Navel-Gazing (episode #1549)

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 Old English word galan means to call or to sing enchantments.

And you don’t see that root in very many English words. There’s some really, really old words like

Galder, which is a charm or incantation. But there is a familiar word that you’ll see it in,

And that word is nightingale. It’s a bird noted for the melodious song, which is heard at night

As well as during the day. It’s literally a night singer from Old English galant, meaning to call

Or sing enchantments. And I was reminded of this in a tweet by writer Robert McFarlane,

Who mentioned the etymology and described the nightingale as, quote,

A tiny bird of exquisite voice, the sound of hope in the dark. Isn’t that lovely?

It is lovely. And it’s better than I usually expect on Twitter.

Right? Yeah.

But I think Twitter gives you back what you cultivate, doesn’t it?

Oh, it certainly does.

You follow the right people, you get beauty like that.

Yeah.

Give us that quote again.

A tiny bird of exquisite voice, the sound of hope in the dark.

Oh, that is very good. I like that.

Isn’t that nice?

And they are. They’re lovely little things.

If you’ve never seen a picture, look them up on the internet.

They’re just gorgeous little things.

Yeah, and I just love the idea of them singing through the night.

This show is about language and everything related to it.

Boy, you can call us about slang, new words, grammar, a dispute you had about how to write a PowerPoint slide at work.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Cherie calling from Bernie, Texas.

Hi, Cherie. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Cherie.

Thank you.

Hey, Martha.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good to be here.

I’ve got a question for you that a quote or a phrase that my mother used to say, she lived

With me for the last 15 years of her life, and she was an excellent cook, and she would

Volunteer to make dinner several nights a week.

Well, towards the end of the week, when there would be a number of leftovers in the fridge,

She would pull them out and say, we’re having a Duke’s mixture.

And I’ve never heard that expression.

And quite frankly, I didn’t really ever think about it until recently.

She’s been gone almost six years.

And I was just thinking about her the other day, and I had to laugh about Duke’s mixture.

So I thought, you guys might know where that came from.

Did she use it specifically for food, or did she ever use it in any other kind of situation?

No, only when she was pulling leftovers out.

A lot of different leftovers. Well, there’s a really interesting history for the term Duke’s

Mixture. The original Duke’s mixture was a kind of tobacco. It was a kind of loose tobacco that

Came in a little white bag with a drawstring. And it was odds and ends, sort of like the leftovers

That you were talking about. But it was just odds and ends of tobacco. It wasn’t very,

Very high-grade tobacco. And it was a product where you would roll your own from this Duke’s

Mixture. And it came from the Duke family’s tobacco company. This is the same family that

Eventually gave millions and millions of dollars to Duke University. So they were the university

After them. Yeah, yeah. So the original Duke’s mixture was produced by this tobacco company

In North Carolina. That was in the late 19th century. And by the early 20th century,

You see people using the term Duke’s Mixture, often in quotation marks, to mean a mixture of

Or conglomeration of things. And later, granted, it’s been applied to all different kinds of things

Like animals. Yeah. So the same way we might say Heinz 57 to refer to a mixed breed mutt,

People sometimes would use Duke’s Mixture. Sometimes it’s not a favorable saying. You

Might use it for a confused or messed up situation. I’ve also seen it being used for

Being dealt a bad hand at card playing. Why, this is a Duke’s Mixture you’ve dealt me here,

Something like that. Interesting, interesting. Well, of course, mother was a good cook, so

It was always a good combination, even though it might be odds and ends. But that’s so interesting

That it would come from the tobacco end of the story.

-huh, -huh.

And now it’s much more generalized.

I’m not sure that anybody knows what Duke’s mixture is,

But you can see pictures of those little pouches of tobacco online.

But that’s a wonderful family linguistic heirloom to bring to us.

Yes, it is.

It’s a great way to remember her.

And I don’t remember her using it when I was a child,

But, you know, we may not have had leftovers left over when I was a kid.

But, you know, as an adult, we had leftovers.

So it is a fond way to remember her.

It really is.

Oh, that’s wonderful.

We appreciate your sharing that with all of us.

Thanks, Sherry.

Oh, you bet.

Well, thank you both, Grant and Martha.

I love your show.

You guys take care, too.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your linguistic heirlooms, 877-929-9673, or send them to us in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Rebecca Livick from Northeast Wisconsin wrote us to say that her daughter, Samantha, was about two or three years old

When she was trying to get a stone out of the treads of her boots.

And little Sam said, it’s stuck in the bumpity scrapples.

I love that, the bumpity scrapples.

And Rebecca says, we’ve been using that term in our family ever since.

