Mystery Date (episode #1577)

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.

In an earlier episode, we talked about items found in old library books, like somebody stuck a four-leaf clover in there and forgot about it, or an old receipt.

And after that, we heard from Mac McClelland. He’s a volunteer at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock, Vermont, evaluating donated books for fundraising sales.

And Mac emailed us a photo of his all-time favorite find. And it’s a brief note on a sheet of binder paper. And it reads, “Dear Tooth Fairy, I lost two teeth by accident. And I was wondering if I still get a prize from Carter.”

And Grant, you’ve seen this. It’s the most adorable little note, with all that little kid handwriting and all those little kid misspellings.

Yes. That just breaks the heart. Does he get a prize?

And, of course, it took a while to decipher it because he spelled Tooth Fairy T-U-S-E-F-A-R-R-Y. And prize was P-R-I-S. And it’s painstakingly written in pencil.

But, you know, what’s really sweet is that at the top in ink, somebody wrote in the date. So you can just imagine somebody in Carter’s family found this adorable note, scribbled the date on it, stuck it in a book, but then forgot about it. And Mack, the volunteer who found it, said he’d love to return it to Carter’s family as a keepsake.

What’s the date on it?

It’s 1996. So Carter’s probably a young adult right now, maybe in mid-30s. So if there’s a Carter out there who grew up near Woodstock, Vermont, the library has something for you.

And we also want to know if you got anything for those two teeth. Did you get your prize? Did the tooth fairy come through?

We love seeing adorable things from kids. What was the adorable thing that the kids in your life wrote? What was the thing that really must be shared? Send it to us in email, words@waywordradio.org, or share it to us on Instagram. Our Instagram is at waywordradio.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Rick from San Diego.

Hey, Rick from San Diego.

This is Grant from San Diego. How are you doing?

Doing wonderful. I was hoping that you could help solve a family word mystery for me that’s been hanging over my family for decades.

Oh, my. That sounds threatening.

No, it’s not threatening at all. It’s very, very sweet. So my beloved grandparents from St. Paul, Minnesota, who we officially refer to as Nana and Bapa, they passed on, but they lived into their 90s. But for every birthday, for me and my sisters, they would always say or write in our cards, “Wishing you many happy returns of the day.” And we just never really understood it. And my parents didn’t either. And so as the years went on, we were kind of too embarrassed to ask what it meant. But we kind of felt like it was some kind of sweet sentiment.

Yeah.

Just for birthdays.

Just for birthdays. It’s a lovely sentiment, and often you hear it as just “many happy returns,” right?

Yes.

But less and less, Grant, I don’t usually hear that phrase anymore, “many happy returns.”

Yeah, it’s got an old-timey flavor to it, but I agree that it is a sweet sentiment. There’s something charming about it, maybe even lovely.

Yeah, and I love that they used the original form of it, “many happy returns of the day,” and it’s actually very straightforward. They’re hoping that that day returns again and again and again, that you enjoy many more birthdays.

And it’s a phrase that goes back to at least the early 18th century. The earliest we can find is by an 18th century priest named William Tazewell, who wrote, “And to wish we may see many happy returns of this day, many happy new years.” So he was talking about many, many more New Year’s to come, that New Year’s Day returning again and again and again.

And then later Samuel Johnson wrote, “Now the new year has come, of which I wish you and dear Mrs. Gastrol many and many returns.” So again, you get this idea of that year just coming back and back again. And that’s the idea that informs that phrase.

So what’s returning is the holiday. The birthday comes again. The new year comes again. It could be Christmas comes again or an anniversary comes again. Some special day comes again. And in between those two birthdays or those two new years, everything is happy. And that’s what they want for you.

Wow.

Wow. I did not expect that. That’s amazing. Thank you so much for helping you solve this mystery for my family that’s kind of been over us for the last several decades.

Well, I would like to wish you, Martha and Grant, many happy returns of the day.

Oh, well, thank you.

Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Rick. We appreciate it. Take care now.

Thank you very much. Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I bet there are a lot of people who are just like Rick going, “Oh,” because it is one of those expressions that you know, you’ve heard it, you’ve read it. Maybe somebody wrote it in a card to you and just kind of said, “Oh, it’s kind of like sincerely yours or dear Martha.” We use dear and sincerely, even though they might seem a little affected or outdated.

Yes, when I think of people wishing other people happy birthday online, I think more and more I’m seeing people wish them another ride around the sun or something like that.

