Lunatic Fringe

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. You can’t judge a book by its cover, right? But I sure do

Judge a book by its first line. I’ve got to get hooked in that first line.

That’s how you do it? You read the first line?

Yeah.

And one line, that’s all that you give them?

You know, it’s my journalistic background. I’ve got to be hooked right at the beginning.

How about this one? It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.

Oh, as John Stewart would say, boom! That’s George Orwell’s 1984, of course.

And speaking of cold, the cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.

Who’s that?

That is Stephen Crane, Red Badge of Courage.

I love that.

Army stretched out on the hills, comma, resting.

Well, my favorite, and this is my favorite book of all time, so I don’t know which came first, liking the book and liking the opening line or liking the opening line and then liking the book.

But my favorite is from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Oh, yeah.

Great book.

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter.

And one of the things I like about it is that Twain, in order to get you to like Huck Finn, has mentioned his bestseller that you probably already read.

Well done.

Well done.

But you also get such a sense of the voice, too, right?

Yes.

It’s such a different way of speaking.

He captured the language of a place and a time and an age.

A boy.

A boy’s language.

An attitude.

An attitude, yeah.

Yeah.

Love that.

What are your favorite opening lines?

What is the thing that you read that made you finish a novel?

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

Was it a turn of phrase?

Let us know in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Carrie Tulls from New York, New York.

Hi, Carrie.

Where do you live in New York, New York?

I live in the East Village.

Well, what can we do for you, Carrie?

Oh, well, I was wondering.

I was on a long road trip a couple weeks ago, and I was kind of, like, dozing off.

And I thought there was a word for it.

You know when your, like, head falls down, and then you snap back up, and you wake up?

Yeah.

I think there’s a word for that, but I couldn’t think of it.

Yeah, there are several.

Oh.

And you think you’ve heard it before?

Yeah, it’s something like, I don’t know, like the snaps or something.

I can’t really remember.

The snaps.

That sounds sort of slang.

Yeah, it does sound like slang.

Yeah, so you’re sort of nodding off to sleep, and then you sort of do this total body hiccup, right?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

It’s kind of a rude awakening, right?

But that’s not the term, right?

No.

Yeah.

Okay, I can give you a term for this.

Oh, really?

It goes back to good old Greek and the Greek word for sleep.

How about you were experiencing the hypnagogic startle?

Oh, nice.

Wow, that definitely wasn’t what I was thinking of.

That wake you up?

Yes, that did.

Yeah, it’s the hypnagogic startle or the hypnic jerk or the night jerk.

That’s what it was.

That’s the guy who bangs on your door when you’re asleep.

Something like that.

Yeah, but the hypno comes from the Greek word for sleep, and the agogic comes from a word that means to lead or drive, like a demagogue drives people to do things.

So hypnagogic startle is something that, I don’t know, are you involved in the arts at all?

A little bit.

Yeah, it seems like something that you hear artists talking about a lot, that hypnagogic state.

Edgar Allan Poe talked about the fancies that only came to him in that state.

And I remember seeing this documentary once on Salvador Dali.

He talked in that documentary about how the way he sleeps is he sits on the edge of a chair holding a spoon over a pie plate that’s on the floor.

And he just kind of drifts off.

And then as soon as he drifts off enough that he lets go of the spoon and it drops to the pie plate and makes noise, then he wakes up.

Wow.

And that’s his way, supposedly.

Maybe he’s just being surreal.

I don’t know.

But that’s his way of getting efficient sleep, just getting into that hypnagogic state.

And then he’s done?

And then he’s through, yeah.

I could see how that might be a way of recording those weird things that you’re thinking when you’re slightly, you know, in that moment you’re kind of in.

I love that state.

Yeah.

And I believe, I’d have to look this up, but I’m pretty sure that the word for coming out of sleep, that drifting out, I think it’s hypnopompic.

I would have to look it up, but I’m pretty sure.

Oh, well, that helps.

That solves my problem.

Right on.

So what are you going to do with that word?

I don’t know.

I guess next time I drift off to sleep, I’m just going to know what it’s called.

It’s called sleepy time.

Well, hey, listen, it was great talking with you.

You too.

Thanks for calling, Carrie.

Okay, bye.

Have a question about language?

Call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how you doing?

This is Andy from Solkope, North Carolina.

It’s a little community just outside of the town of Siler City.

Okay.

All right.

But I have a question about a billboard I saw outside of Siler City, actually.

It was for a phone company, and it had a picture of a woman’s face with eye black under her eyes,

The stuff that football players and baseball players use.

Right.

And the phrase next to it says, be stronger connected to your son.

And I drove past the billboard.

I didn’t really think anything about it the first day I saw it, but I see it every time I go into town.

And besides the fact that I thought it was kind of a silly advertisement,

I was wondering about the correctness of the grammar.

So I called my mom and asked her, and she said that it was grammatically incorrect,

That it was used in an adjective to modify a verb, and it should be an adverb.

So I called the phone company.

