Nerd vs. Geek

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You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Recently, a friend of mine ran a marathon, and I was really proud of her, but it also got me to thinking, not about running a marathon myself.

God forbid you should run the marathon.

It got me thinking, Grant, of course, about toponyms.

Oh, oh, I think I know where you’re going.

Yeah, I bet you do.

I’m going about 26.2 miles to the origin of the word marathon, which goes back to the story of the ancient Greeks defeating the Persians at the town of Marathon in ancient Greece.

And they dispatched a messenger to Athens to spread the good news, and he ran a long way to get there before announcing it.

And I was thinking about toponyms and the fact that the Greek word topos means place, and that’s where we get the word for that kind of thing.

And then I started thinking, because you have to do something while you’re waiting for your friend to finish a marathon, I started thinking about the fact that had she run that marathon in a paisley bikini, we’d have even more toponyms to talk about.

Very good, very good. The brain is always working.

Always working.

Because Paisley is the name of a town in Scotland.

Right, a textile center.

And then Bikini goes back to Bikini Atoll, that island in the Pacific.

Where they did the nuclear test.

Right, in 1946.

And this was huge news.

And this French guy designed this skimpy swimsuit and called it l’atom, you know, the atom.

But then one of his competitors made an even smaller swimsuit and called it the bikini.

And at the time, it wasn’t a big success, but later it became one.

So, you know, when Baywatch comes on, that’s the kind of thing I think about.

Oh, toponyms.

Oh, toponyms. Very good.

Not those kinds of tops. No.

We’ll put a list of toponyms on the website.

A surprising number come from textiles and clothing.

Yes.

You can send us your favorite toponyms or make up some new ones.

Send them to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sheena, director from Bowling Green.

Hi, Sheena, from Bowling Green, Kentucky or Ohio?

Ohio.

Ohio, all right.

Bowling Green, Ohio.

Well, welcome to the program, Sheena.

What’s going on?

Well, basically, I had a question about sort of nerddom.

I’m teaching a course at Bowling Green this semester, actually next semester, on gender, gaming, and nerd culture.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I’m excited to teach it, and the students seem to be excited too, but I was wondering, I’ve seen charts and I’ve read essays and I’ve heard a lot of debate from people identifying as nerds and geeks and not.

If you could sort of figure out a way that I could talk to my students about the difference between sort of geek and nerd.

Like, where do these words come from? Are they like really different as far as the way that we define them?

Because I can’t really find a specific way to define them or differentiate.

Martha’s a nerd and I’m a geek.

I was going to say.

Actually, I would agree with that.

I would agree.

Oh, you would?

No, Sheena, you probably have some preconceptions about what the differences are.

Yeah, what do you think?

Well, I mean, I struggle with it a little bit.

I think geek tends to be sort of skewed more toward technology and gaming.

And a nerd is just somebody who is perhaps more, like, bookish or a little bit more awkward.

But that’s probably because I identify as a geek.

Oh, you do?

I do, I think so.

Okay, you’re a little more techie than a nerd.

Yeah, I think a little bit.

Yeah, that’s interesting.

It jibes pretty well with my understanding of geek and nerd.

And I know this argument has been going on basically as long as the Internet has been a thing.

But in my world, a geek is somebody who has highly specific technical knowledge about something, some particular facet of a computer system or some particular part of the pop culture world or some particular just they have a discipline.

It could even be an insurance geek who just, you know, they know their actuarial tables like inside and out.

They probably have stock options too, right?

Probably, yes.

And they should become my friends and give me advice.

And then a nerd, on the other hand, is somebody who may also be a geek, but they have this inability to express themselves and to relate.

And they have kind of this social dysfunction every time they speak up or try to do something or try to crack a joke or try to be a part of the in crowd.

Wait a minute.

You said I’m a nerd?

Wait.

I was kidding.

It was a joke.

No, I would say I am a nerd, but it’s more, you just have sort of an unusual, outside-the-box interest in this or that thing.

And maybe you’re maybe a little bit socially awkward, or you can’t figure out how to work the microwave, but you’re really good on medieval history or something.

So you’re describing what the British would call an eccentric.

I don’t know. Sheena, what do you think?

I think I’m sort of leaning more towards Grant’s way of viewing it.

I’m a little worried that the course is called nerd culture now.

Maybe it should be geek culture.

But, yeah, I think sort of that makes a little bit more sense to me.

Well, you said you looked at charts.

Yeah, there’s one online.

And, I mean, it came from, like, one of the comics websites.

But they have a whole Venn diagram showing, like, the intersections.

And, like, the worst thing you could be is in the middle.

And it’s a, I think it’s a dork.

It’s a nerd in the middle.

I’ve seen this Venn diagram.

Oh, maybe it is a nerd.

Yeah.

So it’s the intersection of nerd and geek and dork?

Yeah, yeah.

So there’s intelligence in one circle and social ineptitude in another and then obsession in another.

And nerd is at the intersection of all three of these.

And it’s not a happy combination, right?

I read it that way, but I want to say there’s something endearing about nerddom and nerd culture.

Thank you.

I have to say that, but I know people who call themselves things like a food geek or a fashion geek or people who call themselves an Apple geek.

Not an Apple fanboy.

Word nerds.

I mean, people owned just the way that gay people in America can own the word queer.

Right.

