Match Game (episode #1680)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Well, it turns out that all these years now, I’ve been mispronouncing the name of the author of Walden.

You know, the guy who moved to the woods.

Oh, yes, I saw that.

All this time, I thought his name was pronounced Thoreau, but no.

How is it pronounced then?

Thoreau.

Thoreau.

Like I thoroughly did it.

Yeah, or I’m thoroughly surprised that it’s pronounced that way.

But here’s the story.

Thoreau’s grandfather was of French extraction.

He was shipwrecked off the coast of New England in the 1700s and just stayed there, hence the spelling T-H-O-R-E-A-U, which isn’t exactly a New England name.

And we actually have written records of neighbors like Louisa May Alcott’s father and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s son writing about how their friend’s name was pronounced Thoreau with the accent on the first syllable.

And there’s a new Ken Burns film about him on PBS.

And the voice actors for that film, including George Clooney and Meryl Streep, were all directed to pronounce his name Thoreau.

And apparently that wasn’t easy for them.

And Grant is not easy for me either.

After all these years, I don’t know that I’m going to be able to do that.

And it’s not the first time it’s happened where we’ve discovered that a public figure’s name was widely mispronounced.

I’m thinking of former Vice President Dick Cheney, which everyone says Cheney.

Wow.

Huh.

Well, yeah, the pronunciations in the accents we grow up with, they’re really sticky, aren’t they?

They really are.

And unfortunately, sometimes we only know these names through our reading, which I guess is a good thing.

And we don’t always get it right.

But there’s help.

Yeah.

And speaking of reading, there’s a wonderful new book that I want to talk about later in the show that’s called Why We Talk Funny.

It’s by a linguist.

And it’s really fascinating.

Oh, I’m looking forward to that.

So let’s talk about that later in the show.

And we’d love to take your calls and questions.

You can call toll-free 1-877-929-9673 in the United States and Canada.

Outside of the United States and Canada, you can find our WhatsApp phone number, our email address, and a contact form on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Matt from Grand Rapids. I moved here in October.

Okay, from where?

Well, I moved from Montreal, but I’m from Ohio, so that’s where my language knowledge is based.

Okay. Well, what would you like to add to your language knowledge?

Well, apparently there’s a divide between Ohio and Michigan because when I got here, I was out with somebody and we met one of his friends.

And he’s from Big Rapids, which is a small town north of Grand Rapids.

And he said, oh, that guy’s brother stood up at my wedding.

And I was like, how dare he stand up during the wedding?

Was he standing up to object to the union of the two people up at the front?

And he’s like, no, what are you talking about?

He stood up in the wedding party at the front of the church.

And I said, I’ve never heard that.

You would just say normally they were in the wedding party or they were a groomsman.

And then I thought it was kind of a one-off.

And then it happened again during my team meeting at work where somebody from Michigan said that their son stood up at a wedding last weekend or something.

And I was like, that’s when I kind of interjected during my meeting.

And I was like, never heard that.

And then a few other people from Michigan were like, yeah, that sounds normal to me.

So I guess it’s just the difference between Ohio and Michigan.

I don’t think that’s it.

I just think that you’re in with a group of people who just get involved with weddings a lot.

Like there’s this whole period in your life where everything’s a wedding, like every weekend is a wedding.

Well, yeah, that was my 20s for sure.

But in Ohio, nobody ever said that.

Are you hanging with a younger crowd now in Michigan who are, you know, in the earlier years?

The first guy that said it was 36, and then the other person that said it in my meeting was 55.

I could think it was her son, and then a 35-year-old said that they say that all the time.

I’m just going to say, though, Matt, it’s just a coincidence.

Maybe you’re just more attuned to it because it’s an Americanism used throughout North America, actually.

You’ll find in Canada and the United States, nothing particular Michigander about it.

Oh, so you’ve heard it before?

Oh, yeah. It goes back about 200 years to stand up at a wedding.

And just like you said, it means to to be right up there.

The front is the groomsman or the bridesmaid or matron or whatever, the best man.

But originally it was just the idea of standing up as a formal witness.

You didn’t even have to have the official title.

