Pickles and Ice Cream

Even though you’re listening to this on podcast and not on the air, you can still call our toll-free number 877-929-9673.

And you can still send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

And you can still find us online at waywordradio.org.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

If you’re a writer who’s dreamed of getting published, then you may have tried to find yourself a literary agent.

Now that’s a tough process. I’ve been through it. You slave over your manuscript or proposal and then you finally send it off and then you spend all this time biting your nails waiting to hear back.

But just for a moment, pity the poor literary agent who’s digging through that huge slush pile of submissions each week.

They’re looking for that needle in a haystack effort that just might sell.

Well, I have a whole new appreciation for the work of literary agents now thanks to a blog.

It’s called Slushpile Hell.

And the blogger’s taken pains to remain anonymous.

He describes himself simply as one grumpy literary agent.

That’s all. All grumpy literary. They’re all grumpy.

Yeah, isn’t that kind of redundant?

Well, each week, this person takes snippets from the 10 or so worst queries he’s received that week,

And he posts them online along with his grumpy, snarky remarks.

And they’re just snippets. There are no names used, so nobody gets embarrassed.

But they’re really instructive, not to mention hilarious.

I’ll give you an example, Grant.

Oh, please.

Recently, one would-be author wrote,

Not that I would compare myself to Hemingway,

But if you read my novel, you’ll see that it’s as brilliantly simple as The Old Man in the Sea,

As poetic as The Sun Also Rises, and as epic for whom the bell tolls.

And the agent’s response is, well, at least you didn’t compare yourself to Hemingway.

I love it.

Brilliant.

What’s the name of that blog?

It’s called Slushpile Hell.

Let me give you another one.

Okay.

I have an idea for a book about a dog.

Before I take the time to write it, can you tell me if dog books are still hot?

And the agent writes back, I’m glad you didn’t waste your time.

Dog books are out.

Manatee books are in.

I love a good manatee book.

Me too, especially the pop-up ones, right?

There’s a little bit of schadenfreude there.

Yes, there is, but it’s also instructive.

You know, it’s a lesson about doing your homework.

It’s a lesson about knowing your audience.

And I know a lot of writers who read Slushpile Hell now in order to make sure that they don’t make the same mistakes.

Brilliant.

Absolutely the right thing to do.

It’s kind of inspiring.

Well, we know our audience, and we know that you like to have your say, 877-929-9673,

Or send your say in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Drew White.

I’m calling from Oceanside, California.

Well, welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Well, this is one of those things that stick when you’re a little one from your mom.

Mm—

When mom was raising me, everybody was raising children.

You didn’t work.

And your level of activity.

Oh, no, that wasn’t work.

No, it wasn’t work at all, huh?

They kind of raise themselves, don’t they?

Plug and drag.

Well, you’ve just got to keep the water dish filled and they’re fine.

I know.

I know.

And it’s changed so much because the level of a good, you know, mother was the perfect house, very clean, perfect children, well-behaved, articulate, you know what I mean, all that.

Well, I have to say, in all seriousness, that’s still the standard, isn’t it?

If you’re the house husband or the house wife, that’s still the standard.

Well, kind of, but it’s a little looser than it used to be, you know.

And that’s where this whole thing came in.

I remember somebody coming up to my mother and saying, how old is your kid?

And my mother straightening up to her full height.

And let me throw this in.

My mother looked like Marilyn Monroe and acted like Lucille Ball.

She must have been amazing.

Oh, she is.

She got the visual.

Okay, so she really got away with a lot.

And she straightened up and she looked at them and she said, oh, you know, we don’t have any goats, but my daughter’s 10.

Oh, she resented her children being called kids.

Because she was raised on a farm and she explained to me that it was slang and kids were unruly, unbehaved children that you really didn’t want to let into your house.

Oh, I see.

And she was a super – and to this day, now that pretty much there is no word children, everybody calls them kids, you know, I go, oh, my God.

Well, then they have a brat.

Very good.

Yeah, children is for hospital forms, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I mean, W.C. Fields, it was, you know, get your kid out of here.

It was derogatory when I was growing up.

So where on earth did that start?

Well, it’s interesting. It predates calling children kids easily goes back to the 1600s.

And it did start as a contemptuous use.

It was used in a way to talk about kids as brats.

Thank you.

But by the 1800s, it was normal.

Even people in the upper classes of British society were using kid to mean children.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, so it’s got hundreds of years behind it.

And I have heard your mother’s complaints before.

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

I have to say I don’t necessarily agree with it.

But if she meant it as a way of distinguishing her well-behaved, clean, orderly children,

If she meant that as a way to distinguish them from the rabble, then good for her.

Yeah, that was exactly it.

And I thought, well, did this just start when she was raising them?

Or has it been around?

And obviously, it has been around forever.

Yeah, a long time.

And you’re right.

It’s basically the standard term for children these days.

That’s what I thought.

I’m just trying to get over the little hairs going up the back.

And it’s all from my mom.

They do a good job.

She loves the language.

She’s a stickler for the terminology.

