Transcript of “A Linguist Plants Lots of Parsely for Its Roots and Stems”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
And listeners are still chiming in about the question, what would you plant if you were a, and then various professions, such as a jeweler who might plant carrots.
And we heard from Reed Pomeroy in La Crosse, Wisconsin, who offered a couple of answers that I’d never heard before.
He suggested that baseball players would plant, plant what, Grant?
Pitchers?
There you go.
Pitcher plants.
Yes.
Gotcha.
Yes.
And this one really had me puzzled for a while.
He said, prospective pet owners might plant orchids.
Because you get them spayed and neutered?
That’s what I was thinking at first.
Orchidectomies?
That’s what I was thinking at first.
I went straight to the Greek, and orchids meaning testicle.
But I think what he means is you have either pets or kids.
Oh.
That’s pretty good.
Oh, bonus points on that one, A+.
What else you got, Martha?
Well, I got one more set of answers, and this is what would a linguist plant.
Oh, what would a linguist plant?
Well, Chuck Smiler from New Bedford, Massachusetts, suggested that a linguist might plant root vegetables.
Nice.
And then Ramona Mandy from Melbourne, Australia, wrote to us and said, well, of course, a linguist would plant parsley.
Parsley.
And both of those plants would have lots of, if a linguist planted lots of root vegetables in an etymologist’s garden, they would have lots of stems.
Oh, my goodness.
But that’s kind of cheating because that’s where we get the language from, right?
We talk about roots and stems because we’re just borrowing from nature.
Yes.
Well, Grant, I want to say a personal thank you to you for tolerating all these puns.
Oh, you’ll pay later.
I’m not going to tell you how, but you’ll pay.
I’m sure that’s the case.
If you like puns, you can send them all to Martha at waywordradio.org.
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