Mox Nix (episode #1662)

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.

The name Tocharian applies to a small group of extinct languages that were spoken in the Darim region of what is now western China.

The Tocharians flourished in the latter half of the first millennium CE, and we have only fragments of written texts in these languages.

But I wanted to share a part of a Tocarian love poem in translation.

It goes, isn’t that gorgeous?

Oh, that’s so lovely.

And just even across the millennia, it holds up.

It’s incredibly strong sentiment in writing.

Yes, across the millennia. And also what blows my mind is that Tukarian is a distant relative of English. They share a common linguistic ancestor called Proto-Indo-European, which is a tongue that connects a wide range of seemingly unconnected languages. And I want to talk about that later in the show.

Fantastic. Looking forward to it. Martha, do you have any of the words of Tukarian from that poem in the original?

Can you make a go at it?

Well, I was afraid you were going to ask me.

My Tukarian is a little bit rusty.

Oh, come on.

Everybody’s speaking it.

Let’s hear a few words, though, just to give us a taste.

Okay.

I’ll give you just a taste.

Mani chisa noshomo nyeb.

Nol milare taka.

Mara postem chisa lare muskatern.

Wow.

I think the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I don’t know if it was magic.

I’m just super psyched about carrying it.

It’s a magical incantation for sure.

Yes.

We will post that poem on our website, and we’d love to hear what you’re reading and your favorite poetry.

You can call or text 877-929-9673.

Find all of our past episodes and even more ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary Claire calling from San Antonio, Texas.

Hello, Mary Claire. We’re glad to have you. What’s up?

So I am interested in learning more about the word Hoosier, not as it pertains to someone from Indiana, but the way it’s used in St. Louis, Missouri, where I grew up.

So growing up in St. Louis, it was common to use the word Hoosier as a pejorative, but it was always kind of in a teasing or bantery way when somebody did something silly or classless, I guess.

But again, it was silly and teasing.

So if somebody spilled a drink on themselves or tripped in front of you, you would say something like, oh, you’re such a hoosier.

Or you might even shorten it to you’re such a hoosh.

And my older sister reminded me that she and her friends would even use the term who’s was he like bourgeoisie to describe people.

So then when I was in high school, we moved to San Antonio, Texas, and I was sitting around with a group of new friends and one of them did something foolish.

And I said, oh, you’re such a Hoosier.

And it was just crickets.

They looked at me like I was insane.

Of course.

And I will tell you, that is the first time I found out that Hoosier also meant someone from Indiana.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

I didn’t even know.

So it’s always mystified me that it could have such a specific usage in St. Louis and then mean something else completely different to the whole rest of the world.

Yeah.

I don’t know if you know this, but I’m originally from Missouri as well and born in St. Louis and raised in the counties around St. Louis.

So I have the same experience you do with using Hoosier in that way.

And it’s definitely still used that way throughout St. Louis.

Both sides of the river, many counties around.

We’re talking a very large circumference of an area of people who use Hoosier to mean hillbilly, redneck, uncouth person.

Does that sound about right?

It’s not a perfect fit, but yes.

No.

There’s no perfect fit, but unmannerly.

Yes.

Yes.

And in my experience, it was never necessary.

It didn’t go all the way to derogatory.

Like I said, it was mostly when I used it or when I was called a Hoosier, it was kind of between friends.

It was teasing and funny.

I could see that.

I do know that originally it was more geographically widespread.

This particular meaning of Hoosier, even before Indiana picked up on the term and started using it to refer to its own residents, Hoosier was across large parts of the Midwest, as we know it today, kind of above the American South, along the Ohio River Valley, below the Great Lakes.

That whole region definitely used Hoosier to mean the kind of person we’re talking about.

It could have just been something like a country bumpkin, or it could have been somebody who had no manners, or somebody who was, I wouldn’t say klutz is the right word, but they’re just kind of always doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.

That kind of person.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

That’s so interesting.

By the 1830s, Indiana residents started appropriating that term for themselves.

Now, we don’t know where Hoosier came from.

And I know I’m going to get a lot of emails going, yes, we do.

No, we don’t.

Because there’s a lot of theories and a lot of them have no backing.

And I’m not going to get into it here because we’d be here all day.

But around the 1830s, the Indiana residents started calling themselves Hoosiers.

But that term persisted and continued to be used outside of Indiana for just anybody who wasn’t with it.

They didn’t have culture.

They weren’t acting according to the rules of the day, the etiquette of the day.

Throughout the Mississippi Valley and the U.S. South.

And the Dictionary of American Regional English has examples well into the 1960s and 70s and 80s of it being used in Louisiana and the Carolinas.