Like somebody can stand up for you at the courthouse.

It means they show up, they’re present to witness it happening, and maybe they’ll sign the paperwork as a witness, too.

That’s standing up.

You’re literally standing up to show, I’m here to say the yes, this indeed is happened and has happened.

In the future, I’ll be able to talk about it authoritatively and say, they are indeed married.

And so in some traditions, by the way, the person who stands up may take the role for both the bride and the groom.

So they’re not a maid or matron of honor or a best man.

They’re just literally there to stand up for both of the people.

So to stand up at the wedding is just a common phrase that I just have never heard.

Yeah, and that’s fine.

You know, it happens all the time.

Everything that we know, all of our knowledge and our language knowledge was new to us at one point.

You just happened to witness the one time you learned something new.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I guess I just hadn’t encountered the people that use it before.

I guess my bubble was smaller than I thought.

No, yeah, but it’s just a different bubble.

How about that?

Nothing wrong with this bubble.

Nothing wrong with the old one.

Just a new bubble.

That’s all.

For sure.

For sure.

I guess it just, it kind of evoked the idea of being stood up, which is very negative.

We didn’t address that, did we?

The confusion of being stood up, stood up on a date or somebody standing up and saying, I protest so they cannot get married.

I’ve been in love with her for a year.

Well, I won’t be adopting it, but I guess I won’t be stopping people when they say it anymore.

Yeah.

You don’t have to say down in front or anything.

All right, Matt.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Have a great one.

All right. Take care now. Bye.

Was there something you noticed at the last wedding you attended or something you just can’t forget about a particular ceremony?

We’d love to hear about it if it has a linguistic angle.

Call us 877-929-9673.

I recently was doing a live call-in show on the Red River Radio Network.

I know you’ve done this as well, Grant.

They serve East Texas and Louisiana and Arkansas and parts of Mississippi.

And one of the questions that came in from a listener was about the expression, when the moistures meet.

When the moistures meet.

All right, break this down for us.

Okay.

Well, apparently it’s a piece of traditional farming wisdom.

And you don’t really see it in books, but it refers to the moment when the moisture in the soil and the moisture in the air are both just right for planting or for growth.

So it’s this balancing of the ground moisture and the atmospheric moisture that’s just right.

You just watch and wait for that moment where the moistures meet.

I just thought that was such a poetic expression.

But it also represents that fundamental experience and skill that a farmer has after a while where they just get intuition.

Absolutely.

And they can articulate it maybe, but some of it just is they just act because the land talks to them.

They don’t even really need to think about why they know it’s right.

It just is.

Right, right.

They know when the moistures meet.

We love to get calls and messages from people all around the world.

No matter where you are, there’s a way to reach us.

Find that on our website at waywordradio.org slash contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Margie from Pittsburgh.

Hi, Margie in Pittsburgh. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

Well, I always wondered about this phrase that my mother used when I scared her or she was angry with me or something.

She would say to me, Margie Ann, you scared the daylights out of me.

And I always wondered what that meant.

So scared the daylights, like there were daylights inside of her?

What?

Yeah, it’s hard to, what does that mean?

I mean, I had this vision of, you know how little orphan Annie, that cartoon, she had no eyeballs.

She had no pupils in her eyes.

I pictured my mother with like her, not her hair on fire, but you know, like going oink, oink, oink.

Yeah.

Those eyes are classic, right?

They’re like little pieces of partially eaten by or something.

And so, like, she had no more pupils in her eyes because I scared them out or something.

I don’t know.

Scared the daylights.

Now, let me ask you, Margie, have you heard daylights used in any other expressions?

Because I think there were a few.

No, that’s the only one I’ve ever heard.

And did she say scared the daylights or scared the living daylights?

I can’t remember that she added living to it.

I think it was that she scared the daylights out of me.

Okay, okay.

I just wonder because I heard that expression a lot growing up, and it was always the living daylights out of you.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I’ve probably heard people say it, but I don’t remember my mom saying it that way.

Okay, well, it’s really interesting that you mention little orphan Annie and her eyes because there is an old meaning of daylights that actually means eyes, those holes in your head where the daylight gets in.

