Lie Like a Rug (episode #1464)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, a show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. On our Facebook group, someone named Tola Begbaji wrote,

I just wrote a chat to someone that struck me as funny. It’s really coming down up here.

Are there any other sentences like this where you use opposite words right next to each other, like down up? It’s really coming down up here.

Coming down up here. So where are they? They’re like in the northern part of the country.

Yeah.

And the rain is coming down.

Yeah.

It’s really coming down up here.

So those two prepositions next to each other are kind of weird.

A little preposition pile up.

Yes.

And then we heard from a lot of other people who were chiming in.

Somebody said, I can’t stand sitting down for so long.

I can’t stand sitting down.

Or somebody else wrote, turn left right here.

And then somebody else wrote, don’t make the wrong right turn or you’ll be left right back where you started.

It’s like my shoes are out in the garage, out in.

Right.

Some of them make sense, right?

Or come in out of the rain.

Coming out of the rain.

Right?

Coming out.

Or like maybe you’re dozing in a chair in front of the TV and your wife says, wake up, it’s time to go to sleep.

Yeah.

Well, that’s the famous kid thing, right?

Kids come up to you, they’ll come into your bedroom, you know, like 4:30 in the morning.

They’ll be like, are you sleeping?

You’re like, yes, but you’re not.

But you were.

And that’s what you mean.

I guess the takeaway here is you can’t look at English too closely.

No, no.

Turn away.

Shield your eyes.

You’ll be blinded.

877-929-9673.

Send us all your language, slang, weird, quirky stuff to words@waywordradio.org.

And talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Jackie Dozier calling in from Shreveport, Louisiana.

How are you this morning?

Excellent.

Jackie, how are you?

Hi, Jackie.

Very well.

What can we help with?

Well, my dad used to have the same.

My dad was born in 1916, World War II vet.

We started out in the Army as a cook.

My mother was a very good cook.

Betty Crocker was her nickname.

And she used to fix us pretty good meals.

And my dad would always compliment her by saying,

I have dined sufficiently, and the food was well seracified.

And I’ve been trying to find the meaning or the spelling of seracified.

I was on program one time in Shreveport to do the blessing big event, about 600 people in attendance.

Judge Greg Mathis was our keynote speaker.

And I blessed the food, and I used that term.

And there was such a roar of laughter in the audience.

And everybody said, where did you get that from?

What does that mean?

And I thought, all I could say is I figured what my dad was saying was the food was well prepared and it tastes good.

Yeah.

I couldn’t find the spelling of it or anything.

So can you guys help me with that, please?

Oh, yeah.

We sure can.

Absolutely.

Wow.

I know it’s been 10 years.

Jackie, we sure can.

Let’s hear that phrase again.

I have dined sufficiently, and the food was well seracified.

This is great, Jackie.

We have a long list of variations of this.

This kind of construction has been around for a long time.

And it’s exactly, as you said, sort of this formal-sounding pronouncement after you’ve eaten.

Yeah.

It breaks down into two general parts, one of which is refusing the food,

The other of which is sort of elegantly, daintily explaining why you’re refusing more food,

Which is exactly what you did, right?

Yeah.

See, my dad was all the way in the connotation that it was a compliment.

It was something good.

And so maybe he had sufficient enough food, and I don’t know.

So you guys helped me with that.

And it’s sort of fun, too, though, right?

It is.

I’m telling you, it was a big laughter.

I got text messages, e-mails.

What does that mean?

I thought, oh, I got myself in trouble because I can’t explain it.

There’s a wonderful article that we can send you to online in American Speech from how long ago was it?

1980.

1980.

And Frederick G. Cassidy from the University of Wisconsin collected a whole lot of these.

Saffancified, Saffensified, Saffonsified, Saffunsified.

20 or more, by my count.

Yeah, Farancified, Sirancified, Sirfanciful.

It just goes on and on and on.

And it’s got that common thread that we’ve been talking about.

But there are just lots of different variations.

You can just picture all these people pushing back from the table.

And so they’re all kind of ridiculous, hyper-exaggerated versions of the word satisfied, right?

Yeah.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Makes sense.

Yeah, and mixing in sufficient too.

Yeah.

Aha.

And so some of the versions that he has in this article,

My sufficiency is fully sarancified anymore would be obnoxious to my fastidious taste.

Oh, I love that one.

An older one, I have had a genteel sufficiency.

Any more would be superfluity.

Wow.

So I guess that’s it.

So lots of variations.

You say about 20 of them?

At least.

At least.

And all different combinations of the first part of the phrase and the last part of the phrase.

Wow.

Thank you guys so very much.

Take care now.

I appreciate that.

I’m going to share that with my other nine siblings as well.

Oh, boy, yeah.

Keep it going.

Yes, sir.

You got that right.

We’re going to have to do it in honor of Dad.

Oh, that’s so sweet.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

And we will put a link to that on our website.

Absolutely.

One of the things about this phrase is that it’s fun to say and it’s fun to hear.

And it’s a mystery when people ask us about it, right?

So when it comes up in email or voicemail, people are befuddled, just like Jackie was.

But the relief, the palpable relief that there’s an answer and a source that other people are doing it to.