I told them I thought their billboard was wrong, and I pretty much got a,

Oh, yeah, thanks, we’ll get right on that.

Meaning that they wouldn’t.

We’re efforting that.

So I just wanted to know for sure if I was right or wrong with the grammatical correctness of that billboard.

So they actually did connect you to your mother.

She’s another grammar stickler?

She was a teacher a while ago, and so she always pounded grammar into our heads when we were kids.

Martha’s point is their ad worked because you called your mother.

I know.

I was stronger connected.

You were stronger.

Oh, my goodness.

And so the phrase again, Andy, was be stronger connected to your son?

Yes, ma’am.

That’s it.

Ouch.

Yeah, that’s terrible.

Ouch.

And it was on a billboard where thousands of people would see it every day, right?

Right.

My gosh.

You know what this reminds me of?

Do you remember the old Homer and Jethro routines?

Do you remember Homer and Jethro, you guys?

This is probably before your time.

I don’t.

Okay.

You got to look these guys up on YouTube.

They’re hilarious.

Homer and Jethro.

They used to have a song called the Billboard Song, and it’s a song about how there was a tornado that went through town and it messed up all the billboards.

And so then they were talking about what they saw as they drove through town.

It’s like smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, drink Wrigley Spearman beer.

Oh, sure. I’ve heard this.

Can a ration dog who keeps your wild complexion clear.

Oh, you did? Okay.

Well, isn’t that what that billboard sounded like pretty much?

I mean, it’s just insane. That’s terrible.

Just if you haven’t caught the whiff of this, everyone, it’s wrong.

It should not say be stronger connected to your son.

Am I making myself clear?

Be more strongly connected to your son or connect to your son.

I was going to say connect to your son.

Always have a nice, strong, you know, verb.

That’s not even talking about the offense of being, you know, having too many words there.

It’s a poorly written phrase every way to Sunday.

I’d like to think that there was a copywriter who got it right and then somebody who didn’t know what they were doing changed it, you know?

Yeah.

It looks like a translation from another language, maybe.

Don’t you think?

It just looks wrong.

Be stronger.

You know, was there a hyphen between stronger and connected?

There was nothing.

Okay.

It’s funny, though, that you said you thought it was a translation from another language.

Yeah.

Because the next day they called me with an automated survey to ask how satisfied I was with my question that I asked the day prior.

And the automation was in Spanish.

Oh, nice.

Nice.

I used to have a chance to practice Spanish.

It wasn’t a bad thing.

I called with an English grammar question

And I got called back to famous.

That’s nice. That’s sweet.

Boy, that phone company.

You can’t say that they don’t have a sense of humor.

No grammar, but at least a sense of humor.

Right.

Yeah, so you have connected with us, Andy,

And we are completely validating you and your mom.

Well, thanks.

You are 100% right.

You now have our permission to put on all your black clothing

And sneak up on that billboard

And change it in the middle of the night.

Yeah, send us a photo, okay?

And I got 50 bucks towards your bail here.

All right.

Well done, Andy.

Thanks for calling, Andy.

All right.

Thanks.

Take care of yourself.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Of course, Grant, this does remind me of the Apple campaign, Think Different.

Yeah.

It did catch a lot of people’s eyes, right?

It did.

And there was definitely a strong argument to be made that it didn’t have to be the adverb.

There was definitely a strong argument there.

Well, it’s sort of self-referential, right?

Think different.

Right, to think about different as a thing rather than to think differently.

But in this case, A, nobody put any thought into this.

At least at Apple you could say a lot of really bright people worked on that

And they understood that there were multiple layers of meaning in there

And that we would discuss them.

Maybe, yeah.

But there’s no thinking here.

This is just a mess.

I wonder if the sign guys composed this in their truck

The moment before they got out the paste and the paper to put it up.

Have you seen something that kind of ticked you off?

Somebody didn’t get grammar right in a public place about 20 feet high and 30 feet wide.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send photos of it in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Recently, we received an email from Norma in Texas who was asking if there’s a word for the specific birthday that you have that matches your age on the birthday with that date.

So, for example, if you’re born on the 17th of April, is there a special word for your 17th birthday?

Right. And Norma, there is an answer for that.

It’s a golden birthday. I think that’s the term most people use.

And digging around, I see that there are a few other terms for it, the star birthday or champagne birthday.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah, probably some more.

But the golden birthday is the one that most people use.

It’s not usually celebrated, though, except on the hallmark or landmark birthdays, like 13, 21, 30.

Some people I’ve seen do it for the year.

So if you’re turning 10 in 2010 and your birthday is on the 10th, then you’ve got something really special.

That’s a golden champagne star birthday.

Yeah, yeah.

You’d better be a bouncy house and a pony at that party.

What are your questions about language?

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

Try us on Facebook at facebook.com slash waywordradio.

Or call us 1-877-929-9673.

Ahoy, just around the bend.

It’s a puzzle.

Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

We’ll be right back.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And we’re joined now by our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

How’s it going?

