Names don’t always mean what you think they mean. Main Street in San Francisco is named after businessman Charles Main, and Snowflake, Arizona, honors two guys named Snow and Flake. Plus, big words for small people: A colorful new book introduces kids to colossal words (including the word colossal!). And limber up those muscles — we have a trove of terrible tongue twisters to try! Also, invoice, a delicious quiz about food, stilliform, crepuscular, make the cheese more binding, skycap, scofflaw, rutschy, epizootic, and wrongs of passage.
This episode first aired August 3, 2024.
When Main Street is Minor
Names don’t always mean what you think they mean. Main Street in San Francisco is named for businessman Charles Main. Snowflake, Arizona, is named for Erastus Snow and William Jordan Flake.
When a Twister, a-Twisting, Will Twist a Twist
Janine in Murray, Kentucky, shares some favorite tongue twisters. There’s the one that helps you remember the four cardinal directions: Never Eat Sour Wheat. Her dad was fond of saying The stump thunk the skunk stunk and the skunk thunk the stump stunk. There’s also the actors’ warmup All I want is a proper cup of coffee made in a proper copper coffee pot. In French, tongues are tripped up by Cinq ou six sous-officiers se promènent à Soissons, which means “Five or six officers are walking around Soissons,” and in Spanish, Pepe Pecas pica papas con un pico, con un pico pica papas Pepe Pecas translates as “Joe Freckles chops potatoes with a pick, with a pick Joe Freckles chops a potato.” In his 17th-century volume Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae, John Wallis references a tongue twister in a passage that translates to something like: When a twister, a-twisting, will twist him a twist, for the twisting of his twist he three twines doth intwist, but if one of the twists of the twist do I twist, the twine that untwisteth, untwisteth the twist. Many more are in the gorgeously illustrated 1874 collection of tongue twisters called Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation.
Invoice and Envoy
Scott in Madison, Wisconsin, is curious about the word invoice. It’s related to the English word envoy, and comes from French, envois, literally “things sent.”
Colossal Words
Colette Hiller’s Colossal Words for Kids: 75 Tremendous Words: Neatly Defined to Stick in the Mind (Bookshop|Amazon) uses clever rhymes to help children learn big, fun-to-say words like magnanimous, discombobulated, and acquiesce. This colorful book features playful illustrations by Tor Freeman. By the way, author Colette Hiller has had a long career on stage and screen, including playing Corporal Ferro in the movie Aliens.
A Smorgasbord Quiz
Quiz Guy John Chaneski serves up a smorgasbord of food-related words. If you’re hungry and can’t think of anything but food, what would you call someone who’s afraid of every little thing? We don’t have beef with this puzzle.
In a Pickle with Mustard on Top
The word pickle is related to a similar-sounding Dutch word, pekel, meaning “brine.” In the 1400s, a pickle was a spicy sauce. Soon the word came to refer to the salty or acidic used to preserve foods, and later to the foods themselves preserved in it, such as pickled cucumbers. The old Dutch phrase in de pekel zitten literally means “to sit in the pickle brine.” The English phrase to be in a pickle used to mean “to be quite inebriated,” as in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Bookshop|Amazon) where one character says to the other: I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last! meaning “I’ve been so drunk!”
Stilliform Means Drop-Shaped
The lovely English word stilliform, or “drop-shaped,” comes from Latin stilla, meaning “drop,” the source also of distill and instill.
Crepuscular to Gloaming to Starlight: Words for Gentle Light
A Vermont listener named Amy is looking for a word to denote a particular kind of light. She has an eye condition that makes her photophobic, which means that ordinary light makes her physically uncomfortable. She wants a word that describes that specific level of illumination where color just begins to be detectable. None of the following quite gets at what she’s looking for: alpenglow, dim, gloaming, pre-dawn light, subdued light, starlight, or crepuscular. There’s the word antelucan, an archaic word that describes conditions just before dawn, from Latin words meaning exactly that. Martha makes up the word chromagogic based on Greek roots that would mean “leading to color,” just as hypnagogic refers to the period leading up to sleep. But Grant may have the best and most specific suggestion of all: amylight. Do you have a better one?
