No Cap, No Lie (episode #1566)

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. Here’s a handy German word,

Impfnid.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m going to totally use that one.

Well, you might. It’s I-M-P-F-N-E-I-D, impfnid, and it means the envy of those who have been

Vaccinated. Obviously, it’s a neologism, but it’s making the rounds and I really like it.

But you know what? I had a really cool aha moment when I started digging into the etymology of this word.

The night means envy in German, and the inf has to do with the horticultural metaphor of grafting,

You know, grafting a vaccine onto somebody.

And that’s when I had the aha moment because that’s the same idea in our word inoculate.

It is related to our word ocular having to do with eye because it comes from the Latin oculus,

Which means eye, and was sometimes applied in Latin to things that were small and round and

Look like eyes, like buds. And so inoculate in Middle English actually meant to insert a bud

In a plant. And then later it was applied to other forms of grafting or implanting,

Including grafting a vaccine into somebody to prevent disease.

How cool is that?

That is cool.

So you are literally putting one creature inside another.

Yes, yes, you’re grafting.

That’s pretty cool.

All of that wrapped up in this one little two-syllable word.

Well, we love to talk about other languages on the show,

And if you speak more than one language,

Hey, bring us your favorite word or an expression they say in your family

Or just something wonderful that you think we ought to know.

877-929-9673.

Or you can explain it in email to words@waywordradio.org,

Or share it on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, it’s Michelle, and I’m calling from the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

The turn of phrase that I’ve most recently been hearing,

And it’s new to me, and it just might mean that I don’t talk to enough people,

Is it’s been a minute, when the reality is it’s really not been a minute.

So I kind of find it funny and cute and whimsical.

And I’m not really sure where that comes from and kind of how it even started.

Yeah.

How would this come up in conversation?

So if I’m speaking to someone and I say, have you gone on to this website?

And they’ll say, oh, no, it’s been a minute.

And then I’ll say, okay, well, does that mean you’ve not been on the website?

And they’re like, no, I haven’t been on in like months.

I’ll be like, okay. So it’s just kind of a funny turn of phrase that I’ve most recently experienced. And I thought it was interesting because it’s so opposite of what exactly is happening. So are they trying to be ironic? I don’t know.

Yeah, so it’s longer times than a minute. So you might say, I haven’t seen you in a minute, meaning I haven’t seen you in a while. Or you might say, I’ve been working overseas for a minute, meaning I was overseas for some months. Or it’s been a minute since you came back home, meaning it’s been years since you came back home.

It’s a while or an uncertain amount of time or a long time.

And it goes back to at least the 1970s in Black American language.

And it reached mainstream American English by the early 2000s.

And the first uses that we know of in print are really interesting.

And they show you how it came to be the opposite of what it is.

Because they were something you’d say as you’re heading out the door.

You’d say in a minute, meaning it’s kind of a promise that you’d be back soon, like see you soon.

Because we would say see you soon as you’re leaving out the door, right?

Even if it wasn’t really going to be soon, even if we knew it might be years, we might say see you soon as a promise, as a kind of a vow to return.

And so that farewell of in a minute kind of turns around a little bit and later shows up in the conversations to mean unknown period of time or a long time.

Very interesting.

Okay.

So it’s just a different, it’s like what, colloquial phrase or something like that.

Yeah, it’s definitely slang.

But yeah, it shows up in Black American English first.

It takes several decades to pop up in the slang of college students by the early 2000s.

And then it’s more broadly used these days as it started to show up in movies and TV and just picked up in the broader American culture.

And we’d be remiss if we failed to mention the NPR show It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders.

It’s a wonderful show about news and culture.

And on their website, they say It’s Been a Minute is another way of saying let’s catch up.

It’s been a minute, Michelle.

What’s been going on?

Look at that.

I love how you rolled that in.

You are so good.

Thank you, Michelle.

I’m glad somebody noticed.

Michelle, where do you hear it’s been a minute?

What do you do that you run across this phrase?

I’m an RN, and I do work with a very large African-American populace,

And that’s generally who does say that.

I’ve never honestly heard it from white Americans or even Hispanic, Latino, Latinx.

It’s generally usually your African-American population.

So that’s really cool.

It’s a cultural thing, and I feel included.

Oh, there we go. Yeah. You have a good ear for language then.

We’ll call sometime if you hear something else that you can’t quite place.

You got it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Michelle.

Be safe on the front lines out there.

Thanks. Bye.

Bye-bye.

If it’s been a minute since you’ve called us, 877-929-9673,

Or send your language thoughts and ideas to us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Kirstie Skull, and I am calling you from South Mills, North Carolina.

Well, welcome to the show, Kirstie. What’s going on in North Carolina?

