No Bones (episode #1669)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And I have a new bit of slang that I learned this week, Grant.

It’s knobbly monster.

Knobbly.

Is that with a K?

K-N-O-B-B-L-Y?

Yes.

Knobbly monster.

What is a knobbly monster?

Well, it’s a term that’s used in British newsrooms. It originated with one of the tabloids where a reporter was writing about a crocodile attack, but he didn’t want to keep using the word crocodile. So instead, he referred to it as a knobbly monster.

I bet he caught so much flack in the newsroom for that.

Well, he did, and that term is now used for that second reference. You know, when you’re trying to be creative, I think every writer has run into that, you know, where you just use the same word over and over, and you want to say it a different way.

Yeah, there’s a term for that. It’s elegant variation when you’re hard-pressed on the second reference, so you come up with a more elegant way to say something.

Oh, that’s fabulous.

Okay.

Well, I got a couple of other classic elegant variations or knobbly monsters. One of them is for bed. Somebody referred to that as the horizontal sleeping surface.

Oh, goodness.

And one more, the unfortunate ungulate. That was when somebody was writing about a sheep stuck in a car.

A sad sheep?

Yeah, that would have been another good third reference. But anyway, I’m so excited about this new book that’s come out that is a collection of all of these things. It’s called The Little Book of Second Mentions, The Art of Avoiding Repetition. And it’s by Juliet and Matthew Maguire, or as The Guardian newspaper describes them, the married monographers.

That’s funny.

We’d love to hear what you’re reading and take your language questions, thoughts, stories, and ideas. You can reach us at words@waywordradio.org or call or text us toll-free 24 hours a day, 877-929-9673 in the United States and Canada.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sarah calling from Toms River, New Jersey.

Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the program. What’s up?

Thanks. I’m calling because I wanted to know if there’s a word between a friend and an acquaintance. So let’s say a former coworker or your kid’s friend’s parents, someone that you might stop and talk to in the grocery store, but they’re not quite a friend.

Oh, what a question.

So you’re then describing that encounter later, say to a spouse or someone else, and you’re saying, I ran into a blank. You’re trying to fill that blank.

Right.

So I made up my own word. I started calling them friendlies.

Oh, I like that.

That works.

I love that. Everyone seems to realize what I’m saying.

Yeah, I ran into a friendly.

Oh, that’s so nice, though, because that’s got good connotations.

Right.

Yeah, I like that a lot. I think it’s better than frequaintance or something.

Or, you know, something like that. I saw my friendly acquaintance. It just sounds very clunky.

Some people use the word fringer, meaning friend plus stranger. There was even a Danish alternative rock band called Mew, M-E-W, that had an album called Fringers, colon, not quite friends, but not quite strangers.

I like friendlies a lot. I’ve always wanted a word for this myself, and I think that one fits perfectly.

Yeah, because colleagues not right and buddy and bud don’t really work. Pile and meter are a little, I don’t know, they’ve got layers that don’t really fit.

Yeah, the only other thing that I can think about would be maybe anotope. I’m thinking about the word. Well, I just made that up. And I think I like friendly better, but I was thinking about the term anatopism, which refers to when you see somebody totally out of context. You know, you see the pediatrician at the grocery store and you have this moment of like, wait, you’re out of context. And that’s called anatopism from two Greek words that mean, you know, not in that place.

But anatope doesn’t work as well as friendlies. I think this is a winner, Sarah. I can’t improve on that.

Let me toss one more at you, Sarah and Martha. What about the Mexican-Spanish cuate? C-U-A-T-E. It’s kind of like buddy and pal, but it’s informal.

Cuate.

Cuate.

I mean, are we going to adopt that word in English?

I don’t know, but does it? Maybe it has the connotations we want.

Sounds good. The best thing is we have a radio show heard coast to coast, and people will jump in because they love to come up with words for concepts.

Okay.

Sounds good. See if you can beat friendly.

I don’t know.

Thanks for your call. And keep being friendly out there.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Sarah.

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hello. This is Rob Gordon calling from Underhill, Vermont.

We’re glad to have you, Rob. What’s on your mind?

Well, it’s an interesting question which arose when I was hiking and I used the expression to land with your bum in the butter. And my hiking companion said, what sort of expression is that? And I said, oh, it’s a common expression which we used at boarding school. And, you know, I’d been interested in trying to find what it means. I asked my mother many years ago, and she said, oh, it was probably it emerged during the Second World War because butter was being rationed. And that implies you’ve struck it lucky. You’ve gotten something pleasant. And where was boarding school? In South Africa. I grew up in Namibia and there were no English schools after elementary school. So my folks packed me off to boarding school.

Gotcha.

