A Louse in a Wrestling Jacket

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Let’s talk about numbers for a minute.

Really big numbers.

Okay, now you got your mega, as in mega millions.

You got your giga, as in gigabyte, meaning a billion bytes, right?

But Grant, what about those times when you need a prefix for an even bigger number?

Like, say, oh, 10 to the 27th power.

What word are you going to use for that?

Gazile quadrillion? I don’t know.

Make something up, right? A bazillion? Gazile bazillion.

Bigger than that, bigger than that.

Oh, really?

Well, yes. There’s this Northern California college student who’s been waging this valiant campaign over the last few months to get international scientific authorities to use the prefix hella to indicate a multiple of one followed by 27 zeros.

So, for example, you’d say the mass of the Earth is approximately six heligrams or the energy released by the sun is approximately 0.3 helawatts.

This student garnered hella support for this idea on Facebook.

He attracted about 63,000 people to support his idea, but he met some resistance from the International Consultative Committee on Units.

That is the scientific body that establishes these standards for the scientific community.

And Grant, you know as well as anybody how difficult it is to come up with a word and be all excited about it and then go out and get other people to use it.

Sure, it’s incredibly difficult to get your word out there, but 63,000 is not a bad start, and I think he’s had some press about it and done some radio interviews, right?

He’s had a lot of press, yeah.

Got to keep an eye on this kid.

You never know.

He could be changing a language forever.

Yay!

My question for you is it’s not just measuring scientific units, right?

It has something to do with the amount of data that we’re accumulating.

We have a reason to use this prefix.

We have a need, right?

Yeah, because we are counting things of immense size.

Right, right, like the number of pennies in the federal deficit.

You know, that’s probably hella.

Hella million or what is it?

So how does it work?

So I say hellillion or no?

So it’s hella in front of a measurement, right?

Right.

Okay.

Right.

Okay.

And of course, it’s a Northern California expression, right?

I mean, you’ve written about hella.

Yeah, yeah.

Hella is an adverb that basically means very.

Yeah, like we have a hella great show for you today.

Yeah, more coming up.

If you want to participate, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673,

Or put it in an email.

You do have an email.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Louise Miller.

Well, hello, Louise.

Where are you calling from?

Lake Kiowa, Texas.

Well, welcome to the program.

How can we help?

Well, I have a bunch of children, and they all have white blonde hair.

And when I was little, so did I.

And we heard the expression all the time of, oh, you’ve got a toehead there, or oh, they’re all toeheaded.

So I always use the expression.

I knew it meant they were blonde, but I have no idea where it comes from.

Are they all still at home?

No, ranging in age from 13 to 29, so three out, three in.

Oh, that’s quite a span.

Six.

Six.

Yes.

Six.

Oh, my gosh.

I’m picturing the family photos.

They’re great.

They’re all always on the beach, blonde-headed kids with white eyebrows.

That’s great.

Oh, my.

It sounds kind of blinding, right?

It can be.

For their children, I bet you used a lot of sunscreen.

I do, and I spend a lot of time in the car, which is how I learned about your show.

-huh.

And do you have any thoughts about why your kids might be called toe-headed?

No.

As opposed to…

Blonde?

Yeah, blonde.

No, I don’t.

I thought such a strange expression, tried to link it to a language.

Whenever somebody says it now, I ask them, do you know where that comes from?

And they look at me and say, no.

Well, now you can do that, and then you can tell them where it comes from.

That’s my goal.

Okay.

All right.

Here we go.

Toe is an old word for flax.

Oh, let’s spell that.

T-O-W.

Right.

Right.

We’re not talking about little toe heads like T-O-E.

Right.

I mean, you always spelled it T-O-W, right?

I’ve never spelled it.

So it’s T-O-W, and T-O-W is an old word for flax.

And if you’ve ever seen flax when it’s taken from the plant, it looks just like your kid’s hair.

It’s golden.

Yeah, yeah.

And so you talk about a flaxen-haired beauty or something like that.

Oh, they’ll be thrilled with that explanation.

Well, good.

But there’s another characteristic of the flax that comes into play, right?

Because it’s not just about the color of the toe.

It’s about the physical appearance of the toe, right?

Yeah.

I don’t hear it that often, but you can use toe-headed to mean, well, sort of like you have bedhead.

I think it’s more of a secondary usage, though.

Because it’s like sticking out every which way, right?

Yeah, yeah, sort of like flax.

I don’t think that answer is going to be as popular.

No, but I’m sure your kids have that sometimes, too, you know, where they have toe-headed toe-head.

The flax makes so much sense, but it really fits because their hair is like butter.

It’s so soft.

It’s thick, but it feels, it’s fine.

Right.

The flax just is like perfect.

Yeah, I think you’re going to have to email us a photo.

Right, right.

I would love to email you a photo.

I’m a proud mama.

Ask me about it.

I was going to say, this is a woman that clearly loves her children.

Oh, I do.

I do.

And they’re all great.

And the grandkids, though, don’t have the golden hair.