I have a friend who is from just outside of Detroit, Michigan, and she introduced me to a very odd word, door wall.

Door wall. And why is this odd to you?

So how it happened was she sent me a text message with a picture.

In the text message, it said,

What do you think about the curtains around my door wall?

I was really perplexed by all this because in text message,

I’m looking at this and I’m trying to figure out why she wants to hang curtains

Between an opening between two rooms.

I was thinking this was, you know,

I’m going to walk from one room to the other and there’s going to be curtains there.

Okay.

And so after a very confusing text message conversation,

We finally got on the phone, and I discovered she was talking about a sliding glass door.

Oh, okay.

This makes absolutely no sense to me.

So now it’s five years later.

Every time a patient walks in from Michigan, we bombard them, and we have to ask them,

Do you know what a door wall is?

And in the five years since this conversation, only one person has known what a door wall is,

And they were from Detroit.

-huh.

I love it, Kirstie.

So you’re working in some kind of medical office?

You said patient, right?

We work in a dental office.

Yes, ma’am.

Oh, I see.

I see.

Okay.

So just one Michigander knew it as door wall?

One.

Well, and then, of course, Monique’s parents.

So I told her it only exists within a one block radius of her house where she grew up.

But she told me, Google it.

It’s on the Internet.

And everything on the internet is true, so she wins.

Over the years, we’ve had maybe half a dozen people contact us about the term door wall,

And there is always some kind of Michigan connection.

I’m looking at an email that we got from Katie, who now lives in Seattle,

But she grew up in Detroit, and she used the word door wall all the time for sliding glass door,

And her family did too.

But the weird thing was that her local friends did not use it and made fun of her.

And now she always stops herself from using the word door wall there in Seattle because people just give her weird looks.

Because it makes no sense.

Well, it makes sense to people living around Detroit.

There is a story behind this.

Back in the early 1950s, home designers were promoting these homes that had large glass walls that opened out onto a patio through a sliding glass door.

And they were promoting it as, you know, you could feel like you were expanding your living space with all these wonderful vistas through this wall that had a door in it that was made of glass.

But the wall was glass, too.

Correct.

So that’s why it’s called the door wall.

Oh, correct.

The wall is glass and the door is glass.

Right.

And as often happens with language, this term didn’t stick around everywhere, but it did hang around in much of the Detroit area.

It was popularized by Martin Blank’s wall side windows there in Detroit, which is now based west of Detroit.

And what’s interesting, too, is that something similar happened in the southwest where a lot of people will call these doors Arcadia doors.

Have you ever heard this term?

I have heard Arcadia doors. I just didn’t know what that was.

Same thing. Yeah. And there’s a company called the Arcadia Company that’s gone on to manufacture the kind of glass that you see in skyscrapers and office buildings.

But they claim that they invented the Arcadia door. And now you hear that usually in the Southwest.

But that is a sliding glass. What I know is a sliding glass door.

Yeah. And it’s the same reason because it just so happened they were promoted as Arcadia doors in the Southwest.

But they were promoted as door walls in Detroit and other places.

But the names only stuck there.

So door walls were promoted in North Carolina, believe it or not, in Charlotte.

But it didn’t stick in Charlotte.

It’s stuck in Detroit.

Yeah.

Get out of here, Grant.

I’m never going to live that one down.

Well, thank you so much for explaining this to me.

I do not want her to hear this conversation.

Well, you have to share it.

You sound like an honest woman.

You’re totally going to share it with her.

Oh, she totally knows I’ve called about this.

Oh, okay.

She’s like, oh, I have to hear what they have to say.

And now I’m never going to live this down if you tell me this started in North Carolina somehow.

Well, it didn’t start in North Carolina.

But we’re just saying it was promoted there.

You can look in North Carolina newspapers from the 1950s, and they were selling door walls.

Millions of other people might believe you, but I choose to live in my own reality.

I will send you the newspaper equipment, darling.

Well, this has been so great.

I’m so excited about this.

Well, Kirstie, it’s been a delight.

Give Monique our best, too, all right?

I will.

Thank you so much.

Enjoy your day.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Here’s a word I’ve adopted from the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction online.

It’s Ansible, A-N-S-I-B-L-E, and it means an instantaneous communication device.

And I’ve started calling myself on that.

Where’s my Ansible?

That’s from Ursula K. Le Guin, right?

Yeah, she was the first one to use that.

But I don’t know what the etymology is.

But I just like it, Ansible.

Oh, she says that she got it from Answerable,

That it’s a modified form of the word Answerable,

So it’s a thing that can be answered.

Grant, I have so many aha moments with you.

Hit us up, 877-929-9673.

This show is about language seen through family, history, and culture.