That’s about 30 years now.

Oh, yeah, that’s an instant classic, right?

That’s automatically in the family vocabulary.

Bumpity scrapples.

Yes, I’m going to adopt that myself.

She says, I think the reason the word stayed with us is because Sam’s older brother, Kyle, just wouldn’t stop repeating it.

And isn’t that how it goes, right?

A little kid says something and everybody picks it up.

Pumpity scrapples.

That’s perfect.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

My name is Mitchell Buck.

I live in Arlington, Texas.

Hey, Mitchell.

I had a question concerning a phrase my father used to use.

He was a naval aviator in the Second War,

And he learned to fly at a little place called Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas.

And when he went to flight school in Olathe, Kansas, to learn to fly the naval way,

He told me of an expression that one of his instructors used, and it’s a little odd.

He said, if a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt.

The training aircraft that they had there in Olathe was an airplane called an AT-6 Texan.

And it was referred to as a tail dragger, meaning that it had a rear wheel in it.

It set up on the front two wheels.

He said that there were some cadets that, unfortunately, in trading accidents and whatnot, were killed.

And I just have no idea where the expression came from.

And I was just wondering if you guys had any ideas.

What was happening when he used the expression?

I guess it was more of an expression of if this happens, then it could lead to something else happening.

Okay.

That was sort of the way he used it.

And what’s the expression again?

If a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt.

Yeah. Okay. I got that. Martha, you know that one?

Well, he’s got a point there.

It’s true. It’s true.

As be any one of us, right?

And so, Mitchell, it sounds like you believe that the expression has something to do with the tail-dragging aircraft.

That was sort of the impression I got.

I could see the expression feeling like it belonged there.

It’s certainly colorful.

There’s a lot of variations on this.

If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his backside every time he jumps.

And, of course, backside is often replaced by various synonyms for backside, including all the crude ones.

The last part is often changed to they wouldn’t bump their tails on rocks or the ground or logs.

And we find this as early as 1914, although it’s probably older than that.

So what’s interesting is it’s a variation on another classic saying, which is about flying.

If pigs had wings, they could fly.

And that expression dates to the mid-1800s.

So there’s a lot of these expressions.

They’re all about wishful thinking.

It’s when you say, well, you know, I wish I didn’t have to work tomorrow.

Or I wish the summer wasn’t as hot.

And then somebody says to you, yeah, well, if bullfrogs had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt.

Meaning you can’t change that.

And so it’s things like if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

If my aunt had wheels, she’d been a bus.

Or if my aunt had been a man, she’d have been my uncle.

So there’s a bunch of these.

So the operative word here is if.

Yeah.

In all of those, right?

So it’s all about you wishing for something that hasn’t happened and couldn’t happen.

So how about that?

It’s not exclusively aviation related.

This all makes a lot more sense now other than just being a colorful expression.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Yeah, I really appreciate y’all clearing that up for me.

Take care, Rachel.

You too. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Here’s some writing advice from Sherry Bailey.

She’s a teacher and playwright in Virginia.

And she says that at the beginning of a new class of writing students, she tells them there are no writers, only rewriters.

And I thought that was such a wonderfully succinct way of talking about our process, Grant.

Absolutely, because so many beginning writers think that once it’s down on the page, that first draft is golden.

Yes.

And that they better not touch it, that somehow this is the perfect thing and this is the ultimate state of their work.

Yes.

Anything further that would be done to it would destroy it or ruin it.

They don’t understand the perfection that comes from rewriting and editing and collaboration with others.

Yes, yes.

Well said, Grant.

I really prefer the rewriting process to the writing process, to the getting it all down on paper.

That part is usually painful for me, the first part.

Yeah, me too.

I like arguing with myself, basically.

That’s what a rewrite is, where I’m like, wow, what were you thinking there?

Oh, that’s pretty good, but that can be better, or this isn’t for this project.

You need to cut that out and save that for something else.

You’re really talking to yourself and presenting arguments to yourself that you can either win or lose,

But you’re still talking to yourself.

Yeah, you’re pushing yourself to be better.

Anyway, I love that.

There are no writers.

There are only rewriters.

Thank you, Sherry.

We’d love your opinions on writing or editing or any of the creative arts that involve words and language.

877-929-9673 or email 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 that interesting and curious quiz guy, John Chaneski from New York.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

I hope you guys are doing well in this challenging time, as we call it.

And in this challenging time, I think we need some poetry.

Okay, yeah, sure.

One thing that’s great about poetry is that everyone can do it.

You just need confidence and some kind of vocabulary.

Now, this quiz is half trivia, half creative.