Yes, and it’s literally the same thing, right?

Yeah. When the earth gets back to the same place around the sun, which is another anniversary.

Yeah. Well, there’s something in your history, something between you and your siblings, maybe? Or your parents, or something between you and your kids, a thing that you say and you’ve passed amongst yourselves without really wondering what it meant until now. This is the place to find out. We can help you explore it.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

We got a tweet from Willem Terrace who said, “On a recent road trip, my eight-year-old daughter asked me to scroll the window down.” It made me smile hearing how language is changing with the times. When asked, she said, “Because you scroll with your finger on your phone, and you use your finger for the window.”

Right. You press the little button, and down the window goes.

That’s right. It makes perfect sense.

Absolutely logical. No more rolling down the window, right? Scroll the window down. Thank you for that new language.

And we’ll take your new words on Twitter @wayword or on our toll-free line in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Colin from Oceanside, California.

Hi, Colin. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Grant. I’m so happy to be here.

Well, my 10-year-old son had a question. We were hanging out on the couch a little bit ago, and it has to do with our cat. So I’ll pass the phone off to him. This is Alex, and he’s got the question for you.

Hi, I’m Alex. The question was, so we were watching the cat flick its tail, and I thought, “Hey, it’s a telltale sign.” Is that the real version of the word?

Of telltale? Of telltale sign?

-huh.

Okay, so you thought your cat was indicating something by moving that tail, right?

Mm—

Well, it’s a great guess, but the tail in telltale sign is actually spelled T-A-L-E, not T-A-I-L. So it doesn’t have anything to do with that appendage on the back of a cat. Telltale means that something is literally telling a tale. It’s telling a story. And it’s a super old word. It goes back more than 400 years. And originally, the term was applied to somebody who was a tattler. You know, if you told a secret about somebody else, you were called a telltale.

And not long after that, it was used as an adjective, like a telltale sign, as you said, Alex, or telltale stain, something like that. And so that’s the sense of telltale today. It’s T-E-L-L-T-A-L-E, telltale. So it can be a giveaway or a clue or an indicator of the truth of a situation.

Okay, okay. So a cat’s tail flicking could be a telltale sign, but it’s not the origin. And for a cat, that’s its language meaning it’s a little irritated and you probably shouldn’t pet it. Wouldn’t you say, Martha, as a cat owner yourself?

Or I would say if my cat’s flicking his tail, he might be interested in something.

Okay. I’m just thinking of my little troublemaker.

When she’s flicking her tail quickly back and forth, it means do not pet me.

You might get the claws.

Alex, both Grant and I are big cat lovers.

Yeah.

Sounds like you are too.

Yeah.

Thanks, Alex.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Okay.

You’re welcome.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Grant, probably all the sailors out there want us to be talking about the telltale on a sailboat, which are those narrow ribbons that you sometimes see attached to the boat’s sails or elsewhere on the boat.

And you watch how they’re blowing in the wind so you can see how the air flows across the sail.

So a telltale there is this little strip of fabric that tells you if your sail is set for peak performance.

And if not, you need to adjust.

That’s right.

And there are also telltales that are used in machinery showing supply levels or the direction that a particular part is facing.

So if you have something that’s hidden from view, a telltale will show you if it’s right or left or up or down.

If your supply is high or low or so forth.

Right.

And I’ve never been to Australia, but I would love to go just to hear people talking about the rear indicator light on a car.

They call those telltales.

Oh, I love that.

And by the way, we can’t leave this without a quick quote from The Telltale Heart, that 1843 story by Edgar Allan Poe.

I admit the deed.

Tear up the planks.

Here, here.

It is the beating of this hideous heart.

I mean, it is like still an astonishing story.

After all these years, it still is chilling.

It is.

A man who feels this guilt and he can hear the heart of this person he has put under the planks of his house beating its vengeance at him.

Talk about telltale.

877-929-9673.

The other day, a friend of mine from the UK made mention of a money spider.

Do you know this term, Grant? Money spider?

I do not. That’s cool. What is it?

It’s literally a small spider that comes down on a long thread from a ceiling or from a tree over your head.

And there’s a superstition that if you see a money spider and it lands on your shoulder, you’ll come into some money soon.

Oh, how about that? I love it.

So it’s any kind of spider that comes down on a thread and lands on your shoulder.