Fine.

How you doing, kid?

I’m doing just great.

What’s happening?

Well, it’s a simple quiz this week.

Any child can tell you that a W is just an upside down M and vice versa.

Oh, wow.

Right?

I mean, mom.

Oh, you’re just thinking that out.

I’ll read you a sentence with two blanks.

The words that belong in those blanks will be the same, except that one has an M and the other has a W in the same place.

For example, here’s the first example.

All those commercials on the History Channel sure do blank my enjoyment of their documentaries about blank.

Oh, man.

Raw war?

No.

You have one of the words.

So war documentaries.

Oh, mar my enjoyment.

Mar.

Oh, I see.

You turn the W and you make it an M.

Oh, I see.

It’s mar.

Okay.

And the letters can be anywhere?

I actually wasn’t listening to the instructions very well.

That’s okay.

Sorry.

Yes, the letter, the M or the W can be anywhere in the word.

And I call this puzzle, Turn the Worm.

Because W or M, worm.

Thank you.

Okay, here are a few more.

Every blank on the beach was bronze and beautiful, except for Chaneski, who sure looked blank.

Every man on the beach.

Yeah.

Who looked wan.

Yeah.

Except for Chaneski, who sure looked wan.

Takes one to know one, Grant.

That’s true.

I go to the beach.

People think I’m a mime when I go to the beach.

Anyway, that was very good.

Here’s the next.

Golly gosh and gee whiz, Becky.

That perfume you’re wearing sure is a blank blank.

Swell smell.

Yes, swell smell.

Very good.

There we go.

All right.

I can’t seem to blank the tide of spam in my account, so I’ll just sit here and blank about it.

Stem and stew.

Oh, very good.

I can help you with that.

Okay, we’ll talk after.

That’s good.

I usually just sit there and blog about it.

The addition of Buzz Lightyear to Andy’s toy box left Blank feeling rather blank.

Woody feeling rather moody.

Yes, very good.

Oh, yeah!

Of course.

Toy Story represents!

Yeah, the daddy’s in the house.

I knew there was a reason I watched that a hundred times.

And when the DVD for number three comes out, the doom will begin again.

This next one, by the way, is based on a true story.

My brother uses several cans of hairspray every day, so he really doesn’t blank the Chicago blank.

Chicago?

Yeah.

This one’s kind of tough.

What in Chicago might…

Oh, it’s wind. Mind the wind.

Yes. Very good.

You should get this one pretty easy.

As her date held her on the blank of the mighty ship, Becky thought, what a dramatic ending to my junior blank.

The blank of the giant ship.

Of the prow.

The prow.

Oh, and the prow.

The prow in the prom.

I see.

On the prow of the mighty ship, Becky thought, what a dramatic ending to my junior prom.

Here’s the next one.

If you’re lost in the woods, you won’t need that expensive blank, but you’ll be lucky if you have a single blank.

Watch and match.

Yes, very good.

Priorities there.

Don’t need that expensive watch.

I have my phone.

That might come in handy too.

Where’s the lighter mode on this?

Here’s the next one.

If your workplace is hot and you really blank, then you work with iron as a blank.

Oh, swelter and smelter.

Yes.

Swelter and smelter.

Awesome.

That’s the name of my next album, Swelter Smelter.

Swelter Smelter.

I don’t know many smelters, but I assume they swelter.

And here’s the last one.

Thurber was known for being blank and for creating Walter Blank.

Witty and Mitty.

Witty and Mitty.

Very good.

Nice work, Martha.

Nice work, Grant, too.

You guys did fantastic.

That’s my quiz.

I hate to say that.

It doesn’t mean very much.

Yeah.

I’m trying to think of another M and W, but it’s just not coming to you.

They’re hard.

They’re very difficult.

So I appreciate the difficulty it takes to put these together, John.

Thanks for having us along for the fun.

Thank you for having me.

I’ll see you again next time.

All right. Bye-bye.

And if you’d like to talk about grammar, slang, punctuation, or words in how we use them,

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. How are you doing?

This is Jimmy in San Diego.

Hello, Jimmy. Welcome.

Hi, Jimmy. Welcome to the program.

Well, I’m a screenwriter by profession, and I’ve written several episodes of Star Trek.

Oh, for real?

Come on.

Which Star Trek?

Star Trek Voyager and Deep Space Nine.

Oh, cool.

I’ve actually written more episodes of Star Trek than any other freelance writer in the history of the franchise.

And the guys at Paramount used to call me the Jackie Robinson of Star Trek writers.

That’s nice.

You can knock it out of the park every time, huh?

Very nice.

Well, anyway, I grew up in Detroit in the 60s and 50s and late, early 70s.

And my dad, who was a mortician, being an African-American businessman during that era,

He would work a lot of really long, hard hours.

And he would come in and be really, really tired.

And he’d have that kind of, wow, it was a rough day sort of walk, right?

And he’d come in and say, oh, it was a tough day, son.

They really got me Palmer housing, right?

