Poets Laureate and Poetry Brothels

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

For 341 years, the Poets Laureate of Britain have all been men. That changed recently. Britain’s new poet laureate is Carol Ann Duffy.

Her work’s been described as dealing with the darkest turmoil and the lightest minutiae of everyday life. Her poems include such diverse characters as lovers, depressed dolphins, and psychopaths.

Now that might sound like an odd choice for somebody whose work traditionally involves writing flattering poems for the royals. In the past, they’ve penned verses commemorating major royal events like coronations and weddings and mundane ones like the illness of a prince or his return from a trip abroad.

Now, as you might expect, Carol Ann Duffy has said she’s going to use the position of poet laureate as a kind of bully pulpit to promote poetry in general.

And she’s won top awards for her poetry. And she also writes poems for children.

Here’s one, Grant. It’s called GLAAD. You ready?

Mm—

Glad we don’t have to bark. Glad we don’t have to cock one leg and wee on a lamppost. Glad we don’t have to cluck or lay an egg. Glad we don’t have to moo, neigh, baa, eat grass or hay, be milked, fleeced, ridden.

Glad we don’t have to hoot, hang from the thread of a web, sting, slither.

Glad we don’t have to mew, eat mice, peck, breathe through gills, dwell in shells or form a chrysalis, hiss, hum, hover.

Glad we don’t have to kip upside down in the dark, bark.

Grant, to be honest, I’m not really sure what to make of that.

Does it all sound like that?

You know, a lot of her poetry is kind of dark and kind of jagged.

It’s also kind of sensuous.

So if you hear the word kiss or love or lips, somewhere in the next few lines, you’ll probably hear a word like knife.

I mean, it’s really unusual.

And in this poem, Glad, I don’t know if she’s truly glad that she doesn’t have to do all those things or if she’s wistful or maybe a little bit of both.

Her work is arresting.

It’s a little jarring.

I’m still trying to figure it out.

Well, I’ll have to read more about her.

She’s got a poem here I’m seeing called Valentine, which is not the kind of thing I would ever give that to my mother.

Well, you’re not supposed to.

You’re supposed to give it to your Valentine.

I mean, maybe we should read that one later in the show.

It’s very sensuous on the one hand, but it’s jarring, don’t you think?

At the very least, we’ll leave it on the website.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

That’s a nice line, though.

Now, that’s nice.

I like that.

I like that for sure.

Well, we’d love to hear about your favorite poetry or poets, be they British or American or what have you.

You can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or call us at 1-877-929-9673.

And you can find out more about us and our show and how to talk to us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hello, who’s this?

This is Tim calling from Houston, Texas.

Well, hello, Tim. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, I was calling about an expression that my mom and grandma used, and it’s the wreck of the Hesperus.

I’ve never heard any other family use it, and it was used in context when things were messy or screwed up or dirty.

You look like the wreck of the Hesperus.

And the only thing I can find on it is the Longfellow point.

It doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with that connotation, so I don’t know.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it does. It does, Tim. Have you read that poem?

I sure have. It’s not a very long poem.

Yeah, it’s about a young lady that goes out with the sea captain, and the boat goes down, and she gets tied to the mast, and she ends up praying to calm the waters.

I think it’s a really compelling poem.

You know, I mean, it’s kind of, I don’t know, it’s got this rhythm to it, you know.

At daybreak on the bleak sea beach, a fisherman stood aghast to see the form of a maiden fair lashed close to a drifting mast because she gets tied to the mast of this ship in a shipwreck and everybody dies and she sort of washes up on the shore and looks pretty worse for the wear.

But she’s not dead, right?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, she is. There’s a lot of Christ imagery in it.

Yeah, there’s a lot of that and, I mean, it talks about the salt sea was frozen on her breast, the salt tears in her eyes, and he saw her hair like the brown seaweed on the billows fall and rise.

I mean, it’s a pretty terrible picture.

And that’s what that expression comes from.

I believe that poem was written by Longfellow in the 1840s.

And, you know, I guess it was sort of like the perfect storm of its day, this poem.

So you would learn that in school.

That’s why a lot of people might know that, right?

Well, yeah, that’s one of the reasons.

I think shipwrecks tend to capture our imagination, don’t they?

I mean, the imagery in this poem is pretty compelling.

There was a movie, I think, involving Cecil B. DeMille, an adaptation of this poem.

And in the late 19th century, there was a cantata for solo and choir that was performed around the country based on this poem.

But I think it is something that you’d probably hear a generation or two ago.

I mean, I certainly don’t hear people using it today.

But the comparison to something that’s in disarray, that it’s messy, is mostly about the wreck and not about the romanticism or the girl tied to the mast, right?

I think just the whole horrible picture.

I mean, when I read that poem, it sort of, you know, makes my heart race and makes my blood run cold.

It didn’t do that for you?

Yeah, I don’t know that I connected with it in the same way as it sounds like you have.

Yeah.