Oh, that’s okay.

It’s a recessive gene.

It’ll pop up a couple generations from now, and they may never know where it came from, but that’ll be the source.

So, Louise, that’s a great answer, Martha, and I think you got what you wanted, right?

I got exactly what I wanted.

I even like it.

That’s good.

That’s always good.

Another happy customer.

Another happy customer and a case solved.

Thank you so much for calling, Louise.

It’s nice to talk to you.

Thank you.

I appreciate the answer.

Okay.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send a picture of yourself and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Torso and above, please.

Above the taste line.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Denise.

I’m calling from Springfield, Illinois.

Okay.

Sure.

My question is, when I was coming up, let me say this because I think this matters.

We’re black, African-American, and we already know that there are tons of sayings that, you know, we always say, oh, black people say.

So when my family, we were coming up, my mom used to always say, you know, if you’d ask her for money or something like that, she’d say, I’m so broke, I couldn’t buy a louse and a wrestling jacket.

And, you know, she would just say it, and we knew what she meant.

And she also used to say something else.

But she used to say that we all knew what she meant.

And so one day when I was probably in my 30s, and I called my mom and I said, what does that mean?

And she would just always say, what do you mean?

What does it mean?

It means I’m broke.

It means we’re broke.

I can’t buy a louse and a wrestling jacket.

And I said, you know, that doesn’t mean anything to me, Mom, exactly what.

Well, I’ve even, you know, I’ve been writing your show, and I’ve even talked to other friends, other black friends, and they’re going, oh, yeah.

I mean, we don’t know what it means, but we’ve all heard it.

And I’ve talked to white friends who are going, what? I’ve never heard anything like that.

Oh, interesting.

So clearly it’s a phrase used, you know, in the black community among old people. But the only thing they can tell you is what you can already decipher is that means we don’t have any money.

So I just thought, you know, after discovering your show, I thought, well, I’m going to ask them if they’d ever heard this or where it came from.

Well, I’ve got to say that this is a great little expression. I’m not surprised that it belongs to the older generation. And I’m also not surprised that it comes from an older generation of black folks because it is closely tied to black Americans and black English.

And you will find that particular expression, or actually something almost the same, in many books that talk about American speech from African Americans. So the version that I find here is most common, though, is not a louse, but a mosquito in a wrestling jacket.

Really?

Yeah. But what’s really interesting about those is that both of them have to do with something small, and so any kind of clothing for a small insect wouldn’t take very much fabric and wouldn’t be very expensive. And the whole point is just it’s like a really tiny piece of clothing and you still can’t afford it, right?

Oh, yeah. And a wrestling jacket, what it is, it’s an outfit designed to, I think, like a boxer, I think to keep you cool before you go on.

Okay. But maybe that’s, maybe we’re thinking the same thing?

Well, are we thinking about a little bitty insect inside a great big giant jacket?

No. Is that what you picture, Denise?

No. We actually, you know, if you knew my mother, we just knew we were broke. But when I did try to visualize it, I always thought of a straight jacket, not a wrestling jacket. But I don’t know what a wrestling jacket looks like.

Yeah, come to think of it. And I had no idea what a louse was, so how a louse would look in a wrestling jacket, I could not conjure that up in my brain.

Okay, okay. Yeah, well, a louse we can help you with. I mean, that’s the singular of lice. Also a small insect, right?

Yeah, yeah, like a little, little, little bitty one. But gee, a louse in a wrestling jacket, I like that.

There are a few others I find here. Do you know any of these? I’m so broke I couldn’t buy a crippled crab, a crutch if I had a forest of small trees.

No, never heard of that. Never heard of that one.

Well this isn’t talking about your shoes, but it’s the same kind of thing about being broke. I’m so broke that the soles of my shoes are so thin that if I stepped on a dime, I could tell whether it was heads or tails.

No, never heard that one. How about, I’m so broke, I can’t afford to pay attention.

Now I’ve heard that.

You have heard that one.

Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell you what, if you want a little bit more about this, there’s a book by a fellow named Lawrence Levine. It’s called Black Culture and Black Consciousness. And he talks about these kinds of expressions and other things, like the pearls of wisdom that the community shares with each other or that parents share with children or grandparents share with grandchildren.

And I’d recommend that because he has something to say about this particular expression as well.

I will get that. I’ve listened to you make reference to when you had other black callers. And if I could just tell you one thing, Grant, I love the show, first of all.

Thank you. But when you talk about black language, you have such an appreciation for it. And I think a lot of times black, especially in this generation, they get such a rap for it not being real talk. But you always honor it like as an art form. And that just pleases me.

Just really, really a great deal because it’s not slop, you know. I got to tell you. We can’t appreciate all of it, but I’m mutually pleased that I am being heard and that my message is being received and someone is understanding exactly what I’m saying. And you’re making me really happy over here.

Well, cool. Great. This has been exciting. Denise, thank you so much for calling us today. Let us know what you think of that book, all right?

I will do. I will do that. Thank you very much.