And I was going, Palmer housing, right?

So he said it so much, you know, it was just part of his daily language.

And I’ve adopted it, so now, you know, when I’ve had a rough day here or there,

You know, I come in and I go, oh, wow, they got me Palmer housing today.

What I was able to glean from him over the years was that way back in the day

When African-American men, one of the jobs,

A few jobs they could get was being a stevedore or a waiter at some hotel

To try to liven up their work, I guess.

They would end up improvising these unusual steps as they did their job.

That seems to be an African-American cultural imperative.

I mean, there’s the boot dancers from South Africa.

There’s breakdancing.

I mean, we see it all over again.

Take love.

Exactly, right?

So I was assuming that Palmer Housing was referring to a restaurant or a hotel where, you know,

The stylized walk that the waiters developed to give themselves some identity was unique to one hotel or one restaurant called the Palmer House.

And if so, were there other ones like, you know, you’d be putting on the rich and you’d come out with some other fancy step, you know, as you were serving?

Or was there such a thing as doing the Hilton?

Huh.

You know?

Doing the Marriott.

This is all ringing a bell for me here.

Wow.

You’ve hit on a lot of different things here.

Yeah.

The first one to tell you is the Palmer House is still there today.

It’s in Chicago at the corner of Staten Monroe.

Oh, my God.

But it’s the third hotel that’s been on that space, according to what I’m seeing.

But for a long time back in the day, most of the staff at the Palmer House were black men, or the women as well.

And they were known for, get this, flat feet.

What?

I don’t know if it was the way they stood or the way that they walked because they were constantly on their feet.

But in 1942, Zora Neale Hurston published a story called A Story in Harlem Slang.

And she uses this language in there, in this short story.

Holy mo.

Yeah, and it’s glossed as Palmer House, walking flat-footed as from fallen arches.

Oh, my God.

So there’s a connection here.

We’ve got a little bit of history coming together in the story you’re telling us about your father.

That’s fantastic.

All of a sudden, something just occurred to me.

What?

My Uncle Weston, he always said that he had gotten a job working for Al Capone back in the day.

Well, I used to run numbers out of beauty parlors.

Seriously?

And he was in Chicago.

Yeah, my Uncle Weston came from Chicago.

And you know what?

It just occurred to me that that must be where my dad got it from.

He got it from my Uncle Weston, who when Al Capone was finally arrested and everything,

My uncle grabbed all the money he could get and fled to Detroit.

That’s his story.

Oh, my God.

That’s amazing.

Jimmy, we’re going to let you go because you have a movie to write.

I’m done.

I’m on it right now.

Hey, guys, the check’s in the mail.

No, but there’s only a little more to be said about Palmer housing as a style of walking.

That’s the best stuff that we got.

You can’t do much better than Zora Neal Houston.

That is terrific.

And I also find it, strangely enough, in a journal of Mormon thought from 1971.

There’s a poem in there.

It says, trying to show me something, the rickety wagon ain’t had them.

They ain’t felt the bumping when your foot’s so flat from Palmer House and Round.

Oh, my God.

So I don’t know what it has to do with Mormon thought, but it’s in there from 1971.

Maybe they just borrowed it.

Oh, that’s a wonderful tribute to my dad.

I’m going to memorize that poem and pass it on to my nieces and nephews.

Jimmy, you need to send us an email and let us know how your further research goes.

It sounds like you maybe can find some historical avenues.

Maybe there’s some of the older generation left who can tell you a little bit more about your father and your uncle,

And maybe you can piece that together and have just a whopping good tale.

Wow, that’s amazing.

Oh, thank you so much, you know.

This is the reason I listen to this show.

That is great.

Yes, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

I’m a huge fan, and I have been for a long, long time.

Wonderful.

All right, Jimmy.

You make us feel smarter, Jimmy.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Grant, that is so cool.

So you think that it’s specific to the Palmer House, though?

There’s nothing like a Hilton walk or a Ritz walk or like he was suggesting?

Not as far as I know.

And I should also mention that there’s a little bit more about Palmer housing in Clarence Major’s famous black slang dictionary,

Juba to jive.

Cool.

Well, I’d love to hear if other folks have used it in their vernacular.

Give us a call.

1-877-929-9673.

Email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kelly Radke from Green River, Wyoming.

Well, what’s going on?

Well, my question is about a phrase I keep hearing in articles about romantic comedies

Or weddings that tend to be very personalized or really long and just all about the couple.

And the phrase is met cute or meet cute.

And it just, it sounds weird when I hear it.

I was reading an article about romantic comedies and how they’ve declined.

And they were talking about how there’s a meet cute in the movie.

So this is like entertainment weekly or variety or something like that?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Something like that.

And then I was reading an article.

I got married last year, so I was reading about weddings.

It’s the same thing about ceremonies where somebody gets up and talks for hours and hours about the couple and how they met cute.

So did you and your spouse meet cute?

Yeah, we met in college, but I wouldn’t say it was necessarily cute.