Yes, they’re usually really little.

And in this country, apparently you say money spinner.

Money spinner.

Oh, I love the ones where language and folklore coincide.

Yes.

May a money spider or a money spinner land on your shoulder.

Thank you.

In our house, we protect the spiders because they stop the other bugs.

We do too.

Get that glass and an index card and carry them outside.

That’s right.

Where do folklore and language intersect in your life?

877-929-9673 or words@waywordradio.org.

More of what we say and why we say it as A Way with Words continues.

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 we’re joined by game show writer, comedian, and our quiz guy, John Choneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

Thank you guys for following me on all the things I do. You’re so sweet.

I have a really interesting quiz today, I think.

You know, it always annoys me when people talk about astrology, because astrology is just limited to 12 constellations, and astronomy has so much more and more interesting constellations in the night sky.

There are 88 of them in total, and this very quiz quiz will test what you know about some of them.

Let’s start with animals.

If you know adjectives that describe certain animals, you’ll probably get these easily.

Here’s the first one.

The constellation Aquila sounds like it has something to do with water.

It does not.

We have Aquarius for that.

Its name is the Latin name for a bird.

A person with an aquiline nose maybe resembles this bird a bit, a very noble and beautiful bird.

Oh, yeah.

So that’s eagle.

And I know that one because of the Spanish-language name, aguila, or aguilar, which is a common last name.

And so if you have an aquiline nose, you have a bird-like nose.

It looks like the beak of an eagle.

Yeah, very good.

No way to cross-reference.

Nicely done.

Here’s the next one.

The constellation Columba has nothing to do with Christopher Columbus, except its relation to his name.

Now, Columbus is a Latinized version of Columbo, which was a name given to orphans.

Perhaps they thought poor orphan children were like the birds this word represents.

I did not know that, but yeah.

Right. But if you know the adjective Columbine, you know what this pretty white bird is. What is it?

Sure. It’s a dove. And the flower Columbine looks like little doves all tur-turing together.

If you look at the blossom, it looks like a bunch of little doves together.

Excellent.

How pretty.

Here’s the last animal.

Monoceros.

M-O-N-O-C-E-R-O-S.

Monoceros.

It may remind you of rhinoceros, which gets its name from the Greek for nose and horn.

Well, the horn part fits monoceros, and you surely know what the prefix mono means.

So what fictional animal does monoceros represent?

Well, the Latinized version of that, I guess, would be a unicorn, eh?

Yes, exactly.

There’s a unicorn in the sky.

Like I said, next time someone asks you your sign, tell them you’re a monoceros.

You’re a unicorn.

Now, we’ve spent more than a year talking about corona.

And jokes about beer aside, the word coronation is a clue to the Latin meaning of corona.

So the constellations corona australis and corona borealis are the southern australis and northern borealis versions of what item?

The crown.

That would be a crown.

The crown, yes.

There’s a southern crown and a northern crown.

Very good.

And a little crown on a bottle of Corona beer.

And coronary arteries form a little crown around the heart.

There you go.

There’s those connections I was talking about right there.

Very good.

Thanks, guys.

You did this quiz very well.

Thank you.

We crown you the king of quizzes.

Thanks, John.

Hooray.

Well, we’d love to talk with you about language, so call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter at Wayword.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Jesse from Newport News, Virginia.

Oh, great. Well, welcome to the show, Jesse. How can we help you today?

Well, there’s a phrase that I have heard watching a lot of auto racing.

I race cars out here in the Virginia, Carolina area, and I watch a lot of racing.

And from NASCAR all the way down to local short track racing, I’ll hear an announcer describe the way that one of the drivers is maneuvering his car as when he’s getting it slowed down going into the turns.

He is getting on the binders.

And I have tried searching it and have asked a couple people about it, and I have no clue what that is in reference to or where it comes from.

Getting on the binders.

So you’ve heard this more than once.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I’ve heard, like I’ve seen it on, you know, watching like a NASCAR race, like in a national race and even heard it at like a local level.

It sounds particularly British for some reason is what comes to mind when I kind of think of it.

But I’m not sure if I’ve heard Lee Diffie or one of those announcers say it before, but it’s always referred to when trying to low the car down, like going into the turns and bring it down to speed.

But I don’t know where it comes from.

I do know that by the 1930s, this term for binders, meaning the brakes, was fully entrenched in U.S. car racing lingo.

