Orange Pigs (episode #1629)

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. An anagram is a word or phrase that’s formed by rearranging the letters

Of a different word or phrase and typically using all the original letters exactly once.

So, for example, the word listen can be rearranged to make the word silent. And we got a great

Anagram from John Ward in Dallas, Texas. He takes the phrase 11 plus 2 and he anagrams those words

And they become 12 plus 1. So it’s 11 plus 2 and 12 plus 1. Both of those add up to 13 and they both

Have 13 letters. Oh, that’s so nice. That’s such an excellent aged worm. I mean, word game. Oh, aged

Worm. Aged worm. It’s an anagram for word game. I guess it is. This is a classic word puzzle type,

Right? Anagrams? Yes. Yes. And there are lots and lots and lots of these dormitory,

Anagrams to dirty room. Oh yeah, that’s a great one.

Yeah. And I also like the Morse code, anagrams to here come dots.

That’s very good. Well, if you would like to nag a ram with anagrams, you can call us 877-929-9673.

Send your favorite anagrams to words@waywordradio.org or share them through our website at waywordradio.org slash contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. It’s Jennifer from Tallahassee.

Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Jennifer.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, what’s up?

Well, I have another question for you.

I called once before.

I’m a tutor, and I work with elementary age and up to high school age children and students.

And I often use fun words with them, and I love words, and they know it.

And the other day, it’s citrus season here down south, and I had a satsuma orange,

And I gave the children a piece, I gave the student a piece, and I said, have a plug.

And then I told them, I said, that’s what someone told me a section of an orange is called,

And I was all proud of this.

And then later I went home and thought, is that true?

Did I make that up?

Where did I get that?

And so I did a little search on the etymology search about it.

And I didn’t find anything about a plug.

I found something about a peg.

But I am almost certain a long time ago, someone with a scientific background told me that indeed it was called a plug.

So I wanted to check with you all so I don’t mislead my students.

Oh, these are segments of a satsuma orange, and you just popped up the word plug.

I did.

But I thought that someone had taught me this a long time ago.

I’m not aware of plug being a term for a section of an orange.

There are other scientific words like carpal, C-A-R-P-E-L, which comes from an old word that means fruit.

And then there’s segment and slice and wedge.

And you mentioned, did you mention pig or peg?

Peg.

When I looked it up online, and I don’t remember which, you know,

Online dictionary I referenced, but I thought I said something about a peg.

But I was kind of hurried and fast, and so I misled my students.

Well, this is a teachable moment, you know.

This is something you can go back to them and talk with them about a little bit more.

Because the word peg is used for that kind of thing.

And also pig.

Pig is a word that is used.

Yes.

Pig like oink oink pig.

Yes.

Probably because it’s related to the word peg.

We’re not sure.

But yeah, I’m looking at a reference from an 1859 article that talks about the pigs of a dry orange.

Interesting.

So I wonder if like peg and pig, if it just got, it took a little L blend in the beginning and changed the vowel and somehow somebody gave it to me as plug.

Yeah, it’s possible they got it wrong, that your memory is solid and they misremembered or misspoke.

And it doesn’t have to be oranges.

Here’s another reference from the 1950s.

I squeezed my pig of lemon over the sliver of salmon.

Well, not only that, it can be used for apple segments in the UK, particularly Scotland.

But I want to go back to pig.

One of the theories that I’ve read about why they might be called pigs is all the segments lined up in a row look like piglets nursing all in a row.

Oh, that’s so right.

Because it kind of radiates back to the little center.

Yeah, exactly.

They’re all focused on the mama.

Little piggies.

And another thing about pigs here is these are also historically referred to as gussies,

G-U-S-S-I-E in Scotland, which also means pig.

So it’s used for pigs and for citrus segments.

And there’s another term from Scotland going back at least to the 1700s

Where they’re called liths, L-I-T-H,

Which is also used for the rings around the base of a cow’s horn.

So there’s a lot.

And I have a French term for this too, if you want it.

I’m ready.

So if you look in La Russe gastronomique,

Which is one of the classic French cookbooks,

You will find them talking about supreme, S-U-P-R-E-M-E,

With the carrot, the little hat on top, the E.

And this not only refers to the segment of a citrus fruit,

But also it’s a verb for what you do when you segment it out.

And so it probably comes from the many French dishes that have supreme in the name,

But they involve deboning or separating meat at the joint,

Such as supreme de pigeon au choux et foie gras,

Which is supreme to pigeon with cabbage and foie gras.

But the pigeon is deboned.

The pigeon is separated out.

