Pizza Bones (episode #1624)

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.

Grant, if something’s really easy to do, you would say, oh, that’s a cinch?

Yeah, it’s a cinch.

Or what kind of food would you refer to?

That’s a piece of cake.

Exactly, a piece of cake.

And that’s what we say in English, but around the world there are various expressions for this that have to do with other kinds of foods.

For example, in Dutch, the expression for it’s a piece of cake translates as it’s a little egg.

Isn’t that sweet?

A little egg.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or in Polish, it translates as it’s a roll with butter.

Or in Brazilian Portuguese, I love this one, it’s a papaya with sugar.

A papaya with sugar.

Now that’s a thing.

Yeah.

Isn’t that tastier than cake?

And better for you.

What kind of cake are you eating?

I’m thinking of my mom’s carrot cake with the cream cheese icing.

Oh, okay, you win.

It’s a piece.

Where are you getting these, Martha?

These sound fantastic.

I am glad you asked, Grant.

They are collected in a new book by writer Adam Sharp.

He trolls the internet for phrases like this and comes up with some of the funniest, most colorful ways that people around the world find to express themselves.

And we’ve talked about some of his words and phrases that he’s found before, like somebody who’s really self-important might be described as the Tarzan of the flower pot.

Oh, yes.

That’s a fantastic phrase.

But anyway, his new book is called The Wheel is Spinning, But the Hamster is Dead, A Journey Around the World in Idioms, Proverbs, and General Nonsense.

And I will share more of those later in the show.

And that expression means the light’s on, but nobody’s home.

But here, we’re both at home, and you can call us 877-929-9673, 24 hours a day.

You might get voicemail.

And that number works in the United States and Canada.

There’s also a dozen ways to reach us on our website, no matter where you’re listening in the world.

Go to waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

This is Marina Abbott calling from the beautiful Valley of the Moon, Sonoma, California.

What’s up, Marina?

What’s on your mind?

Well, actually, I have a question about my last name. As we know, many last names in English come from someone’s ancestors type of work, for example, Baker or Smith or Cook and so forth.

My last name Abbott comes from the head of a monastery. At least that’s my understanding, which I’ve always wondered, aren’t they supposed to be celibate, not getting married and passing on their name?

So how did myself and many other people end up with the last name Abbott?

Sometimes people stray, Marina.

No, that’s shocking.

But no, but it’s a good question, Martha, right?

Because people have names like Parsons.

My in-laws have the name Parsons.

Oh, that’s true.

That’s true.

Although Parsons can be married, but what are we to do with all the bishops out there?

Oh my goodness, of course.

Right. Yes. What do we do with Thelonious Monk?

What do we do with all the people out there named Pope, for heaven’s sake?

What is going on?

This is a bigger story than I ever imagined.

It may be that people named Abbott were named Abbott because they were employed in the household of an abbot.

You know, they had big households, a church had a lot of money.

Or it may have to do with the fact that they lived near an abbot.

You know, we have all these names in not only English, but other languages that have to do with where you live.

You know, somebody named Hill lives near a hill.

Somebody named Woods lives near the woods.

Or in French, Dubois, you know, they live near the woods.

Or in Spanish or Italian, Rivera, you know, they live near the rivers.

So it could be that somebody lived near the abbot’s home.

And I’ve also seen suggestions that maybe it’s just that someone acted as pompous as an abbot or as pious as an abbot.

Oh, I love that one.

Would that fit with the rest of your family, Marina?

You know, we’re a pretty freewheeling bunch, but I think that that’s a really fun idea.

The idea of proximity did occur to me, but the personality trait aspect of it had not occurred to me.

I just think that’s really funny.

Yeah, so it’s that simple.

It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

Well, they didn’t have to stray.

Let’s just put it that way.

Yeah.

They could have kept their vows.

Well, thank you both so much. I just I love your show and I get so much pleasure out of it. And it’s really a treat to be able to talk to you.

We got a lot of pleasure from your question. We don’t get to talk about on a mastix very much.

No, we love talking about names and naming.

And that’s a good one.

All right. Take care of yourself.

Thank you. Bye bye.

Take care.

Yeah, let’s put the call out, Martha.

So we’d love talking about names and naming, whether it’s an Anglophone name or a Hispanic name or a French name or from somewhere else.

We’d love to give it a shot and help you find out more about it.

877-929-9673 is a phone number that’s toll-free 24 hours a day in the United States and Canada.