Where you might talk about Arkansas Hoosiers or Mountain Hoosiers.

Oh, wow.

So it does exist in little tidbits here and there throughout the United States.

But for some reason, it’s stuck in St. Louis.

And that reason mainly is that we forget in the modern age what a metropolitan powerhouse St. Louis was at one point for the culture of this country.

St. Louis was, for the longest time, right up there in the running with New York City and Philadelphia as the city.

Because it was on the river traffic and it was the launching point for all this westward migration and many other things.

St. Louis was a thing.

And so it doesn’t surprise me at all that St. Louis would have this as part of this lexicon of St. Louis language that stuck.

Because you may not know this, but St. Louis is a little bit of a linguistic bubble anyway.

Because of that, that history is a powerhouse.

Yeah, Hoosier isn’t the only term or thing like that that I have found living in Texas and traveling over different places.

There are a lot of little quirks that seem to kind of stick around St. Louis.

But that’s the short version.

Well, Mary Claire, thank you so much for calling and sharing this story and give our best to your mom as well.

Thank you so much. Have a great day.

All right. You take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve had that experience, we’d love to hear about it and talk about it with you.

877-929-9673 or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John from Orange County, California. How are you today?

All right, John. How are you doing? Welcome to the show.

I got a question that’s based out of where I’m from in Orange County here.

If I were to say, hey, will you let me drink out of your water bottle, but I’m not going to touch it to my lips.

I’m just going to kind of let it flow into my mouth. What would you call that?

Well, you’re asking languagey people, so we’re a little over-equipped for this one, John.

Right, right.

And you’ve already told us that you’re from Orange County.

Right.

Yeah, which is a thing that we know about.

We know where you’re going with this, John.

That’s all we’re saying.

Well, there’s kind of a strange phenomenon I’ve found that people outside of Orange County, at least that I’ve been able to ascertain, people outside of that, they call that action, that, you know, flowing the water bottle out without touching your lips, they call that water falling.

Yeah.

Whereas in Orange County, we would call that birdieing.

Like, hey, can I get a birdie out of that?

Will you give me a birdie for that?

And I don’t know why that is.

I’ve found that I’ve asked people from Los Angeles County, San Diego County, and they say waterfall.

But I ask, you know, friends who I’ve grown up with and, you know, they say birdie.

And I’m wondering why that is.

If you could give me some insight as to why there’s that kind of like regionalism.

So this, just to be clear, we’re talking about the touchless drink.

So you’re holding the bottle, but you do not touch your lips to the mouth of it.

The water pours freely into your open maw.

Mm—

Exactly.

Sort of like your open maw is a little baby bird’s mouth.

Right.

The posture that you’re taking when you do that is very much, Martha, right?

Like a baby bird in the nest waiting for the worm to come from mama.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s interesting.

And it’s not just you, John.

I mean, you can go on TikTok and see lots and lots and lots of videos where people are polling their friends.

Do you call it a birdie or do you call it a waterfall?

And for some reason, Orange County seems to be very closely associated with using the term birdie for this.

We had a call about this, Grant, many, many years ago.

And that was what we discussed.

There are a few other expressions for this.

Some people call it air sipping or airing.

In the U.K. A lot of times, and in India, people will say sky.

They’ll say, you know, I’m going to sky that drink.

Sky me a drink, yeah.

Yeah, Sky Me a Drink.

And, you know, my favorite, though, of all of these is not birdie or waterfall or anything like that.

It’s the French slang term for this.

I got to share it with you.

All right.

Yeah.

The buildup is tense.

Okay.

I’m going to pour it into your ears without touching your ears.

The French phrase is bois en wifi.

Oh, yeah.

Drink a Wi-Fi.

Yeah.

Drink in Wi-Fi, you know, because it’s not connected.

And also I’ve seen Bluetooth used in the same way.

Yeah.

Oh, really?

In English as well.

Yeah.

Oh, there you go.

In parts of Europe, they call it Wi-Fi or Bluetooth just because it’s touchless, wireless, no cables.

It’s so picturesque, right?

I love that one.

And I’m not really sure why Birdie got so closely associated with Orange County unless it started there.

Well, so many of those language questions, you know, the answer is nobody knows.

It’s just a curiosity of language.

But there is, John, right, a strong hiking culture in Southern California, and Orange County is part of that.

But it’s so weird that it’s just to be specific just to that one county when it’s surrounded by these other counties that are also rich with hiking tradition and culture.

Yeah, I would say here in San Diego, we do call it a waterfall, at least the people I know.

Yeah, absolutely, waterfowling.

Yeah.

