Letters and Canadian Doubles (minicast)

Welcome to the summer podcast edition of A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

My co-host Grant Barrett is off minding his P’s and Q’s.

Speaking of letters, I’ve been digging through the mailbag this week.

Our conversation about collective nouns, such as a murder of crows, brought in a flood of email.

Although on second thought, there must be a better word than flood.

What about a double click of email or a triple click or a quadruple click of email?

Never mind.

Anyway, Ward of Madison, Wisconsin, writes that his high school science instructor introduced him to the collective noun, a giggle of girls.

Now, Ward says, as a seventh grade teacher myself, I have learned the accuracy of that term.

His other favorite collective noun, by the way, is a snide of critics.

That’s nice.

Speaking of critics, Carlos sent us a suggestion for a collective noun.

How about a groan of puns?

Of course, Carlos, I would just like to point out that if you’re making a pun while you’re complaining about puns, well, it all gets a little M.C. Escher, doesn’t it?

And speaking of punny collective nouns, Peter in Valley Center, California, emailed us this story.

It seems four Oxford Dons were walking to their local pub one night when they were approached by four ladies.

The women offered their services.

The men politely declined.

But afterward, being English professors, the Dons began to speculate about the proper collective noun for such a group of women.

The first Don offered a jam of tarts.

They all agreed that this was quite good.

The second Don then suggested a fanfare of strumpets.

Better, they all cried.

The third then joined in with an essay.

The fourth Don agreed that this would be hard to top.

But the fourth and most senior Don somberly observed that, in the end, what we had there, gentlemen, was an anthology of prose.

Get it? Prose? As in pro-fessionals? An anthology of prose?

Those English professors.

And now for the topic that simply won’t go away.

Remember the caller who wanted a creative sign-off for emails, something besides “sincerely yours”?

Well, Antigone in Buffalo, New York, you gotta love that name, Antigone, writes to say that ever since moving 3,000 miles from friends and family, she’s had to rely on email for most of her communication with them.

And therefore, she says it’s natural for her to end emails with either “hope all is well” or “read you later.”

Melissa wrote from Wisconsin to say that Grant and I didn’t begin to offer that poor sign-off.

Poor caller, enough suggestions.

So she sent us an enormous list that included “later,” “see ya,” “gotta bounce,” “ciao,” “sayonara,” “hasta luego,” or, taking inspiration from Winnie the Pooh’s friend Tigger, “ta-ta for now.”

And finally, Angelia from Birmingham, Alabama, says she signs emails to friends and family with what looks like “much love less than 3.”

Now, that’s “much love” and then the “less” sign that’s there at the bottom of your keyboard, that little symbol that looks like a sideways V, followed by, the number 3.

Now, I had to confess I had no idea what Angelia was talking about, so I emailed her to find out.

And she explained that if you turn your head sideways, that little symbol and the 3 look like kind of a little heart.

And it turns out that a lot of people sign their emails with that sweet little emoticon, so Angelia, thanks for teaching me something there.

In any case, I hope all’s well with you and I’d love to read you later.

I’d also love to know if you can come up with a good collective noun for lots and lots of email.

You can email us at words@waywordradio.org.

And now, I gotta bounce!

But first, speaking of bouncing, what do you call it when three people are playing tennis together?

A fellow recently called to ask us that question, so Grant and I proceeded to hold court.

Darling, let’s do a dilly-dally.

Ready for a rousing rally.

Shall we say the…

Ball is in your court.

Hi, this is Dana.

Where are you calling from?

Calling from San Diego.

I lurk around on a website that is about discussing tennis.

And there was a thread I hit upon there recently that I found very interesting because it was something I was wondering about in a way.

And the question someone had posed was about a type of tennis when you’re playing doubles and you don’t have the normal number of people, which is 4, 2 for a side.

Mm-hmm.

And instead you play three people, one on one side, two on the other.

And they were talking about what you call that.

And the person asked, “Well, I call it English doubles. I’ve heard it called Canadian doubles.”

People started popping in and answering and saying, “Well, I call it Australian doubles. I call it American doubles. I call it, you know, any other country but mine doubles.”

Basically.

Yeah, right.

You know, I know a tennis player from Argentina who says, “I call it a really good workout for the person who’s playing against the other two.”

Exactly.

I called it cheating. How is that fair that you could have two people taking on one?

It’s, you know, it’s actually quite fun because you really get a good workout.

You call it Canadian doubles?

We called it Australian doubles most frequently, but I had a friend who called it Canadian doubles.

Hmm. And did you grow up here in San Diego?

No, I grew up in various places, moved around a little bit.

