Pink Slip (episode #1444)

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.

I have an email here from Catherine King. She lives in Wethersfield, Vermont, and she’s writing us about bacon seed.

Bacon seed?

Yeah.

What is bacon seed? Can you guess what it is?

This is a prank you pull. You say, I’m going to go out to the yard and plant some bacon.

I like that.

No?

Well, let me just read her email. As a young child, summers always meant long car trips to visit relatives. Come late afternoon, my parents and older siblings would begin to scan for a motel to spend the night. I remember being utterly baffled why they always looked for ones with bacon seed and always passed by the ones that didn’t have any.

She misunderstood the word vacancy.

Vacancy, yeah.

Bacon seed, vacancy.

Yeah, and she said what it took to figure it out was another road trip after I’d learned to read.

That definitely was an aha moment. And I really enjoyed that because I think of, you know, when you’re a little kid and you’re just at that point where you hear words but you don’t know exactly. You can’t differentiate them. Or you’re learning a foreign language and at first it’s a wall of words and then you begin to see little individual bricks like that.

Now that my son is nine, he’s lost a lot of those cute little expressions. I really miss those. I mean, he reads to himself all the time, and there’s constant correction happening. But we still remember the cute little things that he said, like lemonade was limelayed. And it wasn’t T-Rex as in the dinosaur. It was Team Rex.

Team Rex. As there’s a bunch of people all rallying behind Rex. Go Rex.

Those are cute, right?

They’re adorable.

And you miss those. And they do go away once literacy sets in. But the prize of literacy is worth the price of losing those cute expressions.

And you’ll always carry those cute expressions with you.

Yeah, we do. They’re family jokes, and they’ll probably be until he has his own kids.

We’d love to hear about yours. You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send any story about language you like to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hello, who’s this?

This is Marsha, and I’m from Traverse City, Michigan.

Hey there, Marsha. How are you doing?

Hey, Marsha. How are the cherries there?

You know all about our little town, huh?

Well, not all about it. We’d love to visit it sometime.

And eat the cherries.

Yeah. That’s my favorite fruit.

What’s on your mind? What can we help with?

Well, I was on the phone the other day with a girlfriend talking and just chatting away as girls do. And I used the phrase, it just popped in my head, don’t be a dog in the manger. And she said, what? What are you talking about? And I couldn’t answer her because I don’t remember what that was all about, but my mother used it several times when we were growing up, and I think she was trying to teach us to share, to not be so greedy. That’s all I remember about it, but I don’t know where it came from or how it came about.

So you were telling your friend not to be greedy?

What was she doing?

I think so, something like that. She was grabbing a bunch of cherries. I’m quite outspoken.

Was she, like, taking something that she wasn’t sharing?

No, I don’t really remember the whole gist of the conversation. But she was kind of surprised, and I was more surprised. We’re real good friends, so we can say just about anything, you know. But we were just chatting, and she said, where did that come from? And I stopped and paused, and I said, gee, I don’t know.

Yeah.

So that’s what I, and I think maybe shortly after that, I was listening to the radio on your program, and I jotted down the number. It’s been on the refrigerator door for a couple days, and so I thought of calling.

Well, here we are.

Yeah, we’re glad you did.

Well, you know, that story about a dog in the manger goes all the way back to ancient Greece. There’s an old story about a dog that climbs into a manger, and you know what that is. That contains the hay for the horses to eat out of. And the dog climbs into the manger in a kind of spiteful way and doesn’t let the horses come and eat the hay, even though the dog doesn’t want the hay. It doesn’t eat hay. But it’s just sort of like the idea of, you know, I don’t want it, but you can’t have it either.

In fact, it reminds me, every time I hear this expression, I think of orange marshmallow circus peanuts. You know those, that candy?

Yeah.

What are those made out of?

They’re made out of some kind of marshmallow. And I was on a road trip with my family back in, I was in elementary school. And my younger brother didn’t like those peanuts, but he knew I did. And you know how you kind of pester each other in the backseat. He broke into the orange marshmallow circus peanuts and licked all of them so that I couldn’t have them. And I didn’t know the expression dog in the manger, but it’s sort of like that.

I see. I’m very glad to hear this. My mother was a Scandinavian, and I thought maybe it was an old phrase from the country, you know, of Denmark. But obviously not. So I’m glad to get this cleared out.

It may be in Scandinavia as well, but it goes back much farther, even to ancient Greece.

Wonderful. Well, I’m so glad I called.

We are too.

Thanks, Marsha. And come visit any time.

Oh, yes. It’s a lovely place in the summer, so you’re more than welcome.

Okay. That’s a plan.

All right. Bye-bye.

Thanks a bunch.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

You know, Grant, we rarely talk about the word manger. We rarely use it unless we’re talking about a crush.

But, you know, it’s got an interesting origin.

Oh, does it now?

Yeah, yeah. Is it related to the French word to eat?

Indeed. Indeed, to eat.

Yes, and the word mange, you know, that kind of…

Where the fur falls off a dog?

Yeah, it looks like it’s been eaten.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, mangey.

Nice.

