Mystery Drawer (episode #1555)

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.

Grant, you’ll remember our conversation with Dana in Reno, Nevada, who wanted a word for that moment when you’re playing cards or a board game and you draw what would have been the perfect card or tile for the previous turn.

Oh, yeah, too little too late, but she wanted something she could shout in anger.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, of course, our listeners stepped up.

We heard from Linda Gamble Hoyer from Nelliford, Virginia, who said, my idea for that term is tardy tile.

In a card game, you’d call it a tardy card.

And she says it should be delivered explosively to vent your frustration.

Tardy card.

Tardy card.

I kind of like that one.

I like that one.

Chris Moore in Cary, Illinois, says he calls it a squander.

His whole family calls it a squander.

Oh, it’s a squander.

That was a total squander.

Yeah, I like that word, squander.

And we also heard from Dan Jail in San Diego who said, I was thinking a day late and a dollar short really describes that feeling perfectly.

So why not shorten it to a single word that captures it all and sounds great through clenched teeth?

Day late, dollar short becomes dollar dosh.

Dollar dosh.

I like that.

It’s sort of like dastardly.

That’s very good.

I may have to adopt that one.

Add that to the menagerie of words.

Well, if you’ve got the word, just the perfect thing to say or the perfect description of that moment when you realize you just got the thing you needed a minute ago, but now it’s useless, let us know.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nell from Asheville, North Carolina.

Hi, Nell. How are you doing?

I’m doing great. What about you?

We’re doing great.

I had a question about my mom’s strange use of English.

Way back last year when she was visiting, my husband was, I think he was like organizing spices in our spice cabinet or something.

And my mom was standing right behind him, directing him where to put certain spices.

And he just turned around and looked at her dead in the eye and didn’t say anything.

And she stopped what she was doing and kind of paused and said, oh, I’m just being nabby, aren’t I?

And what did he say? Most importantly, what did he say?

Unlike my mom, it tends to be pretty quiet. That’s his power.

So I don’t think he said anything. He just went back to starting spices.

So that stuck with me because it’s just a word I’ve heard her use before, but that particular moment I was like, what?

I don’t even, I mean, obviously from context I know what it means, but I’ve never heard anyone else use that word.

So that’s what I was calling about.

I’m being Nebby.

What have you learned about Nebby since?

Well, so I haven’t listened to this show.

I mean, I looked it up.

It looks like it’s like a word for nosy or kind of, I guess, yeah.

And in that context, the way my mom used it isn’t quite nosy, but, you know, kind of like maybe meddling in other people’s stuff.

Now, I’m going to guess that your mom isn’t from Asheville.

No, actually.

Wait, wait, let us guess.

Martha’s going to guess.

I’m going to guess the Pennsylvania area.

Anywhere in that area?

So it’s, she is actually a little bit, she moved around a lot as a kid.

So the most longest period of her life, she was actually in California, but her family is from the Northeast.

And I know she was born in New York.

And I believe she lived in Pennsylvania for like a period in her like elementary school years.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Yeah, I guess we’ll count that.

Yeah.

Give me a bronze star.

And I do, like, if you go back family roots, I know we have ancestors from the Pennsylvania area as well.

Do you have Scots-Irish in the family roots?

Yeah, I believe so.

Yeah, well, that makes sense because nebby in this country is particularly used in that area, in Pennsylvania and areas of, as Grant said, Scots-Irish settlement.

And the word neb itself for nose or beak goes all the way back to old English.

It goes back a thousand years or so.

So somebody who’s nebby is literally nosy.

They’re sticking their nose in your business.

So they’re standing over you and telling you where to put your spices?

Pretty much.

Pretty much.

So when I started looking into it, I did see that it was maybe a regional word.

And so I actually did go and call my mom and say, like, you know, how does this work?

And it was really interesting to, I didn’t know much about how much she moved as a kid until we had this discussion.

So, like, digging into this word, like, prompted a larger discussion about, like, where she lived.

And maybe if I dig in, I can figure out why she uses Jolly so much as well.

Very nice.

That sounds like your next project.

Yeah, we’re glad to spark those kinds of conversations.

We should say, too, that it’s not related to Nebish.

We get asked that a lot.

But the word nebbish or nebbishy, meaning sort of, what would you say?

Nerdy, maybe.

Nerdy person.

It’s just a coincidence that those two words look alike.

Oh, that’s good to note.

It’s still used in the north of England and Scotland today.

A large swathe of Scotland still uses it.

And we have it in print in the U.S. as far back as the 1920s.

But for some reason, it really stuck in Pennsylvania.

And neb, by the way, originally only refers to the snout or the beak or the nose of an animal and then later referred to human noses.