And black folks can own the N-word.

Right.

People own.

It’s obviously got a less potency.

But they can own geek and they can own nerd and say, I am indeed a nerd for this thing, which I feel strongly about.

Yeah.

And by the way, there’s a great discussion about this on Metafilter.

Did you find that in your research?

I haven’t found that.

I’ll check it out.

Yeah.

Metafilter is an online forum where people can ask questions.

Where geeks hang out.

Geeks hang out.

Oh, yeah.

I know Metafilter.

Sure.

Okay.

Very good.

And they have a great discussion.

It’s a few years old.

But a lot of the arguments there are still strong and still relevant, and they still can ring true for you if you’re having this.

Basically, what you’ve done here is set out your first day’s work in class, right?

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah, exactly.

Because the kids will speak up.

They’ll definitely have opinions on this.

Oh, yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

I mean, fashion geek.

Who would have thought that fashion people would think of themselves as geeks?

But they have an interest.

They are strong in that interest.

They evangelize it, even.

And so that’s what geekdom is about to them.

And I think that’s relatively recent, isn’t it, Grant?

I mean, ever since I heard Geek Chic, and you started realizing that all these geeks were making all this money in Silicon Valley.

And, you know, I mean, Bill Gates used to be really nerdy, and now he’s a geek.

Oh, do you think that’s what it is?

The rise of the computer era made these terms take more power?

I do.

What do you think, Sheena?

I think so.

I mean, there are way more geeks in, you know, popular culture now.

Like, there’s the Big Bang Theory, and those are, I mean, if not even nerds.

Oh, the television, yeah.

But people love that show, so.

Yeah, so you would call them geeks rather than nerds?

Some of them.

I think Shelton, the one who’s incredibly socially awkward, I think he would be a hardcore nerd.

But I think the rest of them, people identify them as geeks.

Sheena, we’d be interested in hearing when your class starts what your students come up with.

Definitely.

Well, I’ll be playing this for them, so hopefully we’ll get some interesting stuff.

Excellent.

I’ll get them back to you.

Sheena, thank you for calling.

I hope we helped some.

Thanks so much.

You did help a lot.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Tell us what you think about nerd and geek.

1-877-929-9673, or send those emails to the nerd and geek here at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Joseph from downtown San Diego.

Well, Joseph, welcome to the program. How can we help you?

Well, I was up in, took a trip up to southern Oregon.

I went up to, actually up to Crater Lake in that area.

And we went to this little town that was the closest to where we were staying.

And it was like, you know, one road in, one road out, and I needed gas.

So I asked the attendant, I says, you know, where’s your favorite place to eat?

And he said, and there were like three restaurants.

And he said, well, I like the pizza place.

He says, but there’s another place that’s the local hangout.

And he says, there’s another restaurant that’s in the hotel.

He said, but that’s kind of spendy.

And I didn’t know if it was a malaprop or if he meant to say expensive or pricey, but it came out spendy.

And I said, I like that word.

So I’ve included it now in my vocabulary whenever the occasion arises.

Nice.

So he meant that it was expensive.

Yes, yes.

Joseph, I’m jealous because I have never heard that term in the wild.

But you know about it from books.

I know about it from books.

Sort of the story of my life.

When a man has certain feelings for a woman, Martha.

I read about that.

So, Spindy, so this was new to you, Joseph.

You were in Oregon, and the person you were talking to was from Oregon?

Yeah, yeah.

He was the, I guess he owned or was the manager at the local gas station.

There was only one station there, and I needed to, because we were in the middle of nowhere up there.

So, Grant, you’re familiar with this term.

But kind of like you from books, but also it seems that when I meet people from Portland

And we begin to talk about this show and my dictionary work and so forth.

This is a word they bring up because they know that it’s special.

This word, Joseph, is particularly common to the Northwest, Washington and Oregon and up in that area. Although it’s been reported across the country for more than 100 years, it just somehow is associated with that part of this continent.

Oh, okay. I lived up in Portland in the mid-70s.

Oh, you did? I never remember hearing it up at that time.

Yes. So Idaho and Oregon and Washington State and maybe even as far north as Alaska and, of course, western Canada, you’re more likely to hear spendy.

Yeah. And the word’s been around for 100 years or so. Originally, it meant extravagant, like that person is spendy. He’s spending money all over the place. But then over time, it came to mean specifically something that’s really expensive or dear, as they would say in England.

This is one of those words that has the potential to be used commonly and frequently by everyone because it makes perfect sense. Especially now.

Yeah, the level of spendy has changed a little bit. The spendy line is going way down.

The spendy line. I love that. If the government reported today, the spendy line was about two points.

I like that. That’s funny. Joseph, thanks for calling and sharing your story.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Have you traveled to a different part of the country and heard a word that just doesn’t make sense? We can probably help you with that. 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, do you remember the program where we took the call about the pronunciation of the word schedule as skedooly?

Oh, yeah. How could I forget? We got so much email about that. Lots of email, lots of phone calls. A lot of people had some interesting stuff to say. Reports came in from all over the country.

A number of people thought it had something to do with German, although they didn’t exactly say what. And a number of people, like Eleanor of La Mesa, California, thought it had something to do with a comedian, maybe in the 1950s or somebody who had a television show, who used that pronunciation as part of a comedy routine.

