Why Do Girls Wear Pink?

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Well, it happened again.

The other day I loaded a new version of a software program on my computer,

But now instead of being an improvement, it’s doing things I don’t like.

I’d rather have the old version of the software.

Grant, you’ve had this experience.

Yes, a downgrade.

You pay for the privilege of downgrading.

You’re like, why did I bother?

Yeah, why did I bother?

Two hours, 60 bucks, waste of my time.

And you may remember that on a recent show we talked about this phenomenon, and I suggested the verb New Coke.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, a reference to Coca-Cola’s disastrous dalliance with that terrible, terrible tasting New Coke.

I suggested we use it as a verb, like that new version of the program really New Coked my computer.

And a lot of people wrote in and said they really liked that idea.

They needed it.

There was a linguistic gap, a lexical gap.

But several of you sent other suggestions for an upgrade that’s actually a step backward.

Andrew Burnick wrote to say he liked the word decovery, playing on recovery.

Decovery, I like that.

And I love this one from Ryan Higginbottom.

Ryan writes, I propose the word flupgrade, a combination of flub and upgrade.

I like that, flupgrade.

So if you’re listening out there, Skype communications, I love you, but I think version 5.3.0 is a flupgrade.

I agree.

You guys put millions of dollars into research.

Fix this.

It’s supposed to improve over time, not degrade over time.

Yeah.

Well, now I’m thinking that the verb new Coke was a flupgrade.

I like flupgrade better.

Call us with your thoughts about language, 877-929-9673.

Or you can send your comments and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name’s Jennifer, and I’m calling from Racine, Wisconsin.

Hi, Jennifer.

Welcome.

Hey, Jennifer.

How are you doing?

Thank you.

I’m doing well, thank you.

I’m hoping that you guys can settle a nine-year marital dispute over a word for me.

Nine years?

Sure.

Well, that’s longer than most marriages last year.

Well, I have used the word hoopty to describe my 88 convertible RX-7 ever since I’ve owned it.

And my husband insists that I’ve made the word up.

Really?

Really.

Interesting.

We tried to Google it about four years ago, and we found one reference in an obscure urban online dictionary.

And he said that wasn’t significant enough.

It wasn’t. Now, how are you spelling it, Jennifer?

We tried to spell it two ways, H-O-O-P-D-E-E or H-O-O-P-T-Y.

Very interesting. How old are you, Jennifer, if you don’t mind me asking?

I’m 44.

How old is your husband?

He is 47.

And what kind of car did you say this is?

It’s an 88 Mazda RX-7 convertible.

88.

Wow.

And you call it a hoopty.

Why?

What makes it a hoopty?

Well, my understanding of the word is that it’s like an unreliable or a jalopy.

You know, hop in the hoopty and go.

And it’s always been a term of affection for my car.

My car, I’ve never had a problem with it, but it needs some restoration work to it.

You go through a lot of duct tape.

Is that what you’re saying?

Well, more like it needs a new interior and it needs a new roof, that type of stuff.

Oh, okay.

So you’re not quite Flintstones peddling it yet, right?

No, not quite Flintstone yet.

Not at all.

We got in this discussion again last week, and I called it a hoopty in front of some friends,

And my husband went to take it to work last Friday because it was 70 degrees and beautiful,

And he got as far as the Wisconsin-Illinois state line, and it died.

No hoopties in Illinois, huh?

Exactly.

They got a force field at the border.

Exactly.

Because you can’t come across the border.

So I think my car really didn’t like me insulting it because I’ve always used it as a term of affection.

I’m going to prepare you to do linguistic battle with your husband.

All righty.

Don’t hurt him.

Just a little.

One year after that car was manufactured, in 1989, Sir Mix-a-Lot had a song called My Hooptie.

Have you never heard this song?

I have never heard that song.

It was big.

It was big.

Really?

Bigger than Baby Got Back?

My Hooptie rolling, tailpipe dragging, heat don’t work or my girl keeps nagging,

369 Buick, Deuce Keeps Rolling.

One hubcap because three got stolen.

Oh, my God.

Sir Mix-a-Lot.

I have never heard it.

I’m going to go find it.

And he does much.

And the video, you’ve got to go do the video on YouTube because it’s old school hip-hop.

I mean, it’s not that old, but it’s old enough.

And it’s kind of a low budget.

But these guys are clearly having a ball singing this song about their junker, their beater, you know?

Exactly.

But the term is older than 1989.

You can find this back to the 1960s.

Whoa.

But somewhere along the way, it changed.

In the 60s and 70s, a hoopty was just your car.

Sometimes your new car.

Sometimes your style and ride.

And then somewhere, say maybe early, mid-80s, it switched on the West Coast to mean your junker.

Like this hand-me-down car that 15 other people had owned or the thing that your older brother ran into the ground and then gave to you when he got his nice new car.

That’s your hoopty.

Your beater.

It’s the thing that worked.

That’s it.

That’s the only qualification that it had, that it runs.

And everything else about it is a mess, okay?

So the thing is, this term exists.

It is widespread.

