Once Upon a Time

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

And I’m Grant Barrett.

There was an article on the New York Times website that caught my attention. It asked the question, are fairy tales too scary for children?

Do you remember that, Martha?

I sure do, and I agree.

We posted it to the website, and our listeners have been talking about it. It turns out that for a lot of people, the answer is yes, fairy tales are too scary to read to children.

More than half of British parents surveyed by a website said they wouldn’t read the stories until their children were at least five years old. One in five parents said the oldies were too politically incorrect and that they wouldn’t read them at all.

Now, my perspective, Martha, you know I’ve got a two-year-old son, is that he’s too young for that. But on the other hand, I know that when we read the Curious George books, for example, if something bad happens to George, my son is very concerned.

The emotions of a child are very raw, aren’t they? Very powerful.

And so I do wonder if there’s some danger about reading the version of Cinderella to children in which the sisters’ feet are cut off or their toes are cut off or their heels are trimmed back in order to make them fit the glass slipper.

Do you know the original version?

Yeah, yeah.

Is that too nasty and weird? I mean, could children handle that?

I mean, there’s this school of thought that fairy tales are cathartic for children, that they help them learn to deal with the outside world. But I tell you, I don’t like them.

And I was shocked to realize, I read that article that you’re talking about, and I was thinking about the fairy tales that I knew growing up, and I had forgotten that most of them had happy endings because I was so focused on the creepy parts.

Oh, really? That’s interesting.

My son, he’s very young, but he understands what pretend is. He understands what play is and not real is. And he pretends to be things like a kitty cat.

He knows that stories are where strange things happened. And George can’t really paint a jungle scene on the room of a house like he does in the books.

Curious George, don’t you feel like your guidance would help lead a child to understanding that some things are true and some things are false? And some things could really happen but didn’t really happen?

Sure, sure.

So you don’t think that he would be traumatized by Hansel and Gretel when he’s five years old?

I, you know, I still, every time I get into a hot car on a summer day, I think of poor Gretel being told to climb into the oven. I don’t, they still skeeve me out.

I don’t think I ever read that stuff as a child, as a very young child. I do know that by the age of 10 or 11, I’d pillaged most of the folklore and myth section of the local library and probably did read all that. And I, maybe that’s why I’m like I am.

You’re exhibit A, come on.

No, no.

But the other thing is, you know, parental fears are sometimes way out of proportion to the true damage that can be caused.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that’s a really good question. And we’d love to hear from you about that. What fairy tales are too scary for your kids? Or what scary fairy tales do you read to your kids and why?

You can call us to talk about that or about any other aspect of language. The number is 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-WAYWORD. Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

Julie, calling from Carmel, Indiana.

What’s on your mind?

Well, the other day I was remembering the very first soap operas I ever saw my mom watch, and I got to thinking about the origin of that term. I thought, why do they call them soap operas? I’m puzzling about the opera part.

I was chatting with a graduate school friend who’s just so clever. And she said, oh, probably, maybe, because they were paid for by soap companies. And I said, oh, no, that’s too easy. That’s too simple.

And then the other memory I had was of my cousin. One of my male cousins always did the soapbox derby. So I see how my mind works. I’m going from soap to soap.

-huh.

And so I get to Soapbox Derby, and there is no explanation anywhere that I could find of how they called it a soapbox. And I didn’t see any connection there at all. So that’s how I got there, and I couldn’t figure it out. I still can’t figure out the opera part.

You’re exactly right that the original soap operas were paid for by companies that were trying to promote household cleaning products.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, to a national audience of stay-at-home housewives.

-huh.

So that was in the 50s when the television first came out.

Oh, earlier than that.

Yeah, earlier.

Okay.

In the radio days, there was a soap opera called The Guiding Light, long before there was television.

Oh, yeah.

You know, there’s an even older term, horse opera.

Horse opera.

Yeah, that was used in the 1920s to describe a radio show that was a Western.

Oh, that makes sense.

Yeah.

And they were called either horse operas or oats operas. And it’s just a joking description because it’s not really a great dramatic work in the grand tradition of European composers. You know, it’s a horse opera.

But most Americans will know opera used in something other than, say, the big lady with the Viking horns on belting out a tune in German. Most people will know it from the grand old Opry. So opera has a long history in the United States of being used for much smaller productions. There’s basically any kind of dramatic work, not really the big things like that.

Okay.

The soapbox, of course, it’s because soapboxes were involved in the soapbox derby.

Well, now how? I mean, they didn’t use them.

Well, there’s a couple ways it could go. You could either make your car out of a piece of a soapbox, or you could actually take your soapbox. This is what the soap comes in when it’s shipped from the factory to the store. Set it on in, put a plank on it, and then you roll your soapbox cars down the plank.

So if we’re talking about the small soapbox cars, if you’re talking about the big soapbox cars, you’re making the entire thing out of the soapbox. You’re putting wheels on it, you’re climbing in it, and you’re headed down the hill in a race.

Okay, okay.