And there are lots of ways to reach us, no matter where you live in the world.

You can find them all on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Leah Segal. I’m calling from Pittsburgh, but I’m originally from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Leah. Welcome to the show.

So I was calling about a question that I had that I’ve encountered twice in recent days.

So first, it was a couple of weeks ago where I moved into a new dorm situation with college.

And they let me know that there’d be a biweekly cleaning service.

And I, at first I was like, oh my gosh, twice a week, they’re going to come into my house and like clean my house. That’s a lot.

Like when are they coming in? I need to plan around this.

And I asked and I said, oh no, we mean once every two weeks.

And I said, oh, okay, fine. Right.

And you know, same thing happened.

I got, I got a new job and they told me I’d be getting biweekly pay.

That does not mean I’m getting paid twice a week.

And at that point, I did think that, you know, I was like confused because I’m like, all right, well, this means obviously now once every two weeks.

But then when something happens bi-monthly, that’s also that’s twice a month that that happens.

Or when something happens biannually, I would think that that’s once every six months, so twice a year.

So I was wondering why then it’s not twice a week when you say bi-weekly.

Yeah, so when they told you the cleaners were coming bi-weekly, your heart went into your throat, right?

You’re like, I have to clean up the cleaners twice a week?

No, no, no. We’re not addressing the larger issue here.

Where are the dorms that have cleaning services?

That’s what I’m saying. I know it was abroad.

What school did you go to? I went to the wrong school.

That’s what I’m saying. I know. I was lucky.

It was also, yeah, get this, it was in Italy.

So that was the real joy of it.

Oh, goodness. Oh, good. I imagine the cafe plan was amazing.

I know, exactly.

Cafeteria plan?

So, Leah, were they giving you these instructions in Italian or in English when they were telling you about the cleaning service?

They were telling me this in English.

And so initially, when I was confused and they corrected me, I thought, oh, maybe this is like a language barrier.

Maybe this is on me or maybe like whatever, some communication.

But then it happened again when I came back to America.

And so I said, wait a minute.

Well, you know, Leah, Grant and I are both really inclusive when it comes to language.

And I almost never say that a word should be banished from the language.

But I’m going to nominate biweekly because it causes so much confusion.

You know, in Britain, they say fortnightly, which makes sense, right?

Every fortnight.

I wouldn’t use the word banished, Martha.

Was that?

Let’s not use the word banished.

Let’s just say retire or rusticate or give it its justly reward, something like that.

I don’t know.

I think it needs to be convicted and sent away to prison because it has caused so much difficulty for so many people.

You know, if you show up for your biweekly meeting and then you realize nobody else is there or you think you’re going to get paid biweekly and you’re not.

Right.

But you’re right.

Short nightly’s nice, right?

Or every other week or twice a month or semi-monthly or 26 times a year?

Oh, well, but even if they change it, I feel like people would still confuse it.

It’s like when you say get off at the next exit, you don’t know which exit you’re talking about.

I just think biweekly has caused so much trouble that I wouldn’t even touch it.

I don’t know. Grant may differ.

No, I agree generally.

Again, I don’t know about banish, but avoiding it is fine.

It’s as Brian Garner puts it, it’s skunked.

Bi-weekly is just too problematic.

If you’re looking for clarity and not to have this conversation every time it’s used, just avoid using it.

And same for bi-monthly, frankly.

So if you mean every other week, say every other week or fortnightly or 26 times a year.

Right?

Right.

If you mean the other thing, say twice a week or 104 times a year or every Tuesday and Friday.

Just say whatever you mean without saying biweekly.

Yeah.

Ways to be clearer about it.

Yes.

Yes.

It’s all about clarity.

And I always like to have a single word for some concept if it’s possible.

But I just don’t think it’s possible with this particular word.

So ostracize, send it into exile, vote it off the island.

I don’t know.

What do you think, Leah?

I think that it could be laid to rest.

Call us back sometime with another question and maybe we can give you a fun answer.

Perfect.

Simply I will.

Okay.

Well, thank you again.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Ciao.

Bye, Leah.

Ciao.

Ciao.

Ciao.

Call us early and often, 877-929-9673.

We were talking not long ago about ice cream trucks, and we heard from Robin Winston, who wrote to us and said,

I was about three years old, and the then ubiquitous ice cream truck frequently drove through our neighborhood, and it was always playing some cheery song or other.

And Robin says that her mother, who was then in her early 20s, didn’t want to be nagged about ice cream.

