Play it By Ear

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.

We asked for your haiku poetry, and boy did you oblige.

Here’s one that I really like from David Storey, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Masks on everyone, sorely missing my friends’ smiles, but then eyes light up.

So much packed into that little poem.

Oh, yeah, and the eyes.

You just pay more attention these days, don’t you?

You have to.

Yeah.

I have another one about masks.

This is from Cheryl Musser in Hampton, Virginia.

Mask obscures features, facial recognition fails, Siri is confused.

Siri is often confused.

Siri, get your act together.

Siri and autocorrect, oh my gosh.

Siri and Alexa, they need some schooling.

If you still have a haiku about everyday life, glimpses into what you’re doing are just a little peaks into your existence.

We’d love to read them and share them on the air, 877-929-9673, or write them down, put them in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Jack.

I’m calling from Spokane.

Hello, Jack.

My girlfriend and I will get into a little fight, more of a conversation, I guess, about the phrase, “Play it by ear.”

So we’ll be going through our day and we’ll be trying to make a plan and she’ll say, “Let’s play it by year.”

And I said, “So okay, I guess I’ll find out a year from now, right?”

And so I’ll say, “Play it by ear.”

I just wanted to know the history behind this.

I mean, obviously, it’s clear the meaning of the phrase, but I don’t know the history of it.

And I wanted to know if you guys had any insight to where that came from.

So you’re saying, “Play it by ear,” E-A-R, and she’s saying, “Play it by year.”

Why E-A-R?

Correct.

Okay.

And you’re arguing about which is correct.

Yes.

What’s your argument for “ear”?

Well, so I think the space between one ear and the other is pretty short.

So it’s kind of like the distance between is relatively short and that we’re going to, oh, I don’t know, that’s the only phrase I can come up with, but it’s one step at a time essentially.

And I guess her argument is that ears are not a measurement of time, but years are.

And so I guess that’s where we’re coming from.

So what each of you mean by the phrase you’re using is, “Let’s see how it goes. Let’s improvise. Let’s not follow any particular plan.”

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that’s the meaning of the term.

“Let’s play it by ear” is a musical term.

Think of a musician kind of sitting in, they show up unexpectedly and they don’t have the sheet music, but they’re going to follow along and play it by ear, just kind of hear what the other musicians are doing and improvise and kind of fill in where they can based upon their skill and knowledge of music in general and the skill of the other performers.

That’s playing it by ear.

Just kind of listening.

Well, that makes so much sense.

And then responding.

Yeah.

So your version of it, “Play it by ear” is the correct one.

But what’s really interesting, your girlfriend is performing what’s known as a linguistic phenomenon by the name of an “Eggcorn,” E-G-G-C-O-R-N, where people misunderstand for really logical reasons, often phonetic reasons, and they have a pretty plausible explanation for it.

And so it sounds right, both in meaning and auditorially.

And so her explanation, because “year” is a measure of time, makes some sense.

And the other thing is the “Y” in “by,” “play it by ear,” you could see how that could become attached to the word “ear,” so maybe “by year,” right?

So it kind of makes sense that there’s an allusion where that “Y” then becomes attached to the ear.

So there is a fantastic website that we’ve talked about on the show before called the Eggcorn Database, again, that’s E-G-G-C-O-R-N, where volunteers keep track of these in English, and it’s so much fun.

And they try not to make fun of people.

It’s really just kind of remarkable how many times we hear something and we’re so intelligent as creatures that we seek to explain this stuff with whatever knowledge we have at hand.

So Jack, what Grant is saying is that you have a very intelligent girlfriend.

Oh, I do know.

What I’m saying is that this isn’t caused by stupidity.

She’s performing the same thing that she’s done her whole life as a speaker of any language.

From the very first day that we’re born, we start trying to puzzle out the meaning of the sounds around us.

And she’s still doing that.

We’re all doing that.

And she’s still trying to puzzle it out.

And sometimes the explanations that we come up with go astray, but that’s pretty logical, what she came up with.

Her understanding of the sounds and the meaning were pretty logical, even if they weren’t correct.

And I must admit, I saw this video on the BBC’s YouTube channel that went on to say that malifors, or like you said, those eggcorns, are actually a very important part of the creation and evolution of our language.

And so we’ve gone from arguing to saying, well, this is just an evolution of our language.

And I think it’s so cool.

So this is really exciting.

It’s super cool.

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

So we have gone from just saying, oh, those people are dumb, to understanding that this is a group phenomenon that explains how we learn.