And she’s Southern.

She’s a little Texas girl.

And she loves our show, I’ll bet.

She adores your show.

Well, Drew’s mom.

You sound like a winner.

Yes.

She is a winner.

She’s a doll.

Drew, we have to ask you.

Do you have, how shall I put this, offspring?

I do.

I do.

I have a son.

I do.

And what do you call him, your child or your kid?

I basically call him my son.

You know, my child.

Child is a little formal.

I just say my son.

My son, the firefighter, would be my whole, that’s his whole handle right there.

Well, it sounds like you did a great job with your kid there.

Well, thank you.

Your son.

Well, tell your homemaker mother, tell your beautiful homemaker mother that we said thanks for listening,

And she sounds like a delightful person.

Thank you for calling, Drew.

This is a huge treat.

Thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Bye-bye, Drew.

All right.

Bye-bye.

You know what? Everybody needs a kind of magical person in their life, whether it’s a teacher or a librarian

Or a parent or a grandmother or somebody like that.

That one person who’s got spine and wit and knows how to use them both.

And you’re mine.

Oh, I feel sorry for you.

Call us and tell us about the stickler in your life and what you learned from that person,

877-929-9673.

Or tell us the stories about that person in email at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Nathaniel calling from Vermillion, South Dakota.

So what’s happening in Vermillion?

Well, I was calling to ask.

I’m originally from Kansas City, Missouri.

And when I moved here, I learned that there is a type of sandwich that they call a tavern.

Now, to me, a tavern would be a drinking establishment, possibly an inn.

But apparently it’s something like a sloppy joe.

And when I ask, they tell me it’s like a loose meat sandwich, but I’ve also never heard of that.

So I’m wondering about the etymology and if taverns are peculiar to this region.

I wouldn’t say taverns are peculiar to that region.

You mean tavern the sandwich, right?

Oh, the sandwich.

The sandwich.

Oh, okay.

I was like, I know about drinking establishments from around the world.

I’ll take it to London sometimes.

We’ll have a ball.

And so your experience then, because you’re from Kansas City, is about barbecue and that kind of thing, right?

Well, actually, I’m vegetarian, but yes, I did grow up around that kind of thing.

Hey, I’ve had some of the best barbecued eggplant that you will ever eat in your life. It’s an amazing stuff.

In Kansas City?

No, not in Kansas. In Missouri.

Okay.

Okay, so let’s talk about this sandwich called the Tavern. You only heard this when you moved to North Dakota?

South Dakota.

South Dakota, sorry.

Yeah, and so you’re not so familiar with the ingredients because you’re vegetarian, but you gather that it’s what, like a sloppy joe without the sloppy part?

I’ve asked. I’m told that it’s similar, that there’s something different about the sauce. And everyone here seems to think it’s the most normal thing in the world, but I called a number of my friends in different parts of the country, and I can’t find anyone who’s heard of it.

Yeah, everyone thinks that their family pathologies are normal until they go to school for the first time.

So this is a diner food? This is not the kind of thing you’re eating at a restaurant that has cloth napkins, right?

I wouldn’t think so. It seems to be served at things like church functions, you know, that sort of thing.

Okay, so your granny would make it, maybe.

Yeah, that’s what I gather.

And is it on a bun?

It is. Apparently it’s on a hamburger bun. I mean, it must not be identical to a sloppy dough because they, you know, liken it to one. But it’s something similar.

So a tavern sandwich on a bun, casual food in the Dakotas.

Yeah. Didn’t know it in Missouri. What else can we add to this, Martha?

Yeah. Well, I think it goes by lots of different names.

Oh.

So it’s like the devil.

Something like that, especially for a vegetarian, right?

Yeah, I’ve heard it called a maid right. M-A-I-D-R-I-T-E.

Bing, bing, bing. My wife from Iowa knows it by that name.

Really?

Yes, Made Right is an establishment throughout Iowa. They make these loose meat sandwiches. Made Right. M-A-I-D hyphen R-I-T-E, Made Right.

So Made Right, I’ve also heard it called a tasty, but you’re right that it’s sort of loose meat, maybe seasoned, but not with so much sauce, as I recall. It’s thought to perhaps have been invented at a, what, a diner in Sioux City, Iowa, I think.

It’s contested, though, isn’t it?

Oh, well, yeah. As always with two diners, right?

Yes, yeah. Everybody takes credit for frankfurters and hamburgers and cheeseburgers. But there is a story about a restaurant in Sioux City, Iowa called Ye Olde Tavern. And people have associated it with that. So I’m not sure if that’s exactly the origin, but that’s the story that gets repeated the most.

But it is interesting. I mean, I’ve never even been offered one.

You haven’t?

Never seen one on a menu in person.

Yeah, so it’s very interesting to hear that, Nathaniel.

Oh, brilliant. Thank you so much.

Well, it’s our pleasure. You know, we could talk your ear off about food questions.

Thanks for calling.

Well, thank you very much for having me.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Martha, I’m betting there are a lot of different names for these kinds of sandwiches, these loose meat sandwiches on bun, right?