And so Robin says, whenever we heard those dulcet tones approaching, she told me, oh, listen, it’s the music truck.

The nice man drives around playing music for everybody.

Isn’t that brilliant?

Yeah, she’s not the only one who emailed us about that.

Other parents had the same brilliant idea.

Yeah, Robin says, imagine my surprise and delight when at age five I was playing at a friend’s house near home and learned that the driver of the music truck also sold ice cream.

Eyes were opened that day.

I don’t know. I might be scarred for life. You didn’t tell me there was ice cream.

The truth about ice cream and language reveals right here on A Way with Words, 877-929-9673.

Or find us all over social media.

You can find all those links and addresses on our website at waywordradio.org.

More about language and how we use it as A Way with Words continues.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And sashaying across the floor is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

You know, I never miss a chance to sashay, so here I go.

A while ago, I heard people talking about this movie, Barbenheimer.

And I got, like, really excited because I would love to see a film about a walking, talking doll designing nuclear bombs.

It sounded like fun on a bun.

Unfortunately, as you may know, it turned out to be two movies.

And everyone was just smushing the two names together.

However, I do love unceremoniously smushing two words together.

Now, let’s program some more double features.

I’ll give you a synopsis of a combined movie.

You tell me the portmanteau of the two one-word movie titles that I used to create it.

Okay?

Yep.

Oh, boy.

Yep.

All right.

Here’s one.

Now, only the persistent investigation of a Minnesota chief of police can possibly track down restless spirits and otherworldly demons like Gozer the Gozerian.

Far Ghostbusters?

Far Ghostbusters.

Yes.

Sign me up.

Now, only four urbanized jungle animals can possibly defeat the violent drug lord, Tony Montana.

Madagascar face.

Madagascar face, right?

That’s good.

There you go.

With a stirring title song by Adele, this Daniel Craig film is about a secret agent who helps a poor orphan boy just get some more ghoul.

Sky Folliver.

Sky follower yes with an exclamation point at the end for sure a creepy motel owner is

So obsessed with his mother that he seeks her out in the Mexican land of the dead.

Psycho psycho psycho psycho yeah I love it.

Now, there are just way too many special effects in this film about a baby boy who was lost in a jungle, but is rescued and raised by huge blue aliens.

Avatar Zan.

Avatar Zan, yes!

A particularly intelligent collie teams up with an undersized racehorse to win races nobody thought they could.

Lassie Biscuit?

Lassie Biscuit, nice. That’s your double feature right there.

Two animal movies, they work very well together.

Finally, a grumpy ogre is redeemed when he finds the mythic sword of King Arthur.

A grumpy ogre, Shrek something.

Excalibur?

Shrekscalibur?

Shrekscalibur, yes.

Shrekscalibur.

You got it.

I mean, is there any movie that wouldn’t be improved with a Shrek?

That’s true.

That’s true.

Thanks so much, John.

We really appreciate it.

All right.

Well, I’m looking forward to seeing you at the movies.

Nice.

I’ll see you next week.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Martha and I and John and everyone else who is a part of this team love to talk to you about language.

You know, we do more than give around with quizzes.

We talk to you about your stories of language, the stuff that you read, the stuff that you discovered, the stuff you want to find out.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And if those aren’t enough ways to reach us, you can find even more on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Meg from Kentucky.

Hello, Meg from Kentucky.

Hello, Meg.

When I was growing up in New England, outside Boston, my dad used to say this little thing all the time to children.

Sort of an entertainment, he’d walk up behind you and whisper it in your ear or just say it over your shoulder.

And it was,

And I want to know where that came from.

All right, you got to do that again, Meg.

Ish-biddley-o-ten-dot-in-bobo-bedeet-en-dot-in. What’s the end of it?

Bobo, baditin, dotin, wanatin.

Like a firecracker going out.

Like a snake at the end, something.

Okay.

And this was his idea of entertainment?

Yeah, well, he couldn’t really keep up with adult conversations, so he’d go off and mess with kids.

Oh, my gosh.

That was just one of his things.

And he never said where it came from.

And he used to also sing a couple of things about mosquitoes and bars of soap and things that I have discovered were camp songs from the 40s and 50s, maybe.

Like, I wish I was a little mosquito.

And I think that probably came from my mother’s sister and father.

Just seemed more like them.

And my aunt, my mom’s sister, was a Girl Scout for years in that era.