And as a matter of fact, I would even say that in the 80s and the 90s,

Hooptie was so common that you probably could have used it amongst 20 and 30-year-olds

And everyone would have understood what you meant.

This Sir Mix-a-Lot song is probably the point of popularity for a lot of people.

It’s the point at which they learned it.

It charted.

I mean, it was big enough to be played on commercial radio.

And the video was in loops on MTV, and it was referenced in other songs.

I’m really surprised that he hasn’t heard it.

Does your hoopty have a CD player?

It actually does.

It has a tape player and a CD player.

Okay, well, you know what your assignment is.

You go get, you know what it is, right?

I definitely will.

Get the Sir Mix-a-Lot CD.

Don’t tell your husband.

Get in the car.

You’re in the driver’s seat.

Pop the disc in.

He’s sitting there.

He’s like, why are you waiting?

Why aren’t you going?

Turn the engine on, fire it up, play that song, and then look at him and just sing along to the music.

I definitely will.

I definitely will.

I will let you guys know how my little mission goes over with him.

All right.

We will testify in the divorce proceedings.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

And trust me, in the divorce, I’m asking for the hoopty.

Thanks, Jennifer.

Good luck.

Thank you guys for having me on.

Bye-bye.

Okay, thanks, Jennifer.

Bye-bye.

We are here to solve your linguistic marital disputes.

Call us 877-929-9673, or we will arbitrate by email.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi.

This is Jane from Dallas.

Jane from Dallas?

Welcome.

What’s on your mind?

Well, a friend of mine and I were talking about a BBC production

In which the expression,

No better than she ought to be, was used.

And again, my friend has a mother-in-law who is English

Who used that expression commonly.

And both of us have encountered it in literature.

I’m thinking particularly Sherlock Holmes

And some of the Dorothy Sayers mysteries.

But I have no idea what exactly it means.

And what was the production from the BBC?

It was Downton Abbey, the new Masterpiece Theater.

I think it’s in its second season now.

Right, right.

We had another call about the language there.

This must be a very provocative program.

Well, I think it’s popular anyway.

So set the scene up for us.

What was happening when this was set on the show?

The context would be, generally it seems to be in relation to women who are not behaving with propriety.

They’re tramps, or on the make, or something is not quite right with them.

I’ve never heard it applied to men.

Oh, what a surprise.

Silence.

So this is just something that the characters would sort of toss off to say, well, you know her, she’s no better than she ought to be?

Precisely.

Precisely.

You’ve kind of laid out the details as we know them.

One, it is not usually used in North American English, so Canadians and Americans are usually mystified.

Unless, as you say, they watch BBC productions or read Dorothy Sayers novels

Or are familiar with British literature and probably older British literature,

Not so much the modern stuff.

The term is a little old-fashioned.

I think it’s brought out by newspaper columnists at the Daily Mail

When they want to get away with calling a woman a slut without fear of libel or lawsuits.

No better than she ought to be or no better than one ought to be

Does mean someone of questionable morals.

It usually means questionable sexual morals, but occasionally it will mean that they thieve or that they do other things that are looked down upon.

As you say, they’re against the mores of common society.

Why it’s phrased that way is probably lost in the mists of time.

But the best guess that I have is that we’re talking about sexual morals.

And this phrase was generally used during a period when you really couldn’t talk about sexual activities at all.

So even though you were referring to someone as being most likely sleeping around, a slut, a tramp, that sort of thing, you really couldn’t say that.

So you needed a euphemized or disguised way to kind of wink, wink and say, well, she could be great.

I mean, this is kind of the understood part of the expression.

She could be great.

She could be a saint or a nun, but she isn’t.

She’s probably about as low as she could be.

That’s more or less the translation of that.

Yeah, and there is an obscure term for this kind of thing.

We’ve talked about it on the show before, carientism, C-H-A-R-I-E-N-T-I-S-M.

And it’s that kind of sugar-coated snark that Grant was talking about

When you say, well, bless her heart, or somebody tells you they’re great plans, and you just kind of say, how’s that working out for you?

Exactly.

Well, Jane, did you have trouble understanding that idiom?

I mean, if you just break it down, though, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

That’s the problem with it is that when you break it down, it really doesn’t make any sense.

Exactly.

But, of course, from the context, you know exactly what it means.

Exactly.

That’s its power.

Yes.

It defies analysis except through context.

Right?

Well, my takeaway for this program is going to be sugar-coated snark.

We specialize.

Well, thank you.

Our pleasure, Jane.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Sugar-coated snark.

A Way with Words, sugar-coated snark.

Yeah, it reminds me of when I would babysit for bratty kids and the parents would come back and I’d say, oh, they were as good as they could be.

Well, bring us your sugar-coated snark or any other linguistic question you’d like to ask.

The number is 877-929-9673 or send it in email to words@waywordradio.org.

I have a new word in my vocabulary.

I’m proud to say it.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

Thank you for the cigar.

It’s swivet.

Swivet.

Yeah, if you’re in a swivet, you’re flustered.

Yeah.

