Midnight Oil (episode #1644)

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.

We got an email from Whitney Catanio in Providence, Rhode Island.

And the day before she wrote us, her two-year-old daughter June had been playing on the slide in their backyard.

And then June started screaming that there was a bug on the slide.

And Whitney writes, I told her to shoo it away.

The next thing I know, she has her shoe up on the slide.

I laughed so hard.

And in fact, she thought it was so funny that she snapped a photo and she sent us, Grant, this adorable picture of this little curly-haired girl with her shoe up on the slide trying to shoo away the bug.

Of course, they are different words.

But how is she to know?

She did the best that she could with what she had.

Yeah.

But the shoo away is S-H-O-O and it’s not related to the footwear.

Correct.

She is the most adorable child, though.

She looks like a handful.

I know.

That little blonde curly hair.

You’ve got to watch out for the curly-headed ones.

That’s all I’m saying.

Yeah, she looks like fun.

But, yeah, shoe, S-H-O-O, may come from the sound that you make when you’re waving away like chickens or something.

And, of course, there’s the term shoe-in as well.

You know, that’s an old horse racing term.

Yeah, we have more information about shoe-in as a horse racing term on our website.

And you can also find a dozen ways to reach us by email, WhatsApp, social media, and more.

Or just call us toll free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Andrea and I’m calling from the DFW area in Texas.

Welcome to the show, Andrea.

How can we help you today?

So I had just had the thought of I kept hearing the phrase, all the things.

Mostly from my friend group and peers at work.

I’m in my early 40s, and I would be talking to another mom maybe,

And I’d say, hey, how’s it going, if I haven’t seen him in a while.

And they’d say, oh, you know, running kids to baseball, going to dance class,

Oh, you know, all the things.

Or I would be talking to someone at work,

And we’d be discussing maybe a patient and we’d say the labs are this, the symptoms are this,

You know, all the things, something like that.

So it wasn’t just me and I did start saying it

As well.

And I just kind of had wondered, why am I hearing it all of a sudden?

I just feel like I hadn’t heard it previously and now all of a sudden I hear it all the time.

And Andrea, the phrase is all the things?

Right.

-huh.

All the things.

All the things.

Well.

All the things.

I have some guesses on this.

So the way I’m hearing it being used is kind of a summary.

And it almost sounds like the modern use of whatnot and whatnot, which means like all the things I just said, plus some things I haven’t mentioned.

Right.

Right.

Saying like all the things I haven’t mentioned that you know.

I mean.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah, you’re basically saying you know to the other person.

You get it because we have something in common.

I don’t have to explain in detail because you and I understand each other.

Exactly. Right.

Gotcha.

But the other thing that occurs to me is, so yeah, I think there’s something there happening maybe with a correspondence to the way we use whatnot.

You know, people just use this at the end of a long string of things.

But also it reminds me of the meme.

All the things from like 2010.

There was a comic titled This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult by Ali Brosh, published in 2010 on the blog Hyperbole and a Half.

You may know this, and it’s got this cartoony character with this intense expression, kind of madically saying that they’re going to do all the things, all the things with exclamation marks.

Just kind of this energetic kind of approach to ambitiously tackle an entire set of activities.

Like clean the house.

I’m going to clean all the house.

I’m going to do all the things.

And it sounded like very adult.

It sounded like adulting.

Yeah, it definitely is.

It’s adulting.

Yeah.

But it’s also this idea that you get so caught up in your enthusiasm for your activities that you unreasonably take on more than you can really handle.

You know, your enthusiasm far exceeds your energy and your capabilities.

You guys must know me or something.

I think it’s the human condition, Andrea.

Looked into my soul through the phone and you’ve called it out.

It was a huge meme.

It was huge.

And it’s still referenced today.

We use it in my house.

Martha, do you use it?

All of the things.

I haven’t used it in a very long time, but I remember the first time I saw that cartoon, I just laughed and laughed because this character is just so extreme.

I’m going to clean all the things.

And we all identify with this little bug-eyed guy or gal.

We’re like, yeah, that’s me sometimes.

I just get manic and want to do it all.

There’s no way you’re going to be able to do it all.

But, you know, sometimes that’s the only way you can operate is to have these real unreasonable expectations for yourself.

Yeah, it’s kind of like a pep talk.

Yeah, exactly.

I just thought it interesting after I found that that I just felt, oh, I guess it’s having a resurgence with people that I guess didn’t back in 2010.