All right. Bye-bye.

Thanks, Denise.

Bye-bye. If you’ve got some favorite I’m so broke that or you are so broke that, then pass them along an email to words@waywordradio.org or leave them in your best performance voice on our voicemail at 1-877-929-9673, and maybe we’ll play them on the air.

Coming up, it’s a word puzzle. Stick around for more on A Way with Words. You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette. And we are joined once again by our quiz guy, Mr. John Chaneski.

Welcome, John.

Hello, fans. Hello, Martha. Hello, Grant. How are you doing?

Hi, John. How are you doing?

I’m doing great. And I have something very interesting for you today. I love books. Who doesn’t, right?

Yeah, yeah, sure. This year, my wife, Jennifer Michael Heck, the author, is one of the five judges of the nonfiction category of the National Book Awards.

Oh, really?

Yeah. We have received, no lie, in the past two months, over 500 nonfiction titles in the mail.

Holy moly. Does she have to read all of them?

Well, they have to pick a winner. They don’t have to read all of them. That’s what she says. But there are five of them doing it together. They have a system. They’re working it out. It’s quite impressive.

Very cool. I love the clever way that some of these books are titled. Now, here’s the quiz. I’ll give you the title of an actual nonfiction book that has come out or is coming out this year. And I want you to take a stab at guessing what the book is about.

Oh, love this.

All right. Good, good. Now, whether you guess it or not, I’ll follow with three options you can pick from those. And, you know, it might confirm your original answer or maybe you’ll change your mind.

Okay. For example, The Watchers. Now, what do you think that could be about?

The Watchers. It’s science fiction about a town in Texas that, never mind, I don’t know. It’s a Swiss family that builds wooden watches.

Oh, that’s good. Those are both very good. Except don’t forget these are nonfiction titles.

Oh, nonfiction. They’re not going to be science fiction, yes. But here are three choices. Is it about Nielsen audiences, surveillance in America, or pediatric dentistry?

Oh, it’s the second one. It’s the surveillance in America.

Yeah, it is the second. The title is The Watchers, colon, The Rise of America’s Surveillance State by Shane Harris.

Okay, very good. Okay, here’s the first book. Well, technically the second book. Here’s a book called Extra Lives.

Extra Lives. This is a fortified cat food.

No, no, it’s the history of video games. Okay, here are your choices. An examination of computer and platform games and their meaning. Awesome. An expose into the science of cryogenics. The memoir of an unknown actor who’s been in over 150 films.

Oh, I like the last one. That sounds like a book pitch, but I still think it’s the video games.

It is called Extra Lives, Why Video Games Matter by Tim Bissell.

Okay, very cool. It’s not fortified cat food?

No, it’s not fortified cat food. Okay. But I might be writing that book soon. Just so you know, out of about 525 books received, this is the only one that I have read and finished is Extra Lives about the video games.

All right. Very good. Here’s the next one. Sweetness and Blood.

Oh, wow. The inside story of A Way with Words.

No, I think it’s a history of diabetes treatment in America.

That’s interesting. Here are your choices. First is A History of the American Ballet Theater. A History of Heavy Metal Music. A History of Surfing.

Ooh. That’s hard. That’s difficult. I’d say the first one.

I’d say the second one.

It is the third. A History of Surfing. The title of the book is Sweetness and Blood, How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California.

To the Rest of the World with Some Unexpected Results by Michael Scott Moore.

Oh, okay.

Cool, cool.

Wow.

I’m excited.

All right.

Here is the next one.

Shock of Gray.

It’s a biography of Susan Sontag.

Nice one.

I bet it’s about the aging of America.

Interesting.

Sorry, by saying nice one, I guess I telegraphed the fact that it’s not about Susan Sontag.

That’s okay.

But the options are the story of the South during the Civil War, the story of writer and monologous Spalding Gray, the story of the aging of the world’s population.

Oh, see, shock of gray.

I’m voting for the last one.

Yeah, the last one.

It is C. Shock of Gray. Get ready for this. The Aging of the World’s Population and How It Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation by Ted C. Fishman.

Well, Fishman has set out a big agenda. I wonder if he accomplishes it.

Wow. What’s the font size on that title?

It’s pretty tiny. Pretty tiny.

All right. What else you got for us?

Here’s the next one. It’s real short. Last Call.

It’s about switching your phone company.

Interesting.

Let me give you the options, okay.

It’s either about the rise and fall of Prohibition,

The rise and fall of the personal pager,

The rise and fall of square dancing in America.

Oh, square dancing is alive and well.

It’s got to be the first one.

Yeah, the personal pager did decline,

But I don’t understand the call reference.

It’s got to be the first one.

Yep, first one.

That is correct.

Last call, the title is

The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent.

Oh, the former public editor of the New York Times.

That’s right.

Oh, very good.

Here’s the last one.

The Possessed.

My car.

It’s about lost luggage.

The Possessed.

Is it an examination of the world of people who hoard?

Is it a history of the paparazzi?

