Like a Duck on a June Bug

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, I’ve always wanted to know, “Why can’t the names of computers and cars be better?”

They come up with these awful, boring brand names, these product names.

Just not interesting, really, to me.

I know that they’re trying to sell a product, but here’s this.

There’s a whole category of names out there that they could draw from that’s far more interesting.

Bird names.

Bird names.

Bird names.

Listen to this.

Try this one.

Lazuli Bunting.

That’s L-A-Z-U-L-I.

Bunting.

B-U-N-T-I-N-G.

It’s a good name.

That’s the name of a bird.

It’s a blue finch, and it’s Lazuli Bunting.

Well, that sounds like a character in “A Bride’s Head Revisited” or something, doesn’t it?

It’s festive.

It’s fun.

Bunting is what you put up when you have parades and celebrations, and somebody gets elected and somebody wins the prize.

Lazuli is a great foreign word that invokes the deepest of blues.

It’s a nice word.

It’s a blue finch.

It’s an interesting word.

My whole premise here is that IBM and Dell and all these other manufacturers, I guess Lenovo and Dell and Apple and whoever, should try something besides strings of numbers and letters for their products.

Here’s another one.

The Northern Beardless Taranullet.

Wait.

Now, I’m not going to be driving a Northern Beardless Taranullet.

I’m sorry.

Well, I’m just saying, you know, there’s some inspiration to be had here, even if they don’t take the words wholesale.

The Northern Beardless Taranullet is a tropical fly catcher.

To me, though, it sounds kind of like a Canadian toddler in the midst of his terrible twos, right?

Because he’s Northern and Canadian.

Beardless means he’s young, and Taranullet means he’s a kind of tyrant.

Yeah, I can see the commercial, a little Bob Seger playing in the background.

Yeah.

All right.

How about this one?

The Black-Necked Stilt.

Black-Necked Stilt?

Yeah.

It’s also called a lawyer bird, with the ring any bells, or the blue stocking.

All three of these are great common names for a kind of long-legged, long-beaked water bird.

Yeah.

But I just can’t imagine being on the freeway and being rear-ended by a lawyer bird.

That is an accident you’re going to lose.

You’re going to pay for that one.

Well, speaking of birds and tweeting, we invite you…

Did I really say that?

We invite you to follow us on Twitter.

You can find us under the name Wayword.

And if you have a question about language, call us.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ann from Dallas.

Hello, Ann.

Welcome.

Hi, Ann.

What’s going on?

Well, I’ve grown up in Dallas, and I’ve moved away, lived all over the world, and came back.

And for some reason or another, I just started to notice a phrase, and I was wondering if this phrase was unique to Texas, or if its origins were from a southern part of the South.

And it’s the phrase, “Do what?”

For instance, there’ll be four of us sitting in a night’s restaurant, and the waiter will come up, and he will be telling us what the entrees are, and everything.

And one of the people will not be listening, and it’ll go, “Do what?”

And I’m looking at them going like…

They didn’t do anything.

And it’s kind of like, they use this phrase as if it’s, instead of saying like, “What’d you say?”

Or “Huh,” which would be more obvious, “Huh,” but I’m wondering if it’s just unique to Texas.

I hear it from people from the rural areas.

Yeah, yeah.

In Texas, you said you’re from Texas, originally you’ve come back after being away for a while.

Right, it’s right there up with fixing.

I’m fixing to do something.

I’m not surprised.

They’re both Southerners, that’s for sure.

You’ll find “do what” is spread from, say, the uppermost reaches of North Carolina, maybe even into Maryland and Virginia, and down through the South, and Alabama, Louisiana, and it makes its home in Texas, too.

So it’s definitely something you are going to hear of from one end of the state, as big as it is, to the other.

Right, and I noticed some friends of mine from Tennessee who had moved to Texas use it, and I thought, “Huh, well, maybe it actually was spread further away from Texas,” but yeah, it’s a bit annoying.

Oh, it’s annoying, is it?

Oh, absolutely.

Well, let me ask you, do you say, or do you know anyone who says, “Come again?”

I was talking to some friends, because we were asking each other, “Do you ever hear anybody say ‘do what’?”

And then a couple times they said, “Come again,” but “Come again” takes too long, and I think that’s the way everybody swallows everything.

“Do what” just kind of, it’s just like a “do what.”

It’s almost like a duo or, you know, a doo-wop, you know, a doo-bop.

Right, you’ll often find it written in a very casual speech as if it’s one word.

It’s said so fast and so blended together that some people mistake it for a single word instead of two words.

You know, when I think of “do what,” I think of Gomer Pyle.

Yeah, sure.

Well, there, okay, then that’d be about Alabama, I suppose.

-huh.

Sergeant, do what?

I like it.

But Ann, this is a widespread expression.

It’s very idiomatic, and by that I mean if you try to break it down into its components words, D-O and W-H-A-T, it’s not likely to make sense.

