Gardentoolism (minicast)

Welcome to the summer edition of Slang This, the language quiz from A Way with Words.

Welcome to another edition of the podcast only Slang This from A Way with Words and KPBS Radio.

I’m Grant Barrett.

My lovely co-host Martha Barnette sends word from Washington, D.C., where she’s spending the show’s summer hiatus bringing shoots and leaves to Butterstick the Panda.

Martha says that if you want to meet some very nice men inside the Beltway, just try cutting animal fodder in the Rose Garden.

Which leads me to today’s word, garden toolism.

That’s G-A-R-D-E-N-T-O-O-L-I-S-M.

Garden toolism. The way we play this quiz is that I give you a word, and you try to figure out which meaning is the correct one. So, which of these meanings is the real garden toolism? Is it A, an addiction to shopping in hardware stores? Is it B, using a hoe as a walking stick? Or is it C, speaking the unwanted truth? I’ll be back in just a minute with the answer.

If you guessed that garden toolism is C, speaking the plain truth, then you guessed correctly.

You might say garden toolism is popular in politics, where everyone enjoys the right to free speech, but nobody hopes anyone else takes up the offer.

For example, I might say, it wasn’t rude, it was garden toolism. He needed to know that upturned collars on polo shirts weren’t cool even in the 80s.

Journalist Timothy Ash coined the term in the British newspaper The Guardian.

He put it this way, let us say what we mean and mean what we say.

Call a spade a spade rather than attacking it as a manifestation of the dangerous ideology of garden toolism.

For Slang This, from A Way with Words and KPBS Radio, I’m Grant Barrett.