What was happening when you were hiking and you used the expression to land with your bum in the butter?

We were just talking and, you know, it’s such a privilege to be able to go hiking. And I said to my friend, boy, we really landed with our bum in the butter. This is such a fantastic place.

Right, exactly. So it was a lucky situation, maybe more than you deserved.

Oh, absolutely. It was a privilege to go hiking in this place. Although your mother’s idea is a good one, the expression is definitely older than World War II. Although we all know that butter was considered a luxury and has been, especially before industrialization when butter making was a lot of work and people who couldn’t afford it would just use animal fat.

But to land with your bum, B-U-M, in the butter is often expressed differently with different words for your rear end or your derriere or your tush. So you’ll find it a lot of different ways. It is so interesting that you have this African English-speaking experience because there are versions of it in Afrikaans and Dutch and Frisian and German and Norwegian and Danish and French. So it’s not just English that has versions of this.

The Germans might say, besides talking about falling with your arse in the butter, they might say to fall with your face in the butter. And the Dutch might say to fall with your nose in the butter. And the Danish, there’s an old expression where they’d say to come back with butter on your horns, meaning to make a profit on an investment or deal.

I love it.

That’s nice. And the Dutch have an opposite to fall with your bum in the butter, which is to fall into water. And that’s not a desirable situation.

That’s interesting because in Afrikaans, it’s get met your hart in die boter gefall. So it goes back to the Dutch, I assume.

Yeah, it certainly does. And those Germanic languages, the languages are often an indication of shared culture as well. So I’m quite certain. And, you know, it’s funny when you go back and read old travel guides, people will talk about the butter-heavy cuisine of the German-speaking countries.

Thank you. You’ve really made my day. I’m going to enjoy telling my hiking companions about this.

Oh, I love digging into proverbs and sayings and expressions like this. It’s one of my favorite things, Rob. So thank you for giving me the chance. It sounds like we’ve all landed with our bums in the butter. We’re just in this big butter bowl together.

All right. Enjoy your hikes, my friend. Have a good time out there.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Take care, Rob.

Well, we would be chuffed if you called us 877-929-9673 or send your emails about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Donna from Redwood City, California.

Hey, Donna. We’re glad to have you. What’s up?

So I work in an office environment up here, and a lot of our business is conducted over email.

And I noticed a trend that made me wonder about the use of a common word, because I’ve gotten emails like this from several different people, usually a one-line email and something to the effect of confirming the supplies will be delivered on Tuesday or confirming there is enough funding to purchase the new furniture.

And the first few times I got an email like this, I thought, well, gee, thanks for that update, but let me know when you’re sure of that information, because I read it that they’re currently in the process of working on the question, and they’ve yet to ensure that that thing will actually really happen.

And then I realized after that they’re usually trying to say that it is a done deal.

They’re meaning, yes, it is confirmed that the supplies will be delivered on Tuesday.

But it’s almost like they’re using the word confirmation referring to the thought of communicating the information, not about the actual action.

So I was wondering, am I misunderstanding or misinterpreting the use of the word or the tense, or maybe it’s shifted over time?

What you have described is almost a textbook case of intention versus reception conflict.

I could put this in a textbook and it would be classic because what we’re talking about here is caused by ellipsis where certain words are omitted.

So in this case, they say confirming X will happen.

They have left off the subject.

I am confirming.

They left off the copula, which is am.

And that increases the chance that you’re going to misunderstand.

But linguists talk about this in a lot of different ways.

But here, what we’re talking about is a performative use of the present participle, that ing word.

And the conflict here is that you were reading it as a constative utterance.

And that means you’re interpreting it as a statement that describes the state of affairs, that the sender is currently in the process of confirming, of verifying.

Where the sender, on the other hand, intends it as a performative utterance, where the statement itself is the act of confirmation.

You’re reading it differently because they mean I have confirmed and you’re reading it as I’m still in the process of confirming.

But it’s not it doesn’t fall on you and it doesn’t fall on the sender this this disagreement or this friction it falls on English because English is complicated all languages and so it falls on this mode of speech we have in the office where we use ellipsis we might just say noted and when somebody points something out instead of saying I have noted your thought or we might say approved instead of I have reviewed this and it is approved, right?

Or requesting update or advising that or tax please fine.

All of these we leave off the subject and off in the copula, the form of the to be verb.

Right. It’s interesting because even if you say I am confirming the supplies will be delivered, it still leaves that doubt for me.

It feels a little bit better and it feels a little bit more like, okay, they’re telling me, yes, it’s confirmed.

But still, not sure.

Donna, thank you so much for this interesting little dilemma.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for the call.

I love the show.

Thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Well, maybe other people have suggestions for how to make that really, really, really super clear.