Well, Tim, I don’t get out much.

So, you know, that’s the problem there.

But I know that on Google Books, there’s a terrific version of the poem with these great illustrations.

Yes, I was just looking at it.

You were?

Yeah, it’s a spectacular photograph.

I mean, what do you call those ink drawings or something?

Yeah, or lithographs or something.

Yeah.

So that was your heartbeat I heard pounding as you were reading some of those stances?

No, it’s a fantastic story.

It’s dark and sad.

And, yeah, as you said, the salt tea was frozen on her breast, the salt tears in her eyes.

Yeah, it’s very moving.

Yeah.

So I’m glad that you brought this to the table for discussion, Tim.

I would love to introduce more people to that poem.

I think it’s pretty powerful.

Well, thank you, Grant and Martha, and thank you for sharing your resonance with that.

Thank you for calling in and sharing yours.

And call us again sometime with some more Southern expressions.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Give us a call.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673 or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi.

Who’s this?

This is Helen O’Reilly.

Hiya, Helen.

Where are you calling from?

Las Vegas, Nevada.

Oh, great to hear from you.

Las Vegas, Nevada.

What’s going on, Helen?

Well, I’m originally from Glasgow, Scotland, and my parents both had strong Scottish accents, and a word that I love, that’s a Scottish word that I thought you might be able to tell me something about, is the word scunner, S-C-U-N-N-E-R.

Scunner. Now tell us how you would use that.

Well, when I was a young girl, let’s say I would have a crush on a boy in class, and one day he would notice that I existed and return my interest, and suddenly I would take the scunner to him.

I would go home, and my mother would say, do you still like Frank? And I’d say, no, I’ve taken the scunner to him.

And what did that mean?

Well, it means to be disgusted with something, but it’s almost like disgusted plus.

It’s like disgusted and irritated, disgusted and frightened.

And I’ve never heard it used by anybody other than Scottish people.

This is really thrilling for me, Helen, because I have never heard this word in conversation, but I’ve read about it.

But I’ve never heard it just in casual speech.

And I feel the poorer for that as a language lover.

Well, you can use it, you know, to say, well, you can say, did you enjoy the concert last night?

And you’d say, oh, it was a right skunner.

In other words, it was not enjoyable at all.

So I was hoping you guys could tell me something more about the word skunner.

Oh, yes, please.

Well, I don’t think that we know the origin of it.

I’ve seen suggestions that maybe it’s related to scare, an old word for scare.

Scurn is an old word that also means sort of the same thing?

Yeah.

My go-to resource for this is the Scottish National Dictionary, which I have a full set of at home.

But also it’s been digitized and put online.

Maybe you’ve heard me talk about it before at the Dictionary of Scots Language online, which combines a bunch of different great historical dictionaries.

And they have some really great treatment of scunner there.

There’s the verb.

Let me see if I’ve got this right and if this jives with what you’re saying, Helen.

It means to feel reluctance or to hesitate, to feel disgust, revulsion, or discouragement?

Disgust and revulsion, definitely.

Or if you scunner at something, you kind of shrink from it in revulsion, right?

You shrink from it.

And when I’ve said this word to my sons, who are half Italian, they think that it’s related to a word that they heard from their Italian grandparents.

Schifoso.

Schieve something.

So you have that SC or SK sound in the beginning, which just seems to be onomatopoeia.

It’s disgusting.

It is true how many of those SK sounds there are like that.

They’re not positive.

No.

And like skeeve, you made me think of that, which comes from Italian scifoso, meaning disgusting.

Yeah, and scorn, and even the SK sound that you hear sort of inside the word disgust.

Disgust, yeah.

The origins of this are lost in time, but it is distinctly a Scots word, distinctly.

Well, the Scots, we have a lot to answer for because we did invent golf.

Talk about a scunner.

I always love digging into the Scots dictionaries because there’s so many words that seem just ready to launch into mainstream English.

It’s just perfectly primed for it, and this may be one of those.

Yeah, so fabulously expressive.

Well, Helen, it’s great to take your call.

Thank you so much for sharing a little bit of the Scots language with us.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Scunner.

Scunner, if you have a wonderful word to introduce us to like that, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Well, here’s a poem I like by Carol Ann Duffy.

It’s called Valentine, and as we said earlier, Carol Ann Duffy is the poet laureate of the UK now.

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light like the careful undressing of love.

Here, it will blind you with tears like a lover.

It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful, not a cute card or a kiss-o-gram.

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful, as we are, for as long as we are.

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring, if you like.

Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers, cling to your knife.

Well, that’s a poem by Carol Ann Duffy, who is the new Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

If you’ve got a poem you’d like to share with us, please send it to us.

Our address is words@waywordradio.org.

Coming up on A Way with Words, it’s a word puzzle and more of your calls.

Stay tuned.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us once again is that roly-poly, lovable, cute-as-a-button quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Roly-poly.

Holy poly. Hi, Martha. Thanks.

