Kitten Britches (episode #1645)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. I came across an intriguing type of wordplay the other day. It involves unrelated pairs of words and phrases. Now, each half of the pair makes sense on its own, but what makes them a pair is that the words in one pair are synonyms of the words in the other.

Let me give you an example. Take the term blanket statement. Now, that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

Right. Blanket statement. This is something that kind of covers all options or situations. Interesting that you mentioned the word cover because you compare the term blanket statement with cover story.

Oh, so although on the surface the words can be synonyms, the idiomatic expressions taken as a whole are not synonyms.

Exactly. So cover story is a kind of a lie that you tell somebody in order to reveal your true intentions. But a blanket statement’s not that.

Right. They mean different things, but they’re paralleled. In fact, some people call these unparalleled misalignments.

Let me give you another one. Dad bod can be paired with father figure. And there’s no law saying a father figure can’t have a dad bod, but idiomatically, they’re not the same thing.

That’s right. And there’s a huge collection of these on the website of Ricky Heichelen. That’s H-E-I-C-K-L-E-N. And we’ll link to it from our website.

But these things really make you think. I’ll give you another one. Drink menu could be paired with spirit guide.

Oh, wow. I love that. Drink menu and spirit guide. Not the same thing idiomatically, but on the surface, they could be.

They could be. Or here’s another bird watcher and eagle scout. Scout becomes a verb there.

Right, right. This is an amazing list, Martha. It really is. And it really made my brain work hard. You know, it’s like doing a cryptic crossword or something.

Yeah, we’ll link to this on our website so you can enjoy it too. And if you’ve got your own unparalleled misalignment, send them right on and we’ll share them with the world.

That email address is words@waywordradio.org.

The toll-free number in the United States and Canada is 877-929-9673.

And if you’re anywhere else or you don’t want to use those methods, there are a dozen other ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Jamila. I’m calling from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Hi, Jamila. Welcome to the program. What’s on your mind?

So growing up, we always called the remote a clicker. I’ve never heard any of my friends use the word clicker. It was actually one of the things that I would get picked on growing up with saying clicker. And I actually never heard any of my family members use it. So I had to train myself growing up to say remote. So I was wondering where did the term clicker come from?

My dad is from North New Jersey, and my mom’s from a small city called Forest City, North Carolina. So they’re from two different regions. But somehow we got stuck saying the word clicker for remote.

So your friends, when they challenged you on saying clicker for the television remote, what did they say besides a remote? Did they all say remote?

Everyone said remote. There’s not one person that has done that.

Martha, that really surprises me.

It really surprises me, too, Jamila.

You are in good company, I’ve got to tell you.

A lot of people use Clicker.

I use Clicker.

Do you, Grant?

No, I just say remote.

Okay.

But I’ve heard so many other terms for it.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Doofer and Flickr and Channel Changer.

What else is there?

Zapper.

Oh, wow.

Clicker is a perfectly legitimate word. And you were asking about the history of it. It actually goes back to the 1950s. The first kind of television remote was called, it was connected by a cord to the TV. And get this, it was called Lazy Bones.

Oh, that’s unique.

In 1956, they made the first commercially successful wireless remote, and they called that the Zenith Space Command.

That was the brand name for it.

But the thing is that those old clickers actually clicked when they were changing the channels.

They made a noise, and that’s why so many people started calling them clickers rather than remote.

Oh, nice.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, that’s pretty self-explanatory.

Sorry. Growing up, my parents were a lot older than my friend’s parents.

So I guess like, you know, there was just a different generation.

So maybe they weren’t exposed to the clicker term.

I think the more important question, Jamila, is who controls the clicker in your house?

Oh, my mom.

She calls it the clicker?

She does.

Okay, well, that’s what it is.

Thank you all so much. I greatly appreciate it.

Take care of yourself.

Yeah, thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, have a great one.

You too. Bye-bye.

Well, don’t zap that channel. Don’t flip it. Don’t use a remote to turn us away.

Instead, use your telephone to call us at 877-929-9673.

Here’s another quadruple entendre, or unparalleled misalignment, organic chemistry and carbon dating.

Organic chemistry.

Mm—

Oh, and carbon dating, because if you hit it off with someone, you’re said to have chemistry.

Right.

Got you.

Organic chemistry involves carbon.

Right.

Amazing.

People are so clever.

They are, and I know our listeners are, too.

So we’d love to hear your unparalleled misalignments.