I have established that the meeting will occur on Tuesday.

Martha, I am confirming that you’re about to say our phone number.

I am indeed.

Yes, that is confirmed.

877-929-9673.

Stay put. We’ll be right back to untangle the web of English.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And getting a running start in front of the slip and slide before he flings himself in our direction, it is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Whee!

That’s not water, that’s jello.

Delicious, delicious slide.

Good to talk to you guys again.

I’ll tell you what, you know, we’re going to do common bonds again.

All right.

Yeah, I’ll give you three things.

You tell me what they have in common.

You know, there’s lots of names for these.

They were in a board game format that was called TriBond.

People still call it that.

But if you’re a diehard puzzle solver, you likely know it from, that’s right, the UK game show Only Connect, where it’s called The Connecting Wall.

When I host Pub Trivia, we call it Common Bonds.

So here we are, Common Bonds.

For example, if I said a report card, USDA inspected beef, and incline, you would say grades.

Grades like that.

Got it?

Gotcha.

All right.

Yeah.

And all of these, by the way, the ones I’m doing here have a sort of a word-based thing as is appropriate for this show.

Here we go.

Crafted, grenade, towel.

Hand.

Hand crafted, hand grenade, hand towel.

Yes.

Very good.

Right out of the gate.

And all of these words can be preceded by the word hand.

Monitor, throb, wrenching.

Heart.

Yes, heart.

Alley, taxes, nine.

Alley, taxes, nine.

Back.

Back alley, back taxes, back nine.

Right, very good.

The body. Now, to be fair, usually when we do this in trivia, there are up to six people in a team, so you guys are doing very well as a duo.

So let’s see.

Pads.

Bag. Holster.

Shoulder.

Shoulder bag. Shoulder pads.

Shoulder holster. Very good.

Coral.

Rot.

Teaser. Brain.

Brain, yes.

Brain coral. Brain rot.

Brain teaser.

If you go skin diving, you might see some brain coral.

Oh, I thought you said quarrel.

Oh, quarrel?

Two sides of my brain, sometimes coral.

Coral.

How about this one?

Finally, splitting trumpet worm.

Splitting trumpet worm.

The famous splitting trumpet worm, yes.

I think David Attenborough discovered the splitting trumpet worm.

Yeah, look, that worm’s leaving.

Ear.

Yes.

Ear splitting, ear worm, ear trumpet.

Ear trumpet.

Again, something we haven’t seen in— I need a brain trumpet.

Many, many, many, many years since we’ve seen ear trumpets around, but they were a thing.

What’s that, Sonny?

Come again?

Oh, wow.

That’s great.

Speaking of coming again, I will come again, I promise, with another quiz, but that was it for today.

We’ll talk to you next week, John.

Take care of yourself.

Slide on out of here.

Bye-bye.

Give our best to the family.

You too.

Bye, John.

You can find all of our past quizzes with John on our website.

Just look for the quiz category.

You can also find all of our past episodes and lots of ways to reach us with your thoughts and ideas about language.

Go to waywordradio.org.

Hello, you who have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hello.

Who are you?

This is Annie.

This is Annie Butler from Omaha, Nebraska.

Omaha, what a lovely town. It’s been a couple of nice days there. What’s on your mind, Dani?

I was calling, my partner and I have really gotten into bird identifying, bird watching, bird listening, and was wondering what the origins of some of the bird names or calls is from.

Specifically, we heard an eastern, what was it, an eastern wood peewee.

And I was just curious how it got its name.

I understand the call of the Pee-wee, but how, I would think that the consonants could be interchangeable.

How did they get the P and the W?

What is the call?

Okay, I’m going to try.

But it’s like, Pee-wee.

It sounds like a television station sting that they do after the news.

Pee-wee.

Right, right.

We’ll be back after this.

Pee-wee.

Right.

Wow, okay.

What a wonderful question.

And are you using the Merlin Bird ID app for this?

We are, yes.

Yeah.

Isn’t that amazing?

But yeah, in terms of P-E-O-E, it begins with that P sound.

And you’re wondering why it can’t begin with another sound, for example?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I guess, you know, in my case, like, I hear the vowels, but just who came up with, you know, yeah, putting that P there, that W there.

Yeah, well, that has to do in a way with what we call English sound symbolism.

The fact that P is what we call a stop consonant.

And stop consonants are consonants like P and T and K, which, you know, feel kind of quick and abrupt.

You know, you get words like pop and tick and crack.

And those are different sounding from what we call continuance, like the letter N or the M sound or L or R.

Those feel more smooth or flowing, you know, like murmur and lull and nice.

And so when you’re trying to distinguish those bird sounds, we tend to use those stop consonants.

You know, I’m thinking of, do you know how an oven bird sounds?