You know, the pigeon is, you know, all the bones are pulled away,

So you have all the different pigeon pieces instead of one of the hard.

Sure, but that kind of makes sense because, you know, when you eat citrus, you know, it kind of is a bit of a pulling out and getting those long lines.

There would be another one.

What are those things called?

You know, those stringies.

I don’t know, but they’re good.

I like them.

I know there’s a term for banana strings.

I think it’s phloem bundles.

If you want to talk about bananas.

P-H-L-O-E-M.

Flow and bundles. So like Martha said, Jennifer,

When you go back to your students, you have

A teachable moment and more to tell them.

Much more. Thank you so much.

So I will make this a very happy mistake.

I’ll say, look, look at this

Wonderful mistake. We’ve got pigs

And gussies and lifts and

We could even segue into banana

Strings, you know? I mean,

There’s lots of possibility here.

So much. Well,

Jennifer, you sound, I got,

I just want to say thanks for being an

Educator. You are our people and

Thanks for calling us.

Thanks so much.

Thanks, Jennifer.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

You know, you can take the word conversation and anagram it.

It becomes voices rant on.

Oh, that’s you and me.

I know.

Oh, we don’t rant very much, but you can rant at us on the phone.

1-877-929-9673 is toll-free in the United States and Canada.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Patrick. I’m calling you from Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

Hey, Patrick. Welcome to the show. What’s on your mind?

Well, I have this little saying that my paternal grandmother used to use.

My dad used it. I use it. And I’ve even kind of passed it on to friends of mine.

And I have no idea where this little quip comes from. So maybe you can help me out.

I remember as a kid, my grandmother, when something would work out really well, or perhaps something turned out exactly the way you wanted it to, she would say, that’s just like downtown.

And I have come to use that little phrase.

Even recently, I was helping a friend do some tiling in a bathroom, and there was one particular piece that was really kind of intricate and had to fit just right.

And I got it cut just right, and it slid right in, and I said, just like downtown.

And I have no idea where that phrase even comes from and what its original meaning is.

So if you can clarify and help me, that would be great.

So are we to understand this means that everything went as you wanted it to?

Things are going well.

It’s as good as it can be.

That’s exactly the way I have always used it and interpreted it to mean, yeah.

If something turns out perfectly the way you want it to, you say it’s just like downtown.

It is a curious expression.

There’s another variant that Martha and I talked about on the show years ago, just like New York.

And both of these expressions have to do with the way that theatrical advertising used to present itself, say, in newspapers or on bills, you know, paper bills pasted up on streets.

And they use that line, just like downtown, as far back as the 1930s, as a kind of way of saying that you could see shows at the theaters in the hinterlands that weren’t downtown.

But they would be just as good as the shows at the fancy theaters in the heart of the city where the action was.

And it would literally have the phrase, just like downtown.

So you wouldn’t have to drive in, say, to the Great White Way in New York City to see the show.

You could see the same show, just like downtown, maybe in Westchester in New York or wherever.

But it wasn’t only New York.

It was used in the Midwest as well.

But yeah, 1930s it shows up.

And it’s just really the whole idea that downtown is where the excitement is.

Yeah.

Well, my grandmother was from northern Iowa, which is nowhere near downtown anywhere.

It’s just kind of rural out in the middle of nothing.

So it’s starting to make sense now.

So, yeah.

So I’m certainly – the way I use it and the way she used it, I think it’s certainly different from seeing a Broadway show or a big production.

But it is kind of along the same lines.

If something is what you expect it to be or, you know, really hits the big time, it’s just like downtown.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s as good as it could be, right?

It’s as good as the best possible case, which is obviously we all think about the, you know, you can see a show on tour, right?

Whether it’s a musician or a theatrical production, but seeing it on Broadway is a whole different thing.

True that.

Yeah, I know the difference.

I do appreciate you clarifying that for me.

I’m going to keep using it because it’s a fun little phrase, and I’ve even got some friends who’ve started using it, and it works when it applies properly.

Yep.

Agreed.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for your call, Patrick.

Cool.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Just like downtown or just like New York.

Just like.

It’s catchy, too.

There’s a cadence to it.

Just like downtown.

I don’t know.

It just makes it sound like, yep, I tiled that bathroom just like downtown.

Well, just like that, you can give us a call, 877-929-9673, to talk about language.

We’ve talked many times about how linguistic misunderstandings can be fun.

There was a post on social media from Gareth P. Jones that I really loved.

It went, I only realized my daughter was misreading the gingerbread man recipe when she announced that we needed either one or four teaspoons of salt.