Yeah, and faces sometimes.

Shakespeare used it to mean mouth.

And if you really want to emphasize that somebody’s got a real snoot on them, you call them a neb nose.

Well, I’m saving that one.

So there you go, Nell.

Take care, Nell.

Cool. Well, thank you. Thank you so much.

Our pleasure. Call me in sometime, will you?

Thank you. Bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we’d like to help open those doorways for you.

877-929-9673 is the language line.

Or tell your language stories to us on Twitter @wayword or in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, how are you? This is Marjorie.

Marjorie, where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Huntsville, Alabama.

What can we do for you, Marjorie?

Well, when I was a little girl, my mother and my grandmother always had a saying, and that was, empty wagons make a lot of noise.

And it took me a long time before I realized what it meant, but I was wondering where it came from, what’s its origin, or was it just something that they made up for us as children?

An empty wagon makes a lot of noise.

What context would she say this in?

Well, she would say it usually like if we were in the bedroom and all of us were talking loudly or complaining about something or getting ready to tattle, she would turn and say, you know, empty wagons make a lot of noise.

We need to think about that.

So I do understand its meaning now, and with the presidential race going on, it fits right now.

But I was just wondering where it came from, you know, or was it just something they made up?

Oh, it’s a really, really, really old idea, this idea of an empty wagon making a lot of noise.

So it’s clattering along the bumpy road and making a lot of noise, but it really doesn’t have much of anything in it, right?

And the idea is that people who maybe don’t know that much about a subject may be the people who talk the most and talk the loudest about it.

Is that your understanding of it?

Well, yeah. And it’s also, as I got older, I realized that people say a lot of things, but their content is really nothing.

There’s nothing there.

So an empty wagon is like an empty head.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I remember hearing my grandmother say it and my mother, and I’ve said it to my children.

And that I was wondering if there was a particular state or region of the country it came from.

Well, we can tell you that it’s old.

It goes back to at least the 19th century.

And there’s another corollary saying that goes, the loaded wagon makes the least noise.

And if you think about it, a wagon that’s got a whole lot of stuff in it isn’t going to make the same amount of noise. Sort of like, you know, that quiet person in the office who doesn’t make a big fuss, but they’re the one who is the most productive of the bunch.

But what’s also really interesting about this whole idea of something empty making a lot of noise is that this idea goes all the way back at least to ancient Rome. There was a Roman proverb. Yeah, there was a Roman proverb that went was a one a plurumum sonant in Latin, which means empty pots make the most noise. And it’s sort of that same idea, you know, like a rattling tea kettle that’s not quite full.

And there are lots of different variations of this. An empty barrel makes a lot of noise. Grant, I know you’re fond of some other ones. Yeah, I’ve seen empty pitcher, vessel, barrel, canister, pail, and bowl. You can describe somebody as making more noise than a jackass in a tin barn. I’ve heard that one, too. I heard that one. Oh, you have. But there’s another one. I have heard that one. There’s another one about streams. Shallow streams make the most noise. So you’re describing somebody as being shallow. Yeah. Thank you for the information. And y’all have a good day. All right. You too, now. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks. Bye-bye.

There’s a couple variations on the phrase that I want to share. The loaded wagon creaks, the empty one rattles. So that’s the two different forms of that together. The serious person who knows a lot is fairly quiet, and the one with nothing in their head is loud. And the wagon makes the loudest noise when it’s going out empty. And then I think my favorite one of all is the longer form still, making more noise than an empty wagon on a frozen road. And you can imagine that, right? Oh, yeah. In any case, they’re all very picturesque. It reminds me of all hat and no cattle. Sure, absolutely, yeah. But these aren’t strictly from the American South or from rural areas. You’ll find them throughout the English-speaking world.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673. We got an email from Gwen Williams who wrote, I recently referred in a family text to a quick road trip from Minnesota to New York by saying that my niece and I were beet feeding it to New York and back. And they realized, Grant, that they didn’t know the origin of that term. They surmised that it might have come from the Flintstones, you know, in that cartoon where Fred’s driving the car and you just see his feet going. But it turns out, Gwen, that it’s older than that. It goes back at least to the 1940s. It’s been mentioned in collections of campus slang from the 40s, where beat feet means time to leave or leaving, hurry up and leave.

That’s perfect, yeah, because it’s almost like a drum sound. Your feet on the ground when you’re running fast. I’m thinking of a wooden floor maybe where you can just hear somebody thudding, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da as they run. Yeah, you’re literally beating the floor with your feet. I like that. But older than the Flintstones for sure. For sure. Well, beat feed it to the phone, 877-929-9673, or beat feed it to your email program, words@waywordradio.org.