I don’t know.

Supposedly, the mnemonic for that one is teacher, teacher.

I’ve listened to these recordings on the Merlin Bird app, and it doesn’t really sound like teacher, teacher to me.

But there’s also the Bard Al, B-A-R-R-E-D, which supposedly sounds like who cooks for you.

And it’s kind of, you know, K sounds.

That one makes a little bit more sense to me, I feel like.

Yeah.

Yeah, and so people were coming up with their own versions of these terms,

But they started to get stabilized when people were publishing different guides to birding.

You know, there was the Roger Torrey Peterson one back in the 1930s,

And the National Geographic Society published a field guide to the birds of North America,

And then, of course, David Allen Sibley, the Sibley Guide to Birds.

Those publications started to codify those different English versions of those bird calls.

But what really interests me about these is that, you know, kind of like words, they tend to change over time and vary from place to place.

Like the white-throated sparrow.

I remember reading this 1970 children’s book, The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White.

And he mentions in that book, just in passing, he talks about this little sparrow with a white throat that arrived and sang,

Oh, sweet Canada, Canada, Canada.

Which is now, if you go to bird guides, you know, they’ll say the call is, Oh, sweet Canada.

But before that, it was old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.

Martha, that reminds me that there’s another layer to this, particularly if we’re talking about the Pee-wee or the Pee-wee,

In that the North American Peewee is a different bird than the European one.

The European one is a Lapwing, and the ones in North America are known as Tyrant Flycatchers.

And so the name was borrowed intercontinentally.

It was already in people’s minds, and so they just reused it because the sound was kind of the same.

And the other layer to this is what people choose when they’re trying to represent the onomatopoeia of a bird sound depends on their phonetic inventory, what languages they know.

So the same exact lapwing birds that are called peewits or peewees and a variety of other things in the English-speaking world are called kieviet in Kibitz in Dutch and South African and German because they have a different phonetic inventory than we do.

And so they represent the sound differently.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I realized this morning, too, that I had a cockatiel growing up who could actually talk.

And so I think that’s maybe another part of me not being able to hear exactly what the mnemonics are.

Right, right. That makes a lot of sense.

Do you have any other favorite mnemonics?

I mean, the ones that we have here in Omaha, lots of Blue Jays and Robins, you know, and it’s the cheer up, cheer up, cheer up.

And I don’t hear it, you know, but I guess I do hear, you know, with the Blue Jay, it’s like jeer, jeer, jeer.

And you do hear that hard J sound in that.

Well, Annie, send us your cool bird sightings.

I have one of those bird buddy feeders with a camera built in, and I love it.

Yeah, we do too.

And it just sends me little pictures of birds.

Yes, that’ll be the next purchase for sure.

It’s a sign of old age, and I don’t mind it.

Yes, exactly.

Take care of yourself, Annie.

Thank you. You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

One more knobbly monster or elegant variation from the Little Book of Second Dimensions.

For watermelon, somebody described it as the pink-fleshed crowd pleaser.

Oh, somebody had a word count that they had to meet.

Maybe they get paid by the word, yeah.

Somebody has school tuition to cover.

Love it.

Hit us up by email, words@waywordradio.org, or find all of our social media handles on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, hello, this is Steve calling from Newport News, Virginia.

I’m a firefighter and have been for going on 24 years.

We have a schedule, and it’s nationwide.

A lot of departments do the same thing, and it’s called a Kelly Day.

So a Kelly Day would be a day that when you would normally be scheduled to work, you’re off that day.

So if you work every other day, 24 hours on your, let’s say, seventh day, you’re off and you have three days off, if that makes sense.

But my question is the origin of Kelly Day.

And if you’re interested, I can tell you some of the lore around it and some of my research that I did.

And you can let me know which one’s right.

Yeah, let her rip.

All right.

One of the first ones I heard was that it was a firefighter chief or a firefighter somewhere that created the schedule, and his last name used to be Kelly.

That’s a pretty boring answer, but that’s pretty much the standard one that most people know.

Another and less savvy proposed that the etymology is the schedule already existed but didn’t necessarily have a name for that day.

And instead, that was more or less a day that the person, that someone, the firefighter would leave their house to supposedly be en route to work, but instead would surreptitiously slink off to their mistress, whose name was Kelly.

Oh, no.

That’s the more fun kind of, you know, side of your mouth kind of answer.

But that’s the one that a lot of people like.

And lastly, and probably most likely but least fun, is that there was a mayor during the Depression that, in order to save money for the city, and I can’t recall what city if I ever knew, created a schedule in order to basically save money for the city to not let responders be at work.

So of those three, any of those ring true or you got something new for me?

Yeah, I do have something new, and it’s probably the mayor.