And there’s something in the brain and mouth.

So now we say, oh, this shows us how language works.

This is a clue.

This is an explanation of language, not an accident of language.

This is important to know.

So your girlfriend actually is part of that larger phenomenon of showing us how language really works.

That’s so cool.

And this isn’t like blowing smoke.

This is really what linguists do.

We look at mistakes and say, aha, evidence.

We can use this.

Right.

And so to confirm or to, I guess, I mean, I’m sure I could look on this website, but I mean, another example that comes to mind is all intensive purposes.

Yeah, exactly.

That’s a great one.

Yeah.

Is that another like egg corn?

Yeah, absolutely.

All intensive purposes instead of all intents and purposes.

Yes.

So let her know that you love her, make her dinner, take her out, let her watch whatever she wants on TV for the rest of the month.

And then play it by ear.

See what happens.

I love the show, guys.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

Jack, thank you so much.

Thanks.

Have a good one.

Bye.

Hi to your girlfriend.

This is a conversation about language that’s been going on in your house.

It’s time to call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jill.

I’m calling from Shelton, Washington.

Hi, Jill.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you, Jill?

I moved up here from San Diego almost two years ago.

So I’m here now in Washington, and of course, when I wanted to get settled, I wanted to get trash pickup service.

So as it turns out, the service is called Mason County Garbage and Recycling.

And just the word garbage kind of struck me as that’s not the right word for what I want done.

I want my trash picked up, garbage is food scraps.

So I just thought, ooh, there must be a trash pickup company.

So I called them up and tried to state my case, and of course, I was spoken to as if I was loony.

But as it turns out, in Southern California, we have garbage disposers.

And so that’s where I got this well-entrenched idea that garbage was food scraps.

And you had a trash compactor for the other kind of stuff.

But up here, garbage means all kinds of trash, the junk you take to the dump, everything.

It’s all garbage.

So I’m sort of tired of arguing with people up here, I need to just go with the flow.

But I think it’s the wrong word.

Jill, it might go deeper than just you getting it from a garbage disposal.

There are a lot of people who would agree with you.

Historically, garbage has been, for a lot of people, the wet, gross stuff that you throw away.

So it would be the food waste, the vegetable matter, or anything that had vegetable or food matter in and on it, something that couldn’t be recycled.

And then the trash would be the dry waste, paper, wood, metal, that sort of stuff.

Your usage does reflect the original senses, not that etymology is destiny for words.

But if you go way, way back, garbage is the older term, and it originally referred to awful and entrails and guts.

And in fact, in the early 14th century, Edward II, King of England, had a sergeant garbager who was the officer of the royal kitchen responsible for gutting animal carcasses.

So it has a very, very old sense there.

And trash is a weird word, too.

Its original sense was something that anything that’s broken or snapped off, which could be twigs or cuttings from vegetable matter, and it’s meant a lot of different things.

The one that I like is that trash, I’m looking at a 1763 glossary that says that trash can be unripe fruit, also an over-worn shoe.

Over-worn shoe.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Apparently, yeah, this is a thing.

There are references to people who wear their shoes into trashes.

Oh, that’s a great insult.

You over-worn shoe, you.

You trash.

You over-worn shoe.

But do people still keep the can under the sink for food waste that’s not compost?

I mean, that used to be a thing, right?

Some people do.

Some people separate the garbage from the trash because you really don’t want to mix your garbage into your trash.

You want your trash to be your paper waste and food wrappings and things like that, and if you don’t empty your trash regularly and have garbage in it, it sort of changes the composition of your trash can and the smell of it and everything.

Right.

Yeah.

I keep my garbage separate, and then I put it in a plastic bag and put it in the trash before the trash pickup day.

Well, Jill, it sounds like you feel better.

No, I do feel better, knowing that I’m not alone in this opinion.

You’re not alone, but the distinction is blurred for a lot of people throughout the English-speaking world.

But let’s not even get started on all the garbage and trash terms in the UK, where we talk about rubbish and dustbins and skips and tips and fly tips.

It’s just a whole nother lexicon.

I think we just got started, Grant.

No, stop.

Bye.

Thanks, Jill.

Take care of yourself.

We appreciate your call.

Okay.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Jill.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send the whole thing in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I’m sure you saw this joke floating around Twitter where people were saying, “I had a joke about this, but blah, blah, blah.”

Right.

Yes.

Like, “I had a joke about my quarantine body, but it didn’t work out.”

Yeah.