I looked and saw.

Oh.

You know where this is going.

Yeah, I sure do.

He says, I looked and saw that we needed one quarter teaspoon of salt.

And by this point, I had already added one or two teaspoons of ginger, mixed spice and cinnamon.

So, of course, she misunderstood 1 slash 4 as either 1 or 4.

Share your linguistic misunderstandings with us, 877-929-9673.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And who is this stepping out of a blue phone box?

It’s John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

This week, it’s one of our staples, the takeoff.

It’s a variation on a National Puzzlers League puzzle type, but it’s very simple.

Take a word, take off its first letter, and a new word is left behind.

That’s it.

I’ll read a sentence that contains clues to both the original word and the resulting word,

And you tell me both of them.

Now, this week we’re taking off the letter M from the beginning of all these words.

For example, if I said,

The knight was an expert at swinging a heavy spiked club.

A heavy spiked club is a, do you know what it is?

Mace.

A mace.

So he was an ace at the mace.

Right, an expert. Ace is a word for an expert.

So, yeah, M, mace, mace, mace. Very good.

Okay, here’s the first clue.

The first man introduced himself to the fancy lady.

The first man introduced himself to the fancy lady.

Madam and Adam.

Madam and Adam.

That’s even part of a famous thing.

Yes, Madam Adam.

They were the most accomplished sorcerers in many, many years.

Mages and ages.

Yes, mages.

Oh, good.

I should have thought of that.

I read so much fantasy fiction with mages in it.

And ages, many, many years is ages.

Very good.

If he finds the cattle trough empty, you’re the one who will face his wrath.

Ooh.

Anger, danger.

Manger.

Manger.

Manger, yes.

The sparse pantry had me craving a decent meal.

So empty cabinet.

And the pickings were meager.

Yes.

Oh, very good.

So it made me…

Eager.

Yes, it made me eager for a decent meal or craving a decent meal.

Very good.

Very good.

Yeah.

Now that we joined the troop, we were responsible for putting out the dregs of the campfire.

Ashes and…

That’s what I was thinking, but what about members and embers?

Yes, members and embers is correct.

Now that our feud had drawn to a close, we fixed the fence between our backyards.

Ended and mended.

Yes, ended and mended. Very good.

Finally, the tale the storyteller recited had a deep, meaningful lesson.

Ooh.

The oral and moral.

I’m not quite sure how to fit them in there.

Yes, oral and moral.

Oral recited is oral, and a meaningful lesson is moral.

Very good.

You guys got them all.

And the moral of that tale is work on your quizzes, and you’ll get better just like these guys.

Well, John, thank you so much.

I’m sorry you have to take off.

Very good.

Yes, I don’t take off.

Those are M takeoffs for today, and I’m going to take off.

Take care, guys.

All right, take care.

Give our best to the family.

You too. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

And we’d love for you to take a moment and go to your phone and call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Amber Hoadley calling from Reno, Nevada.

How are you guys?

We’re all right.

I’m fantastic. It’s nice to talk to you, Amber.

Welcome to the show.

Yeah. Thanks so much.

I’m really curious.

I was born and raised in the South, but I’ve pretty much just been traveling the West in my van for the last eight years or so.

And I’ve finally settled down in Reno, Nevada.

And I’ve lived here for about six months.

And I’ve just noticed a lot recently that whenever myself or I’ve noticed other people saying it, whenever I say thank you, the response is just, yeah.

And coming from the south where most people say you’re welcome or they say thank you back

It’s just been such an interesting shift to me and I’m just very curious like did it get

Shortened from something is this just because I’m close to California and it’s a little bit more

Casual language out here I’m just I’ve never heard that before and I’ve been noticing it

More and more and more. So yeah, I just wanted to ask you all about it.

So you’re in a store and you have an exchange with the clerk and then you say thank you and

They say, yeah. Is that the way it works? Exactly. And that’s it.

Okay. Yeah. You can find many discussions of this online. So that tells us that it’s not

That new. So just to clear that up. But what you’re encountering here is a different politeness

Tradition. So it’s not necessarily a change so much as that you are geographically displaced.

You’re out of the ordinary politeness environment that you grew up with or are most familiar with.