You’ve got to treat those two words together as a single thing, a single item unbroken, and then it has a meaning, and then it has a role, and it’s some relevance, and it’s very serviceable.

It does its job.

It is a way of saying “what” or “what did you mean,” “what did you say,” or “come again,” or “pardon,” or “how’s that.”

It’s very useful.

Yeah, and maybe just pretend like it’s from French or something.

Exactly.

But, you know, I always think of it as the brother or sister to saying “how come” instead of “why.”

Exactly.

Because it’s another way of saying, you know, a two-word phrase where or one word will do.

Okay, great.

Well, Ann, thank you very much for calling.

You bet.

All right.

Thank you.

Take care of yourself, Ann.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’ve got a regional expression that you want to learn more about, or you’ve got something that you heard people say that makes you curious, give us a call 1-877-929-9673.

And if you want to talk more about “do what,” join us on the discussion forums at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Or you can always email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Troy Tippin.

Where are you calling from, Troy?

I’m calling from San Diego.

Well, welcome to the show, Troy.

What can we do for you?

Well, actually I was curious where the phrase “like a duck on a junebug” originated.

Did somebody say that about you?

No, actually it’s a phrase I’ve used for years, and recently I had a couple of people challenge me on the statement.

Challenge you?

What do you mean?

They didn’t believe there were such things as ducks and junebugs, or what?

Well, one person was my boss, and he had heard me say the phrase a few times, and this time he said, “Ducks don’t like junebugs.”

Really?

And I went, “Really?”

And he says, “No, actually I’m just pulling your leg.

I have no clue whether they like junebugs or not.”

City boys, what do they know?

Yeah.

Well, Troy, tell me what context would you use this phrase in?

Typically when it’s a situation where it requires immediate response or quick action, that type of situation, like if I’m doing something and I’ll say, “I’ll get right on it like a duck on a junebug,” that type of thing.

It means fast or with energy, right?

Yeah, without wasting any time at all.

Yeah.

Because ducks are very efficient.

And they love junebugs.

They do indeed.

Your boss is wrong on that, Troy.

Well, he was teasing me.

We have followed up that conversation with, “You know, I’ve done a little bit of homework on this duck on a junebug thing.”

I went to the web and I googled where the phrase originated.

So you haven’t tested this in real life then?

You haven’t gotten yourself a duck and a junebug?

No, but it caused me to reflect on a childhood event where across the street from where I lived, there was a family that had a couple of ducks and their ducks loved snails.

And I saw them eat these snails like they were a delicacy that they couldn’t have enough of.

Sure, like a baby eating blueberries.

Right.

Well, you know, I think we should get the guys at Mythbusters to test the bugs, you know, test the junebugs and the ducks to see if it’s true.

That’s a great idea.

Well, it’s interesting because I had a follow-up conversation with this same boss after doing a little bit of homework.

And we were just kind of reminiscing about our sequence of conversations.

And he said, “You know, I happen to know somebody who is a duck expert.

He’s a hunter.

And he’s been hunting them for years.

And he knows all about ducks.

If anybody knows anything about ducks and junebugs, this is the guy.”

So I’m sitting in his office and he makes a phone call to him.

And his friend says, “Well, certainly they love junebugs, especially in the spring when the junebugs come out.”

They’re big old fat things, junebugs, right?

For those who might not know, junebugs, there’s a lot of meat on them, well, their legs, right?

I don’t know.

I’ve never tried.

They’re not for me, but if I were a bird, I might not be so discriminating.

Right, right.

They’re big, juicy bugs.

Well, let me tell you, I’ve seen junebugs that are big.

And they’re about as big as, say, a ripe walnut.

Pretty big.

A ripe walnut?

Yeah, big stuff.

Yeah, they can be big.

You know, once the ducks get to them, then they have a chance.

Well, and then that’s another part of that image then, that it takes more than one bite or one nibble to get that junebug all the way down.

So yeah, you’re talking about the very picture of eagerness and alacrity.

Right, right.

Well, Troy, thanks a lot for calling.

Well, my pleasure.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Troy.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The number is 1-877-9299673.

Or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

And you can try us on the discussion form at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Martha, more on bird names.

I’m not going to let this go.

Okay.

When you start to look into bird names, one of the things you find out is that the bird names have changed.

For example, a lot of birds used to be named for the person who discovered them or the person who made them known.

These are called commemorative names.

So Rivoli’s Hummingbird or Bancroft’s Nightharan.

Do you know either of these?

No, not at all.

Neither of those names exist anymore.

I mean, they’re not used.

Now they’re called the Magnificent Hummingbird and the Yellow-Crowned Nightharan.

I like the Magnificent Hummingbird.

That’s a great new name.

It’s kind of a shame that the history of the discoverer has kind of disappeared along with the old name.

Although some of the changes are for the better, there was a bird that used to be called the Thorn Scrub.

That’s T-H-O-R-N-S-E-R-U-B.

And now it’s called Couch’s Kingbird.

I think the new name is better than the old one.