It was Edward Joseph Kelly, who was the mayor of Chicago from 1933 to 1947.

He supposedly put a plan in place in 1936.

But there’s a larger picture here of why Kelly days, as they’re called, these extra days that you get off, sometimes called Kelly hours or Kelly shifts or Kelly schedules.

But there’s extra information there.

And that is that in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, the FLSA.

And it’s complicated to explain all this, but it was part of New Deal legislation.

And it established a 44-hour work week.

But as you know, firefighters are on call all the time.

Do you do 24-hour shifts?

Yes.

Yes.

Some people in the jurisdiction actually do 48-hour shifts,

And then they’re off for 72.

But yeah, varying schedules of the same type, yeah.

And so this was the problem where firefighters at the time

Were working 84 to 96 hours per week, and there was no overtime.

But the FLSA set some time limits on what was considered a standard work week and established some pay for overtime.

But there were always these carve-outs, these exceptions for firefighters because their work was so complicated.

Whoever does your schedule at the firehouse, I’m quite sure they have a heck of a time.

Now imagine that on a municipal level, just keeping firefighters on duty where needed, when needed.

So the number of hours that a work week counts for changed in 1939 to 42.

And then in October of 1940, it changed to 40 hours per week.

And this is when we see the term Kelly Day first appear.

So my understanding, and I have sought clarification of this with the International Firefighter Organization, is that the FLSA, this law where it handled firefighter cases, was modeled on what had already taken place in Chicago.

But the general belief is, again, it comes from Edward Joseph Kelly, the mayor of Chicago.

But as you noted, Kelly is an incredibly common name. Many firefighters are Irish in the history of firefighting, right? So I would put this at a 60% chance of being right.

Right, yeah. And again, it’s just things get passed around with lore a long time.

And, you know, sometimes I think the stories are created just for the entertainment value of it all.

And, you know, back when I first started this, we didn’t have phones in our pockets to pull them out and try to prove one another wrong.

So you kind of just went on whatever someone told you.

And hence the whole mistress ordeal, which I, you know, again, was pretty unlikely, but fun anyway.

Well, if it’s just chit-chat around the firehouse and you’re not writing a book, then the stakes are low.

Absolutely. Absolutely, Grant. Yes, sir.

Well, I want to thank you in person for your hard work out there and give our best to everyone down at the station.

I sure will. And I appreciate talking to you, Grant, and you as well, Martha.

And I hope you all are doing well. I look forward to hearing the show more and more and more.

You take care of yourself out there.

Call us again sometime, Steve.

Take care. Thank you. Bye.

Bye.

Call us with your workplace jargon. 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name is Holly Alamo, and I live on Marcus Vineyard, but I’m originally from Philadelphia.

What I used to hear when my mother would be talking to her friends was the phrase, and maybe she isn’t pretty.

And that usually meant she was very pretty.

And I don’t know where that came from.

And it would go like this.

I just saw Bobby the other day with his new girlfriend, and maybe she isn’t pretty.

And that meant she was pretty.

Where did that come from?

And so you’re saying maybe she isn’t pretty.

There wasn’t any particular stress on any one of the words in that?

Like maybe she isn’t pretty?

Yeah, it would be like, and maybe she isn’t pretty.

And maybe she isn’t pretty.

Do you come from a Yiddish-speaking background?

No.

No, okay.

No.

The reason I ask is this is common not only in Yiddish and English that’s derived from Yiddish, but also in other languages, French and Spanish and Danish.

It’s something called litotes, which is ironic negation or saying the opposite of what you mean.

The best example is to say, not bad, instead of saying good, right?

That’s not bad, instead of saying that’s good.

And every language that I’ve looked into, including French and Spanish and German, they all have a version of this.

Other ways that we say it in English, we might say, he’s no slouch, meaning he’s very good at whatever it is we’re talking about.

He’s not lazy.

He’s skilled.

Or we might say, that’s not exactly cheap, meaning it’s expensive.

It’s odd that it’s negating something positive.

You don’t usually see that.

Very positive.

He’s not wealthy, meaning he’s wealthy.

Yeah.

Well, this is, you know, and maybe she isn’t pretty.

And that always meant that she was a very pretty girl.

I think there’s also an unspoken phrase there after that.

Maybe she isn’t pretty, but unspoken is, but I think she is.

And you will often find this kind of unspoken intention in this negative inversion that people have where they say the opposite of what they mean.

I never remember it continuing.

It’s just such an unusual thing.

Yeah.

Well, no biggie.

We’re glad to take your call here.

Okay.

Don’t be a stranger.

Another one.

Oh, well, thank you.

You’re not too shabby, Holly.

Okay.

Not at all.