Yeah, we just heard it, right?

877-929-9673.

Hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

Earlier, we were talking about prepositional pileups, like it’s really coming down up here.

In 1957, James Thurber did something similar in a book.

He wrote,

The day I got dressed and was about to leave the hospital,

I heard a nurse and an intern discussing a patient who had gotten something in his eye.

It’s a bad city to get something in your eye in, the nurse said.

Yes, the intern agreed, but there isn’t a better place to get something in your eye out in.

I really feel sorry for anybody who’s trying to learn English.

Those are outstanding.

Outstanding?

Yes, in a field.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you? My name is Brooke Barnum. I’m calling from Coronado, California.

Hello, Brooke. Welcome to the show.

Hi. So I was sitting at lunch with my father at the retirement facility where he lives,

And there was a gentleman that I had spoken with before, and I knew he was from New York,

And I said, you’re from Brooklyn, correct? And he said, no, I’m from the Bronx. And did you know

That the Bronx is one of a couple places where you have to use the word the in front of it.

You don’t say the Brooklyn or the Manhattan, but you do say the Bronx. And he said, and I believe

The Vatican is another place. And I thought to myself, oh, I’m going to have to call away with

Words for this because I wasn’t sure. I’ve never heard that before. So I’m calling you to ask you

About that. Man, it’s true. There are only a handful of these, right? Countries, cities,

Where you use that definite article, the Bronx. Like it’s special, right? Like it deserves honors

And awards, the Bronx. Not any old Bronx, but the Bronx. Yeah. And it’s not as if there’s a hard

And fast rule about it. There’s kind of a tendency when you’re talking about a name that has a

History that has to do with a feature of geography, like a river. You know, we talk about the Amazon

Or the Gambia.

Yeah, like a topographical feature.

Like think of the Hague in the Netherlands, right?

The Low Countries.

Oh, right, right.

Yeah, the Hague comes from an old word that means hedge in Dutch

And has to do with an area that was, I guess, surrounded by a hedge.

Surrounded the court, I believe, where they met.

Something like that.

Yeah, so they’re little echoes like that.

And so with the Bronx, it’s called the Bronx because it was named after the Bronx River, right?

Which was named after a guy whose last name was Bronx.

Right, who had a farm that was basically most of what today is the Bronx.

Yeah.

So his name, which was spelled differently, was changed to B-R-O-N-X, applied to the river.

And then when they were looking for a name after they took that land from Westchester, which is just north of New York City, they decided to take the name of the river to apply to the borough and thus the Bronx.

Oh, gotcha.

Oh, interesting.

But each one of these places has its own story.

Yeah.

And usually the tendency is to lose those.

But, you know, we talk about the United States, right?

We talk about the United States.

We talk about the United Kingdom.

But an interesting one of more recent vintage is Ukraine.

You know, we used to talk about the Ukraine.

But that term apparently means borderlands.

And so that’s why it’s sort of a politically sensitive thing to say.

So now we don’t use the definite article.

Right, right.

Because it’s a country in and of itself, Ukraine.

Okay.

Islands a lot of times, the Bahamas, the Philippines.

My favorite of all of these, and it’s kind of going off track a little bit here, but it’s the La Brea Tar Pits, which is just so full of redundancies, it’s ridiculous.

Yeah.

The La Brea Tar Pits.

Oh, funny.

Okay.

Well, good.

Well, thank you.

I love listening to your show.

That’s our pleasure.

Thank you for calling us so much.

Okay.

Have a great day.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, this is a show about words and language and anything to do with speaking and writing.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

The other day I felt compelled to go back and watch the 1994 movie called The Madness of King George.

Have you seen this?

No.

It’s about the monarch who is going mad.

He uses a phrase in there that I had to go look up, kicked over the traces.

You know this phrase?

Yeah, this is from horses or oxen.

It is indeed.

The gear used to hitch them to a wagon or plow or what have you.

Yes, yes.

That long leather strip that holds them to the plow or the wagon or whatever is called the trace.

And so if you kick over the traces, it’s like you’re getting so agitated that your legs go up over the traces.

And you get all tangled up.

It’s used to describe, say, somebody who goes off to college and kicks over the traces for the first time, you know, just goes wild.

Right.

They’re no longer like just plowing those steady straight rows.

Right, right.

And obeying the whip of another person.

Yeah, yeah, which makes me think of the word delirium, which has to do with a furrow.

And if you are going out of the furrow, delirium, I think in Latin is…

It means to go out of a furrow?

Yeah, yeah, delirium.

Oh, interesting.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Have you ever seen those videos where they show surfers riding a cool wave and the dolphins are in there too?

Yes, riding it with them.

There’s a phrase for that in surf language.

There is?

Yes.

It’s when anybody does it, not just the dolphins.

The dolphins are raiding the lineup.

So if there’s a bunch of people lined up trying to catch the great wave and you come up kind of out of turn at the last minute and like take a great wave for somebody who’s been waiting can get it, you are raiding the lineup.

Raiding, R-A-I-D.

Yeah, yeah.

Like raiding, like people attacking something.

Okay.

Yeah, I think the one time I tried surfing, I accidentally raided the lineup.

Yeah.

You learn where you are, who’s next.