In the late 18th century, people would talk about someone’s daylights being fixed on the ground.

You know, they’re just looking down at the ground or somebody rolled their daylights because they were, you know, rolling their eyes.

And there was an old expression that meant to darken somebody’s daylights.

And that’s when you give them a black eye.

You know, you punch them and you darken their daylights.

But there’s another element to the darkening their daylights, though, Martha.

Not just to blacken their eyes, but to hit them in such a way that their eyes swell shut.

Sure.

Or sometimes even to knock them senseless.

So there’s another level there.

Yeah, the classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue from 1796 has an entry where it quotes somebody saying, plump his peepers or daylights, meaning give him a blow in the eyes.

So you plump their peepers.

But there’s another layer to all of this that might be the explanation for scaring the daylights out of someone.

And that is the idea that daylights could also mean somebody’s essence, their insides.

You know, just that light within, I guess, would be the way that you’d describe it.

So the inner soul, kind of the way that you can look at a living person or animal and tell they’re alive.

Just there’s something happening in the eyes.

Right, right.

The eyes being the windows of the soul.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Well, thank you so much for calling and sharing this.

Oh, I just love your show.

I may call back because I have some other things I want to talk to you about, too.

Absolutely.

100% Margie.

Oh, Margie.

You’ve been a delight.

Thank you for sharing.

Oh, thank you for taking my call.

Yep.

All right.

Be well.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, knock the daylights out of us with your language and linguistic questions, or tell us your puns and your riddles and your jokes.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

If somebody’s really pestering you, they’re just going over the same thing again and again and again, there’s a wonderful Armenian phrase that translates as, don’t iron my head.

Oh, I think that’s in other languages as well.

Probably, probably.

Don’t iron my head.

Well, we love it when you pass to us with calls and emails and social media messages.

Go to our website at waywordradio.org and find a dozen ways to reach us and all of our past episodes.

Stay put. We’ll be right back to untangle the web of English.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

I’m Grant Barrett, and joining us is our quiz guy, John Chaneski, as he descends from a flying saucer.

John, where were you?

You don’t want to know.

It was uncomfortable, and I don’t want to talk about it, but at least they had good food.

So that’s it.

Okay.

We’re just going to leave it a mystery.

And speaking of mysteries, today’s quiz takes the form of a mystery.

We’ve gathered the whole family and the entire staff of the mansion in the accusing room, and they’re waiting for you.

The sooner you can deduce who the culprit is in this mystery, the cleverer they will tell everyone you are.

Are you ready?

So my payoff is being known as clever.

That’s all you get.

Yeah, they don’t have a lot of resources, even though the family seems to be wealthy.

Each of the following clues suggests a single word, and when taken together, all of those words will clue the answer to the question, whodunit.

Got it?

Oh, boy.

All right.

These are sort of cryptic style clues.

I’ll describe the word to you and you’ll have to suss it out.

Here we go.

A word meaning distant and the end of him is where you’ll find things growing.

A word meaning distant and the end of him is where you’ll find things growing.

So far.

And the end of the word him.

Farm.

Farma.

Yes, there you go.

F-A-R-M, farm.

Far.

The end of him is M.

And where you’ll find things growing is a farm.

The start of mother-in-law’s kindness is the basis of cheese and yogurt.

The start of mother-in-law’s kindness is the basis of cheese and yogurt.

So.

Of course, you can back-solve.

We call that back-solving if you get the answer first.

Yeah, so milk or dairy.

So M-I-L is mother-in-law.

Right.

The start of mother-in-law’s kindness.

Yeah, is M-I-L-K.

M-I-L-K, very good.

That’s milk.

That’s your next answer.

You’re doing just great.

A pair of chopsticks and a caution color is a place to hear classical music performed.

So red would be the stop color.

I said caution, not stop.

Oh, caution.

So yellow or amber.

Oh, probably amber.

A chamber.

Yes.

What’s a pair of chopsticks?

I don’t know, actually.

A chop?

C-H.

That’s a pair of chopsticks?

Yeah, it’s a pair of letters.

A pair of letters.

Oh, gotcha.

Yeah, classic cryptic wording.