Those of us that are behind the curve.

Well, you know, everything’s new to everyone at some point.

But I will say the usage that you describe that you use among your mob group and your friend group is different than that cartoon.

And it sounds like there’s some lexicalization that’s happened here, which means it’s now become almost idiomatic.

And it’s entered, those three words have entered kind of as a unit into the language.

And they’re undergoing a bit of a transformation.

Yeah I guess from that 2010

Little basically

Just funniness

Yeah and tons of

Spin-offs and people memeing the meme

As they do and having their fun

With it well Andrea thank you so

Much give us a call again sometime

It was real nice to talk to you

I appreciate you guys love your show

Thank you take care bye bye

Bye bye

Well when it comes to language we talk about all the things

All the things

You can find all of our handles and the link to that cartoon on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Ben Kelman calling from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hi, Ben. Welcome to the program. What’s on your mind?

Thanks so much for having me.

I was calling to ask about the word siren.

It seems to have moved from, you know, the Odyssey, where it was not great, to kind of great news.

And, you know, if you’re in a dangerous situation right now and you hear a siren, oftentimes that’s great news.

And I was wondering how that change happened.

So sirens in Homer’s Odyssey to sirens in the modern day, you’re saying great news as in good news?

Well, I mean, if you’re in a situation that requires sirens and you hear sirens, you are now in a much better situation.

Oh, I see. Help is on the way.

Yeah.

Gotcha. All right. That makes sense.

I was thinking about nightclubs and sirens under the beats.

Oh, interesting. All right.

That was the positive siren situation that occurred to me.

That’s the way I’m going to call that a stretch.

Beep, beep, beep, boom.

Oh, yeah. So you’ve got the two ends of the history, but there’s so much in between.

That’s what I was suspecting. And I would love to hear more about that.

Well, Ben, the good news is that help is on the way. We can help you with that one.

Yeah, you were referencing the sirens in Homer’s Odyssey.

And these were the women who had the bodies of birds and this song that supposedly would lure men to their death.

And so you’ll probably recall that Odysseus was returning home and asked his sailors to tie him up to the mast of the ship and stuff their ears with wax so that they couldn’t hear the sirens and be diverted.

But he could hear just out of curiosity.

And so that’s quite different from what we think of either in nightclubs or on police vehicles.

I can’t be the only one.

I didn’t go there.

I suppose it’s good news in the nightclub, too.

I mean, I think it’s, I mean, you know, an indication something fun is coming.

Yeah, yeah.

They’re changing it up, right?

The beat’s going to change.

A new DJ is taking over.

Or everybody’s going to start to do the same kind of dance moves.

Yeah.

Well, that’s a good point.

It’s been a while.

It’s been a while.

Well, if we fast forward to the early 19th century, there was a French engineer and physicist named Charles Cagnard de la Tour.

And Cagnard was fascinated by acoustics.

This is a really interesting story.

He did a lot of experiments to try to measure musical frequencies.

And a lot of people were trying to do that back in those days.

But in 1819, he built on this idea that had been circulating, and he constructed this device that forced air through two perforated brass discs.

And one of those discs was spinning.

And as the air passed through the holes, it produced this musical tone.

And he figured out that by changing the speed of that one disc spinning, he could change the pitch.

And so he started to have a lot of fun with that.

And he’s measured musical frequencies.

He even tried to measure the speed of a mosquito’s wings.

And he also showed how this noise-making device could be used on, say, ships as a warning.

And then he figured out that you could also produce sound waves underwater with this thing.

And he actually wrote about this and said it’s because of this property making sound in water that I thought I could give it the name Siren.

So it was very deliberate.

Yes, yes. It was a deliberate connection with the mythological creatures of the Odyssey.

Was there any indication of his consideration of its relationship to danger or that’s all just sort of after that?

I think that was after that. I mean, he was just fascinated by sound and musical tones and that kind of thing.

And then people started applying it to all different kinds of things, you know, to ships or to emergency vehicles, lighthouses, that kind of thing.

So people took that idea and gave it all kinds of practical applications and including playing the siren in nightclubs.

I’m now picturing Grant just, you know, throwing down on the floor.

There was a time.

There was a time.

Well, it’s an underwater nightclub, so, you know, it all fits together.

Yeah.

All right.

There you go.

Less than moves of the mermaids.