I’ll read you a selection from a famous poem, and I’ll leave one word or two off the end or off the section I’m giving you.

And if you think you know what’s missing, say, I know this, and then you can give me the answer.

Or if you don’t know what’s missing, you can say, I wrote this, and then I’ll let you come up with a word that ends the selection, even if you don’t know it.

What do you think of that?

Okay.

So I know this or I wrote this.

I know this means I’m filling in the right words.

I wrote this means I’m filling in some nonsense that I just want to have a laugh with.

It could be good nonsense.

You never know, right?

Yeah.

Okay, now I have a feeling, based on what I know about you guys,

You guys will do pretty well in this quiz anyway.

Here’s an example.

This is from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.

And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first four blank.

I wrote this.

What’d you write, Martha?

What do you want to put in there?

I kept the first four.

I gave the other three back.

I gave the other three back.

That’s very nice.

That’s not actually what Robert Frost said, though.

What he said was another day.

Another day.

Right.

Oh, I thought he was rhyming with black.

Oh, no, no.

He was rhyming with lay.

But nice try, though.

I liked yours.

Again, there’s actually no wrong answers in this quiz.

Whatever you think is poetry is poetry.

Here we go.

Here’s another one.

This is from Gwendolyn Brooks.

It’s called We Real Cool.

We real cool.

We left school.

We lurk late.

We strike straight.

We sing sin.

We blank.

I wrote this.

You wrote that, Grant.

Tell me, what does it say?

We stayed in.

We stayed in.

Well, that’s very current affairs of you.

I like it.

It’s really good.

It goes like this.

We sing sin.

We thin gin.

Oh.

I’ll take both Sting Inn and A Little Thin Gin right about now.

This one’s The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams.

This is basically the whole poem.

So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white blank.

I know this.

You do know that, Martha.

What is it?

Chickens.

Chickens, right, beside the white chickens.

This is from One Art by Elizabeth Bishop.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is…

Faster? I wrote this.

Their loss is no…

Disaster.

Yeah, their loss is no disaster. That’s a beautiful poem.

Anyway, that’s our poetry quiz for today.

I thought I’d just put a little poetry in your day.

So I hope you liked it.

I’ve got some collections here on the shelf that need to make their way to my desk, I think.

Excellent. Let’s do it. Let’s all do it during this time.

Thank you, guys.

Take care, and I’ll talk to you next time.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We know you want to talk with us about language, so give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or send your questions and comments about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello, Grant.

My name is Kristen.

I am in the beach bedroom community of San Clemente, California, and thank you for having me on the show.

Well, hello, Kristen.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Glad to have you.

Thank you.

Hello. I had a question about kind of the evolution of salutations.

I love older movies, anything Turner Classic movies.

I love the whole Downton Abbey series.

And I noticed when they got on the telephone, when it was time for a closing remark or to end a call, they just hung up.

And my favorite, Black and Whites, and the same thing with Downton Abbey.

And I always thought that was brusque and odd.

You know, without a formal hello or goodbye of some kind. Now that we’ve evolved through the times,

I’m noticing with my own boys, just being in quarantine with them a lot and hearing their

Conversations with friends, they don’t say goodbye either. And they often don’t say hello.

I’ve noticed that with a lot of millennials in Trader Joe’s and other grocery stores.

There’s kind of a loss of the hello or goodbye, excuse me, when in conversation with a single

Person. In the grocery store, a lot of people say, you know, I’m going to get that or I need to get

Over there instead of excuse me. And I just found that all odd. I wondered if you could expand.

Well, I think we can address the part about old movies, because it’s not just old movies,

As a matter of fact. This happens a lot in modern movies as well. In fact, you can go online and

And see compilations of people just hanging up the phone without saying goodbye.

Supercuts.

Yeah, supercuts.

And it’s actually really funny to just watch a whole bunch of these in a row.

And they’re people like Tom Cruise and George Clooney and Tom Hanks.

It’s not just old movies by any stretch of the imagination.

And people have complained about this and made that observation before.

And it’s really just a matter of efficiency in a movie script, I think.

Okay.

Yeah, just moving the action along.

It’s sort of like, you know, you don’t really see all the other connective tissue of life in movies.

Whenever I watch a James Bond movie, you know, and he’s having all these adventures, I think, does that man never go to the bathroom?

You know what I mean?

And he rarely eats.

Exactly.

I tell you, I do have a pet peeve when it comes to movies and reality.

The fact that when they’re carrying suitcases, they almost always look empty to me.

Yes.

Very light.

That just drives me crazy.

Mine is they walk into houses and leave the door open.

Yeah.

That too.

They just walk in and leave the door open.