Okay, that was an intentional mispronunciation. We weren’t able to track that down. We weren’t able to prove that. But if you have some information along those lines, and more than one person suggested that, we’d welcome it.

A name. Who could this person have been? Jesse called from San Diego to tell us that his grandfather started saying Skiduli during World War II when he was stationed in Burma. And he debated with the British officers over the pronunciation of the word.

Of course, the British say schedule and Americans tend to say schedule. And Jesse says that his grandfather claims that they settled on Skiduli as the compromise. So we won as opposed to Shiduli.

If you’ve got more to say about the pronunciation of Skidooly, let us know. 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

In just a moment, it’s a puzzle. Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And on the line, direct from New York City, is that master quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

Hi, it’s me.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, John.

I have a very nice quiz for you guys here. I call it Repeat After Me.

Oh.

Okay.

It’s a simple quiz. I’ll give you a clue to a two-word phrase or a hyphenated word in which both halves are the same.

Okay?

Okay.

For example, what’s a hyphenate that means going beyond the bounds of convention, good taste, or common sense?

Tutu?

Yes.

Very good.

Another way is…

T-O-O.

T-O-O dash T-O-O.

Right.

Tutu.

Okay.

Very good.

Very good.

In other words, la-di-da.

Tutu.

Now, how about the name of a volcanic island of French Polynesia in the leeward group of the Society Islands?

Is that Bora Bora?

No.

Yes.

That is Bora Bora.

Oh, it is?

Yes.

Why wouldn’t it be Bora Bora in the South Pacific?

Wait.

That was…

Never mind.

You’re doing all right.

We haven’t even started.

Okay.

Let’s begin with the first clue.

Okay.

Quite simple.

A nautical affirmative.

Aye-aye.

Aye-aye.

Aye-aye.

There you go.

All right.

Let’s see if we can get the next one.

A Latin American ballroom dance.

It’s not tango.

It must be cha-cha.

It is cha-cha.

It’s cha-cha.

Very good, Martha.

How about an adjective used to describe something that is secret or confidential?

Hush, hush.

Yes, hush, hush.

Here’s another one.

Fussy or showy dress or ornamentation?

Fru-fru.

Fru-fru, yes.

You know, sometimes your frou-frou is too-too.

The name of this food fish is Hawaiian for very strong.

Mahi-mahi.

Mahi-mahi.

Anybody like mahi-mahi here?

I find it so-so.

Oh, nice one.

How about this one?

I think it’s a little harder.

Any of a genus of small antelopes of eastern and southern Africa having an elongated snout?

Grant has it.

No, I don’t.

Actually, it got to the elongated snout.

Wow.

Oh, sure.

Dick Dick was what I was going to say.

It is Dick Dick.

Oh, it is.

Okay.

Sure it is.

Very good.

Apparently it hasn’t elongated snow.

Not that I’ve seen one recently.

This well-known facility bears the original name of the New York town where it’s located.

Sing Sing?

Yes.

The facility is a prison and the town’s original name comes from the Native American Sing Sing, meaning stone on stone.

And maybe you know the name of the town that it’s what it’s called now?

Ossining.

Ossining.

Ossining, right.

Ossining, New York, upstate.

Here’s another one.

How about a vehicle such as a boat that is operated by a small gasoline engine?

Putt-putt.

Putt-putt.

Very good.

Good.

How about an amulet or incantation used chiefly by people of African ancestry?

Juju.

All right.

No.

No?

That’s sort of a word for magic in general.

I’m looking for something a little different.

It’s not clicking for me.

Tiki, no.

I don’t know.

What is it?

It’s gris-gris.

Oh, gris-gris.

G-R-I-S.

G-R-I-S.

Interesting.

Learning all kinds of new stuff here.

All right.

How about an expression used to indicate agreement with someone who is speaking?

-huh.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

I was going to say it.

Right, right.

Let’s say we’re in parliament right now.

Here, here.

There you go.

Can you spell it for me, please?

H-E-A-R.

That’s right.

H-E-A-R.

H-E-A-R.

On that note, I’m going to let you guys go.

I think you did a great job, actually, on repeating after me on most of them.

You flatter us.

Here, here.

But thank you for coming up with a clever quiz that stumped us and our listeners, I’m sure.

Thank you very much.

I’ll see you next time.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All right.

If you have a question about wordplay, language, grammar, slang, regional dialects, reduplications, you can always call us at 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ryan calling from San Diego, California.

Hi, Ryan. Welcome to the program.

Hi, how are you guys doing today?

Super. What can we help you with?

I am calling. I’m a Marine station at Camp Pendleton.

And I have been over to Iraq a few times.

And each time we’re over there on the Ford operating bases, we have a lot of Ugandan security personnel.

And they have this greeting that has kind of become a playful term of endearment for Marines who have been in that area.

I don’t know how it’s spelled, but the way they say it is Yombo, kind of like Y-A-M-B-O.

And to our understanding, it just means, hey, you know, hello, good day, that kind of thing.

But to be honest, I don’t know anybody who knows the exact meaning of it, and nobody really knows the root language of it.

But it’s become one of those things you’re walking around a base and you hear somebody say Yombo, and you immediately know, hey, they’ve been deployed to central Iraq.

Oh, that’s really interesting.

So the Ugandan peacekeepers stationed there alongside the Americans just passed along this little bit of language.