You can send them to words@waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chris Jorgensen calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hey, Chris, welcome.

What can we do for you?

So you know how it’s back to school time?

And my husband is a teacher, and he was recently shopping for his back to school clothes.

And he was in JCPenney here in Omaha.

And when he came home, he was like, Chris, he’s like, you’re not going to believe which section still exists at JCPenney.

And I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Matt.

He said, did you know that there is still a Husky Boys section in JCPenney?

And we kind of laughed about it.

And he and I, and we were both shocked because we had assumed that this was like a relic of our 1980s childhood that must have gone out of existence by now.

So, and of course, as we were talking about it, we realized like, like sort of unkind children in the 1980s might think like it could be hadn’t like sort of an insulting thing, right?

To say you were shopping in the Husky Boys section.

And, but as we talked about it more, I was like, well, it certainly couldn’t have been intended to be an insulting thing.

I mean, these folks are trying to sell people clothes.

Like you don’t want to name a clothing section after something that you like, don’t want to be associated with.

So we thought, well, what does this Husky thing even refer to?

And so like every, you know, modern person, we went to Google and tried to figure it out, and we couldn’t.

And so that’s when Matt and I said, well, we should probably call A Way with Words and see if they know anything about this.

Outstanding. That was the right call.

I have personal experience with the Husky section.

I was tall, so going to stores like JCPenney’s when I was a kid was always this struggle because I was too thin for the husky section, but too tall for the other section.

So it was this real battle.

But I’m with you.

I remember the husky section, and there definitely was a little bit of a kind of judgment happening there.

It’s just, it seemed like a coded way to say fat.

Right, right.

Yeah.

But again, I just think, well, we had a long sort of feminist discussion about this too, where I was like, well, of course we can have boys who are husky, and that’s something we sort of celebrate, right?

Like they’re going to, they’re big and strong and strapping, but, you know, we wouldn’t have a girl’s section with that name.

So again, I thought it had to have some positive meaning.

Although you had the petite section for the girls, which would never show up in the boys’ section.

You would never have a petite section for boys, ever.

True.

But let’s go back to husky and what’s happening here with that word.

It originally was a term for somebody with strength and vigor and somebody who was stout or burly.

And it was by comparison to the husk of a plant, the strong outer core of a plant that you might have to peel away to get to the soft goodness inside.

So it was a positive thing, you know.

To refer to somebody as husky meant that they were maybe sinewy or muscular, strong, big.

But definitely no connotations in the early days, back to the 1860s, having to do with fatness.

But, you know, as coded words go, husky kind of falls, you know, by the wayside over the years because of that connotation.

Whether or not stores can keep up with the language, I don’t know, but they have their own vocabulary.

And in any case, the other huskies are different.

The husky referring to size or strength isn’t related to the dog husky.

The dog husky is actually a corruption of the same word that gave us Eskimo, the word Eskimo, which is this outdated term for the native people of Canada.

So actually, you can hear it a little bit how husky sounds a little bit like Eskimo, but they both go back to native words.

So, yeah. And then, of course, there’s the husky voice and that husky voice is related to the husky size.

The idea that your voice sounds maybe like the rattling of husks or dry like the husks of a plant.

Oh, my gosh.

You know, that’s wild because, of course, you know, Nebraska is the corn husker state.

So the fact that we live here.

I was going to say, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

But, yeah, if you think about dried corn husks, they’re strong.

And they’re actually, you can build things with them.

You can make hats and chairs and all kinds of clothes out of them if you want to.

Incredibly strong.

Yeah, that is fascinating.

Yeah.

Well, do you think there’s any chance that we could reclaim this husky word?

Like some other terms have been reclaimed and we can proudly declare ourselves to be husky because nobody can mess with us because we’re too tough.

Well, the only way to find out is to start.

So go for it.

Okay.

I’ll work on that revolution.

Chris, thank you so much for calling.

We appreciate your time.

Take care of yourself.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

You all have a great day.

You too.

Bye-bye.

We love hearing about your personal stories and the histories that you have.

And these little arguments in the family that aren’t really about anger, but are really about finding out things.

Come to us. We’ll help you find out. 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s another unparalleled misalignment that I really like.

Toll booths and Bill Gates.

Oh, toll bill booth gates.

Toll booth Bill Gates.

That’s amazing.

Yeah, it’s kind of terrible, but it’s amazing.

You’re right.