My favorite, though, was one from Helen Kennedy, the journalist, who said, “I have a good Kara-Witchit, but it’s really obscure.”

It’s very obscure.

I don’t get it.

In the early 17th century, it meant a pun, a quibble, a hoax in question, or a conundrum.

So it was this joke that was so much more brilliant when you know the word.

Nailed me.

You got it.

Got me right in the back of the head with that one.

That’s good.

Thanks, Helen.

That’s wonderful.

877-929-9673.

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 I’m joined by that handsome fellow, our quiz guide, John Janeski in New York.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

How are you?

Hey, John.

Looking good.

Fantastic.

What’s up?

Thank you very much.

I’ll wager someday someone with way too much time in their hands, probably me, will compile all the quizzes I’ve created, and they’ll find that each of them falls into one of only about half a dozen different types.

Now, the following quiz is what I call a synonymic puzzle, synonyms.

I’ve taken a compound word that is a word composed of two or more smaller words like “sunflower,” and I’ve replaced each of the two constituent words with a synonym and then used it in a sentence.

For example, if I use “sunflower,” the result could be something like, “While pretty, the bouquet was dominated by a rather large star blossom.”

And we’ve got “star” for “sun” and “blossom” for “flower,” so a star blossom is a sunflower.

Gotcha.

That’s beautiful.

Good.

Thanks.

Now, I think it’ll be pretty obvious what the transformed compound word is in each sentence, and you can use textual clues to figure out the answer.

Note that these are closed compound words.

They do not use a space or a hyphen, okay?

Here we go.

All right.

During my run for state senate, I made sure to put my face on a check plank facing my opponent’s headquarters.

Check plank?

Check plank.

So that would be a billboard.

A billboard, yes.

Check for bill and plank for board.

Very good.

These wireless headphones are not working.

I think there’s something wrong with the sad canine.

The sad canine.

The dog, something, these wireless, the Bluetooth.

Bluetooth, yes.

What is the matter with the Bluetooth here?

That was tricky.

Some of these are a little tricky with the way the synonyms have been chosen, okay?

I will always love you if you are also a fan of my favorite Kevin Costner film, The Carcass Defender.

Oh, Whitney.

She was a gem.

Bodyguard.

Bodyguard is right.

You know, I’ve never told you about my three siblings.

My sister is a teacher, my one brother is a pyro-pugilist, and my other brother is in law enforcement.

My sister, by the way, went to Montclair University on a fluffy orb scholarship.

Yay, Title IX.

Fluffy orb?

Fluffy orb.

Fluffy orb.

So she played on a team with eight other teammates, I guess, huh?

Yeah, she certainly did.

Yeah.

On the field, yeah.

Softball.

Softball, that’s right.

Fluffy orb, softball.

Very good.

Summer, summer fruits, it wouldn’t be summer without cantaloupe, nectar condensate, or plums.

Nectar condensate?

Oh, honeydew.

Honeydew.

Honeydew, yes.

Very good.

It was May of 1983 when we all saw the dance move called the satellite stroll for the first time.

Before that, it was called the backslide.

Moonwalk.

The moonwalk is right.

This one now is a double.

Two words, okay?

Don’t post your gross photos on Visage Tome.

I don’t want to see your weird digit, Brad.

Brad.

Visage Tome.

Visage Tome.

I like that.

Facebook.

And what’s the last one?

I don’t want to see your weird digit, Brad.

Brad.

Finger?

Yeah.

Finger.

Brad.

Fingernail.

Fingernail.

Yeah.

Fingernail.

A Brad is another word for a nail.

Very good.

Okay.

All right.

Those are my compound synonyms or synonyms.

They sure are.

A deep dive into the mind of John Chonesky once a week on A Way with Words.

Wow.

Unfortunately.

Give our best to the family, and we’ll talk to you next week.

Thank you, guys.

You too.

Talk to you then.

Bye-bye.

We love talking with you about language as well, so call us 877-929-9673.

Or send your stories to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Liz Ewing from Laramie, Wyoming.

Hey, Liz.

What can we do for you?

So last year, I left home in Wyoming, and I traveled out to the East Coast to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Ooh.

How cool are you?

Oh, it was really fun.

I had a great time.

I was out there for six months, which is about how long it usually takes.

Wow.

While I was out on the trail, I met a ton of new people, just fellow hikers and also locals from the town where you stop by.

Along with that, I got a lot of questions from people I met about my accent, where my accent was from, and what country I was from.

I got that one a lot.