Well, I tell you, the flashing lights went off as soon as you said camp over here.

Yeah, I think probably there are lots of Girl Scouts and lots of Boy Scouts or anybody who’s ever been away to Sleepaway Camp who’s singing right along with you or Meg.

They’re saying, no, no, no, I heard a different version.

My version goes like this because I heard this at camp when I was a little kid.

It’s been around for decades and it goes by various names.

It’s part of a larger song called Flea Fly Flow.

And it involves clapping or patting your hands, you know, kind of like patty cake.

And sometimes some versions of it get faster and faster and faster.

Some of them get quieter and quieter and quieter and end with that sort of hissing sound.

But the one that I learned as a kid was flea, flea fly, flea fly flow, flea fly flow, la vista, achi kachi kumarachi, ooh, ish, gediddley, otan, botan, bibi, bidatan, watan, taun, shh.

And about what year would that be, Martha, if you don’t mind me asking?

1894.

Oh, you’re like me, older than Dirk.

I asked because I found a version in a Corona California high school yearbook from 1964 that’s very similar. It’s on the page for the cheerleaders, and it’s very similar.

And we had a caller, or we had a listener email us a version in 2016 that was very similar as well. But in the middle, it’s cumulata, cumulata, viste.

Oh no, no, no, not the viste.

Indi-mini, desi-mini, uwa, uwa, walla-mini, hexa-mini, sola-mini, uwa, uwa, -bi, billi-otin-dotin, bo-bo-a-dee-n-dotin.

Shh.

It does sound like a flea fly.

Yeah, that definitely sounds like a camp song when you put all that together.

I can see lots of little heads bobbing along. There’s another history here. Parts of this song have popped up in other arenas and movies and songs outside of the camp experience.

Yeah.

For example, there was a 1964 Chubby Checker song, Kumulabiste, which actually sounds very much like that. I mean, it’s the same melody, the Kumulabiste.

Mm—

Cool.

There’s also a song in the 1944 movie National Barn Dance. It’s called Down Home Rag, and it includes the words Deaton, Dot, and Dooten, the same words that appear in this camp song. And its lyrics are copyright 1939. So that gives us an early date to work with.

And so that last part, the Deaton Dottons, got another history. So there’s an idea here that maybe this camp song is pieced together from different parts of nonsense, from other parts of American life, American folklore.

Plus, we haven’t even talked about jazz music and scat. So there’s this whole history of scat starting about in the 1920s, which is incredibly similar to some of this. And so it’s entirely possible all of this goes back to jazz music and scat.

Thank you for confirming some of my suspicions and giving me some more information that was completely new to me because that’s great.

All right. Take care of yourself, Meg. Call us again sometime.

Thank you. I will.

All right. Be well.

Bye.

We would love to have you chant your camp songs into our phone, 1-877-929-9673. That’s soul free in the United States and Canada.

Or send us a voice note. You can send it attached to email or attached to WhatsApp or attached to a text message. Find out how to do that on our website at waywordradio.org/contact.

Kate DiCamillo is the author of more than 25 books for children, including Tale of Desperate, Flora and Ulysses, and Because of Winn-Dixie.

And talking about children’s literature and the responsibility of writing an ending for a children’s book that rings true, she said, we have been given this sacred task of making hearts large through story. We are working to make hearts that are capable of containing much joy and much sorrow, hearts capacious enough to contain the complexities and mysteries of ourselves and of each other.

Grant, I just thought that was so lovely.

That is very lovely.

The sacred task of making hearts large.

Yeah, capacious, you know?

Capacious.

You have to be able to embrace the joy and the sorrow. I just thought that was a beautiful way of writing about books for children.

I would expect the author of those books to come up with those phrases.

Of course.

The author’s name again is…

Kate DiCamillo.

And you can share your favorite quotations about literature with us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Delisa Staten calling from Pawleys Island, South Carolina.

Welcome to the show, Delisa. What can we do for you?

Well, I had a question about a phrase that my mother-in-law used frequently. When she would prepare a large amount of food, for example, if we would be there for a meal on a weekend or something, she might say, I hope you’re hungry because I have enough for Cox’s Army.

And I’ve never heard anyone else use that phrase, but I’ve found myself using it sometimes these days as I’ve prepared food for my own family. So I thought I’d give you a call and see if you’ve heard other people say that before.

Enough food for Cox’s Army. That’s C-O-X apostrophe S, Cox’s.