Well, thank you so much for your question.

We really appreciate it, Ben.

Yeah, thanks so much for, you know, sharing that with me.

Have a great day.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, hit that siren button for the cherries and berries on top of your car.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

If somebody says something to you and it’s just absolutely incomprehensible, you just can’t understand it,

There’s a great Dutch idiom that translates as, you can’t make chocolate from it.

Is geen chocolat van te maken.

You can’t make chocolate from it because I guess making chocolate is complicated.

But I just love, you know, somebody just spews some kind of word salad and you just say, I can’t make chocolate out of that.

Some kind of chocolate salad.

A chocolate fountain.

Right.

I can’t get my cup under the chocolate fountain.

Oh, I like that even better.

877-929-9673.

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 that dapper fellow emerging from the shiffer robe with a bow tie and a cummerbund.

Nice cummerbund.

It’s John Chaneski.

Hi, John, our quiz guy.

A man who can dress in the dark.

Thank you very much.

There was a lion and a witch in there in that shiffer robe.

That’s really weird.

Yeah, they gave me this cummerbund.

It was so sweet.

You know, I was going to do a quiz about classic simple riddles, because riddles have to do with language, usually wordplay, and they turn out to be way too simple.

What has a head and a tail but no body?

A coin.

A coin.

But, you know, my friends and I have this little game that we play.

We take some issue with some riddles.

You know, who doesn’t love an argument, especially when the author of the riddle is not around?

For example, when does Friday come before Thursday?

The answer is in the dictionary.

But I would argue that Friday comes before Thursday every week.

All the time.

It just depends when you start your week.

Yeah, just six days before.

Yeah, that’s the point there.

So we’re going to argue some riddles, and we could also answer these riddles and talk about the wordplay in them.

Here’s a few more.

What month do people sleep the least?

What month do people sleep the least?

Yeah.

February, because it’s the shortest month.

Right, exactly.

Oh, good.

But who says you can’t get 10 hours a night in February and 7 hours in June?

Next.

Next.

If there are three slices of pizza and you take two, how many slices do you have?

You have two.

You have two.

But there are still three slices.

Who’s to say they’re not all yours?

It depends whether or not the U is plural or singular.

There you go.

Words.

Words.

Next.

What comes down but never goes up what comes down but never goes up rain right rain or snow.

But rain bounces off the sidewalk so right but also hello two inches of rain three inches of rain five inches of snow nine inches no tell the people tell the people in buffalo that snow doesn’t go up okay up and up sorry I get I get a little heated I get a little heated John Chaneski our quibbler guy.

That’s me.

What has 13 hearts and no other organs?

A deck of cards.

Excuse me, but the face is considered an organ.

It has specific functions.

And there are eyes and noses and ears on the royal cards.

Not good. By the way, you can spend hours doing this. I highly recommend it.

Oh, I have a teenager.

I do it already.

There you go.

What letter of the alphabet has the most water?

What letter of the alphabet has the most water?

Yeah.

We’re going way back to preschool for this one.

Yes.

I’m sorry, but as stated, it is the letter C.

It says letter, and it’s not the word C.

Oh, my goodness.

Next.

What has many keys but cannot unlock a door?

Piano.

No, sorry.

Piano versus locked door.

My money is on the piano, yes.

Yeah.

Just give it a good push.

Good, strong push.

Finally, what is always answered without being questioned?

What is always answered without being questioned?

Well, we answer phones.

Yes.

We answer letters.

Alternate answer.

These are alternate answers very well.

The answer I have here is a doorbell.

Now, my question to you is, if you look out the window and you see somebody with a clipboard, are you going to answer, who’s with me?

No.

And haven’t you ever shouted, who is it, before you open the door?

Exactly.

Exactly.

All right.

Those are, again, riddles, classic, classic puzzles, riddles.

And some of them maybe deserve to get, you know, argued with.

I’m going to forward all those arguments to your inbox, John.

Yes, please.

Oh, yeah, I highly recommend anybody has any riddles they want to send along that they take issue with.

Let’s do it together.

I love it.

You can send them to puzzles at waywordradio.org.

John, thank you so much.

Give our best to your family, and we’ll talk to you next week.

Thank you.

You too, guys.

Bye-bye.

We do puzzles and games and goofing around and talking about language and books and literature and poetry and slang and lots of other things.

Join us, 877-929-9673.

That’s toll-free in the United States and Canada.