That’s the thing with puns.

They make you groan with laughter.

That’s true.

But also, it’s the curious kind of situation that only is possible in a complex language like English, right?

One of the glories of English, yes.

Hit us up. Toll free. United States and Canada. 877-929-9673.

More about what you say and why you say it. Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and here he is wearing a tricorn hat and waving the flag.

It’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

It is so hard to play a piccolo and wave a flag at the same time, I’ve got to tell you.

But I try. I try.

So good to see you guys.

It’s another quiz that we’ve done before that I hope you like.

It’s takeoffs.

Again, we’ve done takeoffs before.

We take off the first letter of a word to get another word.

And this time we’re going to make two words by taking the letter O from the start of a word.

Only O now.

O.

Got it?

Yeah, O, exactly.

The letter O, not the sound O?

Not the sound O.

No, the letter O.

Okay.

Well, sometimes it’s the sound O, but it’s always the letter O.

Okay.

For example, if I said, somebody has unlatched the gate of the pigsty, the answer would be open and in.

In.

Oh, that makes sense.

Got it.

Unlatch the gate is open.

Stye is a pen.

Open.

Oh, pen.

Open.

Okay.

I waited until we were married to tell her about my massive debt.

What’s the giggle?

Yeah, well.

Oh.

So we’re starting with such an up note.

So you were waiting until you were wed?

Yes.

To pay what you owed.

To tell her what I owed.

Yes, exactly.

Right.

I still bear the physical reminder of the time I dropped my acne award on my foot.

Your acne award?

No, acting.

Well, it certainly wasn’t a speaking award, that’s for sure, if you thought acting was acne.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, you have a scar on your foot from when you dropped your Oscar.

That’s right, I did, and I do.

Beyond the gate was a roughly egg-shaped portal that seemed to lead to a great nothingness.

Ooh.

Not orifice.

Oh.

I love the sound of realization.

Yeah.

Nothingness being a void.

Yes.

Oh, yes.

There we go.

Roughly egg-shaped.

Yes, it was ovoid.

It was an ovoid void.

Now, this area here is where we store our colorless, odorless, yet highly reactive gas.

Colorless, odorless.

Oh.

It’s the zone where you store your ozone.

That’s right.

It’s our ozone zone.

That’s right.

Finally, on the light spectrum, it’s somewhere between 585 and 620 nanometers.

Of course it is.

Orange is in the range of those frequencies.

Oh, nice.

Yes.

You guys are oh so good.

Yeah.

Oh, that’s very nice.

We would be overjoyed to hear from you.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, to talk about any aspect of language whatsoever,

Or send your thoughts to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Janet Hutto.

Hi, Janet. Where are you calling from?

Montgomery, Alabama.

What’s on your mind, Janet?

It’s kind of a funny question.

This past spring, I had to have a small surgery on my hand

Because there was a cyst growing there.

And they told me to go home and wait two weeks, come back.

They’ll take out the stitches, which I did.

And then the doctor sent me home for regular activities.

And within a day, the wound burst open.

And I had a doctor friend of mine look at it, and he said,

Your wound dehist.

And I went, it what?

He said, dehist.

So I went home and looked that up in the dictionary.

And dehist is a botanical term that refers to a seed pod bursting open or a flower opening.

So my question is, that seems awfully poetic for a medical description.

Yeah. So I wondered how many borrowed terms of similar poetic character are there in the sciences borrowed from another science. Do y’all know?

Well, I just have to say, Janet, I think the world could do with a few more poet doctors. I don’t mind poetry in my medicine.

I hear you.

And Janet, you’re talking about one of my favorite topics in the world, just the fact that we are metaphor-making animals.

I mean, when you talk about scientific terms, I’m thinking about, you know, the tibia in your leg, that straight bone, comes from the Latin word for flute.

And I’ll never forget the time that I was listening to a doctor talk and he was talking about fulguration.

Do you know this term, fulguration?

No.

Well, it’s a surgical procedure that uses electrical current to destroy tumors or lesions.

But I basically guessed that as soon as he said fulguration because the Latin word fulgur means lightning.

How gorgeous is that?

Wonderful.

So Martha D. Hiss, that’s D-E-H-I-S-C-E, what do we know about that and botany?

Well, it’s exactly what Janet said.

It has to do with opening up, and it’s such a beautiful metaphor.

And am I right in remembering that that Hiss root might go back to words meaning to yawn?