Oh, you’re like kind of like can’t really concentrate on what you’re doing, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You’re panicking over like being late or having a lot of work to do or guests are coming and you’re in a swivet to get the house together.

Yeah.

You’re in a swivet.

I love it.

What new words have you added to your vocabulary?

Let us know, 877-929-9673 or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Stick around for some word gymnastics and more of your questions about language.

Support for A Way with Words comes from the University of San Diego,

Whose mission since 1949 has been to prepare students for the world as well as to change it.

More about the college and five schools of this independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. And now we’re joined again by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska. Hi, Greg.

Hello, Grant. Hello, Martha.

Hey, buddy. What’s up?

This week, we’re going to play some instant Google games.

These are games, actually one game, that uses the feature where Google fills what it thinks you might be searching for before you finish typing it.

All right.

So how does this work?

So what I’ve done is type a word or a phrase into my Google search engine, and it’s given me some possible ways to complete that word or phrase.

So I’ll give you several examples of what it is completing with, and you tell me what word or phrase I entered to get that result.

So, for example, if I gave you blank with friends, blank with friends cheat, and blank that start with Z.

Words.

Words, exactly.

Words is what I typed in, and those are the possible ways to complete that entry that Google gave me.

Okay.

Okay.

This sounds doable.

All right.

Here’s your first one.

Airlines, idle, express.

American.

American.

Very good.

Very straightforward.

Here’s a second one.

Ceiling, clock, consolidation.

Ceiling, clock, consolidation.

It’s not debt.

It’s not loan.

Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

Actually, it is debt.

Debt ceiling?

Debt ceiling.

Debt clock.

And debt consolidation.

You know the debt clock, the big clock.

It’s actually in New York City.

All right.

Here’s another one for you.

Numerals, empire, gods, and shades.

Roman.

Roman.

Roman.

Yes.

Polanski was the next one on the list.

Oh, I thought maybe charges.

Roman shades, aren’t they usually called Roman lines?

Well, according to Google, they’re called Roman shades, and that’s what you’re looking for.

Interesting.

Roman shades.

Yeah.

Williams, flytrap, and de Milo.

Venus.

Got that one.

Venus.

And that’s the order in which they appear.

So if you’re typing in Venus, most people are looking for Venus Williams.

Some people are looking for a Venus flytrap.

And the next group are interested in antiquities.

All right.

This one is two words.

Elmo, pink, plant.

Me?

It’s two words.

Two words in front of Elmo.

Oh, tickle me.

Oh, okay.

Tickle me, Elmo.

Tickle me pink.

And tickle me plant.

What’s a tickle me plant?

It’s a mimosa.

You know, the plant that reacts when you stroke its leaves.

Oh, the leaves close up.

Right.

It’s big these days with the kids.

All the young people, they’re getting their tickle me plants.

No, come on.

Google it and see what you just come up with.

So instead of saying it with flowers, you say it with a mimosa plant?

Well, I don’t know.

It’s just people are into the idea that a plant reacts when you touch it.

So how about housewives, estate, simple, and Madrid?

Real.

Oh, I was going to say desperate.

Real Madrid in the last one, though, right?

Real housewives, real estate, real simple, and Real Madrid, the football club.

How about this one?

Look, find my IP address, love thee.

How do I?

How do I?

The first thing is how do I look.

The second one is how do I find my IP address.

And the third is how do I love thee.

I love that because they represent such completely different parts of culture.

Isn’t that great?

I thought you’d like that.

Yes.

Isn’t that wonderful?

That’s nice.

And actually, I have to share one other one that really tickled me.

Okay.

Love, Grand Canyon, Appendix, Mall of America.

Not remove.

No, and it’s actually three words.

Where is?

Finding?

Where is the?

Where is the?

Where is the love?

Where is the Grand Canyon?

Where is the appendix?

And where is the Mall of America?

These are the top four things people want to find.

Oh, my gosh.

That is fantastic.

Nice, Greg. Thank you so much for the quiz.

You’re very welcome.

Who knew technology could be fun?

I feel some song lyrics coming on. That’s terrific.

There we go. Where is the mall of America?

Well, if you’d like to provoke our thoughts, call us 877-929-9673.

And you can find the love at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words?

Hi, this is Rachel calling from Frisco, Texas.

Frisco. Well, welcome to the program, Rachel. How are you doing?

Well, I was calling because I’m curious about creating languages like from scratch.

And I was wondering if either of you guys had ever done that before.

Whoa.

No, I don’t have the free time for that, nor do I have a civilization under my control.

Why are you going to? You are going to do this, right?

Maybe you have a civilization under your control.

Well, I’ve just been thinking about it.

It seems like it would be fun to do.

I mean, obviously it would be a really, really big project.

But you know how Tolkien created languages for Lord of the Rings?

Right.

I can’t remember the name of the guy who did it,

But for the movie Avatar they created languages.

It just seems like it would be kind of fun to do.

And so I was wondering if you guys had ever done it before.

I’ve never done it, so you just want to do it for fun, right?

Yeah.