Oh, yeah.

And it’s, like I said, you know, the Americans don’t fully understand the meaning of it, but our comprehension is good day, hello, that kind of thing.

We could be driving past the checkpoint and see them, and we’ll hollow out Yombo, and you’ll get 20 or 30 Ugandans right back, Yombo, sir, Yombo.

That’s great.

That’s really nice.

So you’re hoping it’s not like a dirty word or something?

Yeah.

Well, you know, basically before we continue to spread it and teach the new guys coming into the core about it, we want to make sure that it’s not something other than good day or hello or anything like that.

-huh.

Well, great.

Well, we can help you with that because that’s exactly what it means.

It’s just hello.

It’s just a greeting.

It’s a great informal way to say hello.

It is perfectly fine.

Oh, that’s wonderful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s Swahili or Kiswahili as they call it, which is spoken in a lot of Eastern Africa.

And literally, as I understand it, it means thing or matter or problem is the literal meaning of it.

But when you use it to greet somebody, it’s just a plain old greeting.

You know, it’s like, what’s the thing going on with you? What’s matter?

So it’s kind of like Kipasa or Kipasa, right?

Yeah, what’s going on?

What up?

Very good.

What up?

All right.

Well, yeah, that’s great.

Then we will just continue to utilize that term as we do now and have it be something lighthearted and playful.

I love the idea that decades from now that this word will still be in the language of the Marine Corps.

It definitely will.

That is way cool. Way cool.

Ryan, thank you so much for calling us today.

Hey, not a problem. Thanks for having me.

All right. Best of luck.

All right. Bye.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Well, what do they do in your workplace?

Perhaps it’s not a loud military base, but give us a call nonetheless.

877-929-9673.

Or share your workplace language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi.

Francesca from San Diego.

Hi, Francesca.

Hi.

So I teach high school English, and a question arose that, actually my question is in two parts.

So my students read Jane Eyre last year, and in some moments in the novel, a character will start to speak in French, and it’s not translated into English.

You just have a direct French translation.

And my students were wondering if there’s a literary term for that.

And so that was the first part of my question, if there’s a term for that transition into a foreign language.

And then my second question was, it got me thinking about foreign languages and how we use certain terms in English.

Sorry, I’m in the middle of class.

Oh, you are?

Yeah.

Is your class listening in?

They are.

They’re standing here attentively and excitedly waiting.

They’re standing?

You make them stand?

On one leg.

They’re standing.

Well, they’re actually waiting to transition into another class.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

I see.

Hi, class.

They said hi.

Whoa.

What do you have, 120 in that class?

Do you teach a stadium?

No.

They’re one of those little microphones?

No.

I teach at the Academy of Our Lady of Peace.

It’s an all-girls school.

Oh, fantastic.

Yeah.

What a lot of enthusiasm there.

A lot of enthusiasm indeed.

So the question about Jane Eyre and the use of French, what did you tell them?

I said I didn’t know.

So the French isn’t translated at all?

Well, in the edition I have, at the bottom there’s an English translation.

Oh, thank goodness.

But that’s the student version, right, for the people who are studying the book?

Right.

Because there are whole sentences in Jane Eyre.

Yeah, and what year was that published?

Ooh, I don’t have it with me.

But even if we don’t have the exact date, we can be pretty sure that this is a period that when any lady of sophistication or any young woman who hoped to better herself in the world had French.

She knew it.

And it was probably pretty standard that the audience for this book understood that French with no question.

And so it wasn’t even really a pretension so much.

I mean, clearly within the book, she’s putting on a little bit of airs, right?

Right.

There’s a little bit of that happening.

But as far as the us, those of us who are reading this book, the author expected that we would get it and that we would understand it.

And it’s only to the modern eye where French isn’t taught as widely that it really is kind of a problem.

Right. Is there a term for that, for inserting another language into a text like that?

Well, if it’s adopted fully, if it’s probably a word or a phrase that’s adopted fully into English, it’s just a foreignism.

Otherwise, it’s just simply a kind of code switching where she’s switching from one language to another because she feels that the purpose is better served by speaking this other language.

So you’re saying it’s not dialogue.

It’s her observation, the author’s observation.

Oh, it is dialogue.

It’s dialogue.

Okay.

She feels in the book, the character feels as if she can only express herself fully in this other language.

And so she does.

Okay.

Because there is a French little girl in the novel, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, and so that got me thinking actually about another question that had to do with foreign languages.

We were talking in my class about words that we use in English, but we don’t translate them from the original words like rendezvous or schadenfreude.

And is there a term for doing that?

Is there a reason why we do that, or is there even a term for that practice of using a word, not translating it into English?

Well, I’m going to get the quote wrong, but there’s a famous quote that’s been making the rounds for a couple of years that English is a language that’s a thief.

It rifles through the pockets of other languages and steals their better words.

And English does do that.

And like I said, the word that I used before is the same word for this.

These are foreignisms.

We borrow them into English because we feel that our language is not doing the job.

Right.

And they’ll take on a meaning that’s very close to the original language but not quite the same.

And it just becomes English.

We stop italicizing it.

We don’t set it apart in any way.

We all just learn it.

And this is the way that English was built.

How about loanwords?

Is that a different term?

Lonewords as well.

Lonewords are when they haven’t been fully anglicized and they have not been fully acclimated into English.