Is it a study of people obsessed with Russian literature?

I kind of like the people who are possessed by their possessions.

That’s where I would go, the hoarders.

That’s not a bad way of looking at that.

We received a book about people obsessed with their possessions, hoarders, but it’s called Stuff.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

This book, The Possessed, is Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elise Dattelman.

Really?

Interesting.

And that’s my quiz on book titles.

You guys were just fantastic and very entertaining.

Thank you so much.

That was fascinating.

I’d love to do another one of those sometimes.

Me too.

That’s a new kind of quiz.

We haven’t done that before.

Glad you like it.

By the way, I hope you know what you’re going to be getting for Christmas.

500 books?

Yeah, or something like that.

Hey, John, thanks a lot.

Yeah, thanks, John.

It was great.

Thank you.

Well, if you want to talk about books or words or slang or punctuation, call us 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hi.

Hello, who’s this?

This is Steva Stowell-Hardcastle.

Where are you calling from, Steva?

I am calling from Sealands Grove, Pennsylvania at Companion Animal Hospital.

Oh, very nice. What do you do there?

I am a small animal veterinarian and co-owner of our practice.

Sounds like a cool work.

What can we help you with today?

Well, my husband and I were traveling across Indiana a couple weekends ago,

And we tuned in your show as we were traveling.

And I thought, I have a couple words.

I’ve always wanted to have somebody explain to me as a veterinarian

When I moved here 20 years ago.

I had owners describe their pet as being dopic.

Really?

So my dog is very dopic, meaning that it’s kind of incoordinated.

The second word is nixie.

My kitten is very nixie.

She gets on the table and she knocks things over.

And the last one which really kind of threw me, it was how long before I can get my cat dressed?

Dressed? Like, outfits?

Boots?

Yeah. Like, this is interesting.

And a feathered cap.

So, yeah. And actually, you know, what they meant was how long before I can have her spay.

Okay.

Oh, dressed.

So let’s break these down one at a time. Most of this is part of the same puzzle.

But Dopic is really interesting.

You’ll often hear it said as Doplic, D-O-P-L-I-C, or you’ll hear it as Dopsy.

There’s a dozen different spellings for this word, but ultimately Dopik comes from the German word Dopik, D-O-P-P-I-C-H, which means clumsy or awkward.

There you go.

And so it is a direct borrowing into English from the Pennsylvania German or Pennsylvania Dutch, whatever you want to call it.

And it shows up all the time in that region of the country.

And I’m not surprised to find that it’s still being used because it’s a pretty handy word.

Yes, it’s a wonderful word and certainly unique.

And now that I’ve inherently over the years know what it means, you know, when somebody says other topic, I know what they’re describing.

But I just wasn’t sure if there was a direct word in German that correlated with that.

Nixie was another one that you came up with.

So if you have a Nixie kitty, that means the cat is doing what?

They’re naughty. They’re naughty and playful.

And they’re getting into trouble.

This is a little more of a stretch, but I’m betting this also comes from German,

From the German word nicht, N-I-C-H-T, which means no.

Because when you have a cat or a child doing something they shouldn’t do,

You’re just like, no, no, no, or nicht, nicht, nicht, right?

That’s my guess, too.

And you’ll find that nicht, and it’s directly related to nix in English.

So you say, you know, nix on that, meaning no to that.

Tons of different ways that this is entered into the language,

But in this particular case, it’s the word nicked, which means no.

And dressed.

Dressed for spade?

This is harder, and this is a guess, but I’m not afraid of guessing.

I think this is just related to the field term for what you do

When you cut an animal open that you’ve killed for meat.

You dress an animal in the field when you take out the innards and prepare it,

You know, dump it in the salt water, however it is you’re preparing the animal.

Unfortunately, I think I probably have a little more finesse.

Yeah.

Thank goodness.

The field dressing.

Yeah, field dressing is a little different, but I think it’s probably related to that.

Well, this is fascinating.

We really should do some more digging on Pennsylvania Dutch.

This is great stuff.

Well, we’ll definitely do some listing of some books and some resources on the language

Because it’s one of the several parts of the country where people still speak varieties of German,

Which is kind of surprising to outsiders.

There’s a place in Texas where they do it, and there’s parts of the Great Lakes region,

And don’t forget the Mennonite and the Amish.

But it’s just really rich language, well-studied, too, which is the nice thing about it,

Which means there’s tons of information out there.

Well, thanks for this firsthand report.

Steve, it was really nice to talk to you.

Drop us a line sometime if you encounter anything new, all right?

I will.

Please do.

I will.

Take care.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Do they talk funny where you’re from or the place where you moved?

1-877-929-9673

Or send an email to

Words@waywordradio.org

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, Martha. Hey, Grant.

Hello, who’s this?

This is Lance Justice calling from

America’s finest city, San Diego.

Cool, what are you calling us about?

I’m calling you about a word.

This word is spelled

N-I-C-H-E

Oh, okay.

And I’m just calling about

The proper pronunciation

Of this word in America and whether or not it’s used differently in different contexts.