And then what will you do with it?

Is this for a video game you’re making or a book you’re writing or just to test yourself?

Well, I’m not really sure what I want to do with it, honestly.

If I can use it at some point in some other project in the future, it would be great,

But at this point I just kind of want to see if I can do it.

There is a group called, well, they call themselves the Language Creation Society,

But most people in the linguistics world know them as conlangers,

Which is a condensation of constructed language.

So these are people who make languages.

Perhaps they work on them together, or they make their own,

Or they put them in novels that they’re writing.

Some of these people might have done them for films.

And definitely many of them look to Tolkien as an inspiration.

You can find this organization at conlang.org.

You’ll also find some great stuff there, a podcast, mailing lists, a conference,

And most importantly, the essential books that you need.

One of them is Mark Rosenfelder’s The Language Construction Kit,

Which basically just tells you how to get started when you want to make your own language.

So, Rachel, did you have any idea that there were a whole bunch of you out there?

Not really, no.

I hadn’t really done much research into it.

I just figured, well, if I want to make a language, I should probably ask some language.

People. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you can do that with these folks. I mean, there are lots and lots

And lots of you, and they kick this stuff around all the time. And they have conferences so you can

Get together with people and talk about it face to face. And if you want a good overview of what

It’s like to invent a language, probably the best book that was recently published is Arika Okrent’s

Book called In the Land of Invented Languages. And she just goes through some of the more well-known

And invented languages and talks about the reasons why and how it was done

And the personalities involved.

And it’s very enlightening.

It’s great.

It’s a good introduction.

It’s not too academic.

All right.

I’ll definitely have to look into that.

So you’re going to have to figure out things like, what, the alphabet?

What else are you going to have to figure out?

I guess I’m probably going to have to start working on, like, grammar rules

And pronunciation and, well, the alphabet.

Yeah.

And, yeah, I’m not really sure how I’m going to do it.

Yeah, numbers and nouns.

One of the things that they talk about in these beginning texts is first deciding whether or not you want to make something completely from scratch, which is incredibly hard to do,

Or you want to build on rules that we already know from existing languages or alphabets that we already know.

And most new languages just go ahead and use an alphabet that the creator is familiar with.

So that’s a start, and I should take some of the trouble out of it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, cross that one off the list.

Okay, take out the alphabet for now.

And then a lot of them try to look for what’s the purest in the languages that they love most.

What are the features of English that really speak to them?

What parts of Latin do they find appealing?

Is there something particularly beautiful about the sounds of another language?

And then they mix them together.

Because so often the language creators aren’t looking to be clever so much as they’re looking to be beautiful.

They want to make people love the thing that they’re creating, just like an artist might.

So I would keep that in mind, Rachel, as you do this, all right?

All right.

Thanks, Rachel.

Thanks.

Take care.

Best of luck to you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Have you had experience with a conlang?

Maybe you’re fluent in Klingon.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Did you ever try to learn one of those, Grant?

I never did.

No, me either.

Some of the Tolkien words I mastered when I was a boy,

But just because I was a fan of his work.

That’s cool stuff.

And he was a classicist, so I’m sure that you brought in all kinds of cool stuff.

Yes, and he has old Anglo-Saxon roots to a lot of his words.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they’re introductions into older forms of English as much as anything.

Yeah, very cool.

Well, call us 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Regu.

I’m calling from San Diego.

Oh, well, welcome to the program.

Thank you.

How can we help you, Regu?

Well, the other day I was talking to my friend about possibly putting an ad for a construction

Bid, and I used the usage call for tender.

And my friend looked at me and was a bit puzzled,

And I realized it’s not a common usage here in the States.

And I’m from India originally, and I think it’s probably a British usage,

But I was just curious to know where that came from.

It’s commonly used in India as a title for an ad

When you want to get some bids or quotations and things like that.

I was just wondering if it’s something you have heard here

Or you know where it came from.

Call for tender, and it means to request bids, right?

Correct, yeah.

So you’ve got a big project.

You want companies to propose to do that project for you

And to tell you how much that they want to be paid.

Absolutely, yeah.

Okay, very good.

We have tender in that way in a few places in American English,

But it’s not nearly as common, particularly as a noun.

Like you can tender an offer here.

One company will try to buy another company,

And they are tendering an offer for that company.

Okay.

And even in the National Football League, American football,

Players may receive tenders or offers of contracts worth millions of dollars.

And that’s one of the few places where tender is still pretty widespread as a noun.

Yeah, yeah. And it has to do with the idea of offering.

And Regu, I don’t know about you guys, but when I was little and I was first getting familiar with dollar bills,

I wanted to bite them because it says legal tender.

And I thought, what?

But isn’t the same usage when you go to a bar and say, you know, a bartender?

Isn’t that the same kind of tendering?

No.

Actually, there are two different tenders in English.

They both come to us from French, but the French got them from two different Latin words.

So we’ve got one path, which is about, actually, there are three different tenders.

I take that back.

So we’ve got one path, which is tender as in delicate or soft or sensitive.