It’s a challenge.

How to get out of the way.

Trust me.

That sort of stuff.

Yeah.

It’s really hard.

This is a show about language examined through family, history, and culture.

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, our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hey, Grant.

Hey, Martha.

What is up, dude?

You know, I realized recently that I haven’t seen, actually seen you guys in person for months.

It’s been like eight months.

And, you know, in the meantime, I’ve been taking your messages.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

I have a whole bunch of those little pink memo sheets that you see at a desk.

I bet you want these, I’m sure.

Now, I can read the names, but I can’t read the part that says re, R-E, a colon.

You know the re.

That’s where I write what the message is about.

I have a vague memory of what these are about.

Maybe together we can figure out the re from the person.

Okay.

Okay.

For example, a Mr. Don Draper call from Sterling Cooper Draper Price.

I think he’s encouraging you to comprehend the meaning of written matter.

Read.

Oh, I thought it was re-add.

You’re right.

It’s re-add.

Something about an add.

No, it’s re-add.

It’s re-add.

You’re right.

Let’s try to figure out a few more of these.

They all begin with R-E, of course.

This one is from the casting department of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, and Price.

They want to talk about an atomic pile used to create nuclear energy?

They do?

Yeah.

A reactor?

Yes, exactly.

Oh, they want to talk about an actor.

I thought they wanted to talk about a reactor.

Okay, very good.

Well, this one is from the great impressionist Rich Little.

Wow.

He needs to talk to you about harvesting crops.

Imitating.

Reaping?

Reaping.

Oh, re-aping.

Re-aping.

Oh, I see.

Now, you’re helping me out with these because I just can’t get them, obviously.

That’s very good.

That’s very good.

This one is from the fictional character Sam Malone.

Look at that.

He wants to talk to you about thick steel wires used to strengthen concrete.

Rebar.

Rebar.

Oh, rebar.

Oh, he wants to talk about the – oh, I get it.

Rebar.

Got it.

Got it.

This one is from the late Betty James.

Now, she ran the company that made Slinkies.

She wanted to talk to you about the kickback from a rifle?

Slinky, Slinky.

Oh, recoil.

Oh, that’s what it is.

She wants to talk about recoils.

Right.

Okay, good, good.

Now, this one is from the American Philately Society.

They want to talk to you about bringing back lost memories?

Something with stamps.

I know.

Perforations.

Remember?

Letters.

Well, what do you do with those stamps?

What does the American Philately Society do with stamps?

They save, collect, recollect.

Oh, that’s right.

They want to talk about recollecting, right?

Yes.

Here’s a while you were out memo from, oh, former Tour de France winner, Greg LeMond.

He wants to talk to you about making the earth greener and using things more than once, that kind of stuff.

Recycling.

Right, right.

Recycling, of course.

This is a message from Quasimodo, you know, the bell ringer at Notre Dame.

He wants to talk to you about unmaking a law.

Unmaking a law.

Repeal.

Oh, repeal.

Oh, repeal.

He wants to talk about peeling.

Okay, peeling the bells.

Got it.

Okay, guys, those are all your messages.

We are so glad we could help you with that, John.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, no, I feel bad that I didn’t do better in taking the messages.

What can I say?

Get on that lease right away.

Get on that lease.

It’s been like eight months.

Thanks, dude.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Next week, guys, take care.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673, or join us on our Facebook group.

Just look for A Way with Words and join thousands of other people talking about language.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Morgan from San Antonio.

Hello, Morgan.

How you doing?

So, over the holiday, I had made a post on an international social media site about getting pleasantly toasted.

And apparently half the people that read my post thought I was talking about marijuana, and the other half understood that I was talking about alcohol.

And so I did a little bit of research.

European people understood I meant alcohol.

East Coast people understood it was alcohol.

And everybody on the West Coast thought I meant marijuana.

So I did a bit of research myself, and I thought toasted probably was related to, like, toasting alcohol.

That might be where it came from.

But I was a little interested in y’all’s feedback, possibly on what you think.

Toasting alcohol like raising a glass to someone?

Yeah, like standing up and toasting at a meal.

It’s a good theory.

I think it’s an accidental connection.

More likely, it’s just because there are a zillion slang words that all have to do with some damage being done to the body.

And a lot of them also serve as slang for being killed or being injured.

Like to be wasted or to be stoned or to be blasted or to be zonked.

You’re bombed.

You’re bombed, yeah.

And so we have just so many of these that we’re probably up in the thousands of slang words for having some kind of intoxication.

What’s really interesting to me on this is I’m not surprised at all, by the way, that there’s some kind of regional division on this.

It’s that it mirrors so well the problem with the word stoned, although that one’s generational.

We’ve talked about this on the show before, where stoned for people, let’s say, 15 and over could easily be used for having too much alcohol.

Whereas stoned for people, let’s say, 40 and younger, there’s kind of a gray decade in there, mostly means high on marijuana.

And so it’s just kind of changed over time.

But in general, toasted still means intoxication.

It’s just what is your chemical, right?

I guess that makes sense.

Yeah.

Is your chemical going to be the stuff in marijuana?

Is your chemical going to be the stuff in your alcoholic drink?