Oh, I bet. I bet we’ve only scratched the surface of the bun.

Mm— Only toasted half of it.

Something like that. If you’ve got names for this sandwich that we haven’t talked about, give us a call, 877-929-9673. Or send your questions about regional food dishes to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, here’s another entry from that blog I’ve been reading by the literary agent Slushpile Hell. Somebody wrote to him and said, have you ever wondered what it’s like to be pulled up a waterfall or flushed down a toilet?

The agent’s response is, hey, have you been reading my mind? I mean, actually, I kind of would like to read a book that tells what that would feel like. Why don’t you do that and just let me know how it turns out.

Okay, and then I can write the book myself.

Okay. Write to us, words@waywordradio.org. Word puzzles and your observations about language. Stay tuned.

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

And I’m Grant Barrett, and we’re joined once again by the fabulous quiz guy.

It says Greg Pliska. Is he the fabulous one?

Yeah.

Hello, Greg. Are you there?

Hi. I’m feeling so fabulous today. Especially now.

It’s the gown. It matches your eyes.

Exactly. It’s the rhinestones. Yeah, James Franco doesn’t have anything on you.

So, Puzzle Man, what do you got for us in your back pocket?

Today’s puzzle is all about connecting the abbreviations for New York and California, NYCA.

Oh, nice. So every word or phrase in this puzzle has those four letters in a row.

Okay. Here’s your first clue.

All right. The man in black.

Johnny Cash.

Oh, good. Johnny Cash. There you go. There’s NYCA right in the middle of that.

I keep my eyes wide open. That’s how I knew that one. All the time.

How about a small two-seater carriage?

Pony something.

Yep. Pony cart?

Pony cart, yes.

So let’s jump from the 19th century into the 21st. A security device that allows you to check up on the babysitter.

Nanny cam?

Nanny cam. Nice. Exactly. That’s what you install in your house to make sure she’s doing her job.

How about, oh, here’s an easy one, a pair of proverbial Irish felines.

Something cats.

Bonnie cats?

Kilkenny cats?

Kilkenny cats, that’s right. What are they?

I don’t even know. It’s a proverb, fighting like Kilkenny cats. They fought until their tails came off.

Oh, right. That’s what happened. I believe in the – Kilkenny is a town or a county, but their local football team is the Kilkenny cats as well.

Gotcha.

Okay. A specialized dragster that has a one-piece molded body resembling the body of a mass-produced car.

Oh, funny car.

A funny car. Funny car, really?

And why is it called a funny car?

I have no idea. If only there were a radio show we could call in and ask.

If only. If only. I don’t know. I have any idea. I think it has something to do with the fakeness of it.

Funny.

Right. Like funny money. It looks like a mass-produced car, but it isn’t really.

I think you’re right. How about this one? A brand name videotaping device.

Sony camera.

Sony camcorder.

A Sony camcorder.

Sony camcorder. Okay, very good.

Bread made from cornmeal.

Johnny cake.

Johnny cake. Nice.

Now, here are a couple more. Instead of N-Y-C-A, these words have C-A-N-Y in them.

Oh, okay. Going back in the other direction. It might be grand in Arizona.

Canyon.

Canyon, yep. A popular Italian tourist region.

Tuscany.

Tuscany. Wow, Martha, you’re doing it. Winning. Martha’s just dreaming of good wine and tasty olive oil.

Aside from the word cany, meaning like cane, those are pretty much the only words in our language with C-A-N-Y in them.

Who knew?

Well, very good, Greg.

Well, thank you very much. You two did very well on that one. And if you’d like to talk with us about grammar, slang, punctuation, words, and how we use them, call us 877-929-9673 or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi. My name’s Jera, and I’m calling from Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Well, hello.

Hi.

Hi.

Jera?

Yep, it’s like Sarah with a J.

Oh, cool.

Cool. What can we do for you, Jera?

So my boyfriend is very proud of a weird skill he has, which is that he can take off his socks and roll them together and throw them across the room using only his toes. And I commented that he had great toe dexterity, but then I was thinking about it, and I was actually wondering where the words dexterous and dexterity come from, and can they be applied to feet or do they only apply to hands? And if they only apply to hands, is there a different word for having toe dexterity?

Wow. Now, Jarrah, you said that he could throw the socks across the room with his toes?

He takes them off with his toes. He rolls them up and throws them across the room.

Yeah. And have you trained him to throw them into the laundry basket? That’s my question.

I think that’s usually the goal.

Yeah. How long does one have to practice to accomplish this?

I haven’t really asked him that. I think it’s something that just sort of came naturally.

I was going to say, because if he’d spend the same amount of time, say, learning physics, he could be working for a space agency right now.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don’t think it’s a very marketable skill, but he has lots of other of those, so it’s okay.

I can see that on his resume.

Hey, if he’s picking up his socks, he’s a keeper, right?

Yeah.

Is it only his socks, or does he pick up other things and throw them?

I mean, is he picking up balls of lent and dust bunnies and that sort of thing?