Most people I met didn’t seem to register anything unusual.

But on the other hand, I had quite a lot of encounters with people who were pretty sure that I had a foreign accent.

The weird part about all this, I hope it’s evident by now, I’m just a regular old American.

I certainly don’t perceive myself as having a particular accent or speaking unusually.

So I wonder if you have any theories or insight into what might be going on there.

And Liz, did you grow up in Laramie?

I was born in Nebraska, but I did grow up in Wyoming, yes.

Well, I’m thinking about this, and I’m thinking what a regular American is, Elizabeth.

What is an a regular American to you?

So you feel like you have a general American accent, I guess?

I think so.

I could have an accent and be totally oblivious to it.

And they thought that you weren’t even from this country sometimes.

Yeah, that was definitely a common thread.

Interesting.

I have had this experience. I don’t remember how often it happened, but it happened enough where people would think I was from Germany. I couldn’t figure it out. When I’m tall, I’m around 6’2″ and almost as white as a sheet of paper and sandy brown hair, I could see maybe my physique having something to do with it. And I tend not to nasalize my Gs at the end of ING words. I tend to make them a hard K sound accidentally.

So my question for you, do you think that your appearance had something to do with it? Are you tall and blonde?

I am blonde. I’m definitely not tall, but I did have lots of times when I told people, “It’s so strange. People think I have an accent.” Several people said, “Oh, well, you certainly look the part,” which is also strange to me in its own way. But I guess something about the way I look tends to register with some people, I guess, enough to predispose them to perceive an accent when I actually do speak then.

We’re asking all these questions because there’s a field of linguistics called perceptual dialectology, and a lot of the questions we’re asking you have some bearing on this. In general, perceptual dialectology deals with how we base our opinions of how other people speak on what we think we know about them. So we think we know things based on their appearance or stereotypes, or we think we know things about where they’re from. We have prejudices built in that we picked up from family and in our environment and television and media, and also about the power differential about our relationship as co-workers or as they’re older or younger, things like that. Race, of course, comes into play here.

And so, of course, everyone has an accent, and you may have a more general American accent. The line quality here isn’t 100%, so I’m listening to you talk. That’s another reason that we’re asking you questions, Martha and I are both very carefully listening to your vowels and your consonants and your cadence and looking for things. But you speak what I would consider to be probably general American. There’s no actual standard, but general American. You could pass for somebody from any one of 20 American states easily. And if you’re in the American South, you’re going to be clearly not from there for most people. And so they’re going to assume you’re from somewhere else.

The other thing is, you have to think about your environment. A lot of people come from around the world to walk the Appalachian Trail, and so they might have been guessing these other countries because they wanted you to be from these other countries because that would be exciting for them.

I hadn’t thought of that, but that does make a lot of sense, yeah. The culture on the trail is a little different, that people are very open and will freely ask someone they just met details about where they’re from and their experiences and stuff like that. So I wonder if that was playing into it as well.

Yeah. Right. So what was your trail name?

Half Note. Half Note. Half Note. Oh, I love it.

Yeah. Is that a musical term?

-huh. I play piano, and sometimes I would play piano in a hostel or something. And then the half part is because I am a rather short entity, so that seems fitting as well.

That’s great. Liz, the only other final thing I say besides, this is amazing, and congratulations on doing the hike. A lot of people dream of it. Some try it and fail, and you did it. So congratulations.

Oh, thank you so much. The only other final thing I should say is, most of us are really poor at judging the speech of other people. We’re poor at really figuring out where they’re from. We’re poor at recognizing the signs that people are giving us. This field of perceptual dialectology really shows us that people have a lot of biases that are completely incorrect about judging which speech is correct, how people talk in other places, and so on and so forth. So those guesses that people made about you probably have very little to do with you and more to do with them.

I hadn’t thought of things in those terms, but that absolutely makes a lot of sense. We appreciate your calling.

Yeah. Take care. Keep hiking.

Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for speaking with me.

All right. Be well. Have a great day.

Bye. Bye.

Your life is filled with amazing experiences, and there was something linguistic about it. Share those stories and those experiences with us at 877-929-9673, or write the story in email at words@waywordradio.org.

[Music] Grant, I know you’re familiar with the term “Blurs Day.”

Blurs Day, yeah. That’s when all the days of the week blur together. Not sure what day of the week it is, although on the recent 30 Rock television special, Liz Lemon called it “Blars Day,” and since she’s a pro at that, I’ll take Blars Day as well.

Blars Day?