There’s an earlier use of it has to do with being executed on an electric chair, which is not common slang.

But yeah, so it’s definitely got some other slang uses there.

Yeah.

I want to throw in a third slang usage that started in probably the 90s and continued well up till today.

And it’s a toast that just means tired or extremely exhausted.

And so you’ve got a third use there.

But this is the thing about slang.

Slang is not as firmly fixed as what we might call standard English.

And I’m trying to say standard with air quotes around it to suggest some doubt about what standard means.

But in general, the stuff we learn in schools or in our textbooks is firm.

You know, it’s exact or mostly exact about the stuff that we learn from our peers and the stuff we learn in the playground or the locker room.

That stuff is all over the place and it changes from day to day and year to year.

Makes sense, Morgan?

Yeah, I know that’s a lot of information and it all makes a lot of sense.

One thing I want to applaud is your field work.

I love the fact that you spent the time to figure out that there’s a West and East vision on this.

That’s pretty cool.

Yeah.

So what are you going to tell them in 140 characters?

Well, it’s not Twitter, but I think I’ll probably go back and make another post about it and see what people say.

They’re actually really, it’s a really involved community where you can communicate.

So I would be interested to go back and give them y’all’s feedback and possibly podcast to the show and see what they say.

There you go.

Yeah, put a link to our show on there.

I would propose that you do kind of a survey and figure out where they’re from and which definition they use and see if you can prove on a map that there is a geographical division on the meanings of this word.

That would be cool.

I’d also like to know their ages.

Yeah, ages too.

Why not?

We can totally do that.

Yes, it sounds like we’re going to have a follow-up.

Let us know, all right?

Sure.

Y’all have a wonderful day.

You too.

Take care now.

Thanks, Morgan.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I love it.

She comes with evidence and theories and a lot of fun.

That’s cool.

Exocated goes back to a Greek word.

Ultimately, that means an arrow.

So the tox root there is the poison arrow.

You’re intaking toxins.

Pretty much.

877-929-9673.

A lawyer that you and I know, we were in a meeting together, remember this, taught us something neither one of us knew.

And I think we both wrote it down.

I’m going to share it here.

Do you remember minders, grinders, and finders?

Yes.

Right?

These are the people who get the business and do the business and keep the business for a law firm.

Minders, grinders, and finders.

Cool phrase.

But think of how many parts of life that applies to, right?

If you’re in sales, minders, grinders, and finders makes sense.

Then you’re the finder.

Yeah.

Finder.

Maybe I should order them differently, right?

Finder, grinder, and minder, right?

Get the business.

Do what it takes to keep the business.

Keep grinding on it.

Keep grinding along in the business.

Something like that.

I bet there are lots of different versions of that.

Yeah.

Let us know.

Send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Andre Madar calling from Indianapolis.

Hi, Andre.

Welcome.

What’s up?

What can we do for you?

Well, I kind of thought about this when you guys were talking about the fickle finger of fate recently.

It’s another bit of what I think is maybe military slang.

Okay.

My father-in-law uses this phrase to mean to take a shortcut.

He says, cut a chogi.

And I’m not really sure about the spelling, but he uses it to mean, you know, cut through that parking lot over there.

Take a shortcut.

Cut a chogi.

And why do you think it’s military?

Well, he was stationed in Southern California during the Korean conflict.

And that’s where he says he picked it up.

Did he go to Korea?

No, he was in ground operations at a couple of air bases.

So you said Chogi?

Chogi.

I had no idea what the spelling is.

To me, it sounded like it might be Mexican slang because, well, he’s right down near the Mexican border there.

But I didn’t know how to spell it and couldn’t really find much online.

Well, your tip is the Korean War, the time that it happened, because it turns out that it comes from the Korean language.

And the military serving in Korea picked it up there and used it in a wide variety of contexts, some meaning to hurry or to assist in a speedy way, to leave quickly, things like that.

And it probably comes from a Korean phrase meaning to go there.

I see in one of my war talk dictionaries, my military slang dictionaries, that it’s listed as pronounced as shogi rather than chogi.

But I could see how those pronunciations, one would blend into the other.

And it’s usually spelled C-H-O-G-I.

But obviously, since it’s a slang term, there’s a lot of variation there.

C-H-O-A-G, G-Y, G-I-E, things like that.

Right.

Wow.

When I talked to him more recently, he added the definition, let’s get the hell out of here.

Yeah.

To go quickly, right?

Yeah.

Let’s get out of here.

Huh.

One of the earliest forms of it, it just referred to a local, a local Korean who was assisting the U.S. Military in whatever they were trying to do.

And one theory has it.

It’s not just necessarily from that phrase meaning to go there or to go.

It may actually just be when you listen to the Korean language, you think you hear the words shogi or chogi a lot.

There’s a wide variety of ways that that might come up because the equivalent of the word there sounds like that.

This is according to what I’m reading.

I don’t actually speak Korean, so I’m taking other people’s word for it.

Got it.

So when you hear it, it sounds like a lot of yogi chokes.

I was curious about the Mexican issue, and I was way off.

I can’t think of anything that would be related to Spanish there.

Interesting.

I’ve never heard of this.

That’s really cool.

There was a small amount of language that came back from the Korean War, but much of it didn’t last.

