Never Bolt Your Door with A Boiled Carrot

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You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett, and I’m Martha Barnette.

Here’s a great piece of advice. It comes from Belize. Don’t call the alligator a big mouth till you cross the river.

I love that. That’s nice.

That’s kind of like about not taunting bullies until you’re safely behind your door or something, right? Exactly right. With a little taste of don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched. I love proverbs.

I love the way that they can sum up so much wisdom in just a few words. Yeah, they’re culturally attached, aren’t they? They’re not the kind of thing that necessarily you’re gonna find the same proverbs in every country, are you? You know, and if you want proof of that?

There’s a huge book out called As They Say in Zanzibar: Proverbial Wisdom from Around the World. It’s by the prolific language writer David Crystal. He’s got a picture of a couple of elephants on the front, and it says, “When two elephants tussle, it’s the grass that suffers.”

Yeah, there are more than 2,000 proverbs in this book, and it looks like he’s done a great deal of research to pluck them out from as many cultures and languages as he could find. There’s one I like from Cameroon. It is the pot that boils, but the dish gets the credit. In other words, we often fail to give credit to people who do the real work, right?

We’ll give credit to the front man. Like, let’s say you go to a concert and there’s Barbara Streisand singing. We’ll say, “Oh, Barbara’s concert was great.”

Yeah, you know there are 400 roadies, you know, who helped Barbara do it. Exactly. So I love that the proverbs just a really great way of summarizing the lessons that we all eventually get around to learning.

Exactly. Although I didn’t see one of my favorites, which is don’t do your deep fat frying in the nude. How long did it take you to learn that?

It’s true. It’s true. Trust me, and I thought those were freckles. Believe you me.

It’s true. Well, if you’d like to talk about language, old sayings, new words, grammar, slang, you name it, call us. The numbers 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-WAY-WORD. Or send us your delicious emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, hi, who’s this?

This is Betsy from Cape Cod.

Well, what’s going on, Betsy?

Well, we’re looking for the polite word for the current spouse of your ex-spouse. So your ex-husband has a new spouse.

Are you on good terms with them?

Not necessarily.

Polite word because I mean at some point I might be somebody else’s this. Right? Good point, right? Right. So what have you come up with so far?

Well, one of my friends came up with curwife because it’s the current wife, but it also sort of unfortunately I felt that it kept the other word in there. And the other one we found out, but again it was again both. That’s a female thing. And then another female thing would was that I came up with was ex-ux.

That’s what it was, ex-ux. In all the legal stuff, I was always the ux.

Right, for the Latin for wife, right? Looks or right? Okay, so ex-ux, yes.

Well, that’s kind of nifty. I don’t it might be difficult to spread though because it’s gonna require you explain it every single time that you say it. And I’m having enough trouble explaining the relationship the first time around.

I don’t want to have to be explaining it. I want a word that I can just say when I have to refer to this person. Or if I was on the other side when somebody had to refer to me.

This is what you call them. Is your relationship with your ex-husband such that you could call his new wife that poor woman?

Again, somebody would think that I was being derogatory. And I don’t put that out there if I don’t, you know, you don’t want to be mean to your ex-husband or his new wife.

Right, right. I’m trying to be, you know, I’m distantly related through marriage to Emily Post, and I’m trying to get this right.

There we go. Generosity of spirit.

I like that. What about like they do for Voldemort in the Harry Potter books and movies? Call her you-know-who?

I gotta tell you that I’m stumped because it brings out the kind of sharpest desire to be, to be, I’m just a little mean.

Doesn’t it? Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, but Betsy’s point is that it could come back to bite her.

Sure, I don’t do that person one day, right? You cut my husband, but with somebody else’s ex-husband.

Wow, well, you know, as Grant will be the first person to tell you, it’s really, really, really hard to coin a word and get it into the English language. But I’m starting to think that, you know, English doesn’t have an academy like the French.

But I’m thinking we need a language academy of the air here just to designate words. Because there are all kinds of words like that that don’t exist yet for those kinds of relationships.

Well, I think we just need to decide arbitrarily and spread it.

I would agree with that, but let’s just agree. I think Betsy already said this, that curwife doesn’t work because it has C-U-R, which is a name for a dog in it.

Right, right?

eE-ux is pretty good. It’s kind of awkward to say, but let’s go ahead and put that number one on our list.

And then I think we need to turn on the sirens, Martha, and get the flashing lights going and have the new word special and solicit requests from our listeners.

What do you say to that, Betsy?

What do you call?

What’s a one-word, short, easy-to-understand way to refer to your ex-husband’s new wife?

I don’t know. The polite word. Everybody’s been able to come up with the impolite one, right? You can call us 1-877-929-9673 or email us to words@waywordradio.org.

Betsy, I want to thank you so much for calling us today.

Yeah, it helps on the way.

Don’t worry.

Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Well, the corning one is always tough, Martha, because you can come up with something that you think is the cleverest thing in the world, and everyone else will go, exactly.

Exactly. So call us 1-877-929-9673 or send us an email with your suggestion for what to call the spouse of your ex. A polite term has to be polite or it will be disqualified. And you can send that to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Steve calling from Milwaukee.

Steve, hi there. I have a question that has been baffling me for the longest time, and I’m hoping that you two experts can help me with this.

One, how long has it been?

How long has it been? It has been a long time. And you know, today?

It is a very warm day in Milwaukee, and last night it was very dark. And in February, it usually snows, and in June, it usually rains. And my question is, when I talk about it, what does it refer to?

What is it? What is it? The dark? What is it that snow?

Given how common that construction is in English, I bet you are bothered by this every day of your life.

Well, okay.

It shows that I don’t need a really exciting life, and I’m worried about it.

Well, first now, what do you think?

Yeah, I’ll send you some brochures for national parks, and you can have a good time, and then we’ll talk about it.

Yeah.

Wow.

This is a good question. I’m gonna throw a little bit of language at you that you probably have never heard before. Have you ever heard of the weather it?

W-E-A-T-H-E-R-I-T, the weather it.

Two words.

No, that’s what this is. It’s called the weather it, and we almost always use this kind of it with either questions about the weather or statements about the weather.

Is it raining?

Is it wet outside?

Is it snowing?

Is it blustery?

And what is that it that it is known as a dummy pronoun and it works with verbs also known as weather verbs that don’t need a subject. So does that also relate when I talk about walking into a room where the shades are pulled and the light is off and it?

Is dark.

Yes, it does. Yeah, the weather term, the weather, it the weather verbs is more specifically related to verbs that have to do with the weather. But in general, we’re talking about these conditions where something is all pervasive or apparently universal, least as far as the subject goes, and we don’t need to specify that somebody is doing or somebody is being done to.

So that’s the short of it. Well, I had a question that I’ve held near and dear for a long time and I thank you for helping me with that.

Let it go.

Now.

What will you do with your life?

All right, thank you so much for you like me. Thanks. All right, I’d love getting wonky, Martha.

I hope that wasn’t too much.

That was pretty wonky. But I don’t know, it does my heart good to know that there are linguists out there sitting around talking about dummy pronouns and the weather and getting very worked up about both of those. I’m sure it’s time to give us a call one eight seven seven nine two nine nine six seven three. And it’s also time to send us an email to words at waywordradio dot org.

Hi, you have a Way with Words. Hi, this is Jen from Boston.

Well, hello, Jen.

This is Grant and Martha from New York City in San Diego. What’s on your mind language wise? You got a question for us?

I do. I work in the medical practice and during a rare down moment, one of our oral surgeons asked around the room if we knew the origin of the term eye teeth. And we didn’t, and he proposed a possible origin of the term, but I wanted to see what you thought. My teeth, E Y E T E E T H. These are the…

Which ones are these, Martha?

These are the longest ones, the pointiest, the canines, correct?

Yep, the upper canine, the upper canine.

Okay. Okay, so he had a pet theory about this.

He did, and so we frantically started googling because we’re competitive and we couldn’t come up with anything. I did find one OED reference, but it didn’t agree quite with what he said.

Oh, really?

Well, so you’re gonna hear what we have to say and then tell us what his theory is. Is that what I’m gathering here?

That’s what I’d like.

Yeah. Okay, well gosh, as far as I know, it’s the one that’s directly below the eye, right? It extends up the root. It ends up into the skull.

Yeah, the longest, the eye teeth have the longest roots that go way back up under the skull near the eye. This is why they have the expression like pulling eye teeth. They’re really hard to get out. If they were trees, their tap roots would be down way past the center of the earth. And that is what the OED reference indicated, huh?

But are you saying that this surgeon had some other theory?

Well, there was just a little more to it. He said that because of the root going so close to the eye, if your tooth gets infected, it goes very rapidly up to your eye and causes it, or it used to cause blindness.

Oh really?

That’s good to know. I had no idea. You said, you said used to. Is this not a concern anymore?

I’m not sure. I guess, you know, we’ve got more advanced dental medicine. I think I’m gonna take the doctor’s word for it, Martha, don’t you?

Oh well, about the physical effects there. But I mean, it’s interesting that you also hear the expression to give one’s eye teeth. It’s like you’re really valuable tooth.

Right?

Why is that?

Because these are the ones that can help you to meet. I’d give my eye teeth to know. Thank you so much for your call, Jen.

Yeah.

Thank you guys.

Okay, take care.

Bye.

Bye. We’d love to hear your questions about language, your questions about parts of the body as long as they’re language related and anything else that occurs to usage, grammar, slang, you name it.

The number to call is one eight seven seven nine two nine nine six seven three. That’s one eight seven seven Wayword or you can email us. The address is words at waywordradio dot o RG. Next on A Way with Words.