Oh, that’s good.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Thank you.

Well, maybe other folks have heard this expression, maybe she isn’t pretty.

I’d love to hear about that.

You can call us day or night and leave a message, 877-929-9673.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And, you know, these days when we hear the word anti-disestablishmentarianism, it’s usually just a kind of lexical stunt.

But it turns out that anti-disestablishmentarianism is not just a mouthful.

It’s a real word.

It shows up in the 1890s as a political term, meaning opposition to ending the Church of England’s status as the official state church.

That is, the disestablishing of the church.

But when this word really took off in the United States was in the 1950s, and there’s a fascinating story about why.

It involves the old TV game show, The $64,000 Question.

In 1955, a 12-year-old girl from Baltimore named Gloria Lockerman was on that show, and she correctly spelled anti-disestablishmentarianism.

And later on the show, she had to spell the sentence, the belligerent, astigmatic anthropologist annihilated innumerable chrysanthemums.

She got that one, too.

Gloria eventually could have gone on another round to try for a $64,000 prize.

But on her grandmother’s advice, she decided just to keep what she’d already won and save it for college.

And as you might imagine, she became an instant celebrity overnight.

She was nationally known.

And suddenly it seemed that everyone was going around saying and trying to spell anti-disestablishmentarianism.

And Gloria went on to college and eventually became a language teacher.

But for most of her life afterward, she avoided the spotlight.

And that was in part because as a black American with a suddenly high profile, she was also a target for abuse.

And I learned about this story from a new book by Jess Zafaris called Useless Etymology.

And Grant, as you know, Jess is also the co-host of the podcast Words Unraveled.

Yeah, it’s on YouTube and they have many subscribers and it’s a whole lot of fun.

And you can find a video of Gloria Lockerman competing on this show online as well.

We can link to that.

So that’s Jess, J-E-S-S, Zafaris, Z-A-F-A-R-R-I-S.

And the book is Useless Etymology, and we’ll link to that from our website.

We would love to hear what you’ve been reading and what you recommend that we read.

Let us know and email words@waywordradio.org or call or text our toll-free number, 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Megan from Louisville calling in.

How are you?

Hi, Megan.

I’m doing well.

And what are you calling us about?

I’m calling because I was listening to your program on the radio last week, and it just got me thinking about a childhood memory of when I was learning about the states and they were talking about Arkansas and Kansas.

And I could not get over the fact, you know, when you’re a kid, everyone’s telling you rules.

I could not get over the fact that they were spelled pretty much the same with just arc in front of Kansas or are in front of Kansas, but you don’t pronounce them the same.

So it’s not like you say, Kansas or Arkansas, Arkansas.

And I just piqued my curiosity and I’m wondering where that comes from.

Oh, this is a good one.

And you’re not the first person to ask this.

It’s been a common question since those two states were named, but I do want to point out that the Arkansas river is sometimes pronounced as the Arkansas river, depending where you are in Kansas and Colorado.

That’s wild.

Yeah, and there’s a reason for this.

Both of these states get their name from the same Siouan tribe.

So they were named for the Kansa people, K-A-N-S-A.

But the name of Kansas came through English-speaking people, and the name of Arkansas came through French-speaking people.

And so the French would not pronounce that final S.

So we, in our weird Anglophone kind of interpretation, we are rendering the French pronunciation of those letters in an anglophone way, but still retaining that silent final letter like the French would.

Of course, it comes down to original tribe names, which we, of course, unfortunately are not taught in school.

I wish the teacher would have answered that question and could have learned something.

That’s really interesting.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So that’s the gist of it.

The name is sometimes said to mean the people of the South Wind.

And they were throughout the Mississippi River Valley.

Wow.

I have a whole respect for it now.

It used to just irk me, but now I have total respect for it.

Well, it’s almost any time we’re irked by language, there’s almost always something interesting happening.

And we can just set that irk aside and go for the interesting stuff.

Well, it’s just that thing where it’s spelled the same, but it’s pronounced differently, like Polish and Polish or resume and resume.

You know, it’s got to be really hard.

I’m learning a different language right now, which I’m struggling with, but I can’t imagine trying to learn English.

Oh, yeah.

English is a real bear.

I don’t know how it ever became any kind of lingua franca with the mess that it is.

What are you learning?

What language are you learning?

Spanish.

It’s like my third attempt.

I’m very lucky to be able to travel there sometimes.

And people are always so gracious with me and let me practice and help me out.

And I’m just trying to get better at it so I can talk with people here and when I travel.

Oh, that’s wonderful.

Yeah, we highly recommend everyone learn any amount of a language they can.

Even just a few words is a start.

My old brain is struggling, but I believe in neuroplasticity.