And you can also email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Joel Capps. How are you?

Doing well. How are you?

I am excellent, thank you for asking.

And where are you?

I am in Alabama.

You know, when I was growing up, my mom, she would tell me that you’ve got a curfew.

And she would tell you something.

And then she would say, not only do you have a curfew, but I want you to come home and tell me what curfew means.

And I said, I can do that now, Mom.

You know, it’s about time I had to be home.

She said, no, I think it’s deeper than that.

And it was her little way of feeding my brain, if you will.

She was a southern lady who didn’t allow you to leave your mind idle, if you may.

And, you know, we say so many things.

I love y’all show because you don’t just go around and say things because you just have heard them.

You know the meaning of it.

And I found out that it was curfew is an item that was put over one’s fire in the 1700s to keep the thatch roof from being set on fire and the whole town burning down.

So I learned that it was a curfew, meaning I think the French word of cover fire.

Am I right?

Yep.

And there you have it.

So, you know, little things like that my mom taught me.

And I just found it amazing that all of our words, I guess, have meanings from the 1700s or so, right?

Oh, yeah.

This one’s older.

This one actually predates French, although we did get it directly from the French.

You can find it in Latin as well.

But, yeah, it was so that you put your fires out at night because an unattended fire could set your dwelling on fire.

You could burn the whole place down and people would forget and leave them lit.

So it was kind of this established law and practice.

Curfew literally comes from a French word meaning to cover your fire.

And not the shooting kind of firing, but the actual flame firing.

Right.

And my mom would paint a picture, you know, of when I told her what it meant.

She said, could you imagine living in those days and having to cover your fire up and then freezing afterwards?

Yeah, Joe, it’s older than the 1700s.

William the Conqueror made it a rule in the 11th century.

Really?

Yep.

That is amazing.

Thank you guys so much.

So you shed light on even more than what my mom did.

Oh, there’s no end to it.

We don’t cover our fire ever.

We don’t hide it under a bushel or anything.

Joe, thanks for calling.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for sharing your memories of your mom.

Thank you guys so much.

Thank you all.

Bye-bye.

You know, Grant, what a gift Joel’s mother gave him, that they would have conversations about words and not just about words, but where they come from.

We’d love to do that with you, too. 877-929-9673.

After our conversation about tongue twisters, we heard from Chicago listener Lauren Eagle.

She called us to share one with us that looks a lot easier than it sounds.

And her tongue twister is Irish wristwatch.

Try saying that three times fast.

Irish wristwatch.

Fast.

I had a problem with W’s and R’s when I was like six.

I think I might still.

Irish wristwatch.

Irish wristwatch.

Irish wristwatch.

Irish.

Oh, boy, that’s hard.

Three-word tongue twister.

I know.

We’ve got a new warm-up for our speaking engagements.

What’s your favorite tongue twister?

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Marta.

Hello, Grant.

My name is Eduarda.

I am calling from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

From Rio.

Tudo bem.

Tudo bem.

Tudo bem.

Tudo bem.

Welcome.

Amazing.

Thank you.

I can’t speak very well, but one day.

I’ve been studying English to be a visiting PhD student researcher.

And I had this amazing teacher that has been encouraging me to study expressions in English.

And he put me on this Jeopardy game that we came across through this expression that was burn the midnight oil.

And I got very curious about it because I understood the expression about working until too late, past your original hours, I guess.

But I wanted to understand what does it come from?

Who speaks this expression?

And if there is any connection with old lamps, I guess, that could be based by oil, I think that’s it.

So burn the midnight oil.

Yeah.

Yeah, you’re right.

It goes back a very long time, hundreds and hundreds of years, back to the days before electric lights.

And you’re right.

It has to do with oil lamps.

You know, people have used lamps that burn different kinds of oil, whether it’s fish oil or nut oil or later kerosene.

Because in the days before electric lights, if you wanted to see at night, you had to either burn a candle or use an oil lamp to light up a room.

So if you’re burning the midnight oil, then you’re working very late into the night.

You’re burning oil at midnight, basically.

And that goes back several hundred years.

You know, it kind of reminds me of the Spanish phrase, and I think there’s a similar one in Portuguese,

Queimar las pestañas, meaning literally to burn the eyelashes.

But isn’t there a similar phrase in Portuguese that means to study really hard?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it’s kind of an antiquated expression now.

It’s pretty old.