You can find it pop up again and again in newspapers that have like little glossaries of car racing slang.

Even advertisements for motor oil it shows up in.

So the 1930s, it was fully entrenched and it shows up with a lot of other fun stuff.

Before that, it’s a little shaky, but there’s some evidence that it may have also been used for airplanes.

And one source, a British slang lexicographer, says that it was used by the Royal Air Force, that’s in the UK, since the mid-1920s.

I don’t know if that is why you’re getting a British flavor to it, but that’s a little bit of evidence.

I’m not surprised at all, because in the early days of race car driving, the same kind of daredevils that like to go fast in cars also like to go fast in planes.

But you will still, to this day, hear it in some airplane use and in motorcycles and kind of any place that machines need braking.

I think there’s some use in the military as well.

That’s interesting.

And next time I meet a pilot or anyone who flies, I might try to throw that lingo their way and see if they pick up on it.

Yeah, ask and see if they use it.

It’s still slangy.

There’s a World War II slang dictionary of it’s a collection of service slang and there’s a phrase jump on the binders defined as apply the brakes and when you said that you heard an announcer say how did he phrase it just getting on the binders getting on the binders it reminded me very much of that but jump on the binders getting on the binders it’s so similar to me it’s funny that like here we are 60 years on and the phrase could be almost the same jump on the binders meaning apply the brakes.

Pretty cool, though.

All right.

Jesse, call us again sometime with racing lingo.

This sounds like something we need to dig into some more.

I appreciate it.

Bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye, Jesse.

Well, if you have a hobby with a lot of great lingo, we’d love to hear about it, whether it involves any kind of racing, car racing, bike racing, maybe balloon racing.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or tell us all about it in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

We talked not long ago about the expression, not my circus, not my monkeys, meaning it’s not my problem, I’m not involved.

Yes, and that prompted an email from Nellie Cooper, who’s a professor of French and Russian at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.

And Nelly says that there is an expression in Russian that I just love.

It translates as, the circus left, the clowns remain.

Oh, that’s good.

How often has that happened?

And I Google that, and in fact, you can buy t-shirts with that saying in Russian, the circus left, the clowns remain.

Oh, it just reminded me of being in college where a friend comes over, brings some friends you don’t know, and you’re like in the kitchen preparing stuff and you come back in the living room and your friend is gone, but their dumb friends that you don’t know are still there.

You’re like, this is all they did.

They came by just to dump off their dumb friends.

Oh, well, we know there are expressions like this in your language.

Let us know, 877-929-9673 or whatever language you speak.

Try us out, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Celia calling from Spokane, Washington.

Hi, Celia. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Hello. Well, I’m concerned about the loss of correct use of plurals of some words of Latin and Greek origin that are now part of our language.

And the one that really has been irritating me for several weeks is on an advertisement for a financial services company.

And they keep saying investment minimums apply.

I can hear you shuddering.

I shudder every time.

I heard it this morning and I gritted my teeth again.

Oh, dear.

Investment minimums apply.

So what would you rather they say?

Well, as I would understand it, the plural should be minima.

Minima. Good. We can work with this.

Tell us a little bit about your own education.

Where are you from? What’s your schooling?

We can hear that you’re not from North America, probably?

No, I was born in London, in England, and I had a pretty multilingual education in Belgium, Sweden, and Finland for the first 11 years of my life.

And then I was back in Britain, and I went to schools where I think I did Latin for four years, and I certainly took one year of Greek.

I worry about language, and then I’m also wondering, am I just being an old fogey?

Is this something that I… I mean, I’ve been asking a few friends, and I noticed that the one that they were happy with is the plural of fungus is fungi.

Because I asked them, I said, would you really say funguses?

And they said, oh, no, no, that’s fungi.

All right, Celia, let’s circle in on this.

So you had the benefit of a multilingual education, which I am so envious of.

You’re in a great position to talk about this.

And most Americans don’t grow up in an environment where Greek and Latin are anything that’s even offered to them, even at a college level.

Grant’s right. It’s increasingly rare, unfortunately.

But to go back to minimum, the plural of it being minima, that is a very British usage.

That is something that’s far more common in the UK.

Do you also say maxima for the plural of maximum?

Oh, yes. And if I was really being scrupulous, I would say stadia instead of stadiums.

Yeah, we have this degrees of nativization that happens with foreign words.

And to be honest, these Latin words still are foreign.