And then we have the tender that comes from a Latin word meaning to stretch or to hold forth.

And I believe that is the tender for both of these, both to offer something and both to tend bar.

Both come from that same word, but they forked somewhere along the way and slowly made their etymological progress.

So they grew further and further apart.

Yeah, it has to do with reaching out, holding out an outstretched hand.

It’s a relative of the word extend, tender and extend in that sense.

And we have gone so far with tender in American English that we can now say what would otherwise be an oxymoron without blinking, which is to tender an offer, which basically means to offer an offer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or tender your resignation if you’re leaving.

That’s another place that people know the verb to tender.

Tender your resignation or to, that’s probably the most common, actually.

If you search in the Google News archives, you’ll find to tender a resignation being incredibly common.

Yeah, and the tender on a dollar bill is not an adjective.

It’s a noun.

It’s something tendered.

It has been offered.

Yeah, legally.

Okay.

All right.

So that makes sense.

Yeah.

So a little complicated, but yeah, one of those places where the British and the Commonwealth countries

Or the former Commonwealth countries all still hold to a certain etymological path that we veered from.

And I have to tell you, I’ve never heard call for tender in this country.

It’s incredibly rare.

It does exist, but it’s incredibly rare.

Yeah, maybe at the highest levels, particularly in multinational companies that are required to do business overseas

Where they might encounter this language

And know that they need to use it

In order to be understood in Europe.

Right, so perfectly legitimate

But unfamiliar to Americans, that’s for sure.

That makes sense.

Cool, thanks for calling, Regu.

But you just educated a bunch of people about it,

So thank you.

I hope so.

Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

And that is the mess that is English.

If you’d like to straighten out your side

Of the mess that is English,

Give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or send your questions and email

To words@waywordradio.org.

Earlier in the show we were talking about upgrades that turn into flop grades because

The software that you load on your computer isn’t as good as the previous version well we got another

Suggestion for that from doug hickey he said my wife and i often refer to our computers as our

Pewters. So it would follow that this upgrade degradation could be known as the pewter principle.

You know, the pewter principle that states that a bureaucrat is promoted to his or her level of

Incompetence. The pewter principle would be the software equivalent. I think that is so true.

Plus the idea that pewter is a metal that’s easy to melt, right? Spelled differently, but still.

Oh, I hate that thought. Using the word melt and computer in the same sentence. I just can’t even

Go there. What would you call an upgrade gone wrong? 877-929-9673 or send it an email and any

Question at all to words@waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, it’s Joanne

From Wilmot, Ohio. Hi, Joanne. Welcome to the program. Thank you. It’s good to be here. Well,

I was doing a crossword puzzle. It threw me off just a little bit because the clue was suit to a

And three letters. I, of course, filled in T-E-A. That makes sense. Things have always suited me to

A T-E-A, T, because I’m a tea drinker big time. Good, it’s comforting. But that was wrong. It was

T-E-E. I’m wondering, how can you suit to a T-E-E? I’m not a golfer.

No.

And then in another crossword puzzle, I found it just the letter T, which is right.

And how does it suit me?

So your confusion is you came across suit to a T, and counter to your expectations, it wasn’t spelled T-E-A.

Right.

What kind of tea drinker are you?

Are we talking fine china and sugar cubes, or are we talking lots of ice and lots of sugar in a tall pitcher?

We’re talking mugs.

Mugs.

Mugs of tea.

Okay.

-huh.

So you think suited to a T has to do with just tea that’s al dente, so to speak, al dente.

Perfect tea, right?

It’s comforting.

It suits me to a T.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, you might have to start brewing a little bit of T because…

Boiling dictionary pages.

Well, for a little comfort because, Joanne, it’s definitely T-E-E or just, as you said, the letter T.

It’s been like that going all the way back to the 17th century.

And there are lots of competing theories about this.

The one that seems to be the most likely for me is that perhaps it’s a shortening of the word tittle, T-I-T-T-L-E,

Which means something really tiny, like the tiniest point of punctuation, like a little umlaut or a little dot over an I, something completely tiny.

Okay.

So right on point. That’s my guess.

You see the term tittle in the New Testament.

Jesus uses the expression jot or tittle, meaning a tiny, tiny, tiny thing.

And that’s what I’m thinking. It is just right on point.

One thing about it, though, the letter T is spelled T-E-E.

Every letter in the alphabet can actually be spelled out as a word as well.

So whether it’s the letter T or it’s spelled out as T-E-E, they’re referring to the same thing.

So actually both are correct, T-E-E and the letter T.

Yes, that’s right, but it’s not T-E-A.

That’s the only thing that’s not true here.

Well, I may say T-E-E, but I’m going to think T-E-A.

Well, I’m a big tea drinker myself.

I like a good lap saying Souchong, so I’m right there with you.

And I am kind of glad it’s got nothing to do with golf.

Yeah.

Well, thank you very much.

All right.

Well, cheers.

Bye-bye.

If you’d like MI about any question involving language, give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or send an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hop on the language train.

Stay tuned 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.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Sometimes the history of a word surprises you, and sometimes it really surprises you.