We didn’t have a big meet and debate class or something like that.

So what I’m understanding here is that to meet cute then is that there’s some kind of contrivance or some kind of device by which the filmmakers bring this couple together.

Yes, I think so.

There’s two cool things I have to tell you about this.

One is we are so very lucky that the Oxford English Dictionary has recently updated its pages.

As of September 2010, they have a brand new entry for this phrase.

So they’ve done all of our homework for us, Martha.

I’m going to go get some coffee, okay?

I’ll be right back.

We’re going to cheat off the editors of the OED.

No, I know these people.

They’re fine people.

They do great work, so we know that we can trust this.

They’ve taken it back as far as 1941.

And they define to meet cute, and it says in filmmaker’s jargon of two characters,

They define it as to have an accidental meeting which leads to or is followed by romantic involvement.

And I would say that they’re kind of missing a little bit of the picture there, so to speak.

I would agree.

Because it’s not just an accidental meeting, but it’s that there’s something, there’s almost a MacGuffin,

Almost this unnecessary event, that’s the old Hitchcock term, right?

This unnecessary event that brings you to the drama and the action that’s going to unfold, right?

There’s almost a MacGuffin there, like they pick up the wrong suitcase at the airport.

Exactly.

Or they both try to get the same cab.

There’s something like that.

Their shopping carts collide and all this stuff.

Yeah.

And there’s usually friction at the beginning, too.

Absolutely.

They don’t seem to like each other.

Right.

And maybe she smacks him and he throws her over his shoulder, you know.

There’s a lot of harrumphing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s farcical almost.

Right.

Anyway, so they’ve done a good job.

I’m looking here and I think I can find some uses maybe from the 1930s.

1941 is the first part of that decade.

I would not be surprised if this goes back to the 30s or even the 20s.

Because romance, since the very early days of filmmaking, just like the very early days of novel writing, has been a main focus.

So I would not be surprised.

And Hollywood is so rich with jargon.

It’s so rich with this crazy language that doesn’t always escape into mainstream.

But, you know, the film reviewers for the newspapers and magazines, they’re steeped in it.

You know, they pick it up from their peers in Hollywood, right?

Yeah, and it’s sort of an overly cute phrase.

I mean, Kelly, I think what might be throwing you is that you would think that the verb there would be modified by an adverb, like met cutely.

Right?

Is that what’s throwing you off?

It’s just it doesn’t sound right to my ears.

Right, right, right.

Exactly.

It’s almost like the phrase itself is a little cutesy, right?

Yes.

Yeah, I don’t like that.

So, Kelly, do you know any people in real life who met cute?

Not that I can think of off the top of my head.

All right.

Well, we’re going to round this rodeo up.

Thank you for giving us a call, Kelly.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Variety magazine has long been a source of great jargon.

A boffo source.

Baffo source.

Oh, that’s one, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They have a couple of books out.

You can find them.

Look for Variety, Slang, and Amazon.

You’ll come up with a couple of books that just have all this good Hollywood language in them.

Oh, yeah?

Oh, cool.

All right.

I’m off to do it.

Send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash waywordradio.

Or give us a call on the telephone, 1-877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Chris from McKinney, Texas.

Welcome to the program.

Well, thank you.

How can we be of service?

Well, I called because I had spelt my newly born son’s name fairly different.

And my name’s spelled different kind of as well.

His name is Christopher.

And I spell it Q-H-R-I-S-T-O-P-A-T-R.

Chris, is that how you spell your name?

No, mine is actually spelled K-H-R-I-S.

-huh.

And I was wondering, the main part of the question, I guess, would be is, you know,

I was kind of playing with the English language a little bit on it.

And I really feel like the Q sounded like a C and a K if the U wasn’t there.

So I kind of went ahead and did it.

And I just wanted to know, is this something else somebody else has done?

Or am I starting a totally new trend with it?

And is there a reason that somebody hasn’t done it?

Probably because nobody really wants to go through the scrutiny.

Oh, so every time you spell your son’s name, you get people who cock an eyebrow at you and wonder if that’s what you meant?

Kind of, yeah. I mean, even at the hospital, the nurse had to redo his paperwork three times.

Oh, really? Okay. So it’s already turned out to be sort of a high-maintenance name for you?

Yes.

And your family, your wife, everyone is on board with this spelling?

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

Okay. I’ve got to say, looking around here, I do find a few uses of Christopher with a QH around the Internet,

But it is not common.

It seems very unusual.

Okay.

And I guess you’ve kind of laid out the biggest issue with it,

Is that you and he, when he’s old enough to write,

Are going to be spelling this name and correcting this name for a very long time.

Yes, I did.

Are you up to that?

Yeah.

I mean, personally, I dealt with it my whole life already,

So I’m pretty sure I could prepare him and help him.

Oh, yeah.

The burden of the father is also on the son.

Yeah.

You know, I always appreciate an effort to name a child in a way that’s familiar and yet still unusual.

I think you’ve done that.

Well, you’ve definitely done that.