Classic cryptic.

A pair of chopsticks and a caution color, C-H, and amber.

Got it.

Is a place to hear classical music performed.

Your answer is chamber.

Got it.

Chamber, okay.

Now, are you ready to figure out whodunit?

Okay, so.

You’ve got the following answers.

You’ve got farm, milk, chamber.

What do they have in common?

No clue.

Oh, no.

I was going to say chambermaid, milkmaid.

We don’t have maid in there, though.

No, I’m saying the maid.

Well, that’s the part you’re supposed to get.

Did the maid do it?

Yes, the maid did it.

Oh.

Yeah.

The butler had the day off.

He was in. Oh, I see they all pair up with maid. Gotcha.

Makes sense. Well done, detectives.

Gumshoes. Well done, gumshoes.

I feel like the family of this victim would be very angry with us right now, though.

I think by the time you finish, you have to go looking for them.

They’d be in the drawing room out there smoking and looking through magazines.

Wow, looks like your alien friends are here to pick you up, John.

There he goes.

Bye, John. Thank you so much.

We’ll talk to you next week.

And if you have a linguistic mystery that you’d like to have us solve, you’ve got a couple of gumshoes right here who are eager and willing.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Andres.

I’m calling in from Washington Heights.

So my question for you guys was that the other day I was listening to some other radio piece.

I don’t know what it was because I just stumbled upon it.

But they had mentioned this idea that in the course of development over evolution, that humans develop the anatomy to speak.

But that same anatomy is what allows us to choke.

And they didn’t elaborate beyond that.

They moved on and then I wasn’t able to find the show.

So do we know anything about that?

Like what that specific anatomy is that allows us to speak, but also allows us to choke as opposed to other animals?

Oh, wow.

That must have been quite the tease where you’re like, I want more.

And then they moved on.

You’re like, no.

I know.

It happens all the time.

Radio is just full of language and opportunity.

And you’re like, no.

But also, you’re in Washington Heights in New York City, right?

Up by Columbia University?

Yes.

Okay.

I know that area very well.

Well, it’s nice to talk to you, Andres.

And I think I can help you with finding that episode you’re talking about.

It wasn’t our show, but of course it’s the classic, classic public radio show, Radio Lab, which does superb science all the time.

And they have an episode in January of 2024 called Our Stupid Little Bodies.

I love that title because it’s so accurate.

But in that episode, they talked to a bunch of very interesting experts.

But one of them is this guy, James Nestor, who wrote this bestselling book called Breath, the new science of a lost art.

I highly recommend that.

So either look for that Radiolab episode, Our Stupid Little Bodies, or maybe and find this book by James Nestor.

That’s N-E-S-T-O-R called Breath.

But in general, what he talked about and what the other experts in the show talked about in that Radiolab episode was that there’s this kind of package of bodily changes that make human speech possible.

So other primates have some of the stuff that we have in our oral cavity, in our throats and other places and could theoretically do it.

But then maybe they’re lacking this extra region of the brain or they’re actually missing this extra space.

So we have, compared to other primates, humans have flatter, less projecting faces.

We have a shorter oral cavity.

And we have a longer pharyngeal cavity.

That’s what contains the voice box.

And so our tongue sits in a different place.

And we can do more exact stuff with our tongues that make all this micro-articulation possible.

Oh yeah, and our larynx is just a little lower than the neck.

So it’s all this actual physical stuff we’re not even talking about necessarily, even the brain yet.

The Barocas region and other stuff in there.

So we’ve got this setup for producing these clear vowels and consonants and the lips and jaws are part of this and super fine, super fine articulation.

But as you said, the cost is that in these stupid little bodies, this Radio Lab put it, is that food and air pass each other in the same channel, in our heads, in our necks.

And so the same passage that the air comes through to breathe and to talk is right next to the one where the food passes.

So, yeah, it absolutely does make it easier for us to choke.

Wow. Yeah, thanks. That’s a great answer. I got more things to look at.

Yeah.

More books to read.

The world is filled with knowledge and lots of people who just want to tell you things.

I’m ready for it. I’m ready for it.

We’ll link to that book and the Radiolab episode on our website.