John, thank you so much for your time, and be safe out there.

Don’t step on any rattlers.

Try not to on a mic.

Thank you so much, guys.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Take care.

Bye now.

Call or text 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

And don’t forget all of our past episodes for free on the website at waywordradio.org.

So if a king sleeps on a king-sized mattress and a queen sleeps on a queen-sized mattress, what does a prince sleep on?

A fold-out bed.

No.

The prince is the dog. It sleeps in the doghouse.

No, a prince sleeps on an air mattress.

Oh, that’s terrible.

I know.

That’s terrible.

Hey, I’m talking about homonyms. It’s a language show.

Sometimes people are princes without being heirs, so I’m going to quibble.

I guess I should say the eldest prince, huh?

Prince not in line to the throne.

877-929-9673.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And entering the room with a smile on his face and a quiz in his hand, it’s our quiz guy, John Janeski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

Hey, John.

I have a quiz for you today.

It’s sort of a random mix, I call it.

I’ll give you a sentence.

One of the words in that sentence has been inexplicably anagrammed by someone into another word,

And you just have to identify the word that was mixed and unmix it.

Okay?

Okay.

For example, if I said,

A rose garden grows deep in the earth of Texas.

The answer would be heart, since earth anagrams to heart.

Gotcha.

Got it?

Now, if I’ve done this right, the sentence should kind of make sense either way.

And there may be other words that can be anagrammed in the sentence, but probably shouldn’t.

Okay?

Okay.

Good.

Ready.

Let’s do this.

Here we go.

And now that we’ve seen Paris, I need to see more.

Now that we’ve seen pairs, I need to see more.

No, that’s a nice little anagram you got there.

Paris and pairs is good, but no.

Paris and then you go to Italy.

Oh, Rome.

Yes, Martha.

You’re right on it.

Now that we’ve seen Paris, I need to see Rome.

I’m done in the garden.

I just have to clean off my shoe.

Hose.

I just have to clean off my hose.

Oh, very good.

Yes.

I would have also accepted hose.

I would also have to clean off my hose.

H-O-E-S or H-O-S-E.

Gotcha.

Correct.

Correct.

The double.

This farm has a barn and silo that’s just perfect for our use.

It has a barn and oils.

A barn and soils.

Pretty good.

Oh, soil.

Yes.

Yes.

Even better.

This farm has a barn and soil that’s just perfect for our use.

I mean, if it’s a barn that holds tractor, oils make sense.

Right.

Right.

Or, you know, destination weddings.

You know, like essential fragrances.

Essential oils that are just perfect on this farm.

Essential oils, yes.

Very good.

My mate is quite good with ropes and also writes poetry.

So there’s prose and poetry.

Yes, it’s good.

She or he is good with ropes, or that is prose,

And also writes poetry.

Very good.

She’s not good with spore.

No, not spore.

Be sure to sweep the dusty living room and bedroom.

Be sure to sweep the dusty living room and bedroom.

Right.

So we’re looking at sweep here or dusty, Martha?

I’m thinking dusty.

Study.

That’s good.

Yes, be sure to sweep the study, living room, and bedroom.

It’s sort of a lack of punctuation in that sense, but that’s okay.

That’s my trick.

Finally, the job took much longer since I cut my fringe.

You cut your fringe?

The job took much longer since I cut my fringe.

How about your finger?

My finger, yes.

It takes much longer to do any of these jobs when I cut my finger.

Yes.

Very good.

That’s how it happens.

Well, John, those bangs, that fringe suits you.

Thank you so much.

All right.

So you guys did pretty well in that random mix of random mixed words.

Well done.

Thanks, John.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Talk to you then.

Bye, John.

Bye-bye.

If you’re feeling mixed up about some aspect of language, this is the place to call and talk about it.

877-929-9673 is toll-free in the U.S. And Canada.

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

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Katie Harris from Tallahassee, Florida.

Hi, Katie.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

So I was recently having dinner with a friend, and she was stirring a pot of rice with a kitchen utensil I’d never seen before.

And it was a straight, like a straight, almost like a chopstick, but completely straight.

And it had a bit of a bulb on the end, kind of like how you might draw a cartoon thermometer.

And I was like, what is that?

And she said, it’s a Scottish spurtle.

And that word made me laugh.

I’d never heard it before.

I’d never seen one before.

So it became a bit of a muse for a while.

And then about two weeks later, my husband found a video on YouTube.

It was like a infomercial from the 90s from a woman named Kathy Mitchell.

And she was selling a whole set of Amish spurtles.

Amish spurtles look much more like a spatula, still made of wood, with a short handle and a bit of a scoop shape, but not as much as a spoon.