Like, you don’t do that.

If the door is closed when you enter it, you close it right behind you.

Absolutely.

You’re letting the air out.

But the conversation in movies is stylized just like everything else in the movies.

It’s art. It’s a representation of real life. It’s not a recreation of it.

It’s not meant to be a perfect picture.

It’s somebody’s, they’ve taken a particular paintbrush and painted this in a particular style,

And the conversation isn’t really a real conversation at all.

There are so many other things that when linguists who study conversation look at movies,

They can’t really use movie scripts as examples of real conversation

Because it just doesn’t flow the way people really talk.

That’s interesting.

Yes, that’s a good point.

And what about today with the millennials?

Any explanation or insight?

Yes.

So people who study computer-mediated communication have an understanding that it’s not just millennials.

It’s everyone now.

It’s anyone who uses a phone for regular communication and a desktop or a laptop for regular communication.

You’ve kind of got these digital devices everywhere.

What it is is that we don’t turn off the conversation anymore.

And so you feel like every time you hear from somebody that you know well, that you never really stopped talking to them.

You’re picking up where you left off.

So you don’t need to have this formality because it’s just part one billion of you two talking.

And also, your phone tells you who they are even before you answer.

It shows you their name.

And so you know who they are.

And they know who you are.

So it’s not a mystery.

So why say hello and goodbye?

It’s not like you’re not going to see them for six months because it takes you six months to get from New York to California.

That’s true. That’s true.

The boys were laughing at me the other day because I left a voicemail and I left my phone number.

And they said, why are you doing that?

People know your number.

And I was like, no, when you get older and you call businesses, they don’t know your number.

And then I thought about it.

I’m like, well, caller ID, maybe that is, you know, a way of old.

That’s kind of going to pair off in time.

Do you do Zoom at all?

Do you do Zoom meetings?

I do, yes.

Because somebody was talking on Twitter the other day about how weird it is that when you end a Zoom conference, everybody’s waving.

Yes.

Like, you don’t do that in real life when you walk out of a room.

Bye.

Yeah, yeah, it is odd.

So I think we’re all evolving a little bit.

Kristen, thank you so much for your call.

This was a really good one.

I really appreciate it.

Take care now.

Thank you.

Love you guys.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Love you, too.

We’re waving.

Bye-bye.

We’re waving.

Bye-bye.

Hello, goodbye.

We’d love to talk to you about both ends of the conversation and everything in between.

Call us.

Martha and I would love to talk to you.

877-929-9673.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Rod.

I’m in Virginia near the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Well, we want to talk about the terms for the crabs in this region.

You’re a crabber? You’re a crab fisherman?

No, no, I’m not a crabber.

I guess you could say a conservationist, biologist.

That was my career.

I retired.

But I found this real interesting when I moved to the area.

And, of course, it’s an ongoing industry.

Everybody loves the blue crab.

Oh, yeah.

So you had some lingo in the business.

Yeah.

It’s around the male and the female and the life cycle and the mating.

And part of it is the derivation of the old words is nobody can figure that out.

And then the rest of it is just terms that you can probably understand by just the way they’re used.

But the two original terms that came to my mind were the name for the blue crab, the male and the female blue crab.

And what are those?

Well, the male is called a jimmy.

And the female is called a sook, S-O-O-K.

Okay.

Sook.

Yeah.

So the male blue crab is a jimmy, the female is a sook.

The sook is interesting, so that’s probably S-O-O-K, right?

Correct, yeah.

The reason that’s interesting to me is that term is sometimes used for female cattle, as in a cow.

So I wonder if it was borrowed from farming to refer to the female.

You know, that’s a good question.

This has been a bit of a cul-de-sac.

I don’t want to say backwater.

I want to say cul-de-sac.

Yeah.

A lot of old terms linger on here in the local vocabulary.

Now, what about, have you ever heard the female called a silk or a sow crab?

Never heard it called a sow crab, no.

A silk, S-I-L-K?

You know, I’m not sure.

There’s a whole vocabulary that I actually looked up one time,

Vocabulary of the crabs of the Chesapeake Bay,

But I don’t want to break into that right now.

Wait, this is a show about language.

What else are we going to do?

It’s not here, where?

They got some crazy terms.

Some of them are pretty descriptive.

If they weren’t sure if the flesh inside of a crab was hard enough to be a market crab,

They’d break one of his small legs, and if it came out like it’s a gooey film, he was known as a snot.

Oh, yeah.

I’ve heard that one.

Absolutely.

Oh, yeah.

So it’s some great terms.

It’s all around, and the life cycle is when they mate, and when they mate, they’re called a buck and a rider.