Stay tuned for more of A Way with Words.

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 joining us now is that man of many mysteries, John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

Hi, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Welcome once again to what I call a play with words.

Let’s play with them.

I have a special quiz for you today.

It’s a little weird.

You know, these days we all wish we could get out more.

It’s as if all of us are living in a massive escape room.

This is a wordplay-based audio escape room, and you’re stuck in it.

I hope you can get out.

-oh.

Yeah.

The two of you are in a standard hotel room,

Complete with the standard things you find in a hotel room.

Somehow you’ve been locked in and have to find a way out.

Now, search the items in the room,

And you’ll find word puzzles which will help you escape.

Now, go ahead and pick an item, a random item.

Now, be sure to take notes.

Write these down.

The Gideon’s Bible.

The Bible.

All right.

You know, it’s said that the Bible is this four-letter term,

But a 1963 song by the Trash Men claims that it’s bird.

What is it?

The word.

Bird, bird, bird.

Bird is the word.

Word.

Right.

Your answer is word.

Write that down.

Word.

All right.

You’ve got the Bible.

What do you want to look at next?

How about that remote control?

The TV.

You know, there’s a puppet show on.

Maybe sit back and watch this classic slapstick character while sipping a same-named five-letter

Fruity drink.

Oh punch punch yes good punch is your answer write that down yeah what else you want to look at in

This room phone book the phone yeah the phone let’s see now if groucho was a grouch and

Chico chased the chicks and harpa played the harp what did a famous drummer wear to earn his name

A ring.

Ring.

Ring is the phone answer.

Yes.

Write down ring.

Very good.

What else would you like to look at?

We have a few more.

Bathroom.

Bath.

You know who could use a relaxing bath and perhaps a refreshing beer?

A six-letter worker who sleeps all night and works all day.

Six letters.

Isn’t there a song that has lyrics like that?

Yeah.

Sleeps all night, works all day.

Oh, a lager.

A lager, yes.

Your answer is lager, L-O-G-G-E-R, lager.

All right, only a few more to go now.

What do you want to look at?

A table.

A table.

There’s a desk.

How about that one?

There is a desk, yeah.

What three-letter word is an item you might find here?

Also something you might do to your expense report.

Well, there’s a pen.

Oh.

I would never do it, but some people pad their…

Yes, pad.

Oh, pad.

Your answer is pad.

You’re almost out of the room.

Take a look at the answers you found.

You took notes.

See if you can find something related to them that will help you out.

Just think of something that’s related that can be used with all of those.

Oh.

Oh, a word that goes with all of them.

How about key?

It’s the key.

You found the key.

You can get out of the room.

Congratulations.

Keypad, key ring.

Key punch, key ring, key logger, keypad.

Nicely done there, Martha.

Welcome back to reality, everybody.

Yeah, fresh air.

Thanks for coming out of the room.

John, that was amazing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, guys.

Take care.

We’ll talk to you next time.

All right, bye-bye.

And now it’s time for you to get in on the fun on this show.

So call us to talk about any aspect of language whatsoever,

Whether it’s wordplay or riddles or etymologies or slang or even grammar.

877-929-9673.

Or you can send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or hit us up on Twitter at Wayword.

Hello.

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Rachel from Ashburn, Virginia.

Hi, Rachel.

How are you doing?

I’m good.

How are you?

We’re great.

What’s on your mind?

My mom, who was a school teacher, was very educated and a very smart lady.

And she was kind of known in our family for using very unique words for things that most people wouldn’t use.

And not only that, she would often make up expressions and even words sometimes.

And my siblings and I joke now about how hard it was for us to tell which words and expressions were real or which ones were made up of hers.

So before I get to my main question, just to give you an example of one of her made-up words, one was occupiance or occupiances.

And that just meant something to keep you busy or occupied.

So if growing up, if we were getting ready to go on a big road trip, or if she had to take us to a long boring church meeting or something, it was very common for her to say, you know, time to go, grab your occupiances, meaning a book or the Game Boy or something.

Yeah, nice.

And that’s one word that was made up that I believed was real for the longest time.

But my question, however, is about a real word that I thought was fake until I was in high school, that she would say.

That word is paraphernalia.

And she would use that word regularly, usually in reference to clutter or messes in the house.

So she would say, hey, Rachel, go pick up all your paraphernalia up off the stairs.

Or there’s all kinds of paraphernalia in here.

And to young me, that was kind of weird sounding,

So I just assumed she might have well have been saying,

Go get your doohickeys off the stairs,

Or let’s clean up all these thingamabobs.

Time to clean up all this paraphernalia.

Yeah, that could totally be a fake word.

Right, that’s what I thought too.

It just seemed like another one of those kind of silly filler words.