But what’s really great about this bird is the Latin name.

It’s of the genus Tyrannidae.

And so the full name is Tyrannus coochii, I believe.

C-O-U-C-H-I-I.

Is that coochii or couchii?

Maybe couchii.

I’m not quite sure if it follows the English pronunciation.

In any case, I’m imagining it’s called Tyrannus.

It’s this little vicious bird with like tiny forearms and big sharp teeth.

Well, Tyrannus is king in Greek.

That’s right.

So it’s the king of the couch.

It’s the bird that controls the remote.

Well, if you want to talk to us about bird names, you can talk to us on our discussion form at waywordradio.org/discussion or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or give us a phone call 1-877-929-9673.

Puzzle, puzzle, toil, and more of your calls.

That’s coming up on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined now by the one and only, the fabulous, the quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

How are you, buddy?

Hello, Greg.

I’m good.

I’m good.

I’m puzzling.

You’re puzzling?

Yes.

We knew that.

Well, do you have a puzzle?

I do, in fact, have a puzzle.

And this week’s puzzle, I call Inish Arithmetic.

Oh, math.

Inish Arithmetic?

Inish Arithmetic.

It’s a combination of numbers and initials.

Okay.

Oh.

I will give you a clue to a set of items of which there are a particular number.

But some of the words in the clue will be replaced by their initials.

So I might say there are 12 M in the Y.

What words, starting with M and Y, could go into that sentence to make it true?

Month and year.

That’s right. 12 months in the year.

Gotcha.

This puzzle is actually based on a puzzle designed by Will Shortz for Games Magazine many years ago, called the Equation Analysis Test.

All right, let’s shoot.

Let’s see how this goes.

Okay.

Numbers and letters.

Inish Arithmetic.

Here we go.

Inish Arithmetic.

There are five B in the C of NY.

There are five boroughs in the city of New York.

Yes.

Oh, wow.

Well done.

Insider knowledge.

Yeah.

That’s not fair.

NY is the big clue.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

All right.

There are 14 D in an F. 14 days in a fortnight.

Yes.

Very good.

There are 12 S of the Z.

Signs of the zodiac.

Very good.

What’s your sign, baby?

Yeah.

What is your sign, Martha?

Well, can you guess?

Scorpio.

Right.

Of course.

Hello.

Come on.

Grant, you’re a…

It’s obvious, right?

I’m a zippity-doo-dah.

Taurus.

No, I’m not a Taurus.

I’m a Cancer.

Oh, well, I’m a Pisces.

And does it mean anything?

No.

All right, carrying on.

You don’t know that.

No, we know that, actually.

We have it written down here.

Good authority.

Okay.

There are five V in the EL, not CY.

Five V in the EL, not the CY.

Five vowels in the English alphabet.

English language.

Yeah.

Or alphabet, starting with L.

Oh, alphabet.

Alphabet.

And not counting Y.

Not counting Y.

Very good.

All right.

Here’s another one for you.

There are 54 C in a D, including the J.

Cards in a deck, including the joker.

Oh, she is good.

Nice.

All right.

28 D in the M of F, except in LY.

Say it again, please.

28 D in the M of F, except in LY. 28 days in the M of F, except in leap years.

Yes.

Very good.

50 W to L your L, in the S by PS.

50 W. 50 ways to leave your lover.

And I don’t know what the last one said.

What’s the last one?

In the S by PS.

I don’t know.

Well, where does that come from?

50 ways to leave your lover.

In the song by Paul Simon. 789 billion D in the ESP.

In the ESP.

Billion dollars in the economic stimulus plan.

Yes, stimulus package.

Is that your economic stimulus package or are you just happy to see me?

Here’s one that’s just ridiculous, but I have to say it anyway.

Oh, no.

There are two K of P in the W.

TWD the W into TKFP and TWD.

I’ll say it slowly.

The key part is the beginning there.

There are two K of P in the W.

TWD the W into TKFP and TWD.

Two K of P and a W.

Yeah.

Two nights of Persia in the war room.

Oh, man.

One more time, Greg.

Two kinds of people in the world.

Two kinds of people in the world.

TWD the W into TKFP and TWD.

I don’t think the kind of people who what?

Those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.

Oh, very nice.

Beautiful.

Who said that?

I forgot.

I did.

I know.

It’s on my Wikipedia page.

I could see somebody sitting down like on a car ride or just as long as everyone was had plenty of time making up these, you know, you could do this with movie titles or song titles, right?

Anything with numbers and letters.

I love it.

Thanks, Greg.

Thank you.

If you’ve got a question about word play, language, grammar, slang, regional expressions, or strange old sayings, call us.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or pop us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And if you just can’t wait, pop into our discussion forum.

You’ll find that at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Patty Potter.

I’m calling from Fort Worth, Texas.

All right.

What’s up?

Well, I have a question regarding my daughter’s newfound habit.

She’s been using the word “like,” in my opinion, overusing the word “like.”

And I just wondered how kids started this habit and where it came from.