Or gape, yeah.

Or gape, how about that?

Yeah. So it’s just a beautiful example of metaphor making in science, which goes all the way back to at least the time of Galen in the second century BCE.

The word plethora, that was originally a medical word that meant an excess of body fluid or excessive volume of blood.

And it came to be used in the English language simply as a term for a whole lot of things.

And now you’ve got me thinking about, you know, if you go to Greece and you see a moving van, sometimes it says metaphora on it.

How about that? It’s the word that gives us metaphor, but in modern Greek, it means both metaphor and transportation.

So you’re transporting one idea to the other.

Janet, if we just let her go, she’ll keep going and going and going.

She’s a rock rolling down a mountain.

Well, I think about the tendon that runs on the inside of the thigh that’s the sartorius, which is named for the position that sailors used to sit in when sober.

Or that when your arm goes to sleep, there was a term for having a loved one’s head on your arm that made it go to sleep.

Oh, I didn’t know that one. I’m going to have to find that one.

Really? Oh, that’s fascinating.

Yeah, I mean, you go up your arm.

The biceps literally means two-headed because it’s a two-headed muscle.

You know, it’s got an attachment at each end.

And muscle itself.

You know, the word muscle comes from the Latin musculus, which means little mouse, because it looks like a little mouse twitching under your skin.

I mean, yeah, as Grant says, I could go on all day about this.

There’s poetry in your anatomy.

Martha is completely herself.

That’s a diplomatic way to put it.

Janet, thank you so much for your question about this.

I hope your hand is doing better.

Oh, it is.

Everything’s perfectly knit back together.

Very good.

Oh, knit.

That might be another metaphor for all we know.

It would indeed.

Exactly.

Call us again sometime, Janet.

This was good fun.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

You’re welcome, and thanks for answering.

We’d love to make those connections with you.

This is a three-way conversation, and you can be a part of it.

877-929-9673.

Or talk to us through our website at waywordradio.org.

Here’s another one of those unparalleled misalignments.

Sickness pay and coffee.

Sickness pay? Oh, and coffee.

Coffee.

But it sounds like cough, C-L-U-G-H.

All right, that was a little deeper. There’s some homophonic fun happening there.

Homophonic fun. We’ve got lots of it right here at 877-929-9673.

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Well, hello. This is Bo. I’m calling from Carter County, Tennessee.

Nice. Pretty country there. Well, Bo, what’s on your mind today?

Well, I was wondering about the origin of a word that I heard many years ago.

And just recently, I was in a dollar store and heard a woman at the counter use that word.

And I didn’t see who it was.

And by the time I got up there to see if I even knew the woman, she was gone.

The word is upscuttle.

Upscuttle.

And what was she saying exactly?

Well, she was trying to use a, I think, debit card or credit card.

And the machine was not reading it properly or some kind of technical problem involving her card.

And rather than cause a problem with a small line of people behind her, she just paid in cash and left.

And I never even saw the woman.

But hearing the word reminded me.

So she described the whole problem as an upscuttle?

Upscuttle.

It’s a really rare word, Bo.

That’s like seeing a jackalope in the wild.

Well, the only place I previously encountered it was a small valley in Tennessee, and it was used by the corrections officer at a maximum security prison there.

And it was used sort of derisively as describing a major altercation without fatalities.

Yeah, okay, that sounds exactly right.

That’s the way that I’ve seen it.

Now, it’s in the Dictionary of American Regional English and the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English, and generally it’s defined exactly like a quarrel.

So we’re not talking about guns blazing.

We’re talking about maybe fists going and mouths running.

Well, that certainly involved fists and mouths going, but it also includes stabbings.

That’s why I said no fatalities.

And it’s spelled U-P-S-C-U-D-D-L-E or T-T-L-E, typically, one or the other.

There are a couple fantastic quotes of it being used.

This one’s from 1913.

If they quarrel, it is a ruction, a ripet, a jower, or an upscuttle.

So there are no fatalities which would amount to a real fray.

I just love that quote.

I like that.

A ruction, a rip it, a jowl, or an upscuttle.

All four of those words are just perfect.

I did trace it to Ireland.

Yeah, or Scotland.

Those were just scuttle without the up, which means to take part in a street fight.

And you can find this back to the late 1800s.

So, yeah, definitely is probably one of those remnants of the Scots-Irish settlement in the U.S. South, because it’s more of a southern word than anything else in the United States.