It’s a word puzzle.

Stay tuned. You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett and I’m Martha Barnette and we’re joined once again by our quiz guide, John Choneski.

Hello, John.

Hello, Grant. Hello, Martha.

How are you guys?

Super duper.

How you doing?

How the kids?

I’m doing okay. The kids are fine. Big Max is starting preschool soon.

Oh, that’s great.

How old is he now?

Yeah, he’s four.

Four?

Yeah, so hey, is Max short for something?

Let’s be sure from Maxwell.

Maxwell, yeah, yeah. Middle name, house or no middle name?

Joseph.

Joseph. But Jesse’s middle name is very interesting.

Jesse’s middle name is Leo.

Yeah, she is named for her mom’s grandfather.

Grandfather’s?

Yeah, Jesse Leo, very pretty. And speaking of very pretty, here’s a very pretty little quiz I came up with.

Nice segue.

Yeah, pretty segue.

Here’s a quiz that features that most basic form of wordplay, is the rhyme. Now I’ll give you a category and then I’ll give you three words. Your job is to find rhymes for each of the three words that fit that category. For example, if the category is numbers and the words are sun, brew, and free, your answers would be one, two, three.

One, two, three, right?

Again, you just have to tell me the three things that fit the category that rhyme with those three words. Got it?

Okay, and what’s the name of this game?

Well, I call it rhyme groups because if I find another puzzle called rhyme time again, I’m just gonna blow my brains out.

Rhyme groups doesn’t rhyme.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t have to. Don’t want it to. Ready to go?

Here we go. First categories, units of time, and the words are flower, peak, beckoned.

So our week.

A week.

And second?

Now where we can?

Second.

Yes.

Very good. One, two, three. Here’s the next category, US Postal Service street suffixes. I’m afraid that’s the shortest way to categorize this. When you hear the words, I think you’ll understand.

I’m going for sure.

Thrive, grace, Ferris.

So drive.

Yes.

Place and terrace.

And terrace.

Yes, very good. Here’s the next one, singers who use just one name, Jewel, sink, spork.

Still sink, spork.

So Bjork is the last one, right? And Jewel is the first one, right?

It’s the first, yeah.

Sink?

Right back.

No, sink, sink.

Pink.

Pink is correct. There’s a case where you could kind of just run through the letters and eventually…

Okay, next category is, you know what? I want to do this one different. I’m just gonna give you the three words and see if you can guess the category.

That works.

Okay, ’cause you’re doing so well. Okay, knocker, menace, thicket.

I have it.

Yeah, what do you got?

These are sports.

These are sports and they’re soccer, tennis, and cricket.

Very nice. Let’s try again with the next one.

Okay.

These are the three words, motion, cuddle, fond.

Sounds naughty.

It does. I went right to the lotion. Just this particular one, just a little motion, cuddle, and fond, right?

Oh, bodies of water.

Yes, bodies of water.

So ocean, puddle, and pond.

Very good. A sweep, a sweep from Grant. Good job. But let’s try this last one. Here we go. Just the words, darling, cloth, gumbo.

Darling, cloth, gumbo.

Yeah, this one’s tough. I’m gonna have to give you the…

What, you think you have it?

Are these Disney characters?

You’re close.

Cartoon characters?

Cartoon animals.

Are they elephants?

I’m thinking gumbo is Dumbo.

That’s my…

Gumbo is Dumbo or it could be Jumbo.

It’s not.

It could be, but it’s not. It’s definitely Dumbo.

Oh, Dumbo. Okay, but the more specific the category is things that fly.

Oh, so starling.

Good. The second word, cloth.

Moth.

My Dumbo and you got it.

Very good. Wow, okay, stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that was a lice cob, you guys.

Well, rank Lou, there’s a word for a welcome.

All right.

Well, thanks, John.

It was great fun as always and I know everyone homes going.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, bring me some more.

So you’ll have some more for us next week. I’ll have some more for you next week. Super duper. All right, and if you’d like to talk with us about funny words, grammar, slang, punctuation, give us a call. The numbers 1 8 7 7 9 2 9 9 6 7 3. The numbers 1 8 7 7 Wayword or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words. Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

This is Pat in Richland, Michigan, which is near Kalamazoo.

Hi.

Yeah, Pat.

All right. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure.

What’s up?

Well, I get regular emails from a website that’s called Head Butler and it gives recommendations mostly for books and music and that kind of thing. Recently, they had a review of Carla Bruni’s new CDs. She’s the first lady of France.