So they actually were constructed out of soapboxes.

Sure, absolutely. That’s the thing that first started. And you’ll find actually in the old Boys magazines, you’ll find how-tos on how to make things like scooters and soapbox cars. And, of course, those wooden soapboxes that loose laundry soap came in were also used when people wanted to make their opinions known out in public places. You put a soapbox on the ground and stood up on it.

Oh, that’s fascinating. I didn’t get that.

Oh, yeah, that’s a great connection. People got up on their soapboxes, and we still use that phrase.

That’s right.

We do.

There are three terms here that linger in English long after most of us have forgotten about the thing that they were connected to.

Yeah.

The fact that soap used to be shipped in wooden containers.

Yeah.

Well, Julie, I’m glad that we could give you a soapbox to talk about all these things.

Well, I appreciate it. It’s a lot of fun.

All right.

Good clean fun, right?

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Thank you.

I just didn’t know, and now I know.

I’m just…

All right.

Well, best of luck to you, Julie.

All right.

Okay.

Take care, Julie.

Thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got a question about something that’s been bugging you, as long as it has to do with language, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tokali. I’m calling from Coronado in California.

Tokali, what a great name. How do you spell that?

It’s T-O-K-E-L-I, Tokali. It’s Potawatomi Indian. The original word is Tokwali. And I believe that Tokwali means I love you in Potawatomi Indian.

Wow, isn’t that sweet? That’s very nice, actually.

Wow, Tokwali.

Yeah.

But the real deal is that I was born in the 60s, and so I was probably going to be named Moon Child. Or Star, or Flower. Chalice, or Saturday, or something.

I like Tokoli. I think you lucked out.

Well, did you have a question for us?

I do. I’m an actress and a singer, and I’ve been a theater director and an educator. And one of the terms that we use in the theater is called papering the house.

Papering the house traditionally means putting industry people in the seats for free on a night when, you know, you have press coming or you have VIPs coming and you don’t want the house to look too empty. It also helps with the energy of the audience and the people on stage.

And I was just wondering the etymology of it. I understand what it means, but why? And where did that come from?

This one is pretty straight up. It goes back more than 100 years. Papering the house means literally to spread paper, and the paper in this case is tickets. So they’re giving all of these comp tickets to these people in order to put butts in seats.

Because as you say, you know, even if somebody’s kind of lukewarm to whatever you’re putting on stage, they’re still better and still better have a living person there kind of half clapping than nobody clapping at all. And that kind of shenanigans is kind of what the airlines do these days. They paper planes.

What they do is it’s better that they should charge somebody $10 a seat instead of $400 if they can’t get $400. They need to make some kind of money. So sometimes papering the house is kind of like to build up this false sense of demand. So you can say, yeah, we had a full house last night. And everyone assumes that those tickets were all paid for.

You know, in New York City, and I think in other towns, they have TKTS booths, where papering the house is now kind of done a little differently, that tickets are heavily discounted the day of the show, perhaps even hours before the curtain goes up, in order, again, to put butts in seats. Butts in seats are more important than getting your max revenue per ticket.

Right, or pay what you can.

Yeah.

The line that goes around the block near Times Square.

So, Tukley, it’s a pretty straightforward answer. Does it make sense?

It sure does. Thank you very much.

Yeah, well, thanks for calling. Break a leg. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, break a leg. Bye-bye.

If you’ve got a question about a bit of jargon from your profession, we’d love to answer a question you have about it. The number to call is 1-877-929-9673, or you can send your questions to words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, I mentioned at the top of the hour that our listeners have been talking about the topic of whether or not old-time fairy tales were just too nasty or too mean or just too dirty for modern children. Too scary.

One listener says, it’s a matter of responsible parenting. If you are there to explain and discuss scary or dangerous things, then you can lead their little brains to good ideas, which I don’t think is a bad perspective.

Another listener points out that he had a difficult time explaining Bill Clinton’s White House shenanigans to his daughter. He says it was a bigger challenge than explaining the weird kind of grim fairy tale.

Yeah, would that it were a fairy tale.

Well, you know, it’s complicated, right? Maybe the sex topic came up earlier than it should have.

Yeah, I can see that. What do you think?

I think that children definitely need guidance. I think they definitely have fears. And I kind of like the idea that their fears are known to you. You are presenting them with possible things that can go wrong in the world. It’s a situation which you can control. See what I’m saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a small sample of what they’ll get in real life.

Yeah, it’s a safe place to deal with those issues. Maybe I’m cynical, though. I think it’s a good starting point to saying, hey, you know, the world is weird and it’s very dangerous. Let’s talk about this fake pretend situation and, you know, discuss the ways it could go.

Yeah, I see what you’re saying. I mean, like Little Red Riding Hood and don’t talk to strangers and that kind of thing.

Don’t talk to wolves.

Right.

Don’t talk to wolves.

Well, we’d love for you to talk to us. Give us a call at 1-877-929-9673. Or you can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Stay tuned for a word puzzle that’s coming up next on A Way with Words. You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette. And we’re joined once again by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Hiya, Greg.

