Noon Balloon to Rangoon (episode #1415)

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. Grant, like you, words are the main thing that I do.

But there are still these words that I have to look up every single time I run across them.

You have that experience, right?

Yeah, because you’re not 100% sure.

Yeah, yeah, I’m not sure. And I think my resolution for this year is that I want to be really mindful of that,

Really pay attention to those words because I think that’s the way I’m going to learn them.

Sort of like I’m trying to teach myself to remember where I left my car keys.

I read in a book that you should just tell yourself I’m putting my car keys on the table, right?

So whenever I come across a word like this, I’m going to just stop what I’m doing and tell myself

I’m looking up this word and learning it once and for all.

And the latest one that I did was innervate.

Innervate. Why? What was holding you back on that one?

Well, you know what? I mean, when I look at the word innervate, I think it means something about agitation or energizing you.

Doesn’t it mean to take the nerves out of somebody or something?

Yes, that’s literally what it means.

Like deveining shrimp, innervating shrimp, maybe?

Thank you. I never thought about it that way.

But yeah, yeah, it goes back to a Latin word that means either nerve or sinew or bowstring.

Interesting.

And if you think about it that way, if you think about innervating as taking the nerves out,

Then you’re going to create a situation where something lacks vitality or strength.

So these days we use it figuratively more than literally, right?

We innervate somebody by telling them, oh, I’m sorry, you didn’t get the job,

And they were innervated, something like that.

Wah, wah, wah.

Yeah, sad trombone.

Yeah, so now I’ve got that association, and I’m not going to forget it.

This is my resolution.

I think if I do this maybe once a day, then, you know, I’ll have 365 new words.

Perfect, right?

The word of day calendars.

My own personal, yeah.

We know there’s a word that stumps you.

You forget the spelling.

You forget the meaning.

No matter how many times you look it up.

No matter how many times you look it up.

You look it up, and 15 seconds later, you still can’t remember.

We know that word.

We know you have it.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Kat, and I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Welcome to the show.

What’s on your mind?

Okay.

Well, I am actually originally from the state of Delaware, and that is where I met my ex-husband.

And he would say, do what?

For instance, if I say something and you don’t quite catch it,

You might say what or say again or pardon me, but he’d say do what?

And he’s the only person I ever knew who said that.

We moved to Ohio and I was there for six years.

No one said it, so it was just him.

I thought it was some weird thing.

Then I moved and transferred it to the Texas office.

Everybody says do what?

And it drives me crazy, and I thought I would be lazy

And see if you would do the research for me.

Well, welcome to Texas.

That’s what we’re here for.

Welcome to the true South, or Texas maybe is not really the South.

Depends which Texan you talk to.

It’s just Texas.

Yeah, so Kat, this is spoken with an upward inflection then.

I say, hey Kat, come over here.

Do what?

Exactly.

Do what?

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I used to associate this with Gomer Pyle,

But now I sort of, when I hear this expression, I picture Matthew McConaughey.

Oh, okay.

Can’t you just see him say, do what?

Yeah, I totally can.

Yep.

Yeah.

Completely.

And you will find this all over the South.

Do what?

Almost exclusively, except by people who learned it from Southerners.

They live elsewhere in the country.

Yeah, and clearly in Texas.

It’s interesting that there are a couple of different versions of this.

Sometimes you’ll hear people say, do how?

Oh, yeah.

Or do which?

Or do what now?

Yeah, yeah, or do what now?

I’ve got family that says that, and they use the disbelief kind of version.

Their do what is.

Like, what is this foolish thing that you just said?

Basically, not that they didn’t understand you, but they think you just said something dumb.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I’m not sure what the structure of that expression is all about.

I’m not sure that you can really break it down.

I mean, I picked it up when I lived in Tennessee.

Do what?

And it was sort of like, at least in my mind, it was like, you want me to do what?

How is it that I can help you?

Right.

Even though there may not have been an implicit action involved in the thing that they misheard or the thing that the other person said, right?

Yeah.

I think that’s where the, does the do throw you?

Did that throw you?

Well, no, what threw me was the what, because now I will say do what if I know you just asked me to do something.

Right.

I’ll say do what.

Right.

But these people will say do what, and when I first got here, I would say do nothing, just listen.

I bet that went over well.

Well, no, he was a young kid, and he’s great, and he told me he thinks that it’s just a polite way of saying it,

And I said, well, I don’t really think it is because it implies that I’m asking you to do more than just listen.

Oh, interesting.

And I’m not even asking that, because you don’t hear me.

It’s just weird to me.

So it’s the do what?

Yeah, that’s the problem with idiomatic expressions.

I say this all the time.

You just can’t break it down.

Don’t break it down into its component parts.

It is what it is.

It simply means what, and it’s nothing else to it.

It’s just the same as say again or come again or what was that?

Oh.

You know, as soon as everybody hears this call,

They’re going to come talk to you and tell you exactly how do what fits into their lexicon.

Well, the thing is I’ve been in Texas for almost two years now,

And I refuse to say it.

Oh, really?

I refuse to pick it up.

And so when I do say do what, and if anyone tries to point out, say, oh, look, I say, no, you asked me to do something.

I didn’t quite catch what you wanted me to do.

And they’re like foiled again.

But, yeah, that’s one thing I refuse to pick up.

Pat, I’m going to make an appointment with you right now.

Put this in your day book.