I don’t know that it’s used that commonly.

But I like that image there of, you know, you’re studying so late at night and you’re working so hard that you burn your eyelashes.

I must say that’s something I do it a lot.

You burn a lot of midnight oil.

If you’re getting a doctorate, I’m not surprised.

Yeah, so your teacher was right.

It has to do with oil lamps.

So, Eduarda, what are you studying?

What are you getting your doctorate in?

Yeah, I am a psychologist and neuropsychologist.

Oh.

Neuropsychologist.

Wow.

Yeah.

I’m trying to take some time in America to study emotional regulation.

So that’s why I’m studying English.

It sounds like it’s going very well.

And we are so delighted.

Oh, I really hope so.

Call us again sometime, Medroida.

We appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you.

All right.

Oh, we’re glad to have you.

Bye-bye.

Até logo.

Até.

Ciao.

Ciao.

Ciao.

Well, Samuel Johnson called them candle wasters,

Someone who burns the midnight oil,

Who carouses late at night.

And if you’re not studying and not carousing,

You can call us, 877-929-9673.

That’s toll free in the United States and Canada.

If you are somewhere else in the world,

You can also try us on WhatsApp.

Find that number on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Michael Swartz from Jones, Michigan.

And my question is, when I was stationed in Germany on a U.S. Army base in the early 1960s,

A buddy of mine from North Carolina would use a phrase I’d never heard.

When we would be walking into a cold, sharp wind, he’d say, the hawk’s out.

It always made me think of a hawk or a falcon diving down on an unsuspecting victim.

Can you tell me anything about the origination of this thing?

So your fellow soldier, was it?

Yes, I was a soldier.

So your fellow soldier was from North Carolina.

Were they African-American, perhaps?

No.

He was full of country-fied sayings, and I really enjoyed being around him.

Well, we can tell you something about that.

These days, the hawk, for some reason, is mostly associated with Chicago,

Where it specifically describes cold wind, especially the wind that comes off the lake.

Sometimes they’ll say that the hawk is the wind and the cold is the bear.

That kind of took hold of Chicago as kind of a thing that people in Chicago say in the 1960s.

But it’s actually older than that.

And it’s actually got much older forms, original forms that aren’t the hawk, but Hawkins, H-A-W-K-I-N-S.

So as far back as the 1870s, Hawkins or old Hawkins or old Mr. Hawkins was used to describe cold weather and not just cold, windy weather, but any cold weather.

And then by the 1930s, Hawkins also starts to be used in jazz, possibly because of the influence of the jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, who was known as the Hawk.

And because the wind blows and Coleman Hawkins blows his sax, there’s kind of a little wordplay happening there.

And so I believe what happened was Hawkins became Hawk, especially in black English, because jazz for a long time was very much a black art form.

And then somehow, for some reason, it stuck in Chicago.

And though it still occurs elsewhere in the country, and the Chicagoans are very proud of it.

But it’s no surprise to have somebody from North Carolina say it,

Because at one time it was more widespread than Chicago.

Oh, wow.

Like I say, this fellow was full of country-fied sayings,

And he was an athlete, and possibly he was on a football team with some African Americans maybe, and he heard it there.

But my time in the military just is a melting pot of people from so many different places.

And I really treasure that time.

Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah, it’s a really intense time of fraternity and learning and experiencing what the body and the mind are capable of.

And people from virtually every part of the nation coming together.

I mean, so many different cultures in one place.

You know, my father, who was in the Marine landing on Iwo Jima, he told me one time, I wouldn’t take a million dollars for the experience that I’ve had, but I wouldn’t give a nickel for the opportunity to do it again.

Smart man.

Absolutely.

Michael, thank you so much for sharing your memories and bringing this question to us.

We appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

I love your show.

It’s absolutely a great show.

Thank you very much.

And take care of yourself, all right?

Yes, sir.

Bye-bye.

Well, we know that we have lots of listeners on military bases and a lot of military veterans out there.

We’d love for you to call and share your stories about language that you encountered when you were in the military.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send them to us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

You know, I forgot to mention in our call with Eduarda about burn the midnight oil, there is a really nice expression in Portuguese, virar a noite, which means to turn over the night.

That’s how you talk about staying up all night.

Like you turn over the night studying or you turn over the night dancing.

So like the calendar turns over from one day to another kind of.

I guess. Maybe it’s sort of like throwing the house out the window, you know, in Spanish.