Hello, Martha. Hello, Grant. Tell me about the puzzle hunt.

The puzzle hunt, the MIT mystery hunt. The big one, right?

Yeah, that happens every… People come from all around the country. Hundreds of them. They gather in this one place to decipher very crafty puzzles put together by last year’s winner, right? The most complicated puzzles you can imagine over the course of 48 hours or more. Overnight.

Right. Sometimes people don’t sleep. Rarely do people sleep, although it’s kind of a catch 22, because if you stay up all night, your ability to solve puzzles, lessons diminishes considerably. So but someone on the team is up all night. We have a team of about 25 people. And, you know, some people go to bed early and get up early. Other people stay up all night.

How did your team do this year? We did not win.

So you’re a loser. Our goal is to not win. Our goal is to not win.

Oh, it is?

Yes, because we’ve won in the past. We’ve run it a number of times, and now we just want to have fun.

I see.

If you win, then you—

You run it the next time.

Right, right, right. You shoulder too much responsibility the next year.

Well, I mean, you get to show off how much more clever you are than the people who ran it last time.

But you recently did win it a couple years ago.

A couple years ago, yeah. So if you search for Mystery Hunt, MIT Mystery Hunt, you’ll go right to the MIT Mystery Hunt webpage.

But I understand that you have some mysteries for us.

I do. I have some puzzles, quizzes.

Puzzles?

There’s no mystery to them.

Oh, there’s plenty of mystery.

This will be a chore then is what you’re telling me.

No.

This week’s puzzle is called Country Kitchen.

Is that spelled with two Ks like we used to do in Kentucky?

It’s actually spelled, funny you should ask, it’s actually spelled K-I-T-S-C-H-I-N apostrophe.

Oh, kitchen. Because nothing is kitschier than my bad puns.

Okay.

This is true. And you can probably see what’s coming. I’m going to give you a sentence with a blank in it, and you fill in the blank with the name of a country so that the sentence sounds like it makes sense.

Aha.

For example, what country name fits in the blank in this sentence? We’ll take our time today because you’d hate to blank quiz as good as this one.

Russia.

Oh, excellent. You’d hate to Russia quiz as good as this one.

Pass up?

Is pass up a…

Yeah, pass up.

It’s a small Asian pension.

I laugh in defense. Bad puns.

That’s right. You’d hate to rush a quiz as good as this one. In fact, I think this quiz is so good that when we’re done, you’ll want to do Samoa.

Okay.

Okay. And if we dare, we could invite our listeners to contribute their own country kitsch to the forum at waywordradio.org if we want more bad puns on the website.

All right.

You ready?

All right.

Yep.

Here we go. After consuming so much at the all-you-can-eat buffet, I neither want to look at myself in the mirror, blank myself on the scale.

Nor weigh myself on the scale.

Yes, I neither want to look at myself in the mirror nor weigh myself on the scale.

Very good. Norway, of course, is the country in question.

If global warming makes you blank, is not what you should be driving.

Get a Chevrolet Volt. You know what a Chevrolet Volt is, right?

Sure.

Like an electric car, right?

It is very much like an electric. Is it a hybrid or just strictly electric?

Strictly electric.

I want to say that their SUV is in there somewhere, but that doesn’t quite work.

Yeah, I was thinking that too.

Or gas guzzler or…

You’ve got a truck or something.

Martha said one of the words there.

Guzzler?

One of the things to think about in puzzles like this is that…

I have it.

Oh, you got it.

Yes.

Oh, no, wait.

Do I?

Try it out.

Oh, yes, I do.

I do.

Try it out.

If global warming makes you mad, a gas car is not what you should be driving.

Is not what you should be driving.

Mad a gas car.

That’s pretty clever.

Here’s one for you.

Donald Trump’s coiffure is so stiff, it’s hard to believe that his hair blank.

Is not a weasel?

Yeah, he’s not a weasel.

It’s a country in very South America.

Wait, one more time, please, Greg.

Donald Trump’s coiffure is so stiff, it’s hard to believe that his hair, blank.

Is real.

Is real.

Oh.

Is real.

It’s hard to believe that his hair is real.

How about another one?

You can spot the guy what’s been lying in the sun face down because he’s the one blank.

I’ll give it to you again.

You can spot the guy what’s been lying in the sun face down because he’s the one blank.

Something red, right?

I’m going to say burned, but…

It hasn’t been in the sun that long.

Oh, okay.

It’s hot.

Okay, then tan.

Then it’s…

Bhutan?

Yeah, a lot of tans.

A lot of tans out there in your country.

That doesn’t work.

It’s former Soviet Republic.

Borders the Aral Sea, and its capital is Tashkent.

Tajikistan.

Yeah, not that one.

No, it’s not?

Kind of tan?

No.

He’s the one.

Uzbekistan.

Oh, Uzbekistan.

He’s been lost by Stan.

That’s why you had to do the accent like that, so you could drop the H’s, right?