Blars Day. Well, I loved it when I first heard this, just the way all the days seem to be running together now, but I was kind of wishing that there were words for other days of the week besides Blars Day, which I use on Thursdays, and then I came across an essay in The New Yorker called “Lexicon for a Pandemic” by Jay Martell, who offered “Some Day,” “None Day,” “Whose Day,” “When’s Day,” “Blurs Day,” “Why Day,” and “Doesn’t Matter Day” for each day of the week.

I really like that. It was a bunch of terms for the times we live in now, like “body mullet,” which is what most people wear on Zoom calls, a nice top and below-the-waist underwear or less. Business up top, party down below. Maybe not party so much as like a disarray.

Yeah. You’re flattening the curve trying to fit into your jeans after three months of sweatpants.

I can relate.

Yeah. 877-929-9673.

Hello. Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hello. This is John Hood in Bardstown, Kentucky, the most beautiful small town in America. Right there on the Bourbon Trail. Suburban capital of the world.

Yeah. How about that? Well, welcome to the show, John. What’s on your mind?

I was wondering about how to express sarcasm in writing. I know there’s emojis that can express sarcasm, but in formal writing, I found no way to express sarcasm. When I was working on my doctorate back in the ’80s, I expressed sarcasm by using an upside-down question mark, and I was wondering if that was correct to utilize it that way. My professor wanted me to take it out, so I did, and I just made a note that it was speaking sarcastically, but that’s the only way you can really express in writing that I have found is by stating that it is sarcastic. I used an upside-down question mark and put a footnote at the bottom to express sarcasm.

I’m not surprised that your professor made you take out the sarcastic remarks. You left the sarcastic remarks in there. What kind of dissertation were you writing?

It was a writing on religious education, and it had to do with utilization of video and computers within the training sessions of small churches.

Well, John, you know the good news is that you’re not the only person who’s struggled with this problem of how to express sarcasm in writing with punctuation. As far back as at least the 16th century, people have been looking for ways to use punctuation to indicate that they were being sarcastic. There was a British printer in 1575 who used a backwards question mark. In 1668, John Wilkins, the philosopher, used an upside-down exclamation mark. For hundreds of years after that, people were trying to, from time to time, come up with something like that that a lot of French writers use translated as an irony point.

More recently, on the internet, there have been lots of different options for this, like “sartalics.” Have you heard of “sartalics”?

I’ve never heard of “sartalics” until I talked to you.

Yeah, “sartalics” is a kind of font with italics, only the italics lean left and not right. If you use a word in “sartalics,” then you’re being sarcastic. Other people have found ways like mixing uppercase and lowercase letters in a word to indicate that they were being sarcastic. One that I really like is called the “sarcasm tilde.” The tilde is that punctuation mark that goes over letters in Spanish, for example, that little curvy one.

That next to a word is the visual version of a sing-songy voice.

It kind of imitates the voice, so if you see a tilde next to a word like that, it may be that the person’s using it sarcastically.

John, I’ve got to say, you sound like a man of character and refinement.

You don’t sound like somebody who uses sarcasm much at all.

Well, at times I’m real sarcastic, but I turn 80 next month, so you do what you want to.

That’s correct.

So you’ll keep using that.

And don’t care whether people like it or not.

Well, John, I guess if you want to keep using that upside-down question mark to indicate sarcasm, it’s okay with us.

And now that you’ve been on national radio talking about it, maybe more people will take it up.

I was hoping maybe that that would happen, but we’ll see.

We’ll see.

All right, take care.

And have a good day.

I’ve enjoyed talking with you.

Good talking with you, John.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Here’s a haiku I really liked from Sofia Barueta, who is 14 years old.

And she lives in Tamball, Texas, which I gather is in the Houston area.

And it’s a really heartfelt haiku about her family.

Daddy works from home, Mama’s work is essential, Abue’s stuck with us.

That’s lovely.

Abue, I guess, is her abuela.

Yes, yes.

She was talking about how incredibly hard both of her parents work.

And her mom is somebody who has to go into work every day, and so she commutes an hour and a half, five days a week still.

Her dad is in a management job that he can do at home, but Abue, her abuela, is the one who’s taking care of everybody.

That was lovely, Martha.

Thank you.

I think it was such a beautiful way of expressing such heartfelt sentiment, so thank you, Sofia.

877-929-9673.

More about what we say and why we say it.

Stick around for more.

[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

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.