And so we’re probably still likely to italicize them or still likely to treat them somehow different.

Maybe even put them in quotes to show that we’re borrowing them.

Or we’ll explain them in the text.

Okay.

So foreignisms and loanwords.

Sounds good.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Well, it’s our pleasure.

Tell your students that we’re glad to have them along,

And they should give us a listen sometime.

They’d like you to listen sometime.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

They are.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Best of luck to you.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Wow.

I love when hardworking teachers putting old heads on young shoulders give us a call.

That’s great.

I love that expression.

I love that.

Yeah.

Miss Jean Brody.

What’s your question about a book that you’re reading or a class that you’re teaching or a class that you’re taking?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, a while back we were talking about crazy crossword puzzle clues, and we’ve got one in email from Nancy Moses.

She says this one is 12 letters, and the clue is camel’s nemesis.

12 letters, camel’s nemesis?

Whiplash? I don’t know. That’s eight.

That’s not enough.

Okay, it’s three words, 12 letters.

Camel’s nemesis.

I don’t know. What would that be?

The last straw.

Very nice. Very nice.

Send us your crazy crossword clues and questions.

Words@waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. This is Daryl Van Dyke from Coppell,

Texas. I was driving recently up in New England and was listening to NPR stations, of course,

And I heard a local station describe people from Maine as being Mainers, and it just sounded odd.

I don’t know why it just struck me as odd. And then I got to thinking through my head about

What are people called from other states?

So I started running through all the state names in my head,

And there were some I could name and some I had not a clue.

And then when I came back to my house, I started doing some research

And found out, like, in the U.S. States, 24 have a derivative from some type of Indian name,

And the rest are French derivatives and English and Latin.

And I was looking for some rule that would say, okay, if you’re from Texas, you add this to the end of it.

If you’re from Illinois, it ends in an ass, add this.

And I couldn’t come up with any type of a rule because names are all over the map.

Literally, yeah.

So I’m curious.

Hey, Daryl, how about seven rules?

Seven?

Well, wait a second.

Explain Maynard to me a second.

I thought they were called Downeasters.

They’re probably called that as well.

Oh, are they? Okay. I didn’t know.

I don’t know. What’s the more standard term?

I thought it was Manor.

And so you heard Manor on the radio?

Yes.

Okay. Because there are a few states where one of the names for the person from that state doesn’t sound so fantastic.

Like you’re from Connecticut. Are you a Connecticut-?

It doesn’t sound good, so they call themselves nutmeggers usually, or at least in the papers.

Well, I wasn’t kidding about the seven rules.

I think there are at least seven rules for naming people from different states.

Like, for example, if the place name ends in A or I-A, then you add an N, like Alaska or California.

If it ends in, say, O-N, then you add I-A-N.

And there’s a whole list of rules like this.

And Utah is weird because it ends in a consonant, but it’s a vowel sound.

So throwing an N on the N makes sense out loud, but maybe it looks a little odd in print.

Right.

There are two spellings, by the way, for that.

For the Utah?

Yeah, yeah.

Daryl, sometimes they put just an N and sometimes it’s U-T-A-H-A-N.

Right, right.

But the preferred one is U-T-A-H-N.

Yeah.

There are a lot of those.

If it ends in an O, you’re supposed to add an A-N like Chicago and Chicagoan.

That makes sense.

Colorado.

If it ends in a silent E, you’re supposed to add I-T-E or E-R.

So Maine and Mainer.

Okay, very good.

So they go on and on.

You know, I was curious about people from Phoenix.

Do they really call themselves Phoenicians?

I believe they do.

That’s what this, I’m looking at a list of these words, and that’s what they call them.

Daryl, we’ll post these rules on our site and links to a few other sources.

The best book for this, and we’ve talked about this before, is Paul Dixon’s book, Labels for Locals.

There’s a relatively new edition.

I think it came out last year.

And he has terms for people from every state, all the nations, many of the cities, a lot of other regional names.

And he just kind of nails it and talks about the debates and the alternatives and the variety that you can get there.

Because sometimes what the locals call themselves is not the same as what the Associated Press might prefer to call them.

Exactly. Or the term in legal language as well.

Yeah, or the term in legal language. It’s sometimes a disagreement there.

So it’s a great book. We’ll link to it and put a couple other things up as well.

That is great. That’s very helpful.

And I can’t wait to get my hands on it and read it.

All right.

Excellent.

Super duper.

It would be great for another long drive, right?

It would be.

Darrell, thanks for calling.

It’s been great.

Thank you very much.

Our pleasure.

Take care.

I guess he’s a capelian.

A capelian.

He’s a Texan above all.

Don’t forget.

That’s right.

Don’t mess with him.

What do they call people where you’re from?

The nice things.

877-929-9673.

Or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, I’m still collecting words of the year.

Yes.

I’ve got a few here for you.

Tell me what you think of this.

These aren’t very fun, but, you know, the Great Recession, which was on last year’s list, has generated some more language.

Double dip, you’ve heard this?

Sure, sure.

Double dip recession.

Right, not just ice cream anymore.

No, it’s not.

It’s not when you’re taking two salaries either.

It’s when you’ve got that first U dip in the economy, whenever all the numbers seem down, and it kind of picks up a little bit, and you think it’s going to be okay, and then it does another dip, right?