So we could drop the H’s, exactly.

There we go.

Very nice.

Oh, wow.

Craig.

I’ve got one more hard one I could send you off with.

Sure, that’s great.

If you’d like.

Always.

Does a bear, when he’s claiming a new blank, the walls with his scent?

Cave?

Lair.

Cave.

Red?

No.

Smear?

Where do bears find themselves?

Cave?

Denmark?

Oh, cute.

There we go, Denmark.

A bear claiming a new den marked the walls with his scent.

Oh, man, Greg, those were tough.

Well, I wanted to mark your walls with my scent.

You have marked.

Never mind.

This was super-duper fun.

Thank you so much for your puzzle, sir.

You’re very welcome.

It’s my pleasure.

Yeah, thanks, Greg.

And if you’d like to talk with us about grammar, slang, punctuation, or words and how we use them, call us. The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Laura from Louisville, Kentucky.

Why, hi, Laura. How are you doing?

All right, Laura.

Okay, well, Martha, I’m sure that you’ve heard this word before because you’re from Louisville.

-huh.

But my husband has always made fun of it.

He’s not from Louisville, and whenever he hears my family use it, he just looks at us like we’re crazy.

And it’s the word tump, as in, hey, be careful, don’t tump over my Coke.

Mm—

Or, you know, don’t tump over the chair.

Right.

And my husband’s from southern Illinois, and he’s never heard the word before until he moved here.

He thinks we’re crazy.

He’s brought it up with his family and other people he knows, and if they’re not from around here, they have no idea what we’re talking about.

Laura, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right.

This is a really important word to me.

I had the very same experience.

I grew up in Louisville.

I moved to upstate New York to go to college.

And the first time I used the word tump, I think I was talking about tumping over a canoe or something, people laughed at me.

It was shocking to me that they had never heard the word tump.

Exactly.

And that not only did they not know the word, but they thought it was hilarious.

And I don’t know, Laura, for me, it was sort of this splash of cold water that was thrilling at the same moment because I think I hadn’t realized that there were actually words like that that would be so foreign to somebody in the same country.

Well, and for me, my husband, like I said, from southern Illinois, he’s only about three hours away.

-huh. -huh.

But they have a completely different language and a completely different accent.

Yeah, and I think that the accent thing we glom on to early in life, but the fact that Tump would be completely unintelligible to somebody in another part of the country.

Well, completely, but surely from context they can tell what you mean.

Well, yeah, okay, not completely unintelligible, but they laughed at me, and they laughed at you too, Laura, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

You still laugh at us.

Yeah, sister, I just want to throw my arms around you.

No, I’ve had this experience with other people from the South.

We feel the same way.

Grant, it’s true.

You didn’t grow up with Tump.

I believe you. I believe you. It’s your passion that’s making me giggle.

Well, where did this word come from? Did we make it up?

There was an innovator lost in history, but more than likely, Marthe.

I believe it comes as a dialect pronunciation of thump, T-H-U-M-P.

Well, you know, I’ve seen all kinds of different explanations.

It could come from that. It could be a combination of tip and dump or turn and dump.

I mean, you sort of get the idea from the word, don’t you?

It sounds similar to some of the other words that mean roughly the same thing, right?

Yeah.

Because my family has had discussions about where it came from now.

And what do they think?

Oh, my aunt thinks it’s from maybe tip and dump.

Yeah.

My mom says maybe tumble and dump.

-huh.

I’ve seen that.

I’ve seen that, too.

And, you know, if you look it up in the dictionary, in my dictionary from college, it’s not in there.

Oh, really?

As that definition, there’s like a tump that means a clump of vegetation or something.

Right, right. That’s exactly it.

In my daughter’s new dictionary, which is several editions later, Storr-Webster’s dictionary, our version of tump is in there, Martha.

It is?

Yes.

Yeah, it is in the Merrim-Webster dictionaries.

You’ll find it in the unabridged at least, and it might be in the collegiate dictionary.

The new collegiate is what I have.

There we go.

And it’s both the transitive and intransitive verb.

That means you can just tump.

I tumped.

It means I fell over, or you can tump something.

I tumped over the barrel.

It means I turned over and spilled the barrel.

And it’s marked as chiefly Southern, which I completely agree with.

If you look in the books, you’ll find again and again and again that it’s Southern authors using this word.

Southern.

Almost strictly.

I mean, it just probably stops cold at the Mason-Dixon line.

Okay.

So I say use it in good health.

Oh, I use it all the time.

It doesn’t bother me that he doesn’t know what it is because there’s other words that they make fun of when I say them also.

Well, Laura, thank you for reminding me of that word.

I love that word.

It just makes me want to tump over everything in the studio right now, just so I can say the word tump.

Now that you’ve been reminded of it again, you can use it all the time.

All right.

Well, thanks for calling, Laura.

Talk to you later.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Well, the two of you, weren’t you just a pair?

Call us with your hometown words, those things that you think make you who you are.

We’d love to hear about them.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Martha. My name is Joel Emanuel.