I just wanted to make sure you were listening.

Yeah, I’m certainly listening to that.

Holy poly.

For those of you who don’t know, John is about 7 feet tall and he weighs about 130 pounds.

That’s right.

People, they usually use me if somebody gets locked out of their car.

They usually slide me in between the window to get something to lock.

If you turn him around, his back looks like a stegosaurus.

It’s all bones back there.

Stegosaurus. Not quite that bad.

My wife likes me. Let’s put it that way.

That’s fine. I’m good.

That’s important.

Speaking of which, by the way, I wanted to tell you guys about something my wife and I are involved in something you may have heard of, something called the Poetry Brothel.

Oh, I saw that in the police report.

No, it’s an actual event.

It’s sort of changing the way people do poetry readings.

Apparently.

And it was created by two of Jenny’s grad students.

And it’s in New York here, and every month or so they get together a different club, and people pay money to have intimate one-on-one poetry readings.

So somebody sits across from me at the table with a little candlelight and some drinks and reads me comments.

No, not even a table.

Really?

Lap poetry?

Just on a bench next to you in a little bit.

Yeah.

What are they wearing when this is happening?

Well, they actually try to create the brothel atmosphere.

So a lot of them are wearing corsets and laces.

There’s feathers and things around.

So I think you’ll like it a lot.

And how are you involved with this?

I am the master of ceremonies.

Oh, I see.

And that’s what they’re calling the pimp now.

No, it’s definitely.

I describe myself as a poet monke.

Oh, sure.

So I wear a monke suit.

And a little bow tie and a tux, and I introduce the poet.

So that’s my bit.

And that’s a perfect segue.

No, it’s not.

Come on.

To my quiz today.

It’s called something I like to call states of mind, and you’ll see why soon.

It’s a very simple quiz.

I’ll give you a definition of a word, and your job is to tell me the two U.S. states whose abbreviations make up that word.

For example, this word refers to your knowledge or intellectual ability, the seat of the faculty of reason.

Oh, so mind.

Mind, right, is in states of mind, so you’d have two states.

Michigan and North Dakota.

Michigan and North Dakota, right.

Here’s the first.

These two states form a word meaning no longer due as a bill.

Pennsylvania and Idaho.

Very good, Pennsylvania and Idaho.

Paid.

Paid, that’s right.

P-A-I-D.

P-A-I-D.

Right.

Very nice.

These two states form a word meaning very, very, very dark, like space.

Very, very, very dark?

Right.

Like space?

Right.

Like, or perhaps, let’s give a little more of a clue, like a dark tribal tattoo.

Really?

Oh, I see.

Indiana and Kentucky.

Indiana and Kentucky.

Martha, do you know the… can you figure that one out?

Yes, inky.

Inky is right.

Good.

Okay, very good, Grant.

These two states form a word meaning refuse to recognize or acknowledge.

Oh, Delaware and New York.

Beautiful.

Oh, deny.

Deny.

Deny is right.

D-E-N-Y.

I’m waiting for you to slip a Canadian province in there.

Wood that I had.

Wood that I had.

But you know what I’ll do?

I’ll make things a little longer.

Saskatchewan has that nice SK, though.

I know.

As in Chaneski.

You don’t see a lot of that.

These three states form a word meaning an urgent request that is not negotiable.

Oregon?

Nope.

No.

Delaware.

Massachusetts and North Dakota.

Very good.

And the word, Martha?

Demand.

Demand is right.

It’s in order, but I ran out of letters.

Let’s go even longer.

These four states form a word meaning a structure intended to honor persons or events.

Maine, Montana, Maine again, Rhode Island, and Alabama.

You got one of the states wrong.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That’s okay.

Oh, Missouri.

That’s right.

Try it again.

Maine, Missouri, Rhode Island, Alabama.

That’s right.

Oh, great.

Good job, Grant.

Martha, can you give us the word?

Memorial.

Memorial is correct.

M-E-M-O-R-I-A-L.

Here’s the last one.

These four states form a word meaning a mixture of zinc oxide and iron oxide that is commonly used as an anti-itching agent.

Wow, that’s not helping me at all.

It’s not desitin.

This is the kind of thing you need if you’ve got sunburn or if you’ve got a bee bite or a mosquito bite or something like that.

Right.

Yeah.

What is that called?

It’s not cortisone.

No.

You already know it’s pink, don’t you?

Oh, it is?

Oh.

Yeah.

Oh, now you know what it is.

Okay.

How about California, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska?

That’s right.

Calamine.

Calamine is correct.

You guys were fantastic.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you, sir.

That was a great quiz.

As always, a couple stumpers in there.

Got to have the stumpers, right?

Yes.

If you’d like to stump us with a question about language, grammar, spelling, pronunciation, slang, or what have you, we’re ready.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-Wayword.

Or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Try us on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org slash discussion.

Try us on Twitter at the username WayWord or SmokeSignals.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Sherry.