The male is the buck, and the rider is the female.

Because the male has to hold the female while she loses her shell.

Her exoskeleton, because they’re called doublers then, and they’re cannibalistic.

And it’s the only time the male can mate with the female.

Yeah, see, she needs protection then, and she’s just a soft piece of meat.

They can’t mate when they’re in their hard shell.

So then there’s a whole vocabulary of what goes on with the female and the male,

And the change in the shell, and then there’s a market vocabulary that goes with the soft crab.

It’s really, really interesting.

Well, now, wait, they’re cannibalistic?

Did you say? If you’re a soft crab in the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay or on the seaside,

Yep, you’re nothing but meat. Wow. And anything out there, including another crab, except for the

Male, except for the buck, who’s got you kind of cradled in his legs and he’s got his pinchers out

There in front of him to defend him, defend both of you while he’s mating with you. That’s very

Descriptive. I’ve learned something new every day. This is a family show, but thanks for that.

You’re reminding me of a different term, which I don’t think is related, but Bacrum is a term for a crab that is molted whose new shell has hardened, right?

She sheds.

Now she’s lost all of her exoskeletons.

They mate.

Now she’s a soft crab.

And then they got the vocabulary that goes with that.

And that’s primarily based on the grade of the crab and, you know, who they can sell them to.

And she’ll stay soft as long as you keep her out of the water.

But as soon as you put her in the water, she starts to harden up.

And first she becomes a paper.

And then she becomes a buckram.

I think buckram is like a kind of canvas or something.

That’s right.

It’s kind of a double-layered stiff fabric sometimes used for hat making or book binding,

Kind of held together with glue.

But, yeah, it’s a stiff fabric.

And so the shell probably reminded people of that.

I got to say, Rod, this is all incredibly fascinating.

I think I’m in the wrong career.

Thank you for spending so much time with us and sharing your knowledge.

This is great.

Oh, you’re welcome. Yeah, dig into it. Come visit.

All right. Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

And if you’ve got a field that you work in that’s got this wealth of language,

Hey, give us a call, tell us all about it, and we’ll share it with the world.

877-929-9673.

Or explain it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We received an email from Eleanor Hubbard on Martha’s Vineyard, and she writes,

On a recent Sunday morning, our son called from Boston to check on his parents quarantined at home on Martha’s Vineyard.

In the course of the conversation, he asked what I was going to do now that my art exhibit had been canceled.

I’ll just spend a month in my studio navel-gazing, said I, and chattered on.

Not one to skip a beat, he immediately chimed in with,

What? Navel-gazing?

Mom, what are you talking about? What is navel-gazing?

And Eleanor explained it as being wrapped up in feelings and thoughts of the self,

And then she suggested that they research the etymology and call us about it.

And Grant, I’m so glad she did, because that gives us the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite words from medieval Greek.

The fancy name for it?

Yeah.

Wait, so you get to talk about the classics and a Greek etymology, and you’re excited.

Okay, let her rip.

Surprise, surprise.

Light those firecrackers.

Throw the gasoline on the fire.

Thank you, Eleanor.

Well, the word that I got so excited about in Greek is omphaloxikoi, which is a sarcastic term for medieval monks in Greece who did a lot of mystical contemplation in a position that made it look like they were gazing at their navels.

Maybe they were gazing at their navels.

That was a sarcastic term in the 14th century.

And it’s a cool term because the omphalos is a word that means belly button or navel.

Related to Latin umbilicus, and the sukoi, the psyche, has to do with spirit, so omphalopsukoi.

And a version of this jocular term found its way into English in the mid-1800s as omphalopsikite,

O-M-P-H-A-L-O-P-S-Y-C-H-I-T-E, omphalopsikite, which means somebody who stares fixedly at his

Navel in order to induce a mystical trance. And the word you may be thinking of, Grant, also is

Omphiloskepsis. That’s right, yeah. Yeah, which was an early 20th century joking word for that

Practice. And later on, we got the words navel contemplator and navel gazer and navel gazing.

But what preceded them was omphiloskepsis. That’s outstanding. Now, there may be an origin

For both navel contemplator and navel gazing.

There is a book by Robert Vaughn from 1857

Called Hours with the Mystics,

Where he talks about the holy monasteries

Of Mount Athos in Greece.

And he talks about these mystics

With their chins on their chest,

Centering their minds on their hearts,

Searching for an inward divine glory for days on end.

And he uses the phrase navel contemplators,

But he also uses the phrase gazing at their navels.

So it’s possible that if people read that, that was the origin after some switcheroo of navel gazing.

But that’s the mid-1800s that you were talking about.