Hi, Joel.

Hi. I live in Mesquite, Texas, but I’m currently sitting at my work desk in Irving, Texas.

Okay.

All right.

I moved to Texas from New York City about 30 years ago.

And when I got here, I began hearing a mispronunciation of the word height.

H-E-I-G-H-T.

Mm—

It seems that people in this area insist on pronouncing the word H-E-I-G-H-T-H.

Height.

I’m assuming that this comes from a confusion of the words length, width, and height, being mistaken for length, width, and height.

Out of some quirk of speech or plain ignorance of the proper pronunciation of the word.

Pronunciation drives me nuts.

You know, it’s interesting that you say that because that was the one word that would make my mother, the English teacher, walk to the chalkboard and literally drag her fingers down it.

Well, good for her.

I wish I had a chalkboard most of the time.

Are they pronouncing the T or not?

Yes, it’s heighth.

Heighth.

So there’s a T. They’re not saying heighth.

No, they’re not.

Okay, great.

And now I’m hearing it on TV, on radio, interviews.

Let me tell you, this is definitely a case of Diego Garcetti, which is once you hear something, you seem to find it everywhere.

That’s a word used in various places online.

Humans do this all the time.

It probably was just as frequent before you noticed it.

So I just want to say that, all right?

Because this pronunciation has a history going back hundreds of years.

In fact, the spelling of height was so variable hundreds of years ago that it was very common for it to be spelled H-E-I-G-H-T-H.

It was part of the set with width, length, and breadth.

Until about 1700, I think.

Right.

And so then the spelling became fixed without that final H.

Now, there’s two theories about why it’s pronounced this way.

The one which is a little more forgiving and doesn’t blame ignorance is that these are holdovers.

And that somehow this old pronunciation has continued to be transmitted across the centuries.

And, you know, that’s forgiving people and basically saying it’s not ignorance, it’s just history that makes them pronounce that way.

The other one says that it’s carelessness, and that’s kind of what you’re saying, right?

It’s what it feels like to me.

Yeah, yeah.

The carelessness is that they’re not really noticing what they’re doing.

It’s just coming out of their mouth, and they’re moving onward.

Certainly, it’s so common that in some style guides, they acknowledge it and say, you will hear this come out of the mouths of the most educated speakers.

And so when you have that happen, you need to ask yourself, does that make it wrong or right?

Or are you indifferent to that kind of evidence?

And that’s up to each speaker.

So you see what I’m saying here, Joel?

If you’re hearing lots of people do it, does that mean that they’re all wrong?

Sometimes it feels that way.

It just simply hurts my ears like Martha’s mom.

Here’s something for you, Joel.

This might make you feel a little better.

Research has shown that the same parts of the brain are activated when you hear something ungrammatical or contrary to your own language experience as when you hear a curse word.

Oh.

So for you, it’s kicking in the parts of your brain where you might cringe or flinch if you heard somebody use, say, the F word in the wrong context.

Right.

So that’s kind of – I’m just kind of helping you understand that gut response that you’ve got to this word, height.

Well, I’ve lived here long enough to where it’s become part of my – the lexicon of the area, and it doesn’t destroy me.

No.

Well, that’s good.

It’s always been a little bugaboo that kind of, that’s fur under my saddle.

Yeah, yeah, that’s a good way to describe it.

Well, I thank you for taking the time to talk to me.

I appreciate it.

Joel, it was a pleasure.

Have a good day.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’ve got something that just peeves you off, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Make sure it’s about language.

You can call another program about your political peeves.

Or you can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Cynthia from Louisville, Kentucky.

Hi, Cynthia. What’s going on?

Well, I was reading a blog called Valley Wag the other day.

It’s a Silicon Valley gossip blog.

And they had this article talking about how things have really changed at Google.

People used to get $30,000 bonuses and things like that.

And this year it wasn’t so great.

They had a great name to the article, which was Google Freuda.

This year, instead of giving them $30,000, they gave them one of the new Google phones that has the Google operating system on it.

The term that they used for this was dogfooding as a verb, meaning to test something in-house.

So instead of giving them bonuses, they basically gave them a phone to try out on their own time.

And, of course, Grant, I immediately thought of you because I know you love words like this.

And I wondered where it came from.

Dog fooding is when you use the product that you make or you eat the food that you make.

And the idea here is that if it’s not good enough for you to eat, then why are you bothering?

For example, if you’re giving your dog rubbish, stuff that you wouldn’t put on your own plate, then you’ve got to think twice about if that’s fair and if that’s right.

You know?

Dogfooding is eating your own dogfood.

And this dates back to the 90s, maybe even the late 80s.

Microsoft certainly is known for this.

When they were making the Windows NT product, and I know all this from my days as a tech guy, when they were making the Windows NT product, I believe that they made all of the developers use the product that they were making.

So, you know, there’s nothing that’s going to make you improve a product faster than finding bugs in it through your daily use, right?

Right.

Bugs in your dog food.