Where are you calling from, Sherry?

I’m calling from Ocean Beach, California.

Well, welcome to the show. We’re glad to have you.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, I wanted a pronunciation on a mountain range in eastern USA.

Blue Ridge.

Allegheny.

I think you both might be right.

Oh, good. That was easy.

Yeah, I was actually watching a fascinating program about this mountain range on KPBS, our local station.

Anyway, it’s bothering me because I have said it one way my entire life, and I’m no spring chick.

And then when I watch the program, and I tend to believe everything that is ever said on NPR or KPBS or public television.

You poor woman.

I know, and I was just really confounded to find I may have been mispronouncing it my entire life.

So here it is.

Spill it. Let’s hear it.

Which it is.

It’s either Appalachia or Appalachia.

Yes, yes.

Now, the people being interviewed on the program or being seen on the television were living in Appalachia,

And that’s the way they pronounced it.

But the one woman in particular that was being interviewed a lot or featured a lot was not from Appalachia.

So either she adopted the local way of saying it or, you know, that’s the way it’s supposed to be pronounced.

Can you help me out?

Yeah, and that’s a lovely documentary, isn’t it, narrated by Sissy Spacek?

Yes.

Yeah, and beautiful scenery.

That’s God’s country there.

Sure.

In that special, they do say Appalachia, don’t they?

They do.

Yes.

Which upset me.

Well, Sherry, you haven’t been saying it wrong.

I’ll tell you that much because I grew up saying Appalachia myself or Appalachia.

Interchangeably. But the more time I spent over there, I heard Appalachia. And the thing is that

Appalachia is a huge region, right? The Appalachian Trail goes from Georgia to Maine.

Oh, and even up past Nova Scotia, I think Newfoundland or something like that.

Oh, does it really? I thought it ended in Maine.

I probably mispronounced that too.

Newfoundland.

Newfoundland. I’ve been corrected on that one.

But you’re right that in the very core of it, the very center of it, you know, West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, western North Carolina is definitely Appalachia.

And you will be branded as an outsider if you say Appalachia for sure.

They will literally brand you.

They will fire up the end.

But I’ll tell you something that will make you feel even better, Sherry, which is there are at least six pronunciations that I can fish out of the various dictionaries I own.

For example, some of the pronunciations think that the last syllable shouldn’t be a schwa,

It should be ea, so Appalachia or Appalachia.

There’s a sh pronunciation versus a ch, so Appalachia.

There’s a variety of these things here.

And we have that lay or latch sound in the middle, one or the other.

So you can mix these all up a variety of different ways.

And the only rhyme or reason that I can find, besides the one that Martha identified,

Which is in the center they say Appalachia,

Is that in the south they are more likely to say Appalachia,

And in the north they’re more likely to say Appalachia or Appalachia.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy,

Which is based in Harpers Ferry, Virginia,

Has a little sign in their office that says,

In about 40 miles, the Appalachia Trail becomes the Appalachian Trail.

So they’re sort of right there on the border of where Appalachian becomes Appalachian.

Well, thank you so much, guys. I sure love your show.

All right, Sherry. Well, thanks a lot for calling.

Well, thank you. Bye-bye.

Take care.

If you have a question about pronunciation, call us 1-877-929-9673

Or email your questions to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Mike from Manchester, Connecticut.

Welcome, Mike.

Welcome to the show, Mike.

Thank you very much.

I have a question and a couple of theories regarding the phrase wet behind the ears.

Wet behind the ears meaning what?

Wet behind the ears I’ve heard used many times basically referring to someone who’s inexperienced, new, never done whatever it is, that job before.

So I’m just wondering if you have any hard evidence of its origins, that phrase.

Well, what will you accept? What’s the currency that equals hard for you?

Well, I guess I just would like someone else’s opinion because I have my own, although it’s changed a couple times over the years.

Oh, let’s hear it.

Okay, let’s hear them.

Well, originally when I first heard it, I was working in a landscaping job, and I heard the term referred to me.

And my understanding at the time was just that perhaps it means that I, you know, as a young fellow, was not used to taking care of myself.

And as such, maybe forgot to dry behind my ears or something.

And then years later, my son was born, and I noticed that every time he would breastfeed,

When he was done, we’d always had to dry right behind his ear

Because some of the breast milk would trickle down every single time to the spot right behind his ear.

It’s kind of odd, and I don’t know if you can even allow that sort of information on the radio,

But I had suddenly an epiphany and realized,

Hey, I bet that’s where that phrase really comes from.

So I wanted to hear what you guys had to say about it.

Well, it’s not a bad guess, but I don’t think it’s correct.

It’s close, though. It’s close.

Here’s the explanation that,

Did you ever hear of the dictionary called Funk and Wagnalls?

Yes.

All right, Charles Earl Funk was one of those people in that dictionary name,

And his explanation was,

A newly born animal as a colt or a calf on which the last spot to become dry after birth

Is the little depression behind either ear.