They slowly, each one of them takes their own path into English.

And they’re kind of like children.

They get further and further away from their home until, before you know it, they have their own lives and families.

And some of them are fully English now, and so they take an English plural.

And some of them still feel very Latin, and so they take a Latin plural.

And the ones that feel most Latin tend to be those that are especially connected with the scientific fields.

And so that’s why a word like fungus probably will for a long time have fungi as a plural.

And same for things like spectrum, spectrums by non-specialist, spectra by specialist and so forth.

Foci for focus or focuses.

We have many of these again and again and again, but we can only take this so far.

Should we stop using agenda as a singular and instead say agendum?

Yeah, what do you think about that one, Celia?

Do you use a plural verb with agenda?

I would say somebody would have different agenda.

Yes, I guess the problem becomes, do we then put it back into the singular and say, this is my most important agendum?

I think that would be a difficult one to go back to.

Exactly, exactly.

But yes, the Latin agenda means the things that you have to get done.

It is plural.

Right.

Well, Celia, I’ve got to tell you, you certainly have this precious store of knowledge that clearly you cherish, and rightfully so.

And it is, oh, if I could have had your childhood and all those opportunities to live in Finland and Sweden and to learn Latin and Greek, how delightful that would have been for me.

Because I was into languages at an early age.

Right.

And this is what gives you that special eye.

You have this watchful eye on the language.

This is how you have this special observance.

Well, it adds richness to my life.

It really does.

Exactly.

Thank you so much, both of you.

All right.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

Hey there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hey there.

I’m Stu.

Hi, Stu.

Welcome to the show.

Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Suffolk, Virginia.

It’s a little hamlet outside the Virginia Beach and Norfolk area.

Welcome to the show.

What’s on your mind?

Well, it’s the word cumshaw.

I worked, it’s a Navy base that’s nearby.

And all my life, I worked with people who said, I’m going to cumshaw this, I’m going to cumshaw that.

And I always thought of some secret Navy code, because no one would ever give me a definition, a real definition of it.

I think we can help you with this, Stu.

I think we absolutely can.

So a Kamsha artist is someone who is clever about doing trades in the military.

And this is a real art in the military because you don’t necessarily have what you want when you want it, as you might remember if you’ve been in the service yourself.

Yes, I’ve been in the Army.

Yeah, in the Army.

There we go.

It might be as simple as trading cigarettes to have somebody look the other way when you come in after a light’s out.

Or if you need a part for a machine but don’t have it, well, a Kumsha artist knows people.

And through a complex series of favors and trades, they can get that part and get it ready to be installed.

And usually food and booze are a part of the trades.

And maybe even an entire machine.

It’ll just appear there in the morning, thanks to a Kumsha artist.

Maybe not officially checked out of where it came from, but maybe officially checked into its new home.

After all, it all belongs to Uncle Sam, right?

So that’s Cumshaw.

Two, Cumshaw is clever trades.

Sometimes it’s really, really clever stuff like swapping use of someone’s car for your date night and return of a load of fresh meat for the next barbecue.

Maybe the guys who eat in your mess are all tired of chicken and some other guys in another mess are all tired of pork.

So you put those two supply chiefs together and take a little off the top for your own.

You know, he’s usually a really friendly guy.

He’s fun to talk to, and he just knows what to do to get the thing that you want.

And maybe it’s not strictly legit, but it’s never completely outright illegal, you know?

Okay.

But you know, there’s a really interesting history to this word.

It’s 200 years of history behind the word Kamschostew.

Well, tell me about it.

Well, it goes back to when the British started their history in what is now the port of Hong Kong in the early 1800s.

The British were trading with the Chinese.

And in Mandarin, there is a word, if you’ll forgive my pronunciation,

It’s something like ganji, which basically means a gift or a present or can be used as a thank you.

And in a dialect spoken in the port city of what is now Jiangmin, there’s another word which is similar,

Which means about the same thing.

And these two words sounded to the Englishman like the word sounded like kamsha.

And so they hear this word not only from children and beggars on the street asking for food or coins or gifts,

But also from Chinese translators and trading port officials who were looking for payment before doing their jobs.

Now, sometimes that payment was official, but sometimes it was a bribe.

Oh, that’s interesting.

That term just kind of became entrenched in the Royal Navy.

And then when the American forces started spending their time in China,

They also picked up the term from the Royal Navy.