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 our quiz guy, John Chaneski in New York City. Hi, John. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. Hello, friends.

Speaking of friends, I have a puzzle for you today called Greek friends. Now, many great things have come to us from the Greeks. Nearly all of the great things I have came to be by networking. So a few famous Greeks that you know would like to introduce you to some pretend Greek friends of theirs. First, we’ll say hello or yasas to friends of Sophocles whose names follow his pronunciation patterns. Can you tell me their names? Here we go.

Sophocles would like you to meet his friend who is an expert on cephalopods, like squids, octopi, and cuttlefish. Say yasas to… How about Tentacles? Tentacles, yes. Sophocles knows you need to rent a car. Luckily, he has a friend who rents out cars, trucks, wagons, bicyclies, buses, and just about anything with wheels. Say yasas to… Oh, no. Boy, this one’s not doing me any favors, is it? All of those things fall into a category. Clees. They all have clees or lees at the end, right? Cars, trucks, wagons, buses. Does it start with a V?

It does start with a V, yes.

Vehicles, yes.

Sophocles knows that you’re both writers.

He’d like you to meet his friend who has had short pieces and essays published in newspapers, magazines, and online.

Say yasas to…

Articles.

Articles, there we go.

Grant is up to speed.

Finally.

Sophocles has a lot of friends who are scientists.

He’d like you to know his friend who specialized in studying the tiny particles.

That are the smallest units of elements or compounds.

Say yasas to.

The smallest units of.

Elements or compounds.

Molecules.

Molecules.

Molecules.

That’s right.

Now let’s meet some friends of other Greeks whose names follow their friends’ pattern.

For example, Greek mathematician Archimedes, he has two friends who study arthropods,

Specifically those insect-like creatures that have 30 to 350 legs.

Say Yassas to…

Centipedes.

Centipedes and…

Oh.

Molypides.

Melipides, yes.

It’s always helpful to have two friends.

Right.

Finally, we have comic playwright Aristophanes.

Now, he’d like you to meet a friend.

She’s a meteorologist, more specifically a tempestologist

Who studies cyclones and similar weather conditions.

Sayasas to…

Herakonies?

Sure, Herakonies.

Those are my Greek friends and friends of my Greek friends.

You guys were fantastic.

Nice job.

That’s funny.

Yeah, English pronounced incorrectly is hilarious.

Always good.

Opa.

Opa.

John, thank you so much.

Thank you, guys.

Thanks, John.

Take care.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, obviously, language is endlessly fascinating, and we would love to talk with you about it.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Michael Price. I live in Sherman Oaks, California.

Hey, Michael, welcome.

What can we do for you, Michael?

Oh, well, I wanted to share with you, I have a question or a memory of a word.

It’s actually a phrase that turned into a word, which is the word word, the way it’s used in hip hop culture.

I have a little bit of information that just a personal experience from when I was a teacher in a high school in New Jersey back in the mid 80s,

Where over the course of the school year, which I believe was 1985 to 1986,

Which is when hip hop culture was really exploding with fans like Run DMC,

Where I heard the phrase, word is born, used by kids as a way of saying,

Like, no, I’m telling you the truth.

And they used it a lot, saying word is born, word is born.

And then by the end of the school year, they were just saying word.

And I wonder if you’ve got any information about that.

So mid-80s, New Jersey, prime years for picking up new language from each other, right?

Yeah, definitely.

Do you remember the song Word Up by Cameo?

Wow, no, I don’t.

I mean, I should have.

I was being exposed to, you know, you can’t see me,

But I’m one of the, you know, people will say I’m one of the whitest guys of all time.

So I was from a mostly white area of central New Jersey,

And this was my first teaching job, and it was in a town called Irvington, New Jersey,

Which was, I’d say the student population there was probably 80% African-American.

Well, I asked about the Cameo song because it was popular enough that it charted.

I think it even broke top 40, and it’s got lyrics.

The song is called Word Up, and it’s all about the word.

And this really kind of was the peak for Word and Word Up

Leaving the slang of African-American culture

And migrating to the larger slang used by everybody,

No matter whether they were African-American or not.

And a lot of hip-hop has been the path by which black English and the language of black Americans has moved into the larger non-black culture of this country and actually into the language of other cultures and other languages around the world.

Because hip-hop has been this interesting ambassador.

And the reason I bring that up is because it goes back further than that.

But really, hip-hop was the way that this came about.

There are two lexicographers that I want to bring up who’ve done some work.

Geneva Smitherman and Clarence Major both have done work on word, W-O-R-D.