And so some people may perceive that as rude. I love that when you said, yeah, you did that

Rising tone with it, because that is important because that indicates they are trying to

Introduce into this conversation a formality level which shows politeness and respect because

They see you as an equal a peer or a colleague so that’s kind of what’s happening here if they

Said yeah then you might have thought it was rude but that yeah is as it demonstrates that

There’s still a tone of politeness there there’s still a feeling of i see you customer as as a peer

Of mine. And we have an equal relationship. Cool. That’s so fascinating. Yeah, it definitely,

It always sounds very happy. It doesn’t sound dismissive in any way. So I was just curious if

It had gotten shortened from something, but that’s so interesting to me. Well, it could be,

Yeah, you’re welcome, or yeah, of course, or yeah, no problem. But really, when we have these

Encounters where two people are in these commercial situations, there’s kind of a script

Where it really doesn’t matter how you say thank you, and it doesn’t really matter how they respond

As long as both parties respond at all. That’s very true. That’s a good point.

But sometimes when you have those, Martha, we’ve talked about this before, when you have those

Differing politeness traditions, there can be a perception that if you’re not getting exactly the

Response you’re used to, that the other person is rude. Right. Yeah. We get a lot of complaints

From people who are unhappy that people say no problem, you know, as if it’s not a problem for

Them. But I think it sort of doesn’t matter what the word is. Now that you’re talking about this,

I’m thinking that a lot of times when people thank me, I’ll say, sure,

You know, which isn’t your well, it’s more like, yeah, that’s kind of what I mean.

Yeah.

And I think you could, you know, say popcorn or something.

It’s more the tone of the voice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You completed the transaction by fulfilling your role in the script with some sound that acknowledged their statement.

Right.

And it’s hard to break away from knowing that it’s not really the actual words you say.

It’s that you say any words at all.

That’s the politeness part.

That’s where the most content is being transmitted, is that you’ve returned their remark.

Right.

Definitely.

In your facial expression and just your body language.

So, yeah, Amber, maybe, as you said, maybe you’ll try popcorn or Labrador Retriever or something like that.

People do say things like, my pleasure, or anytime.

And they often come with that same tone that you said.

Yeah, anytime.

My pleasure.

This kind of high-pitched way of phrasing it.

Hopefully I can chat again with you all soon.

This has been so fun.

Thank you for answering my question.

Our pleasure.

Take care of yourself, Amber.

Bye.

It is no problem for you to call us anytime, and it would be our pleasure.

1-877-929-9673.

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

Maria Grant from Plano, Texas sent us a lovely Spanish word.

It’s desahogar.

So that’s D-E-S-A-H-O-G-A-R?

Yes, exactly.

And it has lots of meanings.

It can mean to vent to somebody or to let your emotions out by crying

Or to confide in somebody, just telling them what is making you sad at the moment.

And the wonderful thing about desahogar is that it comes from the verb ahogar, which means to drown.

And so desahogar literally means to undrown.

Isn’t that gorgeous?

Oh, yeah.

So there’s like connotations of rescue and resuscitation and the aid of another person.

Yeah, or just reversing the process.

You know, there’s also an expression in Spanish, ahogarse en un vaso de agua,

Which means to drown in a glass of water, literally,

But it means to get overwhelmed by a problem that’s really not all that much.

Mountain out of Mohill.

Yeah, exactly.

That’s a lovely word.

We are super language aficionados,

Meaning when you share your language tidbits with us,

We read them, love them, adore them, absorb them.

Share your language tidbits then.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Micah. I’m calling from Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Hi, Micah. Welcome to the show.

I was calling about the word sockdollager.

I was actually reading a book about the history of Omaha in the 1800s,

And there were these two newspaper editors that were always poking at each other in their editorials,

And they met on the street one day and got into a fight,

And the third paper reported on it saying that one of them had put in a sock dollager on the other one’s jaw.

And I just thought it was a fun word.

And then I started thinking about.

On his jaw.

Yeah, he put in a sock dollager on him.

So I’m assuming it’s a punch.

Yeah, I know things.

Yeah, but yeah, a punch.

Yeah, so then it was such a fun word.

It kind of stuck in my head.

And then I wondered if that maybe was where we got our word for sock.

Like if you were to sock someone, like to punch them, if that maybe was the route for that.

And I thought I know just the people to call.

Well, gosh, I’m still back on the newspaper editors.

I mean, this was this was not a verbal fisticuffs.

This was actually punching each other in the middle of the street.

So this is this is how the online bickering happened before online was possible.

Yeah, yeah. There were trolls even in the newspaper days.

It’s so slow, they just had to get out on the street and do it in real time.

Wow. Okay, so one of them landed a sockdollager.

And you’re right. I mean, a sockdollager is a knockout punch or a heavy blow or just the punch that puts an end to everything.

It just stops the fight cold because the person gets knocked out or gets hit hard enough that they give up.

Sockdollager.

And the word sock preceded sockdollager.