And so one year in high school,

The principal was making an announcement over the PA system

About how police dogs were coming in that week

To sniff the lockers for drugs and you guessed it, drug paraphernalia. And I was shocked. I didn’t

Realize that anyone used this word besides my mom. I’m sure I didn’t react in that moment.

But later I came home and chatted with her and looked it up and realized that yes,

This is a real life word that more people than my mom used. And we still kind of joke about it today.

I guess my question is, what can you teach me about this word?

Because, I mean, to this day, it still seems kind of such a long and ridiculous word with such a simple meaning, which I believe it just means things or stuff.

Maybe you can send more nuances or a more sophisticated definition.

But anyway, just anything about the etymology or why it is the way it is, I would love to learn.

Rachel, let me tell you right now, Martha is literally on the edge of her seat.

I think she’s frothing at the mouth.

Oh, good.

This word has a really interesting history.

Martha’s got the whole story.

I’m so excited.

When we take the word paraphernalia, we get to go all the way back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome.

Because in ancient Greece, the ferna, P-H-E-R-N-A, was a bride’s dowry.

It was the money or property that she brings to her husband in marriage.

So the ferna was the dowry, and the paraferna was the other property that she brought along with her, you know, her own stuff, clothing and jewelry.

So you have the word ferna, meaning dowry, and then you have the word para, the little preposition there at the front, which means beside, you know, like paramilitary or a parasite is something that eats food alongside you.

And so this influenced Roman law where paraphernalia was, again, the articles of property that were held by a wife beyond the dowry that she brought to the marriage.

And this influenced English and Scottish common law where paraphernalia referred to purely personal belongings of the wife, like her clothing and jewelry and mementos and things like that.

And back then, the husband owned those things legally, but the wife had free use of them.

And that was her paraphernalia.

And then by the 18th century, the word sort of morphed from this sense of a wife’s purely personal belongings to the purely personal belongings of anybody or the belongings that somebody used to engage in a particular activity.

And then it wasn’t until the early 20th century that people started using the word to apply also to the belongings or the little doodads that you use to smoke opium.

And then it became used in terms of drug paraphernalia as well.

Wow. I never would have guessed there was such a history behind that word.

Yeah, so from dowry to drugs.

And interestingly, the word paraphernalia kept its shape and form throughout all those long centuries.

Right, Martha?

Right.

Once the para and ferneli were added together, the spelling didn’t change.

Yeah, but you’re right, Rachel.

I mean, it’s weird that it’s such a long word for, you know, little bits and bobs.

Right, right.

That’s what I was thinking.

And it seems like it’s really only used in reference to drugs.

And maybe I feel like I’ve heard it in reference to swag or merch for sports teams or universities.

Maybe.

But you don’t hear it very often for anything besides drugs, from what I’ve noticed.

Yeah, I get this mental picture of gathering up your stuff and putting it in a container and walking out with it or something.

Yeah, usually I see uses of it where it’s kind of a class of items like drug paraphernalia stuff pertaining to drugs or office paraphernalia stuff related to an office or class paraphernalia, classroom paraphernalia.

And it’s not so much miscellaneous as it’s miscellaneous of a type, if that makes sense.

Yeah, all the accoutrements.

Yeah. All the things that go with whatever your activity is, I guess.

Yeah. That makes sense with how my mom uses it.

When growing up, she would say, go pick up all your paraphernalia.

So I guess all the things regarding to Rachel and everything about me,

All of my notes that I left everywhere, that is my paraphernalia that I got to go pick up.

Your Rachelnerlia.

Yeah.

Yes.

Rachel, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you. Thrilled to speak with you.

And thank you for everything you do on the show.

I appreciate it.

Our pleasure.

Thanks a lot.

Be well.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Rachel.

Bye-bye.

Is there a word you’re wondering about?

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mike O’Sullivan in Blacksburg, Virginia.

What can we do for you, Mike?

Well, it is nice and warm today here in Blacksburg.

It’s not too windy.

It’s sunny, but it looks like it’s going to be cloudy tomorrow, and it’s probably going to snow by the end of the week.

So my question for you is, what is it?

What is this it that is sunny and warm and it snows and it’s cloudy?

And why don’t we have a more specific word for it?

Oh, that’s a good question.

So you’re using this it, and ordinarily the it would, it’s a pronoun, so it should refer to something, but it doesn’t really seem to be referring to something, right?

That’s right.

If I’d say give me it, ordinarily you’d know what I was referring to.

It’d be a book or a magazine or a piece of food, right?

But there’s no it when it’s raining.

Do we mean the sky or do we mean the environment?

I’m picturing cousin it from the Addams Family.