On the day when you actually say it for the first time unselfconsciously, you have to call us because it’s coming.

It’s going to happen.

It’s going to pop.

It’s so useful.

It’s going to pop right out, and you won’t even realize it until a little bit later.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving from your ex-husband, it sounds like, right?

Oh, he’s a lovely guy.

Don’t hold it against him.

He can’t help it.

He was raised wrong.

Oh!

All of Texas just went up in arms.

All of Texas is saying, do what?

Kat, we’re going to let you go now because you’re digging a deep hole that I don’t think you can climb out of.

Well, thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Thank you, Kat.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Will do.

Bye-bye.

Okay, thanks.

Bye-bye.

Well, it’s amazing how much you can say about a little expression like that.

We’d like to hear the ones you want to talk about, so call us, 877-929-9673,

Or send those sayings to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

You may remember a few episodes I was talking about my friend Carol,

Who has a turtle that she just puts away in her closet for the winter because the turtle hibernates.

Yes, I remember.

Well, we heard from David Beiswinger who said,

Martha, you said you had a friend whose turtle hibernates.

Don’t reptiles brumate?

Brumate?

Yes.

How do you spell that?

B-R-U-M-A-T-E.

And what is that?

Well, it’s the way that reptiles hibernate,

Which apparently is a little bit different from the way mammals hibernate.

For example, they wake up and drink water.

I mean, it’s a slightly different way, but I looked online, and there’s actually some controversy about whether one should specify brumate.

But the point is that there’s a wonderful word for wintry, which is brumal in English, B-R-U-M-A-L.

So brumate means basically to hibernate during the winter?

Yeah, they’re very, very, very similar.

That’s pretty cool.

So not quite as knocked out as, say, a frog that has immersed itself in the mud all winter.

Yes, or frozen.

You know those wood frogs that freeze all winter?

But anyway, if you’re tired of talking about wintry weather, you can also talk about bruma weather.

The weather will still be there, though.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Emily calling from Colchester, Vermont.

Hey, Emily.

How are you doing?

Hey there.

What’s up?

I’m doing well.

I’m calling with a question that my mom actually told our family about at a Sunday dinner.

She was at a meeting at work, and one of her co-workers was telling a story.

Something happened to her, and in the story she said,

Well, I told so-and-so, you know, hark your racket.

And everybody at the meeting said, What? You told her to what?

Hark your racket? Hark your racket?

It. She’s like, no, no, no, hark your racket.

You know, like, hark the herald angels

Sing. And nobody

In the room

Had ever heard of it before.

And they asked where she got it. And she said, oh, you know,

It’s a Vermont thing. Okay, so

Hark your racket, it doesn’t have anything to do

With tennis, though. Apparently

Not. It just meant, you know,

Be quiet or, you know,

Pipe down or

Stop complaining.

Close your pie hole. I don’t have anything

For that exact phrase. Obviously, hark

Means listen. In hark the heralds, it means listen to the heralds. And racket is a word for noise

That probably originally came from a word having to do with rattle or something like that, you know,

To make a annoying noise. Yeah. So it means listen to your noise. But I don’t find that exact phrase

Anywhere, except there’s something close to it in our favorite lexicographical work, the Dictionary

Of American Regional English at daredictionary.com. And they have an entry for hark your noise,

Dating from the 1940s.

And the citations are from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Maine.

And so I think Maine is close enough to Vermont.

There’s only four citations here.

I bet if we looked at length, we could probably find a lot more

And find that it’s particular to that part of the country as well.

Interesting.

So hark your noise.

And is the meaning the same?

Yeah.

Like watch your noise level?

Yeah, basically it’s to be mindful of all the noise you’re making.

Did you realize that you’re being loud, basically, is what the subtext is.

Interesting.

Well, that’s fantastic.

So you said Michigan, Wisconsin, and Maine from the 40s.

Yeah, and there’s a couple from Maine here.

But all of these are in the form Hark Your Noise rather than Hark Your Racket.

But I could see how you could easily replace the word noise with racket.

So the citations appear from the 40s, and then they kind of fall off from there.

40s, 50s, 70s.

Yeah, they’re not that common.

It’s not that well-known.

But, you know, with this kind of language, it is not uncommon for something to exist in abundance and just be barely recorded, even in the specialty dictionaries like this one.

That’s awesome.

Thank you so much for taking the time to take my call and answer my question.

I will tell my mom that it’s not just this person, but some other folks in other parts of the country as well.

Yeah, tell her to hark her racket and you want to talk to her.

Thank you for your call.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we want to hark your racket.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your joyful noise an email, if you can do that, to words@waywordradio.org.

Writing recently in the Financial Times, Lucy Kellaway had a column that I found really interesting.

It was about how she’s now in her 50s and she doesn’t have the same level of fear at work that she used to.

And it made me think, you know, when you’re a lot younger, a lot of times when you’re in a work situation, you do have a certain amount of fear.

And you often develop a kind of fearlessness as you get older, as your competency improves.

But there was one line here that really jumped out at me.

She was going around and asking if other people felt the same way.

And then she said, my tentative conclusion is that I am bog standard.

Bog standard, yeah.

Do you know this term?

It’s a British term.

Yes.

Yeah.

It’s a Britishism that means ordinary, run-of-the-mill bog standard.

Just like the bog, which is, depending on your dialect, it’s the bathroom, the restroom, the place you do your business.