Well, yesterday he took off his watch with his hands, but then he moved it to another place in the room using his toes.

My goodness. He’s just a laugh a minute, isn’t he?

And is he dexterous? Would you say he’s dexterous, Martha?

I would say he’s dexterous.

He has dexterity.

He has dexterity.

And it’s not manual dexterity, because that’s dexterity of the hands.

So what is it, then?

Petal dexterity?

Petal.

You know, I didn’t think of it being anything more specific than just dexterity.

I mean, I think of, you know, Messi playing for Argentina soccer or Marta for the soccer team in Los Angeles.

I would say they have dexterity.

I don’t know that I would specify.

We’re agreed here, Jero.

You can have dexterity of the feet.

It doesn’t have to be just the hands.

But you might also say that somebody is nimble or agile.

Or there are other words for this that are a little more associated with full body dexterity, right?

And here’s an old word I wanted to share with you.

It’s obsolete, but I’m going to share it anyway, just because it sounds similar to what we’re talking about.

It’s feedius.

What?

F-E-A-T-E-O-U-S.

Feedius.

It means dexterous.

Well, I think that’s the word for toe dexterity then, feedius.

Just change the A to an E.

Yeah, the wrong company might be taken the wrong way, but yeah.

I like it.

Jarrah with the dexterous boyfriend.

Best of luck to you both.

I hope you get married and have dexterous children.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Okay, thanks.

Okay, bye.

Well, that’s really impressive.

And we didn’t even talk about the origin of the word dexterous.

It comes from the TV show, right?

Yes.

No, it comes from the Latin for right, right hand.

Oh, yeah, very good.

Dexter.

Dexter, yeah.

And the left hand in Latin was sinister.

Or Sinistra.

Yeah, right.

If you’re listening in Canada, our number works there too.

877-929-9673.

Or send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, I know you’re not a morning person.

You may be a nocturnal person.

No.

But are you noctivigant?

Am I noctivagant?

Yes.

Do you wander the night?

Do I wander the night?

N-O-C-T-I-V-A-G-A-N-T.

You can break down the parts.

The nocta and the vagant, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So wandering during the night.

So it’s like a synambulist only awake.

Yeah.

Okay.

No, I’m not.

Something that vampires would be, right?

Yeah.

They wander the night looking for victims.

Yeah.

Vampires are vespertilian, sort of bat-like.

Vespers, right?

Exactly.

Something to do with the evening.

Yes, yes, yes.

Oh, very good.

Yes.

877-929-9673.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Bascom Griesen from Reading, California.

Bascom?

Yeah.

Well, welcome.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help you today?

Well, I have an interesting question about something that I would call a reverse parable.

I don’t know what else to call them.

They’re little bits of wisdom that I’ve heard over the years, and I’ve made a small collection of them.

And if I hear a neat one, I’ll write it down.

Okay, well, you can always use a bit of wisdom.

Yeah, and what these are, these are two-part sentences.

And the first part of the sentence will make a statement.

And then in the second part of the statement, that original sentence is reversed and flipped over, and together they make a bit of wisdom.

So, for instance, here would be a really good one that we’ve all heard.

When the going gets tough, the tough dead going.

Great. Is that Newt Rockne who originally said that, or is that one of those?

That was Teddy Roosevelt, I believe.

Oh, was it? Okay, very good.

And here would be another one. I’ve always liked this one.

Some people think before they speak, and some people speak before they think.

And it’s true. That’s the thing about these. They’re absolutely true, right?

Yeah, and I’ve noticed that sometimes these statements try to reverse the first part, and sometimes they come out slightly different.

So, for instance, here would be one that is sort of modified from that.

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Nice.

So the words aren’t the same, but the concept is the same.

Well, Bascom, I can give you a word for that.

What is it?

The word is anti-metabole.

Anti-metabole.

Anti-metabole.

Anti-metabole, yes.

Well, and O Greek expert, what does that mean?

Well, let me spell it for you first.

Okay.

A-N-T-I-M-E-T-A-B-O-L-E.

Anti-metabole.

It comes from Greek words that mean turning about in the opposite direction.

Oh, of course.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anti-metabole.

It’s a term of rhetoric.

Nice.

And it applies specifically to the kinds of things you were talking about, that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Or as Mae West said, it’s not the men in your life that counts.

It’s the life in your men.

That’s a great one.

Great one.

And there is another word for those kinds of things that you mentioned afterward that have a similar structure but not necessarily the same words.

That’s called chiasmus.

Chiasmus?

Yes.

C-H-I-A-S-M-U-S.

Chiasmus from the Greek letter chi, which is shaped like an X.

I see.

Really?

So it suggests the crossing over of ideas.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

Very good.

Exactly.

But that one’s a little bit different.

And it’s a mirrored grammatical structure, not necessarily the mirror images of the words.

They’re very effective because they allow you to soak in the concept and the wisdom.

Exactly.

When they’re embedded in a speech, I’ve noticed that it really makes you think about what’s been said.

You mean like John F. Kennedy?

Right.

Ask not what you can do for your country?