Unexpected turn on the roller coaster, and out comes lunch.

Another term that goes along with that is quantitative easing.

Quantitative easing.

It’s all over the media.

You probably heard it on NPR, top of the hour, right?

Quantitative easing.

Basically, this is where the government buys its own bonds in order to put more cash into the economy.

Oh, that doesn’t sound right.

Well, economists know, right?

Surely they know what they’re doing.

Send us your words of the year to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call on the telephone, 877-929-9673.

Coming up next on A Way with Words, our recommendations for irresistible books about language.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, I’ve been thinking about giving books as gifts.

If you know me, that’s all you get.

Right.

I mean, you might get a ticket.

Pamphlets.

If I really love you, you might get a ticket to Paris, but probably not. You’re going to get books.

And so I’ve got a stack of books at home.

I’m looking at these and figuring out who gets what and how many copies I need to buy.

And a few of them kind of rose to the top, and I thought I’d share those.

At the top of my stack is this book called Through the Language Glass.

It’s by Guy Deutscher.

That’s D-E-U-T-S-C-H-E-R.

And the subtitle is Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages.

And this is a book where he takes the latest research in theory in linguistics and language,

And he explains it in a way that’s comprehensible to the layperson.

He talks about the interplay between people.

He talks about field research.

He talks about how the brain works.

Really interesting stuff.

And I would recommend this for anyone who isn’t necessarily a professional that’s interested in language, but has a strong interest in it.

And again, that’s Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher.

Also, I got this great little book.

I think I’ve also mentioned this before.

OK.

That’s all it’s called.

OK.

It’s about the word OK.

It’s by Alan Metcalf.

He summarizes what we know about the true origins of that great Americanism, OK.

One of our greatest exports ever.

It really is.

And the crazy thing is there’s all of these wrong theories, but the right theories about the origins of OK are actually really incredibly interesting.

So he’s got it all here in this book.

This is by Alan Metcalf.

Very readable.

And then the third one, this is, I’d say, a juvenile book.

This is for, say, 11-year-olds, maybe through 15-year-olds.

This is called Lost in Lexicon.

It’s by Pendrid Noyce.

And this is a kid’s book.

It’s a story about children who go missing in the land of lexicon.

And then the two heroes of the story, through their understanding of language, save the day.

It’s not too didactic.

It’s got some real instruction kind of hidden in this narrative.

And I think it really works.

And that’s Lost in Lexicon by Pendrid Noyce.

N-O-Y-C-E.

Very cool.

Well, Grant, I have a recommendation for you.

Oh, please.

You know, I’m a sucker for books in which someone goes to a foreign country and tries to understand the culture by learning their language.

That’s why I moved to California.

It’s working, isn’t it?

It is working.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I talked on the show before about Dreaming in Hindi, that wonderful book by Katherine Russell Rich.

Yes, yes, I remember this.

Who goes to Indian midlife.

Now I’m reading a book called Dreaming in Chinese, Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language.

This is by Deborah Fallows.

Now she has a PhD in linguistics, and she already spoke five or six languages before she went to China.

Yeah, hot, right?

Well, she went with her husband, the writer James Fallows, to China several years ago.

And her book is a really personal take on their life in China.

And being a linguist, she gets at that largely through trying to understand the language itself.

So you learn all these kinds of great things along the way, like the fact that Chinese has lots and lots of homophones, those similar-sounding words.

And what that means on a practical level is that if a couple is getting married, you would never give them a clock as a wedding present.

Why?

Why?

Because the word for clock sounds an awful lot like the word for end.

So not a very auspicious beginning for a couple.

And you also learn that the Chinese avoid the number four the way we avoid the number 13.

So you’ll go into Chinese high-rises and there won’t be a fourth floor or a 14th floor or a 24th floor.

But they like the number eight.

They love the number eight.

They love the number eight.

But the number four sounds like the word for die.

How cool is that?

So she has all these different chapters on the grammar of romance and why Chinese hear tones and we don’t.

So it’s this great combination of personal memoir but done through the eyes of a linguist who’s struggling to understand a foreign country.

Again, the name of it is Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows.

If you’ve got books to recommend to us or to your fellow listeners, send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Kurt Johnson.

I’m calling from Shelbyville, Indiana, and I had a question about cat butter.

Excuse me?

Cat butter. Cat butter?

Cat butter.

Yeah, it’s the stuff that you have in the corner of your eye when you wake up in the morning.

My mom, growing up, always called it cat butter.

And I have never found even this.

And she’s from Shelbyville also.

And I’ve never found anyone who has used that terminology.

It’s often it’s sleep or eye boogers.

Right, right, yeah.

Those are the ones I know.

But I’ve never heard it referred to as cat butter.

The image I get is of a kitten who’s been sick.

Aww.

Yeah, because they do.

They get the rheumatic eyes or something, right?

If you say so.

Yeah, they have the stuff in the corners there.

And so I assume that that’s where it comes from, but I really have no idea.

Cat butter for sleep in the eyes.

Martha, am I gathering that this is new to you, too?

It’s completely new to me.

Yeah, I’ve never heard of it.

That’s cool, though.

I love it.

Yeah, yeah.

Lots of words for this already, but hey, we can use another one.

Yeah. Kurt, what is your family extraction? German maybe? Central Indiana?