And I was like, that’s also a spurtle?

I have a few questions. One was, you know, what is the etymology of the spurtle? And the other one is, is an Amish spurtle just a New World take on an Old World favorite?

There we go. So spurtle, S-P-U-R-T-L-E?

Yep.

Okay, spurtle. And there’s a question you asked in there, Martha, which I think we’ve had asked about spatula before. It’s like, how can one term refer to so many different implements?

Yeah.

And so this thing that your friend was using, it was like sort of a dowel with a knob on the end?

Pretty much, yeah.

And was the knob in the whatever she was stirring, or was it out?

Yes.

No, that part goes in.

And I think it’s meant for porridges and thick stews, maybe.

And it’s a Scottish-specific spurtle.

Yeah.

Yes.

I think I understand your confusion, Martha, because that’s a nonstandard spurtle, as I know them.

There are a couple of different kinds of spurtle.

As you said, there’s the one that’s shaped like a dowel for stirring porridge.

And you’re right, it’s a Scottish term.

As I understand it, it’s really good for making porridge because it helps you avoid lumps.

And it helps you avoid the porridge sticking to the sides of whatever you’re cooking in because of the shape.

I always thought the knob part went on top, though.

I guess if there are Spertle fans out there, they will let me know.

Do you know, Grant?

Well, they’ll let you know.

I am not Scottish, and I’m new to Spertles.

And my friend had this tool.

It was a gift from someone, so it’s possible she’s using it wrong.

However, the little bold in the bottom makes sense to me in getting in that weird little corners of your, I mean, I know a pot is brown, but you have that edge that’s hard to get to, and I think this could do it.

So I’m Googling Spertle as we’re talking here and looking at the images, and there are a lot of types of Spertle.

I think people just like putting the word spurtle on anything.

Since Katie is spurtle curious here, we can tell you that there is a Golden Spurtle World Porridge Cup.

Do you know about this?

No.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, look online.

You can find the championship that’s held every year in Scotland, and the winner gets a gold-colored dowel like that, which is called a spurtle.

But what do they do to win it?

They stir it well?

Well, you’re supposed to stir a clock.

This is a great question.

Thank you, Grant.

Yes, it is a great question.

Yeah.

Supposedly with a spurtle, you’re supposed to stir in a clockwise direction with your right hand.

I know that much.

I mean, with the stick in your right hand.

Yeah.

But that type of spurtle is also called a thivel or a thievel in Scotland, T-H-I-V-E-L.

And then the other one that you were describing, Katie, the one that’s more flat, have you heard the term, have you heard the term couthy spurtle?

No.

Which could be my new stage name, I think.

Give it up.

Couthy.

It’s a good name.

Couthy spurtle.

And all I know about that is that couthy in Scotland means familiar, it literally means known.

So couthy spurtle is like your everyday spurtle?

Well, it’s got a flat blade, which brings us to one of the competing etymologies.

It’s really hard to drill down and find the actual origin of the word spurtle.

Some people think that it’s related to words like spatula and spade, you know, because it’s flat.

But then there’s another school of thought that is that maybe it’s formed by what we call metathesis, where letters shift places.

Because it might be related to the word sprit, like the bow sprit on a sail, on a sailboat is like a stick.

And there are these words that are related to sprit that have to do with sticks.

So I don’t know.

That one feels more plausible to me.

Yeah, I think that one and the Old Norse priority meaning stick, rod, twig.

So this goes back deeper even in many ways than spatula, just depending on the path you want to take.

But it’s entirely possible that spurtle is influenced by both etymologies and both contributed to the word.

Because we do find a zillion different spellings and pronunciations of this word, including spartle and spurkle and spurrel and quite a few others.

Spintle.

Quite a few others.

Yeah.

And you mentioned, Katie, an Amish spurtle, which is interesting because I’ve also seen the flat kind of spurtle referred to as an American spurtle.

Also known as a koothie spurtle.

But I’m sure there are a lot of, what would you call a spurtle fan, a spurtler?

Yep, I would. I will.

So you take the spurtle, you flip your bannocks, you scutch your flax, and that’s what a spurtle is for, right?

Perfect, yeah.

Well, Katie, I can’t wait to continue this conversation. I know people are going to fill us in on it, so I appreciate you starting it. I’m sure people know more.

Well, Katie, thank you so much. We’re going to find out more about Sperl from our listeners, I’m sure.

Perfect. Thanks so much for your time. Take care now. Bye-bye.

Thanks, Katie. Bye-bye.

Call or text 877-929-9673.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jacob Schroer. I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Well, Jacob, welcome. What can we do for you today?