But thank you, Andres, so much for calling us about this.

Thank you very much.

You guys take care now.

Take care.

You can go to our website at waywordradio.org and find a contact form on every page or tell us an email what you’ve been reading and what we should read too.

Words@waywordradio.org.

Nancy Gabriel from Ithaca, New York, sent us this remembrance.

On the farm, there wasn’t much sympathy for whining.

So my pop had a couple of favorite sayings when I’d hurt myself.

After he’d made sure I was really okay, he’d say, it’s far enough from your heart, it won’t kill you.

It’s far enough from your heart.

Or else he’d say, what’d you do, fall and step on it?

Which just doesn’t make any sense, but it’s going to distract you from your boo-boo, right?

Exactly.

Well, we hold the phone close to our hearts.

So when you call, we’ll see those little lights go up.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

So glad to talk to you.

Hi.

Who am I talking to?

This is Claire.

I’m basically from New York, but I’m presently in Philadelphia.

But that’s not necessarily relevant to my question.

But it’s a huge story, I bet.

Two of the world’s great cities.

Oh, indeed it is.

And you’ve lived in them both.

That’s right.

What’s on your mind, Claire?

Okay.

So I had a friend who recently passed away, and I’ve known her since 96.

So we’re talking a good amount of time.

And she was known by some of her phrases.

And one of her phrases that we never knew really where it came from, but she used all the time, was, since Christ left Philadelphia.

I haven’t seen you since Christ left Philadelphia.

And we’re like, okay, that’s been a long time, Tony.

We never knew why it was Christ in Philadelphia.

So tell us a little about your friend.

Was she super religious and this was just kind of her way of like being a little naughty?

No, no.

She is, well, I guess, I mean, she was raised Catholic, but she’s definitely not religious in that way.

She’s from a second generation Italian and from Connecticut.

Okay.

Gotcha.

She had so many phrases that she used all the time at her service, they made a two-page list.

Oh, that’s amazing.

That’s a memory stored right there.

Oh, totally, totally.

So since Christ left Philadelphia, Martha, that’s a long time ago, right?

Apparently, yeah.

Apparently so.

Claire, I’m wondering if you’ve heard any other versions of that phrase.

Or is it always Christ and always Philadelphia?

It was only her.

It was only her.

And that’s the only thing she ever said.

She didn’t ever alter it or change it in any way.

And she was, like, known for that and many other things.

But it was always since Christ left Philadelphia.

I’m like, okay.

I’m surprised, Martha, Claire, because there are so many of these.

Yeah, it’s a particular pattern that we see a whole lot.

Particularly since Christ left Chicago.

That’s the one that I’ve heard.

Sometimes it’s Cleveland, but yeah.

Oh, my.

And it’s this pattern of, you know, since somebody left some place, and it’s usually some historical figure, somebody really improbable, you know, since Moses did something or George Washington or Caesar.

But, yeah, the idea is that it was a long time ago.

And the ones that combine Christ, I’ve seen it more often as since Christ was a cowboy or since Christ was a corporal.

I know John Dos Passos, the writer in 1921, had a book called Three Soldiers.

And there were a couple of mentions in that book where, you know, soldiers were saying, I ain’t had any pay since Christ was a corporal.

So it’s always this improbable, just weird thing.

I know, Grant, you know a lot of other expressions like this.

Well, what’s interesting is the…

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And if you’ve ever wondered how different regional accents came to be, or why it’s so hard to master an accent in a second language later in life, or maybe you’ve wondered how people in colonial America sounded, or for that matter, why so many people hate the word moist, have I got a book for you.

It’s called Why We Talk Funny, The Real Story Behind Our Accents.

It’s by Valerie Friedland.

She’s a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno.

And her book is all about how humans acquire our accents and how our accents affect so many aspects of our daily lives, often without our even realizing it.

Now, of course, Grant, you and I touch on these ideas all the time.

But what I love about her book is that it’s this comprehensive look at the whole topic through the lenses of history and science and psychology.

And she’s a linguist, of course, so she covers everything from the babblings of babies and the evolution of human speech to how incredibly quickly people tend to make judgments today about somebody based solely on their accent.