It’s all connected.

I did not know that. It’s all connected.

We love it.

It’s a language conspiracy.

That’s right, and we love to talk about them here on A Way with Words. So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your questions an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

Good morning. Who’s this?

This is Jack calling from Denton, Texas.

Hi, Jack. What’s up?

Such a pleasure to speak with you both.

Oh, same here.

Yeah. What’s up?

I’ve got a question that seems a little bit timely in the political season. When we hear people speaking, either the politicians or news people, it seems like they’re throwing out these catchphrases that are almost automatic, and they just throw them out there and they will start their conversation with, now look, I mean, and sometimes they even put them together and say, now look, I mean, and it’s almost like they’re saying, you have no way of understanding what I’m saying, but try. And I’m wondering how these become so popular and so widely used. It’s something that seems recent.

There’s a lot of different ways into answering this question. I’ll tackle the very last word first. I don’t think it’s recent. It’s been ongoing forever and ever. These are what are known as discourse markers. These are ways that we adjust a sentence or we bridge different thoughts or we throw in natural pauses in order to emphasize or there’s a lot of different reasons we use discourse markers.

But these two, I mean or now I mean and look or now look, these have different roles that I can see a politician using on purpose, maybe even coached to use. And for example, when you say, I mean, it frequently is like a prelude to a restatement or a redefinition or a rephrasing where you want to make sure your audience understands you and you want to give the impression that you are speaking plainly.

So you might first say, when you all know that the right people don’t pay the right amount of taxes, I mean the rich people pay too little and the poor people pay too much, whatever.

Like you’re kind of leading up to your little punch.

And then now look is another one of those where you refocus people’s attention on what you’re about to say.

Maybe you’ve had a long explanation and now you want to summarize it.

You will say, now look, the way I feel about this is,

And it’s also a way of suggesting that you might be contrarian to what’s previously been said.

Yeah, I remember when Obama was running for president the first time,

Some people were commenting on the fact that he began a lot of sentences with look.

And in fact, somebody wrote an article that said something like, look, Obama, stop using look.

Yeah, he does.

And your other question you asked, which is a good one, how does this happen?

Why does this become so common?

And it spreads like all language does.

It’s almost contagious.

I won’t say viral because that gives the wrong connotations these days.

But it’s the kind of thing that you pick up from people that you respect.

You pick up from people in authority.

If you’re a politician, you may pick it up from your aides or pick it up from your people who are coaching you.

Or you might pick it up from your advisors or even dominant donors or voters, people who spend a lot of time talking to you.

Well, I wonder if some of it, too, is just campaigning.

I mean, you have to say the same thing over and over and over again, and you’re almost like an automaton.

Right.

It is very automatic.

Yeah.

Thanks very much.

Yeah, sure. Our pleasure. Thanks for calling.

I enjoyed your show.

Thank you so much, Jack.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

It is a political year.

If you want to talk to us about political language or anything else, 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

We asked you to send your favorite similes,

And Alex Snyder from Ellsworth, Michigan,

Reminded us of a great one in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

And the line goes,

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

Yeah, that’s from the very first chapter.

That might even be the first paragraph.

Right.

The Vogon Constructor Fleet to come to make an interspace bypass.

Yeah, the ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

They don’t.

Get to the end of that sentence and it just, the whole thing is…

You’re like, what?

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

My name’s Scott. I’m from San Diego.

Hi, Scott. How you doing?

Hey, Scott.

I used to hear my grandmother, who was born in 1895,

She told me that when she was five years old and her family crossed parts of the South in a covered wagon,

That as a little girl, when they needed to use the restroom, her phrase was, she needed to make a branch.

And for her, that was referring to how the water made a branch as it went downhill.

I was wondering if you guys could tell me more about where that phrase came from.

Wow, that’s a great family story.

Yeah.

That’s what immediately brings to mind this important period of American migration westward.

Yeah.

That’s really fascinating.

I’ve never heard anyone use that phrase, although I’ve read about it.

Make a branch does mean to urinate.

It’s a reference to the word branch, which in the South and South Midlands is a small stream.

It’s a branch of a flowing body of water.

So it’s not big enough to be a river.

But it’s a little branch.

It’s more or less a synonym for creek in large parts of the South.

A stream, yeah.

Yeah, something that’s moving.

So it makes sense.

I mean, you can see how a little kid would say they need to go make a branch.

It makes perfect sense.

And branch can mean water.

Like, I don’t know if people do this in other parts of the country,

But certainly in Kentucky you order bourbon and branch.

Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that.

Yeah, which is bourbon and water as opposed to bourbon and soda water.

So branch can refer to water.

I think my grandmother, if she was still around, would get a big laugh for me saying that.

Do you use it yourself?

No.

Okay. All right.

But, you know, I guess as a lot of other listeners, you hear this show with some frequency.

You start trying to think of other phrases that you’ve heard along the way that might fit in your show.

And this is one I actually have kind of wanted to know about since I was a kid.

So I really appreciate your time.

Well, thanks for sharing it with us, Scott.

We appreciate your calling.

Take care now.