I love that dog food has become a verb.

Would you write a newspaper article that you wouldn’t read?

You know, would you do a radio show that you wouldn’t listen to?

Martha, do you dog food our show?

I dog food our show all the time.

Of course I do.

I dog food our show again and again and again.

Doesn’t everyone?

Valleywag says that it’s a tech industry term.

Is that true?

That is true.

I think the concept is known in engineering, but I think the term, the concept of using the thing that you make, but I think the term dogfooding, it comes from the computer tech industry.

Yes.

Seattle area, probably.

Okay.

Cool.

All right.

Thank you very much.

You’re welcome.

Thanks for a great question.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Well, if you’d like to talk about kibble or dog food or other tech industry terms, we’d love to hear about it.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

How’s your slang savvy?

Find out next on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And it’s time for our weekly slang challenge, where we try to stump a member of the National Puzzlers League.

Today’s contestant is Roy Laban from Redmond, Washington.

Hello, Roy.

Hi.

How are you doing?

I’m doing great.

Anybody from Redmond probably works for Microsoft, right?

Well, I did work for Microsoft for about five years, but I’m starting a company right now.

Oh, really?

Well, congratulations.

I know that’s a big undertaking.

What kind of business is it?

It’s a software as a service for small businesses, helping small businesses be more productive.

Well, congratulations, and good luck with that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So do you have a favorite slang term you’d like to share?

I do.

I thought about this a bit.

My kids, of course, had their votes.

But I thought about the word rad, which I learned when I was about 10 years old.

And rad was the first slang word that I heard that was new.

You know, it hadn’t existed before.

And as a result, it was the first word that told me slang changes.

And I even remember where I was when I heard the word.

I was in the middle of the street, maybe not the smartest place to be.

But, you know, I heard the word rad, and it’s like, that’s new.

And, you know, obviously slang changes a lot, but back then we didn’t have the Internet, we didn’t have as much television, and it wasn’t as obvious how fast slang can change.

That’s cool.

So that’s rad, short for radical, basically meaning great or good, right?

Yeah.

Well, Roy, let’s see how you do on our slang quiz today.

Great.

I’m going to give you a sentence with a blank in it with two possible answers.

Your goal is to figure out which one is correct, all right?

If you need some help, just ask Martha.

Okay.

All right.

All right, well, here we go.

Here’s the first one.

He looked all buff and ripped until he took off his shirt.

His blank almost made me wretch.

What made me almost wretch?

Was it his A, bacne, B-A-C-K-N-E, or B, button cotton, B-U-T-T-O-N-C-O-T-T-O-N?

Wow, those are great terms.

Well, obviously, BAC-NE, I can tell where that came from, or would come from if it was real.

Yeah, and then button cotton.

Button cotton.

I’m thinking that might be belly button lint.

You know, maybe someone’s overweight, has a really big belly button.

That’s a lot of lint.

Yeah, what do you think, Martha?

Well, remember, he’s all buff and ripped, though.

Oh, he’s buff and ripped.

Right.

Oh, so I think the button cotton’s not in.

I think it’s bacne.

Yeah, I could see how that could be a repellent.

Yes.

And bacne is, you said it was obvious what it was.

Will you tell us?

Oh, well, back acne.

There we go.

Acne on your back.

And that is the correct choice.

It is A, his bacne almost made me wretch.

And the reason I chose that is that sometimes people who use steroids in order to get all buff and ripped, that is to have well-defined muscles, have side effects.

And acne is one of them.

And back acne can just look like this horrific red bleeding mess.

It’s very disgusting.

Interesting.

Anyway.

The things you learn on this show, I had no idea.

All right, Roy.

Good job on that one.

One more for you.

Ready?

Okay.

You better examine that closely before you send it out.

If you don’t blank a document like that, any mistakes in it are going to come back to haunt you.

So what do you need to do to a document before you send it out?

Do you need to A, snake check it, or B, filter filter it?

Filter filter?

Mm—

Interesting.

I was expecting something that was going to mean spell check.

Snake check.

Snake check could be check for things that are going to come and bite you.

Filter, filter.

I can’t think of what that might mean.

So I’m going to go with snake check thinking something’s going to come back and bite you because email ends up getting forwarded to the entire Internet these days.

Yeah, I’m leaning toward that for a different reason.

What’s your reason?

I’m thinking of, I just started doing this.

I’m leaving the little spell check thing on when I use Microsoft Word.

Oh.

You know, speaking of red in Washington.

Yeah, and, you know, they have those little squiggly lines underneath.

That’s where I’m going.

Oh, that could be, you know, people could call those snakes.

I haven’t heard anyone call that a snake.

Or maybe a worm check.

I don’t know.

Worm check.

Okay, let’s go for that.

Grant, we can’t stand the suspense any longer.

It is snake check.

Martha, it has nothing to do with the red squiggly line in Microsoft Word.

Oh, I’m wrong.

What it has to do if you’re in the military or have been in the military in the jungle or the desert, you know what I’m talking about.