So in that case, in terms of the location, obviously, it’s behind the ears.

But the idea here is that when you’re born, you are completely covered in fluid,

And it takes a while to dry it off.

And to say that you are still wet behind the ears means that you’ve only recently come into the world.

In other words, you were born yesterday or born today.

So it’s directly related to that.

I wasn’t born yesterday.

What do you think?

So that’s the last place to dry out.

Yeah, that’s what he said.

I don’t know from personal experience.

I’ve never done any experiments on newborn calves or colts.

Good.

That came out wrong, didn’t it?

Nor cats or dogs or people or anything.

Well, you know, what’s interesting is there is an earlier German version of this.

In fact, there’s an earlier version in English that’s not yet dry back of the ears.

And apparently that comes from a German expression.

Right.

And I’ve seen speculation, Mike, that the English version might actually come directly from German-speaking settlers in Pennsylvania,

Who brought that over with them and then, when they learned English, translated this concept into English.

I don’t know if that’s for certain, but certainly this expression is abundant in German.

On the other hand, any agricultural or pastoral nation is going to see this kind of parallel as pretty obvious, I think.

Well, I do like your explanation. That makes sense to me.

So I guess I’ll have to replace my theories with this theory.

Well, thank you very much.

Mike, thanks for calling.

Thank you, Mike.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question about language, we’re all ears.

Give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or you can send an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello there.

This is Colleen Walsh from Lake Dallas, Texas.

And I’d like to know where the saying came from, on the slam, meaning when someone runs away from the police.

The reason why I ask this is because 10 years ago when my husband and I were living in London,

He decided to sell his Rolex watch because of all the muggings and the robbings they had.

And since I’m a professional astrologer, I told him this was the worst, worst time for you to be doing that.

Well, he went ahead, tried to sell the watch.

Instead, we got robbed, and the robbers were caught in three days.

But it took three years to get them to court because every time the judge gave them bail,

They ran away and they were on the lam.

Every time the policeman or constable had to call us up and said,

Well, they’re on the lam again, where did that saying come from?

On the lam.

So you were right.

Oh, yes, I was right.

Here’s the thing.

This is pretty straightforward, I think.

To go on the lamb actually is just a later version of to lamb,

Which means to run away, to flee, to escape, or to beat it.

And what’s interesting about that last synonym, to beat it,

Which means, you know, another slang term meaning to run away.

You’re like, beat it, kid, get out of here.

Is that lamb has an even older meaning, to lamb, which is to beat it.

So what you have here is to lamb somebody is to beat,

Meaning to thrash them or to hit them.

To beat is also to run or to scram.

And so by transference, lamb also comes to mean to run or to scram.

So it kind of passes between these three different expressions.

I wondered if it had anything to do with the wigs that the people wore in court

Because they look like lamb’s heads.

No, no, it’s spelled without the B for one thing.

No. And actually, the expression is far more American than it is anything.

Yeah, it’s far more common in American literature.

It doesn’t really appear until the very late 1800s in the first place.

So there were a variety of other expressions, slang expressions,

Long out of fashion that are kind of related to it, like lamster, L-A-M-S-T-E-R,

Which is a person who escapes, a fugitive or somebody who is taken off with the loot.

Yeah.

Well, Colleen, this has been fascinating. We appreciate your calling.

Thank you so much, and I love your show.

I look forward.

I never want to miss your show.

It’s so interesting.

Oh, thank you so much.

It’s very nice to hear, Colleen.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Take care.

Well, run on over to your phone and give us a call.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org.

In a recent episode, we talked about to boot, meaning in addition to.

Do you remember that?

Oh, sure.

Ellen in Canton, New York, wrote in response to that to ask about another boot, as in to boot up a computer.

She and her husband have been having an argument as to whether it comes from bootstrap.

Do you know to bootstrap?

Right.

If you bootstrap yourself, you kind of help yourself more or less, right?

Yeah, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, which I’ve never been able to figure out how to do.

Well, Ellen’s point of view was that that couldn’t possibly be the origin of to boot a computer,

But it turns out that her husband is probably correct.

Boot, as in to boot a computer, dates to at least as early as 1975,

And it did come about as a shorthand bootstrap, which was used as early as 1953.

To refer to those kinds of instructions, and maybe this is a little too technical,

But the instructions that load from software into hardware

To tell the hardware to do more things with the software.

It’s kind of written in a way that the software more or less loads itself,

Which, as you can see, is a pretty good figurative way to think about

Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, right?

Yeah, it’s nice.

So that’s what my computer is doing when I press the button and have to go get a cup of coffee.

Yeah, the strange stuff flashes across the screen.

Exactly.

It’s booting.

It’s bootstrapping itself.

The earliest use that we know of, though, is even older than that, from 1946, from an engineering journal,

Where they talk about it in terms of just circuits rather than true computing.

Sorry, Ellen, your husband’s right on that one.

I guess somebody’s making dinner tonight.