Take care.

Take care. Bye.

877-929-9673.

Support for A Way with Words comes from Lizanne, Fokian, and Chloe Potamianos-Homem,

Proud sponsors of WayWord, Inc., the nonprofit that produces and distributes this program.

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 we’re joined by John Chaneski, our quiz guide.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

Hey, John.

It’s me once again. Hi.

What is up?

Well, I have something brand new for you today.

Listen to this.

Welcome to the A Way with Words Kitchens.

Kitchens.

Oh, no.

This is where we learn to assemble a really great word salad

Or dip a phrase in chocolate.

I’ll be your instructor.

Are you ready to begin?

Yes, let’s go.

Let me put on my apron.

Excuse me. Yes, what?

Yes, chef. Yes, sir.

Yes, that’s it. Yes, chef.

Now, you see, the first thing you’ll need to learn is herbs and spices.

But being a pretentious snot, I, of course, have made up kitchen slang,

Sort of like diner slang, to create an air of esoteric knowledge.

For example, if I’m cooking and I demand that you bring me

What is commonly known as the fourth dimension,

Then obviously what I want you to find in the pantry is…

Time.

Time, exactly, yes.

Just like the diner slang, I seem to use more words than is necessary,

For some reason.

No matter.

I need the following herbs and or spices.

Let’s get cooking.

Here we go.

Okay.

Bring me Fred’s dancing partner.

Ginger.

Very good.

Yes, bring me the ginger.

Bring me Mia Farrow in a movie about the devil.

Rosemary.

Yes, thank you.

Very prompt, Grant.

Right away.

Good.

Bring me what sounds like a Jamaican accusing someone of a religious offense.

Sanaman.

Cinnamon.

Very good.

Nicely done, Grant.

Going through the spice rack.

Bring me an adjective that means like a mongrel.

Like a mongrel.

Something curry.

Curry.

Mm—

Curry.

Curry.

Yes.

That is slightly curry.

That’s good.

Okay.

Okay.

Bring me the main character from the BBC series Fawlty Towers.

Basil.

Basil.

Basil.

Basil.

Either one of those will do.

All right.

Bring me actress Ryan gone completely gaga for something.

Ryan gone gaga?

Nutmeg.

Nutmeg.

Bring me the nutmeg.

Bring me the total destruction of the plantation in Gone with the Wind.

Tarragon.

Tarragon, please.

That’s terrible.

Well, we all have our opinions in the kitchen.

Bring me a seven of spades and a woman with children.

Seven of spades.

Something mother.

Card a mom?

No.

Card a mom.

Card a mom.

Card a mom.

Oh, I get it.

Sometimes you can get it without getting it.

I know.

That’s very interesting.

Finally, bring me everything we have in the rack.

All spice.

Allspice, yes.

Oh, Grant, I knew you were waiting for that one.

But there you go.

Oh, my God.

I’m going to quit this job in this kitchen and never come to your restaurant because it sounds like you’re overusing your spices, my friend.

Oh, there’s no such thing as too much spice.

Oh, Chef John, our tokes are off to you.

Oh, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

All right, we’ll talk to you next week, buddy.

See you next week.

Bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Oh, my gosh. If you want to talk about any aspect of language whatsoever, call us 877-929-9673 or send your questions an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

Hello, how you doing?

Hi, who’s this?

This is Anne Angerer from San Antonio, Texas.

Hi, Anne. How you doing?

Welcome, Anne.

Oh, I’m doing well, thanks.

Recently, I was reading an interview with the absolutely amazing Mephis Staples.

Oh, amazing.

And love her.

And she used a term that I had never heard before.

She was talking about how her life might have been different if she and Bob Dylan had married and had children.

Apparently, they used to date back in the 60s.

And in this interview, she referred to children as little plum crushers.

And I did a Google search, and I came up with nothing.

I’ve no doubt that Mavis and Dylan would have had amazingly talented little plum crushers.

I have no idea of the origin of that term.

I have a few thoughts.

We would be buying their children’s albums already, wouldn’t we?

Yes.

Oh, my God.

I know what it’s not.

Plum crusher.

It actually said that in the article.

She said that in the article.

And she said if we’d had some little plum crushers, how our lives would be.

The kids would be singing now, and Bobby and I would be holding each other up.

Oh, my goodness.

I’ve got to read that.

What newspaper was that?

It was in The Guardian.

Okay.

I’ll look for that.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

And I can tell you I have never heard or seen the word plum crusher.

And my suspicion is that the reporter misunderstood what she said.

Really?

Or she had a malapropism.

Yeah, but I’m guessing the reporter had a brain-o and just misunderstood it.

Because there’s a far more common term, which is crumb crusher, particularly in the African-American community.

And it means a baby who’s just learning to eat solid food, a crumb crusher.

Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense.

And it’s interesting because the term crumb crusher just jumped out at me.

Because I had never seen that.

And then when I went on the Internet and started looking, there was absolutely no reference to it whatsoever.

I would not be surprised if The Guardian reporter misunderstood it.