Oh, yeah?

Try me.

Yeah.

Well, Grant, I’m sure you have the same experience I did when you first learned that back in the 14th and the 15th century,

The word girls didn’t just refer to young females.

Right, right.

Yeah, back then the word girls was often used to refer to a group of children.

Of any sex, male or female.

Right, both boys and girls.

And over time, as you know, the word girls came to specify female children only.

But remember that shock of learning it for the first time?

Because you don’t think at first, even when you’ve been studying language for a while,

You kind of forget that words can be completely overturned.

There’s like a revolution in a word, and its definition just switches.

Speaking of which, I had the same experience recently when I was reading an article in Smithsonian Magazine

About why we tend to associate the color pink with girls.

That is female children, and the color blue with boys.

It turns out that there’s a historian named Jo B. Paoletti.

She’s at the University of Maryland, and she’s been studying the meaning of children’s clothing for the last 30 years.

And what she found out pretty much turns what we think about those colors on its head.

It turns out that in the early 1800s, people tended to dress all babies in white.

You know, that bleaches really easily.

And as time went on, parents began to make more of a distinction between the genders.

But the weird thing is that originally pink was associated with boys and blue was associated with girls.

So you go back and you look at trade publications from that period and you see things like the generally accepted rule is pink for boys and blue for the girls.

The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy,

While blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.

That’s amazing!

Isn’t that bizarre?

And then nobody knows why, but sometime around the 1940s, this began to switch.

And it’s just fascinating to me that when you look at what you might call the etymology of color,

The meaning of those particular colors, they weren’t always like that,

Just like the word girls didn’t always mean what it means today.

That’s crazy.

So we don’t know why in the 40s it switched.

No.

I mean, I think part of it had to do with marketing.

You know, if you’re doing marketing and, you know, fashion is all about creating a need that you don’t really have.

And so say you decorate the room in pink for a girl the first time and a boy comes along the next time, you’ve got to buy all new stuff.

Right.

So I think that’s possibly one reason.

So it’s not that there was a nascent woman’s revolution in the 1940s,

And when the men started doing the laundry, they started mixing the colors with the whites.

So these little boy onesies came out pink.

Or the little girl onesies came out pink.

Great. You sound like you have some experience in that.

I’ve been doing my own laundry for like 35 plus years.

Those mistakes are long past.

That’s great.

Well, color etymology, word etymologies, we love talking about it all.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Rebecca Bridge from Seattle, Washington.

Hey, Rebecca, welcome to the program.

How are things in Seattle?

Well, I’m hoping that you guys can help settle an argument between my friends and I.

We were out the other night having beers, and we got into, one of my friends asked for another beer,

And he said it would really slate his thirst at the moment, S-L-A-T-E.

And I immediately corrected him and said, you mean slake?

And he said, no, I think that slate also works.

And then his name is Aaron.

And then our other friend Mike jumped in and said he thought it was slay, one’s thirst.

So after a little bit of Googling, we didn’t really find anything

That settled the argument about correct word usage.

So we’re looking for you as a deciding vote.

Between Googling it and talking to us, there weren’t knives and billy clubs involved.

You guys didn’t go, do you have a rumble on this?

We got a lot of back and forth.

He seems, he’s pretty sure that slate is proper usage as well as slate.

I think that, I think it’s an acorn, but I’m not quite sure.

If you could jump in on my side, that’d be great.

We can, we can.

We got your back, right?

They got to buy you drinks next time.

Martha’s got broken bottles in both hands and I’ve got a chair.

We’re ready to go.

Good, good, good.

And you’ve got the right word.

It is slake.

It’s S-L-A-K-E, slake.

Yes, slake your thirst.

And let’s just be definitive about it.

Without question, it is slake.

Yes, yes, yes.

Have you heard people using slate at all?

I’m not even sure if I would consider it an egg corn or more of a malaprop.

Well, let’s just explain again for our listeners what an egg corn is.

This is when people mishear something or misremember something,

And they say it in another way that kind of makes sense and doesn’t sound exactly wrong.

For example, some people think that an acorn, A-C-O-R-N, is egg corn, E-G-G-C-O-R-N.

And so they kind of work out a backstory for this word that kind of makes sense to them.

In this case, I would say to slay your thirst is an egg corn, S-L-A-Y,

Because you’re thinking, oh, I’m going to kill my thirst or destroy my thirst or stop my thirst, right?

But to slate your thirst? I don’t get how anybody could explain that to themselves where it would make sense.

Did he say why he thought the verb slate made sense in slate your thirst?

I think he was referring to some kind of third or fourth usage of the word slate, maybe.

I don’t know. To me, it sounds like, you know, he’s saying that next Wednesday at 9 p.m. He’s going to go ahead and have a beer to clench his thirst.

Oh, so he’s scheduling his thirst?

Pencil it in, right?

No, no, there’s an old, old meaning of slate, meaning to punish an enemy severely or to beat or thrash.

So technically, I’m going to say that.

But the number of people in the country who know that without looking it up is probably three, the three of us.