But I just, I love terms for staying up all night.

I think of the French term nuit blanche.

White night.

Yeah, I was just thinking of that myself.

Well, we’re collecting terms about sleep and sleeplessness and staying up all night.

If you have some, let us know.

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

This show is about language seen through family, history, and culture.

Stay tuned.

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.

Back in 2006, the International Astronomical Union had a vote on the definition of the word planet.

And you may remember that there was lots of arguing about this, and in the end, the ninth planet, Pluto, was stripped of its title.

And this was really big news at the time.

And there were a lot of people, including me, who were kind of upset.

You know, we thought, wait, we’ve learned in school that there are nine planets.

And we even had mnemonics to remember all their names, like my very educated mother just served us nine pizzas.

What are we supposed to say now?

My very educated mother just served us nachos.

And Grant, linguists also took note of that brouhaha, didn’t they?

That’s right. In January of 2007, the American Dialect Society, which I am a part of, voted Pluto as one of its Pluto-related words of the year because there were other words related to Pluto, like Pluton, possibly a category of trans-Neptunian objects that did not warrant the designation as true planets.

Right. And if you got Pluto’d, you were demoted or devalued, right? I mean, we rarely hear this word.

Exactly. Well, the story of how Pluto got kicked off its planetary pedestal is told in a really delightful book that was written a few years ago by the astronomer who set all this in motion.

It’s called How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, which is so intriguing, right? It just makes you want to pick it up.

But it’s by Mike Brown, who’s an astronomer at California Polytechnic Institute in Pasadena.

And in 2005, Brown and his colleagues announced that they had discovered an object that was a whole lot bigger than Pluto and even farther away.

And so for a short time, Brown was hailed as the discoverer of the 10th planet.

But there was a problem with this.

There was a problem with the definition of the word planet because astronomers had never formally agreed on what exactly a planet was.

And in fact, I learned that in the early 1800s, school kids were taught that there were 11 planets.

And for a brief time after that, they were told that more than 20 planets had been discovered.

Now, most of those were soon reclassified as asteroids.

So anyway, the word planet itself comes from the Greek word for wanderer.

And that’s because unlike the stars that move in fixed constellations, planets wander right through those patterns.

And Brown’s discovery forced scientists to wrestle again with the definition of what exactly these celestial bodies are.

And eventually they decided that to be called a planet, basically it had to orbit the sun, it had to be round, and it had to be big enough to be gravitationally dominant.

That is, it’s big enough to clear its orbit of other debris.

And as much as it pained Brown to conclude that this new object wasn’t a planet, he was among those arguing that it simply didn’t meet those criteria.

And if that new one didn’t, then Pluto certainly didn’t.

And Brown got lots of angry letters from schoolchildren and even some death threats.

And I’m leaving out a lot.

The book has a lot of humor.

It even includes a little whodunit, which is very cool.

It’s got a ton of personal memoir about his own experience becoming a husband and a father.

But Grant, I think it’s this fascinating read about our struggle to classify nature, you know, to break all of that down into manageable chunks and try to squeeze it into words, you know, words that we can use to help understand it.

Definitions really matter.

They do indeed.

And I remember the vote at the American Dialect Society about whether or not Pluto should be word of the year for 2006.

And the arguments were fierce.

And people were full of energy and vigor.

I’m going to talk about this.

So it wasn’t just the astronomers who were having this big debate.

There were no death threats.

Well, I should add one more thing about this book, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.

Since it was published in 2010, Brown and a colleague have announced that their calculations suggest that there really is a planet nine out there that’s several times bigger than the Earth.

And they’re hopeful that when a new state-of-the-art observatory opens in Chile in 2025, the discovery of the ninth planet won’t be far behind.

Oh, that would be so amazing.

I can’t wait.

Wouldn’t it be cool?

Whatever you’re reading, Martha and I love to hear about it.

Send us your favorite passages, recommend a book, tell us something that you want to find to read yourself.

877-929-9673, email words@waywordradio.org, or find ways to talk to us via our website at waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

This is Katina Bettencourt-Norton from Abilene, Texas.

So I am calling because I have a 13-year-old daughter and her friend who started using this interesting word.

I think it’s kind of they’re using it as a term of endearment, and it’s the word stigma.

So I think it’s kind of like if you’re saying chica or girlfriend or dude or something like that.

They said it means cool or awesome, and I thought, this is unusual.