And she also covers all kinds of history from Proto-Indo-European to the story of how settlement patterns in the U.S. directly influenced what we recognize as distinctive dialects today.

And she shows how those regional accents are changing and in some cases starting to fade away.

And the book’s also a helpful guide for understanding how linguists talk about all those movements of the lips and tongue to produce various sounds.

And her book is backed up by lots and lots of scholarly research.

She cites study after study to make her points.

And there are wonderful extensive footnotes that are great for drilling down if you want to learn more.

And I’ve already marked several of them myself.

But as you might guess from the title, Why We Talk Funny, it’s also breezy and clear and really entertaining.

In fact, it reminds me of that one memorable teacher you had in school for a tough subject.

You know, the one where everybody’s saying, take Friedland’s class because she makes it fun.

I wonder what her Rate My Professor reviews are like.

Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure.

But anyway, just to sum up, it’s a great introduction to linguistics in general, but also to the idea that accents can connect us, but they can also divide us.

And it’s a great reminder that the idea that there’s only one right way to sound is both historically and linguistically misguided.

Oh, yeah.

That’s the lesson we try to teach all the time.

And the book, again, is?

It’s called Why We Talk Funny, The Real Story Behind Our Accents.

And Valerie Friedland is a professor and linguist at the University of Nevada, Reno.

I know her professionally and I can 100% confirm that she’s the real deal.

So totally looking forward to digging further into this book.

And we will link to it from our website.

And as always, Martha and I love to find out what you’re reading.

What are you reading right now?

What’s the thing you can’t put down?

Let us know.

Send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Or call us on the telephone, toll free in Canada and the U.S., 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tom from Cotchahokan, Pennsylvania.

My question is, last summer I came back from walking in the woods and I checked myself for tics.

I did a tic check.

And I realized that tic check is the opposite of an oxymoron.

Instead of two words that are opposites, it’s two words that mean the same thing.

Both tick and check mean checkmark.

And I was wondering if there was a word for this opposite of an oxymoron.

It’s not really a redundancy because they’re only synonyms out of context.

But, yeah, I wanted to know what you guys thought.

All right.

So let’s break this down just a little bit, kind of re-explain this in other words.

So you’ve got the compound tick check, where you’re literally checking your body for the arachnids known as ticks.

And the interesting linguistic curiosity that you noticed, good eye, by the way, is that tick and check can both mean checkmark.

So both parts of the compound are synonyms.

Yes.

Okay. Gotcha.

Gosh, a word for that.

You know, I’m not aware of one.

I mean, the linguistic terms we can talk about here are polysemy, which refers to how words can have multiple meanings, as you pointed out.

You know, tick could be like the noise that a clock makes, but also that little critter.

And then check can be something you write or an inspection.

I’m trying to think of, in fact, any other word combinations like that.

Well, I have a few, but let’s explain polysemy for a second.

Or at least spell it, P-O-L-Y-S-E-M-Y.

Polysemy is a word may have more than one meaning, which is pretty standard across all of English.

It’s also worth mentioning that in everyday phrases, the English language usually avoids pairing true synonyms, unless they’re doing it on purpose in legal language, and then it’s usually separated by and, like null and void or will and testament.

Yeah, peace and quiet.

Yeah.

And those are tautologies or those doublets, as they’re called in legalese, are tautologies.

And then there’s pleonasm, which is not quite the right term either.

So this isn’t a tautology or a pleonasm.

Pleonasm is when a word or expression contains more words than it really needs to say the same thing.

So advance warning or past history.

Yes.

And so we’re talking about something really succinct.

I don’t know.

Tom, do you have a word for this?

So I thought since it was the opposite of an oxymoron, I’d play off oxymoron.

And I’m not like a big Latin guy, but I did some research.

Oxymoron means smart, dumb.

And I thought we’d do a smart, smart.

So I came up with oxy soften.

From Greek, huh?

Or what if you just called it a moronoxy?

Or an oxy, that’s good.

I mean, seriously, I don’t think this is a very big category of words, if at all.

I mean, the only thing that I can think of is maybe stress test, in that you stress something and test something, and both of those things mean the same thing.