Yeah.

This idea of assuming a certain position to try to get yourself into a mystical trance,

I mean, it really goes back to Hebrew scripture and the book of Kings,

Where Elijah puts his head between his knees to pray.

That’s outstanding.

Eleanor has an inquisitive mind.

Tell us about your life and the words you’ve come across and the things that you want to discover and share with us.

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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 1971, a new public library opened in Troy, Michigan.

To celebrate, the children’s librarian, a woman named Marguerite Hart, wrote to famous authors and artists and musicians and others,

Asking them to write to the children of Troy, both to congratulate them on this milestone

And to extol the benefits of their new library. One of the responses she received was from E.B.

White, the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, and I wanted to share that with you.

Dear children of Troy, your librarian has asked me to write telling you what a library can mean

To you. A library is many things. It’s a place to go to get in out of the rain. It’s a place to go

If you want to sit and think. But particularly, it is a place where books live and where you can get

In touch with other people and other thoughts through books. If you want to find out about

Something, the information is in the reference books, the dictionaries, the encyclopedias,

The atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go. Books hold most of the

Secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you’re reading a book,

You and the author are alone together, just the two of you. A library is a good place to go when

You feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a

Good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have

Your question answered. Books are good company in sad times and happy times, for books are people.

People who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

Signed, E.B. White. How about that, Grant? That’s lovely. And just for background for anyone who

Doesn’t remember, E.B. White was one of the names on Strunk and White’s writing guide, right?

Oh, that’s right. I forgot about that part.

But also the author of…

Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little. I found this and a whole lot of other really cool letters

At lettersofnote.com. It’s a collection of letters from throughout history compiled by

Sean Usher, who has also published several compilations of this correspondence back and

Forth between historical figures, some people that you wouldn’t know, some people that you would,

But all the letters are really fascinating to read. That’s at lettersofnote.com.

And I love that letter in particular. I’m glad that you chose it. And you know that you’ve seen

Me give speeches about this when you and I are on the road and talking to our listeners and to

Communities and groups about how I feel in some way that libraries saved me or even rescued me

From what I think would have been a different life, maybe not as a good one, because they gave

Me exactly the opportunities that he’s talking about. In a poor community, they gave me books,

They gave me learning, they gave me knowledge, they gave me other worlds, other perspectives.

And I absolutely think that it’s still true that libraries are now, and maybe more than they were

When I was a kid, a lifeline for anybody who’s lonely or uneducated or needs help or needs a

Friend or just needs to get out of their own shoes and get into someone else’s.

Call us 877-929-9673 or write us a letter. Our email address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words. Hi, Martha. Yeah, this is Doug Bradley. How are you?

I’m calling you from Madison, Wisconsin.

What can we do for you today?

I’ve got a term that my dad used when I was a young man growing up in Sioux in the 1950s.

And all the interesting words that came into our household were from my mother’s side of the family because he was Albanian and Italian.

And so I got a lot of that.

But my dad, when at one point he was getting promoted in a sales job he had, was having his boss come over for dinner and was really flexy about this.

And everything, all the preparations.

And he kept referring to the guy as a big Mahath.

Big Mahath.

Yeah, Mahath.

I’m guessing it’s M-A-H-O-F-F.

And, you know, I remember I quizzed my mom about this.

I think I even later asked my dad, who sort of blew me off.

But, you know, when this guy came, I thought maybe he’d be regal.

He’d be on a camel and have a special kind of hat on.

I was getting these images of what a Mahath was, but he was just like anybody else.

You know, he was the guy that came over for dinner.

But and it stayed with me for years.

I never did get, you know, my folks have passed away and I never did get back to that story.

And, of course, knowing about your show and loving your show and what you guys are able to do.

I thought, you know, if there’s anybody that can help explain to me what a big Mahath is,

It’s you guys.

So this is in Philadelphia, right?

Yes.

Yep.

It was in southwest Philly.

Yep.

This term is mainly only used in Philadelphia and surrounding areas.

It’s really astonishing.

We have looked at this on the show before, about 10 years ago, but I’ve done some work since then and trying to track this down because it’s one of the great puzzles.

Somebody else who’s looked into it is Mark Bowden.

I think that’s how you say his name, B-O-W-D-E-N,

Who wrote a piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1996.

-huh, that’s our old paper, yeah.

He couldn’t find the origins either, and he asked a bunch of people who would know,

Including some of my colleagues in the dictionary world,

And he got a lot of response from listeners as well, and people had some theories.

But the results were inconclusive.