Yeah, and the review said this. She’s got a cashmere voice and a killer body, plays decent guitar and writes her own lyrics, can hold her own with queens and statesmen. And then it says she must be stopped, which is written with a period after each word. And I’ve seen that before, using periods and capitalizing each word that way to emphasize the words. And it seems to me such a perfect way to transcribe that tone people take when they’re making a thread or some dire pronouncement or explaining something to a little child or a son or something. And to me, it conveys a lot more than something like italics or all caps. And I think it’s just a fantastic use of punctuation. But I don’t remember seeing it until pretty recently, and I found it hard to search for online. I was thinking maybe “Read my lips” might have been written down that way, and I think that was from 1988. But I didn’t find any example of that. So can you tell me, does it go back farther than just a few years, and can you trace who invented it? Because that person’s a genius as far as I’m concerned.

Well, let’s talk about this a little bit. Most of the people that I know that have looked into this, and believe me, other people have looked into this phenomenon, trace it to a Simpsons episode from 1997.

Yes, that’s the short answer. The long answer is in this particular episode, which they named “Worst Episode Ever.” Comic-book guy, if you remember, he’s this overweight guy wearing a t-shirt that usually has some kind of pop culture reference. Oh, yeah, and he’s a little bit super silliest and full of himself and thinks that he’s like the expert on all this pop culture that he consumes. In this episode, he says that he says “Worst episode ever” in this particular Comic-book guy voice.

He says something like “Worst episode ever” like that. Very well. And that episode is an in-joke made by the writers of the Simpsons to refer to their fans who online had gotten into the habit first of saying “Worst episode ever” about a variety of Simpsons episodes. And then it became kind of an in-joke for that group to every time a new episode of the Simpsons came out to say “Worst episode ever.” And so they’re kind of got Comic-book guy standing in for these fans, so they’re kind of poking back at the fans.

Yeah, after that episode then, Pat, what happened was the fans adopted it so much, and there are a lot of Simpsons fans. The show’s been on for what, 16 years now? That they started using that everywhere, and it became “Worst whatever ever.” You could put anything in the blank: “Worst book ever,” “Worst show ever.” And they began to punctuate in such a way to indicate that kind of way that the Comic-book guy says it. And sometimes in order to indicate how that last word is pronounced, they say they spell it “EVAR.”

Great, that really is sheer genius, I think. But that particular writing style to use punctuation to indicate that there’s something deliberate or force-filled being said has been traced back by the fans of the website Language Log to the 1950s at least. So just to kind of recap here, the Simpsons are responsible probably most likely for the current wave of this because something can happen online that before we all were typing for a living. Let’s face it, everybody in our day jobs at home, we have computers. The penetration of computers is great. We all type a lot more. We all use text a lot more than we would have even 20 years ago. And this kind of like little clever way to use language wouldn’t have traveled as far in the 1950s. So it kind of took some big pop culture thing like the Simpsons in order to make it happen.

Well, thank you. I really appreciate that because I love that youth, and it’s great to know once it came. Thank you for your sharp eye, Pat.

Not everyone, you know, sometimes this stuff slips by and not everyone catches it.

But well, it had slipped by me for several years, it seems. Thank you very, very much.

Welcome.

Thanks for calling.

Okay.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye. Grant, Martha, did I take too much?

I thought that was the best answer ever.

Oh, you flatter me. Do I get an award?

How about a pay raise?

Well, we’d love to take your calls about anything that you’ve seen that is curious and makes you wonder about its origins. By all means, give us a call, 1 8 7 7 9 2 9 9 6 7 3.

That’s 1 8 7 7 Wayword. Things that make you go. You can write us about those at words at waywordradio dot o RG.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Keith d’Orsay calling from San Diego.

Hi, you, Keith. Got a question for us today?

I do. I do. I’m hoping you can help me with a phrase that I grew up saying in South Louisiana, in the Cajun area. Whenever you hop in a car and drive to a place, once you arrive at that place, it’s not unusual for the driver to turn to everyone else in the car and say something like, “Am I the only one who’s going to get down, or are we all getting down together?” or something like that.

I just sort of thought it was a normal way of describing the act of getting out of a vehicle until I got into college at LSU and made friends with people from New Orleans who just laughed hysterically at me every time I would use the phrase. So I’ve always wondered, you know, what it’s rooted in, if it’s a phrase that people say in, you know, rural areas of, you know, in the rest of the country, or if it’s something unique to, you know, southern Louisiana or, you know, the Cajun area. Maybe it’s, you know, an English translation of a French phrase. So you’re saying the vehicle arrives, the driver or somebody say, “I’m gonna get down now,” and they mean they’re getting out of the vehicle.

Right, exactly.

They don’t mean that there’s gunfire and they need to hide, right?

Or that Casey and the Sunshine Band have showed up.

Well, you have a very good instinct about the possibility of it having to do with French because in French you do basically descend from a vehicle.

Right, right. The verb is “descendre,” and you have something similar in Spanish, “bajar.” You go down from the vehicle. And it appears that in that part of the country, it’s one of those calques, what we call a calc, C-A-L-Q-U-E, where it’s a direct translation from the French.

Do you also invite somebody to have a coffee rather than have coffee?