Right.

If you’ve got a dispute about language, pronunciation, spelling, grammar, whatever, let us know.

The email address is words@waywordradio.org, or you can call us at 1-877-929-9673.

Coming up, the joy of Lex, as A Way with Words continues.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

If you listen to the broadcast version of our show on your local public radio station,

Then you may not be aware that we have a lot of special online-only web content.

In fact, every week we post a mini-podcast of about five minutes or less.

Recently, I did one on macaroni and gravy. You remember that one, Grant?

I do. We got a lot of email about that.

We did. We were responding to an email from a listener who said she grew up eating macaroni and gravy, meaning macaroni and marinara sauce.

And her Italian-born grandmother always called it macaroni and gravy.

And it turns out that there’s this raging, friendly debate in the Italian-American community about whether that red sauce should be called gravy or sauce.

Debbie wrote,

I’m a Cajun-born New Orleanian, and everything I ate was with brown gravy made with a roux.

But if we had Italian night, it would be macaroni and red gravy.

That surprised me that somebody in New Orleans would be eating macaroni and red gravy.

And then we got a really nice posting on our discussion forum from Nana Lee.

She writes,

When I started dating the man who had become my husband,

His Italian grandmother from Salerno near Naples

Invited me to dinner at her house for macaroons and gravy.

I was a shy young girl of Irish-German descent

Who grew up on meat, taters, and two veggies for dinner,

So I was dumbstruck at her invitation.

I politely accepted, wondering why on earth

Grandma would prepare such a weird dinner.

To my delight, she had made spaghetti and meatballs.

It was a terrific dinner, and over time,

She taught me to make everything from gravy,

Northern Italian style,

To broccoli rabe, to beans and greens, to gnocchi.

It just goes to show you never know what you’re going to get when you order gravy.

I like the fact that she chose Nona Lee for her username on our discussion forums because Nona is grandmother in Italian.

Yeah, I thought that was really sweet, too.

Well, if you’d like to comment on a show, you can go to our website.

That’s waywordradio.org.

Or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or call us 1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Vicki from LaGrange, Texas.

Hi, Vicki.

Hi, Vicki. How are you doing?

I’m wondering when the F word came to be used in casual conversation.

I know it sounds odd when I hear the word in contemporary movies that are set in other centuries,

And I don’t know if that’s because I grew up on movies where it was not used by anyone,

And maybe that colored my perceptions.

So is Hollywood historically inaccurate in the words people used in earlier times,

Or were we just sugarcoated in the golden age of movies?

Good question.

Yes to both.

Hollywood is inaccurate to a certain degree in that they,

I think they put that in the mouth of far too many people,

But we can’t know for sure because the thing is,

I’ve talked about this before,

The cursing and the four-letter words and the obscene language,

It’s not a straight progression from rare to frequent.

That is, we don’t necessarily use it more frequently now

Than other points in history.

The F word, for example, at certain points in the history of English, has been an ordinary word amongst certain people, say farmers.

They might refer to their cattle doing the act.

It’s not the kind of thing that people snickered behind their hands.

It wasn’t necessarily an epithet that you cursed with.

It might have just been a perfectly ordinary word, another synonym in your arsenal of language to refer to a certain act.

I know what the New York Times wrote about that stuff, and I know what other people have written about that.

I think it misunderstands history.

I think the thing about the Victorian era, there wasn’t one English any more than there is one English now.

There were different registers of language, and among a certain moneyed, rich, educated class, that’s how they behaved.

But there were many millions of common people throughout the United Kingdom and the rest of the English-speaking world who used that word daily as an everyday part of conversation.

And we can find it in their letters and books and reports written about them.

We can find it most of all in court cases where this kind of language is reported accurately because it’s intrinsic to whatever legal proceedings are happening.

So it requires that they get it down in print accurately.

Just like right now in this society, the Supreme Court just said it’s okay for the government to say that you can’t say these words on broadcast television.

Well, we have one standard there, and yet on cable television, we use these words and hear these words freely.

So it’s different standards at the same time.

It was the same then, it’s the same now.

Thank you. That’s a very detailed answer.

I didn’t realize the question was that complex.

Oh, yes, indeed.

Yes.

Well, I hope it’s been some help.

There’s certainly a lot to be said about this.

Let me recommend a book to you if you want some more information.

There’s a book by Jeffrey Hughes.

He’s a Brit, I believe, and it’s called The Encyclopedia of Swearing.

And certainly in the preface and various entries, he goes into the historical detail of this kind of language.

And it’s not a purient book.

It’s not something you open and there are goofy cartoons that you can giggle at.

It’s an academic work where he treats this stuff with some sophistication.

Well, thank you very much.

You’re welcome. Thank you for calling, Vicki.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hello. This is June Pekia from Encinitas.

What can we do for you today?

Well, I’ve been wondering for a long time about the use of the word troop in the news, newspapers and when I’m hearing it broadcast, instead of soldier.