A little bit, including this phrase, did last through the Vietnam War.

A lot of the same people served in both conflicts, but after the Vietnam War, it now is basically a relic of history that appears in war fiction.

And occasionally, people remember it from their days in the military, like your father-in-law, and keep using it.

Yeah. Did it ever spread beyond the military? I had never heard it before I met him.

No, no. You’ll find occasionally people will say it, but they always understand, almost always I’ve seen,

They’re like, yeah, I learned it from my father who was in the military,

Or I learned it from my brother who was in the military.

There’s almost always an obvious connection there.

Right.

Andre, thank you so much for calling.

That’s really cool.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That clears it up.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, we live in a military town.

San Diego is one of the biggest military areas in the United States,

And we always welcome calls from the military if you want to talk about your language,

Maybe the things you learned from your father or your grandfather that are different than what you say

Now that you serve in the military.

That stuff always amazes me.

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

A friend of mine sent me a link to a video, and part of the video included a simulated chat room from the early 1990s.

And my friend was saying, remember these?

When, you know, the text would just go across the screen like that.

And I wrote her back and I said, the one thing that it’s missing is the sialagogic sound of the modem.

Sialagogic, it comes from a Greek word that means saliva.

And the agogic is like a demagogue or something that drives people.

So you think it sounds like a slavering monster, the sound of the modem?

When I used to hear a modem in the early 1990s, I would just salivate.

Oh, I see.

So it’s cueing in you, this response, I’m about to go online and wonderful things are about to happen.

Yes, remember that sound?

Yeah, I do.

I know you had that experience, right?

I absolutely did.

I mean, if I played that sound right now, wouldn’t you start drooling?

Probably, yeah.

Yes.

There was a particular time where I was running a tourist store in the Virgin Islands where I had no internet.

But in the shop that I ran, they had a PC that they used for some bookkeeping.

And when the manager wasn’t around, I was running the store, but they had another branch.

I would get on there and do this old-fashioned dial-up to a free net.

And it was the loudest sound.

And I had to cover the speaker so everyone else couldn’t hear that I was fetching my mail down.

It was weird.

This is the 90s, so early 90s.

Fetching your mail.

Fetching my mail.

You had to watch it come in.

That’s how slow it was.

Like a message every 15 seconds or something.

Ridiculous.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Travis from San Diego.

Hi, Travis.

Welcome to the show. How can we help?

So my mom, when my brother and I would get in trouble,

If we were doing something egregious, she would say,

You lie like a rug and you hang like a cheap curtain.

And that always hit me like I really need to not be doing that

Because I’m upsetting my mom.

So I was just curious where that comes from, if you’ve heard it before.

This would be something like bouncing a ball in the house?

No, this is something more like caught lying over something important.

It’s like a big offense, not something as small as that.

Caught lying like a rug.

Exactly, yeah.

Origins, we can help you a little bit on this.

It’s interesting.

This is a slang term that’s made of a bit of a transition here.

It’s clearly based on the pun, right?

Because the verb to lie has a couple different, several different meanings, a bunch of different meanings.

And so it’s a little joke on the fact that a rug can lie on the floor, but you can also tell a lie.

And the curtain part, I don’t think I’ve ever heard before.

I wonder if that was her innovation, and I don’t know of any source that has that particular addition to it.

There are other vague additions to it.

But the source of this is really interesting, because it didn’t always mean that particular lie.

There was, as of the 1920s and possibly earlier, a phrase making the rounds where you would talk about punching somebody or hitting somebody so that they would fall down.

And so you might say, I’ll lay you out like a wagon or I will lay you out like a rug, meaning I will punch you so that you fall down on the ground like a rug.

What it looks like here is that that particular pun made the rounds,

And then the verb to lie kind of inserted itself in there,

And it became about the speech act rather than the physical act.

Yeah, the lie part, the lie like a rug part, I figured, you know, meant about lying like a rug.

Rugs lie.

But the hang like a cheap curtain part, that always made me think.

Always curious about, you know, what exactly that means,

Like hanging for your crime or, you know, what could that mean?

Yeah, I don’t know.

Good question.

It’s possible it’s her own innovation or that she picked it up from a source that I’ve never heard of.

I can’t even venture a guess here.

I’m not entirely sure what she meant, but that always stuck with me.

And whenever she said it, it really made me feel bad about what I did wrong.

And you changed your ways, right?

Helped me correct my ways.

Yeah, of course.

Absolutely.

Well, Travis, if anybody else had a parent who said that to them, we’re going to hear about it.

So stay tuned when you’re going to the park in places, okay?

Because we might have more for you.

Yes, ma’am, I will.

Okay.

Thanks so much.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you very much.

All right. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

So the original origin of that actually had to do with knocking someone unconscious.

You would lay them out, meaning punch them so that they would fall down on the ground,

And they would be lying there.

And so that lie, lying there, combines with the other lie, and there’s a transference of meaning, and the joke kind of continues, but it has a new usage in American slang.

I made a note of this.

I don’t remember the source.

I’m sorry, but I know that it was from an old book.

It was talking about somebody being stingy and serving food to somebody else at the table and called them a belly robber.

A belly robber.