Sockdollager probably comes from the word sock.

And it’s this early 19th century Americanism that comes from a time when there was a lot of linguistic exuberance in this country.

People were forever making up fun words like sockdollager or absquatulate, meaning to leave or something like that.

You don’t hear it much anymore.

But Mark Twain used the term sockdollager when he was writing about lightning and thunder in Huck Finn.

Then rip comes another flash and another sockdollager.

He’s talking about resounding thunder.

And one more cool point about the term Sockdologer is that the adjectival form Sockdologizing is famous.

Do you know why it’s famous?

No.

Sockdologizing is famous for being one of the last words that Abraham Lincoln ever heard.

Yeah, you’ll remember that on April 14th, 1865, he goes to Ford’s Theater to see the play Our American Cousin.

And this is about an awkward guy from rural Vermont who goes to visit his aristocratic cousins in England.

And he outsmarts the posh Mrs. Mount Chessington.

And at one point, Mrs. Mount Chessington makes this snide remark about how this guy from Vermont isn’t used to the good manners of good society.

And he says, don’t know the manners of good society, eh?

Well, I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal, you sock-dologizing old man-trap.

And supposedly that was the line that got the biggest laugh of the play.

And John Wilkes Booth was waiting, listening to, in hopes that that would cover the sound of his shot when the audience erupted into laughter.

But the line was you Sockdologizing old man trap because she was trying to trap him into marrying her daughter because he’s about to inherit a fortune.

So Sockdologizing has this really interesting history.

Oh, my goodness. I can’t wait to start using this in my regular conversation now.

Yeah, I think it deserves to be revived. Sockdologer.

You can spell it a lot of different ways.

Slogdologer or slogdologer.

There are lots of different ways because it was sort of an irregular kind of word.

But the one that it’s standardized on is S-O-C-K-D-O-L-A-G-E-R.

Yeah, we should mention that.

Well, Micah, thank you so much for reaching out.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks for talking with us.

Thanks so much, guys.

All right.

Take care.

Take care, Micah.

You too.

Bye.

Well, like Micah, if you’ve come across an interesting word in your reading and want to talk with us about it,

The number is 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Jody, and I’m calling from Norfolk, Virginia.

Hi, Jody. Welcome. What’s up?

My husband and I were looking to go to dinner,

And a new pizza place popped up in our neighborhood.

They were advertising Connecticut-style pizza,

And the restaurant is called District, and it’s a pizza.

So it was called District of Pizza.

And so we go into the restaurant and we look at the menu.

And they said that their pizza place is District of Beets because that’s how they pronounce it in Connecticut.

And so I want to know why it’s pronounced a beats instead of a pizza and where it came from.

I love that Connecticut style pizza is branching out into the rest of the country,

Which is why you’re having this question, because you wouldn’t usually encounter this,

At least in the United States, outside of Connecticut.

Exactly.

So a pizza, they’re spelling the word pizza with an A at the beginning, right?

Correct.

Yeah, and say the, how do they pronounce it again?

A-beets.

A-beets.

Like it would be A-B-E-E-T-S, a-beets.

With a stress on the last syllable, right? A-beets.

Correct, correct.

It’s really a curious little dialect remnant having to do with Italian immigrants settling in Connecticut.

There are two Italian dialect things that have happened here.

One is a pizza is a contraction of the two words la pizza, which is Italian for pizza.

So a pizza is now one word where it used to be two, la pizza.

The second thing that happens is there’s a tradition of lanition.

This is a softening or weakening of a syllable in the form of what’s known as apocope,

In which the final syllable is swallowed or dropped, especially when it’s following a stressed syllable.

So you see this in other words, like mozzarella becomes mozzarella, or prosciutto becomes prosciutto.

And many of these are from southern Italian dialects.

And many of the people who came to the New World from what is now Italy came here before Italian was more standardized.

And when Italian dialects were even stronger and more regional.

A lot of these maybe are Neapolitan, for example, although there are others.

And it just so happens that many of them settled in New Haven, Connecticut in particular, but nearby as well in Connecticut, and brought their food traditions, their foodways with them.

And so their particular dialect pronunciation of pizza, a pizza, which they say is a vitz, which has that last syllable disappearing, is now just kind of a tradition in New Haven.

And I guess it’s now a tradition in Norfolk, Virginia as well.

It has come down here and they, it’s delicious.

They say it’s coal fired instead of, I guess.

Yeah.

So it’s a little charred on the bottom, but it was thin and delicious.

Oh, yeah.

That’s so good.

What’s your go-to on toppings?