Nobody really knew where Mahath came from, but everyone agreed it meant a big deal,

Big Cheese. Here’s what we’ve learned since 1996 when Mark published that piece in the Philadelphia

Inquirer. By 1949, Mahaff, with or without The Big, had started appearing regularly in newspapers,

Especially to refer to sports figures. You know, we’ve often talked on the show how when there’s

New language, it often appears in the sports columns first because editors are more likely to

Give sports writers a little more leeway to be colorful and slangy and colloquial.

But in February of 1951, the terms use exploded because on the 19th of that month,

William Weisberg of Philadelphia testified in the congressional hearings before a special

Committee to investigate organized crime in interstate commerce.

I know that’s a fancy title.

So basically, these were mob hearings to figure out what parts of the crime world certain mob members may have controlled and who was in the mob.

And he was asked by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee whether people in Philadelphia called Harry Stromberg, also of Philadelphia, the Big Mahaff.

Now, Stromberg was the name he was born with, but he went by Rosen.

And by all accounts, he was indeed the leading mobster in Philadelphia at the time and absolutely the Big Mahaff.

And Weisberg was his bodyguard and driver.

So this is in Congress.

It was widely broadcast at the time on radio and television.

And it made the headlines.

It was chewed over in the press at some length.

It was on the front pages of newspapers.

I’m talking the word Mahaff itself appeared in headlines on the front pages of newspapers.

And from that point on in 1951, the word’s use exploded.

However, it’s still kind of only stuck in Philadelphia.

So what’s the origin?

That’s what you’re wondering, right?

All this talk, where does it come from?

And the answer, Doug, I’m afraid to say, is nobody knows.

You’re kidding.

But, Doug, I’ve been holding something back.

Okay.

There are four earlier uses of the term I can find between about 1936 and 1940-something in the Philadelphia Inquirer, still in Philadelphia.

And they’re in a column about bridge, the card game.

You’re kidding.

No.

That’s the first place I find the term ever, anywhere.

Yeah.

It’s in a bridge column.

And so it’s a column by Robert Clifton.

He’s the guy who used it repeatedly.

And he even includes it in a glossary with a definition.

And what he writes is Mahaff, noun implying size or potency, equally applicable to Ozzy Jacoby.

I’ll explain that in a second.

A two bid or 70% duplicate score.

Now, I don’t understand contract bridge, but those of you who do may know something about that.

Ozzy Jacoby was one of the most famous contract bridge players of his era.

So anyway, he’s defined this term in 1936.

So why would it pop up in a bridge column?

Was it already in the era of Philadelphia?

Does it come from the bridge world?

We don’t know.

We have no idea.

Oh, my God, that’s so amazing.

And it’s so good of you that’s spelunking to be able to find this.

So the guy, indeed, at least at dinner that night, was a Mahaf of some sort.

But, you know, given my mother’s family, being Italian-Albanian,

They could have been Mahavs too, and I didn’t know it.

But every time this is talked about in newspapers or on our radio show

Or any time it comes up, people always want to bring up the fact

That it sounds a lot like the word maher, M-A-C-H-E-R, in Yiddish,

Which is a kind of bigwig, but sometimes a showy or pretentious bigwig.

But there are a lot of linguistic reasons that that doesn’t really work.

Another theory is that it may come from an Irish phrase,

Mofaska, which means my business.

I’m sorry for the mispronunciation.

I don’t speak Irish.

And what’s interesting about that phrase meaning my business,

It’s a really good parallel to La Cosa Nostra,

Which is another name for the mafia, which means our thing.

And that kind of meaning similarity is really interesting, right?

God, this is so fascinating.

It’s like a whole different journey, a different culture.

I know.

I love it.

I love the big Mahaf.

I love these regional words.

Martha, isn’t it wonderful when they don’t really leave home?

And that’s like, Mahof belongs to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, right?

Right.

It’s a Philadelphia word.

And just so much fun that had you not mentioned where you grew up, we would be on it.

Yeah, if I’d have said Madison, forget it.

But now, you know, given I grew up as a kid in Philly, and that’s where the big Mahofs were.

Yeah, I guess you don’t hear it in Madison, huh?

No.

No, not much.

Keith, you guys, you’re terrific.

Thanks so much.

Yeah, our pleasure, Doug.

Take care of yourself.

You too. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

What do they say where you live?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Monty Belton writes,

I used the phrase too tired to wiggle in an email this week

Had a couple people comment on it.

I assumed it came from my Oklahoma heritage,

And I’ve seen it in letters dating back to 1917,

But I can’t find the origin.

Can you help?

I love that, too tired to wiggle.

And Grant, I couldn’t find much in the way of origins,

But I think it’s probably just literal, right?