In part because one of my favorite newspaper corrections was from The Guardian,

Where this football chairman, the chairman of a soccer team there,

Was attributed as saying our team was the worst in the first division.

But they had to run a correction later on and noted that he had just declined the offer of a hot drink.

And what he actually said was our tea was the worst in the first division, not our team.

So it does happen.

That is the newspaper that misspelled its own name and is now called the Growniad by some people.

But it happens to all of us.

I think that’s a very logical explanation for it, although I have to say I’m a little disappointed because I was thinking up some interesting reasons for plum crushers.

Plum crusher is a solid lead and most likely what she meant to say or actually said is misunderstood.

Oh, well, it’s good to know. At least it was kind of driving me crazy. I hate not figuring things out.

I hear you.

I appreciate that. And by the way, I love your show. Listen to it every Sunday.

Yay.

Hey, Dan.

Thanks a lot.

All right.

Take care now.

Thanks.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Crumb crushers.

Crumb crushers.

Dude, they have these little stubby fingers that can’t grab things very well, and everything ends up as a…

There’s no delicate eating with the child.

I know, right?

Because when you’re a new parent, first kid, you don’t realize at first that you shouldn’t put them in the high chair next to the wall.

So we have pictures of a nicely painted wall, painted with blueberries.

Oh, really?

We fixed that one.

Blueberry crusher.

Well, don’t give a kid plums, right?

Yeah, exactly.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

Ben Miller.

Ben.

What are you calling from, Ben?

Flower Mountain, Texas.

Well, welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Well, I was very interested and have been for some time in the word nerd.

Nerd.

N-E-R-D.

Yep.

And the reason I’m interested in it is because there’s so many connotations of the word and how it’s changed through just the last, I would say, 50 years or so, I’m guessing.

In what way?

In the way that the connotation of the word nerd used to mean the person with big glasses and a pocket protector, kind of scholastic type.

And now the word has been used for people who go to Comic-Con and play Dungeons and Dragons or they’re geeks or nerds because they work at Google or in the Silicon Valley.

And so I’m interested in how that has changed over time.

And it used to, whenever you were called nerd, it used to be sort of a negative connotation.

And now it seems like people are embracing it.

I’m a nerd with books or I’m a nerd with this sport or I’m a nerd with, you know, some kind of video game.

Right.

That’s true.

Are you one of those people who used to be called a nerd and hate it and now you’re called a nerd and don’t mind?

That’s right.

When I was young, of course, you know, you didn’t want to be called a nerd and now it’s fashionable almost to be called a nerd.

Yeah, it’s a point of pride, right?

We like to say if there were a nerd pride parade, we’d be the Grand Marshals.

We’re nerds.

Yeah, exactly.

And when I called in, I thought, what kind of a nerd am I by calling in with A Way with Words?

Not just a show about language, but a public radio show about language.

Yeah, you’re a gigantic nerd.

You’re Nerdzilla.

This is a really common transformation.

It’s called amelioration, just to get that word out of the way.

Amelioration is making things better.

And this word has ameliorated twice.

When it was first coined, most people credit Dr. Seuss, although apparently it was also coined at a, I believe it was MIT, a Vermont Technical Institute.

I’m not sure.

A couple technical universities.

Nerdy places.

Yeah, nerdy places.

And these words kind of went from just being a general derogatory term to specifically being about somebody who was obsessed or even a monomaniac about a particular extreme field that most of the public didn’t know anything about.

Because remember, computers used to be this really strange esoteric thing.

And also a nerd was somebody who kind of sacrificed personal style and personal presentation.

That’s a nice way to say it.

In the service of their interests.

And then we see by the time Revenge of the Nerds comes around in 1984, we see, I mean, this is a movie about the nerds rising up.

I have many problems with that movie.

But the basic core to that movie, which is still really strong, is the idea of the nerds are like, oh, wait a second.

If we band together and work together, well, we’re as good as the jocks.

And it’s pretty interesting that that is kind of predicting what ends up happening in Silicon Valley and in the other technical realms,

Where people get together with their weird technical aptitudes and say,

Oh, wait a second, I’m not the only one.

When the Internet came about, you could do a search on the Internet and say,

Hey, there are other people who like to knit bonnets for cars.

I’m not the only one.

I’m not the only one.

And then you start to realize, wait a second, there’s actually thousands of us.

Wow, this is kind of cool.

Do you think that maybe the term has changed because of the Internet and that communication and the bonding?

The Internet is a really common media.

And by that means there’s more than one way of communicating on the Internet, so it’s not just a medium.

And also, I don’t want to credit it as some kind of magical device that, you know, culture goes in and new culture comes out because newspapers have behaved the same way.

Even telephone, even the telegraph in its small way has made its own contributions to transmitting culture.

That’s primarily what it does.

It makes culture available to more people.

And so in that way, yes, the Internet has done that.

But it’s not like endowed with some great magical qualities that somehow, you know, overtake all culture and somehow replace it with bits and bytes and binary code.

Yeah, but exponentially more powerful.

Yeah, because we’re more connected, right?

A larger community of people means larger change is possible.