Absolutely, absolutely. And in New Orleans, actually, people in New Orleans are sort of famous for saying that they’re going to make groceries. Talked about that before, sure, that’s a great one. Tons of this, and French isn’t completely gone down there. It still exists enough for at least among the older set that it can still have some influence on the English language, right?

Absolutely.

The funny thing is that we do see get down in various parts of the country from time to time. And I think that in that sense of getting down from a vehicle, people will say something like get down and stay a while. I also wondered if it was connected maybe to, you know, days when people traveled on horses and buggies where you actually had to step far down. Unless you’re climbing out of a monster truck, you’re not really getting down these days, right? Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

So, so you do see that scattered in pockets around the country. It’s really interesting.

But definitely, I think there’s a French connection there in Cajun country. Heroin, it’s great to finally get a conclusive explanation and know that I’m not alone, that I can safely travel around the country and not feel like I’m the only one saying these sorts of things, Keith.

Thank you so much for your call.

This was a great question. We always love talking about dialects in the United States. So we sometimes think that Americans all speak alike, but we don’t. We do not. There’s too many at all, thanks.

Thanks for the answer.

I really appreciate that, you.

Thanks. Well, if you’ve got a question about something they say down home, we’d like to hear it. Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-929 Wayword or email us.

The address is words at waywordradio dot o RG. Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Elaine calling from Indianapolis, Indiana. What you up to?

So I have this question. A teacher friend of mine used the phrase he’s the spitting image of his father, and I thought that the phrase is supposed to be he’s the spit and image of his father.

So I wonder if you could help to sort that out. I’m thinking maybe spitting image may be a corruption and maybe isn’t quite as complementary.

I’m not sure you would want to be called the spit and image of your father, but I think that means more like, you know, you take after him and have his look and his ways, huh?

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

So just to clarify, we’re talking about the phrase spitting image, s p i t t i n g i m a g e, spitting image, and spit and image, s p i t a n d i m a g e, right?

That’s correct.

I’ve actually seen it written both ways.

Yep. But Elaine, I think your hunch is right on because for years and years and years, centuries, people have used that as a metaphor. As far back as 1825, you see the expression.

He’s the very spit of the very likeness, and you also see in the 19th century the expression spit an image of something or spit and picture. So, so I, you can see how spit and might become spittin, right? Or spitting. There was a really interesting article written a few years ago by Larry Horne from Yale University who had some interesting theories about this expression as well.

Suggesting that maybe it’s a participial adjective, spittin, that is something that has been spat out, huh? And I don’t know, Grant.

I mean, it’s a hypothesis.

I should say, are you gonna force me to explain exactly what he was?

I’m pitching that softball right over the plate. Let us just say, Elaine, that Larry’s theory was a little off the wall and a little risqué. But it’s the idea that when you say spit an image, s p i t t e n, you’re referring to the fact that the father somehow during the sex act passed along his looks and behavior to the child.

Yes, I know. I’ve tried to handle that as delicately as I could. Becoming more and more unfortunate for the child.

I think yes, it is.

I know Larry. He’s a colleague of mine, and Larry has a very wry and dry sense of humor, and I suspect that he meant this, but he also meant the comedy of it. He hasn’t convinced me though, Martha, that it just doesn’t come from spit and image, really.

Well, I hope what we have sufficiently muddied these waters away.

I enjoyed it.

It was a lot of fun. All right.

Thank you so much for your call.

Thanks. Wow, Martha, you handled that so gracefully, Grant.

Oh, did I? I didn’t know that I had the grace in.

I think you did. I mean, Larry’s article is wonderfully witty. I really enjoyed reading it, and I think he may be on to something. I do. I know you’re skeptical about that, but we’ll see. We’ll see. There’s, I think there’s work left to be done, and we may never know, like most origins of words and expressions. We may never know, right? Further research is needed. If you’ve got a linguistic question, or you want to know a word origin, we can’t promise we’ll always know the answer, but we’ll give it our best shot.

So give us a call at 1-877-929-9673 or email us, words at waywordradio dot org. Coming up, how’s your knowledge of slang? Find out when A Way with Words continues?

Support for A Way with Words comes from National Geographic Books, publisher of I’m Not Hanging Noodles from Your Ears, a collection of intriguing idioms from around the world by Jag Bala. Learn more at shop in g dot com slash noodles. You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett, and I’m Martha Barnette. It’s time for another round of slang. This our weekly slang challenge. Grant, today’s contestant from the National Puzzlers League is Dave Dickerson of New York City.

Hello. Well, you may recognize Dave’s name from his occasional features on the show This American Life.

He’s also a serious puzzler. Dave, what’s your specialty?

Variety cryptic crossword puzzles.

Huh.

What’s that?

The strange stuff you see in the back of Harper’s or the Atlantic Monthly. You used to show at Atlantic Monthly.

Oh, the CIA doesn’t put those there.