I’ve never heard it like that.

So I wanted to get your thoughts and ideas on the nuances and how long this Sigma has been used in this context.

Sigma, like the Greek letter, like S-I-G-M-A?

Yes.

Okay.

S-I-G-M-A, yes.

Exactly.

Yeah, as we record this, Sigma is undergoing a bit of a slang surge.

And it does sometimes mean cool or successful or popular.

But originally it comes from this misunderstanding that wolf packs have alphas, that is, leaders of the groups.

And the wolf packs, even though this is widespread, particularly like in the fan fiction community, wolves do not have alphas.

They’re collaborative.

And so this whole idea of a male alpha in the human world was borrowed, as well as beta and sigma.

So an alpha refers to men, usually, who are seen as dominant or natural leaders.

Beta is for men who are not dominant.

A more polite way of looking at it would be they’re kind and gentle.

And then a sigma is someone who is like an alpha, but they’re an outsider.

They’re not part of the pack.

And so they operate outside the normal structure of the group.

And all three of these terms are widely used in what is called the manosphere, which is this world of men talking to men about how to be a man.

And there’s a little bit of, how shall I put this?

You will sometimes find the less savory parts of the men’s rights movements use these terms in not very nice ways, particularly beta.

And you will find them use, beta in particular, used as an insult.

Sigma, not so much.

But Sigma has kind of left the manosphere.

I know that’s a ridiculous word, but that’s what they call it.

Clearly it’s left the manosphere.

If her 13-year-old daughter is using it.

It has indeed, yeah.

And now it just is more generically used to refer to somebody who is, I don’t know,

I’m kind of thinking of like a James Dean in his motorcycle jacket kind of character with the cool hair, smoking a cigarette, looking smoky at the camera.

You know what I’m saying?

Yes, definitely.

On all these terms, you usually refer to men, but you’ll find them used to refer to women.

But that’s where we are.

There’s so much more to say with this.

But Sigma has been used this way since about 2010.

There was an alt-right writer who used it on their blog, and it kind of caught on from there.

And there have been books published using Sigma male in the title.

And a lot of this stuff has to do with, like I said, some of it is unsavory and kind of gross.

It’s used in writing and videos used on how to lure women to date you.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

I’ve got to definitely make sure my daughter knows that history.

Yeah.

Yeah, Katina, I think it’s fascinating that your daughter and her friend are using it as affectionate terms, like my buddy, my pal.

Exactly. I thought it was just kind of interesting. I’m like, what are you saying?

And it was the funniest thing to hear them trying to explain to me what they’re trying to say, you know, and I’m like, Sigma, you know, just everything was Sigma this, Sigma that, Sigma everything.

And I was like, okay, we need to send this to Martha and Grant.

We can get more information on this.

It’s very interesting.

So that’s where we are with that.

So it looks like Sigma has left its original kind of unsavory origin to just become more generic.

And that can be okay.

That’s good.

I’m glad to know that.

Wow, this is really great.

I can’t wait to share this with my daughter and her friends.

And hopefully they’re as excited as I am to, you know, find out the history of this word and, you know, the nuances and everything.

So thank you.

Thank you, Sigma.

It’s our pleasure, Katina.

Take care of yourself.

Give our best to your daughter.

Thank you for taking my call.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, maybe a word is wafted into your life from the lingo sphere and you’re puzzling over what it means.

We can try to puzzle it out with you.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Leslie Barnette. I’m calling from Hickory, North Carolina.

Hi, Leslie. Welcome to the program. What’s on your mind?

I have a saying that I had heard from my grandmother.

I was raised here in North Carolina and heard from her.

She always had an expression she used when talking about something that’s hot,

Especially food, that she would say, that’s hot as brinjup.

And as a child, I heard it as a child and as a teenager, and then she passed away in the 60s.

And I always wondered where that expression came from.

My mom would often tell me that she thought maybe it was a German expression because my mother had some German ancestors.

And so later, when I met a German teacher, I asked about that.

And that person who spoke German said she didn’t know that word from the German language at all.

So I’ve always wondered and wondered if you could help me find out where that expression came from.

Can you give us the word one more time and spell it?

You know, I’m not sure exactly how to spell it.

I never saw it in writing.

But the way she said it was hot as brinchup, like B-R-I-N-G-U-P.

Okay.

All right.

This is familiar, isn’t it, Martha?

Yes.