Right.

I had this happen once ages ago.

We went to a friend’s house, and everybody bought tons of food.

But the only thing that they put out out of all the food that everyone bought was, like, four crackers on a plate.

Like, eight people sitting around going, like, but wait a second.

I brought stuff that I gave to you in the kitchen that you should be putting back out for us to eat, right?

But that’s belly robbing.

877-929-9673.

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.

In his book, Humans of New York, Brandon Stanton interviewed a man who said something that I think is perfect for our show.

It’s about language.

He said, I’m learning to be more careful with my words.

Words that seem meaningless at the time can end up having a lot of power.

Seeds that you didn’t even intend to plant can fall off you and start growing in people.

That’s perfect, right?

Yes.

And who said that?

Yes.

Did I get a name?

No, I didn’t get a name.

Oh, that’s wonderful. And was that from the book or the Facebook or?

It was from the book.

And you see this as a parent or if you’re around young kids, say nieces and nephews, grandkids,

That something slips out of your mouth and then you hear it come out of theirs.

I’m not just talking about the four-letter words, but anything that you say and the ideas behind it

Is loaded right up into their brains and it becomes a part of how they think and who they are.

You know what? I had that strange experience.

I was in New York. I was traveling. I was in the airport.

And a woman I hadn’t seen in a very long time since college came up to me.

And I didn’t recognize her at first.

And she reintroduced herself.

And I remembered who she was and how we’d met.

And we were, you know, not close friends in college, but we were friends of friends.

And she said, I did the thing that you said I should do.

And I was like, I don’t.

Yeah.

And how is jail?

I don’t know.

How is jail?

And, you know, she said, you told me that I needed to, you know, that I was unsure of my degree program.

And I don’t want to be too specific.

Because I don’t want to talk about our business too clearly on the air.

But she said, you told me that the degree program that I wanted to do didn’t sound like me.

And that the other thing that I thought was a hobby, you said it sounded exactly like me.

And I might look into that again and do that thing.

She says, I’m doing it.

I’m fully degreed.

I got my master’s.

I’m working on my doctorate.

I started internships.

I’m doing the whole thing.

And she says, you did that for me.

And I was like stunned and amazed and really happy for her and delighted to have that connection.

And it perfectly illustrates exactly what Humans of New York just said to us.

Yeah, yeah. You never know the effect of your words.

You never know.

Yeah.

Tell us about a time that somebody changed you or changed your life with their words.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Zach Skolberman. I’m calling from Burlington, Vermont.

Hi, Zach. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

So a couple weeks ago, there was a caller who was talking about using the word jip as a move in Morris and wondering how to sort of transition away from using a term that has racial connotations.

You’re talking about Morris dancing, right?

Yes, Morris dancing.

I’ve had some experience with something a little similar.

I’m a swing dance instructor, West Coast Swing specifically,

And we started to transition away from gendered terminology when talking about our partners.

Instead of using the male does this, the female does this, or the man and the woman,

We’re starting to use leader and follower instead.

And it’s just something that’s kind of been pushed for the new students who have come in,

As well as some of the newer instructors.

And the transition happened really, really smoothly.

And so you didn’t run into any conflicts in your classes where people were confused by the new gender-neutral language?

No, if anything, it made things a lot clearer because oftentimes we’ll have partners dancing in their nontraditional roles.

So we will have a female lead or a male follow.

And so just specifying leads and follows makes it a lot easier for everyone to follow, for lack of a better term.

Interesting. And what were you saying before? What were the calls?

Usually it was man and woman.

So the man’s going to do this or the woman can place her hand on his chest.

Now it’s just, well, the follower can place their hand on the leader’s chest for this styling or something like that.

Okay, so this is just instruction.

I don’t know how that kind of dancing works.

You’re not calling it out like in square dancing.

It’s not like an ordered set of moves.

It’s about you create the patterns on the fly, and so with the instruction of these patterns.

Okay.

So there in Burlington, you didn’t get any resistance?

None whatsoever.

The community has been extremely supportive.

I also danced down in Boston, and it’s been a similar sort of thing.

Just because the community is a lot bigger, though, it’s been a little bit slower to get going.

But we’ve actually, we’re starting to get support with, like, the national governing body of Swank.

And they’re starting to allow for non-traditional competitions as well.

And so what are people saying about this?

I think it’s overall really, really favorable.

There have been a couple of times where people aren’t entirely on board with it

Because there’s such an attitude of support and discussion in the community

That we’re all comfortable going to that person or just talking to someone saying,

Hey, when you say this, it makes me feel uncomfortable because, well, I am a male follower,

And so dragging me away from my partner because two guys shouldn’t be dancing together,

That’s not really something we’re okay with in the community.

So now that the community support developed, it’s become the norm.

So you’re saying at the national level, though, they still do gendered dancing mostly?

So primarily, yes.

Just within the past year or so, they switched the actual regulations that say how the competitions are supposed to go.

They switched them from you must have a male lead female follow to you can dance whatever role you want.

And there’s a whole bunch of politics with that.

But they’re just starting to switch.

But West Coast Wing is a smaller community than ballroom.

And ballroom is taking a lot longer to catch up, if it ever will.