And how do you say it? And what are your contexts?

So I’m a former student of biology. I pronounce the word niche, like hitch.

This is how I’ve always been taught to use it, although I think it is of French origin.

Right.

And some people do pronounce it niche, like quiche. But I get like this,

Underlying tone of pretentiousness.

Whenever I hear somebody say niche.

Mm—

But disclaimer, if you’re from the UK, it’s okay.

Oh, I see.

Why?

Just because they’re automatically pretentious?

Just get away with it.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

They talk funny anyway.

Yeah, yeah.

I want to raise my pinky.

But I’m not hearing the difference in the context.

Are there situations in which you would say niche, you yourself, Lance?

Not that I know of, because I only use it in the biological sense.

I’m a science teacher, so this word comes up.

You got a really great question here.

And the cool thing about this is we know a little about this because people have been tracking this pronunciation change for more than 100 years.

Oh, wow.

Like a lot of the words we borrowed from French that have a C-H surrounded by vowels, we borrowed it wholly and completely into English and just made it a ch sound.

C-H is like a church or chunk or chip, right?

Right.

And then something happened about 100 years ago.

People began pronouncing it differently.

And a number of commentators wrote, you know, long screeds against it.

You should not pronounce it as the French do because it’s now an American word and it’s been Americanized.

And who do you think you are? Are you poser, faker, you? Basically, the sum total of their message.

But it grows by the day, by the year, by the decade.

And more often than not, now people do pronounce it as niche.

Okay.

That’s not to say that either pronunciation is more correct.

It’s just there’s some people who are holding on to niche and are reluctant to grant you niche.

Okay.

So I learned niche.

I don’t know why or how, but that was how I was taught it.

And that’s where the problem lies these days, that if you make an accusation that somebody is a pretentious fool, they might not be their fault.

They might have been taught in school to say niche.

Right.

I understand.

I just get that, I don’t know, it just drives me bananas when I hear it the other way.

Right, right.

Right.

But you don’t say quiche.

No.

You like a slice of quiche.

And you don’t, but you also don’t say avalanche.

You say avalanche, right?

Right, exactly.

Which is another word we got from the French.

There’s a whole bunch of these.

There’s some words in French that retain that ch sound instead of taking a more normal English ch sound when you’re having a ch together.

So cliché, machine.

We don’t say mustache.

We say mustache, right?

Or we don’t say chute, we say shoot.

Right.

The C-H-U-T-E.

So, in any case, to summarize all my long meandering thought here on this is, currently, most experts say that pronunciation of the word is more formally niche, but both are acceptable.

Okay, thank you so much.

I hope that helps.

Yes.

Thanks, Lance.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

So you say niche.

I say niche, but…

Actually, I usually say Nicky.

Of course you do.

He’s such a contrarian.

No, I say the most pretentious way possible, which is niche.

I like that.

I’m going to steal that.

So say it my way.

And if you have a dispute about pronunciation, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We had an email recently from Ann Heck in Indiana, and she wanted to know what you call, what she calls, the little blue whirly loading circle that stays up while she has to load something on a computer.

Oh, right, sure.

Remember, she said her husband taught high school English for over 30 years, and they have a son who has a degree in information technology, but they don’t have a word for this, and she wants to show off and give them a word for that little thing that comes up on your computer screen while you’re waiting for the computer to do something.

And we have an answer for her.

Oh, we do.

It’s kind of not so interesting.

I mean, it’s called a weight cursor, right?

Right, yeah.

What I really love are the names that other people give to these things.

You know, people who use Macs may call it the swirly rainbow thing, you know, because of the beach ball of death.

Yeah, the spinning beach ball of death is what we’ve always used.

Oh, really?

Some people call it the pizza of death, right?

Yeah, or the spinning gay pizza because it’s all rainbow.

Oh, right.

But weight cursor, that’s all it is, or spinning weight cursor, which is different, you know, from an indeterminate progress bar, which is different from a progress bar.

You know, that’s the little thing that goes across the screen.

Is there anything more boring than the jargon of user interface design?

No, no.

That’s why I like calling the progress indicator a fever bar.

Oh, nice.

Very good.

Have you seen that fever bar?

Yeah, it looks like a thermometer kind of, right?

Yeah, and then there’s the one that sort of looks like a spinning barber pole on its side.

That’s the indeterminate progress bar.

Oh, I see. Right.

Could take a minute, could take an hour.

Yeah, yeah.

But I like spinning beach ball of death.

On a Windows machine, what do they use?

Well, it depends on which version of Windows you’re on.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Well, the hourglass, right?

It’s a swirly thing, yeah.

You have a boring hourglass.

Well, it used to be.

I think they’ve changed it.

Yeah.

And you can get your own waiting cursors anyway.

You can assign anything to it.

You can make a kitty chase a butterfly if you want.

Oh, I had that a long time ago.

Do you have a custom weight cursor now?

I don’t know.

No?

I’m older than 11.