Well, that’s the way it sounded to me, you know. So I don’t know if that’s the way to say it or not, but that’s what I would hear her say.

And, Delisa, was that always about food or did she use it in other ways?

I think she might have used it in other ways, too. Anytime she had like an abundance of something, she would use that phrase.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

The name Cox here has undergone a bit of a transformation over the years. Just so you know, your mother-in-law wasn’t the only person to use that expression. It’s got history to it.

There was a depression during the 1890s. And a fellow by the name of Jacob Coxey, that’s C-O-X-E-Y, rallied the unemployed men of the nation to march on Washington, D.C. to demand relief from the government, to demand welfare of some kind, payments or rations or food or whatever that they could get, jobs even.

And these men came from around the country in groups large and small. A lot of them were farmers or laborers, and all of them, though, had this common characteristic that they’d been hit hard by this depression. They had lost jobs, they’d lost farms, maybe houses, property.

And as they came from around the country, they depended upon the generosity of others for their food and shelter. So, for example, in Massillon, Ohio, where the march started, the mayor gave them food and lodging. In Pittsburgh, the city council passed a resolution to give them food and shelter. And in Washington, D.C., the Salvation Army also gave them food and clothing.

But in some places, they overwhelmed the resources that were available. There wasn’t enough food to go around. They were arrested or the people didn’t agree with their goals, considered them to be just lazy men who were looking for a handout without earning it.

And in one place in Montana, the Coxseyites, as they were known, they stole a train. So they weren’t all up to, they didn’t all have the best motives.

So as you might expect, there were a lot of different political opinions about this. And this was all over the newspapers for a very long time. Coxsey’s army became kind of the default term for these people because it really felt like they were literally marching as an army might upon Washington to make a claim.

And some people were worried that they were going to do something akin to military damage on the town and upon the officials there.

Yeah. And the army got bigger and bigger as they got closer.

Yeah. Yeah. So they, yeah. The army, the men, it was almost all men that gathered in Washington. As they approached Washington, the group became kind of astonishingly larger and began to worry officials.

Any place that these men passed through, they stripped clean because there were not a lot of resources for them. And whether they were given the food or they stole it or promised to pay it back with IOUs, there was not a lot of food left when they passed through.

So Cox’s Army became known as a group of men who were hard to feed. And the whole point of this is, this is where the expression comes from. To feed Cox’s Army required a lot of food and a lot of resources.

Sure. Well, I appreciate that. I love your show and I listen to it every chance I get. And when I heard your phone number to call, I thought, well, this is my chance to find out where this came from. So that’s great. I appreciate it.

Well, thank you so much, Delisa. You take care of yourself.

Okay, y’all have a great day. Bye.

You too.

Bye-bye.

There have been other Coxes who have been said to be the source of Cox’s Army, but they’re all later than this, and they are not the source of the expression Cox’s Army.

So it is definitely Jacob Coxey who first organized this march on Washington in the 1890s.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, hello. My name is Ronville Birdie, calling from Jacksonville, Florida.

Welcome to the show, Ronville.

Well, I’m a child of the 70s, I guess. And, you know, growing up, I always had this song, Manic Monday.

And as I grew older, I became a mental health therapist. And being around bipolar individuals, you’ll hear the term, someone is manic. And I always wonder, like, where did this come from?

And how would you describe that?

Well, from a mental health standpoint, it’s someone that’s having risky behaviors, danger to themselves.

They’re somewhat frantic.

It’s just like being over-anxious or being over-zealous in everything they do.

They may clean a lot.

They may start doing a lot of risky or being promiscuous or different things like that to where they’re having a manic episode.

Yeah, and it’s interesting, too, isn’t it, that manic is both used in a clinical setting, but it’s also in the general population.

Those of us who aren’t therapists sometimes refer to someone as manic or like you said, the song Manic Monday.

Just another Manic Monday, right?

Yes, I mean, they had me go look up at that video, and I was like, okay, yeah, I can’t really figure out on the video where it comes from.

Okay, well, let’s see if we can unpack this word.

Manic comes from the old word mania, which goes back to the ancient Greek word mania, which means a madness or a frenzy.

So you might talk about the mania of soldiers rushing into battle in antiquity or or also somebody who is mad, who is just raging and furious.

And so it has to do with that same kind of frenetic energy and rapid speech.

And sometimes you’re loosely connected thoughts and and delusions of grandeur.

And in the 14th century, it was used that way in English, mania, to describe that kind of behavior.