Yes, yes.

And a bog roll is a roll of toilet paper, apparently.

I didn’t know this.

And I started digging around because, of course, I was curious about where we ever got a term like bog standard.

And apparently the origin is in dispute.

Some people think maybe it has to do with box standard.

That is something coming straight out of the box.

But the research for that isn’t quite solid.

Imagine that, a slang word where the origins are in dispute.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But in any case, I really love the notion, bog standard.

Bog standard.

Just utter run-of-the-mill, we might say vanilla in this country.

That’s a great idea.

Even though vanilla is actually a flavor and not actually no flavor.

Yes.

Yes.

But let’s not get into that.

Let’s not.

But bog standard.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Try us on Facebook and Twitter.

And you know, we’ve got a discussion forum on our website, waywordradio.org, where you’ll find every episode of the show for free.

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 on the line with us from New York City is the one, the only, John Chaneski.

Hi, it’s me, John Chaneski.

Hi, guys.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

So you’re still a quiz guy, right?

I am still our quiz guy as long as she’ll have me.

I always imagine you with quizzes out of every pocket, stuff into your socks, in the soles of your shoe.

Instead of a hat, you’re wearing quizzes with a rubber band around your head.

Behind your ear.

When I go to the boardwalk and they do a caricature of me, that’s what the guy does.

A giant head and then a tiny body with papers and quizzes falling out.

Now, if I reach into this pocket here, I pull out this quiz right here.

Sure, yeah.

Let’s see what that’s about.

Now, you know, it seems flippant to put it in a puzzle.

But when one day the age of man comes to a close and a new species becomes dominant on the planet, there will be some changes, guys.

Okay.

Okay.

I’m speaking, of course, of the rise of the ungulates.

Yes.

Yeah.

Let’s take a look at an average citizen of an average city of the cow-filled future.

Okay.

Now, in cow town, some things will remain the same.

For example, our friend Mookie, that’s her name, Mookie the cow.

Mookie still likes some of the same things we do, or did.

Mookie’s weekend plans include watching Raging Bull,

The Count of Monte Cristo, and Milk.

She’s a big fan of…

Moo-vies.

Okay, gotcha.

Got it.

Now, here are some more things.

Now, remember, be sure to bring the moo out.

Oh, it’s all moo.

It’s all moos.

So, all things with moos.

Oh, okay.

Mookie’s favorite old-timey movie star, though, is the attractive star of Ghost, Indecent Proposal, and A Few Good Men.

Demi Moore.

Oh, Demi Moore, okay.

Demi Moore.

I was just coming up with Whoopi and Patrick.

I know.

Whoopi?

Of course, Mookie has a job, but times are tough for a young cow out there.

She works another job after hours.

What does she call this?

Moonlighting.

Moonlighting, yes. Very nice.

Now, when Mookie gets paid, of course, it’s in cow dollars, but she calls it by a slang term.

Moolah.

Moolah.

Moolah.

Mookie is always looking to get ahead, though.

She knows a good way to do this is to network.

So when she’s at a cocktail party, she indulges in this activity with powerful people.

Schmoozing.

Schmoozing.

Mooching.

Mooching, yeah, why not?

Mookie even has a pet.

Whereas we keep dogs and cats around for company, she keeps a large, flightless bird.

Emu.

Emu.

Ancient literature from the time of the primates interests Mookie, especially children’s books.

She’s fascinated by Megan McDonald’s plucky third-grade heroine from a series of books in which she saves the world, predicts the future, and has a not-bummer summer.

And Judy Moody.

Yes, Judy Moody.

Finally, Mookie likes to kick back with a nice blended drink containing yogurts and fruits, ignoring the ethical concerns.

A smoothie.

A smoothie is right.

And you guys were very smooth on that quiz.

You did fantastic.

Nice job.

Thank you very much.

That was amazing.

I just do anything I can to get you to sound embarrassing on the radio.

I know.

Are we going to have a chicken quiz next week?

Oh, hey.

Memo to self.

Chicken quiz.

Thanks, John.

We really appreciate it.

Say hello to the wife and kids, all right?

I think those cows are coming home.

I’ll head back to the barnyard.

Yes, thanks.

Bye, guys.

Time to bring in the cattle.

As you can hear, this is a show about words and language and a lot of goofing off.

Give us a call if you want to be a part of it.

877-929-9673.

Or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Keisha Smith.

Hi, how are you?

Hey, Keisha, where are you calling us from?

I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Oh, well, thanks for being on the show.

What can we do for you?

Okay, I have a phrase.

My mother is up in age, elderly, and she’s from this house.

And I heard it a million times growing up.

If you do something that, you know, you’re kind of embarrassed about

Or you feel embarrassed of how you’re looking or feeling sheepish,

She would say you’re looking like Ned in the primer.

And I’m like, what? Who is Ned in the primer?

What is a primer?

Interesting. Keisha, where did your mother grow up?

Troy, Alabama.

Troy, Alabama.

Okay, nice. All right.

So what was she meaning when she said that? How did you react?

Like if I did something that’s, you know, worthy of being embarrassed, as children do.

Or if you’re describing something that someone did that clearly they should, you know, they should be embarrassed because of what they did,

She’d say, well, he’s over there looking like Ned in the primer.

Or, you know, that was how she described the embarrassing event.

She would say what happened and then say, yep, you look like Ned in the primer.