After dark, when you go to bed, you check your bed or your sleeping bag or whatever you’re sleeping in for snakes.

Because they will curl up inside your sleeping bag or under your blankets.

They’ll look for a warm place.

And they will bite you just like Roy said.

Yes, they will indeed bite you.

And I left a clue in the sentence there.

I said mistakes in it are going to come back to haunt you, knowing full well that most people would think of going to come back to bite you, which is another way that we say the same thing.

So two for two.

Nice job, Roy.

Roy, that was a totally rad performance.

Thank you.

And thanks for playing.

Thank you, Roy.

It was fun.

All right.

Best of luck to you.

Okay.

Thanks a lot.

Well, if you have a question about slang terms or grammar or word origins, give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Evan Seitz from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Well, hello, Evan. How are you doing?

Good. How are you?

Super.

Doing fine.

I was just calling with a question about butterflies.

Butterfly.

The word?

The word, yes.

I have a friend who was thinking about them, and she remarked that she wished they were called flutterbys instead.

And I said that I thought that they had been once upon a time.

But now I can’t find where I found that fact, and I was wondering if it was true.

Well, Evan, there’s a reason that you can’t find that.

And that’s because butterfly is an amazingly old word.

It goes back more than a thousand years, butterfly or a form of it.

And it doesn’t come from flutterby.

Right.

Oh, no.

We always hate to disappoint like that.

But, yeah, somehow over the centuries this insect has been associated with butter in one way or another.

And the big question is why.

Why is this little delicate insect somehow associated with butter?

Do you have any theories about that yourself?

No, I don’t.

Well, there’s some controversy over why that might be.

I think the most likely hypothesis is simply that in Europe, a lot of the really common butterflies that you’ll see will have a yellow color.

So it’s the buttery color of the wings.

And there have been other theories, one of which is that butterfly poop is yellow.

I’ve tried to track that one down, and maybe this is some place where we need entomologists helping us with our etymology.

No, but seriously, I’ve heard conflicting reports about whether butterflies poop or not.

Yeah, it’s not very large quantities.

No.

There aren’t mounds of it in the garden.

No, no, no.

And I think some of them kind of recycle it within their own body.

So I think we can cross off the butterfly poop theory, although I like it.

Right.

Well, thank you very much.

You sound disappointed.

A little bit.

But you get to talk about butterfly poop on the radio.

What could be better?

That’s true.

All right.

Well, thank you again.

Okay.

Best of luck.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Grant, I do know that caterpillars poop.

And do you know what the word for caterpillar poop is?

It’s a great word.

Caterpillar poop?

I don’t know.

No.

I don’t know what it is.

No.

It’s a great word for scrabble or crossword puzzles.

Inch crap?

I don’t know.

Something.

No.

The word is frass.

F-R-A-S-S.

It’s a great word.

The word for caterpillar poop.

I know that’s a good word.

Anyway, if you want the poop on a particular word, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Kent Spielman. I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Kent. Welcome.

Thanks.

What’s going on?

Well, I had a story I wanted to have you comment on because this is about a word I made up.

A word you made up?

Yeah, when I was really young, like about six or seven with a friend of mine.

And we decided that it would be really useful to have a word for the part of your face right under your nose, that little indentation right under your nose.

And so we made up a word.

We said it was a berber.

A berber.

A berber.

It had nothing to do with people called the berbers or anything.

Just a nice little kid’s word, right?

Mm—

So for some reason, when I got married, I shared that word with my wife because I remembered it.

It just was useful.

It was a useful word.

And so she heard it, and she thought about it.

It was kind of useful for her, too, because we didn’t know what the word for that was.

So the next thing you know is she’s come back from a shopping center or someplace where she’d gone to a makeup counter.

And the makeup, the consultant, was telling her how to put on lipstick or something around your lips.

And she was saying, now you just follow the contour of your lips around those little indentations under your nose.

And my wife just kind of, she does this kind of thing.

She says, oh, you mean around your berber?

And the lady says, oh, yeah, your berber, that’s right.

That’s it.

That’s the word for it.

The customer’s always right, huh?

You know, you’re Berber this, you’re Berber that.

You know, I just kept on using it as though that was the right term.

So when she came home and told me that, we just found that was hilarious.

So the woman didn’t really use the word Berber herself.

She was just nodding along with your wife.

Is that right?

Well, she started using it. She started using the word in conversation because she continued to explain how to put on lipstick or lip liner or whatever. And kept using the word as though that was the proper term for that part of your face.

Nice.

This is how words start getting spread. And this is how lipstick gets sold.

But you know what an indentation is called otherwise, right? You know, I did hear what it was one time because I talked to an artist, a friend of mine who was an artist, and he had a word for it. And I said, oh, there really is a word for that. But, you know, I can’t for the life of me remember it. Because it’s just a really hard word to remember. And I already had a word for it.

So what is that called?

Oh, I think we can help you out. Was the word philtrum?

Philtrum.

I think you’re right. P-H-I-L-T-R-U-M. Philtrum. Philtrum.