Becky Green asks, “Did you have an almost name? I was almost Jocelyn. However, there was a nurse’s strike the week I was born. My mother spent an entire week in the maternity ward by herself. And she started reading the novel Rebecca in the hospital, and hence I was named Rebecca instead of the preplanned Jocelyn.”

Oh, that’s a great story.

It is a great story, and it reminds me of going through my parents’ love letters, which I’ve mentioned to you before, which has been quite an experience. My dad gave me a huge stack of them before he died. And I’m learning all these things about their romance and things that I didn’t know. But I’m up to the part now where my mother is pregnant, and she writes a letter to my dad who was traveling. And she says, “What do you think about the name Karen? I really like the name Karen for the wee one.”

Oh, that would have been the right time of the year you were born.

Yeah, right? In the ’50s. Karen would have been a popular name then, absolutely.

I know. So I was almost a Karen. I’m not sure how they came up with Martha.

Well, Martha was a fairly common name then, too. You know, my sisters used to tease me that my name would have been Gertrude, which I think is not true at all. I think they just found the most inappropriate girl’s name they could find.

That started with a G?

And for a long time, my little sister called me Gertie. Not even really to tease me. That just became the name that she called me was Gertie. It was Gertie.

Oh, my gosh. I’m partly influenced by Drew Barrymore in E.T., I think, who was, of course, very adorable, so I didn’t mind very much.

You didn’t?

No, I never really had a problem with it.

I had a nickname, and nicknames always felt like, “Okay, that’s cool.” They think highly enough of me to give me a nickname, so who cares? And again, Drew Barrymore in E.T. was very cute.

Well, I’m wondering if our listeners have stories like this, either the shock of finding out that you were going to be named something else, like I had, or an affectionate family name that arose.

Yeah, particularly if it could have gone all wrong. Like, what was that other horrific name that you could have been called? Let us know, 877-929-9673, or tell us on Twitter so the whole world knows, @Wayword.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you doing?

This is Dennis from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hey, Dennis, we’re doing great. What’s on your mind today?

I’m originally from Colombia, and we use a lot of mixed words from indigenous dialects. So in Colombia, when we want to say that you get something extra, we say “la nyapa.” And I was telling that to my husband, who is from Louisiana. He said, “Well, you got the same word. We call it ‘la nyapa.'” And I was like, “Wait a second. That sounds very similar.” Those are indeed the same words.

So spell that for us in Spanish.

So in Spanish, we’ll be “la,” which means “la,” so it’s “l-a.” And the word itself is “n-a-p-a,” “n-yapa.” And then in Louisiana and in American English, “l-a-g-n-i-a-p-p-e,” right?

Yes, that’s correct.

And how does that work in Colombia? You go into a store, you buy something, and how does “la nyapa” happen?

So let’s say you go to the bakery, and you get like 10 pieces of bread, and you say, “Hey, since I got all this bread, why don’t you give me la nyapa?” So they will give you like an extra piece of bread.

Yeah, so this goes back, like you said, to an indigenous language, to Quechua, which is still widely spoken throughout South America, one of the largest indigenous languages with a bunch of dialects. And it entered Spanish not long after the Spaniards arrived in the New World. And it comes from a word “yapa,” spelled “y-a-p-a,” meaning “to help” or “to increase,” and there are various verbs and noun forms of that.

And it entered Spanish, like I said, as “la nyapa,” but when it arrived in Louisiana, it entered this linguistic melange as a single word. So instead of being “la nyapa,” it arrived as one word, and then it took on the French spelling, since French was such a dominant language in Louisiana and in New Orleans and all the Creole heritage there.

So it really kind of reflects the Spanish heritage of that part, because remember, Spain had influence and control over Louisiana and New Orleans for a while, too. Mark Twain, in his book “Life on the Mississippi,” calls it the equivalent to the thirteenth roll in a baker’s dozen, just like you were talking about in Colombia.

But what’s really interesting to me is that this Quechua word doesn’t exist only in Colombia and in American English. It also exists throughout the Spanish-speaking parts of South America. It is everywhere, and it’s kind of altered and changed a bit, but you will find it in pretty much every country in South America.

This one word is—so the “la nyapa” is just one finger out of the ten fingers of “yapa.” So in Chile and Peru and Bolivia and Argentina and Ecuador and Venezuela and even in Puerto Rico and Cuba and all these other places, it’s there. It always means something like “give me a little extra” or “give me more of the same.”

That’s so cool. Wow. Isn’t it—I’m trying to imagine that moment when your husband, who’s from Louisiana, and you both figured out it was the same thing.