Oh, wow.

And have you heard anybody else say that besides her?

No, I have not.

Interesting.

So Ned in the primer.

We know.

What about Nancy?

Did she ever say anything about Nancy?

Yeah, she would describe a female and had an embarrassing event.

I do believe there was a Nancy.

I think so.

Well, there were a series of books with Ned and Nancy as these kid characters

That were taught people to read, I think, as far back as the 1950s.

And I think Ned was the troublesome young boy,

And Nancy was the prim little girl,

Kind of stereotypical male-female separation there in the narrative.

And anyway, so if you are Ned and the Primer,

You are not that bright, frankly.

What is a primer?

Is she saying primer?

Yeah, primer, yeah.

The word’s got two pronunciations.

So a primer or a primer, P-R-I-M-E-R, is a book that teaches you something.

And most people in our country would know it as a book that teaches you to read.

Oh, like a kid’s book.

Yeah, like one of the first books, like the primary book.

Yeah, the very, like this is like…

Oh, okay.

So Ned was kind of the rascal, huh?

Yeah.

Well, yeah, he’s just kind of the gently misbehaving boy.

The use of that expression, Ned and the Primer, go back to at least the 1940s.

It actually pops up in the congressional record of all places in 1948.

It does, really?

What?

Yeah, so it’s got a good long history to it, 50, 60 years, right?

Well, he was born in 1944, so yeah, that’s right.

Oh, there you go.

So it was already in use by 1948.

Huh, I can just picture a congressman talking about another congressman looking like Ned and the Primer, huh?

Well, no, they’re actually talking about World War II and the Nazis, but yeah.

Oh.

Well, you’ll be amazed.

Isn’t that something?

Okay, well, thank you.

That was quite helpful and enlightening.

I’ve always wondered.

I’m really glad you asked that question.

I’d never heard of that expression before.

Thank you so much, Keisha.

Well, thank you.

Take care now.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye, Keisha.

Thanks.

You guys take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Ned and the Primer.

I had never heard that.

It’s cute little kids, little paintings, you know, little rosy cheeks.

Yeah, well, like the Dick and Jane stories.

Yeah, exactly.

Capering around in the yard, dog, and everything’s pristine and perfect.

You know how those books tend to be.

Yeah, but Ned sounds like a more complex character than Dick or Jane, don’t you think?

Yeah.

He has issues.

Take your character and then put them in jeopardy, and that’s how you write an interesting book.

That’s the advice, right?

The standard writing advice.

Yeah, yeah.

How not to be boring when you’re writing a book.

Right, right.

Have that character.

Have a want.

Have a want.

You have to want something.

That’s the idea.

We want you to call.

Call us.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter.

And you know what?

We’ve got a community of people having a great time discussing language on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is William from Thousand Oaks, California.

Hi, William.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

What’s going on?

Well, around the office, we’ve been dealing with a lot of tech support that does kind of this fall of the sun thing that ends up in India most of the time.

And we have been seeing the phrase, do the needful, a lot.

And it’s almost become sort of an inside joke around the office.

And I want to know, where’s it from?

Do the needful.

So what’s happening when you see that phrase?

What has led up to it?

We’ll take a tax support request.

And we get all the other stuff that happens internally.

And it’s being used from someone to tell someone else, hey, here’s this thing, just get it done.

But the youth do the needful.

Yeah, I learned this from Indians as well.

I was working on a giant dictionary project with some partners in India, and they would say the same thing to me in email.

And I had to look it up.

There’s an entry for it, fortunately, in the Oxford English Dictionary.

And then I talked to some other dictionary colleagues.

They’re like, yeah, I learned that from the Indians too, because it’s a standard part of business jargon in India.

It used to be more common in English in all the varieties, and it just kind of faded away in the UK and the US.

But it hung around in India.

Now it comes out.

And what’s strange about it is that needful, it’s only got this one use, basically, and it’s a noun, the needful.

And so it just sounds not quite right.

We think of words ending in F-U-L as being adjectives rather than nouns.

So that’s the other thing.

So not only is it outside of our dialect, but it strikes us as being the wrong part of speech, too.

What do you take it to mean?

Go ahead with your own knowledge and judgment and just get back to me when it’s done.

So do what you must, basically.

Yeah.

I work at a small consulting firm, and every time we do a project or we find something that wasn’t done properly,

The joke around the office is, well, I guess they didn’t do the needful.

Exactly.

It’s exactly what it is.

Like, everyone knows about the needful.

The needful is an obvious thing, right?

Of course.

Needful has to be done.

You don’t do the needful.

I can’t say it on the air, but it’s like the acronym for read the manual that they pass around in tech circles, right?

That has an F in it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, that one.

Well, you know what I think is really interesting about this fact that it’s become such jargon to the point where you all are laughing at it is that it’s an expression that goes,

Way, way back. I mean, it goes back to at least the 1680s.

Do the needful. Yeah. Yeah, it’s got a long history, but it just fell out of

Fashion. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, that’s the thing with the dialects

Of English. They hang on to things that the other dialects abandon.

Oh, that’s really interesting. So have you ever had to pre-pone anything yet with your Indian friends?

Yes, I have. I’ve also had to revert. Oh, yeah.

Revert meaning to reply. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay.

So you have to pre-pone the needful?

Right.

I mean, do it before you were going to do it.