Do you know the term ambidancorous?

Yes, I identify as ambidancorous.

That means that you both lead and follow as the occasion requires, right?

Yep.

Interesting. And you wear one high heel and one flat shoe. How does that work?

Usually it’s one or the other at a time, but I can say I can rock a good pair of heels.

Nice.

And so do you think that changing the language changes people’s attitudes?

I think it does.

At the very least, it’s allowed, it’s created an atmosphere of open discussion,

Whereby making sure that we’re using this inclusive language,

It allows people to speak up without points of confusion,

And it opens the dance to people who otherwise wouldn’t feel comfortable being a part of it.

When I started, one of my really close friends was transgender,

And I told him to, well, why don’t you come to the ballroom?

And they said, well, I don’t think there would be a place for me.

Because they wouldn’t know what role to fit in.

Well, now that we’re using the more open language, there’s a lot more opportunity for non-binary individuals to come and enjoy something that may have been previously inaccessible.

Perfect summary.

Yeah.

That’s great, Zach.

I got to say that it sounds like you guys are moving the conversation along in the right direction.

Thank you.

Yeah, it’s been a long road, but it’s definitely been worth it.

We really appreciate you taking the time to tell us how it’s going there in Burlington,

And we hope to hear from everyone else in the country about this, too.

Well, thank you for having me on. Have a good one.

You too. Take care now.

Okay, thanks, Zach.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Yeah, you know, this reminds me of inclusive language in liturgy now,

Or on birth certificates or marriage certificates.

I mean, I think it makes a lot of sense.

You want to see yourself.

You want to see yourself reflected, yeah.

You want to know that if you were to walk in that door, that it’s open to you.

And the only way to do that is if things as simple as pronouns or gender are carefully considered, right?

Sometimes you don’t know what you’re walking into.

But if somebody says, oh, here’s the dances we’re going to do.

And all it says is lead and follower, leader and follower.

And it doesn’t say male and female.

You’re like, okay, yeah, I’m cool with this.

You know, I’ve often heard people say, well, it doesn’t really matter.

The language doesn’t really matter that much.

And I always say if the language doesn’t matter, then let’s say womankind rather than mankind.

If it doesn’t matter very much.

Let’s say her or she rather than.

Then we can change it.

Yeah.

If it doesn’t matter, let’s try it the other way and see if it matters to you.

If you want to read more about this, there’s a great discussion of the pros and cons on a website called Lindy Affair by a woman named Carrie Westbrook.

Just go there and look for a comparison of arguments surrounding general neutral language.

And she’s got a lot of pluses and minuses on this.

And it’s a really thoughtful consideration.

Cool.

And in the meantime, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your thoughts and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Randy.

Hi, Randy.

Where are you calling from?

Calling from Brad Rowe, Vermont.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Okay.

So I’ve heard the term very often, making ends meet.

And I’m curious about the actual, the origin of it.

I understand what it means and how it’s used, but where it comes from, I’m not sure of.

But I always get a mental image of, well, it comes down to being a meat pie.

And it’s kind of, it’s not very appetizing.

And I want to know more about it.

I want to know the original origin of it.

So hopefully you can help me.

So in your mind, it’s M-E-A-T and not M-E-E-T?

As a child, like, hearing it, I didn’t understand.

That’s just kind of how it morphed into being an adult meat pie.

So, right.

Making ends meet.

So, like, you’re putting meat on the table.

Correct.

Something like that.

I think of a meat pie, even though that has nothing to do with the connotation.

Oh, because it’s made out of the leftovers, the ends, and they’re all together,

And you make one more meal out of the meat?

Yes.

Oh, I could see.

So the scraps, the bit of this and the bit of that that aren’t a full dish in themselves.

Yeah.

Okay.

That’s very picturesque.

Yeah.

It’s not one of the prevailing theories.

No.

No.

I hope not.

Good.

No, because the meat in this sense is M-E-E-T.

To meat.

Like for two things to meet, to go together.

Right.

And we’re not really sure of how that shapes up, how the origin shapes up, but it could have to do with tailoring and dressmaking, you know, when you’re trying to make sure you have enough cloth available to meet so that your garment covers whatever you are trying to cover.

Some people have suggested that it comes from the idea of splicing ends of ropes together to make sure that you’re covering whatever you need to cover with the length of that rope.

And there are phrases like that in French and Polish.

It just has to do with things coming together.

And another theory, actually, is that it has to do with a ledger and the income and the outgo.

And you want the bottom of that ledger to meet.

You want to meet your expenses, in other words.

Although the phrase—

Oh, right. Like an accounting.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

The phrase is older than double entry accounting, though.

So that kind of doesn’t really work.

There’s another thing about that.

I want to talk about the rope one in a second, which is a lot of people favorite because people love for some reason the nautically originated words.

But it’s the idea also of scraps of rope, which you just, you know, broken rope or old rope that you then splice together.

So you have one long, useful rope.

So that kind of matches a little bit with what your vision in your mind of the meat pie was made out of scraps.

Right.

I believe, I have a strong feeling that what we’re talking about here is the money lasting through the end of the calendar period.

Like, I have enough money to pay my rent at the end of the month means the end of my money matches the end of the month.