We’re talking about when you say something and somebody agrees with you, like word, or you say word up as a way to get attention before you say something that you want people to notice, right?

Is that how your students used it?

I first heard it being used when they were being challenged.

They would say something like, you know, I did this the other night, and they would say, no, you didn’t.

And they would say, no, no, no, my word is born, which meant you can trust me.

I know what I mean.

Or like, you better believe me.

So Geneva Smitherman connects the word is born as a corruption of your word is your bond, which was used throughout African-American history as a phrase to say, I trust you.

And actually, it’s used in the larger culture as a whole.

Word is born came from word is your bond, meaning I trust you.

And Clarence Major traces all these variations of word and word up and word is bond to at least the 1950s.

And it’s probably older than that.

It’s definitely something that was passed mouth to ear long before it was ever put in print.

And all of this, in turn, goes back to the larger idea of having the last word or having the final word.

Like you might say, you are not going to that party tonight, and that’s my final word, something that a parent might say to a child.

And it’s kind of sometimes a version of like saying period or full stop after a statement to emphasize it.

You know, it means like that’s absolutely true.

That is absolutely, I mean it.

You know, it’s absolutely true.

But I work in Hollywood now, so I don’t work in Irvington, New Jersey anymore.

What do they say in Hollywood when they want to say that they’re not lying?

They don’t say they’re not lying.

They just lie.

They say, trust me, trust me.

When they say trust me, then you know you’re in trouble.

Sounds like you speak from experience.

A little bit, a little bit.

That’s funny.

Michael, thank you for that field report.

Yeah, we’d love to hear about the lingo of Hollywood anytime, whether it’s from meetings with producers or the writer’s room or stuff that comes up when you’re doing a pitch or anything like that.

Just bring it to us.

We’d love to hear about that insider’s knowledge.

That’d be amazing.

I’ve worked in sitcom writers’ rooms for about almost 20 years.

So, yeah, I’d be happy to help you with that anytime.

Oh, wow.

That’d be fantastic.

We could do a whole show on that.

Yeah, please call us again sometime, Michael.

Take care.

I will.

I will.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Michael.

Sure.

Well, I know that you have memories of you as a fish out of water in a place where you learned a lot of new language really fast from people who had something to teach you.

Well, now you can teach us.

Tell us about the language you learned when you were the fish out of water.

877-929-9673

Or tell the whole tale and email to words@waywordradio.org.

We are still getting haiku from listeners about the way we live now.

And this one is from Mark Bryce, who lives in Hyattsville, Maryland.

He writes, dining room table covered with computer stuff.

WFH.

That’s great.

Work from home.

Yeah, I love the use of WFH.

All the syllables match out to seven syllables with letters.

Whether it’s the letters or the words.

Yeah, that’s great.

Thanks, Mark.

Send your pandemic haiku to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Megan Marksbury, and I’m so excited to talk to you.

Hi, Megan. Where are you calling from, Megan?

I’m calling from Theo Beach, California.

Cool. Megan, it’s mutual.

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

I have two daughters. One of them is a redhead.

And I have a brand-new husband, and he was talking to me the other day, and he said, I can’t believe it, Meg.

I have a redheaded stepchild.

And we were kind of laughing about it, and we’ve kind of talked to my daughter Margo about it, and he said, why don’t you call your word show that you’re always listening to and ask your grand Martha about redheaded stepchild?

And I said, oh, my gosh, well, this might be just the opportunity I was looking for to talk to my two favorite people.

Well, I get to call you guys and tell you thank you for having such a great show and maybe find out where this came from.

Maybe it’s from an Irish immigration a long time ago.

But where are the stepchildren coming from and what’s the origin of this race?

So I just didn’t know.

Were there a lot of widows?

Was it a divorce situation?

What’s going on with the stepchildren back in the day?

Why are they hurting children, which they should not do, right?

Why the harsh treatment of these kids?

Does not be cruel to each other.

Yeah.

And why the redheads?

I love redheads.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You’re not a redhead yourself?

I am not.

My dad is a redhead.

Oh, okay.

So it got passed down through him.

Yeah.

I think that recessive gene might play into it.

Right, Martha?

I think it might.

Because, yeah, a redheaded stepchild is usually the one who’s different, right?

The one who, yeah, traditionally might have questionable parentage, but, yeah, it has to do with that recessive gene.

And you’re right that the phrase redheaded stepchild has a history, you know, when you’re talking about either treating someone like a redheaded stepchild or unfortunately beating, which, of course, we don’t advocate.

But yeah, you’re treating the child like they’re different from the rest of the family.

And that goes back to the late 19th century for sure.

And so the reasons for this, let’s see if we can figure these out.