And you can find as early as the 1830s, it shows up in American newspapers,

Things called kamsha boxes, present boxes,

These really ornate Chinese-made boxes that you could put presents in to give to people.

So, Stu, how about that? A lot of history behind that word.

I’ve wondered most of my life, in my 70s, and I’ve wondered most of my life what the official definition of Comshaw was.

And then just, you’ve really filled me in on the history of the word,

Not realizing it actually came from the port of what I know is Hong Kong.

And, Stu, thank you so much for sharing those memories.

Thank you all so much, and have a blessed day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Well, if there’s a word that you’ve been wondering about all these years, we’d love to talk with you about it.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or spill the whole story in email, words@waywordradio.org.

More about what we say and why we say it.

Stick around for more.

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.

Pam Spooner of Denton, Texas, used to work as a university reference librarian,

And she sent us photos of something really amazing that a colleague once found in a book.

It looks like a plain white professionally printed business card or a calling card.

And on one side in all capital letters, it reads the ex-Mrs. Bradford.

That’s all it says, the ex-Mrs. Bradford.

And at the bottom written in ink is the word over in parentheses.

So you turn it over and on the other side of the ex-Mrs. Bradford’s card,

Somebody wrote by hand in this beautiful old-fashioned script,

Meet me at the Paramount Theater, Sunday afternoon.

Oh, wow! There’s a story there.

Wow, what happened? Did they meet?

Well, that’s what Pam wanted to know.

Did they go in, or did they walk on and have a liaison somewhere?

Right. I mean, who would have a calling card like this printed in the first place?

Right. This is a woman with some panache.

Right.

This is a woman who flies airplanes.

This is somebody who lives her own life to the fullest.

She tried marriage. It didn’t work.

And now she’s doing her own thing.

And who was the recipient?

-huh. Yeah.

Was it a man? Was it a woman?

Good question.

Could have been anybody.

Or maybe it was just an agent.

Maybe it was just a business card.

Maybe it was just somebody who, maybe she’s in the film.

And she wanted somebody to see her latest picture.

Ooh, ooh.

I’m just thinking that maybe some of you want to fill in the blanks here for us.

Write a story about it.

So to recap, on the front it says, the ex-Mrs. Bradford.

On the bottom it says, in a handwritten ink, over.

And on the back it says, meet me at the Paramount Theater.

Sunday afternoon.

Sunday afternoon.

What’s the rest of the story?

You tell us.

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Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Julia.

And I am calling from the tropical Champlain Valley.

I’ve been told that’s what it’s called.

I’m originally from the Dominican Republic.

And I came to this country when I was 10.

Spanish is my first language.

And so my question, when we came, we came from the DR, as I mentioned, 31-year dictatorship there.

We fled and landed in Nueva York, New York.

And our second year, we moved to Long Island, pretty much to a Jewish neighborhood.

And I had a lot of Jewish girlfriends, and they did something that I thought was really cool.

They would say, you go, oh, you deserve that.

They go, deserve, deserve.

You go, oh, that’s so cool.

Cool, schmoo.

And I picked this up because I thought it was really cool.

And the point was to repeat the word and, I guess, make up a nonsense word from it as a way to, I don’t know, be funny, deflect a compliment or disagree or deflate a statement.

I wasn’t, you know, I knew when to use it, but I sort of recently went in search of why.

Because my husband’s from Nebraska, and he never heard such a thing.

And so I said, well, I think they told me it was Yiddish.

So I asked a Jewish friend, she said, no way is that Yiddish.

So I thought, the two people who might be able to tell me what this is would be the two of you.

Absolutely. This is a great example. Deserve shmerve.

That’s a really good one.

One that a lot of people will know is fancy schmancy, which by far in a way is the most common one of these.

And it’s so common that it’s kind of neutral, even positive and not really negative like so many of these are.

This is known here. I’m going to throw some linguistic terms at you.

This is known as schm reduplication or echoic dismissive schm.

That’s S-C-H-M or S-H-M.

And reduplication is when a sound or a word repeats.

And echoic means when something sounds like something else

And dismissive means you’re dismissive of it.

You’re kind of poo-pooing it.

But let’s just call it schmuh for now.

Schmuh.

Yeah, and there’s a kind of rhythm to these, right?

This reduplication kind of has a da-da-da-da rhyme to it.

Not a rhyme exactly, but there’s kind of a melody to it.