No, wait.

Yeah, that’s another good one.

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

And you said it just right, Bascom.

These have the potential, if you think about them long enough, you begin to unravel and unwrap all of these different kind of complexities that goes beyond the rhetorical device, right?

Exactly.

There’s a lot to be understood there.

If only you think about them with sufficient attention.

And if you want to see a whole book of these, there’s one called Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You.

Good.

Yeah, so Google that one.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much for calling.

Okay, have a great afternoon.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for the wisdom.

Bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, here’s another one from the slush pile from hell.

Ooh, detail.

From that blog by the literary agent.

He mentions that somebody wrote to him and said, I have attached a copy of a letter I recently sent to Oprah about my book.

She ends her show in September 2011, which leaves little time to select an agent.

And he writes back, finally, an author who understands the importance of Oprah and has a no-fail plan for getting on her show.

Love the snark.

It’s optimistic beyond all reason, right?

Yeah, but, you know.

I’m going to get an agent, therefore I will be on Oprah before the show closes.

And we have to, yeah, we have to do it right away.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Susie in Duncanville, Texas.

Duncanville, Texas. Well, welcome to the program. How are you doing today?

Just fine.

What can we help you with?

Well, when I was a kid growing up, my mother, we’d always ask mom, what are we having for dinner?

And she’d say, when putting in air sauce, which all of us going, huh.

And it took us a few years before we finally got smart and figured out what she was telling us.

And when I tell my grandchildren that now, they just had the same reaction like, oh, whatever.

But we were just wondering where this could have come from.

If it was something maybe that they did during the Depression or if she was just trying to get us off her coattails.

So you’d say, what’s for supper?

And she’d say, wind, pudding, and air sauce, right?

Correct.

Well, we can help you with that.

It’s been around a long time.

Oh, yeah, 1870s at least.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

We can find it throughout the recorded history, usually in slangy context or jokey context, but yeah, this is a fairly well-established term.

And it comes with some companions.

So wind pudding means nothing, right?

Right.

And air sauce means nothing.

So nothing with nothing sauce.

Here’s one from 1902, and they add a third item to it.

Wind pudding, air sauce, and balloon trimmings.

Oh, nice.

Really?

And all of these mean you’re getting nothing but air, right?

Yeah.

Exactly.

Well, we had just never heard it before, and none of my friends have ever heard their parents or grandparents say it.

So I’m going, well, where did this come from?

The first uses that I can find of it, and Martha, maybe you’ve got the same information, are from stories about the American Civil War where they’re talking about troops kind of going without.

So they show up at the mess tent, and there’s nothing except maybe like some bony squirrel to eat.

And they talk about how some of the soldiers were so disgusted, they just turned around because they’d rather have air sauce and wind pudding, right?

Meaning they’d rather do without than eat the disgusting boiled squirrel that they were trying to serve in the mess.

Yeah.

I think I can understand that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think having a sense of humor helps there.

Yeah, it’s definitely like a different way.

So instead of just a lot of griping and complaining about the food being terrible, they just, like, put a joke on top of it and probably went to, you know, went out to the bushes and found some wild herbs to eat.

I don’t know what they did.

Well, that’s really interesting because I’ve never heard it before.

Well, Susie, I think it’s definitely worth reviving, don’t you?

Well, I do.

Yeah.

I’m going to start using it.

Well, great.

Well, thank you for letting me know.

It’s our pleasure, Susie.

Thanks for calling.

Bye, Susie.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

I love those old terms, the stuff that’s passed down from, you know, grandma to grandchild and again from grandma to grandchild, right?

Yeah, that one’s so handy.

I’m surprised it’s died out.

I think it’s time to revive it.

Yeah.

Call us with your linguistic heirlooms, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We’re still getting a lot of calls and emails about the names Todd and Scott being confused.

Right.

The interesting thing about these emails is that there are two things happening there.

On one hand, the guys are really delighted to find a community of other people who have the same problem, right?

On the other hand, they’re all annoyed.

So it’s like this buzzing beehive of men who are like, my name is Scott, not Todd.

My name is Todd, not Scott.

Yeah, and somebody called in and said that they had gone to a christening where the priest called the baby Todd and he was really Scott or the other way around.

I mean, it’s hilarious.

Stephanie’s small sent us an email, and her problem is that people think her name is Jennifer.

I don’t know how you get from Stephanie to Jennifer or vice versa.

And she has a double problem as well.

Just like the producer of our show, she spells Stephanie with an F.

Right.

Anyway, it’s really interesting stuff.

Confused names, it’s who we are, right?

When somebody gets your name wrong, it’s like a blow to the chest.

It is.

Or kicking the pants anyway, or at least being goosed.

Yes.

All of the above.

Now I’m wondering, now that you’re mentioning the Stephanie Jennifer thing, if it has to do with rhythm.

Stephanie, Jennifer, Todd, Scott.

That’s a great point.

I think it might have something to do with that.

We expect what we’re hearing to fit patterns that we know well, right?

Well, if your name is constantly confused, we want to hear about it.

877-929-9673.