So, Bo, was this woman saying she was having an upscuttle with the credit card machine?

It was that she didn’t want to cause an upscuttle because the lawn was building behind her.

Yeah.

Got it. Got it.

You know, I’m looking forward to hearing from our listeners about this one, Bo, because it’s rare enough out there that it’s just like, I don’t know, it’s like finding a pearl in an oyster.

Bo, I want to thank you for sharing your memories and your time with us.

Oh, thank you for having me on.

I love the show.

Oh, it’s our pleasure.

Call again sometime, all right?

All right.

Take care, Bo.

If there’s a language upscuttle, eruption, or splutterment in your life, let us sort it out.

877-929-9673.

And if you’re not one for voice, you can try us in text form.

There are a lot of ways to talk to us with your keyboard.

Find them all on our website at waywordradio.org.

Wayne Curtis is a wonderful travel writer, and writing in the Timbuk2 review, he had some great advice for anybody who’s thinking about travel writing or wanted to get better at writing in general.

He says, when I first arrive somewhere, my head invariably overflows with cliches.

An Italian plaza looks like something from a Fellini movie.

Visiting an historic Vermont town is like stepping back in time.

The glaciers and volcanoes of Iceland combine to create a land of many contrasts.

One could commit these initial impressions to paper, but one should not.

An editor would laugh you off their pages.

Yeah, that’s one of those cliches.

An X of contrast is something that teach you not to put in headlines in the journalism field.

Yeah, yeah.

There’s so many of those, right?

Well, he says you need to get beyond those early thoughts.

And the most fail-safe way to do that is to simply be still.

Find a bench or a fallen log or just lean against a wall and pause for a time.

Maybe 10 minutes, maybe an hour.

And soon enough, the place will start to reveal itself.

A cliche only tells the reader what one place shares with another.

A travel writer’s job is to find the elements unique to each place, the things that separate it from all the others.

And I thought that was just terrific advice.

Yeah, it’s true.

Martha and I both love to travel, and we both love reading travel writing.

If there’s a travel writer that you really enjoy, make a recommendation, and maybe we’ll talk about it on the show.

Send those books to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is David.

I’m calling from Plymouth, Wisconsin.

Hi, David.

Welcome to the program.

So, you know, we live in the country and we burn wood for heat in our house.

And we’ve been curious about this form of measurement that everyone uses to measure firewood.

And it’s a cord.

I think it’s spelled C-O-R-D, but maybe it’s C-H-O-R-D.

I’m not sure.

And just wondering kind of where that term comes from.

If other countries use the same thing, you know, is it kind of like metric, imperial, or whatever?

And how does that work?

Oh, interesting.

Well, first of all, it is spelled C-O-R-D.

It’s that kind of cord.

And it’s a term that goes back to the 17th century.

And it has to do with firewood that you stack neatly and tightly until it’s measuring 8 feet long, 4 feet in height, and 4 feet wide.

That’s the measurement that’s a cord.

And it was simply called that because it was measured with a cord of rope that had that, you know, if you wrapped it around there, it would be that measurement.

Oh, so initially it was actually a measurement of a length of cord or a length of rope.

Sorry.

Oh, okay.

And there’s two reasons that you would want to measure your wood.

One is you know approximately what your burn rate is over the winter.

So you know how much wood to stack up in the fall before the cold weather really sets in.

And then, of course, sometimes you sell your wood, so you need to have a way to measure it so that the person knows what they’re getting.

Indeed, yeah, yeah.

And is that kind of a European thing, the length of rope that originated with that measurement?

That’s a really good question.

I don’t know offhand.

I would bet that there’s something analogous.

I don’t know.

Do you know, Grant?

I don’t know, but I know that this comes to us from the United Kingdom, and it’s very old in its usage.

400 years at least people have been talking about cords of wood in English.

Okay.

Cool.

All right.

All right.

Well, thanks for taking some time out of your day.

We’ll talk to you later.

All right.

Yeah.

Thank you, too.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

That’s a toll-free number in the United States and Canada.

Here’s another unparalleled misalignment for you, Grant.

Cleveland and break ground.

Oh, Cleveland, although it’s spelled differently.

Yes.

And break ground.

Yes.

How about that?

Yeah, so it’s a punny, but still, it makes you think.

Just like every pun.

If you’re one of those people who loves to talk to other people on social media,

We are all over the place.