I am a pepperoni mushroom type of girl.

All right.

Mushrooms.

Yeah, I have a hard time convincing anyone in my family to get mushrooms on a pizza, but that’s my fave.

Well, next time you have a Beetz in Norfolk or New Haven, think of us, all right?

I will.

Next time I have a Beetz, I’m going to send a picture.

Oh, yeah, please.

Please do.

All right.

Jodi, take care of yourself.

Great.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Thank you, too.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear about food language in your part of the world, so give us a call, 877-929-9673.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And I think I have found a great answer to a question that was raised in an earlier episode.

You may remember Amanda in Tucson, Arizona, who wanted an alternative to kill two birds with one stone.

Right. I remember that. Yeah. And we got a lot of feedback on that. People who said they had better ideas and people who said, why change it at all?

Right. Right. And she was lobbying for feed two birds with one seed, which I like. But I think we actually got an even better one.

This came from Shuba Iyer, who grew up in India. And she says, in our mother tongue, we have an equivalent benign version.

And she points out among speakers of the Tamil language, there’s a commonly used phrase for the same idea.

And it’s Urukhalil Irandumangai, which translates as one stone, two mangoes.

And the idea there is that you throw a stone at a mango tree and two mangoes drop to the ground.

Oh, wonderful. That’s exactly the spirit of it, isn’t it?

Yes.

The idea of accomplishing two things with one effort.

Yes, so I really appreciated getting that.

And then we heard from Cynthia Cox-Gerard, who’s a pastor in Midland, Georgia.

And she wasn’t talking about that phrase specifically, but she pointed out that a parishioner told her about a more delicate way to tell somebody to get off the pot.

And the phrase that this person used was, paint or get off the ladder.

Definitely more polite, the kind of thing that you can say around your pastor.

Yes. Yes. Cynthia says the light bulb that inevitably goes off in the listener’s head when they hear this for the first time is fun to behold.

Right. Because a ladder kind of prevents more than one person doing the job at the time if it’s up on top of the ladder.

True. And one more email that I wanted to share is from Matt Welter, who lives in Wisconsin.

And responding to our conversation with 11-year-old Josiah, who was looking for a term to describe a road that’s largely free of traffic.

You remember that call, Grant?

Yeah.

Well, Matt writes, in Green Bay, we have a term for that.

The game has started.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

It’s weird sometimes when you’re driving down the streets in San Diego and you don’t know that there’s something happening at Petco Park where the Padres are playing.

And you’re like, where is everyone?

This store should be packed right now.

And you’re like, oh, yeah, they’re watching the game.

Right.

Why didn’t the emergency warning go off on my phone?

Right, right, right.

What do they know that I don’t know?

Let me check the websites of the newspapers.

We’re always on the lookout for new ways to say old things or old ways to say new things.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

That’s toll-free in the United States and Canada.

Or you can email us from anywhere in the world, words@waywordradio.org.

And if you’d like to leave us a voice note on WhatsApp, we’ve got a number for that, too.

You can find it at waywordradio.org slash contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Patty Adams.

Hi, Patty.

Where are you calling from?

San Diego, California.

Well, hello, neighbor.

What’s on your mind?

Hi.

I was thinking about the lack of a word.

I can’t find a word for that period of sleeplessness in the middle of the night that I find more and more people complain about.

You are up for a wake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.

And I was just thinking about it in the middle of the night as to why there isn’t a word for it.

You know, like when you take a nap during the day, you are in a period of sleepfulness.

But when you are awake in the middle of the night, you’re just awake.

There’s no word for it.

And I thought the only people that would know the answer to this question would be you guys.

Hopefully.

We’ll find out.

Yeah, my first instinct is just to flip nap around and call it a pan, but that doesn’t really work.

100%.

That was mine as well.

Yeah, but it just means too many other things, right?

Exactly.

Oh, that’s so great.

I like that.

I never thought of that.

But I’m thrilled that you asked about this because I am obsessed with sleep.

I mean, I think of sleep as one of my hobbies.

And I’m fascinated with when people go to sleep and when they wake up and if they’re awake during the night.

And I’m wondering, you mentioned complaining about that period.

Does it happen to you every night?

Almost every night.

I happen to really love that period because for me, it’s a period of what’s been described as non-anxious wakefulness.

I think especially for people who are writers or creative, sometimes that’s just sort of an almost hypnotic period of time when you just lie there and you think creatively.

And the French have a lovely word for that. It’s dorvé, which means wake sleep. It comes from the same roots as dormitory and reveille, sleep and wake. Dorvé, which is D-O-R-V-E-I-L-L-E, dorvé.