So this is, interestingly, that it is sometimes called the weather it, W-E-A-T-H-E-R, the weather it, because it so often occurs in expressions of weather.

But more often it’s called the dummy it, and not because it’s dumb or ignorant, but because it fills a place.

It’s a placeholder. It’s in an inactive unit.

So in general, it appears where a subject or object could or should appear according to the rules of English syntax.

But in this case, it doesn’t because the sentence in question doesn’t really have a subject or an object.

Sometimes it’s because it’s delayed or moved elsewhere in the sentence.

Or sometimes it’s because it’s understood but not specified.

So with it snowing or it snows, what’s the it?

It’s nothing.

There’s no antecedent.

The pronoun it isn’t standing in for any noun previously mentioned.

We just do it because English syntax fires off these alarm bells in our heads if we just say snows, snowing, without a subject, right?

Right.

We do sometimes say snowing out there.

You know, you come in, you shake off your boots and your hat, and we can say snowing out there and get away with it.

But in that case, the dummy it is simply a deleted subject where we still understand that that it snowing out there is still unsaid, but it’s there somewhere.

And we just can’t get away without having a subject in that sentence.

And then the other way, we can say it’s true that it snowed last night.

That it is what’s called a delayed subject.

So it snowed last night is the subject, but it’s at the end of the sentence and not the beginning.

So the antecedent isn’t an antecedent because it doesn’t come before it comes after.

And I know that’s complicated, but there you go.

Grammar is weird.

Michael, thank you so much for calling.

Hey, it’s been fun. Thank you.

It’s been fun? You mean the conversation?

It has.

Okay. All right. Thanks, Michael.

Bye.

English is weird. Let’s talk about it.

877-929-9673.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Scott Flarsky speaking to you from Oak Bluff, Massachusetts.

Yeah, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Yeah, so I was listening to the show and I thought of something from my childhood.

My mother was from southeastern Kentucky, Appalachia, but I grew up in New England.

So, you know, their language and use of language was something that was always like fascinating for me.

And my mother’s family all used the word chimley, C-H-I-M-L-E-Y, to talk about the chimney.

And I don’t know, it just always stuck with me, and I wondered if it had any origins anywhere else.

-huh. So chimley for chimney.

Yes.

So you’re saying the folks in Appalachia said chimley, not the folks in Massachusetts.

Correct. My mother moved from there to Massachusetts in the Second World War.

So, she sort of lost that usage, but whenever I would visit all of my aunts and uncles and

Grandparents there, they would use this other word, and I actually never asked them. It just

Sort of stuck with me. That pronunciation, the C-H-I-M-L-E-Y, and another one, Chimbley,

C-H-I-M-B-L-Y, are both really common in the United States, and they’re often looked down upon.

But from another perspective, they’re these artifacts of immigration because they tend to pop up where Americans have roots from the north of England and Scotland because that’s where those pronunciations come from.

They go back hundreds of years, heck, as far back as the 15th century in the British Isles.

So they are direct descendants of these people who migrated to the United States,

And they’ve just kind of persisted in pockets ever since.

Wow. So that is related to sort of the Scotch-Irish origins of the people of Appalachia?

That is correct. That is absolutely right.

Now, there’s a little bit of the Chimley and Chimbley being said in places that don’t have Scotch-Irish heritage,

But that’s just because the pronunciation then has spread a little bit.

But I have to say this plainly, if you say chimley and chimbley, it’s not because of a lack of education and it’s not because someone is stupid.

It’s just because that is a part of the dialect.

Yeah, Scott, I like the word you used, authentic.

It’s history in people’s mouths.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for calling, Scott.

Really appreciate it. Take care.

Love the show. Thank you.

Well, is there a word or phrase that your family uses that you’re surprised other people don’t use?

We’d love to hear about it. 877-929-9673 or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

We were talking earlier about the new German word impfnite, which means vaccine envy.

And another great new coinage in German is Corona Fussgus.

I probably didn’t pronounce that very well, but it means Corona foot greeting.

And it’s the way that you greet somebody instead of shaking hands.

You just stick out a toe.

Corona foos goose.

Tap toes.

They do a little do-si-do with your feet.

Yeah, a little foot greeting.

Well, yeah, the foos is, you know, like foosball and gloos is greeting.

Right, exactly.

Corona foos goose.

And to goose somebody is to poke them.

I don’t know.

I’m just making that up.

877-929-9673.

More about what we say and why we say it.

Stick around for more.

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.

John Colapinto is a writer for The New Yorker,

And in his spare time, he sang in a rock band very loudly.

And this led to a polyp on one of his vocal cords and a very noticeable rasp.

And it’s a problem that sometimes can be fixed with surgery, but the operation is risky and delicate.