You can find all of our social media accounts and handles on our website at waywordradio.org.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And Grant, I’m getting hungry and I’m craving a big helping of buttered ermol.

Excuse me?

What?

Ermol?

What is that?

You know, ermol, a big bowl of buttered ermol and maybe a side of braised trach with that.

Doesn’t that sound good?

I don’t know what those are, ermol and trach.

Trach sounds like a fish maybe because he’s braising it.

And maybe ermol is Garfield the Cat’s young nemesis, Nermal, like his nickname online.

I don’t know what that is.

What are we talking about here, Maitha?

Well, what if I whip up a big helping of Funistrata?

Mmm. Yeah, that sounds Italian. Is that a pasta? What is that?

That’s what it sounds like. Okay, let me explain what I’m talking about.

Yes, please.

Back in 1972, there were some researchers who administered a survey to thousands of members of the armed forces to find out about their food preferences.

So they gave service members a list of 378 foods, and they asked for answers about those foods in three categories.

They asked how much they liked or disliked a particular food, how many days per month they wanted to eat that particular food, and if they’d ever tried that food before.

And of the 378 food names on that survey, three of them were complete nonsense, including the ones I just mentioned, like buttered ermal, E-R-M-A-L.

And trach, braised trach, T-R-A-K-E.

Yes.

And then Funistrada, F-U-N-I-S-T-R-A-D-A.

That’s it.

It sounds like Fun Street.

Fun Street.

I think it sounds like mom’s cooking, you know.

Oh, yeah.

Just comfort food, right?

Yeah, right.

After a bad day, you come home for a big bowl of Funistrada.

So what were they up to?

What was the point of this?

Well, they wanted to see how the service members would answer, like if they were just going through it so fast and not really paying attention,

Or how they would respond to a word that sounds like a food name, but really wasn’t.

And it turned out that about 80% of the service members answered that they’d never tried the fake foods.

But then there were the ones who said, yeah, they’d tried Funestrata.

And it turned out that they ranked Funestrata higher than lima beans or eggplant in their list of preferences.

Well, you know what this reminds me of?

Above all, there’s a famous linguistic study about booba and kiki, which are also made-up words.

And the respondents were asked to compare these words to some diagrams.

And people tend to match the word booba with a curvy cloud-like figure.

And they match the word kiki with a pointy, spiky figure.

Because in our minds, there’s this phonemic correspondences where we think of certain sounds as having certain characteristics, even though they don’t really.

So it reminds me very much of that.

But the other thing it reminds me of is really good surveys always have some kind of counterfactual in there to see how serious you are when you’re taking it.

And if you fail their kind of check questions, their check some questions, they might just throw your whole thing out.

Oh, really interesting.

Yeah, when I think of buttered ermol, I think of something that’s high fiber, but cooked down.

And the funestrata does sound more, you know, it’s definitely not kiki.

Yeah, it’s just something with a little cheese and cream, right?

Maybe some mushrooms in there.

Those might be fake words, but this is a real show.

We are real hosts, not AI, and we give you real answers, not from AI.

Call us 877-929-9673 and find dozens of ways to talk to us through our website at waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Margo and I’m calling from Portland, Oregon.

Hey Margo, welcome. What’s up?

I grew up in a Vietnamese family on my mom’s side.

And since I was little, they spoke Vietnamese and I would notice certain language patterns.

There were a lot of French loan words that were expected, especially with the history.

But sometimes there would be English sprinkled in, and I always wondered why.

And also with my Korean and Spanish speaking friends growing up, they had a lot of like official English loan words in their respective languages.

And sometimes those words would have a completely different meaning.

And so my question is, how do words from one language evolve into another?

And what causes an English word to kind of develop into a completely different meaning in a different culture?

There are a lot of different ways that languages mix.

They can make creoles, they can make pigeons, and there’s a little bit of difference between the two.

But more or less, they’re both about two or more languages brushing up against each other,

Usually because there’s multilingualism happening.

And people who speak both or two or more languages often will take the word or the syntax out of one language and use it for another.

Either for simplicity’s sake because that’s what they know better or because they think it’s more appropriate.

Or because the language that they’re using, that they’re borrowing from, has a greater inventory of ideas or terms for what they’re talking about.

So we can talk about Vietnamese a little bit and be specific.

If you look at Vietnamese, it’s not just French.

Of course, there is French there because of the French colonization of Vietnam.

So a lot of Americans will have heard of banh mi, which is a type of sandwich.