Yeah, and I think the other thing is that now the word nerd has sort of been watered down to the point where you can be a nerd about any subject.

Yeah.

You know, a nutrition nerd.

Yeah, you’ll see that on, let’s say, the evening news on television.

You’ll see, say, oh, you’re such a weather nerd to this guy who’s got like four advanced degrees about meteorology and like, you know, understands physics and the way the world works and can explain the solar system or even the universe to you.

Like they’ll say, oh, you’re such a nerd when really we’re talking at this point about some super high qualified people who are bringing mad science to bear on the big problems of the world.

That’s kind of an awesome nerd.

Right, right.

So, Ben, it’s always great to hear from another word nerd.

We appreciate your calling.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, take care now.

All right, bye-bye.

Thanks.

Well, no question that the nerds have really had their revenge.

I mean, look at Bill Gates or Sheryl Sandberg.

Right, the top-level nerds.

Yeah.

Well, take your nerd word questions to 877-929-9673 or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org or fire up your nerd Twitter and hit us up at WayWord.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Claude from Toronto, Canada.

Claude.

How are you doing, Martha and Grant?

Fine. Thank you. How are you?

Very well, thank you.

The other day, I worked in a government office, and we have some security to get into the building and into the offices.

And one of my colleagues had difficulties getting in, so I had to let him in.

And he was asking me, why is my card disabled?

I said, well, you know, like this is the first step.

You know, we like bantering as the first.

Your card is disabled for access, and then you have a pick slip on your desk.

So I look at him and say, do you know where that expression comes from, pink slip?

And he hadn’t had a clue.

Everybody seemed to be familiar with the expression, but nobody had a clue where it was coming from.

So I looked a little bit on the Internet, found all sorts of various potential explanations, but nothing firm.

So I thought it was just contacting you and asking you for your good words, your good advice on that one.

So let me recap. You’re at the front door to the company.

Your co-worker’s car doesn’t work, the one they use to swipe to get into the building.

And you make a joke that that’s the first thing that they do when they’re going to fire you and give you the pink slip.

You got it.

Yeah, okay.

Oh, it was a joke.

It was a joke, yeah.

We like mentoring in the office.

Yeah, sure.

Right.

It’s a good spirit.

But it was just a pink slip that we both look at each other.

Where is that coming from?

Yeah, I used to use a joke like that when I worked in computer support when people would call me and say, I can’t get my laptop on the network.

I’m like, yeah, you need to go see HR.

Oh, that’s terrible.

And funny enough, we have a very broad diversity of people working in our office.

We have people who are French, English, from Sri Lanka, Sinhalese, Tamil, German, Hebrew, Chinese, Hungarian, Arabic, Persian, you name it.

And I was looking around and asking people if there was equivalent of pink slip in their country of origin.

And it seems to be Canada pretty much.

And I think, well, in fact, United States mostly, but I think it has become an expression here also in Canada.

But nowhere else.

Yeah.

No equivalent.

So it’s the U.S. and Canada, North American English.

It has slipped a little bit across the pond to the U.K., but it’s not as common there.

You’re wondering why it’s pink, right?

Yeah.

And I’m sorry to say it’s probably really simple.

They used to print really important documents like dismissal notices on pink paper.

Okay.

That’s it.

And a lot of—

Was doing that the military or—?

Oh, throughout different kinds of—it’s kind of like one of these standards of clerkdom, like any place that there are clerks and office workers.

Like, you know how you used to have the three-part forms with the pink, yellow, and white, and they were a triplicate and like that?

How did that form get to all these different businesses?

It’s just everyone adopts the same practices and standards from each other.

Sometimes it’s from the government to the government, from the military to the military, across banking or the financial services.

And things spread in that way.

They just take their custom from field to field and industry to industry.

You wouldn’t miss it if it were different from all the other papers on your desk.

That’s exactly right.

As a matter of fact, when I first started working on the Historical Dictionary of American Slang for Oxford University Press, we had index cards, traditional handwritten cards that recorded information that had been found in books.

And some of the cards were in white and some of the cards were what we called salmon colored, basically a pink.

And that was a coding for us that we knew what kind of card it was.

So even now in certain government offices, they’ll ask for the pink slip, the pink colored copy of the thing that you’ve given.

Because it’s still really important to have that kind of visual coding.

Kind of like salmon slip.

Salmon, yeah.

So it’s really a clod.

It’s no more complicated than that.

This is like 99.99% confident that it just came from a practice of printing important documents on pink paper.

But if you’re Germany, you get, if you get the blue letter, I guess, from school, apparently this is a bad report card.

It’s bad news.

The blue letter?

Oh, yeah.

That’s no good.

That’s not so good.

No.

And I was looking, too, like in Ireland and the UK, it’s a P45 you get.

Belgium, it’s a C4.

Right?

So there’s different expressions, but it seems that, as you mentioned, it is North America pretty much the pink slip.

Claude, what do you do that you have so many people in the office from so many places around the world?

Well, we work in the government office, and this is typical of Toronto, of having such a very wide diversity in the workplace.

It is really not unusual at all.

Oh, that’s cool.