And it refers to that period of time when you’re just sort of awake and maybe you’re thinking.

But what I would recommend to you is a wonderful book by a guy who’s a professor of history at Virginia Tech.

His name is Roger Eckrich.

And he was studying public records of pre-industrial Europe.

And he started seeing all these references to first and second sleep, first sleep and second

Sleep. And then he started looking around. It turns out there’s an Italian term for this. And

He looked around even more. And there were all these records in Africa, in the Middle East,

In South Asia, in Latin America, where people were talking about the first sleep and the second

Sleep. And then there’s this period of time in between, you know, before we had electric lights

And all that when people would get up and just do stuff.

Ben Franklin liked to stand in front of the window naked during that period of time

And take a cold air bath.

Yeah, so the thing.

So I don’t know if you want to try that, but, I mean,

Do you just lie there and think the whole time,

Or did you think about getting up and, I don’t know?

No, I’m single.

So generally what I do is turn on the TV

And find something that is kind of mindless.

Yeah.

Right.

Not hard on TV.

So, Martha, the faire d’orveil,

To make yourself, to become wakeful or to sleep or doze or to drowse is really good.

But we still don’t have,

We still don’t really have a noun in English for that period between first and second sleep.

I really like your idea of pan.

Now, there is an adjective, semi-somnus, which means half asleep.

And there’s a medical term, hypnopompic, which describes that semi-wakefulness period between sleep and full consciousness.

But that’s still not, it’s an adjective and it’s still not describing the time period.

It’s still describing you, your own mental state.

And then there’s Japanese utouto or utura, which is about fluctuating between being awake and being asleep.

I really recommend this book by Roger Eckrich about it.

It’s called At Days Closed, Night in Times Past.

It’s about the history of sleep, and it’s really fascinating.

Maybe you could get up in the middle of the night and read it.

That sounds like a good idea.

At Days Closed, okay.

I don’t know that we’ve named that period between the first and second sleep,

But it must be encouraging to know that many other people have that.

Indeed, and it’s interesting that it would actually have a word

In other languages. So I think we should keep researching it.

Take care of yourself, Patty.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

We got a text from Ruth Brown in Tucson, Arizona, and I just loved it. She said,

As newlyweds, my husband David and I were so pleased to have friends over to eat with us.

We proudly got out our wedding china, and as David brought in the soup, he announced we made this and were even serving it in our soup latrine.

Poor David.

Latrine instead of tureen.

Oh, I bet that one never gets old.

You’re exactly right.

That was the rest of the text.

Needless to say, it’s been called the soup latrine ever since.

Oh, David, I hope you know this isn’t the spirit of fun, but that’s a genius, Mark.

We like it when you poke fun at your own language mishaps rather than the mishaps of other people.

Share your embarrassing language moments with us, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Byron Rope.

Hi, Byron, where are you calling us from?

Jacksonville, Florida.

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

Well, I listened to your show and it piqued my interest because as I listen, I think of things that I heard in my upbringing from my mother, usually.

And there was something that she used to say, and I wanted to see what you all thought about it.

Fire away.

And if she heard something or experienced something that really kind of astonished her or kind of took her aback, she would say, oh, if that don’t beat all.

But sometimes if it was really something amazing or something that really took her for a loop, she would say, that beats bobtail and bobtail beats the devil.

And I never gave it much thought when I was a child.

I just listened to it.

But as an adult remembering it, I just kind of wonder what she was talking about when you say that beat Bobtail and Bobtail beats the devil.

What is Bobtail?

Because I thought nothing beat the devil.

I was just wondering what that could mean.

Yeah, you’ve got the order of events there.

Usually nothing beats the devil, but if it’s something extraordinary, it would be extraordinary

For something to beat the devil. And bobtail in this case is a horse. You trim the tail of a horse

So that the hair is all short, and that’s a bob, just like a woman can get a bob, which means a

Short haircut. So the bobtail often was a horse nickname or an actual name for a horse, and you

You can find it in old horse racing records.

Bobtail came in second in such and such race or so forth.

And so, yeah, it’s just the idea here that this horse is named Bobtail.

And Bobtail’s amazing.

And Bobtail beat the devil.

But whatever we’re talking about right now, this exciting event, this beats both of them.

Okay.

There was a bit of folklore that came out of this.

African-American folklore that tells a story where Bobtail isn’t a horse, but is a rabbit who beats the devil and tricks the devil into giving the rabbit the food that it wants, the plants that it wants to eat.

But the expression is older.