Well, people who meet Christopher and learn the spelling of his name will surely never forget him.

Exactly.

I hope so.

I hope he’s a very good person when he grows up, you know.

Oh, no doubt, no doubt.

Well, sounds like you love him a lot.

Enjoy those early months. They go so fast.

Oh, yeah. Little sleep, a lot of days.

Take care of yourself and your family.

All right. Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Tell us the story of your unusual name or your kids’ names.

Call us 1-877-929-9673 or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Is there a bee in your linguistic bonnet?

Maybe we can help.

More of your calls next on The Way With Words.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University,

Where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, we were talking about great opening lines for novels, right?

It’s well-written, beautiful language.

It catches you, makes you want to read the rest of the book, right?

Right, right.

Well, of course, there’s a whole market for making bad opening lines for novels.

Fake stuff, right?

Yeah.

Like the Bulwar Litton Fiction Contest.

Oh, right.

It was a dark and stormy night.

So you’re parodying a really bad writer.

Well, I found this wonderful list.

It’s compiled from a variety of sources.

It’s on the website called keepersoflist.org.

And whoever put this together, somebody named Glenna has got 109 of these.

And they’re wonderfully terrible in that awful way, right?

Oh, give me some wonderfully terrible.

Car crashes on paper.

Number one with the most votes is, she walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

That’s terrible.

Why can’t you just say two legs, right?

That’s terrible.

And I’m pretty sure these are fake.

But if they were real, how awesome would that be?

Oh, my gosh.

Here’s one for us.

At number 11, her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

Anyway.

And then this one, which maybe takes a second to get, but remember, this is a bad opening line for a novel.

You still have 873 pages to go.

Oh, my gosh.

That’s terrible.

At which point you would close the book, right?

Oh, those are painful.

I hope they’re made up.

I think so.

Some of these come from the Washington Post Style Invitational, where people have these competitions.

And some of these are from the 1999 Style Invitational.

Right.

What’s the worst opening line you ever heard?

We’re talking about books here.

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

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Alan Kapischke from Fish Creek, Wisconsin.

Hi, Alan.

Hello, Alan. Welcome to the program.

Oh, thank you.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Well, last winter, my brother-in-law asked me to take a look at a play he was writing

And to give him some feedback, and I offered to proofread it at the same time.

Made some notes for him, but one correction I offered we disagreed on.

And I can give you the quote.

Okay.

We had a terrific game yesterday, and I do not want to take that away from you,

But if you think we were flawless, well, then you’ve got another thing coming.

Mm—

And I told him I thought it should be another think coming.

Mm—

And he kind of laughed at me and then thought I was joking

Because he said he had always seen it and heard it as another thing coming.

What kind of play is this, Alan?

Where does it take place?

What’s the setting?

It’s about Vince Lombardi.

It’s actually just playing on Broadway now.

It’s on Broadway now?

Oh, wow.

How about that?

Whoa.

Whoa.

So how are they saying it on Broadway?

Yeah.

Who won this debate?

Yeah.

Winning isn’t the only thing.

Or no.

Cut the line.

Oh, he cut the line.

The best writers know that when there’s a dispute, just write around it.

I guess.

Did he cut the line because of your disagreement about another think versus another thing?

No.

Oh, okay.

I see.

That didn’t play into it.

Okay.

But the argument still festered.

So you’re calling to ask, should it be another thing coming or another think coming?

Right.

T-H-I-N-G or T-H-I-N-K?

Right.

Okay.

And you’re in the think camp.

Yeah.

I mean, it seems to me that you’ve got another think coming is sort of a creative way of saying think again.

But if it’s another thing coming, what is the thing?

Right.

And if it’s another thing, what’s the first thing?

Right.

Well, I can tell you, I grew up saying another thing coming my whole life.

But that K and that C bump up against each other, and it’s pretty hard to tell.

Right.

That’s right.

Yeah, and thing and think, even without a following word, it begins with a sound, still sound a lot alike.

So it’s an easy phonetic mistake to make, a hearing mistake as well as a production mistake.

Right, but Alan, your take on it is the original as far as I know.

Yeah, Alan, that is the source of it, the origin, the most common one, probably the safest choice is to say another thing coming.

But Martha joins the millions who say another thing coming with the exact same effect.

They mean the same thing no matter which word you use.

Personally, I have always said another think coming.

I’ve always written another think coming.

And when I’m editing someone else’s work and they say another thing coming,

I silently change it to another think coming.

So, because think is just a better choice, really.

Although the problem with think, and maybe you’re on to this,

Is that a think as a noun doesn’t really work for a lot of people.

That’s why they’re looking for another word that it might be.

Sure, you’ve nailed the verb there.

Have a think, maybe, you know, another think?

What do you mean another think?

It doesn’t make sense.

But I did like your logic about you’ve got one instance of thinking,

And a think is another instance of thinking, so you can’t have another one.

Whereas the thing, there’s no thing.

There’s no first thing, so how can you have a second thing?