And, of course, we also get the word maniac from that.

All those words go back to an extremely ancient root that may be related to words like mind and mental.

And it’s also extended to words like megalomania and kleptomania and nymphomania.

And those are pathological conditions.

But then we also have, for example, Beatlemania, right?

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay.

So it’s a very old word.

That makes lots of sense.

Thank you guys for clearing that up for me.

Sure thing.

Thank you, Ronville.

Take care of yourself.

Be well.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Martha and I are here to help.

You can find a dozen ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org

Or send us an email today, right now, to words@waywordradio.org.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And Grant, did you know that a turkey’s head can change colors?

Maybe you know this from growing up on a farm.

A turkey’s head can change colors.

Yes, I did know this.

Sometimes even the wattle can become bluish.

Yes, I learned this only today, that depending on its mood,

A turkey’s skin can shift from red to blue to white because the skin has these bundles of collagen interspersed with lots of blood vessels.

And so if the bird is angry or agitated, the spacing between those collagen fibers changes when the blood vessels swell or contract.

And I learned this because I went down something of a turkey rabbit hole, to mix metaphors,

When I found out that the Japanese word for turkey, which is something like shihimencho, translates as seven-faced bird.

Isn’t that wonderful?

It’s because of the change of color.

Seven-faced bird?

Yes.

That sounds like a political insult.

Well, it’s a descriptive word for this kind of bird.

And there’s a similar word in Korean.

I learned it from the book, The Wheel is Spinning But the Hamster is Dead,

A Journey Around the World in Idioms, Proverbs, and General Nonsense by Adam Sharp.

That sounds like a fantastically fun book, Martha.

It really is. It’s a great browsing book.

It gathers sayings from around the world.

And as you can imagine, some of them are coarse or body, but that’s often the way that people talk, right?

Yeah, so you’ve bookmarked those sections for me.

Well, I also have some of the cleaner ones.

In Ireland, if you want to describe someone who’s always showing off or engaging in one-upmanship,

You can say, if you’ve been to 10 a reef, he’s been to 11 a reef.

I’ve heard that one before.

Oh, have you?

Yeah, that’s lovely. I like it.

Or you’ll really like this one, too.

If you’ve got an elephant, he’s got the box it came in.

Oh, I love that.

I’m still going back to the turkey with the chromatospores, though.

Like the turkey that can change colors like an octopus.

Yeah.

I was still thinking about that.

The seven-faced bird.

That’s crazy.

Yeah, so much to learn.

So much to learn.

And so many jumping off points in this book.

We’ll link to this book on our website.

And the book again is…

The wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead.

And despite the dreary title, it sounds like a lovely and exciting book.

We’ll have a link to it on our website.

And we’d love to hear about what you’re reading or those fun idioms and expressions from wherever you live in the world.

And whatever languages you speak, English or not, doesn’t matter.

You can send them to us in email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on social media.

All of our accounts are on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Tim from Jacksonville, Florida.

Hey, Tim.

Welcome.

What’s up?

Hey, so I’m calling in because I have a couple words that have been sort of following me around my entire life have been made fun of for the way I’ve said them.

The way I say the words milk and eggs, which it’s funny, my ex used to tell me the way I said it used to send a shiver down her spine.

And I guess when I’ve broken down the words, I sort of get where they’re getting at.

Instead of milk like a till or a miller, I say milk.

Or instead of eggs like beggar, I say eggs.

And I have a mother who has a pretty strong South Carolinian accent and then a father who is from Canada and has a pretty strong Newfoundland accent.

And I was just wondering if maybe I picked up those words or pronunciations from them or maybe it’s something locally from my region.

Not quite sure.

Were you raised in Jacksonville?

I was raised in Jacksonville, yes.

I was here for most of my life.

Okay.

And so you say, so milk as in the white dairy product from cows, M-I-L-K.

You say it how?

Like N-E-L-K, milk.

It sounds right to me, but to most people I say to, they’ll stop me and they’re like, what?

And so, yeah.

And then the white or brown spheroid objects from chickens that we fry for breakfast, you say those as?

As eggs, like in almost like A-G-E-S, you know, like instead of like egg as in like beggar.

So, yeah. And most people would expect to hear milk or eggs.

Marcia, what do you say?

I say milk and eggs.

Milk and eggs.

And you know what’s funny, Tim?

There are a number of people listening who either can’t hear the difference between you and Martha,

Or they’re hearing you say it, Tim, and they’re like, yeah, that sounds right.