Yeah. We thought those were secret messages to their operatives. You know, it’s funny. There was, there was in the 90s, there were about four or five venues you could write those things for, and I was actually making a couple hundred dollars a month doing that, and then, you know, they all collapsed within a month or two.

Do you think that you were a part of that collapse?

Yes, in the sense that I don’t think the structure was able to hold that much greatness. Well, let’s see how you do today, a wise guy. You guys have really got me into the mood for a slang quiz. So let me tell you how we play, Dave.

Sure. Grant’s gonna give you a sentence with a blank in it, and then he’ll give you three slang words that might fill in that blank. So your job will be to figure out which slang word fits best, and I haven’t seen these before, so I’ll be joining you, and we’ll try to figure it out together.

Okay.

Sure.

Here’s the first part of the quiz.

We’ve got two questions today. I’m gonna read a sentence, you fill in the blank. We’ll see how you do.

Okay, okay. Of course, you have to tell her grow a pair for once. You need to blank and just tell her you want to divorce. Is it A, surrender Dorothy and just tell her you want to divorce? Is it B, cowboy up and just tell her you want to divorce? Or is it C, stir the fire and just tell her you want to divorce?

I guess it depends on why you’re divorcing someone because I think surrender Dorothy would suggest a completely different reason.

Oh, right, something about the rainbow flag, right?

But I’m gonna, I’m gonna say cowboy up because that would be someone, because it sounds like the person in this scenario is having trouble with his courage.

Yes, and, and, and is, I’m gonna be presumably male, and therefore the cowboy thing is more relevant in that respect.

There we go.

Exactly. Man, and do that to cowboy up means to act like John Wayne in one of the old Westerns. It’s to be tough, self-reliant, brave, as you say, courageous, right?

Right, right. Grow a pair was the clue there, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, we were talking about a man. Here we go. Another one. Thanks to a 24-hour blank, the campaign was able to raise an incredible 10 million dollars and put the candidate back in the running. Was it A, 24-hour lemonade sale, a 24-hour candy cane parade, or a 24-hour money bomb?

Wow, that is so cool.

A candy cane parade.

Yeah, it’s just like your childhood fantasy come real.

Oh my goodness, that and teddy bears picnic. I’m back to babes in toy land with Laurel Hardy.

Laurel and Hardy.

What was the I thought it was it was lemonade sale, candy cane parade, and a money bomb.

That’s right. Now money bomb sounds like you’d be spending money rather than rather than getting it coming in. I’m gonna guess lemonade sale where you’re squeezing out the last of anything you have to sell. Taking lemons and making lemonade. That would be my, that that’s my suspicion.

So you two are in agreement on this.

Well, Dave, you’re ruling out the candy canes. Well, I was trying to think a candy cane parade. Well, what would that be? A candy cane parade sounds like a dog-and-pony show, right? Where you get people to show up. No one pays for a parade. The stripes remind me of flags or whatever, so there might be a patriotic thing, but honestly, candy canes are seasonal.

They’re all made in China.

They’re not patriotic.

What are you talking about?

So really, lemonades are the only thing I could think. Well, and of course, I’m at this point thinking of the McCain campaign and they, you know, I associate them more with lemons. What they’re bringing in a quarter. He seems grumpy is all, okay.

I think it’s a good guess.

I like lemonade sale. I’m going with Dave. He seems to know what he’s talking about.

You’re both wrong.

Oh, we’re so close, but it was see not a. The correct answer was money bomb. Ron Paul’s campaign, for example, used a bunch of these. They take an intense period, say 24 hours long, and they petition everyone they know in all their databases and all their mailing lists and try to get them to donate money to raise a lot of money for that period. It’s kind of like a false sales event. You know how they have these celebrations, spring sales event from Toyota on television or where they’re trying to sell these cars. It’s not a holiday, but they’re trying to make it like it’s something. The other two also terms, no, they’re completely made up. You made the vote. Candy canes parade is a stroke of that sounds like it deserves a niche in the slang. I like the way that you were saying that it was a dog and pony show. It could easily be another word for that, right? Dog and pony shows a little out. Did maybe this can be the dog and pony show of 2008?

That would be great.

Well, I gotta say, Dave, I had a really great fun.

This was a hoot.

This is a hoot.

Yay.

Thank you so much, Dave. You can find out more about the National Puzzlers League at puzzlers dot org and you can join us right here on the show with your questions or comments about slang or about anything else language related. Call us at one eight seven seven nine two nine nine six seven three or email us. The address is words at waywordradio dot org and don’t forget you can always jump into the fray on our discussion forums at waywordradio dot org slash discussion. Hello, you have a Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Grace from Highland, Wisconsin. Hello, Grace.

How are you, Grace?

I’m real fine. I’m hoping that you can help me with the words that my grandmother from Indiana used to use.

The word is dauncy. How are you spelling that?

Well, I don’t really know.