So there’s the stereotype that a stepchild gets treated worse than a parent’s own children, right?

Yes.

Not in this family.

Not in this family.

Not in that family.

Good.

That’s right.

And then red hair is unusual, and it may open someone up to being ridiculed, right?

And as we alluded to, red hair in a child might be a giveaway that someone has been unfaithful as a spouse.

Oh.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s what I meant.

That’s where the recessive gene comes in because it skips generations.

And so if you don’t understand genetics, you might think that your spouse has been cheating on you or sleeping around if you don’t have red hair and the redheaded baby is born.

But also, Martha, did you notice that sometimes red-haired people were seen as unlucky?

Oh, sure.

Yeah, you might have avoided them like you avoid a black cat.

Yeah, there were superstitions, yeah.

Martha, you mentioned the late 1800s for this, but there were some other versions of it back then too, right?

Yeah, I’m looking at a newspaper from 1899 that refers to somebody as being as sad as a red-headed cross-eyed stepchild.

You know, it’s that child who’s a little bit different from the rest of the family.

So, yeah, redheads have dealt with a lot over the years.

They’ve dealt with gingerism, as it’s called, you know, where people just have stereotypes.

I feel like we’re coming out of that a bit, though.

I do feel like my redhead has not been picked on.

It’s been more embraced.

And even the freckles have been embraced as being different and unique.

So I’m hoping that’s all changing.

That’s wonderful.

I think Harry Potter probably had something to do with that.

All the Weasleys, you know.

Right.

Being part of the Weasley tribe was seen as a strength.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you, Megan.

We really appreciate your call.

Give our best to your family, all right?

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name is Dwayne Francis.

I’m in New York.

And my question is, what is the meaning of the word corundle?

Yes, it’s a word I learned from my parents. They’re from the USVI, United States Virgin Islands. And it’s a word that my mother and her siblings would use. And it would refer to, I’m not so much concerned about the meaning of a book, the origin, that they use it to refer to like clutter. And I can’t figure out where this word comes from or how it’s properly spelled or if that’s the only significance that it has.

Clutter. Okay. And how would you spell that if you had to spell it?

Well, I guess, and I would say C-A-R-U-T-T-L-E. That was just guessing, but I can’t find it anywhere.

That’s about right. It does appear in a couple of dictionaries of Virgin Islands language.

There’s one by Kareem Nelson Hull, the Virgin Island Dictionary, and he has an entry for it, and he calls it a collection of items, seemingly junk, that is placed where it is causing obstruction or making an area unsightly.

And he spells it C-O-R-O-T-O-L-E.

And then there’s another entry on the website of ChristianDictionary.com by Robin Stearns.

She has an entry that’s very similar for that.

And the spelling is C-R-R-O-T-L-E.

I’m missing that last O.

And it’s very similar.

And I have a theory on where that comes from.

And this goes back to a dictionary of Jamaican English published by Fred Cassidy and R.B. LePage.

And in this book, they talk about a word from New World Spanish, carotos, C-A-R-O-T-O-S.

I guess I shouldn’t have trilled that R. It’s carotos.

And that means stuff, miscellaneous things, or junk.

And it’s used in Puerto Rico and Venezuela and other Spanish-speaking countries around the Caribbean.

Wow.

There’s also a word in Jamaican and other Caribbean countries that mean junk or miscellaneous things or stuff that are very similar.

Carrochi, caruchi, carroco, and tons of different spellings.

They’re all pretty similar.

Not exactly like they’re all missing that L, for example, that are very similar to carroco.

Wow.

Well, thank you so much. I would have never made that connection with the Spanish type of things.

Yeah, because, you know, the Virgin Islands, it’s got all those layers of English.

It’s got, of course, it’s got the English. It’s got a little bit of Spanish.

It’s got a little bit of French, a little bit of Danish. It’s got the African heritage.

Duane, I’m wondering about the sense in which you use it.

Is it a really negative sense or is it just kind of mild?

You know, I got a little bit of clutter on my desk.

No, it was used when, like, if mom walked in in the room was in disarray, you were going to hear that word.

Corrottal!

Oh, yes, I can’t.

Then she’d have a light accent and she’d be like, oh, I can’t work in all this corrottal.

You know, you have to clean all this corrottal up, you know.

Well, who could?

I always loved the Virgin Islands accent.

It always made me feel warm.

There was something home-like about it.

Yes, yes.

Another theory is that there’s just a bit of metathesis here where the consonant sounds in clutter were rearranged to give us corutal.

So that’s what metathesis means, where sounds swap in a word.

Like bird used to be brid and dirt used to be drit.

Exactly.

Metathesis.