And as Colopinto began looking into that surgery, he found himself increasingly fascinated by the whole idea of the human voice.

About the fact that there’s so much that we take for granted about our own voice.

And about the fact that we manage to communicate thought and emotions on, as he puts it,

Tiny ripples of air that we beam into other people’s brains by moving our lips and tongue while exhaling.

And the result is Colopinto’s new book.

It’s called This is the Voice, and Grant, it is wonderful.

I know that you and our listeners will really dig it because it combines history and science and linguistics and personal narrative,

All in a way that you’d expect from a writer for The New Yorker.

For example, until I read his book,

I hadn’t understood that it’s actually anatomically impossible for newborns

To form most of the sounds we use for language

Because of where their voice box, their larynx, is located.

It turns out a baby’s larynx is tucked up in the back of the mouth.

This positioning helps them suck steadily on milk,

But as a result, babies don’t have a resonating chamber in the throat, and that limits the range of sounds that they can form.

It’s only later, once they transition to solid food, that the larynx drops lower.

And it sets the stage for babies to start creating that much broader array of sounds.

And what’s really fascinating is that the larynx of a Neanderthal, like the larynx of a chimpanzee, sat higher in the neck than our own one does.

So this lowering of the larynx as every baby grows mirrors the larger evolutionary picture,

And it helps lead to the miracle of language itself.

And he also covers research about a lot of topics that you and I have covered on the show,

Things like language acquisition, the development of regional accents, vocal fry, prejudices toward people who speak differently, all those things.

And he talks about the work of linguists we’ve mentioned many times on the show.

And along the way, he also talks about how opera singers train their voices,

How demagogues use language and vocal delivery to incite their followers.

So, Grant, it’s really an exhilarating read.

It’s this wide swath through this topic that we all take for granted,

And I think it’s a must for language enthusiasts.

I want to argue with something there, though.

I would argue that babies do have a resonating chamber.

Really?

I think I’m partially deft in my right ear because my son had a resonating chamber.

Well, yeah.

I tease. I believe him.

What he was saying was that they can’t make the full articulation of all the different sounds,

All the different phonemes required to really complete the English language and be a full speaker of the language.

Exactly. That’s it.

And he does talk about how that first screech of a baby and those early vocalizations are really pure.

And singers, opera singers, for example, have to work to get back to that ability that babies have to project the sound the way they do.

But I found that so fascinating that your larynx actually moves down, and that’s what gives you the room to make the more sophisticated sounds.

And this explains also why you are able to teach a baby sign language before they can learn spoken word.

Because they are capable of doing the hand movements before they’re capable of doing things with their mouth or things with their vocal cords.

I didn’t even think about that. But yeah, that’s a great point.

Well, it does sound like a lovely book. Can you tell us again what the book is?

It’s called This is the Voice, and it’s by John Colapinto.

And as always, we’ll put a link to that book on the show description when we post it to the website.

We know that you’re big readers, and we know that you want to share your favorite books with us.

Share them with us, and perhaps we’ll talk about them on the show with everyone else.

877-929-9673.

Or send us your favorite books in email to words@waywordradio.org.

And hey, if you’re a writer, don’t be shy.

Share your books with us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Gabriel.

I’m calling you from Nevada, and I was calling you about the word capping.

Ever since I was a teenager, this word just kind of appeared in my vocabulary, and I don’t know where it came from.

I’ve heard it in rap songs and kids talking about it at school, but the word capping is supposed to mean lie.

And I was wondering where that word came from.

So if somebody tells you something that you’re doubtful about, you say you’re capping?

You say, bro, that’s cap. You say that’s cap.

Or whenever you want to say that you’re not lying or you’re not exaggerating, you say no cats, like you’re not lying.

Okay.

Do you remember how long ago you first heard it?

I think it was like two-ish years ago.

And I did a little bit of research on it, and I guess it came from these two rapper guys.

And they said that they heard it ever since they were little.

And I was wondering, like, where that came from.

So you’re still in high school, Gabriel?

Mm—

Okay, great.

So a couple years ago, that put it around 2018.

Are you talking about the future in Young Thug song, No Cap?

Yes.

Okay, and that came out in 2017.

You know, a lot of people think that maybe that’s where it came from,

But the song only charted for a week.

It was only on Billboard’s chart for one week,

Although the album sold very well,

So maybe that song is the reason it became popular.

But it actually goes back a lot further than that.

Let me take you back, believe it or not, to the 1500s.

What?

Yes.

In the 1500s, you might cap an anecdote, proverb, quotation, or verse.

So this was a kind of verbal jousting game where the goal was to have the last word with the best or most appropriate response of the same kind.

So you might tell me a quotation, say, from the Bible, and I would respond with one that I thought was related to that, but a little better for the situation that we’re talking about.