Yeah, so I have a phrase that’s been passed down through a few generations in my family that I wanted to maybe know a little bit more about. And that phrase is, good enough for who it’s for.

Good enough for who it’s for. In what context would you hear this?

The context is usually kind of in a more comedic form when you’re doing a task for someone and you maybe don’t do it as well as you should. And you kind of shrug and say, good enough for who it’s for.

The origin of the story is, I think, more of the funny part. My great-grandfather, for a time, his profession was grave digging. And so, as the story goes, one day they were working on a grave site, and they were having problems getting to the correct depth. And one of the supervisors looked down and said, good enough for who it’s for.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. That particular customer is not going to know.

Yeah, exactly. So my great-grandfather was so amused by that saying, maybe taken aback at first, but he started using it himself in different circumstances, mostly as a joke. And now, multiple generations down, that phrase is still being used in my family.

That’s super interesting.

Yeah, it’s got some life outside of your family. Good enough for who it’s for.

So the idea that I’m hearing from you is that it’s not perfect, but it’ll do?

Exactly. And when I look at it being used elsewhere, I see often there’s a notion of being less perfectionist for oneself or one’s family than you might be for outsiders or for others. So you might do something around the house. It’s good enough for me. You know, good enough for who it’s for, which is me.

Yes. And that’s actually how my father uses it the most is when he’s working for himself and wants to be done with the project and doesn’t want to continue on. He might use that phrase.

But is there a notion partly here of pearls before swine, meaning why do it any better when nobody of any taste or sophistication really noticed the fine work that I’ve done?

Yeah, I think that is also an applicable use.

Okay, but in your family you would use it that way?

Yes. There’s at least 100 years to this. I find one construction company that uses it as a slogan, which I don’t think is well advised. Come, let us do some half-assed work on your house.

No, thank you. Pretty good biscuits.

Yeah, I’m definitely going to utilize their services. Good enough. Who it’s for. Not bad. Not bad.

The other expression they use in construction, by the way, that’s similar is, looks good for my house. And it reminds me of the good enough for government work, if you know that expression.

Oh. Where would that trace its history back to?

Well, good enough for government comes from the idea that the government has all these ridiculous specifications about how work should be done. But in the end, people often just do slapdash work anyway. In Italian, though, slapdash work, get this, is called fatto con i piedi, which means made with the feet. So slapdash work looks like it wasn’t done with the hands at all.

Well, I’m also thinking about that expression, it’ll never be seen on a galloping horse.

Oh, yeah.

We get questions about that one all the time.

You know, if you’re going by galloping by, you’re not going to see it.

So, Jacob, thank you for sharing the family anecdote.

And just know there’s about 100 years of history, and it doesn’t have a lot of life to it.

But the expression is used here and there in English and has been for a century.

And it sounds like it takes different variations wherever you’re at.

Yeah, of course.

All right.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for calling, Jacob.

Thank you so much.

Have a great one.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question about language, we’ll give you an answer that’s good enough for who it’s for, you.

So call us, 877-929-9673.

Or you can ask us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant, Martha, how are you?

My name is Tommy Glover.

I’m in Lexington, Kentucky.

Well, Tommy, thank you for joining us.

What’s on your mind today?

Well, long ago and far away, I was a combat artillery officer serving with the U.S. Army in an infantry unit in the jungles of Vietnam.

Now, the military, like other organizations, has their own special language, professional language to describe and serve their own unique situations.

The word that I’m interested in, there are lots of military words, but the one I’m interested in, the one I heard in Vietnam, is mox nix.

Mox nix. What does it mean to you?

Well, when I heard it in country the first time, I knew exactly what it meant because it’s pretty descriptive.

I took it to mean doesn’t matter or it’s not important or sometimes I don’t care, I’m not interested or things like that.

Did you ever hear it outside the military?

Well, probably from veteran friends that have used it incorporated into their own language.

I don’t know that it’s fully incorporated into the English language now. It’s still probably a military term.

Yeah, I think you’re right. I think Max Nix is definitely, if it’s still in use in the military, I don’t know that it is. But when it started and then when it was in regular use, it was military.

It came out of the U.S. experience in Europe during World War II. It’s a version of a German expression, which means I don’t care. M-A-C-H-T-N-I-C-H-T. Max Nix.

So it’s kind of anglicized and usually spelled in English as M-O-X-N-I-X, which is very distinctive. But I’m not surprised that you heard it in Vietnam because it was still in regular use among soldiers in Korea and Vietnam and even a little bit after that.

But I think after that generation moved on, either passed on or retired, that it kind of fell by the wayside.