I was going to say, all the time you spin in front of a computer, you don’t want to.

What would I?

I’d probably have a beach ball.

Well, what do you call your spinning weight cursor?

Do you have special names for the goofiness you see on the screen?

You’re not using the boring jargon, are you?

Please say no.

1-877-929-9673 or email to words@waywordradio.org.

Stick around for more language questions and answers next on A Way with Words.

A Way with Words is sponsored in part by iUniverse, supported self-publishing.

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You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, did you ever think that dictionaries also define numbers?

They do.

I mean, we think about dictionaries being just for words, right?

Yeah.

But you can look up pretty much all the major numbers, not 302, but you can look up 100 or 1,000, the big landmark numbers.

Right.

And they have definitions.

And it’s interesting to me how differently they can be defined in order to get to that point.

How do you describe a number in words?

Ooh.

It’s kind of a puzzle, right?

It would be a challenge.

Yeah.

One of the tricks that you can do is you can say that three is the sum of one and two.

Okay.

That’s fair, right?

Okay.

Or you could say that it’s one more than two.

Or you can say one less than four.

Right.

Some dictionaries will do all of these and also give the Arabic number.

So you would write the numeral three there next to it, right?

Okay.

It’s just really interesting.

When you get to the higher numbers, though, it’s more difficult because they kind of stick to this math.

And so you get really crazy stuff like the New Oxford American Dictionary defines the number a million as the product of a thousand and a thousand.

So a thousand times a thousand?

Why didn’t they just say it’s one more than nine?

Or it’s ten to the sixth power, right?

And a trillion.

The Collins Dictionaries, for example, give it as one, the number represented as one followed by 12 zeros.

That’s one way to do it, right?

Yeah, that makes sense.

Or 10 to the power of 12 or a million million.

They’re doing the job of defining.

It’s as if the dictionary editor said, I have defined this word.

But I don’t know that they’ve added clarity.

Yeah.

It’s kind of a cursory.

Let’s just go up to up one level of conversation.

Putting numbers in the dictionary is kind of like obligatory.

You kind of have to do it.

But the question is, do people actually consult the dictionary for the definition of numbers?

I mean, maybe this doesn’t matter because you can just get away with putting anything.

Or you could do what the Merriam-Webster dictionaries do.

They just kind of bail on definitions altogether.

Do they?

In the unabridged, they just put a number table.

Oh, they do?

Yeah.

See, that kind of solves the problem, right?

Well, that’s because they’re so busy defining colors.

I’m looking at one of my favorite entries in Merriam-Webster, which is for geranium lake.

Do tell.

Which is a color.

Geranium lake is a vivid red that is lighter and slightly yellower and stronger than apple red,

Yellower, lighter and stronger than carmine,

And bluer, lighter and stronger than scarlet,

Also called spark.

I mean, think about it.

Trying to define numbers and colors?

It’s crazy.

Yeah, the Collins Dictionaries,

When they define the color red,

It says,

Any of a group of colors,

Such as that of a ripe tomato or fresh blood,

That lie at one end of the visible spectrum,

Next to orange,

And are perceived by the eye

When light in the approximate wavelength range

740 to 620 nanometers falls on the retina.

Oh my gosh.

Clarity, not added.

Oh my gosh.

Opacity is like at maximum levels there.

But I think, but let’s just say,

Comparing it to the ripe tomato or fresh blood does the job.

It does the job.

Right.

We know what blood is because we’ve experienced these things as human beings.

Yeah.

I think the moral of this story is hug a dictionary editor today.

Share your finds in the dictionary or your wonderful finds in the English language with us.

You can send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Leave them on our Facebook page under the username Wayword Radio.

And speaking of numbers, here’s ours.

1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Janie Chambers.

I’m calling from Gainesville, Florida.

Well, welcome to the program.

How are things in Gainesville?

Oh, they’re great.

We’re getting ready for football.

Go Gators.

Go Gators.

That’s right.

Go Gators.

What can we do for you today?

Well, my grandmother, who passed away years ago, she used to tell us when we were little,

A saying, you know, you would say, I wish I had this or I wish I had that.

And she would say, well, wish in one hand and tacky in the other and tell me which one gets full first.

We never knew what tacky meant.

And tacky in the other.

Have you heard that other ways?

I’ve heard other things there in place of the word tacky.

Well, I have heard some other things, too.

And somebody at one point told me that tacky was an old English word.

They thought, but they didn’t really know what it meant.

Oh, very interesting.

They had no other information except that they thought it was an old English word.

Right.

And so do you use this expression as well?

No.

No, okay.

I don’t know what it meant.

It’s a very parental thing to say, though, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Where was your grandmother from?

Well, she was a Hatfield, and originally she was from West Virginia,

But she was from northwest Georgia, from Appalachian Mountains.

So she was basically saying, Janie, good luck with that.

Exactly.

Okay, okay.

I wish you luck with your wish.

Yeah, so to speak. That’s good.

Yeah, because I think what we’re all getting at, and maybe you’re getting at too,

Is that it sounds like tacky is either a mishearing or a euphemism for a much stronger expression.