Wow.

Yeah, philtrum is a very sexy word. What is not sexy is the other name for it, the infranasal depression.

Oh, really?

That’s not sexy at all.

No, not at all. No, no, no.

But, yeah, the word philtrum is very sexy. Maybe this will help you remember it because it comes from the Greek word philtrum, which means love potion.

Love potion?

Yeah.

Whoa.

Whoa.

So there’s something sexy about that?

Yeah, I guess that’s where you’re supposed to put your perfume or something. I don’t know. That is a possible explanation. People have tried to figure this one out, and they haven’t been able to. I don’t know if it was that the Greeks thought of this as a particularly erogenous zone or if that little dent in your upper lip looks like the little vial that you’d carry love potion in, or as you suggested, that maybe that’s where a little dab will do you.

Maybe. Wow.

Well, Ken, thank you for your call. I hope the word spreads. Maybe in 10 or 20 years we’ll hear Berber everywhere and we’ll know that it was you.

Well, thank you. I’ll be very interested to see if that ever happens. And in the meantime, use Filtrum.

Okay, bye-bye. Best of luck.

Okay, bye-bye.

Grant, we’ve talked about this before, you know, that little dent in your upper lip. There’s a wonderful Talmudic tradition that babies have all the knowledge in the world before they’re born, and then right before they’re born, an angel taps them or somehow seals their lips right at that little point, and that’s why you have that little dent, because now you have to relearn all the stuff that you forgot once you got born.

I love that.

If you’d like to talk with us about Filtra or Berbers or any other word, give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673. Or you can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, as you know, I was traveling in Argentina recently, and I came across an idiom that I just love, that I would love to import into English. The idiom is quemarse las pestañas. And it means to study for a really long time or to read for a really long time. But literally, it means to burn your eyelashes.

Isn’t that great?

To burn your eyelashes.

Yeah.

Presumably because you’re spending all your time in front of a candle and a book, right?

Yeah, a candle and a book or in your case, a computer.

I don’t know. As soon as I heard que marce las pestañas, meaning to burn one’s eyelashes, I thought of you.

It’s very logical.

Yeah, I love it. To study for a long time.

Well, anyway, if you’d like to give us a call, the number is 1-877-929-9673. Or if you want to share your favorite idiom, email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mike from Oakland.

Hi, Mike, how are you doing?

I’m well, thanks. What’s on your mind?

Well, it’s the word reticent. And it seems to me that every few years I look it up, and it still says that it means tending not to speak, tending to be silent. But I only ever hear people using it to mean something more like reluctant. And I’m wondering if the times have changed and the dictionary is not caught up yet.

Oh, that’s a good question. And I love that you go back to the dictionary every few years to check on that word.

Yeah, I recently heard Clint Eastwood use it on the radio, and he said he definitely used it as reluctant.

Oh, yeah? Like, can you give us an example of?

Well, I mean, I’ve heard it a few times. That’s basically what I call it. But he was on fresh air, and he was talking about doing a stunt. And, you know, it’s when you’re in the middle of a stunt and you realize you could die that you become reticent. Definitely wasn’t talking about not being willing to say anything.

Really?

Yeah, he strikes me as kind of reticent from time to time.

You know, Mike, personally, I’m reluctant to use reticent for reluctant.

Yeah, me too. You know, I’m not reticent to use reticent. And the reason that I prefer to use reticent for not talking very much, traditionally reticent has meant not talkative, uncommunicative. And a good way to remember that is the fact that reticent goes back to a Latin root that also gives us the word tacit, silent.

Oh, sure, sure.

Yeah, those two words are connected, reticent and tacit. And so if you think about it that way, then it’s really clear that reticent is a perfectly good word to describe somebody who doesn’t talk very much. But it really doesn’t – I think reluctant is a much better word if you’re talking about somebody who’s, well, reluctant.

Yeah, I mean, is it acceptable now to use it as reluctant? That’s the real question.

Yeah, you’re right. That is the real question. And you will find as a secondary definition in a lot of dictionaries, you will find reticent defined as reluctant. But I’m reluctant to use reticent that way.

I can see how the confusion comes into play there when you’re reluctant. Not speaking is often a feature of that. Right. So there’s kind of a little bit of an overlap there.

Yeah, there is an overlap. Connotations of the two words. I understand the confusion. I think the distinction is still common enough that you will be appreciated for respecting it.

All right. Well, thanks so much.

All right, Mike. Well, thanks for bringing that up.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Give us a call at 1-877-929-9673, or you can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass. Our romance is growing fast. That’s our show for this week. Support for our program comes from Mozy Online Backup. Got data? Visit mozy.com. If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message anytime at 1-877-929-9673. Or email your questions to words@waywordradio.org. Or join the conversation right now on our discussion forum. That’s at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer. Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten. Tim also engineered our theme music. Kurt Conin produced it. We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdazian and Josette Hurdell. From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette. And from the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett.

Arrivederci.

Ciao, luego.

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