I was going to ask you if you had any Scots in your heritage besides German.

Yes.

Okay.

Scotch-Irish is also in our heritage.

Yep.

Yep.

That’s probably the source of it because hot as bringer is usually how you see it written out, when you see it written out.

B-R-I-N-J-E-R.

Hot as bringer.

And that comes from the language of Scotland, because there’s an old word, bringe, which means to rush forward recklessly and violently.

And bringe can also be a kind of punch or a blow.

And a bringe is a beating.

And this word apparently gave us the word bringer, which refers to something that’s equally extreme.

And I’m curious whether your grandmother ever used cold as bringer.

No, I never heard that.

Okay, because sometimes people will say cold as bringer, but hot as bringer, you know,

It’s today’s a bringer or it’s bringing hot today.

That goes back to Scotland.

How about that?

That’s wonderful to find out how interesting that is.

Yeah, and so you see it often in areas of Scots and Scots-Irish settlement.

So you see it in North Carolina, for sure, in Georgia, South Carolina, and that area.

That has been a mystery my whole life.

So I really appreciate you helping me get to the source of that

And to actually know that I’ve been saying it wrong or she said it wrong or we misunderstood it

And to now know how it’s spelled.

That means a lot.

Well, I don’t know about wrong, but it’s just a variance.

So you can go ahead and say branch up there.

I think I’ve got six spellings of it here.

On my notes. So you’re good with that one too. Thank you so much. Okay, Leslie. Well, it’s great

To talk with you. We appreciate your calling. Thank you, Leslie. Take care. Thank you. An honor

To speak to you. Bye-bye. There are linguistic heirlooms in everyone’s language stuck there

Like little jewels. Talk to us. We’ll explore them. 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lisa Linton from Huntsville, Alabama, Rocket City, USA.

All right. Well, Lisa, what’s on your mind today?

I was listening to your program a few weeks ago, and I remembered hearing the use of this word, sleazy, you know, like sleazeball, sleazy.

So my mother used to say this word, like, if I’m dressed, she always used it in reference to being dressed up, looking really good,

Sitting just tight enough to show that you’re a woman and loose enough to show that you’re a lady.

And it looked so good, she said, you look sleazy.

That dress is sleazy.

And now it was like my head would do a 180 like, Mom, what?

Is sleazy one of those kind of words that at one time meant something good?

Well, that’s a quick one.

So let me summarize here.

So your mother is talking about a dress being sleazy, but she doesn’t mean sleazy.

S-L-E-A-Z-Y.

She means attractive or nice or even…

That’s what she meant, right.

She meant it looking attractive.

So I thought she was playing on the word for, you know, if it’s kind of slim looking, slinky or sexy, you know.

But she was very consistent with that.

We’re sleazy.

We’re getting ready for church.

I look sleazy.

I’m like, Mom, you can’t go to church like that.

No.

You’re on to something.

The word sleazy, S-L-E-A-Z-Y, has undergone a transformation in the 300 plus years that it’s been around.

Originally referred to kind of like the lanugo or the downy hair, like on the legs of flies and other insects or something hairy or fuzzy.

Fibers of twisted rope could be called sleazy.

And then that meaning transformed a little bit, not long after, to mean thin or flimsy, just like hair might be or having little substance or body.

And that was used specifically to refer to textiles or fabrics.

And I’m wondering if your mother has hung on somehow to this much older use of sleazy to refer to thin or flimsy fabric.

You know what? And she often used it when I did dress, often when it’s something that’s a very thin fabric, like an organza or a chiffon.

Yeah, exactly.

Like a fabric.

That’s exactly what I was thinking of. huh

So I’m wondering if there wasn’t some history of that older meaning of sleazy kind of sticking around.

And she’s using it from her heritage and not because she got a word wrong or because of a malapropism.

Right. That’s what I thought because I used to ask her and she’s just like, it is what it is.

But my mother, she is a wordsmith. My parents would play Scrabble for lunch.

I mean, they know their words. So I knew there had to be something about it.

Okay. So that makes a lot of sense because, you know, down here in the South, when it gets hot, you need something.

Yeah.

And it’s definitely in the Caribbean, too.

So that’s, wow.

So that’s what we know, Lisa.

I hope that helps.

Oh, that helps a lot.

That helps tremendously.

I can’t wait.

We appreciate your time.

Take care of yourself and call us again sometime, all right?

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

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Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.