It sounds like Martha and I could go there and just learn languages to our heart’s desires.

Yeah, and I was naming the few languages of about a dozen people.

If I extend to the entire branch, you would have, I think, every continent except perhaps Antarctica.

Oh, wow. You’ve got to get some penguins up there.

Bring them over from the zoo.

Penguin slips.

Claude, thank you so much for your call.

Oh, thank you very much, and I always enjoy and I learn so much listening to your program.

So thank you very much for all the hard work and responding to my question there.

It is our pleasure.

Thank you.

Call again, all right?

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call about language in your workplace.

You can also share your stories in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

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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.

Poet Jessica Goodfellow was fighting her insomnia one night when she started thinking about the sound of water and how the sound of rain is different from the sound of a river and that’s different from the sound of an ocean.

And the next day she emailed all her friends to ask them what consonant and vowel sounds they associated with each of those kinds of water.

And the responses she got to that were very consistent.

People always associated rain with sounds like t and k and p.

And the sound of a river was more liquid, like l’s and r’s.

And an ocean sound was more like u.

And she wrote a poem based on that called Chance of Precipitation.

And I wanted to share it with you because there’s so much that’s delicious about this poem.

Part of it is the vocabulary because she uses words that I don’t use that often, like tessellated, meaning mosaic, or tarantella, meaning a rapid whirling dance from Italy, or literal, L-I-T-T-O-R-A-L, meaning having to do with the shore.

This is Chance of Precipitation by Jessica Goodfellow.

Rain’s tonal ticker tape, tarmac tarantella, rooftop timpani, water glitterati, articulate in triplicate.

River, all glissando, glossolalia, liquid limerick, wet tessellated, literal lateral lullaby.

Oceans hush-hush hoodoo, whispering womb, shea chartreuse chantouse, fugue soothed in blue, a wish awash in white noise.

The insomniac longs to transliterate, reign into a human alphabet, French maybe, a lullaby, a chanson, a hymn, a baptism of sleep as unstable as water.

That’s very beautiful.

Isn’t that great?

You can hear the different kinds of water, right?

Yeah, absolutely, 100%.

The rain and the river.

We’ll link to that poem on our website.

It’s called Chance of Precipitation by Jessica Goodfellow, and it appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Charlie Sorrell. I’m calling from Kingsport, Tennessee. I especially like A Way with Words because I’m always learning something.

Oh, yeah.

All right. That’s what we’re trying to do. I’m glad it’s working. What’s on your mind?

We had invited our new neighbors over for dessert and drinks, and after a while, I asked each person if they wanted a refill. One woman said she didn’t care to have any. I refilled everyone else’s and sat down, and then she asked, well, where was hers? And I said, well, you didn’t want any because you said I don’t care to have any.

I rarely hear this expression, but have also heard it in the context of someone coming to your home and saying, I wouldn’t care to have that lamp. They mean it, of course, as a compliment rather than an insult. Speaking of lamps, I’m hoping you can shed some light on this thing and where it comes from and how widely is it used.

Yeah, isn’t that weird saying, I wouldn’t care to, and it means to be willing, to be pleased. It’s like, I don’t mind to. Like, I wouldn’t care to take you to the store, right?

Right. And so you’ve only heard it in East Tennessee, but where else did you live in the South?

Well, I’ve lived in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Mm—

Okay, so mostly the Deep South then.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah, because there is this feature, this dialectal feature that you find in the Midlands, more like Kentucky, Tennessee, western North Carolina, some in Missouri. It’s exactly the construction that you’re talking about. And it sounds like it means the opposite of what you’re saying, right?

Right. And I still have to think about it when I hear it. Is this a yes or a no? It’s a double negative, it seems to me.

Right. Well, what’s really cool is that this construction goes all the way back to England in the 1500s, if you can believe that.

Wow.

Yeah. In fact, Shakespeare used it this way. In Henry V, the chief justice says, I care not if I do become your physician, meaning I wouldn’t mind being your doctor. So it’s the idea of I wouldn’t mind.

Well, again, I’ve never heard it before this area. And this area uses, I’ve even been asked, do I want a poke, which I knew what that was, but I haven’t heard somebody really ask that question when you’re at a store.

You were at a store and someone asked if you wanted a poke?

Correct. And they meant a sack or a bag.

Yeah, exactly. So not paper or plastic. They wanted to know if I wanted a bag. Fortunately, I knew what it was, but most people I don’t think would.

Yeah, it might have been hanky-panky in the soccer room.

Right, exactly. Well, Charlie, thanks for this field report from one of my favorite parts of the country.

Well, I’ve lived in six states, as I’ve said, but the terrain in the four distinctive mile seasons set it apart from any other place I’ve lived. The rolling hills, it is gorgeous in all seasons. But thank you for clearing this up for me.

Sure thing, Charlie. Thank you. Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Grant, how many times have we had somebody call and say, I moved to a different part of the country and I said this or that, and people looked at me like I had two heads.

It’s the American condition, right?

