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

A couple of episodes ago, we took a call about horseradish.

I said, as if I knew what I was talking about, that in one dialect of German, it had a name that meant mare’s radish, as in the radish of a female horse.

Well, I didn’t know what I was talking about.

And you didn’t know we had so many Germans in the audience.

I did not know that we had so many German speakers, but thank you for correcting me.

I was misreading a book that said people might have mistakenly misunderstood one part of the German word to mean mare, as in a female horse, when it actually means C-S-E-A.

So, thanks to listeners David Gray and Allison Kaiser, and to the discussion forum participant Him83 for setting me straight.

Well, if you feel the need to set us straight about something, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you doing?

Super duper, who’s this?

This is Muhammad.

Hi, Muhammad, where are you calling from?

From Dallas, Texas.

Welcome to the program.

Welcome.

What can we do for you?

Well, I was curious about the origin of the word el in Spanish,

And I wondered if it came from the Arabic word al, A-L.

Aha. And what got you to wondering about that?

Well, because I noticed on, for example, the name of the city, El Paso,

And we also have Alcatraz, so I was curious if it translates to the word del.

You’re absolutely right that Arabic had a huge influence on Spanish

Because the Moors were there in control from 711 to 1492.

Very easy to remember numbers, 711 and 1492.

So Arabic is the second largest influence on Spanish besides Latin.

And so you’re wondering if the EL in the article, like El Paso, is related to that AL.

And although there are a lot of Spanish words that are influenced by Arabic,

This is not one of them.

The EL in Spanish goes all the way back to Latin,

The word ile, I-L-L-E, which means that.

It’s a pronoun.

And that’s because the Romans were there several hundred years

Before the Moors were there.

But there are huge numbers of words in Spanish

That have Arabic footprints all over them.

Alcoba, which means bedroom.

We get the word alcove from that, a little room in a house.

Oh, okay.

Al-Mu’erso, lunch, is a combination of the Arabic and then a Latin word.

Do you speak any of those languages, Mohamed?

I should have asked.

No, I don’t speak Arabic or Hebrew.

I speak other languages like Urdu and Hindi from Southeast Asia, from South Asia.

Very interesting.

All right, great.

Thanks for taking my call.

All right, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Oh, the list just goes on and on.

Magazine goes all the way back to Arabic.

Isn’t that cool?

Yeah, yeah.

It goes back to an Arabic word that I think is something like mahazan, which means a warehouse or a storehouse.

And ultimately a magazine came to be a place where a whole bunch of things are stored.

And you see that in Spanish, too.

It gives us the word almacen, which is a kind of store.

So anyway, this stuff gets me all hot and bothered, as you know, Grant.

Give that woman a pill.

Give that woman a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us the address words@waywordradio.org.

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That’s our show for this week.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell and Jennifer Powell.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And from San Francisco, I’m Grant Barrett.

Thanks to Howard Gelman for engineering our show from the studios of KQED Radio.

Sayonara.

Bye-bye.

Oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must.