Yeah, it was actually fairly common in Vietnam. It was handy, a handy word, usable in lots of situations. But you probably still had senior officers upstairs, way upstairs, who had World War II experience at that point.

Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably so. And it’s such a handy expression, as you say, Tommy. I mean, you would just, I guess, shrug and say something doesn’t matter by saying that, right? Like, who cares?

Sure. Yeah, nobody had to explain to me what it meant. It was pretty descriptive by itself. So it means like it makes no difference or I don’t care.

So if somebody says, I’m sorry, went down to the mess and got some ice cream, but we didn’t bring you any, you might go, moxnix.

Right. Yep. That’s a good way to use it. I don’t think I would say that if somebody failed to bring me ice cream, though, Tommy.

But that’s what we know from German, entered English, and kind of has faded at this point. But I believe it’s faded. We’ll find out. Our military listeners will let us know.

Thank you so much, Tommy, for your time. Really appreciate it.

Sure.

Sure.

Thank you, Josh.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

As Grant said, we have a lot of military listeners out there, and we would love to hear your thoughts on either Moxnix or another bit of military slang or jargon.

The number to call is 877-929-9673.

There’s more A Way with Words on the way, stay tuned.

So 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.

Nearly half the people in the world speak languages that arose from just one source.

It’s a linguistic ancestor of modern languages as diverse as English, Hindi, Irish, Russian, Greek, Spanish, and also ancient ones like Hittite and Akkadian, as well as Tukarian.

And it’s thought that this ancestral tongue, called Proto-Indo-European, was spoken by a small number of people some 5,000 years ago, probably in eastern Ukraine, near the Black Sea.

Now, not a word of it was written down, but scholars have deduced its existence because of the strikingly consistent correspondence of sounds among its descendants.

Take a basic word like the word for the number three. In Spanish it’s tres, in French it’s trois, in Russian it’s three, and in Albanian it’s three, and of course in English it’s three.

And there are lots of other languages that have similar sounding terms for this very basic notion.

And just in the past decade, working alongside archaeologists and geneticists, linguists have been able to fill out a much bigger, much more detailed story of how the offspring of Proto-Indo-Europeans spread out thousands of miles.

And this story is told in a fascinating new book.

It’s called Proto, How One Ancient Language Went Global.

It’s by science journalist Laura Spinney.

And Spinney makes clear how both migration and climate change have been absolutely key to this history.

And she also shows how loanwords can serve as a kind of tracer die of contacts between languages.

Take, for example, the Roma people’s thousand-year exodus out of India.

They spoke Romani, which is a descendant of Sanskrit, but once they reached Persia, they assimilated the indigenous words for new things they encountered, such as honey, pear, and donkeys.

And so that’s like a linguistic fossil record of their travels.

And another thing I learned from this book is that a lot of linguists believe that the name of the early Slavs meant the famous people.

That’s what they called themselves.

And then in the early Middle Ages, the Franks took the Slavs captive and Slav became Sklavos in the language of the Holy Roman Empire, that is Latin.

And that went on to become Esclav in French.

And then when the Normans moved into Britain, it morphed into English slave.

But the original idea of Slav, meaning fame, lives on today in the Polish name Stanislaw, which means he who’s achieved fame.

And the Ukrainian rallying cry, Slava Ukraina, or Glory to Ukraine.

And this is a beautifully written, sweeping history.

But Spinney is careful to say that this is just a snapshot of current research at this moment, all those threads coming together of archaeology and genetics and linguistics.

And she compares it to sort of gazing backward into the mist, like you see the shape of something there, but you’re still working out exactly what it is.

And I really appreciate the way she puts it, Grant, because she says, how do you study a language that’s been dead for thousands of years and never written down?

The short answer is with humility.

Lovely.

I can’t wait to finish it.

I’m almost through it, Martha.

Proto by Laura Spinney is a book that we both recommend and we’ll link to it from our website.

Martha and I love to hear what you’re reading or your thoughts on this book.

You can call or text 877-929-9673 or tell us more in email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, how are you?

This is Rob from Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Hello, Rob in Oshkosh.

Welcome to the program.

What’s on your mind?

I’m wondering about the word bully.

It’s a big word these days, right?

And it’s like I had to have someone tell me at my work that someone was a bully, and that’s just the way it was.

So then it got me thinking about where does this word even come from?

And, you know, how do, well, the deeper question is how do people become bullies in the first place?

Yeah, so bully, B-U-L-L-Y, and this is, you have bullies in the workplace? What are they like?

They’re the type of people who do not want to get along, it seems.