Right.

Well, Aaron is kind of an inventive fellow.

He’s an avid Dungeon and Dragons player.

Well, there’s his weakness.

Okay, right.

Why go to false mythologies when all the real ones are so interesting?

Exactly.

Well, I think that I’m glad that you guys came down on my side on this one.

I feel vindicated.

There’s one interesting thing about Slake that I love.

It’s one of those words that’s mostly used by fiction writers.

They love this word.

If you look at, if you analyze big texts, lots of collection of different kinds of texts,

It’s the fiction writers who keep this word going.

Well, I actually am a fiction writer.

Oh, you are?

Well, very good.

I am an MFA holder.

Oh, yeah?

Yes.

Yes, I am.

Well, you’re doing Slake proud then.

Okay.

No wonder you used it in conversation, right?

Yes.

Well, your credentials are better than his.

Dungeons and Dragons versus an MFA?

Come on.

I tried to tell him that, but now I can’t wait until he hears this on the air.

Well, tell him that we scoffed, all right?

We called.

Okay.

And use Slake Your Thirst in your next book or poem, or what are you writing?

I have a collection of poetry that’s finished, and I’m working on a novel right now.

Okay, great.

I’ll make sure to work the phrase in it someplace.

Yeah, then highlight it and send a copy to us and to your friend.

Well, I will.

Super. Thanks, Rebecca. Best of luck with the novel.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

We do like settling these linguistic disputes because a lot of times they get at these fundamental truths about English

And how we understand or misunderstand, which is often just as interesting.

Yes.

So call us 877-929-9673 or explain the whole mess in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha and Grant.

This is Kara from the smallest state with the biggest name.

Ooh, the smallest state with the biggest name.

Is it Rhode Island?

Rhode Island.

Rhode Island.

Grant.

What, it’s like one letter different, one letter less, right?

Or fewer.

Don’t get us started on that.

-oh.

So what’s that?

I subscribe to the word of the day from dictionary.com.

Okay.

And recently their word was one that I had never heard before, and I’m curious about its origin.

And even the dictionary.com entry said the origin was unknown.

So the word is gazump, and that’s G-A-Z-U-M-P.

And the website says it means to swindle a home buyer by raising the price just before the contract is about to be signed.

Ooh.

So I’ve been a lawyer for 15 years, and I primarily practice in real estate law.

Mm—

And I have never heard of this before.

Aha.

The practice or the word?

The word.

You would never participate in anything so underhanded, would you?

No.

No, absolutely not.

People from Rhode Island have pure morals.

Kara is not a gazumper or a gazumpstress.

Gazump.

What a great word, gazump.

A gazumptress.

Gazumptress?

Nice.

And I asked some of my colleagues, too, and nobody has ever heard of this word.

Gazump.

And it certainly does not sound Latin.

No.

No, the Z gives it away, right?

Yeah.

So I’m thinking, well, maybe there’s a rogue employee at dictionary.com

And he’s playing practical jokes and just making up words.

On the editor named Mr. Gazump.

That’s it.

Well, you know, just as a small tangent,

Dictionaries do sometimes make up fake words to find out when their material is being stolen by competitors.

But this is not one of those cases.

No?

No.

I have two reasons why you probably have never heard of this word before.

One, it’s primarily used in Britain, Great Britain.

Two, it supposedly has Yiddish roots.

And so if you’re not a Yiddish speaker or don’t come from Yiddish speakers, it might not sound familiar.

Most Yiddish speakers are people who have it in their family or might say, oh, yeah, that sounds vaguely Yiddish to me.

And so it dates back to about the 1920s, and it’s transformed a bit over time.

In the beginning, it was often used to mean just kind of a rascal or a scoundrel and a swindler.

And then eventually more or less fixed for a couple decades to mean to swindle or to cheat.

And then somewhere by about the 1970s, it was borrowed into British English to mean this particular cheat, this particular way of when a deal is almost about to be struck.

One of two things happens.

Either the seller, at the moment of signing, when the keys are about to be handed over,

Or all the paperwork’s about to be done, says,

Oh, you know, I forgot that actually all those trees in the yard are worth a lot more than I thought,

And so it’s going to cost you another $20,000, right?

And that’s gazumping.

At the last minute, when somebody’s like, their hopes are set on it,

They think the deal is done, and they’re so committed to the transaction

That the cheat who’s selling the place knows that they can get in there and take them for a little bit more.

Oh, and then they say, oi gazump!

No, they don’t.

Oi, bae.

But the other version of gazump, which can apply to any kind of transaction where there’s some kind of switcheroo at the last minute, where it’s not what you thought.

For example, in real estate, for example, if you’re buying any one of a number of condos in a building and you think that it’s the condo on the fourth floor that’s got the views,

But it actually turns out it’s the one on the fifth floor that’s facing the other direction that doesn’t have the views,

And at the last minute, you’re like, well, wait a second.

This isn’t unit 404.

This is unit 510.

I’m buying 404, right?

That’s a gazump at the last minute to kind of do a little switcheroo, a little cheat there.