That sounds fine to me.

Milk.

Milk sounds 100% fine.

It feels weird saying it.

But you, just because people have teased you for it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that’s true.

When you go to bed at night and there is the fluffy thing at the top of the head of the bed that you put your head on, what do you call that?

Pillow.

Say it again?

Pillow.

You don’t say Pellow, P-E-L-L-O-W.

No, I don’t say Pellow. I don’t say Pellow.

Well, let me put you at ease.

And Martha and I don’t do a lot of finger wagging on this show, but I don’t want to do any now, but people should just relax a little bit when they hear you say milk and eggs.

Because both of those pronunciations are sprinkled throughout the United States.

I want to focus because it’s just going to take too long to do both.

But let’s focus on milk, M-I-L-K, and your pronunciation, milk.

It is especially common in the Great Lakes.

We’ll get to Tallahassee in a minute.

But it is found throughout the United States and Canada.

It is found throughout North America.

Field reports exist for it for at least the last hundred years.

So it’s not even new, including parts of the Carolinas where your mom is from and parts of Canada where your dad is from.

So it is entirely possible that you picked it up from them, even if you don’t exactly hear them say it.

There may be occasions where you hear them say it.

Some people try to pin that melk, M-E-L-K pronunciation, on Dutch or German heritage because there are words like that in those languages.

But really what’s happening is just a function of a certain type of vowel before a certain type of L, the letter L.

It’s called lax vowel lowering, lax, L-A-X.

And it’s a linguistic term, lax, not a negative comment about someone’s motivation to speak well.

And so I just want to clarify here, this is something happening in sprinkled patches throughout North America.

It doesn’t make you a bad speaker.

It’s a dialect feature.

This is something happening in the language because of the structure of words.

Because one sound follows another sound.

And so it’s a natural thing to happen in the mouth.

So it’s not surprising to hear you say it.

That actually is very quite interesting now.

It makes me want to go talk to my two sides of the family and see which ones I might have picked it up from.

Well, those aren’t exactly the same sounds, but I just want to point out that it is incredibly common as languages change and morph for vowels to fluctuate and they move and they become new things.

We’ve had vowel shifts happen in English as a whole.

We’ve had vowel shifts currently taking place right now as we speak in North America.

And this milk pronunciation may end up being permanent, at least for some speakers of some dialects of North American English.

So it is always changing.

So when people ask you why you say milk, what you need to say is it’s a dialect feature.

It’s just who I am and it’s based upon how I speak.

It’s my idiolect.

Idiolect is your personal language and all its features put together.

Tim, you going to run out and order a coffee with milk right now?

Milk?

Yeah, I’ll crack a few eggs, too.

Eggs.

Sounds good.

All right.

Take care of yourself, Tim.

Thanks for calling.

I appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye.

Appreciate it, too.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673.

I saw a tweet I really liked from poet and teacher Francis Klein, who wrote,

My friend just referred to the overemphasized voice people use to read poems as spoken Garamond.

Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. It’s a word. I’m feeling the word. It’s spoken Garamond.

And of course, that has me imagining what different typefaces would sound like, you know.

Mm—

Yeah.

Is it a different typeface for haiku than it is for limericks?

I don’t know.

I’m thinking of spoken comic sans.

I think spoken comic sans has got to be in like some of the hack comics voice, right?

What’s the hackiest comic you can think of?

Whose voice is in papyrus?

Is it Charleston Heston?

Let my people go.

That’s pretty good.

We’d love to hear the voices that you can match with your favorite typefaces, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Anna in Concord, North Carolina.

Concord, right outside of Kannapolis. I know it well.

Exactly. And it’s not Concord, it’s Concord.

Right.

Concord. We are in Concord about Concord.

Hi, Anna, welcome to the show. What is on your mind?

Well, my family and I were having pizza for dinner the other night, and my son happened to mention that he had told a friend of his that he will sometimes give our dog pizza bones, and the dog will carry them around and just use them as a toy rather than a snack.

But anyway, this friend said that she had never heard the term pizza bones before, and that got us to thinking, well, where did we start using it?

And I seem to recollect that way back in the late 70s, early 80s, maybe, I knew somebody that worked at a pizza hut.

And I believe that that might be where I first heard the term pizza bones used.

And I’ve been using it ever since.

And my husband and I worked for a long time in Cleveland, and the backstage crew and theater tech people that we hung out with the most always seemed to use the term pizza bones.