And better yet, how can we stop it?

How old is your daughter?

She’s only 11.

She’s very bright.

She’s very articulate and a straight-A student.

But when she starts saying the word “like” between every other word, I find myself getting very distracted.

And I can hardly listen to what she’s saying because all I hear is the word “like.”

She’ll say “like,” like, you know, like, just in the middle there, right?

She doesn’t say it like he said, like, this is that and that.

Because there’s a couple different kind of “likes” here.

I’m trying to get at what kind of “like.”

Do you have an example exactly of how she might have put it?

Well, you kind of nailed it.

It goes like this.

Well, we were, like, in the lunchroom and, like, we started laughing and, like, he got really mad, like, and then all I hear is the word “like,” and I can hardly listen to the story.

It’s like that Gary Larson cartoon of what dogs hear, you know, the woman’s scolding the dog named Ginger, but all the dog hears is, “Wah-wah-wah-wah, Ginger!”

Exactly.

And I must admit that when I’m around her and she starts doing it, I have to hold back because I start doing it.

It seems to be contagious.

Then my eight-year-old starts doing it, and we’re just, we’re all blithering idiots by the time I saw her.

You’ve touched onto something there, though.

She’s 11.

She is probably looking at the behavior of girls who are much older than her and kind of adopting their mannerisms.

Maybe so.

So there’s a really good chance that she picked this up from older girls, right?

That’s my guess, that she’s seen it either on TV or she’s been around some older girls who are doing it.

Let’s talk about this in two ways.

You have basically two questions here.

Your first one is, how does this start?

Where does it come from?

And your other question is, how do we stop it?

The first one’s pretty easy to answer.

We know that this kind of “like,” which is called in linguistic jargon a discourse marker, dates to about the 1700s, believe it or not.

It has very little to do with the valley girls, and they may have used it, but it spread without them, and they didn’t necessarily cause the whole thing.

And it actually, believe it or not, has a role in the speech.

It does things.

It has a function.

It often has meaning, and it changes the way their words are perceived by the listener, not just because it repulses you, because it intentionally sows a little bit of doubt in there.

It lets you know that what she’s saying is approximate.

If she’s telling a story and there are a lot of “likes,” it’s because she’s not detailing exactly what was said or exactly what was done, but she’s kind of given the summary or kind of gliding over some facts in order to make the narrative tighter, just kind of get to the point.

So that’s one of the things that she could be doing with the “like.”

So it’s useful.

It does have its uses.

I do know, like the reason I asked about her age and the reason I suggested that she was picking it from older kids, it’s addictive.

Once you hear this being used, you have a tendency to overuse this tool.

It’s your new hammer, and everything looks like a nail.

That makes sense to me.

The next part, as far as getting rid of it, there are two things to do.

First, wait it out.

She’s going to change her speech.

The older she gets, the more she learns, the new friends that she gets, the influence she gets from you and other adults in her life.

She’s going to change, and that kind of the fad of saying “like” will disappear eventually.

The second thing to do is, if it really bugs you, although I don’t necessarily recommend this, tape record her, maybe when she’s not looking, and then play it back for her later.

She’s probably going to be horrified at first at the sound of her voice, but when you point out the “like,” she’s probably going to be horrified about them, too.

Anything other than nagging sounds good to me.

Yeah, nagging’s not going to do the trick.

Don’t want to do that.

No, nagging’s got no more effect on the speech of teenagers than the weather does.

I knew that much.

Well, thank you.

You’re welcome, Patti.

Thank you so much for giving us a call.

Grant, I remember reading an interesting essay by Jeffrey Nunberg, the linguist, about “like.”

He was observing some TV interviews with, I think they were high school or middle school students after a tragedy, and he noticed that nobody was using the word “like” at all, because they were recounting this thing that had happened that was very, very serious, very traumatic, and vivid, and there wasn’t this distancing, there wasn’t this sort of equivocating.

You know, it was a very, very straightforward narrative, and he had been thinking about the word “like,” and he was watching those interviews, specifically listening for “like,” he didn’t hear it once, and that makes sense to me.

Right, it’s exactly what we’re saying.

“Like” is used when there’s some doubt about what you’re saying, or if it’s an approximation of what really happened or what was really said, but there’s a show out of Los Angeles on KCRW they use “somehow.”

When someone is trying to express an idea that’s not completely clarified, and they’re basically articulating it for the first time in response to a question they’ve never heard before, “somehow” plays a large role in what they have to say, because it makes sure that the proper doubt is sewn about what they’re saying.

It has a function, it has a role, but it doesn’t stop it from being annoying when it’s overused.

A little weaselly word.

Now I’m going to be hearing that word all the time.

Thank you very much, Grant.

You’re very welcome.

If you’d like to talk more about “like” and “somehow” and other weaselly words, try our discussion forums at waywordradio.org/discussion, or give us a call at 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Joey.

Where are you calling from?

Greenville, South Carolina.

Greenville, South Carolina.