And this comes from the French pain de mie.

And then the Vietnamese word for coffee, it comes from the French word café.

And then the Vietnamese word for train station, it’s spelled G-A.

I don’t know how you would say that.

My Vietnamese is non-existent.

But it comes from the French word gare.

G-A-R-E meaning train station.

But older than that, Vietnamese is, has maybe 30% or more Vietnamese comes from older forms of Chinese.

Old Chinese and Middle Chinese.

And so there’s words like the word for student or book or freedom.

All of these have Chinese roots.

So all of this has happened because people live in multilingual environments, either in the home or the workplace or just in the community.

And languages don’t have these strict walls between them because they don’t have strict walls in our heads.

We know we mix all of our languages that we know kind of into one big pot and pull something out when it seems appropriate.

Wow, that’s really interesting. And I guess I was kind of wondering, not just for maybe Vietnamese, but for like another language. What are, I guess, what are the origins of like official loan words where it becomes so ingrained in the culture or in Korean, my friend that’s Korean, or especially her parents, they’ll kind of use English words exclusively for words that I guess were originally Korean.

And I would kind of ask her, like, oh, is that like part of the language?

She’s like, oh, yeah, that’s just they’re not just using English.

That’s just kind of how all Koreans kind of say a certain word specifically like for phone.

And I was kind of wondering why do you kind of certain words just kind of, I guess, are quote unquote loanwords, but just become so ingrained that they’re kind of officially part of another language.

Sure. Yeah, we can talk about that.

And I used Vietnamese as an example just because you have experience in it.

But I just want to say that all of this happens to every language.

Any naturally existing language, that is a language that isn’t invented just like Esperanto or Klingon, all natural languages borrow from other languages, either in a small way or a large way.

So just like Korean, Vietnamese has borrowed the words for internet and email and smartphone from English.

And there’s a lot of this has to do with cultural and political and financial hegemony.

That is the dominance of English in these different parts of our community, in politics, in finance, in education, in the internet, in technology.

And because of that dominance of English in these environments, its words are far more likely to spread to other countries.

Whether this is good or bad is not for me to say, but I do know that many governments that run official language institutions like the French government and the Russian government do try to find non-English words to replace these English terms when they start to become too dominant.

It’s hard to do, but they do attempt it.

And I don’t know if South Korea has one of these academies.

The influence of English on South Korean language comes from the American occupation of South Korea, from the Korean War, because of the Americans being there physically as a military and political force and having influence over culture and technology and politics.

Wow. That’s really, really fascinating. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Sure. Thanks for calling.

All right. Take care, Mario. Bye-bye.

You too. Bye.

Wherever you are in the world, we’d love to hear from you.

There are lots of ways to reach us.

Go to our website, waywordradio.org, slash contact, and you’ll find a list there.

Here’s a line I really like from a short story by Irish novelist Edna O’Brien.

In Madame Cassandra, the narrator is walking outdoors on a hot, sunny day.

And she says, I always love the way the bees snuggle into the foxglove for the coolth and the nectar.

For the coolth.

You know, that’s not that common a word, C-O-O-L-T-H.

But it means coolness.

And it’s now mostly literary or archaic.

But it’s just such a lovely word for the coolth and the nectar.

I’ve seen it used like in rock and roll criticism of albums where they talk about the cool of a performer.

Right, right.

That way it’s sort of humorous, right?

Well, maybe, but also kind of respectful.

The cool of David Bowie, you know.

Oh, definitely.

Yeah.

I just really like that line.

We’d love to hear what you’re reading.

We like your recommendations and we’d like to hear your favorite passages.

877-929-9673.

And email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Bill, and I’m calling from the Hudson Valley in New York.

Oh, beautiful country up there along the river.

Hi, Bill. Welcome to the show.

Hi.

What’s on your mind?

My question was about something that my grandma texted to my dad.

So she was watching a political rally, and she said that a politician gave a stem winder speech.

And I was wondering what a stem winder is.

A stem winder of a speech.

What was your impression that she meant?

Something good.

Bill, back in the early 1800s, people would tell time using a pocket watch.

You know, those old-fashioned ones with the numbers all around it.

And pocket watches were like an old-fashioned clock that you could just fit in your hand and then stick in your pocket and carry around.

Back in those days, the watches didn’t run on batteries, and so you had to wind it up to make it keep working after a few hours.