So you think it’s like when you are buying a car and at the last second,

They’re putting all these add-ons and you really want that car.

It’s that kind of thing.

They don’t use it in the car industry.

No, they don’t.

That’s interesting that they don’t.

It’s strictly real estate.

And what’s really interesting, what’s really interesting, Cara,

Is that it started out as an American word.

Well through the 20s and into the 30s, and it kind of dies out.

And then in the 70s, it just pops up in British English.

In Britain.

Yeah, and the thing is, like, the etymological history is clear enough

That we’re pretty sure this is the same word.

It’s a great detective work you have to do to find this stuff out.

Wow.

Yeah.

Very interesting.

I could have sworn it was made up.

I’m going to use it in my next closing and see what happens.

That’s a hand-waving.

Let us know how that goes, okay, Kara?

I will, I will.

Thanks for calling, Kara.

Okay.

Thank you, guys.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Is there a term of interest from your workplace that you’d like to talk about with us?

Maybe you don’t know the origin or maybe you’d just like to share it.

The number is 877-929-9673.

Or you can send them all in email to the gazumps here at words@waywordradio.org.

There’s a new movement afoot, Martha.

Yes.

People still are looking for a way to indicate sarcasm in text.

Oh, yeah.

Punctuation or they want to just some way to tell that a passage is sarcastic without having to say, he sarcastically said.

Exactly.

So at sartalics.com, they are promoting the idea of italics, only they lean to the left instead of to the right.

And if the italics lean to the left, then you know that the passage is sarcastic.

I kind of like that.

It might work, right?

But the thing is, all of these typefaces will have to be remade.

You’ll have to put a new set in there, right?

Oh, and I’d grown accustomed to your typeface.

That’s awesome and terrible.

It was awful.

Yeah, I know.

How do you indicate sarcasm?

Sometimes there’s an emoticon.

Sometimes it’s just the way that you write it.

Sometimes it’s just a thing that you wouldn’t say any other way but sarcastic, like, yeah, right.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Stacey Robb. I’m calling from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Stacey. Welcome to the program.

Hi, thanks for calling.

Thank you.

What can we help you with today?

Well, I had a fun story to share.

Basically, I’ve been traveling around the world for the past couple of years.

Nice.

And I’ve picked up some funny phrases along the way,

And I thought I would share my favorite one, which comes from Jordan.

While I was living there on a Fulbright scholarship, one of my students told me about the phrase

Bilmishmish, and literally translated, it means in the apricot.

And he kept asking me, well, what does this mean?

How do I translate it?

And I finally had to ask somebody else, and it actually translates to mean in your dreams.

And I was like, I don’t get it.

Why does it mean in your dreams?

It means in the apricot. And it turns out that the apricot season is so short in Jordan

That they say, you know, in the apricot season for something that is very unlikely to happen.

And I thought that was such a cute phrase.

It is. What is the Arabic of it again?

Yeah, let’s hear it.

Bilmishmish.

Bilmishmish.

I know that etymologically the word apricot comes from words that mean to ripen early.

It’s related to precocious, which is cooking or ripening early.

Yeah, yeah, apricot.

So that’s fabulous.

That’s cool.

So the idiom kind of matches with the etymology of the English word apricot.

That’s pretty cool.

What were you doing on your Fulbright?

Well, I was teaching English at a culinary school.

Oh, cool.

And I was also teaching music to Iraqi refugee children.

Wow.

Thank you so much, Stacey, for sharing this story of a cool idiom from another language.

That’s awesome.

Thank you.

Okay.

Nice to talk to you guys.

Yeah, take care.

Best of luck.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Here’s a list of Egyptian Arabic sayings that I liked.

All these, of course, translated into English.

Can you guess what the English equivalent of this one is?

He ate the camel and all it carried.

Is that falling for a tall tale?

No, it’s to eat someone out of house and home.

Oh.

He ate the camel and all it carried.

Some of these we have in English as well.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

That’s pretty common, right?

What about this?

Grapes are eaten one by one.

What is that?

Step by step?

Yeah, one step at a time.

Oh, that’s nice.

That’s nice.

I have a really nice book of Arabic proverbs called The Son of a Duck is a Floater.

And it’s got all these great illustrations.

I don’t know who the author is, but it’s a lot of fun.

Is that idiom like the English one, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?

I think so.

I think so.

Very good.

Yeah, what an evocative expression, right?

We’d love to hear about your travels and the language that you picked up

And the things that struck you from other languages that could work so well in English.

Share them, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

That’s our show for this week.

Don’t forget, you can leave us a message even if we’re not on the air.

Call us at 877-929-9673 or send email to words@waywordradio.org.

Stay in touch with us all week on Facebook and Twitter.

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Or you can get the podcast on iTunes.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also chooses our music.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell, Jennifer Powell, and James Ramsey.

And we say hello to Kathy Myers in the studio.

The 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.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Ta luego.

Take care.

Neither, neither, neither.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

You like potato and I like potato.

You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing up.

Let’s all if we call it.

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.

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