And then revert to me about it?

Yes.

Oh, that’s fascinating.

It is.

It’s truly fascinating.

But yeah, so this is the multicultural global world we live in where the dialects collide.

That’s right.

And they’re colliding on your desk, dude.

That’s right.

Two more countries separated by common language, right?

All right.

Well, I hope that helped make you feel a little bit better about it.

You sound just a little bit like, ugh, not again.

I’m going to have to do the needful later, so.

That’s how you get your paycheck every week.

You do the needful every day, right?

Yeah, I guess it’s my job now.

Well, William, thank you so much for calling.

Take care now.

Thank you. Bye.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

We want you to do the needful, and you know what that is.

Call us, 877-929-9673,

Or send your comments about workplace jargon to words@waywordradio.org.

And there are always lively discussions going on on our Facebook page

Or find us on Twitter.

A while back, I brought the term

Billy Badass to the show.

Billy Badass.

Do you remember this?

This is the guy in the military

Who’s all gung-ho

And he’s going to go fight, fight, fight

And solve everything

And he’s a tough guy.

Okay.

You know, he thinks of himself

As like a real superhero, right?

Turns out, a friend of mine heard that segment, and she says in firefighting and in EMT work,

That is people who work in the ambulances.

Paramedics.

Paramedics.

They have another term that’s very similar.

It’s Ricky Rescue, and Ricky Rescue is the same.

He thinks that he’s going to go save a life today, and he gets really amped up about stuff,

And he’s out there all day long.

We’re running these fantasies through his mind about how he’s going to be the savior,

And somebody’s going to remember him for life, and he’s just going to get an award and commendations,

And he’s in it to win it.

He’s just going to rescue people no matter what.

That’s Ricky Rescue.

He’s going to risk it for the biscuit.

Risk it for the biscuit.

I just heard that the other day.

Yeah, so it’s funny.

We’ve got these terms, and usually they’re put-downs.

They’re not usually accolades if somebody calls you Ricky Rescue or Billy Badass.

Something tells me that there are a lot of other professions where there are terms like this.

Yes, I imagine there are.

If in your profession there’s a term for the guy or gal who’s a little too gung-ho,

Tell me about it, 877-929-9673,

Or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Erica from New York City.

Thanks for taking my call.

Hi, Erica, where in New York City are you?

I always have to ask.

I’m in Manhattan.

I’m calling from Midtown, but I live on the Upper East Side.

Okay, okay, well, I miss it.

Kiss the ground for me, all right?

I will.

I’ll say hello to this beautiful city.

What can we help you with, Erica?

Okay, so my family has this expression.

And only my immediate family has been saying, and we assumed that it was common until we would say it around other people, and they were unfamiliar with it.

So the expression we say is, do you think I came in on the noon balloon?

Which is another way of saying, do you think I was born yesterday?

Right.

So we have no idea where this saying came from.

We’ve asked people in my family, extended family, older generations in the family.

But they’re not familiar with it either.

So how many of you weirdos say it?

Well, it started, honestly, probably with my mom.

Okay.

And she has no idea where she got this from.

And Erica, what do you picture when you say this?

I picture like a hot air balloon.

I don’t know what.

So this is like somebody’s trying to pull your leg,

And they’re like, no, really, these four quarters are worth that $5 bill.

And you’re like, what are you trying to do?

You think I came in on the noon balloon?

No, I’m not giving you a $5 bill for four quarters.

So who’s the oldest person who says it in your family, and how old are they, and what can you tell us about them?

Well, my mom says it.

She’s 61.

Okay.

Does your mom follow sports at all?

Sports?

Yeah.

She’s a baseball fan.

Okay.

That’s probably her biggest thing, but nothing else, really.

There was a—Frank Finch was a columnist for the LA Times for years and years, and he loved that phrase and would throw it in there all the time.

I don’t know if he was syndicated around the country, but it was really colorful sports pros.

It was just anything that he could get.

He would just pile in all this lingo and slang and catchphrases and invent a few of his own.

He loved it.

I don’t think he coined it.

And then there was a novelty hit in 1956 because there’s a longer form of this by a guy who called himself Nervous Norvous.

His real name was Jimmy Drake or James Drake.

And his song was called Noon Balloon from Rangoon.

And there’s an even longer form, which is the noon balloon from Rangoon is coming soon.

In June.

In general, yeah.

And so that was 1956.

That was a novelty hit.

I mean, it was just burst on the scene.

He sold like a half million copies, then he disappeared.

And is it just one of those crazy silly rhymes and weird images?

Years ago, I did a whole listing for the Among the New Words section of the Journal of American Speech about rhyming phrases in English.

Because we love them.

And they tend to last a lot longer than phrases that don’t rhyme.

So I’m wondering if she heard that novelty song in 1956.

Maybe.

I mean, he sold a half million copies of it.

You know, there were big write-ups for him.

And Billboard is like the wacky news star.

Because these were all goofball songs.

Crazy lyrics, weird sound effects, kind of twangy guitars, silly voices, that sort of thing.

Were they the kind of thing you would do the twist to or the pony?

I think it was a little.

It’s on YouTube if you want to look it up.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

It’s a noon balloon from Rangoon by James Drake or Nervous Norvis.

And I think it’s a little more rockability in that way that rock and roll used to have a lot more of the ability

And not so much of the rock, if you know what I mean.

Yeah.