The word troop is often used to mean one person, like the troop died.

And to me it feels like that’s not the right word.

It feels like it’s a lie.

And I don’t know when this started to happen.

It seems like it’s been a number of years.

And I’m wondering if other people feel the same way about the word.

You know, June, it’s interesting.

We get this question a lot.

And I can tell you that I felt the same way about this word, that it just struck me strangely to hear people talk about one troop or two troops, something happening to two troops.

But I have to tell you, I’ve changed my thinking on that.

Would you like to know why?

I would love to know why.

Okay.

You and I and everybody else grew up with the idea of troop as a group, right?

Boy Scout troops.

Maybe you were part of a Girl Scout troop.

Maybe you watched the TV show F Troop.

But the idea was always a troop as a group, right?

Right.

And a trooper is one person.

-huh.

-huh.

But you know what? Troop is often used that way in the military to mean one person.

And you see instances of this back in the 50s.

But certainly by the Vietnam era, you hear people talking about troop being one individual.

People remembering being told, stand up in there, troop, meaning one person.

And I think it’s complicated by the fact that, you know, you were talking about soldiers and not everybody who’s in the military is a soldier.

Like if you call a Marine a soldier, then you’re going to get corrected.

I’m wondering if the fact that we’ve been embedding journalists with the military in the last few years in particular might have influenced journalistic use of it.

Yeah, that could be.

What about the actual meaning of the word itself?

I mean, is it a twist from the original meaning?

It’s interesting.

It comes from the French troupe, T-R-O-U-P-E, which did mean a band or a company of people.

You could say a troop of performers or a troop of anything, cattle herders and that kind of thing.

And then once it got adopted into English, a person who was a member of that troop was a trooper.

And so you have a trooper, a state trooper is actually a member of a police troop, right?

And then you kind of get a little bit of reversing that.

You get the clipping of trooper to become troop again to refer to a single person who was a member of a troop.

And that’s where we get the confusion.

Now, I remember being confused about this when I was very young, and it took me a long time to sort this out and try to figure out this usage because it’s kind of counterintuitive until you start to look at the larger context.

And I realize, as Martha was saying, oh, hey, wait a second.

The military, they’re the ones who do this the most.

They’re the ones who use the troop by far and away the most.

All of the branches of the military use this term to refer to an individual as well as a bunch of people.

But if you look in the various dictionaries that are put out by the military, you’ll find that they make some distinction.

A troop is not an official designation for a group of people in the military.

It may be an informal one, but it’s not an official one.

Does that make sense?

So you have C Company or something like that, but they won’t call them C Troop.

I know we had the television show F Troop, but that’s a different story.

Well, I hope we’ve helped you some, June, have we?

Yes, yes. Thank you very much.

Okay, super duper.

Thanks for coming.

All right, thank you. I look forward to listening to you guys in the future.

Okay, thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a linguistic burr under your saddle, call us 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Guy from San Diego, and I’m hoping you can help me with a usage dilemma.

Well, hello, Guy. We’ll sure try. What’s up?

Well, there are a few, a very small number of things that I hear people say or write very often that really grate with me.

And one of them is when I hear people say something like, I literally exploded with anger.

Right.

And, you know, this is the, I always just sort of quietly say to myself, they can’t help being an idiot, they can’t help being an idiot.

And then I was surprised to read a piece in Slate by Jesse Scheidlauer saying that, in fact, that usage is just fine.

So my main dilemma is, if literally is an intensifier, then what do I say when I mean literally?

That is the problem in a nutshell, and actually it’s the reason why this usage of literally shows up on so many people’s favorite peeve lists.

Literally used in this way is annoying because they’re using literally in a figurative way.

And literally not being used literally is kind of mind-bending.

It’s like naming a child a grandpa.

It just really doesn’t make any sense.

Right.

I like that.

Yeah, well, I feel the same way, though.

I mean, if somebody says I literally exploded with rage, I mean, literally.

You know, call in sunshine cleaning and wipe down the walls.

It’s gross.

But here, a couple of things.

First, Jesse Scheidlauer is a colleague of mine, so I understand where he’s coming with this article.

I think the article is a little more nuanced than that.

What he’s saying here by laying out this historical record that shows that literally has been used figuratively for a very long time by some of the best writers in English, in edited text, mind you, not even their personal correspondence, what he means to demonstrate is that this is not some passing quirk of the ignorant and the maleducated, right?

What he’s demonstrating is that this use of literally goes hand in hand with other uses of adverbs that are used to emphasize things or to kind of exaggerate.

So we use, as he says in the article, really in that way.

Or nearly is my favorite one.

I nearly died.

I was so embarrassed.

Well, no, you didn’t actually nearly die.

You weren’t anywhere near dying.

She’s really as dumb as a stump, isn’t she?

You know, she’s not, actually.

She’s a thinking, breathing, educated human being that you just happen to disagree with.

So we use a lot of different words in this way to overemphasize.