And linguists who have looked at this have found it,

Have indeed found it, despite what your friends told you,

In Yiddish in the 19th century.

When you could say things like tata shmata, which basically meant father shmather, where the shmata meant rag.

And it was what women would call their no-good husbands when they couldn’t provide for their children.

Tata shmata.

And other things like geld schmelt.

Money is not everything, is basically what you’re saying.

This really does exist in Yiddish, and there are examples of it in Eastern European Yiddish in the 1800s, definitely.

And it shows up in English at least as early as the 1920s, and probably earlier.

And before long, it becomes kind of trendy in slangy English and really has never fallen out of use.

Really?

And still is kind of, yeah, still is popular today.

Is it always like an sh or sch prefix to the second repetition or just any playful nonsense way of saying?

That is a wonderful question because in this particular kind of reduplication where we’re using this Yiddish-derived kind of dismissive form, it is a Shmah, S-E-H-M or S-H-M.

But there are other kinds of this where an M is used in Farsi and Turkish and some other Middle Eastern languages where they use just an M and some other letters to kind of do a word and then a word that’s kind of modified a little bit in order to mock it, make fun of it, or to dismiss it.

And so this kind of repeating a word partially but modifying it does exist in other languages.

Wow. But not in Spanish. Or it does?

A little bit, but not very common in Spanish.

I don’t have any examples at hand, but I believe there are some in Spanish.

Well, this is so great.

I knew you would know.

Thank you.

That’s great.

It’s a pleasure, Julia.

You sound like, what with the Dominican Spanish background and the time in the way of New York,

It sounds like you’ve got a great linguistic background, so you’re bound to have more questions for us later.

So do please call.

I’ll call Small.

How’s that?

No, definitely call.

Don’t dismiss us.

Oh, I really love the program.

Thank you so much.

Oh, Julie, it’s been a delight.

Yeah.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

We know you have questions about language.

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

There’s a 1946 article in California Folklore Quarterly that’s titled Folk Sayings in a Pioneer Family of Western Oregon.

And I’ve had a lot of fun going through this and seeing some of the sayings that were popular as people were starting to settle the state.

And there’s one saying in this collection that, Grant, I know you’re really going to appreciate.

It describes somebody, the guy in town who knows everybody, knows everybody’s business.

The saying goes, he knew everybody and why they left Missouri.

Yes, because I am from Missouri and I did leave it.

Oh, that’s good.

Yeah, but well, Missouri was a jumping off point for the settlement of the West.

Exactly.

Oregon Trail, Ring a Bell, anyone?

Yes, yes, exactly.

And the article makes note of that.

I just think it’s a wonderful phrase that we should revive anyway, you know, no matter where you are.

He knows everybody and why they left Missouri.

By the way, that reminds me of a wonderful TV show that you should be watching.

It stars Steve Buscemi and Daniel Radcliffe called The Miracle Workers.

Each season has the same, more or less the same cast of actors in a completely different environment.

And this season has them heading westward to Oregon.

It’s a comedy show with modern viewpoints set in historical settings.

It’s very good.

Ooh, two of my favorites.

I’ll have to put that on the list.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Jennifer from Andrews, South Carolina.

Andrews.

Well, welcome to the show.

I’d like to know if there’s any information about the phrase case quarter.

I’ve had a co-worker of mine, she started asking, we have a vending machine at work,

And she asked for a case quarter.

And I said, well, I got two dimes and a nickel, some type of change.

And she said, no, I need a case quarter.

And she explained what that was, and I have never heard that in all of my life, and I’m 41.

And I thought maybe my friends at O.A. With Birds would have an answer.

So she wanted a case quarter, meaning just one quarter, right?

Not change, just that one coin.

Just one quarter. No change, no five nickels or anything.

She had to have a quarter.

Yeah. Have you ever heard the term case nickel or case dime or case dollar?

I have not.

Okay, well, I’m delighted that you called about this because this is an expression that, you know,

I think if we didn’t know you were from South Carolina, we would ask you if you were from South Carolina

Because this phrase is pretty specific to that state.

And nobody’s really sure why a case quarter has that name,

But you’re right that it is just the single coin and it is applied to case nickel and case dime and case dollar.

And the origin of this term is really a puzzle.

There have been several different ideas proposed.

The one that I like is the idea that it expresses the idea of all of the value being in that one container, that one coin, that single case.