So funny.

Yeah.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

Pass this on.

Let us know what she says, all right?

I will, definitely.

Thank you very much.

Thanks a lot, Erica.

Bye-bye.

Nice talking to you.

Nice talking with you, too.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, whether or not you came in on the noon balloon from Saskatoon

Or you just rode in on a load of cantaloupes, we still want to hear from you.

877-929-9673.

Send an email to words@waywordradio.org

And try us at the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D on Twitter.

English has a lot of placeholder words like doohickey or thingamabob

Or the whatchamacallit.

But it turns out in law, real estate law in particular, there’s a fictitious company name that they use.

Several of them, the variations are Black Acre, White Acre, Green Acre, Brown Acre.

And all of these are stand-in names so that when they’re discussing a hypothetical case or the way a bit of law might go

Or just really discussing how these things are handled when you’re transferring land or the taxes involved and all the problems,

You can just throw that in as your generic company name.

So you will do this whole class about Black Acre, but use that as your way you develop your legal talents.

Interesting.

Without having to use a real company’s name.

Okay.

So Black Acre, all one word.

Yeah, all one word.

Acre, like A-C-R-E.

Like a piece of land, yeah.

Cool.

If there’s a placeholder in your field, when you don’t really know what to talk about or you don’t want to name the thing that you’re talking about, tell us what it is.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

More stories about what we say and how we say it.

Stay tuned.

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.

We got a wonderful letter the other day that I wanted to share with you.

It’s from Dwayne Martin Abramowski, and he’s from Upper Michigan.

And he wrote to say that he’s what some people might call a little dyslexic.

That is, he can’t spell without a spell checker.

And he writes, my words collect on the page like pebbles on a stormy shore.

And this was really frustrating for him when he was growing up because he wanted to be a writer.

And back in the 1980s, he decided to write a letter to his hero, Kurt Vonnegut.

And he wrote to Kurt Vonnegut that he was struggling to get his words on the page and asked him, why am I writing?

I can’t spell. I can’t put the words together like everybody else.

How am I ever going to get published and be a writer?

And do you know, Kurt Vonnegut actually wrote him back and Dwayne sent us the letter.

And it’s beautiful with that classic.

If you’ve ever seen Kurt Vonnegut’s signature, it’s kind of wild and crazy looking.

But it’s this beautiful old letter.

And I wanted to share some of it with you.

And the letter says, your parents were correct in telling you that it is nearly impossible to make a living as an imaginative writer.

That’s not a powerful argument against writing, though.

Like singing and dancing and playing catch and so on,

Writing can be good for you, even if the pay is zero.

Caring tremendously about some subject matters more than skill in the writing game.

If you can care enough about your subject, you will become amazingly skillful.

The words will arrive in their proper order.

And he goes on to say later, other people can fix the spelling.

Mm—

Mm—

How inspiring.

Right.

Don’t worry about the hurdle as long as you can put something on the page that can be fixed later.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought this was just a beautiful piece of advice.

Find your passion and write about it.

And the rest will take care of itself.

And treat the writing as writing without thinking about market, without thinking about who’s going to buy it.

Right.

Just do it because you like to write.

Right.

Right.

Writing and publishing are two different things.

Mm—

Right.

And I’m hoping, Dwayne, that you’ll share this with the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis.

That would be outstanding.

I think this would be really cool.

Because it’s, you know, it’s just one of those beautiful old letters in that kind of typeface.

Right, yeah.

Well, we’d love to hear about who inspired you, who made you a better writer,

Who gave you the advice that you live with every day that makes you a better human being.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sarah from Casper, Wyoming.

Hi, Sarah.

Welcome.

Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

What’s going on?

Well, I was wondering if you guys could shed a little light on the meaning or the origin of the phrase, a horse apiece.

I’m from Wisconsin, from the Green Bay area, and I grew up hearing that all the time.

So if someone asked if you liked the blue one or the green one and you didn’t care, you’d say, it’s a horse apiece.

It doesn’t matter.

And I thought everybody said it.

So I went to visit my old roommate who had moved to Denver, Colorado.

And I said it, I don’t know, just in conversation.

And her roommate was like, oh, my gosh, I never thought I’d meet two people who said that.

Like, she’d never heard it before.

Oh, really?

So I started asking people.

Yeah, so I started asking people here in Wyoming, like my coworkers, like my friends.

Nobody’s ever heard it.

My boyfriend’s from Nebraska.

He’s never heard it either.

Where do you think you picked it up?

Wisconsin.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s like, I guess, everybody says it.

I’ve heard it my whole life.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it basically means six of one, half a dozen of the other, right?

Yeah, exactly.

It probably comes to us from dice gambling.

So there are some different games that you play.

Yeah, but if you’ve got a couple people playing where you want to do the best two out of three,

And if the first two throws result in a tie, like you have the same roll each time,

Then you’re said to have a horse apiece, or you’re said to have a horse and a horse.

Yeah, there’s a dice game called horse.

Yeah, we don’t know.

Yeah, there’s a wide variety of games that might use this phraseology.

And now you’ve got to remember, we have a lot of stuff embedded in English that goes back to a gambling culture.

Tons of this stuff.

We don’t need to get into it now.

But this is just one of those many things, a little less obvious, that probably comes ultimately from dice gambling.

So was that a game then that would only have been played in that area?

Who knows?