There’s, yeah, my mom’s maiden name was actually boring, as in dull.

So I believe that’s of German origin.

Oh, okay. I just wonder, it sort of sounds German to me, cats and something, but I don’t know.

Well, let’s see what the rest of our listeners have to say about this.

There certainly are a lot of terms for the gunk that’s in the corner of your eyes when you wake up.

Yeah, what do you call it?

Sleep.

In my family, it was always sleep, but I’ve learned some since, like eye boogers, which Kurt also said.

Eye jam.

Eye jam.

Sleepy jacks is an unusual one.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah, sleepy jacks.

That’s kind of, it’s got a catchy sound to it, right?

I like that.

I like that.

An eye gook, or just, some people pluralize it and call it sleeps, the sleeps in the corner of your eye.

Oh, that’s nice.

And then also sleep dust or sleep dirt.

Do you know those?

I’ve heard of sleepy dust.

Sleepy dust.

Okay.

Yeah, and sleepies.

I think we called them sleepies growing up.

I did later learn the term gowned.

It looks like ground but without the R.

That’s right.

That’s sort of a medical term.

You don’t hear it much, but for dry uvies.

G-O-U-N-D.

Yeah.

Very good.

You never used that one, did you, Kurt?

That’s a new one.

I think it’s interesting because it’s one of those things that almost every person, I mean, everybody has them at some point when you wake up, but there’s no standardized word for it.

And I speak Spanish, and I do just one of those little things, and there’s a word in Spanish for it.

La gana or something like that?

Right, la gana.

So it’s standardized down there, but I think at least in American English, there’s no standard word for it.

That’s a really good point.

Well, let’s see what everyone else has to say.

Phone line’s open, 877-929-9673, or send your word for the stuff that’s in the corner of your eyes when you wake up to words@waywordradio.org.

Kurt, thank you for calling today.

Thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Hello, you have A Way with Words?

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Ms. Gallup at Hoover High School.

Oh, fantastic.

Well, we’re always glad to have teachers.

What can we do for you?

Okay, I called you because in teaching my English class, we were working on little sayings.

I think they were called cliches on the sheet we were working on.

One of them said, toe the line.

Now, I know what toe the line is, but my students don’t necessarily know what it is.

So I’m reading it, and it’s T-O-E.

And I said, that’s funny.

In my mind, it would be T-O-W the line.

So I asked my ex-husband, and he said, no, it’s T-O-E.

Step up, put your toe up on the line and speak.

And I said, okay, that works.

But what about towing a line as in towing a car, towing a water steer?

You have to get in line and just move straight ahead and stay where you are.

So which one is it is my question.

Yes, and so the meaning of this is to sort of, what, straighten up and behave?

Yeah, straighten up and fly right, get in line, don’t make a fuss, do what you’re expected to do.

That’s how I read it.

And so that’s why I thought toe was so funny, T-O-E, because I thought, what does a toe have to do with it?

Okay, okay.

Well, you’ll appreciate the fact that toe in this case is a verb.

T-O-E is functioning as a verb.

So if you toe the line, you’re sticking your toes right up to the line, getting right on the mark.

And in fact, toe the line, T-O-E, was a survivor of a whole lot of phrases in the 19th century that were sort of along the same line, so to speak.

Because you could toe the mark or toe the scratch.

Yeah.

And if you take the line out of it, then you stop thinking that something’s being pulled.

Because you can’t really pull on a mark, right?

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

So it’s the idea of just aligning as precisely as you can, really focusing your attention.

So what environments are we talking about?

Where might this come from?

Well, do you have any guesses?

I have radio, maybe?

I don’t know.

Are you kidding?

Early radio? That’s what my husband said. You’ve got to put your toe up on the line.

Well, there is a mark in a lot of acting, including old radio, where you might have a lot of microphones and you need to position on the stage in a certain way so that the stereo effect works.

But yeah, that could be it.

Okay.

But more likely, it’s the military line. You know, you’re at attention and you’re all in a row and you’re beautiful in your regalia and everybody’s perfectly shaped and perfectly formed and the limbs are in the right position, right?

And you’re on a line.

You’re actually down to the centimeter, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or athletics.

Athletics, right.

In a race.

You’re right there at the starting line.

On a track.

You’ve got the blocks, right?

And nobody’s supposed to have an advantage over anyone else.

Right, right.

You’re, in effect, towing the starting line.

Right.

Very good.

I got you.

And so they were right and I was wrong.

But you know what?

The cool thing about this is that with all this great history behind this term and the different context, which it appears,

It doesn’t really matter that you misunderstood because there’s just something new to be learned, and you’re a teacher, and so you can spread the word, right?

I will do that now.

I’m very happy to get that.

And, you know, I did think, well, toe the line actually could be it.

I just needed someone to suggest it to me because I hadn’t thought of it that way.

But I appreciate the idea that it could have something to do with pulling a rope or a cable or something.

When I hear toe the line, even though I know that it’s actually T-O-E, I think of the song Eerie Canal.

I think of the mule sow pulling those barges up the canal, towing the line, literally towing a line.

So I could totally get how that mental image would just pop into your head.

Yeah, and I think that’s what it was, too.

I think there’s a picture in my head of that mule pulling that barge up the canal.

Right, right.

Well, rock on.

Educate those kids well, will you?

I will.