Have you heard a much stronger expression, Janie?

I have heard a much stronger expression.

My grandmother wouldn’t have said that word.

Okay.

All right.

So wish in one hand and say spit or maybe poop in the other.

Yeah.

Exactly.

I’ve heard those.

But a much stronger those.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, and the idea is which hand is going to fill up faster.

Well, if you’re wishing and you’re spitting, let’s say, in the other hand,

Then, yeah, the second hand is going to fill up faster.

That’s a great expression.

I’ve never heard tacky used as a euphemism for…

No, I mean, I know things like hard tack, which are kind of hard biscuit,

And, of course, everyone knows the adjective meaning cheesy or kind of cheap-looking, right?

Right, right.

But tacky as a noun referring to something in large qualities?

I don’t know.

Is that related to molasses maybe?

Right.

Seeky?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Well, Janie, did other Hatfields say this and your neighbors and extended family or just your grandma?

Mostly it was just my grandmother.

I don’t remember hearing my grandfather say that.

Just my grandmother, her name was Othella May Hatfield.

Othellame.

Nice.

Love that.

There actually was another word she would say.

-huh.

It was carrion.

And if something smelled bad, she would say smell like carrion.

-huh.

Or have you heard charney?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, in that part of the country, charney kind of means filthy or just icky.

Like you said, the house is charney or something like that.

One really interesting thing about the more traditional form of this, where we use the four-letter word beginning with S and meaning poop,

Is that you can find it in that form as far back as the 1730s.

Lord have mercy.

In books of Proverbs.

Yeah, absolutely.

And they didn’t euphemize it either.

They just went ahead and used the four-letter word.

And there are a few other Proverbs there that you might find interesting.

Do you want to hear those?

Yes.

If wishes were butter cakes, then beggars might bite.

Oh, I like that.

I like that.

That one.

If wishes would bide, then beggars would ride.

I never heard of that one.

If wishes were horses, then everyone would ride.

You ever heard that one?

I’ve heard that one.

Yeah, it’s very similar.

Everyone would ride.

I’ve heard that one.

I think my favorite is your grandmother’s, Janie.

I like it.

The assumption that I make is that it was maybe that, as I got older, that it was the F word.

But I didn’t really know if that’s what it meant.

I suppose it was something that came down from her family.

Yeah, maybe she’s trying not to be tacky.

Exactly.

Thank you so much for your call today.

Well, thank you.

All right.

Take care of yourself, Jenny.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right.

What did your grandmother say when you wished?

Let us know.

words@waywordradio.org or call us 1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Shaker Dadlani.

Shaker?

Yes, that’s right.

Where are you calling from, Shaker?

I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Well, welcome to the program. Glad to have you.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

I was calling to learn the meaning and the origin of the word frenetic.

F-R-E-N-E-T-I-C.

-huh. Okay. What got you interested in that word?

Oh, well, I graduated from business school last year,

And one of my professors in school used the word frenetic, and I did not know what he meant by it.

I knew the word frantic, and I figured frenetic meant frantic in a business environment, I guess.

So I wanted to know where this word came from.

Is the origin in the word frantic?

And if not, what’s the origin?

What’s the history behind it?

So frenetic was the word that he used.

Correct.

And do you remember what context he was using it in?

It’s an entrepreneurship school.

So the context was in a business environment.

You need to be very proactive and get to situations or anticipate situations early on.

I guess that was the context he had used it in.

Okay.

So he was talking about frenetic activity then.

Correct.

Is that the idea?

Okay.

One dictionary has a pretty good distinction, the American heritage, between these two adjectives.

And it describes frenetic meaning wildly excited and frantic meaning highly excited.

And I think that’s the difference in just shades of meaning, that frenetic is a little bit more caffeinated, you might say.

Would you agree with that, Grant?

Mm—

Yeah.

But here’s what’s really cool.

You asked about the history of the word, and I’m so glad you did because both of these words are really closely related etymologically.

And they both go back to a Greek word, fren, which means brain or mind.

And you see this root, for example, in schizophrenic, which is a split mind.

And you see it in the word frenzy as well.

Frenzy.

Is that right?

Okay.

And frenitis in ancient Greek was an inflammation of the brain.

And caused, you know, frenetic activity or frantic activity.

And so both of these words have a common ancestor

And arose pretty much around the same time.

And frenetic came to mean just a little bit more agitated.

That’s the way I would describe it.

They are used almost exactly the same in English.

You can have a frenetic or a frantic pace, for example.

Or you can have frantic activity or frenetic activity.

But one little difference that I see when I look at the big mass of data here is that frantic is usually a little more negative, a frantic rescue or a frantic scream.

And frenetic is a little more neutral, a frenetic drumming or a frenetic schedule.

So we’ve started to differentiate them a little bit more in their value.

That’s interesting because I think a frantic is carrying more emotion.

Oh, you do?

And frenetic is carrying more motion, actually.

Oh, I see.