Yeah, I was like, “Wait a second.” So this little word over 500 years made this path into all these languages, and people still use it today. Isn’t that incredible?

It’s amazing. Wow. Dennis, thank you so much for your call.

All right. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye, Dennis. 877-929-9673.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Dana from Reno, Nevada.

Hello, Dana. Welcome to the show.

Thanks. Well, I have a question. Our family needs some help. We are game players, and we’re looking for a word to help us with a phenomenon that happens during our games.

So we like to play, like, Scrabble, for example, and you might have your tile of letters and just missing one perfect letter, so you have to end up just kind of throwing out whatever you can make. And then the next — when you pull your next tiles, of course, the letter that you needed to make that perfect word was in the tiles of your new pick.

Of course.

Yeah.

And more like during apples to apples, when there’s a category that you’re supposed to pick one of your cards to play, and you don’t have anything that fits that description, then you just, you know, throw out a few cards, and then, of course, the next pull, there’s that perfect card.

And so our family is looking for an exclamation, something that we can say to say, “Oh, I just got the perfect tile or the perfect card for that last play.”

And we’re wondering if there’s a word out there for that.

Wow.

Kind of the opposite of Eureka.

Right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

What does that look like spelled backwards?

Oh, yeah.

That’s a good way of thinking about it.

And so you’re looking for a word that’s more expressive than “doh”?

Well, we tried coming up with something.

We tried like, “Oh, that was a post-perfect pickup.”

And while we love the alliteration, you know, we want something that’s more powerful, I guess, but that kind of speaks to the phenomenon of that, you know.

That’s just what we needed, but too late.

Okay.

And you want the exclamation itself rather than a description of that moment, like you’re telling somebody later about it.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We want to be able to tell the other players, the other game players that, you know, kind of like in Go Fish, when you fish what you wish, but in Go Fish, you can still play that, right?

Right.

At least that’s the way our family plays.

But in a game like Scrabble or even, you know, a rummy game or something like that, the time has passed for you to use that perfect card.

So we’re just looking for a word for that.

Grant, I’m wondering if maybe a gesture is more appropriate here.

I mean, that feeling is just so awful, you know, it’s like drawers remorse or something.

A hand gesture, like a naughty gesture?

No, like, you know, a face palm, just your palm to your forehead or something.

I think that could be fun and it would give you a little bit of exercise, because I don’t know, in terms of an exclamation, I was going to say, if you were describing it to somebody else, you might talk about it being an onosecond.

Have you heard that term, onosecond?

No, I haven’t.

It’s like nanosecond, but the onosecond, O-H-N-O, second, is the interval between when you make a mistake and you realize you’ve made the mistake, like you leave the keys in the car and you slam the door.

And just as the door is slamming, you have this onosecond of, oh, my gosh, I left the keys in the car.

But you’re thinking about something in real time.

Like, I don’t know that PPP does it.

Yeah, it doesn’t really.

I’m thinking about the online interjection of head desk, which is when somebody says something dumb, you just kind of maybe either put the emoticon or even just the words “head desk” in there, which means you slammed your head on your desk because somebody did something dumb.

Does that work?

That’s pretty good.

But I’m also thinking of poker.

I’m thinking about bad break, which is also from billiards.

A bad break is when the balls just don’t break the way you need them to or the cards just aren’t dealt the way you need them to.

But that’s more general and not about a specific turn.

There’s also a bad beat when you get just a whole hand doesn’t go the same way that you wanted it to and you lose.

So if you’re talking about Scrabble, it would be a tile you could have used goes to somebody else and they crush you with it.

Right, right.

Maybe you could call it a crumble because that’s the way a cookie crumbles.

Oh, I like that.

A crumble.

So just yell out the word crumble?

-huh.

So Martha, this is kind of like the staircase wit of games, right?

Yeah, I was thinking about that esprit de scalais or Trevenvitz.

Do you know what this is, Dana?

No, I don’t.

Yeah, esprit de scalais is a term for, you know, when you think of something that you should have said, but you only think of it when you’re on the staircase leaving.

Of course, that happens all the time.

So you could call it the la caro de scalais, the square of the stair.

Yeah, but you’re still wanting something to say in that moment, right?

In the moment, yeah, yeah.

I was just looking at the eureka backwards because I think that that’s clever and fun and so that would be, what, a karoo?

A karoo.

Yeah, if that works for you.

But I’m also thinking about the sad trombone.

Womp, womp, womp.

Well, there’s that, too.

