Kentucky Contestant on Slang This!

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

And I’m Martha Barnette, and it’s time for this week’s slang challenge where we try to stump a member of the National Puzzlers League with some curious terminology.

Today’s contestant is Mark Halpin from Cold Spring, Kentucky.

Hi, how are you doing?

Hi, Mark.

Good, how are you doing?

Very well, thank you.

All right, what do you do there in Cold Spring?

I’m a scene designer.

Oh, yeah?

So I design scenery for theaters and museums and so on like that.

Oh, cool.

Oh, that’s cool.

Cool. Do you have a favorite slang term you’d like to share with us?

Well, I’m not sure if this is a slang term exactly, but I think it’s a regionalism.

The phrase, Jeezel Pete.

Jeezel Pete. Jeezel Pete. J-E-E-Z-L-E, Pete.

I was thinking about that this morning. It’s an expression I sort of grew up with,

And I don’t know that I’ve heard a lot of people use it outside of this immediate area.

But a lot of people here do use it.

When do you use it and what is it for?

I think it’s a more polite way of holy cow.

Okay, that makes sense, sure.

Or the Lord’s name or something.

Jeez, O.P.

That’s the one place I’ve heard it was in the Cincinnati area.

That’s pretty cool.

Well, Mark, let’s see how you do with our quiz.

Okay.

I’m going to give you a sentence with a blank in it

And two possible answers.

Only one is correct.

All right.

And if you need help, Martha will be standing by,

So feel free to discuss everything with her, okay?

Great.

In fact, please do.

Yes.

All right, well, here we go.

Okay.

Okay, ladies, I want smiles and cheers and blanks whenever we score, okay?

Pompoms high, go team!

So does the cheerleading coach want smiles and cheers and A, rubber bands,

Or B, Herkes?

Rubber bands, R-U-B-B-E-R-B-A-N-D-S,

And Herkes, H-E-R-K-I-E-S.

I want to, jeez, I have no idea.

Rubber bands, for no good reason that I can justify.

You know, Mark, I have to disqualify myself from this one

Because when I was in high school,

I desperately wanted to be a cheerleader.

Okay.

Desperately.

Well, you can bring your own knowledge to the table, dear.

Okay.

All right.

I would go the other way.

I would go through the herkeys.

I was never a cheerleader, so I’m going to defer to you on that one.

No.

I couldn’t do the splits, and I don’t think I could do a herkey either.

I could try to show you what it looks like, but…

What is that?

What is a herkey?

It’s some kind of weird move, isn’t it, Grant?

Martha does have the correct answer.

It is be a herkey.

A herky, in my poor understanding of the field, is a type of cheerleading jump in which one leg is bent to the ground and the other one kicks up high.

It’s the kind of thing that they can just do kind of on the spur of the moment when they’re waving their arms and the pom-poms are high.

And, you know, that’s the little kick that they do where it’s not the full move where the two legs come out straight to the side.

One of them is kind of bent.

There’s good information if you Google it.

It’s named after the founder of the National Cheerleaders Association, Lawrence Herkimer.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So he came up with it because apparently he couldn’t do the full move that needed to be done,

So he did this kind of variation of it, and it’s pretty easy.

I think this move is harder.

I seem to remember something about my hand behind my back and my other hand up in the air.

There’s probably people doing herkies on YouTube, don’t you think?

Yes, there are herkies on YouTube, and you’ll find this in lexicons of cheerleading websites all across the Internet.

So no worries, Mark, that you didn’t know it, all right?

All right.

Let’s see how you do on this next one.

Okay.

The bigwigs don’t know how to leave well enough alone in the editing room.

So we give them a big blank that they can fiddle with all they want.

It doesn’t actually do anything.

So the bigwigs come.

They don’t know how to leave well enough alone.

We give them a big what that doesn’t do anything.

We give them an executive handle or a producer’s button.

You know, it seems like I’ve heard producer’s button.

I’m going to feel foolish if that’s wrong now, but that kind of rings a bell.

Yeah, what do you think it is?

Why do you think it’s a producer’s button?

That just sounds familiar a little bit.

The notion of giving something that makes them feel like they’re being hands-on while not actually being.

Like a button you might push, but it’s not connected to anything?

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

That’s exactly what it is.

It’s a producer’s button.

And this is a term that…

I’m making up for my lack of cheerleading knowledge.

No, that’s okay.

I first read it in writing about Hollywood.

They were talking about a bigwig producer who would come down and could never just say,

That’s great, go with it.

They always had to be doing this or that.

So you’ll find this happens again and again in the music business.

My friends in the music business talk about, oh, yeah, we’ll make that change.

They make every change that they’re asked for.

And they don’t even tell the bigwig that the album has already gone to master

And then all these changes aren’t going to be reflected in the final product.

They don’t even tell them.

Just let them feel like it.

Sort of like a producer’s hydrant.

Something like that.

So anyway, that’s good.

One out of two is not bad, Mark.

I think your spirits are good anyway.

Nice work, Mark.

And bone up on your cheerleading stuff and maybe we’ll play again, all right?

Oh, that would be terrific.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for playing, Mark.

Thanks for playing.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You can find out more about the National Puzzlers League at puzzlers.org.

And you can call us anytime about any aspect of language or share your high school traumas like mine.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.