What’s going on in Greenville?

Well, I grew up in the low country of South Carolina, and we had a dish there called chicken bog, and I know y’all like regional dishes.

Love ’em.

And this chicken bog is made of rice and chicken and country sausage and lots of black pepper.

And my dad used to make this for some of his workmen periodically.

We’d make it in a big iron pot with a gas burner or a burner that came out of an old tobacco barn.

And like Friday at five o’clock, we’d make this up and have some slaw with it and corn dodgers and light bread and Pepsi.

And that was, you know, that was kind of a celebration for us.

Mmm, I’m getting hungry.

What’s a corn dodger, by the way?

A hush puppy.

Okay, all right.

But the whole big dish with chicken bog, is that what you called it?

Yes, exactly.

B-O-G?

B-O-G.

I have to say that I don’t know that from growing up in Missouri.

Never heard of it.

Okay, well, even here in Greenville, people don’t know that term.

So, I mean, I’m only 250 miles away from home.

Oh, really?

They don’t know that.

And we also used—some people call it chicken perlo.

There’s another similar dish called backbone and rice, which is made of pork backbone, cooked in the same way.

Now, perlo I have heard of, and this is because perlo has a really interesting history.

Have you ever heard of rice pilaf?

Yes.

It’s directly related that perlo and pilaf come from the same roots.

It’s a Turkish or Persian word, and they’re all rice dishes.

I mean, they’re made a variety of different ways, but it comes into English probably from French and maybe from Spanish.

But it’s got a really rich, incredible history.

Food words tend to travel pretty well, and they tend to be well recorded in print.

Okay.

Yeah, so I’ve seen chicken perlo, pilaf, pillow, perlo.

And perlo has a similar history, I’d bet, to bog, a chicken bog, which is, it’s mainly used in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

Okay.

So it’s interesting.

But so chicken bog, so you get together about what do you do with the chicken?

You fry it, you boil it?

Well, you’ve got to have a big iron pot.

Yeah.

And you get the water boiling, you pour the rice in, let it cook, and then in the meantime, you’re preparing the chicken, and you just maybe basically put the whole chicken in there.

It’s been, you know, just a whole chicken in there, and it will boil to pieces.

And then towards the end, you put the sausage and the pepper.

And Joey, do you have a special name for that kind of gathering?

A bogathon?

No, no.

Or competitions or anything like that.

Just to get together like that, it’s just, you know, there’s no name for it.

But it sounds like a good group entertainment, though.

I mean, it sounds like something you do with friends or family, right?

It’s not something you don’t get to get, you go by yourself to the kitchen and make chicken bog.

Well, you can, but yeah, generally it’s an event, like something that you would hold after work, and it’s usually kind of on the blue collar end of the spectrum.

Sure, like a pig roast or a fish fry.

Exactly.

Joey, thanks for sharing that with us.

Bog, that’s an interesting regional food dish.

I did not know that.

I had that one on my list of foods to eat when I traveled around the country.

Well, I enjoy your show very much.

Thank you for calling us today.

All right, thank you so much.

Okay, take care.

Bye-bye.

We could do a 24 hour a day, seven day a week show about food words, so I hesitate to say this, but you know what?

What the hay.

Oh, say it.

If you’ve got some regional food words you’d like to share with us, by all means give us a call. 1-877-929-9673 or send us your favorite local dish to words@waywordradio.org.

Oh boy, here come the emails.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Debbie Kaufman.

I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

What are you calling us about?

Well, I grew up hearing and invariably using the phrase “good night nurse” and I never once thought about where it came from and what it meant.

And so when I grew up, I use it every now and then with friends and they look at me like I have three heads.

What are you saying and why are you saying that?

And I got to thinking I have no idea.

Well, Debbie, we love these.

What kind of context would you use that in?

If I was frustrated instead of cussing, like say if somebody pulled out in front of me, I’d say, “Well, good night nurse.”

Yeah, it’s a kind of an exclamation of surprise or disagreement or…

Yeah, you stub your toe.

Yes.

Or disbelief even.

It comes out when somebody says something that is just kind of so shocking or not something you were expecting.

Exactly.

There’s a fellow by the name of Eric Partridge who was a British lexicographer who collected a lot of catchphrases and old sayings and a lot of slang language and his work is really interesting because he’s just got so much that nobody else has for what that’s worth.

And he does have entries for this expression, “good night nurse.”

And in my own work and trying to track this phrase down and find some uses, the earliest use that I could find is 1908.

And he says that he probably dates from around 1910.

So he and I are in the same ballpark there.

Okay.

And it’s kind of said with enthusiasm and emphasis, right?

Right, exactly.

“Good night nurse,” or “good night nurse,” right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Eric Partridge speculates that it really became popular during World War I because of all the soldiers who passed through the military hospital because there were actual nurses there.

And there were a couple movies that came out.

There was a Fatty Arbuckle movie.

I think there was a Mae West movie that either had songs in them by that name or the movies themselves were titled “good night nurse.”