It’s about 200 years than the folklore, which is substantially newer.

Huh. Interesting.

Yeah.

So it’s like to beat the band or to, like you said, to beat all.

Don’t that beat all?

Doesn’t that beat everything?

Yeah, but how did Bobtail, a rabbit, beat the devil?

I don’t understand that.

Yeah, were they running a race or what?

No, no.

So the way this, I wasn’t going to tell the story, but the way the story goes is the rabbit says to the devil, you know, let’s plant our crops together and you can have the bottom of the crops and I’ll have the tops.

So the devil says, all right.

And so when it comes time to gather the crops, the rabbit had all the grain that grew above ground and the devil didn’t have anything but roots.

So the next time the devil says, well, that’s not fair.

Let’s do this again next year, but I’m going to have the tops and you have the bottoms.

And the rabbit says, all right, all right, let’s do that.

So the next year they raise sweet potatoes.

So the rabbit gets all the sweet potatoes, which are under the ground, and the devil gets nothing but the green parts that he can’t eat.

And the rabbit’s name was Bob Doe.

But again, that bit of folklore comes from the expression

And is not the source of the expression.

So then my mother must have been somewhat familiar with that story,

Even if she didn’t know the background, like I didn’t know the background.

She had heard the expression or the story somewhere along the way.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Somewhere along the way.

Or she could have just heard the expression without the story.

But it’s colorful, isn’t it?

Absolutely, absolutely.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that insight.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Now I know what he was talking about.

Thanks for talking with us today, Byron.

Yes, thank you so much.

All right, take care of yourself.

Okay, all right.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Joan McCarthy calling from Battendorf, Iowa.

What’s on your mind, Joan?

I was reminiscing about a word or a phrase.

Back in the 80s, we had a little Toyota Corolla.

It was like a little station wagon, kind of a bronze color.

And we had four kids, so they were all really little.

And we’d pile them into the station wagon, and they’d have all this stuff in their hands.

And I’d say, well, just put it in the way back.

Put it in the way back.

And I had never heard anybody really use that phrase before, and I felt like I made it up.

But I don’t know if I did.

You haven’t heard anybody else use the term way back for the part of a station wagon or a van that’s way, way back, the farthest row of seats.

Is that right?

I actually have.

I actually have heard other people use it.

But I didn’t know if maybe they heard me say it and they just latched onto it.

No, the truth is that, Joan, plenty of people have used the term way back for that part of a car.

I mean, all the way back in the 1960s and 70s, remember how big those station wagons were?

They were enormous.

And if you weren’t riding shotgun up in the front seat and you were sitting all the way back in that last row, I mean, it is the way back of a car.

Yeah. And you know, what’s funny is that years ago we had a caller from Maryland who said that she used the term way back and her kids made fun of her and she was wanting us to tell her that it was a legitimate word.

And absolutely it is. And we put the call out to our listeners and we heard from people all over the country who use the term way back for that part of a car.

It’s not the term that I used growing up in Kentucky.

We called it the back-back or the back-back-to.

And other people have other terms for it, like backity-back or the back of the back.

But you’re perfectly within your rights, Joan, to use the term way back for that.

Oh, well, good.

I’m saddened that I didn’t make it up, though.

Well, we often don’t remember where we learn our words, right?

Most words that we say, we have no idea where we got them from.

It just seemed appropriate, you know, to give that directive to four little kids to make them understand where they were supposed to put their junk.

It is entirely possible that you did come up with it independently, but so did other people.

So it’s out there.

I always understood the way back to refer to the non-seat storage area, though, in the back of a van or a station wagon.

But you guys think it’s the last row of seats?

Well, sometimes it’s adjustable.

Yeah, I think of it as a storage because our little Toyota station wagon just had a front seat and a back seat.

And the way back where there were no seats.

Gotcha.

And then, yeah, we never had one of those station wagons where they had the third row that faced the back.

We just had the storage area.

Well, Joan, thank you so much for sharing your memories with us.

And we would love to have you back on the show some other time.

Okay.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Share your language memories with us, 877-929-9673,

Or send them to us in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Our team includes senior producer Stefanie Levine,

Engineer and editor Tim Felten, and quiz guide John Chaneski.

We’d love to hear from you, no matter where you are in the world.

Go to waywordradio.org slash contact.

Subscribe to the podcast, hear hundreds of past episodes, and get the newsletter at waywordradio.org.

Whenever you have a language story or question, our toll-free line is open in the U.S. And Canada.

1-877-929-9673.

Or send your thoughts to words@waywordradio.org.

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

Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

Thank you.