Or you might tell me a proverb about something, and I might respond with one that was better.

Or you might tell me a funny story, and I might tell you one that was a little better and a little funnier.

According to the people around us observing would be the ones to respond and cheer or clap or say

Amen or something like that to let us know that we were doing well or not doing well. And then

This kind of tradition continued with Shakespeare quotes and things like that. You’ll find this

Sometimes in British movies, even today, occasionally people will just start saying

Shakespeare quotes to each other and somebody will say, oh yes, that’s from such and such,

That’s from Macbeth, scene two, blah, blah, blah.

And then somebody else will say, name and do another quote.

And somebody will say, oh yeah, that’s from, you know, da, da, da.

And they’ll just keep naming these quotes.

This is a kind of capping.

Over the centuries, it turned into something else.

So by the mid-1800s, it turned into, basically it was really about telling jokes.

The form of it was about telling jokes, where the idea of capping was about telling a better joke,

Or telling a better story.

And you can see it in slang guides

Where basically it’s kind of barroom talk or pub talk.

And it was still in use this way in the 1980s.

But by the 1940s,

There became this thing called capping

In the black American community,

Which was kind of this formalized exchange

Of insults called capping.

And capping is a direct relationship,

Has a direct connection to this old idea

Of this verbal jousting.

So it combines the African tradition, African being from Africa tradition, of formalized insults with this European tradition of challenging each other with this kind of ability to be verbally aggressive without being physically aggressive.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense.

And it goes by a lot of different names.

The dozens, the dirty dozens.

Trading Yo Mama jokes is a watered down version of this.

And so these were often exaggerations on someone’s character or their circumstances.

And so in that way, capping became a synonym for stretching the truth or lying.

So when I tell you a joke about your mama, right, I’m not really saying that your mama’s that fat, right?

I’m exaggerating, and that’s a lie.

And so to cap meant to tell a lie.

And this continued well past the 40s, the 50s, the 60s.

It starts to show up in slang dictionaries again by the 70s, specifically associated with black Americans.

And then it starts to show up in hip-hop music.

And then it starts to show up in college slang.

And here we are on the phone with you.

Wow.

2021.

Yeah.

How about that, Gabriel?

Hundreds of years of history, and it has to do with verbal contests.

Gabriel, give us a call sometime.

You know, we’re not as in touch with slang as we used to be.

But we’d love to hear from you if you’ve got questions or even if you’d just like to call us and tell us and keep these old farts in touch with what the teens are saying.

Thank you.

Our pleasure.

Gabriel, thank you so much for calling.

Be well, man.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye.

So how about that?

New slang that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.

That’s really amazing.

We’d love to hear your stories about slang.

Give us a call 877-929-9673 or send them to us in email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

On our Facebook group, Brett Stone writes, something I do with my son in the car is we

Come up with alternate pronunciations for various businesses and billboards we see.

For instance, KFC becomes Kifka, and Goodwill becomes Goudwell, and Office Depot becomes

Ofikidapat. He says it’s silly and immature, but that’s part of the appeal. Passes the time well

And gives him something to do that isn’t a screen. He often imagines what these alternate stores are

Selling. That sounds like a good exercise to do with your kid. Yeah, my son does one. Sometimes

When we go to the San Diego Safari Park,

We pass a sign where they sell fresh fruit and vegetables,

And one of the signs says fresh avocado,

But he says fresh avocado.

I like that.

Fresh avocado.

Avocado instead of avocado.

Fresh avocado.

That’s very evocative.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sikoa.

I’m calling from Norfolk, Virginia right now.

Nice to talk to you.

What’s up?

I had a question about a word that’s from where I’m from, from a place called Monticello, Kentucky.

The word is sigoglin.

So it’s spelled S-I-G-O-G-G-L-I-N-G.

From the best I can tell.

And it’s typically taken in that crooked or anything that’s curvy.

Often used like job sites and things like that about, you know, it’s like a wall or a building project is a little sigoglin.

-huh.

So is it a negative thing then?

Yeah.

Typically, it’s a negative thing, you know, like saying that something is like too crooked or bent in a way that it shouldn’t be.

So like if in my home, like if there’s a picture frame on the wall that’s a little bit crooked, I would say it’s Cy Goglin?

No, it’s typically like a road that’s like curvy, like unnaturally, or like a wall that has multiple curves in it.

Oh, okay. Okay. And do you work in construction?

Yeah, yeah. I had worked in construction for a while, and it was a pretty common term from some of the older guys.