It is, right? If you’ve had that experience, call us, 877-929-9673, or tell us all about it in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s a simile I really like that comes from Rose Carbonella, who lives in Central Maryland. How about, as smart as a bee sting?

I like that. Smart as a bee sting.

Oh, yeah, because it’s smart.

Yeah. Two meanings of smart. Nice.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Walter from Dallas, Texas.

Hey, Walter, welcome. How can we help?

Thank you. I have a question. My great-grandfather always used to say a saying. Every time we’d leave or we’d get ready to go anywhere, he would always begin or end it with, and we’re off like a dirty shirt. And so I was just wondering if you know any information about that, where it came from, or if he just made it up, or if it’s a popular saying back in the day.

So off like a dirty shirt, this means you’re leaving or leaving quickly?

Yeah, we’re leaving quickly or we’re going somewhere quickly. We’re headed to a destination quickly.

Yeah, so I can see that. There’s a number of slang expressions that are similar. This one is not as common as off like a prom dress. And the Australians say off like a bride’s nightie.

Oh, my.

They all have to do with something that happens urgently and quickly. The Australians actually have a couple others as well. One of them is off like a bucket of prawns. And by that, off, I think they mean spoiled.

Oh, off.

Or maybe they mean eaten really fast like a bucket of prawns, I’m sure.

Oh, okay. But a dirty shirt.

But a dirty shirt. It’s really interesting. This one pops up again and again. And when I first looked into this, I thought, oh, 1920s, 1930s, surely. And then the further I dug, I realized that it dates to the 1700s.

What?

Yeah, to this play by Henry Fielding. So these two characters with ridiculous names, their names are Lovegurlo and Cassinda. That sounds like Henry Fielding. Lovegurlo is the male, Cassinda is the female. And there’s a particular passage in here where Cassinda is talking about all that she’ll do for him. She’ll mend his stockings, she’ll make his bed, she’ll wash his clothes. And he says, because in his mind, he’s imagining like a wife who’s so perfect that she wouldn’t sink to the level to do those things for him. And he says, you know, I just can’t imagine doing that. And then he says, besides, whenever my mistress plays me foul, I cast her like a dirty shirt away. And so he’s literally talking about the fact when you have a dirty shirt on, like, don’t imagine just like, oh, you wore it for a little bit and there’s a little bit of sweat in it. But like you’ve spilled food on it and the cuffs have trailed in there and the spaghetti sauce or something like that. So you’re taking the shirt off to put on new clean clothes. And it’s just really interesting to find it pops up here, it pops up there. And by our era, it’s still not that common, but it’s consistently used. And I always wonder, are these people going back to Fielding to fetch this old expression?

I wonder.

Or have they reinvented it for themselves?

I would lean toward the reinvention. Just getting it off as quickly as possible.

Yeah. Because we’ve got to imagine here, it’s not just like, oh, there’s a little bit of ink on the pocket or something. Or, you know, it’s not yellowed at the collar. We’re talking a substantially dirty shirt.

That sounds about right. I mean, I always kind of knew, I guess the phrase, you know, made sense. You want to get it off quick or leave somewhere quickly. But I didn’t know it dated back that far. That’s crazy.

Yeah. I’d never heard any other grandparent or similarly aged person say a phrase like that. So I didn’t know if maybe it was something his parents said that was just passed down. I heard it somewhere. It’s not that common. It did come up in Pretty in Pink, that 1986 movie. John Cryer’s character says it. And so it’s not common, but when it does pop up, it can be in prominent places. Like, I think Stephen King has used it in one of his novels. And so it shows up in scripts here and there. So it surfaces enough to keep kind of refreshing the number of people who know it and use it.

Oh, wow.

So there you go.

There you go. Thanks very much for your call, Walter.

Yeah, no problem. Thank you guys for answering that for me. Take care. Bye.

Take care.

Well, you know, I’m hoping that all of our listeners are off like a herd of turtles. That’s another one we get a lot of questions about. Is that fast? That’s slow.

Well, it’s a joke.

You know, I mean, I think all of these are just silly expressions, right?

Off like a dirty shirt, off like a herd of turtles.

Anyway, we hope you’re off like a herd of turtles.

Do your phone to call us, 877-929-9673.

Grant, do you know what hairy panic is?

It’s when my son refuses to get his long hair cut.

Could be.

And runs around like a crazy man.

Could be.

Because he doesn’t want to get it washed either.

Yeah, he’s got long hair.

He does.

Very long hair, yeah.

What is it?

No, hairy panic is a native grass in Australia that thrives in warm, dry conditions and ends up sort of like tumbleweed.

And there are towns in Australia right now that have this overabundance of hairy panic.

Oh, I saw those videos.

Oh, they’re crazy, aren’t they?

Right? They’re like filling houses or something.

Yeah, yeah. Every day, these hairy panic tumbleweeds fill up people’s driveways, and then you see their cars driving out from this giant pile of hairy panic.

Organic matter, yeah.

Yeah, but the name was there before it started invading this town, but we will link to those videos.

Why? Does it have like psychoactive properties or something?

No, no, no. It’s a different kind of panic. It comes from a Latin word that means a kind of grain or millet.