Ooh, okay.

But anyway, that’s the best I have to offer you.

And I appreciate your effort. Thank you both so much.

Our pleasure. Thanks for calling.

Thanks for calling.

Take care now.

All righty. You too. Bye-bye.

You too. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye.

We talk about English from all over the world, and we’d love to hear what’s going on in your corner of it.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send your questions and stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

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.

Grant, as you know, my mom was a public school teacher for 25 years in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

And Louisville is a city with a long history of racial segregation.

And in 1975, Louisville began court-ordered busing to desegregate the schools.

And this was a really tense time.

So my mom welcomed her new, nervous 7th graders from all over the city with an odd bit of homework.

She said, go out and find me a black and white and yellow caterpillar.

She wanted them to focus on their weird teacher and this unexpected task rather than on themselves and each other.

And sure enough, one of them found a caterpillar and brought it in.

And the kids put it in this big container with a branch of milkweed leaves, which monarch caterpillars like to eat.

And over the next few days, the students watched as it attached to one of those leaves and hung down in that J shape that they do, and then formed this beautiful blue-green case called a chrysalis.

And inside that case, the caterpillar’s body broke down into a chemical soup, and a few days later, it reformed as a butterfly.

And the kids got to watch it emerge and dry its wings.

Together, when it was ready, they set the butterfly free.

That first homework assignment became a yearly tradition in room 210, and the kids learned the words metamorphosis from the Greek for change form.

And they also learned the word chrysalis, which comes from the Greek word for gold, because the case of some butterfly chrysalises are gold, and on a monarch chrysalis, it’s got these gorgeous gold dots.

And the Greek word chrysos, meaning gold, also gives us the word chrysanthemum, which means golden flower.

We lost my mom way too early, almost three decades ago.

But, you know, when I run into her former students, I still hear about those butterflies.

And this is why this week I was over the moon, Grant, to find my first ever monarch caterpillar in the wild.

I was so excited.

Oh, how delightful.

Yeah, after all these years.

And it was so weird because it was actually on the inside of our front door.

And strangely enough, just a few weeks ago, we realized that there’s a milkweed plant right out in the front yard.

I did not know this until recently.

So my wife and I took the caterpillar out and put it on one of the leaves of the milkweed.

And sure enough, the next day, came back, there was this gorgeous chrysalis with the little gold dots.

And so I’m really hoping it survives.

There are a lot of threats out there.

There’s apparently a parasite going around.

But I’m hopeful that we can keep an eye on it and watch its eclosion, which is a word I just learned yesterday.

Eclosion.

It looks like explosion, but it’s eclosion, which means the hatching or emerging from a cocoon.

It comes from the French word for to hatch.

So I’m waiting for eclosion, hoping, crossing my fingers.

That’s amazing.

So monarchs have, if I remember, a three-year cycle.

So your monarch might somehow send monarchs back to you and your plant in a few years, the grandchildren of the one that you put on the plant.

Oh, I’m hoping so.

I’m hoping so.

That’s amazing.

First it was feral kittens.

Now it’s feral caterpillars.

Nature finds a way, as the great Jeff Goldblum put it.

Yes, and it teaches us lessons.

It was such a great way to teach kids about the words metamorphosis and chrysalis.

Like I said, I just learned the explosion.

Well, she sounds like a great teacher.

She was.

Sounds like a good mother, too.

She was.

She was great.

Martha, thank you for sharing that memory.

And, you know, I know that our listeners have memories because they share them all the time.

What’s your memory of a language thing from someone who meant a lot to you, a teacher or a parent or grandparent to a relative, somebody who taught you a thing and it’s just tied so perfectly into your love of language and books and literature and reading and writing, just let us know.

We want to hear those stories, 877-929-9673, or put in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lori from Michigan.

Hi, Lori from Michigan.

How are you doing?

If you can solve my quandary, it’d be great.

I grew up in a very linguistically diverse household because my mother was born and raised in a Polish family and spoke Polish until she was in school.

And my father is from New Jersey, which I’m in Michigan.

So things were different.

Things were interesting.

And they got really interesting when I was about four years old.

And my father told me to go get my coloring books and my crown.

Now, being a little girl, of course, I had a crown.

I had a scepter.

I held the whole railroad thing.

So I got them.

I didn’t know what the coloring book was for, but I got that too.

And ever since that day, we’ve had wax coloring devices in my family because my dad can’t say crayon.

You call them wax coloring devices?

Wax coloring devices, yes, since I was four.

My children have wax coloring devices now.

The thing is, I just kind of accepted this as a family thing until I was teaching third grade one day and a new little girl started up and she came and she says, teacher, may I have some crowns?