And do you play that a lot?

I play it with my family because sometimes we all can’t get to the courts together. It just makes it more flexible and fun.

Yeah, yeah, right. It’s like pickup tennis.

Exactly, yeah.

And you can rotate it.

Yeah, you can rotate around. You know, who plays by themselves changes every few games, so it’s fun.

Yeah.

But I was just curious about the naming because it seemed so, when I was reading the thread this person started, it was so varied, all the different answers that people gave.

And it always seemed to be named after another country.

And it began to wonder if it was almost sort of like one of those pejorative sayings like Dutch treat or Indian giver where it almost had a, you know, it’s a lesser thing or something.

You know what? I think you’re probably on to something. I’ve looked into this a little bit myself.

And I have a friend from the Netherlands who grew up playing American doubles that way.

You know, people in England sometimes call it threes.

Yeah.

But I think your theory is probably the best we have, that it’s somebody else’s tennis.

You know, it’s not quite, it’s sort of familiar, but it’s sort of not.

And you brought up Dutch treat and I unfortunately was thinking of syphilis and how, you know, the English called it the French disease and the French called it somebody else’s disease.

And plus, all this is complicated, isn’t it, Dana, by the fact that there are different tweaks on tennis in different countries.

Like there’s the Australian formation.

Right, right.

What’s that?

Well, it’s lining up so that the two players line up in a line directly one behind the other.

Yeah, yeah. It kind of fakes out the other doubles team.

But I think it’s kind of hard to trace the formal history of this because as far as I know, Dana, there aren’t organized Canadian doubles teams.

There aren’t organized Canadian doubles tournament or Australian doubles tournaments, right?

Right.

Unless they’re…

No, never heard of them.

Yeah.

I’ll bet that there are folks who are going to want to chime in on this discussion.

So I appreciate your starting it up.

Well, thanks for having me on.

Thanks so much, Dana.

It was fun and I really enjoy your show.

Great.

Thanks, Dana.

Bye bye.

Thanks.

Bye bye.

You know, Grant, lately I’ve become a big fan of sphairistike.

What is that?

I’m glad you asked.

It’s S-P-H-A-I-R-I-S-T-I-K-E.

Sphairistike.

And it means…

What does it mean?

It’s a very old word for tennis.

That’s what the modern version of lawn tennis was first called when a guy patented it.

Here in the U.S. or in the United Kingdom or where?

No, it was in Britain.

It was in Britain.

He applied for a patent and he called it sphairistike, which is from a Greek word that is for a kind of… game played with a ball.

But that name, as you might imagine, sort of went over like a lead balloon.

People started mispronouncing it because of the spelling and sometimes they called it sticky.

So it got changed to lawn tennis.

But you can still find that word in the Oxford English Dictionary and I am pleased to say that my sphairistikic prowess is improving these days.

I’m not sporting at all, but I can tell you a thing or two about slang.

I want to go back to the comment, the very apt comment that Dana made about perhaps we always call something by the name of another country because it makes it somehow lesser or it’s a way of just saying, “Well, this isn’t ours.”

Right?

Yeah.

And you find this again and again.

One that a lot of people in California will know is the California stop, which is when you don’t actually stop at a stop sign and you just kind of roll right through it.

Right?

Right.

But what you’ll find across the country is that a lot of people will…

In their own state or their own city will refer to it as the guy from the state over or the people from the city across the river.

They’re the ones who do the Chicago stop or the St. Louis roll or what have you.

Oh, really?

You’ll find this again and again in slang.

Yeah.

Where people…

It’s always the same act and the same idea, but the place changes.

There are a couple others as well.

One that I did an entry for a couple years ago was hillbilly chrome, which is a slang name for duct tape.

You know, that silvery tape that you use to patch and repair everything.

But the names of it are Alabama chrome, Arkansas chrome, Georgia chrome, Mexican chrome, Wisconsin chrome, Tijuana chrome.

Wow.

It’s a little derogatory, but you find that again and again.

There’s another one, the Michigan roll, the Missouri roll, the Chicago roll.

This is a different kind of roll than the rolling stop.

It’s a wad of $1 bills with 100 around it.

I’ve got 90,000 pounds in my pajamas.

I’ve got 40,000 French francs in my fridge.

I’ve got lots of lovely lira.

Now the Deutschmark’s getting dearer, and my dollar bills would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

There is nothing quite as wonderful as money.

Thanks for joining us here on A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

Some people say it’s folly, but I’d rather have the lolly.

With money you can make a splash.

You can keep your Marxist ways, but it’s only just a phase.

For it’s money, money, money makes the world go round.