Visually, I get a different visual.

So what’s a good, can you put it in a sentence for me?

Yeah, we made frantic efforts to rescue the…

The stranded sea lion.

The stranded sea lion.

Right.

Okay.

Or, yeah, entrepreneurs have to engage in frenetic activity in order to keep their businesses going.

Yeah, exactly.

They’re working 24-7 and making all kinds of phone calls or deals or whatever.

Does that make sense?

-huh.

That does make sense. Thank you.

So are you an entrepreneur now?

I am working towards being one.

So you’re engaged in a lot of frenetic activity?

Frenetic activity.

And what kind of startup are you involved with?

I am trying to build an air conditioning unit that runs on solar power.

That runs on solar power?

Yes.

Very nice.

Excellent.

Keep up the frenetic activity.

We could use that.

I would say we’ll look for you in the business pages.

That’s sure to be a success.

Definitely. Good luck to you.

Shagra, thank you so much for your call.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What’s your business and what’s the language you use in it?

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

You can call that number anytime or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, I want to share this book with you.

I just got it in the mail.

This is OK, the improbable history of America’s greatest word.

It is the history of OK.

Oh, OK.

That very American expression that we all use every day.

That has traveled around the globe.

And is used by people who speak a variety of languages.

He has taken it from its earliest days in the early 1800s.

Up through Ned Flanders and Oakley Doakley.

And the author is a colleague of mine, Alan Metcalf.

He teaches at McMurray College in Illinois.

He’s a member of the American Dialect Society,

The secretary, longstanding secretary.

And this book will be released in November by Oxford University Press.

And he knows how to write for a popular audience.

His books are very readable.

Very comprehensible.

This is not one of your boring, dry academic treatises.

We’ll share some more about this book on our website when it’s released.

Well, is there a book you’re aching to talk about?

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

And it’s okay to email us to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Allison.

Hi, Allison. Welcome to the program. Where are you calling from?

Arlington, Texas.

Ooh, welcome.

Thanks.

What can we do you for today?

I was wanting to know about the phrase, play it by ear.

Are you a pianist?

No.

No.

I was making plans with my children one day last week, and it was a very busy day.

And I had told the person I was trying to make plans with, well, we’ll play it by ear.

And I think I happened to listen to your show at the time.

Like, ooh, I should call in and find out what that means.

Ooh, yes.

Very good.

Yes.

Do you have any theories about it?

Well, my first thought was a musical instrument where people, you know, they hear something.

And then they can recall it.

That’s right.

Yeah.

That’s pretty much it.

It’s related to that, where someone can, dates back hundreds of years, where a musician,

Skilled ones, can listen to a song and then do their own version of it without sheet music.

Or any kind of aid at all.

That’s quite wonderful to see.

I wish I had that ability.

Me too.

And you’ll also find it really has a lot of resonance for jazz musicians who do a lot of improv.

Because they may not have even heard the song before.

But they’re taking their cues from one of their colleagues.

They’re going to do a complete improv who will just lay down something.

And then they’ll all embellish on it and keep going.

And that’s truly a wonderful performance of playing it by ear.

You know what? I have to confess that when I was really young,

You know how you misunderstand words when you’re really young or phrases?

Oh, sure.

I thought play it by ear.

I thought it meant being a very skilled musician, but I really thought it meant playing with your ear on the piano.

You know how at the State Fair they put all that chicken feet on the little pianos and then the chickens peck at it?

I thought play by ear was literally, I thought, you know, that’s why people were so impressed with people.

Martha walking around with an ochre in her ear.

So your kids.

That would be entertaining.

I should try that. So do your kids understand that expression? Then they’re not misunderstanding it the way I did?

You know, I’m not really sure if they understand it at all, but I mean, because I was talking to an adult.

I see.

I mean, I do say it around them, so I guess, you know, maybe I should ask them.

Yeah, I mean, it’s a kind of good way of getting out of stuff, right, without committing to it.

You know, oh, we’ll see about it.

Yeah, because it’s now far from music. Now we talk about it in terms of general just winging it.

Or just making it up as you go along, or working with very little information.

If you have plans with somebody and you say,

Well, I might be there at 11, but let’s just play it by ear,

It gives you a chance to be there at 12 and maybe not at 11.

Although I’d hate to do that to someone, but hey.

Yeah, we all have different measures of time, don’t we?

Yes, that’s right.

Well, hey, thanks a lot for calling.

All right, thank you very much.

Take care, Allison.

All right, bye-bye.

You too, bye-bye.

Play it by ear.

I really thought that people would bang their head on the piano in order to get the tunes out.

Not their head, their ears!

Oh, I love childhood misunderstandings. They’re really rich, aren’t they?

Yeah, they are.

1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D

Or send it all in email to words@waywordradio.org.

That’s our show for this week.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Hurdell and Jennifer Powell.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Dasvidanya.

Love ya.

You say tomato.

I say Creole tomato.

Oh, let’s call the whole thing off.

Oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

And oh, if we ever part…

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