We know that the term a horse of peace and a horse and a horse was used in dice gambling in the UK.

So it probably was more widespread at one time and simply stuck in a particular part of the country among a particular people.

And probably has nothing to do with who they are, where they’re from.

Yeah.

Well, I really associate it with Wisconsin.

I feel like we get a number of emails every single week about this.

We get a number of emails and calls from Wisconsin.

Yeah.

We’ve got our own little language up there, huh?

That’s right.

As a matter of fact, Wisconsin is worth a lot more study.

Well, cool, Sarah.

I hope we’re able to help you a little bit.

Don’t feel strange saying it, by the way.

You sound just a little embarrassed, but go forth.

Do it.

Own it.

I do.

I do say it, actually.

And my coworker, she said she’s been saying it ever since I told her about it.

She’s trying to get it caught on around here.

You’re a vector.

You’re a vector of a horse apiece.

Patient zero for spreading horse apiece.

Evangelist.

Sarah, take care of yourself, all right?

Yeah, thank you guys so much.

Cheers, bye.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye.

This is a show about language and how we use it.

We’ll take your questions about anything having to do with language.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Remember the listener who was describing the action of closeteering?

No.

What was that?

This was when her cat goes into the closet and just tries to find the…

The most difficult place to find the cat and goes closeteering all over the place.

That prompted Tracy Lord from Valdosta, Georgia to write us.

She said, there’s one perfect sunny spot on the floor by the back door.

When we find one of our cats lying in the spot, my daughter says, we caught one in the cat trap.

That’s nice.

I really, really like that, the cat trap.

That’s perfect.

That little square of sunlight on the floor.

Well, have you seen that people have been doing this online for a while?

They’ve demonstrated that you can put a chalk square or a tape square on the floor and cats will go to it as if it were a box that they can sit in.

Is that right?

Supposedly.

Oh, my gosh.

I haven’t done it with my cats yet.

I should.

Oh, you’ll have to try that at home, right?

But you know how they immediately go to an open bag or open box, right?

Oh, yeah.

Try to climb into a backpack or a purse even.

As long as it’s coming out of a dark cavern, they can hide in.

That’s right.

Yeah, the bag is much more fun than the toys you bought for it, right?

Yeah.

Send us your emails about language to words@waywordradio.org.

And if you just can’t wait to talk with us, find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Mitch calling from Miami.

Hi, Mitch.

Hey, what’s up, Mitch? How are you doing?

I’m doing well today. How are you guys doing?

All right. What can we help you with?

I work in the entertainment industry, mostly with theme parks and museums.

And with that, we use a lot of video playback systems, so video players and video screens.

And we have a process that we call ingest, meaning we take video that somebody else has made

And we put it into the system. Now, oftentimes we have to remove this video, but we don’t have a

Word for that, like a verb that would mean the opposite of ingest in this instance.

I worked a little bit around the edges of the video industry for a while,

And ingest is a fairly standard term, right?

Yeah, for us it is.

And so a lot of times it just means you’re taking video to use for your own purposes. Sometimes

It’s pieces of video that you’re going to compile into something else or you’re, I don’t

Even know, you’re going to edit it up into something nice or small or larger or whatever.

So you’re adding pieces of video to a larger one?

Sometimes it’s just one piece of video that you put into a system so that you can use it

In that system.

What do you mean a system?

So it could be, like he said, it could be something simple as a monitor that’s on a

Counter that just plays a movie on a loop.

Oh, I see.

It could actually be Avid editing system or Final Cut Pro where you’re putting a lot of

Video all in one place and you’re going to actually make an entire movie out of all

These different scenes that you’ve shot, that’s ingesting as well. So it’s all about moving video

From your outside system to your primary system, whatever it is you’re concentrating your attention

On. Okay. So you’re ingesting. You’re ingesting it. Yeah. But your question then, Mitch, is

When you take it off, why doesn’t delete work? Delete for us, it’s usually a lot more involved

Than that because it means that you’re removing a file, but you also have to do a lot more processes.

And for our clients, if we just say, oh, just delete it, they sometimes and actually usually jump to conclusions that this can be an easy, very simple process.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

It’s not that you want to bill more, that it’s actually complicated.

They don’t get how complicated it is.

You want a fancy word that sounds like $200 an hour.

Essentially, yeah.

Okay.

Well, you could do the opposite, e-gest maybe, but that’s a little too close to ingest.

-huh.

That’s not a common word.

Maybe decombobulate?

There we go, yeah.

Maybe not.

Something like that.

The terms that we usually end up searching for end up based in biology,

Which are usually not the most appropriate responses for something like this.

Oh, really?

Based in biology?

Like bodily functions?

To excrete it?

Like if you ingest a meal, what usually happens if the meal comes up exactly?

You regurgitate it.

Okay.

Yeah.

You divest yourself of the ingestion.

I like that.

Divest actually might.

Huh.

I kind of like that.

I’m thinking about how the word populate used to seem so foreign to me when people would use that like to populate a form online.

And now it doesn’t seem weird to me at all.

Oh, yeah.

That’s a great one.

That’s a really good.

So depopulate actually sounds kind of mean.

No, that doesn’t sound good.

It’s like video side.

Boy, this is a tough one.

What else do you use besides to regurgitate?

Or is there another term that you’ve tried out?

We’ve tried simply deleting, but like I said, people jump to conclusions about that.