Makes the Cheese More Binding
Matt from Memphis, Tennessee, reports that he had a professor who would acknowledge a complication to a task that made it more challenging by saying That makes the cheese a bit more binding, doesn’t it? The expression to make the cheese more binding can also have a positive meaning, suggesting that a situation’s been enhanced, as when a deal sweetener increases the odds of a successful negotiation. A version of the phrase appears in one of the most famous “Twilight Zone” episodes of all time.
He Tried to be Helpful: Other Terms for Drinkers and Non-Drinkers
The term skycap for workers who help with luggage at an airport was coined by analogy with redcap, a term for porters on trains who wore red caps. Skycap was the winning entry in a contest. Another contest, held in 1923, gave us the word scofflaw, a term for someone who drinks illegally during Prohibition. A Boston philanthropist and staunch anti-alcohol crusader named Delcevare King sponsored the contest run by a local newspaper. Other entries included boozshevik, klinker, wetocrat, slacklaw, and lawjacker. Not to be outdone, a Harvard student magazine ran its own contest, offering $25 for the best slang term “Prohibitionist”: Also-rans included fear-beer and jug buster, but the winner was spigot-bigot. King is buried in Quincy, Massachusetts, where his epitaph reads simply, “He tried to be helpful.”
Rutchy and Squirming
When a listener from Buffalo, New York, was a child, she was told to stop being so rutschy, or in other words, to stop being so “fidgety.” Rutsch, meaning “to squirm,” and its variants, which include rooch and roosh, come from German rutschen, which means to “slip,” “slide,” or “slither,” and are heard primarily in areas of German settlement in the U.S.
Grape Grandma and Grandpa
Taylor in Casper, Wyoming, carefully prepared her three-year-old son to meet his great grandparents for the first time. He misunderstood the great, and calls them Grandma and Grandpa Grape. Naturally, so does the rest of the family. Grant observes that they’re raisin that boy right and must love him a bunch. And by the way, what did the grapes say when the elephant stepped on them?
Beware the Epizooty!
A Montana farmer says his dad used to warn against catching the epizooty. In 1872, an epizootic respiratory disease among horses nearly brought the United States to a standstill. The word epizootic is modeled on the Greek word epidemic, from Greek epi, meaning “upon,” and demos, meaning “people,” as in democracy, or “rule of the people.” The zoo- in epizootic describes a disease affecting a group of animals. Over time, variants such as epizooty came to refer to any kind of undefined or imaginary illness in animals or humans.
Greetings from the Interior
Sean from Buffalo, New York, says that whenever someone burped, his mother would say Well, bring it up again and we’ll vote on it. There are many of these so-called wrongs of passage, such as Six more and we’ll have 7-Up! Another good one: Greetings from the interior! Sean’s father, who was from New York, used to say just like downtown, a saying we’ve discussed before, to mean something was satisfactory or excellent.
This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.
Books Mentioned in the Episode
| Grammatica Linguae Anglicanaeby John Wallis |
| Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation designed by Bruce Rogers |
| Colossal Words for Kids: 75 Tremendous Words: Neatly Defined to Stick in the Mind by Collette Hiller Bookshop|Amazon |
| The Tempest by William Shakespeare (Bookshop|Amazon> |
Music Used in the Episode
| Title | Artist | Album | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yeah, You! | The Rare Sounds | Introducing: The Rare Sounds | Color Red |
| Half A Mind | The Rare Sounds | Introducing: The Rare Sounds | Color Red |
| Erika, Seq 4 | Roberto Pregadio | Erika OST | Beat Records Company |
| One Hand | The Rare Sounds | Introducing: The Rare Sounds | Color Red |
| Lost Backpack | The Rare Sounds | Introducing: The Rare Sounds | Color Red |
| Erika, Seq 8 | Roberto Pregadio | Erika OST | Beat Records Company |
| Through Being Cool | The Rare Sounds | Introducing: The Rare Sounds | Color Red |
| The Other Side | Sure Fire Soul Ensemble | Step Down | Colemine Records |