So there were a lot of different ways in which this expression was spread.

And there’s a bunch of related expressions too.

So Debbie, are you going to go back to your friends and tell them that you don’t have three heads and in fact…

Well, yeah, they only have two heads.

But it’s nice to know that it did come from somewhere that I just didn’t make it up.

No, you did not.

You did not make it up.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

It’s a good old-fashioned expression and I think you should keep using it.

Okay, well, thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Debbie.

Okay, bye-bye.

If you’ve got more to say about “good night nurse” or some other old-timey expressions, you can join us on the discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or give us a phone call 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

More of your calls coming up.

Stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

We received an email recently from Linda in Dallas.

She’d heard somebody described as a Luddite and she wondered about that word.

Now, a Luddite is somebody who’s resistant to technological change.

And Grant, you’ve probably heard people who aren’t very adept with computers call themselves Luddites, right?

Yeah, they usually take a little bit of pride in it.

Exactly.

Oh, I don’t know anything about those.

You do it.

Well, the term itself has its roots in a kind of populist rage.

Picture this.

It’s the early 19th century in England and skilled artisans are increasingly incensed by the changes brought about by industrialization.

And among other things, they’re angry about this new technology that they fear is going to cost them their jobs.

If they’re skilled in weaving things by hand, for example, they’re afraid that these machines are going to take their jobs away.

So they organize.

And in 1811, they go around destroying factory machinery and terrorizing business owners.

Well, their leader writes a manifesto with all their grievances and signs it with the fictitious name King Ludd.

That’s L-U-D-D.

And his followers, therefore, called themselves, wait for it, Luddites.

And they kept up this rebellion for about five years.

And then things like government suppression and the country’s growing prosperity led them to disband.

And the Luddites ended up protesting a lot of different things, but it was their opposition to labor saving devices that really captured the public’s imagination and ended up giving us the term Luddite.

And Grant, I should mention that the word Luddite is almost always capitalized these days.

Yeah, even though it’s far removed from its origins.

Yeah, exactly.

I’ve encountered a lot of people who are still that way.

People who even this far into the computer revolution don’t get that computers are here to stay.

Unless we have an apocalypse, the computer is not going away, right?

That’s right.

And I think you’re right that they do take a certain pride in reading things like, what are those things called, books?

Books.

Yeah, the tree thing, right?

Yeah, the tree thing, right.

If you’d like to talk about Luddites, try our discussion forums waywordradio.org/discussion, or if you’ve got questions about language, grammar, usage, spelling, pronunciation, anything, give us a call 1-877-929-9673, and you can send all of your questions about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Beverly from Dallas, Texas.

Well, hello, Beverly.

Welcome.

Thank you.

What do you have on your mind today, Beverly?

Well, there is something that has bothered me since I was a little girl, and I’m still thinking about it.

My grandmother used to have a limerick or a verse that she would say to us as she would play horsey with us as we sat on her ankle, and she’d bob us up and down like we were riding a horse, and it was, “Mology Buck, Mology Buck, how many fingers do I hold up?”

And I don’t know who Mology Buck is.

-huh.

Mology Buck?

Mology Buck?

It’s Molly.

Mology.

Yes, Mology Buck.

-huh.

Go ahead, Beverly.

Well, she came from a farm outside of Joplin, Missouri, and she said she had heard this as a child herself.

Now, she lived during the time when she was very little, probably around four or five.

She lived outside of Joplin, Missouri, on a farm.

Kind of interesting because she said that they would hide her when the armies were coming through during the Civil War.

Her parents would hide her out in the field, and the South would come through and steal all their crops, and then the North would come back and burn them out.

So she had a very interesting childhood herself.

Oh, my goodness.

This limerick or verse has always bothered me about who Mology Buck was.

I’ve said it with my children and my grandchildren, and so we’ve carried it on to the family, but no one knows that my two sisters, they don’t know who Mology Buck was, and neither did my mother.

Oh, Beverly, this is marvelous.

I am so delighted to hear this, because do you know there are lots and lots and lots of versions of this rhyme?

Are there really?

Oh, yes.

Tons and tons of it.

Fortunately, we’ve got a pretty good record of this going back at least a hundred years and maybe a lot further.

Oh, my goodness.

Can you figure out who she was referring?

Well, Beverly, I think the key isn’t so much the Mology.

The common thread in all of these games is the part about how many fingers do I hold up, and the other words in the rhyme, in other versions of the game, tend to be nonsense words.

Although Buck does tend to appear pretty frequently, right?

But not as part of a name, just kind of as a nonsense word of its own.

Right, that’s what I was going to say is that a huge number of these games have the word “buck” in them, but they’ll say things like “mummily buck, mummily buck, how many fingers do I hold up?”

Or “mingledy, mingledy, clap, clap, clap, how many fingers do I hold up?”

Or “buckety buck, buckety buck, how many fingers do I hold up?”

It was always so that we could ride on her leg and she could hold our hands, and she would go up and down.