So this is where the word stem winder comes from, because back then you had to use like a tiny key to wind it up, like a key not any bigger than your thumbnail.

And you would stick it in the watch and you would turn it.

And that was a big hassle because, you know, it was a hassle to keep track of the key.

It was easy to lose.

But then in the 1840s, somebody invented a watch that had a little stem sticking out of it with a tiny knob on it.

And you could wind that little knob on the stem.

And you didn’t have to use a key, so it was really convenient.

And this type of watch was called a stem winder.

And it was so convenient and so popular that people not only started referring to those clocks, those little watches, as a stem winder, they started referring to anything that was excellent or outstanding as a stem winder because they liked those watches so much.

Is that more than you thought you would ever learn about watches?

Yeah, probably.

Is this the kind of word that you think that you’ll use, Bill?

Maybe.

Yeah, okay.

Do you have a watch yourself, Bill?

No.

How do you tell time then?

With like an analog clock.

Got it, analog.

Yeah, that’s why I felt like I had to explain that there used to be clocks that were round with numbers.

Well, Bill, we appreciate you calling with the question.

I hope that was everything you needed to know.

Okay.

Yeah, and stick that word in a school paper and see what your teacher says.

Yeah.

All right, bye-bye.

Take care of yourself.

Bye.

Bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Well, you can spill your stem-winding question into our voicemail at 877-929-9673.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lee calling from Charleston, South Carolina.

Hey, Lee, we’re glad to have you. What’s up?

Well, I have a phrase that my dad used to say.

We grew up in Athens, Georgia, and we would vacation down at the beach, usually the coast of South Carolina or Georgia, over many years, my family and then the extended family and the grandchildren.

And invariably there would be a day or two of bad weather, but at some point my dad would call out to the house, kitten’s britches.

And at that, everybody would run out to the beach because we knew that meant that there was some blue sky.

And it was just a thing that we all did.

And eventually, I think when I was older, I said, what’s the story with that? What does that mean?

And he said, well, it means there’s enough blue sky to make a kitten a pair of britches.

And I just wondered, is that something that my sweet dad dreamed up? Or is it something that’s original that you’ve heard other people use?

Your sweet dad.

I like that, that you call him your sweet dad.

He was very sweet, especially when he got older and we called him granddaddy.

Then it became an absolute icon of a phrase.

Yeah, that’s lovely.

No, it’s not his expression, though, but it is the kind of expression that I think requires a certain attitude toward the world.

Talk about a little bit of blue appearing as enough blue to make kittens britches.

And there are variations on this.

Some people would say a Dutchman’s coat or Dutchman’s trousers or pants for a sailor or an old woman’s apron or a handkerchief or a cat’s vest.

Just enough of these expressions.

And they all have to do with this stereotypical blue used to color fabric.

This well-known, very specific blue that looked like the sky that you would use for a relatively inexpensive fabric.

Like you might put on an apron or you might, you know, sailors not wearing velvet pants, you know.

It’s something, it’s a rough course fabric.

Yeah.

It’s funny when I tell other people, I recently told a group of friends of mine that we’re all going to the beach and they all just, and it was exactly the time that the tropical storm Debbie was coming through.

And she said they were all kind of hovered inside and then suddenly they saw it and they all yelled kitten screeches and got a big kick out of it.

And it’s a thing now that I’ve introduced all these people in Charleston.

And I will say my northern friends get a big kick out of it.

But I always thought it was very sweet.

It is sweet.

Yeah.

And it goes back to the 19th century, so the 1800s.

So there’s a lot of depth to it.

And there are some expressions about predicting the weather based on when and how that patch of blue sky appears.

But, of course, there’s no real truth to them.

But they’re out there, all kinds of weather lore and traditional sayings about a patch that’s a blue sky indicating that the weather’s going to turn this way or that.

Yeah, and if they’re kitten britches, they’re not very big at all.

That’s the other piece of this.

They aren’t.

It was just enough for us to get super excited and run out.

Because if you’ve been in town on a family vacation, you know it’s time to get out.

Yeah, you’re on vacation.

You want good skies at the beach.

Lee, this is a wonderful memory.

Yeah, thank you for sharing with us.

We really appreciate it.

Okay, thanks so much.

Enjoy your show.

You take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, no matter where you are in the world, we’re waiting to talk with you.

You can go to our website to find all kinds of ways to contact us.

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We’d love to hear from you, no matter where you are in the world.

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Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

Thank you.