And I looked at her and said, sweetie, of course, are you from New Jersey?

And she was.

Huh.

She was mortified, but she’s the only person I have ever met that calls them crowns besides my dad.

Is this a really weird thing between two people from the same state, or is there a bigger phenomenon here?

This is a classic. I’m not saying it’s an FAQ. I’m saying it’s an exciting classic.

This is a really good one to bring up as an example of how we’re not a monolithic country. Right, Martha?

Yes, indeed, Lori. There are actually four or five different pronunciations for that term for wax coloring devices, C-R-A-Y-O-N.

There’s what I grew up saying in Kentucky, which was crayon.

I mean, most people say it as one syllable. I think because of my Southern influence, I kind of say crayon.

But you can say it with one syllable or crayon or crayon.

But there is a whole swath of the country that uses the pronunciation crown.

There are dialect maps online that you can take a look at,

And there is quite a concentration of crown pronouncers in New Jersey.

In New York, yes.

Southern New York, Long Island, New York City, that area.

Then there are people who say cran.

Sounds like rhymes with the first part of cranberry.

Rhymes with man.

Right.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

See, if I were speaking my native tongue, it would be a crayon.

Right.

Crayon.

Generally, when I’m teaching that’s what it is, it’s a crayon.

But, you know, there’s my dad’s pronunciation and apparently a lot of other people that say it that way.

That is so cool.

How cool that you could rescue that kid who was using the term crayon.

Yeah.

And instead of teasing her or pretending you didn’t understand, you knew immediately what she was saying.

Yeah.

She was mortified, but I didn’t know what she was talking about.

And for me, it was like, oh, yeah, here’s a box of 24.

You only gave her the 24 box?

I’m a schoolteacher.

Oh, good point.

You buy your own, right?

That’s a good point.

Send me the link to your donor’s choose.

I’ll fix that.

You’re on.

Thank you.

Lori, thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

We’d love to hear about language stuff in your classroom anytime you want to tell us about it.

Well, thank you.

I’m so glad I got to talk to you.

All right.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

In Scotland, a fank, F-A-N-K, is a coil of rope or a snare.

And that gives us the verb fankle, which I really love.

It means to tangle or, more metaphorically, to lose the thread of discourse.

I got fankled.

It also gives us the word fankle, which means a tangle.

And I’m glad to finally have a word for what happens to my earbuds.

You know, the cord on my earbuds.

They’re fankled.

They get all fankled.

Yeah.

Tangled.

For a second there, I was thinking it might be a synonym for cankle.

Fat ankle.

Like a really fat.

Yeah, you know, it’s been a long day and you’ve been on your feet and your ankles are a little swollen and you take off your shoes and you’ve got that red line.

Yeah, and you just put up your cankles, right?

Oh, yeah, you put the dogs up so they stop barking.

Send us the words you’ve discovered in email.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name’s Scott. How are you?

Hey, Scott, I’m doing well. Where are you calling us from?

Valdosta, Georgia.

What are you thinking about there in Valdosta, Georgia?

Whenever I’d go to my dad, you know, sometimes saying, well, you know, I want a drink or can I have some money or just whatever.

And he had a saying that he would frequently use.

He’d say that I was in a goat house looking for wool.

I understand the meaning behind that.

But what I don’t understand is where did that come from?

Where did that phrase originate?

And I was hoping maybe you could help clear that up.

Scott, what did he mean?

I assume a goat house is a place where they have goats and sheep produce wool.

So if you go to a goat house, you’re looking for a sheep, you’re in the wrong place.

What you’re looking for doesn’t exist.

This is a good one.

Usually it’s put something more like can’t get wool off a goat or come to the goat’s house for wool, something like that.

Sometimes people say gather goat’s feathers or about as easy as finding wool on a goat’s back.

A lot of different variations of this.

But the idea is that goat’s wool isn’t very important and it’s not very useful.

Because there is such a thing as goat’s wool.

It’s just not as good as sheep’s wool and you can’t do much with it.

And it dates back to, oh, the 1500s.

There was the idea of quarreling about goat’s wool from the writings of Horace.

And it basically meant quarreling about a question that could never be decided.

Because the idea was that what goats have to offer is nearly worthless, at least compared to sheep.

So perhaps goat’s wool shouldn’t even be called wool.

And people would bicker about this.

And in fact, it has been called goat’s wool.

And you can find plenty of mentions of goat’s wool in old texts.

But yeah, so it’s not quite that you can’t find wool in a goat’s house.

It’s just that what’s the point of going for wool in a goat’s house when there are so many other better places and ways to get wool?

Variants of that phrase go all the way back to the 1500s.