Send an email to words@waywordradio.org and find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Word lust and more of your calls as A Way with Words continues.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

And from the fifth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 10 years in the making with 10,000 new words and senses.

At ahdictionary.com.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

You know, Grant, I was just looking at my handwriting.

I have penmanship envy.

You know, my handwriting is so inconsistent.

I think it’s because all my life, sort of the same way that I pick and choose different words off of people’s vocabulary.

Yeah, that’s the business we’re in.

We pick the best from what we hear, right?

Yeah, and I’ve just, you know, for a while there, I was making G’s in this sort of weird little way because I saw somebody’s writing that had this really cool G with a circle and a couple of circles.

And so you borrowed that?

Yeah.

And it’s just my handwriting is just a mutt.

And it’s very, very inconsistent.

And it’s not.

It’s the proverbial chicken scratching.

Will you write me a prescription?

I guess I could.

Yeah.

My handwriting is not much better.

I’ve been known to have the worst handwriting in pretty much every class I’ve ever been in.

Really?

This predates the computer era, so you can’t necessarily blame the keyboard.

And what’s interesting, there are a couple of books that I read, and I highly recommend them, that talk about the history of handwriting.

We think of it as being a stable thing.

Perhaps we’re worried about it being a lost art.

Perhaps we don’t think of it at all.

But handwriting actually has changed so much over the years.

And one of the really striking things that you’ll find if you read a book called Reading Early American Handwriting.

This is a book by Kip Sperry.

It might be used by, say, a researcher or even a genealogist who has a lot of records to go through and they have to try to make it out and decipher it.

They talk about the political consequences of teaching people to write in cursive and longhand in a particular way.

It wasn’t just because you might have a style of script, say, that it was used in the court, you know, the king’s court, or that it was used by secretaries or clerks, but also because in order to practice that handwriting, they would give you specific scripts from specific sources that had like a political content or a social content.

So as you’re writing and practicing this penmanship, the longhand or cursive penmanship, you would be absorbing the message of the words as well.

It’s very much the same kind of thing you might have if you were being punished by your parents and forced to write at the dinner table for a couple of hours, which is very familiar to me.

And there’s another book I want to recommend to you before we go to calls, Handwriting in America, A Cultural History by Tamara Thornton.

This is a great book.

She talks very specifically about the different modes of longhand that we’ve had, where they were taught, why they were taught, who learned them, why they’ve disappeared or why they’ve stuck around.

It’s really interesting stuff because there isn’t just one way, as you noted, to write a capital G or a capital S or a lowercase y.

Whether or not you put a flourish in, whether you end above the line or below the line, these are things that people cared at one time very much about and particular systems would profess one kind of handwriting over another.

Amazing stuff to me.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about handwriting.

Did you learn how to write cursive?

Are your children learning how to write longhand?

Do you feel like your handwriting is worse or better than it used to be?

Do we even need to learn how to write longhand or cursive?

That’s a loaded question.

Do we even need to learn how to write anything other than a signature?

877-929-9673 or send your thoughts and ideas in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Todd from Federal Way, Washington.

From where in Washington?

Federal Way. We’re just a little south of Seattle.

What’s happening up there on Federal Way? What’s on your mind?

Well, I was just wondering about piggy banks.

I know pigs don’t really have a theme of money, so why we still use piggy banks?

Why not another creature, another animal?

Oh, interesting.

Why don’t we use, like, the donkey bank?

Yeah, exactly.

Or the doggy bank.

I wouldn’t mind a doggy bank.

Todd, do you have any theories about that?

I mean, I don’t…

Well, the one I heard was there used to be a clay called pig, but it was spelled P-Y-G-G.

And that was used in the Middle Ages, and they used to store money in pig jars.

And then after they stopped using pigs or pig, you know, they just kept the name and did P-I-G-G.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

That pig in particularly the dialects of Scotland and northern England was a term for an earthenware pot.

And you can see where somebody might take an earthenware pot called a pig and make little piggy markings on it or fashion it into a pig.

Oh, I see.

So you would just put the money in it and maybe as a joke because you had both these words in your vocabulary,

You would just make it look more like a pig, an actual pig.

Sure, sure.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

Sounds like you did your homework, Todd.

Yeah, it was one of those questions.

My son has one and we put money in it all the time.

And I’m looking at it thinking, why not a rabbit or something with prosperity?

I raised pigs for quite some years and not the icon of wealth, I guess.

Well, I sort of thought that when I was growing up that it must be sort of fattening this pig,

And you want to make it fatter and fatter and fatter by putting more pennies in.

Yeah, or greed.

That’s the only thing I could think of maybe was it was greedy like a pig.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Hogging all your money.

But no, so this is really interesting.

So this word pig is kind of hiding out in English.

It’s from an older branch of the language.

Most of us don’t know that it’s there, but it refers to a type of earthen material like ceramic or something.

Yeah, yeah, that you would make little pots out of.

Well, Todd, it sounds like you did your homework.

Thanks for sharing all of it with us.

Thank you so much, guys.