I’ve got some more for you guys if you want them.

Seriously, really?

I have some, too.

Oh, you do?

Let’s hear them, Tom.

Head start, both mean beginning.

And I guess like dude bro, but I guess that’s a tautology.

Dude bro.

Dude bro, yeah.

Yeah.

What about match game?

Then international championship matches are sometimes called match games.

Yes.

Yeah.

Or suitcase, a piece of luggage.

But both words are, suit and case can mean a legal proceeding.

Oh my gosh.

That’s a good one.

Yeah.

So we’ve got a few of these.

But you know what?

We have many puzzlers listening to the show.

Many of them are members of the National Puzzlers League, which I highly recommend you check out because it sounds like they’re going to be right down your alley, Tom.

And maybe our NPL friends will jump in here with a bunch more examples and maybe even have a word for it.

Awesome.

I love more of Oxy, though.

That’s great.

Yeah, I do, too.

I like yours, though.

Oxy’s often sounds sophisticated.

It kind of does.

I’m going to name my next business that, I think.

I think it sounds like a medication, oxysulfon.

All right.

Well, keep those tick checks going.

You don’t want to get them in the unfortunate crevices and come down with Lyme disease.

I appreciate that.

Thanks, guys.

All right.

Take care of yourself, Tom.

And thanks for talking to us today.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

One expression that I’ve been tracking just recently, I’ve seen it in a few social media posts, and it’s AI breath.

Isn’t that great?

AI breath refers to writing that’s stale and lacks personality.

You know, it has AI breath.

Oh, I thought you were talking about when you have the AI talk to you and it does these fake pauses as if it really needs to breathe.

Oh.

It really does, though.

But the AI breath that I see on social media is lots of short sentences, one or two words, maybe three, but one right after the other.

You know, it was like, hold, breathe, think about it.

And it just like there’s it just takes a while to get to the point.

Oh, gosh.

I think we’re going to get to the point where the same way that we can recognize when drones became a thing and making movies and television, everybody had to use a drone.

Right.

We’re going to look back at this era and say, oh, yeah, that was the AI era.

That was when people were giving their creativity over to machines.

Yeah.

We love it when you write to us straight from your heart.

And don’t let your computer do it.

We want to hear from you.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org, or go to our website at waywordradio.org and find a dozen more ways to reach us.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Susan Rogge from Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Hey, Susan, we’re glad to have you.

What’s on your mind today?

Well, I listened to a previous episode where you talked about food language quirks, and I immediately thought of something my mother always told my sisters and I.

If we were eating, well, resisting eating something that we didn’t like, she would say that we should eat it because it would grow hair on our back teeth.

We thought that sounded disgusting, and it was no inducement at all for us to eat that.

I guess not.

She said that her granny told her as she was growing up the same thing, and she thought it would be just very exciting to grow hair on her back teeth, and it made her want to eat it.

But we’re not sure, you know, it made us question our mother for one thing.

But also, you know, it was just an odd expression, which I have never heard anybody else say or, you know, I really don’t talk about it a lot.

It’s a little embarrassing.

So Susan, it’s like, eat your vegetables, you’ll grow hair on your back teeth, as if that’s a good thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I’ve heard about, you know, like doing things that put hair on your chest, but I thought that was more like alcohol related.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s right.

So there’s a couple different ways into this, but let me ask, do you have recent-ish Germanic heritage in your family?

Somebody from one of the German speaking countries?

I would say so, that it was on the side of the family where there were roots to Germany.

Okay.

Because there’s an expression in German, which is to have hair on your teeth.

Not necessarily back teeth.

It’s Haure Auf den Sehnen in Haven.

And it’s fairly common and still currently used.

And it’s quite old, actually, a couple hundred years old.

The German poet and novelist Goethe is quoted as using it when he talks about Berliners being a daring, hard-edged sort of people who can be delicate but must have hair on their teeth or, you know, be coarse in their manner in order to stay above the mess and the crowd.

But so, yeah, it’s a couple hundred years.

But this is not quite the same expression because to have hair on your teeth in German is really about being assertive or courageous or speaking furiously or with a great deal of wit or sometimes speaking in such a way that you never agree with anyone else, being very argumentative.