Right.

Well, Alan, before we go, tell us a little bit more about this play.

My brother-in-law is Eric Simonson, and he wrote it based on David Marinus’ book, When Pride Still Mattered.

Right, Dave Marinus from the Washington Post.

Right.

We used to play softball together, but he wouldn’t remember me.

Oh, wow.

And so it’s on Broadway.

What theater?

It’s at Circle on the Square.

Okay, very good.

And Dan Loria from The Wonder Years is playing Vince Lombardi.

Oh, really?

And Judith Light plays his wife, Marie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, have we helped you, Alan?

I basically said that you were right with think,

And Martha said that she thinks that thing is okay.

So, you know how it is here on the radio show,

Two people, three opinions.

Well, I’m going to say that I won,

And so I have something to lord over my Broadway playwright brother-in-law.

It’s hard to compete with people who are successful.

They become so full of themselves, don’t they?

No.

Thank you so much for calling, Alan.

My pleasure. Thank you.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Do you have another think coming about an argument you had with somebody about the best choice when speaking or writing?

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

Grant, I came across a wonderful quote the other day on Facebook.

Somebody was quoting George Eliot.

This is my new favorite quotation.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

Very nice.

Shout out is what she was saying.

Pretty much.

Pretty much.

If you’d like to talk about language, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673 is the phone number.

You can always email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

And stay in touch with us all week on Facebook.

We’re there under the name Wayword Radio.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Helene from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hello, Helene. Welcome.

Welcome to the program. How are things in Madison?

Well, I have this word that I grew up with.

My mother used it.

I’ve only heard it mentioned one other time, which I’ll tell you about in a minute.

So I’m very puzzled by this and would love to get an origin for it.

The word is skoshabang, and what it means is tattered or ragtag or beat up.

That thing is all skoshabang, meaning it’s kind of a mess.

I grew up in upstate New York, and my mother was of Russian origin, but it’s not a Russian term.

It was nothing that anybody else in the area used.

I never thought to ask her where she got it from,

But I thought at first maybe it was Yiddish,

But I’ve not ever found it in a Yiddish dictionary,

And none of my Jewish friends have heard of it.

The only other place that I ever heard it mentioned

Was this wonderful movie called Fatso with Dom DeLuise and Anne Bancroft.

And Anne Bancroft, who was Italian-American, wrote and directed the movie.

And it’s set in an ethnic Italian restaurant or neighborhood in New York.

And at some point, her character refers to their beat-up old car as the Scosche Bon,

Or for short, the Scosche, you know, take the keys to the Scosche.

Oh, wow. So you sat up straight when you heard that.

Oh, you bet.

But none of my Italian-American friends have ever heard of this.

This all came to a head several years ago when my husband and I adopted a puppy from the local Humane Society.

And we named him Scachabon because that’s what he was.

You know, he had no idea what went into the making of him.

His fur stuck out in every direction.

He was perfect, Scachabon.

But then we spent the rest of his life having to explain this name.

Oh, right.

And I’ve looked it up also in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

I waited for decades for the F volume to come out,

And it’s not in there under any kind of spelling I can use it with.

Oh, man.

So, there it is.

So we don’t know if it’s all one word or three words?

I just know in the movie Fatso, it’s either the Skoshabang or, for short, the Skosh.

But I think that’s just for short.

Skoshabang.

I wonder, I mean, the distance between Russian and an Italian-American dialect is so large

That I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that it sounded the same.

Yeah.

Well, I’m drawing a blank here, and I don’t find anything on it.

And I think what we have to do is turn on the sirens, Martha.

Get the red lights going.

Somebody has heard this before outside of that movie and outside of the name of your dog.

Yeah.

Give us a call.

You’re going to have to stay tuned.

1-877-929-9673.

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

Or send your answer for Helene to words@waywordradio.org.

This is an etymological emergency, so hurry.

Yes, it is.

Yes, it is.

Okay, you’ll have to stay tuned.

Alright? Okay, thank you.

Okay, bye.

Here’s a did you know, Martha.

A did you know? Okay.

You know the expression lunatic French?

It refers to, say, people

On the far right or far left who

Kind of wacky or nutty or…

Okay, you’re not talking about my jacket.

A little crazy.

Well, interestingly enough, that lunatic fringe

Comes from a reference to hair.

Oh, that kind of fringe?

Yeah, the fringe is a word for bangs.

A lunatic fringe was a curly style of wearing your bangs.

I’m finding that there’s a lot of evidence

Collected by my colleagues in the American Dialect Society.

They’ve been posting about it.

It’s been discussed in a number of circles,

And it’s a pretty clear etymological path.

Interesting, huh?

Really?

Yeah, so a lunatic fringe existed long before as just a way of referring to really frizzy or nutty-looking bangs of your hair hanging over your forehead.

And then it was borrowed into politics.

I’ll be darned.

I had no idea.

Give us a call.

Talk about language, 1-877-929-9673, or send your words and queries and such and so forth to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sonia Goddekin.