And best of luck up there.

Best of luck filling up his – how is he making all that money, your son?

Oh, raiding our pockets of change.

Aha, aha, that time-honored technique.

Very good.

I’m an avid pool player, so I at least have a few dollars and quarters to give him at the end of the day.

Very good.

Thanks, buddy.

All right, thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There are mysteries in everyday language. Call us to talk about them, 877-929-9673,

Or send your questions about the mysterious English language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Doing well. Who’s this?

This is Mary calling from San Diego.

Hi, Mary.

Hi, Mary. How are you doing?

Good. How are you?

Super duper. What can we help you with today?

Well, I am about six months pregnant expecting my second child.

Oh, congratulations.

Babies are good.

Thank you.

And I must have seen this somewhere.

Someone said it to me, but I found myself thinking about that old saying that pregnant women always crave pickles and ice cream.

Mm—

And I thought that was really strange because that’s never been true for me,

And I don’t really know anyone for whom that has been true, so I tried looking it up.

But it’s so common, I didn’t have much luck.

So I was wondering if you had any insight on that.

What do you crave?

Well, you know, I’ve heard also that if you’re carrying a boy, you’re supposed to crave salty food.

And if you’re carrying a girl, you’re supposed to crave sweet food.

So I have found that to be true for me.

But I don’t know if that’s more of me knowing the saying and it becomes true.

Right.

I think it’s more of a folk tale, but it’s a fun one, right?

Yeah, right.

I can crave chocolate right now.

And how do you satisfy that craving?

Mostly Ben and Jerry’s.

Oh, I thought maybe it was just like big squirts right out of the Hershey’s syrup bottle.

She goes into the soda fountain and just puts her head under the tap.

Got the chocolate syrup right from the source.

Ben and Jerry in a spoon.

I’ll tell you, they were discussing this question about pickles and ice cream on the email list of the American Dialect Society earlier this year.

The American Dialect Society is an organization that studies language, mainly English, in North America.

I’m a member and have been an officer of the society for a long time.

And what they found is really interesting.

The pickles and ice cream related to pregnancy is a thing that a woman craves goes back to the 1940s easily.

And prior to that, pickles and ice cream was used in a wide variety of contexts just to refer to two very different things.

Like you might say, Martha and Grant get along like pickles and ice cream.

It’s kind of like water and oil, right?

Because that’s another idiom that, you know, might say.

What’s that?

Like the opposite of peas and carrots.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly like that.

Or the opposite of like peanut butter and jelly.

Pickles and ice cream is like, who wants that?

Yeah, right.

Nobody.

That’s interesting.

Pass the Pepto-Bismol.

And so you’ll find pickles and ice cream being used in reverse order, ice cream and pickles,

In a lot of different contexts and a lot of different sources.

For more than 100 years, but it wasn’t until the mid part of the last century that it really solidified as this stereotypical thing that kind of represented all the different cravings that a woman could have.

And it wasn’t meant to imply that there was some kind of statistical evidence that said that women crave pickles and ice cream a lot.

It just meant that, you know, they have these weird tastes.

Yeah, that you wouldn’t normally eat.

Yeah, a little kind of unreasonableness.

And they want them at weird times.

That don’t make sense.

Yeah, they want them at weird times and not as part of their normal meal.

And really, scientifically, it’s been shown that women have these cravings because their body knows that they need a nutrient.

And there’s a really kind of inefficient system for the body telling the brain to go get the right thing.

The message is somehow garbled sometimes, and the woman goes to get a thing that doesn’t have that nutrient in it at all.

Well, it would be interesting to know if there are women out there who are pregnant or have been and specifically crave pickles and ice cream.

Being pregnant does give me the excuse to eat all the Ben and Jerry’s I want.

Well, Mary, we wish you the best of luck with the baby when little Grant is born.

Will you give us a call?

Sure.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

What are your questions about words and language and food?

877-929-9673.

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

Ed McClure from the Phoenix School of Law sent us an email.

He’s asking about a word that has annoyed me as well.

And you know, I don’t let very many words annoy me, right?

I figure live and let live, and if it works for the other person, they should just go about their business and do what they like, right?

Yeah.

This is the word training turned into account noun so that you can say things like, I had three trainings yesterday.

Or if you watch all the trainings videos, you’ll learn how to do the thing that you need to do.

And he’s annoyed by it, and I’m annoyed by it.

You’re annoyed by it?

Yeah, trainings.

Really?

Training to me is not account noun.

You just have training as a mass noun, right?

Inside of training can be a lot of different chapters or units or classes or lectures, but you only have training.

You don’t have trainings with a plural.

Well, Grant, I think it’s odd and striking that it bothers you.

That’s why I’m bringing it up.

That’s fascinating.

Yes.

I have stepped outside my usual streams and I’ve allowed myself to be annoyed.

And I’m fascinated by this.

Wow.

Trainings.

Can you say trainings?

I have some trainings.

Sure.

Sure.

Call us and tell us about it.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Paul from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Hi, Paul. Welcome.

Hi, Paul. Welcome to the program.