That was a big treat.

I’m very interested, and you say this could be older than a hundred years?

Oh, yeah.

Well, here’s the thing.

I’ve mentioned them before.

There were two researchers by the name of Iona and Peter Opie, and they were British, and they did great and wonderful work in the language and lore of children.

Iona and Peter Opie, that’s O-P-I-E.

Most libraries will have one or more of their books, and they record in a book that they published in 1969 an expression in Latin dating to the year 65.

Not 1965, but 65, which is surprisingly similar.

My Latin is no good, but it’s, Martha, how can you do that?

“Bucka, bucka, quote, sunt hick.”

“Bucka, bucka, quote, sunt hick.”

Okay, which basically means, “Bucka, bucka, how many are there?”

And it has the same rhythm.

Yep, and it talks about children horsing around, and it’s a little different because in this version somebody climbs on somebody else’s back.

But the parallels there are astonishing, and I could see how the game would change over the centuries.

It’s not 100% sure that they’re connected, but boy, that similarity is really compelling.

Yeah.

Well, it sounds that I really appreciate you giving me this knowledge.

I shall call my sister, who is 86, and tell her what you have said.

All right.

Beverly, I gotta tell you, it was delightful to talk to you today.

Thank you for calling.

Well, thank you so much.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We welcome your call about old sayings, expressions, rhymes, things you learned as a kid, and things you’ve always wanted to know.

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

And if you remember some details about the “Mology Buck Game” or the “Buck Buck Game,” let us know on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Brent from San Diego.

Hi, Brent, how you doing?

I’m doing fine.

Well, welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Well, I was wanting to know from where the expression “keeping your eyes peeled” comes.

In particular, I’m interested in the word “peeled,” because in the back of my mind, I’m thinking it has something to do with the opening eyelid movement of birds of prey, and I’ve always had a question about it.

The opening eyelid movement of birds of prey, what do you mean by that?

Well, somewhere in my mind, I’m thinking that the word “peel” means when a bird of prey, like a hawk or an eagle, opens their eye, it’s called “peeling.”

And I think that that’s where the expression comes from, but I think that it has an interesting spelling, and I don’t recall at all what it is, and I thought maybe you guys could help me out.

You’re not confusing the word “peel” with “seel,” are you?

S-E-E-L?

I don’t believe that I am, no.

Okay, I was going to say that’s a term from falconry that in the Middle Ages, it’s terrible what they did.

To train hawks at a certain point in their training, they would stitch their eyes shut, I mean, to train falcons.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, and they would call that “seeling,” S-E-E-L.

Because that makes them tame, right?

So they can be conditioned while their eyes are sewed shut, and then when you un-sew them, un-stitch them, then they’re more manageable.

Right, right.

They don’t do that anymore, I’m told.

Yeah, they lose those little hoods, don’t they?

Yeah, I think so.

But that’s not ringing a bell, huh?

No, that’s not ringing a bell.

But it’s close.

It does have something to do with the eyelids, right, Martha?

Yeah, well, keeping your eyes open.

But I’m not sure that there’s a technical term from falconry or anything like that.

As far as I know, it just originated in the 19th century as the idea of keeping that eyelid up so that you can see what’s going on.

So it’s like your eyelids are the peels on the fruit of your eye orbs or something like that, right?

Yeah, on the apple of your eye or something.

There we go, yeah.

I don’t know.

Well, it really is spelled P-E-E-L then.

Yes, it’s P-E-E-L, and it’s not P-E-A-L.

I do recall running across another definition of the word peel, referring to the eyelid movement of a bird of prey, and that made sense to me.

When the bird peels its eye, then it’s looking like a hawk or eagle eye, something.

I wonder if that’s sort of like a back formation, like somebody started using that term to refer to the hawk after the fact, after the other expression, keep your eyes peeled with two E’s came about.

But I tell you what, Brent, I always appreciate the opportunity to talk about nictitating membranes.

I got to tell you.

Is that legal?

Are we going to get fined?

Yeah, I mean, I love that term.

It comes from a Latin word that means wink, and that’s that little thing that goes back and forth over bird’s eyes.

That makes them more moist, right?

It’s not the eyelid, but it’s under the eyelid.

Oh, well, no, it’s over the eyelid, right, Brent?

Oh, I see.

I mean, it’s over the eye, right?

It’s like a third eyelid, right?

Oh, I see.

That’s my understanding.

I’m not an expert in bird anatomy either.

So, Brent, I don’t have a good answer for you about peel, but I always love the opportunity to talk about nictitating membranes anytime I can get the chance.

Yeah, Brent, the short version is, as far as we know, has nothing to do with hawks or falconry or anything like that.

It simply has to mean with the eyelids being talked about as if they were the peel of a fruit, and you’re literally peeling them back off your eyes when you open your eyes.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, Brent.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if there’s a word that’s always puzzled you, give us a call.