Okay. Well, this is fascinating to me because I’ve seen this term in print for years,

But it’s really nice to talk to somebody who uses it. And it seems to be related to a family

Of dialectal terms in England and Scotland that include the verbs goggle or coggle. And it has

To do with the idea of causing something to wobble or sway or totter. It’s the words that kind of

Sound like what they mean. And my sense of Cygaglin was more like something was crooked.

This is a really interesting sense that you’re bringing to us. I’ve seen it spelled lots of

Different ways, like Cygodlin and Cygadlin, Cygartlin, Cywadlin. But my sense is it has to do

With crookedness. Yeah, yeah. That’s really what I took it to mean and what it was meant for on job

Sides. That’s really fascinating. Yeah, it goes all the way back to England and Scotland. There’s

A whole family of words like that, a whole collection of words like that, that we use to

Describe that kind of situation, like whompy jawed and catawampus. But Cygoglin is a great one.

Do you use any of those? Yeah, catawampus is another really big one from more of like the

South kind of area. Yeah. Well, you hear these primarily in Appalachia. For you, is catawampus

Different from saigogland? No, catawampus would be the same thing. It would be taken to mean

Something is also like off kilter as another common one. Yeah, something is like wrong in a

Way that it shouldn’t be. Well, I’m really interested to hear that it’s something that

You use all the time in that work. Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s pretty much what we know about it.

Yeah, that’s really interesting. Thank you. I didn’t know that it actually dated back that far.

I thought it was something made up.

Thanks, Toccoa.

All right. Thank you.

All right. Thanks for calling.

Well, whatever you do, there’s strange language, and we’d like to talk about it.

877-929-9673. Email us words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. My name is Dan Webb, and I live in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Hey, Dan. Welcome.

Well, thank you.

I would like to point out a word that I think is missing from the English language.

You know, we’re all familiar with the word boo, which is a word you use when you want to startle someone.

But we don’t have the antonym of boo.

We don’t have the opposite word, which is a word you would use to indicate you don’t want to startle someone.

Where I would use that word, I’ll give you a couple brief examples.

I’m a runner, and I’ll be running on a trail in the woods, and I’ll be coming up behind someone.

And it’s easy to startle someone that way.

Sometimes you can say something like passing on your left.

But sometimes, you know, sometimes you’re not going to be passing on your left.

Anyways, some word that would indicate your presence without startling them.

Right.

You need kind of one word that’s an interjection that means I mean you no harm.

Right. I come in peace.

Yeah.

I know what you’re talking about. It’s not just when you’re jogging.

Like as a dude, like when I lived in New York City at night,

There’d be women walking on the street alone.

I’d always kind of like shuffle my feet so they could hear my feet clattering,

Even cross the street before I got to them just so that they wouldn’t be frightened.

You know, I’m like 6’2 and a big guy.

Just you never know how somebody’s going to take it when, you know, it’s nighttime and they’re alone, you know.

Good plan to cross the street.

But I don’t have a word for that.

I don’t have a word where it can say beep beep or whatever it is.

Maybe that’s not bad.

I really hit the nail on the head there.

You know, I’ll do the same thing in the running scenario.

I’ll sort of try to, like, you know, rustle some leaves or something with my feet to sort of make it less of a surprise.

When I, you know, someone said to me, well, you could say excuse me, but excuse me has

Kind of a different meaning.

It sounds like you might be saying, excuse me, you know, can I borrow 10 bucks?

Right.

Or excuse me, you’re in the way.

How dare you?

Right.

Yeah.

So that doesn’t quite work.

I’m thinking of something that they do in some parts of South America when you show up

At somebody’s house, you get out of the car and you clap your hands really loudly to announce

Your presence.

Ooh.

I like that.

What about something like that?

I mean, if your hands are busy, when you’re jogging, your arms are swinging to the side and clapping might be out of rhythm.

But maybe it’s something like, or would that be too odd of a noise that it’s on its own?

A clapping noise in the woods might be creepy.

Well, I guess, you know, if it came to be accepted, if people understood that that’s what the clap meant, sure, that might be okay.

Maybe in some other languages, maybe they have a solution to this.

When you’re in a public bathroom and somebody tries to get in, you say,

Ocupado, even though for some reason, why are you saying the Spanish word for occupy?

Nobody really knows, but it’s the easiest word to come out.

Why don’t you say the English word?

I don’t know, but you say, Ocupado.

And you don’t even say it well.

You just say, Ocupado.

Well, Dan, the really good thing is that we can crowdsource this question.

It’s a really good one.

What could you say when you’re coming up behind somebody and you don’t want to startle them?

What’s the opposite of boo?

Let us know, 877-929-9673.

And Dan, if we get some really good ones, we’ll be sure to share them on future shows, all right?

Great, thank you.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler.

You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. And Canada, 877-929-9673, or email us words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye-bye.