So I’m hoping it’ll just eventually work it out.

Well, thank you for taking care of my curiosity and getting to the root of it.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye, Megan.

Leave us a voicemail anytime, 877-929-9673.

I think Patricia Lockwood is one of the most original and invigorating novelists writing today.

And she has a new book out that’s about her experience with long COVID.

And it’s called Will There Ever Be Another You?

Did I also mention that she’s pretty witty?

But the best article I’ve read about her lately was in The New Yorker.

And here’s the first sentence.

It’s by Alexandra Schwartz.

On a humid evening in May, Patricia Lockwood, who writes with the impish verve and provocative guilelessness of a peeing Cupid, was scanning the menu at a Mexican restaurant near her home in Savannah, Georgia.

It sort of sets the scene, doesn’t it?

Yeah, but I don’t know.

I think as an editor, I would have cut a lot of that.

I don’t know.

Yeah, it’s too much a ribbon for the size of the present, you know?

Well, I think it’s consistent with her sense of humor.

Patricia Lockwood’s sense of humor.

Yeah, yeah, I bet she liked it.

We’ll link to that article and to Patricia Lockwood’s new book on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Adam from Abilene. Thanks for having me.

Hi, Adam.

Yes, I have a question, a food language question for you.

And so I have this dish that was passed down to me, the recipe from my mother, and we always called it like a Tex-Mex casserole.

But I’ve never been sure if casserole is the right word for it just based on its consistency, like the form of it, you know?

Describe the dish for us.

It’s ground beef and onions, and then you have enchilada sauce, corn, olives, and then you layer that with tortilla strips you cut up and cheese.

And it doesn’t really hold like a square, like a lasagna or like a green bean casserole.

It’s too thick to be like a stew.

It’s definitely something you serve in a bowl, but you eat it with a fork.

And so I’ve never really been sure what exact food terminology to describe it.

Well, it sounds good anyway.

Yeah.

You know, so casserole is complicated because there’s some specific features that make a food dish a casserole.

For example, it’ll have a protein and a starch and a binder or a sauce.

And then usually throughout, except for maybe a crust, it’s the same.

So a lasagna technically isn’t a casserole because it’s layered.

But a casserole would be, so no matter where you spoon it from in the pan, you’re going to get the same thing.

So the form and consistency of a casserole isn’t really a factor in naming it.

It is not necessarily about keeping its shape. No, not at all.

Okay.

But there are a lot of terms for this if you want something different than the word casserole.

Hash is a really good one.

Hashes often have chopped meat and potatoes and maybe other vegetables cooked in a skillet and often used for shapeless dishes.

Slum gullion is another one, although it’s a little more like a stew.

And so the other thing that a casserole has is it’s baked.

It isn’t stewed.

It’s not simmered on the stovetop.

Well, it sounds like I have a casserole on my hands.

Yeah, it does.

But there is—nothing wrong with that.

There is—interestingly, in the Southwest, there’s a term called tamale pie, which sounds a lot like what you’re talking about.

Ground meat and cornmeal, though, instead of ground meat and tortillas.

I might have to look that up because that sounds pretty good, too.

You know, here in Texas, tamale season is the best season of all.

I mean, it’s the best part of the Christmas season, I’d say.

Yeah, there’s a bit of folklore in San Diego is that when you see the tamale person selling tamales wherever you are, you get a tamale.

That’s when you have a good day.

You always buy a tamale from the tamale person.

No soliciting except for the tamale person.

The tamale person absolutely is admitted.

I mean, they probably have entree into Fort Knox, you know.

You have to let the tamale person in.

Well, Adam, thanks so much for sharing that.

Yeah.

And you know what?

I would love to see a picture of that food the next time you make it.

You betcha.

Yeah, I can send you all the recipe as well.

Oh, yes, please.

Please do.

All right.

Take care of yourself now.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Questions about words and food are often in our wheelhouse, so call us 877-929-9673 or send your stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lynn Bowles from Currituck, North Carolina.

Hey, Lynn.

We’re glad to have you.

What’s up?

I had a question about a saying my mom used to say to me when I was a little kid.

I went up to her one day and I asked her if she had heard from her brother.

And she said, no, why?

I said, I don’t know.

So then a few days later, he called her.

She told me, she says, you have a goat’s mouth.

And I was kind of wondering what the meaning of that was.

So goat’s mouth as in the animal, G-O-A-T?

Yeah.

I’m assuming. I mean, that’s what she would say.

Yeah. What did you take away from that when she said you had a goat’s mouth?

What do you think she meant by it?

I’m not sure.

Okay.

Exactly. It was kind of a joke between me and her.

Yeah. It’s an expression, though. It’s actually a thing.