Right, yeah, you can’t move.

There’s just no energy left, nothing left to give.

Yeah, it’s like the smallest unit of movement, I guess.

I found it in a 1902 newspaper, but really no good context for it.

But that’s another phrase I’m going to adopt, too tired to wiggle.

I know that feeling.

Yeah, on the spectrum of tired, that’s like right after a sleep.

Right.

Well, we hope you’re not too tired to wiggle a finger and call us, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Tom from Janesville, Wisconsin.

I’ve read a lot of Western novels in the last year by Compton and John Stone and like that.

And they have a term that they use in there that I had never heard before.

And the term is light a shuck.

And it is used in the sense of, you know, let’s get out of here.

Hey, Red, you just killed the sheriff.

Better light a shuck.

And I have no idea what lighting a shuck has to do with getting out of dodge.

-huh.

So getting out of dodge, skedaddle, you light a shuck.

Right.

That’s S-H-U-C-K, like a corn shuck?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Exactly like a corn shuck, as a matter of fact.

Oh, here we go.

Yeah, Tom, you have to think back to time before electricity being widespread

Or think back to time before flashlights.

If you needed to leave someplace quickly, like a cabin or something out on the range,

And go out in the dark, then you had to take your own light with you.

And a quick way to do that would be to grab a corn shuck and stick it in the fire

And use that for a light.

And another expression like that, I don’t know if you’ve run into it, is light a rag.

It’s the same idea.

Interesting.

It is in a lot of dictionaries of cowboy language.

A Dictionary of the American West by Winford Blevins has it.

And so it’s possible these writers of these modern or even the older dictionary stories have those same dictionaries.

They’re plucking cowboy language from them.

So you’re going very far.

You must have had to have a big sack of corn shucks because they can’t burn very long.

Well, that’s one of the things that the dictionaries say that part of the idea is that they do burn so fast.

A dry corn husk is, it doesn’t last very long.

You can twist them and you can actually rub them in the dirt to make them last a little bit longer.

Another dictionary suggests an even broader idea, the speed at which fire travels through a whole field of dry corn stalks, not just a single shuck held in the hand.

And this reminds me, there’s another expression, come to fetch fire, which means if you go someplace to fetch fire, if you go to the neighbors to fetch fire,

It’s another way of saying the person didn’t stay very long.

Oh, you just came to fetch fire.

So you just pop over, you fetch a little fire, light your shuck, and go on home.

I see. Interesting.

So you wouldn’t stay as long as if you came to borrow a cup of sugar.

Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, a lot of times when I’ve seen light a shuck in early newspapers in Backwoods, Virginia, places like that,

Light a Shuck is used more as an order than we’re going to light a shuck.

It’s like to tell somebody to get out of here.

Beat it, kid.

Yeah, beat it.

Yeah, I think Zora Neale Hurston used it that way.

I see.

Well, that explains the use in these Western novels that I’ve been reading.

There’s one more way the cowboys used to say to leave, and that’s one of my favorites.

It says, get out of here and don’t stop for no kissing.

Well, that’s interesting.

Lighting a shuck eventually morphed into kissing.

That’s very interesting.

Call us again sometime, Tom.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling.

I’ll do that.

Thank you very much.

877-929-9673.

I was reading some Carl Sandburg, and he said,

The woman who will kiss and tell is small as the little end of nothing.

And I thought that was such a cool expression to describe someone who’s really small.

Small is the little end of nothing.

But it turns out that he didn’t come up with that expression, small as the little end of nothing.

Oh, no? Has that got some legs to it, some life to it?

It definitely has legs to it.

In fact, I started digging on it, and I saw a lot of elaborations on it,

Including one from a newspaper in 1826 that was small as the little end of nothing whittled off to a point.

How about that?

That’s small.

Well, in the Sandberg piece, you say that it’s about a woman who kisses and tells,

And so she might be somebody who’s not trustworthy, right?

Yeah, it’s interesting that you bring that up because I’ve seen a lot of uses of small as the little end of nothing

Referring to somebody’s character, you know, not very trustworthy.

But it’s also been used to suggest something that’s just really tiny.

You know, maybe the runt of a litter or something.

Small is the little end of nothing.

Yeah, calling someone small in character reminds me of calling someone a little man,

Which is a way of referring to their masculinity, of course,

But also a way of talking about they’re not big of heart and big of spirit and big in generosity.

Small as the little end of nothing whittled off to a point.

I mean, you can’t get any smaller than that.

That’s minute.

That’s an atom.

Yeah.

Talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine,

Editor Tim Felten,

And production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler.

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At waywordradio.org.

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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.