So there’s a lot of different nuances here.

And it’s popped up in other European languages like Danish as well.

But I think you were on another track that I think is important here. Earlier, when you mentioned people say drinking strong alcohol puts hair on your chest. And what I think we’ve got in your great grandmother or your mother is a combination of these two.

I think they’ve come together in one person.

So it’s a little bit of one, a little bit of that, a little bit of a menu A, a little bit of a menu B.

Because this expression to put hair on one’s chest, usually said about eating strong food or drinking strong drink, isn’t as old as the German expression, only going back maybe 100 or so years.

But it’s about toughening up.

It’s by comparison to an adult.

You know, you go, one of the most visible signs of becoming an adult is, you know, being tall and strong, but also having hair in unusual places.

And so, yeah, so I think it’s both of these coming together saying you eat your vegetables and you’ll be tall and strong.

You know, you become an adult and having the jokey way of talking about the hair showing up in unusual places just adds a little icing on the saying, I think.

But the back teeth, I just.

Yeah, well, I think the teeth part came from the German inspection.

I think the German expression has collided with the American one and formed this new thing in your family.

Well, Susan, I’m glad your husband never saw any evidence of this.

No, no, no.

He says no.

And so it is not a common thing, I guess.

But, well, I will let my sisters know because they will be interested to know, you know, where this all came from.

Susan, thank you so much for sharing with us.

We appreciate it.

Thank you so much for giving me your time and the information.

Yeah, happy to do it.

Thanks for calling, Susan.

Bye-bye.

You’re welcome.

Bye.

You can call or text us, 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tess.

I’m calling from southeastern Pennsylvania, and I was just wondering about the word coleslaw.

And what were you wondering about the word coleslaw?

I guess there’s just so many cabbage-based dishes in so many cultures.

And the one that I’m most used to is coleslaw.

And I was kind of wondering what the origin of that word is.

You know, is it coleslaw?

Yeah, that’s hard to parse, right?

It is.

Yeah, because there’s not many other words that on the surface look the same or like they share roots.

But we’re going to fix that for you.

We’ve got a few words that are surprisingly connected to it.

So coleslaw comes to English from Dutch.

There’s a word coleslaw, which literally sounds the same, but it’s spelled differently.

K-double-O-L-S-L-A, which means cabbage salad.

It’s as simple as that.

But that col part, the C-O-L-E in English, is the interesting part of this because it’s the same root as the word kale, K-L-E, and the collie in cauliflower.

And they’re all brassicas.

And I believe that they all originally come from the same plant anyway.

They’re just bred differently over time.

So we have that same root.

And kohlrabi, the K-O-H-L and kohlrabi, it’s the same word.

It all goes back to Latin to this word that means hollow stem or stalk.

Kohlis, C-A-U-L-I-S.

Do you know when we started calling kohlsa, kohlsa?

A long time ago, I guess, right?

A long time ago, yeah.

It’s part of the Dutch heritage.

You know, we don’t actually have that many words that are pure, straight-up Dutch in English.

So we’re looking at it in Dutch as early as the 1700s.

And then the Dutch experience in the United States brought it here in the late 18th century.

Wow.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, it’s cool, right?

Yeah.

If you get a chance, it’s not linguistic, but look into all the breeding done over the many centuries to get that one plant to turn into all these different vegetables, all these brassicas, as they’re known as a group.

And it is incredibly interesting.

It is so interesting.

Some of them are the same plant, just picked at a different time of the growth cycle.

It’s just astonishingly interesting what has happened here with this one plant.

Yeah, definitely look into it.

It’s one of my favorite foods.

Oh, I love it with a little caraway seed.

For some reason, a vinegar-based coleslaw with caraway seed.

I don’t know why I love that so much, but I love it.

Yeah, and I do like the idea of cold, you know, nicely chilled, you know, with a fish sandwich or something.

Well, thank you so much, Tess.

We appreciate the call.

You call us again sometime, all right?

Thank you so much.

I’m a huge fan.

Oh, thank you.

Glad to have you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Tess.

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So long.