Well, these days it’s mostly in the English and French creoles of the Caribbean.

There are lots of different sayings that are about goat’s mouth, where you were said to have a goat’s mouth if you say something and then it comes true.

Or you mention someone and then they appear.

Or you cause someone to have bad luck because you predicted something else would happen.

It’s kind of like in the United States, we knock on wood in order to stop something from happening.

And so there’s a lot of superstition and folklore and proverbs that are about not mentioning a thing or else it will happen or the devil will notice.

But, yeah, so it appears in Jamaica and almost all the Caribbean islands, whether they have a French or English base, and on the island of Mauritius off the coast of Africa.

They also use a version of it.

That’s interesting.

I wonder where she picked that up.

I’m not sure exactly.

But it was just something that we always, you know, because I would do it randomly growing up.

I’d ask her about something and then she’s like, you got a goat’s mouth, you know, because it happened.

What I had mentioned.

It’s entirely possible that she picked it up through just the long history of the interplay between different cultures, because the Dictionary of Caribbean Usage by Richard Alsop makes a very strong case that it comes from African languages like Yoruba.

And it’s entirely possible that enslaved Black people brought it over from Africa and it passed into the larger culture from there.

Oh, okay. That’s interesting.

So, Lynn, how are you with lottery numbers?

Not good.

I wish I was better.

She’s calling us from her mansion, Martha.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, well, my grandmother used to read tea leaves.

Oh, okay.

Oh.

Yeah.

So maybe it’s like inherited or something.

Yeah, it could be something she picked up from somebody else in the T. Lee reading business.

Right.

Lynn, thank you so much for sharing this with us.

We really appreciate it.

Yes, thank you so much for letting me ask that question.

Sure.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye-bye.

What’s the saying that your family uses that you’re really, really curious about?

Call us or write us.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Colin from Los Angeles.

I go hiking sometimes and when I’m passing by people, like I’ll hear fragments of conversations.

You just can’t avoid it.

I heard something the other day that I’ve heard many times before.

I don’t know what it means.

And it’s make no bones about it.

And I just don’t have any idea what it means.

All right.

So, yeah, we can give you some clarity on this.

Do you have some guesses about what it means?

No.

I mean, like, I guess it’s just, it’s like being firm in your beliefs, I guess.

That’s pretty good.

It’s about speaking or acting without hesitation and not equivocating.

It means when people might expect you to be cautious or reluctant to say anything.

Instead, you speak frankly and forthrightly.

Or you’re just basically saying, make no bones about it.

I’m a firm believer in X, right?

Meaning, don’t doubt me in my sincerity.

And the origin of it is a little bit of a cool thing, I think, Martha, don’t you?

It’s this whole idea about not finding bones in your food where you didn’t want bones, like not finding bones in fish.

That’s literally saying in this meal of a conversation we’re having, I see no bones to stick in my throat, more or less.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, there’s no bones to ruin this encounter.

Like, nothing to stop me from doing what I’m going to do.

So it’s literally about bones and food.

Literally about bones and food.

Because, you know, you can choke on a bone or can pierce your gums or what have you.

And this whole idea of bones shows up in other European languages, such as Dutch and Yiddish.

But other languages approach it a little differently.

The French have a couple of really interesting ones.

One is ne pas y aller de ma mort, which literally means don’t go there with a dead hand.

And they also say ne pas y aller avec le dos de la cuillère, to not go there with the back of the spoon, which I get a little more.

It’s a little more like, why are you eating with the back of the spoon when you should be eating with the front, which is more straightforward.

But they have the more acceptable don’t take, you know, don’t take four paths, don’t take four roads, which is kind of like our don’t beat around the bush.

And it is different than the mafia slang of to make one’s bones, which means to become a made man, to become like an official member of the family.

That’s a whole different thing.

Like a bone of contention?

There’s that too, right?

That’s another one arguing about the bone.

But anyway, bones, so many of our metaphors are about food and eating.

Yeah.

No, it’s very interesting.

I had no idea that that’s what that meant, but it makes perfect sense to me.

Well, make no bones about it, Colin.

We are glad that you called, and you should call us again, all right?

Okay.

I really appreciate it.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

And happy hiking.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

Thanks.

Bye.

What have you heard or overheard recently that made you wonder?

We’d love to talk with you about it if it involves language.

877-929-9673

Or email us

Words@waywordradio.org

A Way with Words

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Is Stefanie Levine.

Tim Felten

Is our engineer and editor

And John Chaneski

Is our quiz master.

Go to waywordradio.org

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It’s supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Although we’re not a part of NPR, we thank NPR stations throughout the United States that carry the show.

And special thanks to our nonprofit’s volunteer board.

Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Merrill Perlman, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

So long.