Or the end of whatever amount of money matches the end of whatever calendar period.

But all of these are supposition, and we don’t have strong enough evidence for any of them.

Because making ends meet just kind of pops up, doesn’t it?

Yeah.

1650s or something like that?

So, Randy, we hope we’ve helped.

Yes, you have.

And I just want to reiterate the fact that I don’t think making ends meet is about a meat pie, but I just wanted a little bit more clarity.

Yeah, sure. We got you. We understand.

As far as the origins of it.

Absolutely. We understand. Thanks for your call. Really appreciate it.

Great. I love your show. Thanks.

Thank you. Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

We take your questions about language, and it doesn’t have to be word origins.

Tell us about a dispute you had at work when you’re putting together a PowerPoint deck or a passage that you read in a book that just really struck you as beautiful.

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

We were talking earlier about using gender-inclusive language, and I appreciated the point that you made, Grant, about not seeing yourself reflected in language.

And it reminds me of one of my favorite quotations from the poet Adrienne Rich.

It goes,

On the show, right? Yeah, exactly what you said. 877-929-9673. Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, it’s James calling from Dallas, Texas. Hey, James, how you doing? Hi, James, what’s up?

You folks were talking about the way people sign off at the end of a phone call. They’ll say things

Like, bye, that sort of thing. And it reminded me of, I actually grew up in New Mexico, even though

I’ve been in Dallas now for a number of years, but I grew up in New Mexico and lived for a while in Albuquerque.

And it reminded me of something I’ve heard.

I’ve only heard it in Albuquerque, but the way people sign off there is they’ll say, bueno, bye.

Bueno, bye, right?

Bueno, bye.

So it’s bueno, bye with the B barely pronounced, right?

Pronounced like a W?

Yep.

Yep, exactly.

Bueno, bye.

And it’s all one word, bueno, bye.

Bueno, bye.

So it’s a nice Spanish mix of two languages.

Yeah, exactly.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you folks.

And, you know, just because I love listening to your show, and I know that it’s always fun to share those little facts.

And you don’t hear that in Dallas, right?

Despite all the Spanish speakers there, nobody says win-o-bye when they’re hanging up the phone in Dallas, right?

Yeah, I’ve never heard it outside of, and even in other places in New Mexico.

I’ve only heard it in Albuquerque.

In fact, I even saw it on a vanity plate one time.

Somebody put wino by.

That’s good.

I did see one anecdotal report of somebody using it, and they were from West Texas.

But West Texas is practically New Mexico.

So that kind of counts.

But this is called Burkino slang, right?

People from Albuquerque speak Burkino.

And there’s a bunch of stuff.

We’ve talked about umbers on the show.

Do you know that one?

It’s kind of like when somebody’s in trouble in school.

You’re like, umbers?

Is that how you said it?

Umbers, yeah.

That and they use the word all a lot.

Oh, you’re all taller.

You’re all shorter.

You’re all mad.

How interesting.

There were a couple of really fun videos called Stuff Bracanios.

They only replaced the word stuffed with a familiar four-letter word that begins with S.

Yes.

Stuff the Bracanios.

And they’re super fun.

And everybody I know from Albuquerque says that they’re pretty spot on.

They’re done by some improv actors, I believe.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, they’re pretty good.

Oh, yeah.

I’ve seen that video.

It’s absolutely accurate.

You do hear the – it’s filled with burqueño slang.

Good to know.

The other thing I wanted to share is elsewhere in New Mexico, and I didn’t hear it until I moved to Las Cruces, which is close to El Paso, Texas.

But they’ll say, like say you and I are driving out running errands and I get thirsty.

So I pull into the 7-Eleven and I want to go in and grab a drink.

And so I’ll turn to you and say, hey, are you going to get down?

Meaning, you know, should I leave the car running and you’re going to stay here or are you going to get out?

But they’ll say get down instead of get out.

Yeah, and that’s probably a calc from the Spanish, right?

Bajar.

About how to get down out of a vehicle.

And I believe you find the similar usage in the formerly French-speaking parts of Louisiana.

Yes, you do.

Where they also do something.

Oh, no kidding.

Yeah, because they get it from the French rather than from the Spanish.

And then the other one is put gas instead of get gas.

I’m going to go put gas.

Oh, and they don’t put gas in something.

They just put gas.

Yeah.

Hey, I’m going to go put gas.

That’s great.

That’s outstanding.

Oh, this is super fun.

James, thank you for sharing the Burkina stuff.

The New Mexican stuff.

We really appreciate it.

Oh, sure thing.

I really enjoy your show.

Thank you very much.

Take care now.

Okay, call us again sometime.

All right, we’ll do.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What a rich and diverse language we speak.

Yes.

It’s abundant.

Yes.

With novelty and things of interest.

I love it.

And we don’t all speak one language, but we do.

How does that work?

Well, bye.

That’s what this show is about.

877-929-9673.

Send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org,

Or join us on our Facebook group.

Just look for A Way with Words.

Want more A Way with Words?

Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org or find the show in any podcast app or on iTunes.

Our toll-free line is always open, so leave us a message at 877-929-9673 and we’ll take a listen.

We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter @wayword and look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten, director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guy John Chaneski, and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.