And we didn’t have any idea where it came from.

So we thought we’d ask you.

And I think the big question is, does your family eat the pizza bones?

It depends on who made the pizza and how good the crust is.

Right, right.

Pizza bones are the crust.

After you’ve eaten the soft stuff with the cheese in the sauce, it’s the hard outer rim.

Yes, some people eat them, some people never do.

Right, right.

And I think you’re right that it depends on the pizza.

I mean, you get a good wood-fired pizza with those kinds of leopard spot, you know, slightly burned parts on the pizza bones.

I will gobble those up. How about you? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Especially if it’s really good thin crust.

Yes, yes. And you know, I had never heard this term pizza bones until about 10 years ago when somebody called with that very same question. And they use the term pizza bones.

And since then, I’ve seen a lot of discussions where people argue over whether it’s a crust or pizza bones.

And it seems like particularly dog lovers like to call them pizza bones because you can just picture, you know, Rover coming up to the table and handing them the bones.

So that’s what I use now is pizza bones.

But there are different terms for this, certainly crust, and some people call it a dough lip.

We also had a caller who said… A dough lip. A dough lip. You you can’t just go right by that.

Dough lip?

Like L-I-P?

Yes, yes.

Like the lip of the dough over the pan.

You know, it’s the dough lip.

And we also had a caller one time who said that what they do is they call it the dashboard, which I kind of like.

You know, it’s like the dashboard in a car kind of blocking things.

And then in Italian, it’s il cornicione, which is the cornice, you know, like an architectural term.

Yeah, so pizza bones has been around for a while.

Grant, I’m not sure how long, but it’s certainly something that a lot of people use.

Yeah, I don’t know how long either.

It’s right up there with pizza handles and pizza rind.

Rind suggests that you’re not going to eat it like you wouldn’t eat usually the rind of an orange.

Although some people do.

Pizza handle, I like that.

Yeah, the handle.

It’s what you’re holding the pizza by.

But that also suggests that maybe you’re not going to eat it.

The thing is, if it’s really hard, what you do, you make sure you have some extra marinara and you dip it.

That’s what you do with it if it’s hard.

Soften it up a little bit and then you can finish it.

Or garlic butter.

Garlic butter.

I was going for something of fewer calories, Martha.

The Japanese call it something like pizza no mimi, which means pizza ear.

So it’s the ear of the pizza, like you might grab somebody by the ear to hold them still.

But it sticks out, right? Just like an ear does.

Yeah. So, Anna, to answer your original question, yes, there are lots of people who use the term pizza bones.

And I think particularly people who have dogs as companions.

Well, that certainly makes a lot of sense.

But I had never heard dough lip or dashboard or pizza.

I think I’ve heard pizza rind before, but the other two have never before.

So those are some good terms to throw out, too.

Thank you for sharing with us, Anna.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Thank you very much.

Have a good afternoon.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So put your phone up to your pizza hole and give us a call, 877-929-9673, and talk to us about the sling that you use and where you picked it up.

Following up on our conversation about a possible better term for mocktail, that is a drink that doesn’t have alcohol in it, we heard from Rob Keim from Walcott, New York.

And he noted that a food magazine he was perusing used the term zero-proof drink.

And Rob says that sounds a bit better and more grown up than virgin cocktail or mocktail.

What do you think, Grant?

Oh, I love it. Zero-proof.

So 100 proof is 50% alcohol, and so zero proof is 0% alcohol.

But it sounds fancy.

Well, it does sound fancy.

And in fact, Rob posted to our Facebook group the article that he was reading that had that in it.

And it is a recipe for a harissa pomegranate cocktail.

And I’ve got to share this with you, Grant, because it sounds amazing.

It includes cool Lapsang Souchong black tea, pomegranate juice, lemon juice, harissa simple syrup, rose water, pink peppercorns for garnish.

And to give it a vegan-friendly froth, a half ounce of aquafaba, which I learned is liquid from canned chickpeas.

Oh, that would froth up nicely.

And so you get a little bit of a punch from the red peppercorns and the harissa.

And what was the first ingredient?

A cooled Lapsang shoot.

And then the caffeine from the tea.

So it actually has a little bit of something for you, right?

It sounds like it’s got a lot.

I don’t know if zero proof applies to that.

Right.

That’s almost an energy drink.

But no alcohol.

877-929-9673.

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Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting,

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Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

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

Bye.

Thank you.