That’s right, yeah.

How about that?

And it’s not just in the United States.

Wow.

You find it in the U.K. and Scotland, Ireland.

We can find it in the U.S. at least as far back as the 1830s.

There are other things that are similar.

People talk about gathering or finding toad feathers or getting feathers from a toad.

It’s the same idea that you go to someone or something for a thing that you just can’t get there.

Your father might have said, you might as well get feathers from a toad as to get money from me.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And he was an extremely educated man, so he may have actually have known the origins.

I just never thought to ask him.

He may have.

He may have indeed.

Thank you for your call.

Appreciate it very much.

Scott, take care.

Thank you for the information, and y’all have a fantastic day.

You too.

Be well.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nell Bekaris. I’m calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hey, Nell. How are you?

Doing well. What’s going on in Madison?

So there’s a drawer in, you know, probably your kitchen, but maybe your dining room where you put maybe birthday candles, keys that you don’t know where they go to, matches, you know, a pencil with a broken lead, a battery that you don’t know if it works or not.

You know what I’m talking about?

You know that drawer?

Of course you put the battery in there.

You mean that one drawer?

You have only one of those?

One of those drawers, yes.

So in my family, we always called it the mystery drawer because we never really knew what you might find in that drawer.

And of course, I thought that was the term that everybody used for that particular drawer.

But when I’ve talked with people and said, oh, go check the mystery drawer, they have no idea what I’m talking about.

So I’ve heard other people call it a junk drawer,

But I just was wondering if the terminology my family used had any background other than my family.

Mystery drawer. Oh, I love the idea that you might blindfold yourself and reach in and see what you get out. Exactly. And actually, that is, I didn’t just invent that idea. That possibly is connected to the name mystery drawer. If you look in party books from as far back as the 1950s and 60s, so these are books about how to throw parties for kids, you will find one party favor idea is a mystery drawer where you fill a drawer with a jumble of small prizes for children and then they cover their eyes and they reach in to draw out a surprise. Now I don’t know that there’s a connection, but i I thought it worth mentioning because it just comes up again and again and again as a way to instead of just giving the kids a gift, you give them this opportunity to kind of have this moment of, I don’t know, everyone kind of likes this mystery moment, right?

Your eyes are covered, you reach in, you kind of feel around, you try to guess which one’s the best, and you pull it out. Yes! I love that.

Yeah, but you’re not the only family that uses it for the drunk drawer. I note in looking in the digital archives of all these newspapers, by the mid-90s, it really starts to show up mystery drawer with some regularity in newspapers and books about organizing your life and organizing your house.

Oh, really?

Yeah, when people are looking for another word for junk drawer and don’t want to say junk drawer again, it’s kind of the other term that they pull out is mystery drawer. It’s got a little jocularity to it, a little humor.

Yeah, interesting.

My family, I am a child who grew up in the early 70s to mid-80s, I would say, and then by 1990 I was in college. So, you know, in my family, it’s been in use for a long time. My parents actually are from Chicago, and they would have been children in the 1950s, well, 40s and 50s. I wonder if they picked it up, you know, somewhere at a party, perhaps.

Maybe.

The other thing about this, Nell, is mystery drawer is kind of an obvious term, right? I mean, I think it could easily be recoined again and again and again. I think it’s the kind of term that somebody, when they’re just trying to be a little humorous, could come up with on their own without having gotten it from someone else. And so your family might just be the sense of humor that your family has. It might just be the little giggle that you give yourself, the mystery drawer.

I’m feeling kind of deprived.

We called ours the work drawer.

Oh!

I would have loved to have had a mystery drawer. Maybe that’s why in my adult life I have a mystery office. I just close my door. You wouldn’t believe what’s in there.

That’s funny.

I’m going to switch the name of our utility closet to the mystery closet from here on out.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, rebrand that thing. It’s the one with the brooms and the extra grocery bags and the spools of tape on a peg and that sort of thing.

Duct tape, yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, Nell, I hope that helped a little bit, but that is a fun term, mystery drawer.

Oh, yeah.

The drawer of mystery.

Yeah, the drawer of mystery sounds even better.

Thank you so much for taking my call. I appreciate it. This has been a fun conversation.

Bye, Nell.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Email us words@waywordradio.org.

Today, I learned about the word undermine. It never occurred to me that undermine is literally mining under. The original sense of it was to dig or excavate beneath to make a passage like a mine under a wall. It was usually applied to a military operation, to undermine.

Yeah, absolutely. Right. You undermine something, meaning you weaken its defenses or you weaken its support structure so it might collapse.

Yes. I just never thought about it being connected to mining.

877-929-9673. 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.