Exactly.

You know, Dana, we’ve got a lot of listeners who probably will want to weigh in on this and share their own stories.

That would be great.

Well, good luck with your cardboard.

Thanks.

We’ll see how it goes.

We’ll see what they suggest.

Thanks, Dana.

Take care.

Oh, thanks so much for taking my call.

Bye-bye.

All right, be well.

Okay, bye-bye.

You too, bye.

Well, what’s the word you use if the card or tile you needed comes up right after you discarded the other one?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Megan Dooley from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Thanks for having me on the show today, guys.

Hello, Megan Dooley.

You sound like you’re in a good mood.

I am in a good mood.

It’s always a good time to be on A Way with Words.

Absolutely.

You got that right.

What’s on your mind?

I was wondering if you guys had ever heard of the word “puckalo.”

I’m a professional whistler.

A professional whistler?

Really?

Yes.

Yes, that’s what “puckalos” are called.

Isn’t that funny?

It makes me feel like I’m part of, like, the Woodwind family.

We’ve got breasts, we’ve got strings, we’ve got Megan.

Exactly!

We’ve got me!

Wait a minute.

A professional whistler?

What does that mean that you do?

I’m technically a professional musician.

I do more than just whistling.

I’m a multi-instrumentalist, I play guitar, I play ukulele, I play piano, I’m a singer, I’m a songwriter.

I do a lot.

I’ve been performing locally, regionally, and internationally for 20 years.

It’s my 20-year anniversary this year, actually.

My dad taught me how to whistle.

He used to do the bird calls that sounded, like, super ethereal.

-huh.

Yeah, and he could do crazy-sounding whistles.

I can’t do that.

I can only do the melodic whistling, which is what a “puckalo” is.

All right, so tell us about the word “puckalo.”

We have to know.

So I was on a show, and I was talking about how I could not find a word for being a professional whistler, and how frustrated it made me.

One of my fans had found it, and they stood up in the middle of the audience, and they were like, “I know what it is!”

And I was like, “You’re kidding me.

Is there an actual word?”

And they were like, “Yeah, you’re called a puckalo.”

And I was like, “That makes perfect sense, actually.”

And it’s Italian, and it is based off of all of the original music terms and embouchures and stuff like that.

So it’s been around for a really long time and just never used or talked about, because professional whistling isn’t a very popular subject, I suppose.

Okay, so Megan, while you’re talking, I’ve been digging here, and I can tell you a little bit more about it.

Awesome.

So P-U-C-C-A-L-O, right?

That is correct.

All right, so it’s a combination of the words “pucker” and “pickalo.”

Oh, see?

I am part of the Woodwind family.

You are, yeah!

So you pucker your lips to whistle, and you’ve got those high-pitched notes like a pickalo.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

And it looks like it was coined by a guy named Ron McCroby.

There’s a story in People magazine from 1983 where he whistled jazz, and he called the art form “puckalo,” and he looks like he’s the first guy to use this word from the early ’80s.

Oh, see?

Maybe that’s why I couldn’t find anything historically about it, because that was a big ingredient.

Now, “puckalo” is a last name in Italian, so that’s easily why it could be considered Italian, but it doesn’t look like it was connected to “whistling” until he did it, and he put these two words together to make this blend.

So you say “puckalo” or “puckalo”?

It’s been said to me so many times as “puckalo.”

“Puckalo” is great.

“Puckalo.”

I love the sound of “puckalo” better than “puckalo.”

You know that we’re not going to let you go without hearing.

I can either whistle something improv for you guys, or I can whistle one of my favorite pieces that I do, which is “Levian Roads” by ESPF.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, yes.

That would be lovely.

Please do that.

I think we must hear that.

Okay.

All right. [whistling “Levian Roads”] [whistling “Levian Roads”] [whistling “Levian Roads”] Yay!

Wow!

Bravo!

Oh, thank you so much.

Megan, thank you so much for sharing your talent and your stories.

That was amazing.

And we learned a new word, Martha.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Our pleasure.

Thank you.

Good luck and be well.

Thank you.

Thanks.

You too.

Bye.

You do something for a living that’s got a great lingo, and I bet you there are words in it that you want to share with us, because you’re pretty sure they’re fun, and we don’t know them.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or give us the glossary and email words@waywordradio.org, or share it on Twitter, and we’ll retweet it @wayword.

Thanks to Senior Producer Stefanie Levine, Editor Tim Felten, and Production Assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler.

You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or email us words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye-bye.

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