How can we help you?

Oh, thank you.

Well, I spent, I’m not a native of Wisconsin. I spent my first 30 years of life living in nearby Minnesota. And then we moved over here. And from time to time when somebody would find out that I wasn’t native to the state and that I came from Minnesota, they’d say, oh, so you’re a mud duck. And I said, I guess, because I’d never heard that and never knew what that meant. And they didn’t really seem to know what that meant either, but they insisted that that’s what I was indeed.

So you’re saying mud duck is two words like a little bird.

Right. Yeah, that’s kind of what I figured. I don’t know of any actual mud ducks that, or any, you know, any type of animal that’s called that, that would lend itself to this. But I was never sure if I should be offended or impressed or what.

Well, it’s a complicated question, isn’t it? Did they say, were you, if you’ll pardon me asking, were you being a meanie or a jerk when they called you a mud duck?

No, it was usually they were, you know, standing around talking about the Packers, and I’d just shrug my shoulders and say, I don’t know.

You just mumble Vikings, Vikings.

Yeah, yeah, I just kind of explained to them why I wasn’t actually watching the game the day before and didn’t see what happened and didn’t know what they were talking about.

Those are fighting words in Wisconsin.

I guess you figured that out.

Yeah, so I just kind of kept my mouth shut and said, you know, I nodded my head up and down, and they said, well, what’s wrong with you? Well, I’m from Minnesota. I don’t really care that much.

Okay, okay. I’m getting the picture.

Let’s see if we can break this down as simply as possible. There is a term, mudduck, that is used by Wisconsinites to refer to Minnesotans. And I think almost always it’s met good-naturedly. Almost every state has some kind of derogatory joke or remark or some tradition that their people from the neighboring states are not smart or not nice and so forth. And so they mean it good-naturedly, right?

Right.

They’re not saying it as they punch you in the face, right?

Right.

It sounds like more or less a friendly pejorative.

Right, right. Sort of joshing.

Yeah.

There’s an article in the Star Tribune from 2005 that we’ll link to on the website that kind of lays this out pretty plainly. There have been throughout American history a lot of times a lot of different kind of ducks that have been called mud ducks. It’s just a common name for different mixes of species or different kind of animals that are bland and boring and brown. And so it’s not a common term, but you’ll find hunters who are duck hunters, they’ll talk about mud ducks. And sometimes it just means a duck that they can see in the distance but can’t recognize, right? They just can’t make out the species.

So you’ve got these two different meanings of mud duck, which are generally well-intentioned. But then there’s the one or two that aren’t well-intentioned. And I’m not going to propagate them further by talking about them much on the air. But there is an unseemly racial component to mud duck which suggests that there is something unnatural about people from two different races dating or marrying or having a romantic relationship. And I’m pretty sure that none of the people that you’re talking to or using the term mud duck mean that because it’s used by the crassest and crudest of people that you can find on the Internet. And those are not Wisconsinites.

Yeah, right.

No, these were generally friends of mine at church that were –

There we go.

Exactly.

And mudduck has come up occasionally in court cases as kind of evidence of some kind of racial dispute or racial bias. And I just have to say that in your personal encounters, if you hear mudduck, just assume that they have the best of intentions.

Yeah, it’s kind of an unfortunate coincidence.

Yeah, that’s the nature of slang. One word, many definitions.

Yeah.

Is there a definitive resource for finding out, you know, a list of, you know, the things that we call them and kind of this friendly, good-natured sort of thing? Because I knew all the words coming from Minnesota. I knew what we called the people from Wisconsin. I knew there was the cheeseheads in Wisconsin, the Iowegans in Iowa. And I came here and didn’t know what the terms were until I heard them and went, oh, okay.

That’s a good question. There may be a definitive resource. If we find it, we will send it along and post it to the website, okay?

All right.

Super.

Thank you so much for calling, Paul.

Thanks, Paul.

Yep, thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Call with your questions about language, 877-929-9673, or email us, words, at waywordradio.org.

Grant, here’s another snippet from a letter sent to the person writing the blog Slushpile Hell. They write to the agent, I received your rejection notice, and I want to let you know that even if you would have offered representation, I would have turned it down. You obviously have no taste in literature and are a hack. I look forward to your failure as the publishing industry goes down in flames. And the agent writes back, OK, Mom, sorry you feel that way. See you at Thanksgiving.

Give us a piece of your mind, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass. Our romance is growing flat. For you like this and the other. That’s our show for this week. Don’t forget, you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air. Call us, 877-929-9673, or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Stay in touch with us all week on Facebook and Twitter. You can listen to all of our past shows by downloading them at waywordradio.org or get the podcast on iTunes.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer, our technical director and editor, Tim Felten. Tim also chooses our music. We’ve had production help this week from Josette Hurdell, Jennifer Powell, and James Ramsey. A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit organization. The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thank you for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Shalom.

Love ya.

You like potato and I like potato. You like tomato and I like tomato. Potato, potato, tomato, tomato. Let’s call the whole thing off. But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part. And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.

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