Maybe we can help the numbers 1-877-9299673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

On a recent show, we talked about the odd names that grandkids give to their grandparents, things more creative than Gramps and Grammy, and we asked for other examples, and sure enough, it seems that there are almost as many different names for grandparents as there are grandparents.

Arland from Wisconsin wrote, “Our granddaughter differentiated between the two sets of grandparents by location.

She lives in the country outside of town in Michigan and the others in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

So, one set became Nana Downtown and Papa Downtown, while we became Nanaboo and Papaboo.”

Here’s a great one from Stephanie in Dallas.

“My mother decided that she needed to get her votes in early.

She did not want anything like Meemaw or Granny.

She wanted something dignified and maybe even youthful sounding.

Once my nephew, Gabe, started babbling and assigning sounds to people or objects, we knew the time was near.

Upon his arrival at my mother’s house one day, he looked at my mother, grinned wide, and uttered, ‘Nano.’

Yep, pronounced just like Mork would say it.

We, the grown-ups, instantly dissolved in laughter.

Therefore, to this day, 15 years later, my mother’s distinctive name is Nanu for all her grandchildren.”

That’s a great story.

Isn’t that great?

It just goes to show you, Grant, that it’s not worth worrying in advance about what your grandkids are going to call you.

No, they’ve got minds of their own.

They do.

And we’d love for you to give us a piece of your mind, the numbers 1-877-9299-673, or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Joyce.

I’m from Charlottesville, Virginia.

Well, hi, Joyce.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me on.

What’s on your mind today?

I wondered about a phrase, “Don’t let anyone get your goat.”

I know this story that my parents had told me, but I have been unable to find any place else where it’s written down.

We would love to hear that story.

The story is set in the early 1800s, and it’s about a farmer.

He lives in a village that’s in the heart of Sicily, and in the fall of every year, tradition dictates that two different families have to give up one of their animals to the church.

The short of it is that they finally decide on this goat, Nina the goat, to give, and he is taking the goat to the church when he becomes angry, because it’s been a very tough year and they don’t have very much, and he hears a voice.

We don’t know if it’s a goat or someone else, and the goat tells him not to get angry, basically, but to get smart, and when he gets there, he says, “You know, shouldn’t my goat happen to get free?

My family would come and work at the church one day out of the month every year.”

And the priest takes us all in, and then ultimately, the goat does escape, and they work in the church, and the farmer goes through life learning not to let people get his goat.

And you say that’s from where?

Sicily.

Sicily?

My father was born in Sicily, and my mother’s parents were born in Sicily, and one of the phrases I like to use a lot when my brother and I would get upset is, “Don’t let anyone get your goat.”

I gotta say something about that story, though.

It’s almost a little too pat, if you know what I mean.

I never heard it.

I didn’t find anything else that was written anywhere except some vague references to goats being kept with horses.

Yeah, now that’s the story that I’ve seen floating around most often, that horses, thoroughbreds, tend to be calmed by having a small animal in the stall with them, and having grown up in Kentucky, I’ve talked with people in the horse industry, and indeed they say that a lot of people keep a dog with a horse, or a cat with a horse, or a goat with a horse, just to kind of have a little companion.

And the idea of that story is that if you got your goat taken away from you, then you’d be at loose ends, right, at sixes and sevens.

Right.

But…

When I looked at that, they said that there was uses of that phrase prior to when that was a popular, or a common, I guess, thing to do, but I really felt I didn’t find anything pretty conclusive, so I’ve often wondered if there was any other explanation.

Well, it seems that goat has been a slang term for anger, and back in the early 1900s, it was in a book about prison life as meaning anger, and that makes more sense to me.

Don’t let anybody get your goat, don’t let anybody let you get your ire up.

Right.

Yeah, Joyce, I would agree with Grant on this.

It just seems like sometimes the more elaborate those stories are, the more suspicious we should be of them, and I think this is probably one of those cases, although it’s a good story.

It’s particularly the case when we can’t find the original story in print anywhere, because stories don’t travel with that kind of detail for that long.

Right.

That makes sense.

So oral transmission of stories tends to be fraught with all kinds of complications and corruptions.

Yeah, so I guess the bottom line here is that nobody’s really sure, but I’m putting my money on the goat is anger, sort of goading even.

Yeah, you will occasionally, very rarely, find people miswrite this as get one’s goad, G-O-A-D, and I’m not suggesting that is an origin story.

It’s just how some people have reanalyzed the expression in order to kind of try to make sense of why there’s a goat in it at all.

Well, Joyce, I appreciate your efforts trying to track it down.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Sometimes “I don’t know” is a really great answer, because it’s better than just making stuff up.

True.

Thank you so much for your call, Joyce.

We’re glad to be of some assistance.

I’ll talk to you again.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

We’d love to help you with your origin stories.

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

That’s 1-877-Wayword.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

That’s our show for this week.

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Kurt Konan produced it.

We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdasian and Josette Hurdell.

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

And from the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett.

Auf Wiedersehn.

Cheers.

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