I’m calling from Mansfield, Texas.

Mansfield, Texas.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What can we help you with today?

Well, my husband, who hails from Arkansas, has used the phrase, a tree full of owls, on

Me.

And I assumed it meant that I was surprised or amazed at something.

And I’ve gone on that assumption for a while.

Until recently, he told me, no, it’s more like, you don’t really know what you’re talking

About.

Or it’s kind of a different phrase for duh.

But I was just curious about, have you heard that phrase before?

How does it go when you’re talking?

Is this in the middle of a fight or is this bedroom talk?

Is this over dinner?

When does this come up?

Well, I had said something.

I’m not sure what it was.

I don’t recall.

This has been a while back.

And he just said, well, you’re sitting there like a tree full of owls.

And I just assumed it, and I took it to have a good meaning,

That it meant I was surprised or amazed at something.

He more recently has confessed to me that, no, he actually meant that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

And what does your divorce lawyer say about this?

Have not consulted him yet.

Oh, okay.

So he meant you look dumbfounded or something?

Well, that’s kind of, I just thought it meant that I looked surprised at something he had said.

But he seems to think that his father used to use the phrase when he was talking about someone who didn’t know what he was talking about.

Oh, how interesting.

Because I’m imagining a tree full of owls, all these heads facing one way, big eyes staring, right?

Right.

Which you might think dumbfounded pretty much fits, right?

Yeah, sort of blinking.

Or nonplussed, right?

Right.

Or saying, who?

Who?

It certainly does create an image in one’s mind.

It does.

It does.

And what’s so interesting about this phrase is I’ve seen it lots of different ways for lots of different uses.

But it’s almost never a negative, right?

No.

I’ve seen it as wiser than a tree full of owls, you know, because we think of owls being really wise.

I’ll take that one.

But I do find it also crazy as a tree full of owls.

But that’s not the same as your husband’s use either.

No, not exactly.

Or surprise.

You know, he was so surprised, you know, his eyes were really big and he was looking like a tree full of owls.

I mean, owls are really compelling creatures.

You know, there were the famous owls here in San Marcos, in San Diego.

The burrowing owls?

Well, there was a family that put their owl cam on in their little owl house.

It was up again this year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they had millions of hits on the Internet.

You might want to go look at the owl cam.

So the underlying message I’m getting from you is that you’re not understanding, which I’m not understanding, is why it’s a negative, right?

Well, a tree full of owls doesn’t really seem like a bad thing to me.

Unless you’re just sort of blinking stupidly.

What are you saying about our caller, Sonia?

I’ll wrap her over here if you want.

No, actually, I like the wise one.

I think I’ll take that one.

Yeah, that one.

It’s like my husband that he has it all wrong.

Because ever since Athena, owls have, even before that, owls are considered a source of wisdom and a representative of the greater knowledge.

Right.

Exactly.

Absolutely.

Well, I’ll straighten him out on this point.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, do.

And you know what, Sonia?

You can tell him, the next time he says that, you can say, oh, are you saying I look strigiform?

Oh.

What does that mean?

I’ll have to look that one up, too.

Yeah, S-T-R-I-G-I-F-O-R-M, which means looking like an owl.

Oh, very good.

Stringiform.

I mean, he’s going to have to say your whys after that, right?

I knew you would come up with something.

Thank you.

You’re welcome, Sonia.

Great talking to you.

Take care.

Okay.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

You know, I find a million new words, so this is just one of a zillion.

Yeah.

Are you ever guilty of bean plating?

Bean plating?

All right.

This one’s a little rarer than the other ones, but bean plating comes from the site Metafilter,

Which is this group discussion site that’s been around for 10 plus years.

Right.

And on this site, they have an in-joke that’s going for a few years now,

And it’s traveled in other circles where bean plating is to overthink something.

Oh.

I’m a world-class bean plater.

Right.

It comes from a joke.

It was a funny video, I think it was.

And they were overthinking it.

And this guy posted it and he says, hi, I’m on Metafilter and I could overthink a plate of beans.

And it’s kind of like you could look at a plate of beans like, well, are the beans staring back?

Maybe I should use pinto.

What about refri—

How much fiber is in those things?

Yeah, exactly.

It’s like a plate of beans.

It’s eat it.

Right?

Cook it, eat it, done.

Plate of beans.

So bean plating is to think too long and hard about something that doesn’t really merit it at all.

I like that.

I do too.

Thanks to Metafilter.

Thanks, guys.

You got some new words for us?

Send them along.

words@waywordradio.org.

Or call us on the telephone.

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

That’s our show for this week.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message at any time.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

You can also stay in touch with us all week by finding us on Facebook at facebook.com slash waywordradio.

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.

A Way with Words is an independent production created and distributed by Wayword, Inc.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Ciao.

Take care.

We must part.

And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.

So if you like pajamas, and I like pajamas, I’ll wear pajamas and give up pajamas.

For we know we need each other, so we better call the calling off on.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University,

Where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

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