Because here’s the thing, and do I hear an Australian accent there, Guy?

Yes.

Okay, here’s the thing, and maybe you’ll appreciate this about Americans.

We, and I know Australians have this trait too,

But I’m just going to talk about my own people,

and you can talk about yours.

We tend to overstate and exaggerate to make a point.

Adwords in particular in the mouths of Americans

are stretched so far beyond their limits

that they’re almost unrecognizable.

We never met an adjective we didn’t like,

and there’s nothing we like more than saying things about ourselves

that are so absurd that they kind of emphasize our point.

And I’m not the first guy to say this.

I mean, I think the best American writers have been saying this

for more than a century about Americans and their tendency to boast and brag.

I mean, just think about the old stories of the riverboat storytellers, the guys out there on the steamboats who were talking about how they whipped a hurricane and were the son of a crocodile married to a tornado or whatever it was.

I don’t know, Grant.

I’m still bothered by literally.

I’m more in guys camp on this, I think.

And I’m sitting here trying to think about why nearly and really, like I’m really dying to go to that concert.

I’m trying to figure out why that doesn’t bother me as much as literally.

Here’s why.

Because this is what I think.

Literally.

Not being used literally is mind-bendingly odd.

It’s just weird.

You’re like, wait a second.

I kind of feel like literally should always be used literally.

Right.

Literally should not be used figuratively.

Well, Guy, have you changed your mind at all?

Or are you going to sit there reading Jane Austen saying to yourself, Jane Austen is an idiot.

Jane Austen is an idiot.

I don’t know. I think maybe there’s a new standardization of the word is developing, and maybe I should fight for that.

All right. Well, I hope if we have a convention, we’ve at least given you a vigorous debate.

Some ideas to think about. Thank you very much for taking my call.

Thank you, Guy.

Thanks, Guy.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, what do you think about literally or figuratively or other words?

Give us a call. The number’s 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We had a lot of response to our discussion of peeing, meaning get in touch with someone or to check with someone.

Martha, do you remember that call?

I sure do.

Well, a lot of listeners rightly pointed out that this sense of peeing originally seems to have come from the sonar used in submarines,

As listener William in Texas put it,

Ping describes the exact sound that a sonar operator heard at about 10-second intervals,

And they sung me to sleep whenever we were at sea because my bunk was adjacent to the sonar compartment.

Oh, what a great description.

That’s a great description.

That’s really cool.

Well, if you’ve got something more to say on the subject of ping or any other bit of linguistic knowledge,

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Paul Reed calling from Minneapolis.

Well, hello, Paul. Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

What can we do for you?

My wife and I were listening to the show one day and thought, well, what about that phrase, call a spade a spade? Want to know if that’s something that we can use confidently without having racial overtones? You know, there is some history of spade being a derogatory term.

So where does call a spade a spade come from?

Well, you’ve asked two different questions, Paul. Let’s take the second part first. Where does it come from? The expression goes all the way back to ancient Greek, and it eventually got mistranslated a couple of times. And so when it ended up in English in the 16th century, it was to call a spade a spade. The original was more like to call a basin a basin or a bowl a bowl. There was some translation error or something, right?

Yeah, there was a translation error from the Greek via Latin. It means to call something what it is, right? To call a duck a duck, to speak plainly, in other words. The expression spade is an offensive term for a black person. We don’t see until the early 20th century, right, Grant?

Right, yeah. There’s a huge chronological gap there, so we know that they’re unrelated. However, there’s a big however there. Martha’s probably going to say the same thing that I would say. Right, which is that I just think it’s too risky to use that word now. I mean, I’m sort of someone who clings to etymologies and the stories behind the words. But even though you know the story behind this expression, which has nothing to do with offensive language, at this point, I think that expression is just too hot to handle.

I’m inclined to agree.

Yeah. There’s a fellow by the name of Garner, Brian Garner. We talk about him on the show every now and again. He’s a lexicographer, and he’s written style guides and usage guides and edited Black’s Law Dictionary. And he’s got a term that we use for these. These are skunked words. It’s skunked, meaning it’s ruined for everyday use because you just can’t be sure that somebody isn’t going to misunderstand you.

Well, thanks for calling, Paul. I hope we’ve been some help.

You have been, and it’s been a real pleasure.

Thanks.

Same here.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’ve got a question about language, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673. And you can find us on the internet at waywordradio.org. That’s our show for this week. Support for our program comes from Mosey Online Backup. Got data? Visit mozy.com. If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message anytime. That number is 1-877-929-9673. Or email your questions to words@waywordradio.org. Or join the conversation right now in our discussion forum. That’s at waywordradio.org slash discussion.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer. Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten. Tim also engineered our theme music. Kurt Conan produced it. We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdazian and Josette Herdell. From the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett. And from Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

Bye-bye.

Ciao.

And oh, if we have a part that would break my heart, so I say, you say oyster. I’m not going to stop eating oysters just because you say oyster.