Oh, interesting.

And it’s kind of hairy, but there are these videos online of these giant puff wads of hairy panic.

They’re covering cars and houses, and people are digging out from them every single day.

It’s bizarre.

Yeah.

Look the videos up.

They’re awesome.

We’ll link to them on our website, 877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Lindy from Bozeman, Montana.

Hi, Lindy.

Welcome.

Hi, Lindy.

What’s up?

Well, my dad used to have a phrase meaning the cocktail hour, and he called it the horning hour.

And I always thought it was a code word because it was at our summer cabins.

And some of the folks were Mormons, and our end of the string of cabins was not.

So when I was younger, I thought it was a code word.

It was time for everyone to come over and have cocktails for those that drank.

And then later on, I thought, well, maybe that wasn’t quite right.

And I thought maybe it came from my mother, who used to be a sailor in San Francisco.

And then she said, no, it was your dad’s.

Every time I’ve listened to your show, I wonder if they know where it came from.

So the last two of that generation are in their 90s.

And so we asked the other woman next door, and she thought it came from her dad.

And it was from Vikings or Norsemen.

Okay.

And then she said, but it’s not those nasty little minds that think horny, as in toad.

Yeah.

She’s 90 and full of it.

Yeah, full of vinegar.

Like Vikings with helmets and horns sticking out.

You know, I’m glad that you’ve got that theory because there’s nothing out there.

Seriously, Lindy, we have searched what we have and looked in the books that we have,

And I have nothing on Horning Hour.

Now, it doesn’t mean it’s not a phrase. I’m just saying, like, it’s not been recorded in any place that I can find.

I don’t have it in my own citation files.

I’ve looked in the historical record where I can.

The theory about the Vikings sounds plausible.

Like, imagine, you know, an ox horn being used to pour mead into a flagon and rousing songs at the big oak table.

Well, Lindy, I have a question for you.

Yes.

Grant mentioned the word rousing, and I’m wondering how rousing this horning hour was.

Well, the children were all around, so it wasn’t way too wild.

The dads would come up to the cabins on the weekend, and so all the adults would get together on one porch or another and have their cocktails.

And like I say, the other end of the beach was the Mormons, and they didn’t drink.

So, like I say, originally I thought it was a code word.

Okay.

Because the only thing I can think of is that there is a term, horning, that means a noisy celebration after a wedding.

Something like a chivalry in the movie Oklahoma, that kind of thing.

There you go.

That’s not bad.

I mean, still, what confidence level would you give that?

Oh, maybe 50.

I mean, yeah.

Yeah.

Like a noisy party.

Yeah, well, they were definitely rowdier than the other end of the cabin.

I like that, Martha.

I do like that.

That might work.

But as a dialect expression from where?

Well, it’s mostly the northeast of state New York and northern Pennsylvania.

I haven’t seen Horning Hour.

So, I mean, if they were making a joke about the notion of horning being a noisy celebration,

It wouldn’t have to actually be noisy in order for the joke to work, right?

Yeah, or what I’m saying is I haven’t seen Horning Hour together.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe it was an extension of that.

But I’m wondering if any of our listeners have ever talked about Horning Hour.

It’s like Happy Hour, right?

Or Rowdier.

Yes, exactly.

It is Happy Hour.

Okay.

I guess it would be.

I hadn’t thought of that, but that’s probably exactly what it is.

Well, we’ll put the call out to the listeners.

And if anyone else has used the expression horning hour or knows a little bit more about this, let us know.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org or tell us on Twitter @wayword.

Well, if we hear anything, we’ll sure let you know.

Thank you so much.

And thanks for taking my call.

And I really enjoy your show.

Thank you, Lindy.

Take care now.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Could be a family word.

It could be a family word.

I like the horning as a celebration.

It could easily exist amongst her family, even if they’re not from the Northeast.

The Viking thing, I think we’ve seen that parodied enough in movies and television and cartoons.

And drinking out of skulls.

Yeah, yeah.

The sculling hour?

No.

Go rowing on the lake.

Well, we’d love to hear from you.

877-929-9673.

Or send us email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

And hit us up on Twitter at WayWord.

We talked on an earlier show about dad-isms, those weird old expressions that dads say.

Oh, yeah.

And we heard from Valerie Murray, who lives in North Haven, Connecticut,

And she said that her dad has always said he has fishhooks in his pockets.

Do you know what that means?

No.

It’s a reference to a tightwad.

Oh, so it’s hard to get the money out.

Yeah, or you’re afraid to put your hand in because it’s just dangerous.

And when we got this email from her, a light bulb went on in my head because so many times in Argentina,

I heard the Spanish equivalent of he has a crocodile in his pocket referring to a tightwad.

And I started researching that, and it turns out that in Australia what they say to describe somebody who’s really tight with his money

Is he has scorpions in his pocket or he has mousetraps in his pocket.

So the idea is it’s just too dangerous to stick your hand in there and get out your wallet, right?

Yeah, they’re afraid of it.

He has fishhooks in his pockets.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

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This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten, director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chaneski and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.

You