We really haven’t found anything that works well enough for us to remember them even.

Well, we’ll throw the word out there.

I assume you’ve looked at all the various video glossary archive thingies out there on the Internet, right?

Yeah, yeah, we have.

It’s one of those things that it comes up in meetings all the time, and then somebody gets an idea to Google, and then they never really find anything useful.

Well, it’s possible that other people are facing this same problem, Mitch, so we’ll find out.

I would love that.

Yeah, we have a million coiners in the audience, lots of people who like to neologize.

If you’ve got a word for Mitch, what is he really doing?

What’s the process called when he takes a video out of his system?

It’s not really deletion.

It’s something more than that.

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

Mitch, we’re going to help you. It’s just going to take some time.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673, email words@waywordradio.org.

We had a question sent in from Mark Baltsley from Wisconsin.

Who wanted to know, he was thinking that there was some kind of German word

That explains the act of being physically shaken by an experience of beauty,

Like being moved to tears by a work of art.

And we do have an answer for him.

It’s not exactly a German word.

It’s called the Stendhal syndrome.

It’s a reference to the French writer who wrote about the dizzying disorientation

That tourists experience when they go to Florence, you know,

And they go to the Uffizi and they go to all those museums and see all the gorgeous art.

And some people just have this overwhelming emotional experience.

There’s also something called the Jerusalem.

I was just going to mention that.

Yeah, exactly.

Same thing.

People go and they’re overwhelmed by the religious history of the place.

Exactly.

Thinking that this is where Jesus and other figures of note may have stood.

Right.

So Stendhal syndrome.

Stendhal syndrome.

S-T-E-N-D-A-H-L.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Sue Carroll Elvin.

Hi, Sue, where are you calling from?

Panama City, Florida.

Oh, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What’s going on in the panhandle?

Well, my husband is English, and as you may have caught a little glimpse of this accent, I am Southern.

And occasionally we have a little difference in our wording.

And lately it’s gotten to be where I get my correcting for putting the empty milk jug back in the refrigerator

Or unwrapping a present or something and just throwing the paper down rather than that.

I’ll say this is childish.

And he says, no, no, no, that’s childlike.

Well, this goes on and on, and his definition is that childlike refers to an adult,

And that childish refers to a youth or a child.

And I think that childish is negative, and childlike is positive.

So, who’s right?

I think you are.

I do, too.

Yeah.

Next time he says that, you have to say poppycock, because he’s just redefining the words to suit his needs.

Great.

Well, also, I heard another connotation.

We were over at Friends watching a silly Christmas movie, Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase.

And they had the narrator on, the cast and the crew were telling all about the movie.

And I heard one of the cast say that the animation was childlike,

And that might refer to childlike being appearance and childish,

Which might mean behavior, which I think I had heard Grant say that at one time.

Yeah, I think generally you’re right that childish has a certain derogatory connotation

Like a lot of words that end in ish, like foolish or boorish or selfish.

And childlike connotes more of that charm and wonder of a child.

The innocence of a child, right?

Yeah, the innocence.

The kind of special naiveness that makes them so wonderful to talk to sometimes.

Yeah, and I’m not quite sure why that is, but I think it was probably influenced a great deal by the use of childish in the Bible, I would think.

You know, the Apostle Paul writes about putting away childish things rather than putting away childlike things in Ecclesiastes and other books.

In Hebrew scripture, there’s talk about childish leaders or woe to you, O land, when your king is childish.

Childlike, yeah, childlike in any of those contexts would be something different.

It would. It would mean that you were the form or features of a child.

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.

And not so much about the negative childlike behaviors.

Behavior, exactly.

Now, there are a lot of nuances to both of these words, like most words in English.

So it would be wrong to say that there’s just one meaning.

But Martha really nailed the key point here, which is many of the meanings of childish and all the variation are negative.

And none of the meanings of childlike and all the variations are negative, unless you think being a child is a problem.

Yes, hopefully not.

Anyway, that sounds great.

Oh, wonderful.

Thank you so much, Sue.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Call us again sometime.

Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

It’s the gentle disputes between couples.

Sometimes it’s between fathers and sons or mothers and daughters or some variation.

Those gentle disputes, they often manifest in language.

And they’re not really about the language always, are they?

No, they’re not.

And they’re a good reason to talk, right?

Yeah.

A good reason to sort of tease out.

The proxy for the bigger issue can be handled through discussing language with us.

Although I think she was really glad that she was right.

Who isn’t?

I took that away.

Who isn’t?

If you want to be right or wrong or want us to decide who’s right or wrong, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Tell us about your marital linguistic woes to words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s another great quotation I found from Kurt Vonnegut.

I love this one.

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order

So they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.

It’s true.

Isn’t that the truth?

But if you go a weekend without talking to people,

Maybe everyone else is out of town and you’re just doing the reading to yourself all weekend,

Your voice is a little rusty on Monday.

Oh, yeah.

That’s not his point.

No, not at all.

Not at all.

You’ll exercise a machine that does not need to be exercised.

877-929-9673.

Things have come to a pretty path.

That’s all for today’s broadcast.

But don’t wait till next week to chat with us.

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Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

The show is directed and edited this week by Tim Felten.

We have production help from James Ramsey and Tamar Wittenberg.

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

A nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning and better human communication.

The show’s coming to you from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye-bye.

So long.

I like tomato, potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.