Well, the word bully itself has a really weird history because you won’t believe this, but as early as the 1530s, the term bully was kind of a term of endearment.

It meant a sweetheart and it could be applied either to male or females.

And it’s uncertain what the origin of that use of bully is.

It might come from a Dutch word boel, B-O-E-L, which means lover or brother.

And actually, if you go back to Shakespeare, it was used to mean sort of a fine fellow or good chap.

If you look at Midsummer Night’s Dream, bottom is addressed as sweet bully bottom.

You know, it’s a fond word.

And over time, the meaning diverged in a couple of different ways.

The word bully also came to mean jolly or admirable, like bully for you.

Or you might remember Teddy Roosevelt talking about his bully pulpit.

I always thought that had to do with, yeah, I thought that that had to do with him being forceful when he was expressing his convictions forcefully.

But actually, he was talking about how he had such a good bully pulpit.

What a wonderful thing that was.

And he would say things like, I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I’ve got such a bully pulpit.

The other weird thing about bully is that this notion of good chap also morphed somehow into the idea of a swaggering hail fellow well met.

And then it took on the meaning of somebody who harasses people or intimidates people who are weaker than them.

And that’s a bit of a puzzle because it might be associated with the animal known as a bull, you know, which is very forceful and bullish behavior.

Or it may have come to be associated with the idea of a ruffian who protects a prostitute.

So we’re not really sure about how that came to mean, you know, it went through a process of pejoration, as they say.

It became something worse than the original meaning.

But Grant and I were talking about this at one point, and you were talking about masculinity and the difficulty of expressing affection.

Yeah, when there is earnest affection between men, oftentimes it manifests not even just in personal relationships, but culturally as kind of an aggressive, maybe playful aggression, but that can turn into real aggression.

But also terms for men that are complimentary, just like terms for women that are complimentary, often take a negative turn.

Like we don’t use the word champ today, except in sarcastic or ironic uses basically in English.

You might go, nice going, champ, when somebody messes up or fails, right?

And dandy is the same way.

Dandy at one point was a complimentary word for somebody who was well-dressed.

And now a dandy is somebody who’s overdressed or they’re over-decorated.

And more than a few times in English, we see this happen where, for whatever reason, complimentary terms for men can’t stand alone.

The affection turns into aggressiveness.

And it’s just part of the way that we handle masculinity, I think, in our North American cultures and our European cultures.

That makes a lot of sense.

So as for your question about bullies in the workplace, I mean, I don’t know.

Those are people who just bring their bullying behavior into the workplace.

Yeah, that’s a different show.

That’s a different radio program.

It’s complicated.

But that leap that Martha had, that leap, that pejoration, that growing worse from the word that was sweetheart to be a swaggering man who is a thug or overbearing, aggressive person, that’s quite a leap, isn’t it?

Yeah, it definitely morphs.

Yeah, it might be cold comfort for your situation, but that’s what we have.

Right. That does make a lot of sense, actually. It tracks. I could say that it tracks.

Well, Rob, good luck in the workplace, and hopefully other people will join you in handling those bullies and putting them in their place.

Sure. All right. Thank you.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Grant, I got a couple of new retronyms to add to my vocabulary.

A retronym, of course, being a term that was modified based on an original term,

Like, for example, the term acoustic guitar.

Right, because we didn’t need to call it acoustic until we also had electric guitars.

Right. And so I’m going to add to my vocabulary water sommelier.

That’s a new one on me.

Oh, a water sommelier.

So somebody who brings the finest waters to your table and lets you choose?

Yes.

This is a thing now that there are people who appreciate what is called fine water.

That’s another one.

That’s unprocessed water that reflects a region’s terroir.

Unprocessed water?

So we’re talking about the brain-eating amoeba are still in there and I’m just taking my chances?

Gosh, I hope not.

But apparently this is a thing.

Are now annual competitions. And at a recent one, the winners included melted snow filtered through volcanic rock in Peru and moisture collected from nets suspended in a foggy pine forest in Tasmania.

What? If you’re really serious about water, that’s what you want to have.

Oh boy, I think I’ll just take my tap water at home, run through a charcoal filter. How about it’s a lot cheaper.

Text or call 877-929-9673.

Hey there, welcome to A Way with Words.

Martha, this is Lisa from West Grove, Pennsylvania.

Lisa, thanks for joining us.

I’m calling about a word that we used when we were kids.

I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, outside of a small town in Pennsylvania called Tamaqua,

And kind of an anthracite mining area.

And there was a fire company up the road from us in this kind of rural on the side of the mountain area.

And we grew up calling it the hosie because it was the hosie.