I’ve never seen it in print. I’m guessing it’s something like da, u, n, c, y, but I’ve never seen it. I’ve never heard anybody except my grandmother use it increase.

How would your grandmother use it?

She would use it to describe how she was feeling if she was not feeling really good, but didn’t have a specific symptom. Under the weather, maybe a little queasy.

Poorly.

Poorly.

Yeah, your spelling is probably the most common one in the United States, da, u, n, c, y. I first encountered this word in the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English. Love that publication.

It’s a great dictionary. There are a couple other spellings, d, a, u, n, c, y, and that spelling d, a, u, n, c, y kind of gives away the root of this. It comes to American English from Scots English and the meaning that you give is one of the meanings that is still used today and all over Appalachia and a few other parts of the country. Here’s the best explanation of it that I’ve ever seen. About 20 years ago, Vic Wills, who wrote for the Knoxville Journal, described it this way. He said when it is applied to the self and when it applies to another person, the meanings are different. I feel dauncy might mean I feel dizzy or slightly ill or nauseated. But when put on somebody else, dauncy can mean, at least in some localities, that the person is intoxicated, addled, silly, stupid, or according to some interpretations, quick-tempered and even saucy or pert.

Did you ever hear it that way, Grace?

No, no. She only used it to apply to herself and the rest of the family. We weren’t even sure that it was really a word.

We thought it might have been something she’d made up. No, no, no, there’s still plenty. As a matter of fact, this word is common enough that it was used in the 19, I guess it was the 1950s.

Well, in an I Love Lucy episode, the particularly well-known episode where she’s pregnant and in describing the way she feels of more from morning sickness.

Lucy says that she feels dauncy.

Oh, really?

So, so it’s common enough to show up in popular television, at least in that era, and you’ll find it used here and again in some fiction these days, though.

I suspect that most of the fiction writers just pulled it out of a dictionary. It’s a great dialect word. It still is in use in parts of the United States, probably among the older generations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to be used here and there for several generations to come. It’s got a nice feel to it.

It’s got a wonderful sound to it.

I mean, it sounds like what it is.

Doesn’t it, Grace?

Yes, it does.

Well, Grace, thank you so much for your call today.

Thanks for bringing this word to the airways. Well, thank you, and I really appreciate the information.

I love your show. Bye-bye, Grace.

Thanks so much. Well, as you know, Martha and I just love the heck out of old expressions and dialect things and stuff that your grandma used to say. So pop us an email, words at waywordradio dot org, or give us a call, one eight seven seven nine two nine nine six seven three. Hello, you have a Way with Words.

I grant them.

My name is Jeff. I’m calling from Hawaii. I have a couple questions about acronyms, initialisms, and possibly even macronyms. Okay, I work in the joint military environment and I meet a lot of people from the Army and the Marine Corps and Air Force and different services.

I’m in the Navy, so I’ve been exposed to a bunch of new acronyms I hadn’t really heard a lot. And while we were having this discussion, I stopped one of my friends and said I don’t know if that’s an acronym so much as a initialism. And he hadn’t heard that. So I wanted to ask, first of all, if maybe I’m being too academic about splitting up acronyms and initialisms.

Oh no, I don’t think you can ever be too academic about splitting up acronyms and initialisms.

That’s great. But then once we got into this discussion, I was asked, well, what about like radar and AWOL where they aren’t actually English words, but we use them as acronyms? We’ve actually made a word up out of the abbreviation.

Well, then let’s clarify our terms just for a second. There are two things to say here. One is the lexicographers and the linguists tend to be very specific about the meaning of acronym and the meaning of initialism, whereas the general public doesn’t. And sometimes this is where differences of opinion arrive. It sounds like you’re falling on the linguist and lexicographer camp, right?

I’ve been listening to you guys too much.

So I believe, oh yeah, we’re like a bad disease. We’re everyone catches us. So initialisms are something like CBS or IBM where it can’t be pronounced as a word, right?

You say the names of the letters in order to say the thing right, but acronyms are things like NASA where the letters can be pronounced as a word, right, right?

So and then so then you’re agreeing with me that radar is actually an acronym. Here’s the key.

Here’s the trick.

Here’s the trick. Martha will agree with me as I know she will. They’re both initialisms. But only the ones that can be pronounced as words are acronyms. Huh, initialisms are the umbrella category and acronyms are a subset of initialisms, right?

And then again am I being too flip to use macronym?

Is that not academic enough?

Well, macronym is not an established term in linguistics or in lexicography and we should define that too, Martha. That’s a acronym made of other acronyms, right?

Right, and I have an example actually, a synthetic aperture radar where the initialism I guess radar is inside of the acronym. And what is the acronym?

So what is the macronym then?

SAR. Sorry, sorry, gotcha.

Yeah, that’s great.

That’s a good example.

Well, thank you very much. You’ve been very helpful and I think decisive in my question. Okay, glad to hear it. Thank you so much for your call, Jeff.