Thank you so much.

Okay, take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, call us from your workplace.

You boss won’t mind.

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

One of the books that I recommended as a gift to people was the book OK by Alan Metcalf.

Right.

And we talked just for a moment about the pervasiveness of this word, right?

Oh, yeah.

Did you know that it was part of the first conversation on the moon?

I’m not surprised.

Yeah, but it’s just so ingrained in English.

Okay is such a part of our language that we speak it and we say it at times that we wouldn’t, you know, we don’t even know that we’re saying it.

It’s like the verb, to be, right?

Anyway, the conversation with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, you know, Armstrong says, shut down, and they turn the engines off.

And then Aldrin says, OK, engine stop.

And it’s just, there it is, that word on the moon.

And I wonder sometimes if the record that they included with, remember the satellites that they sent way out into space?

Was it Voyager with the brass plaque and the photograph record and Nixon’s voice and the music and stuff?

I wonder if the word OK is on there.

If not, we’re going to have to recall it.

Bring it back.

Call us with your questions about language, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Greg Stolze. I’m calling from Aurora, Illinois.

Well, welcome to the program. How can we help you today?

Well, I wrote in with a couple of concepts that I thought needed words to describe them,

And both of which I’ve experienced in my personal life.

One is a repair or upgrade that leaves a device working worse than before.

Yeah, I can relate to that.

I’m thinking of this primarily in terms of computer software where you get the new version

And replace the one that worked just fine with one that doesn’t work as well or at all.

When I wrote in the question, it was before the election,

And, you know, it now occurs to me that there’s probably a, you know, a political aspect to this idea as well.

What do you mean when you elect someone, you oust the incumbent and you put somebody new in office and they actually perform worse than the last guy?

Well, I’m sure that could never, ever happen.

Except in theory.

Democracy is perfect, isn’t it?

Do you have words for this, though?

Oh, no.

If I had coined them myself, I wouldn’t have bothered you with it.

Oh, to share those so we can spread them far and wide.

We do have that capability.

I’ve got nothing.

The idea that when we think we’re going to fix something or, actually, it’s not even just fix.

When we think we’re going to improve it, sometimes it’s a setback.

And, boy, do I know it from the software world.

I bet.

Yeah, Greg, I did IT work for the longest time, and we inevitably called it a downgrade, you know, an unintentional downgrade, but a downgrade nonetheless.

Just, you know, put the new version of Microsoft Office on there.

It’s supposed to do X.

It’s supposed to do Y.

And it turns out it actually takes away A, B, and C and doesn’t do X and Y all that well.

Oh, that’s great.

So it’s an oops grade rather than upgrade, right?

Yeah, something like that.

Very nice.

Yeah, oops grade.

Or maybe we could do something with the root of New Coke or clear beer.

You know, those ideas that just tank.

Yeah, New Coke, one of the greatest tanks of all time in terms of a new product just not really working.

Yeah.

So I’ve New Coke-ed my software.

I like that.

And it’s got an echo of nuke in it, too, which is a plus, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And everyone will know exactly what that means, I think.

I think probably so.

I nu-coked my…

What else do you do where you think you’re improving, but you’re actually setting yourself back a couple decades?

They nu-coked that legislation, but good.

Yeah.

I like it.

And, you know, I have had that with dictionaries where I bought the new edition,

And it turned out it was a step back from the previous one because they undid a lot of good things that I like.

Took out tables or took out whole big sections of it or made it a lot smaller for no particular reason.

I don’t know.

It happens a lot.

I’m liking this, you guys.

New Coke.

I New Coked it.

Martha, you’ve coined a word.

Yay!

Greg, do you think you can use it?

Oh, I’m sure I will at some point.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Well, please spread it around.

Help us.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks, Greg.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye.

What are your words for these concepts?

If you think you’re fixing something or making it better, but you’re actually setting yourself back,

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

This may not win word of the year at the American Dialect Society vote in January in Pittsburgh, but I like it.

Okay, you’re going to be lobbying for it?

I am.

The word is poutrage.

Poutrage.

So pout, you know, the little face that you make with your mouth when you’re unhappy, plus outrage.

And this is when you act outraged, but you’re not really.

Oh, you’re in high dudgeon, right?

Yes, yes.

Glenn Beck does this all the time.

Oh, yeah.

He pretends to be outraged just for the sake of, like, getting his ire up, you know, his dander going and stuff.

Or you might do this.

For example, you’re at somebody’s house, this happens, and they give you a gigantic piece of cake and you act pout rage.

You’re like, oh, I couldn’t possibly eat all that.

And then, of course, you do.

Right?

That’s pout rage.

You don’t really mean it.

You know, there’s an old word for that, axismus, A-C-C-I-S-M-U-S.

That means the pretended refusal of something you really want.

The rest of us are not reading Plato, hun.

What is it again?

Axismus?

Axismus.

Oh, very nice.

What are your words of the year? Send them to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call, 877-929-9673.

That’s our show for this week.

Don’t forget you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

Call us at 1-877-929-9673 or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Stay in touch with us all week on Facebook. Look for us there under Wayword Radio.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

He also chooses our music.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell and Jennifer Powell.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit organization.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

So long.

Ciao.

You say neither and I say neither.

Either, either, neither, neither.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

You like potato, and I like patata.

You like tomato.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

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