But there are other suggestions that maybe it comes from the French word kes, which means cash.

Like on kes means cash in hand.

Grant, there are others as well that we just don’t know.

Yeah, there’s one that might be related to a Yiddish word that means crown,

Referring to the British crown piece worth five shillings or 25 pence,

Which is related to the word Caesar or czar.

It’s pronounced keser.

But that’s all speculation.

We don’t have enough evidence to prove any of them.

But it’s pretty much concentrated in South Carolina.

And you’ll hear it more often in the African-American community.

Exactly.

I have several friends that are also co-workers, and they’ve only been African-Americans that’s ever used that.

And I’ve picked it up, and several people I’ve been in line at the grocery store and said,

Well, I have a case quarter, really just seeing if anybody would recognize the term.

And I’ve had people respond and say, I know what that is.

I have a case quarter.

It’s just interesting.

I’ve never heard of that.

And I’ve lived in several parts of South Carolina and have only heard it in this area close to Charleston.

Never heard it anywhere else.

Well, I bet it’s one of those things where now you’ll hear it everywhere.

You know, you see a certain kind of car and then you see it everywhere.

Of course.

Well, I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for calling and call us again sometime.

All right.

All right.

Thank you.

Take care, Jennifer.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Paul Mena calling from Centerville, Massachusetts.

Hey, Paul.

I was born and raised on Long Island in Nassau County, New York.

My parents were born and raised in Brooklyn

And moved from Brooklyn to Nassau County when I was just a few months old.

And they brought with them an unusual Brooklyn figure of speech

That I have not heard anywhere else.

And that is Johnny Pump, which is the phrase that they use to describe a fire hydrant.

And for some reason, I thought that that was a universal phrase.

So the first time I tried to parallel park in Nassau County and remarked, oh, this is not a real space.

There’s a Johnny Pump there.

That was the first time I realized that we were not in Brooklyn anymore.

So my questions are, is this phrase, Johnny Pump, used anywhere outside of Brooklyn, and what is its origin?

Johnny Pump meaning a fire plug or a fire hydrant, right?

That is correct.

How far back are we talking that your parents lived in Brooklyn?

They left Brooklyn in 1960.

And I was born in 1959, and they used the expression for as long as I can remember,

Especially when we made trips back to Brooklyn and parking was at a premium.

That was a very common situation that they would try to park,

And there was a Johnny Pump ruining their parking experience.

And when I’ve tried to use the expression, it’s either seen as very quaint or very odd or results in a lot of laughter.

And so now I don’t say it except with my wife, who I think at least pretends that it’s a quaint expression.

No, it is. It’s a good quaint expression.

And if you use it amongst the right people from Brooklyn, they’ll know that you’re an old-timer anyway, if not an insider.

I think Johnny Pump is fading, although you will still find it here and there.

It is a Brooklyn expression, although you will find print evidence that it was used in Manhattan and other parts of the five boroughs.

The origins are murky.

I think that the Johnny probably is related to the John, meaning the bathroom, because what you would do is if you were a city worker, you would crank open that fire plug and you would direct the spray in the gutter to clean out like the horse apples and the trash and whatever, you know, the whatever kind of filth was in the gutters to put it, send it towards the sewer grates or the sewer opening.

So it’s kind of a street cleaner, kind of cleaning the street as a john. But that’s just a guess. Otherwise, we don’t know.

I do know that I found it in the Brooklyn Eagle as far back as 1926. And again and again, it comes up in association with Brooklyn, including boxer Rocky Graziano had a kind of a tell-all in Collier’s magazine in 1949 where he talked about his life as a Brooklyn kid and talked about opening the Johnny Pump and getting their trunks on and kind of like running from the police who came to shut the Johnny Pump.

But you’ll find similar stories again and again throughout the 30s and 40s and 50s of people talking about hot summers and opening the Johnny Pump. But yeah, hang on to those old terms. Mark you for who you are and where you’re from. Those are good ones, Johnny Pump. You and Rocky Graziano remember the Johnny Pump. And your wife. And your wife. She tolerates it anyway.

Take care. Appreciate the call. Thank you so much. Thanks, Paul. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

We call those terms two-headed terms when you grow up saying it and then you move someplace else, and everybody looks at you like you have two heads when you use that term. Have you had that experience? Call us about at 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler. You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or email us words@waywordradio.org. A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise. Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye. Bye-bye. Thank you.