Thanks.

Aloha. If you’re seeking clarity, we’ll do our best to provide it.

The number to call is one eight seven seven nine two nine nine six seven three, that’s one eight seven seven nine two nine wayword or email us.

The address is words at waywordradio dot org. Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Lillian Chanel and we’re from Park Falls, Wisconsin. Hi, Lillian.

Hi. My question is these aren’t words that are in our dictionary and yet they’re used so much today and it is really getting to be nerve-wracking to listen to people speak. They’ll say something and then they’ll go.

Oh, and another one is oh, you know, and then they’re telling you something.

No, I don’t know.

I’m listening. No, what you’re talking about and then they always say yeah, but and these are just words that just irritate me when we have to sit and listen to somebody on TV or radio speak and they use these plus your everyday people. Right.

So you’re talking about they’re filling all the little holes in their language or things like you know, like I mean, I just or but yeah, but yeah. They repeat themselves and interrupt themselves and we say things over and over, right, right. Lillian, I have a technique that I use that you might find useful. It’s a way of kind of diverting your attention away from the fact that you’re annoyed about these things and to maybe appreciating that they sometimes take on roles. Sometimes and those words actually have meaning. In general, they’re called disfluencies, it’s di s fl u e n c i e s and it just means it’s kind of, you know, the opposite of fluent, you know, they’re not speaking very clearly, right, right. One study estimated this is how often they occur that they occurred six times per 100 words and that’s six percent of the words that people say might be a disfluency, an or an or whatever and they happen of course because people aren’t sure what they’re going to say and maybe a question has been asked that they’re not ready to answer but they can have a real function.

Listen to this. Sometimes even professional storytellers, these are people who go around the circuits and maybe we’ll do it for radio or they’ll do it at a theater or they’ll do it at fairs.

They’ll tell stories for a living, a story that they’ve told a thousand times if they insert or or whatever at the very beginning, people pay more attention. By using these particular kind of devices to interrupt the flow of your speech, you call people’s attention to what you’re about to say and research has shown that you are more likely to understand what comes after an or than if I leave it out. If I say the same sentence to you and leave out the or, you might get it less.

You’ll understand less of it.

What do you think about that?

So what I’m suggesting and just might help you a little bit not be quite so annoyed about it, just think that every time they say and pay attention to what happens after and you might find that’s the most important thing that they have to say, you might. Lillian, I’ve been paying attention to you and I haven’t heard an or. Got the bar pretty high there.

I did hear some from you, Grant.

Yes.

Just a second ago.

Yep.

They happen. Yeah, well, yes it is. But you know what brought me this more to my attention was my one grandson would always say every time his mother would say something to him.

Yeah, but and she was so angry with him for doing that all the time. So I would charge him a quarter every time he said it and I’d be darned if I didn’t say it my old he owed. You know it was vice-versa, but when he went home after two weeks up here with us, my daughter says he doesn’t say it anymore.

Well, there you go, there you hit on something. Once people’s attention is brought to the fact that they have these verbal ticks and they’re made to be aware that they’re habitual, I mean, they’re like tobacco or actually they’re more like a disease.

They’re catching. A friend of mine, he uses the word dude all the time.

It seems like he starts every other sentence with the word dude. He’s like, dude, we’ve got to go do this or dude, we’ve got to go do that. And when I hang around him, I go home with a bad case of dude. I have to work really hard to shake it and arms and ers and us and you knows and I mean that I like and I just and all those, they’re catching. They’re like the flu or the common cold. But if you pay attention to them, you can cut them out of your speech. The best tactic to take is to replace them with a pause because if you, because the thing is if you’re saying, if you’re saying you’re probably doing that because you need just a second to collect your thoughts. So just take that second, but fill it with silence.

Don’t fill it with some utterance that’s more or less meaningless. Lillian, I’m glad we don’t have the quarter thing going on because I think I’d be out several quarters. Well, it’s very nice to hear from both of you and it’s a pleasure to talk with you. Nice watch my language from here on out, Lillian.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Bye.

Bye. Well, don’t hem and haw, give us a call one eight seven seven nine two nine nine six seven three or send us an email to words at waywordradio dot org. That’s our show for this week. Support for a program comes from Mosey online backup. Got data? Visit M O Z Y dot com. If you didn’t get on the air today, don’t worry. You can leave us a message any time day or night. Call one eight seven seven nine two nine nine six seven three. You can also email your questions to words at waywordradio dot org or join the conversations going on right now in our discussion forum. You’ll find them at waywordradio dot org slash discussion. Stefanie Levine is our senior producer. Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten. Tim also engineered our theme music. Kurt Conan produced it. We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdasians from Studio West in San Diego. I’m Martha Barnette and from the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett inviting you to join us next week right here on A Way with Words.

So long. Arrivederci. You’d like tomato, tomato, potato, tomato, tomato. The model, let’s call the old man.