And I’m not really sure if that word gets used outside of the area or if that’s specific to that area.

It’s called Schuylkill County.

I know that people in the region are kind of proud, as many people are, of this dialect that they have.

They call it the skook.

And I’m just kind of curious if anybody else uses it because my husband was a little surprised with it, thought it was funny.

He’s from Michigan, so it would be a completely different area.

So the hosie is the firehouse, but it’s more than the firehouse.

Yeah, it’s the firehouse, but it also had a community hall where they would have celebrations.

That was just kind of traditionally the place where they would have wedding receptions, baby showers, wedding showers, funeral dinners.

I mean, it was just kind of everything.

It was kind of the community center of the area where we would gather together and do things.

We would play outside while the adults were in doing their things.

The men would kind of hang out at the bar in the back, and the women would make the dinners.

And it was always a very lively place.

The hosie.

You know, what’s interesting with this, I only come up with two mentions of hosie in connection to the firehouse.

And one of them is right on the money.

And it’s from a website called coalregion.com.

They have a fantastic coal speak dictionary.

And it’s about the language of the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania, which includes Goukill.

Well, that would be right on target.

Yeah.

And the way they define HOSE, and they spell it both with an S, so H-O-S-I-E, or with a Z, H-O-Z-I-E, is a place to drink beer and keep fire trucks.

That was very succinct.

But it also says a fire department or hose company.

And obviously the hose company is the origin of the hosy part.

The second place I find a term related is hosy is a noun referring to a firefighter belonging to an engine company.

And this is from a 1983 book by Leo Stapleton.

And it’s called 30 Years on the Line because he worked for 30 years as a firefighter in Boston.

So different part of the country.

But the way that we abbreviate words and come up with this diminutive kind of these shortening of words and to make them colloquial and familiar is natural to add that E sound to the end.

So it’s probably a coincidence that you have these two hosies, that hose becomes hosie or hose company becomes hosie.

No, that makes sense.

That makes sense.

It sounds like a very fond word, you know, like lots of fond memories must have been made there.

Oh, sure.

It’s just full of.

It’s like a little vessel of all these childhood memories.

And I can, you know, you can smell the food cooking.

You can hear the people laughing.

And it’s, yeah, it’s very, it was a very warm, warm place.

There’s a favorite passage of mine from the book Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon.

And he talks about when driving across the country, the best meals to eat are often the, you know, the fish fry at the firehouse and things like that.

Yeah, that makes sense.

But do check out that dictionary.

It’s called the Coal Speak Dictionary at coalregion.com.

I’m sure you’re going to have your memory button pressed a zillion times and lots of aha moments as you recognize some of the language there.

I’m sure I will.

It’s been a long time since I’ve lived there, but I still recognize it and still pick up little inflections when we go back.

So, yeah, it’s interesting.

Thank you, Lisa, for sharing your memories and take care of yourself.

All right.

All right.

Thank you.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Think of our show as the community center of the air for word lovers and language lovers.

Give us a call or text us 877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org.

Not long ago, we had a conversation with Rich in Jackson, Wyoming, who was looking for a word for using natural objects like rocks or driftwood or antlers as decorations in the home.

And I think we came up with a found object.

Right. We settled on things like objet trouvé, found objects, and other terms for natural art and natural findings.

Yeah. And that prompted an email from Tess Goldblatt, who lives in Virginia Beach.

And she wrote, I beach comb on Buckrow Beach in the Chesapeake Bay area, and I make art assemblies of my beach combing.

So you could say that Rich is forest combing and artistically using her forest combings.

And I really like that word.

Oh, I like that. Extending beach combing out to other kinds of geography, other environments.

Interesting.

I’m thinking about dictionary combing, too.

I was just thinking about what’s it like when you do found objects in an urban environment.

My father-in-law, when he takes walks, collects all the random bits of metal that you find alongside the highways and the freeways and the passageways.

And he makes art out of them.

Oh, he does.

So, yeah.

So is that what is that?

Would that be metal combing?

Highway combing?

What do you call that?

I’m not sure.

Anti-littering.

That’s great.

You can find all of our past episodes and lots of ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

Tim Felten is our engineer and editor.

And John Chaneski is our quiz master.

Go to waywordradio.org for all of our past episodes, podcast links, and ways to reach us.

If you have a language, thought, or question, the toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada.

1-877-929-9673.

A Wayword Words is an independent nonprofit production of Wayword, Inc.

It’s supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Although we’re not a part of NPR, we thank NPR stations throughout the United States that carry the show.

And special thanks to our nonprofit’s volunteer board, Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Merrill Perlman, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

So long.

Thank you.