Potato Wagon (episode #1650)

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And there are some names of towns that I always have trouble spelling.

Tallahassee, for example.

Yes, that was the one that came to mind immediately.

How many S’s are in that word?

Yeah, how many S’s, how many L’s?

Do they have a rhyme or a mnemonic to help out?

Right.

I hope our Tallahassee listeners can help us with that because I always have to go look

Up how to spell Tallahassee. I’m sure there’s a trick, but I don’t know it. But you know,

There are some town names that are really easy to spell. Some of them just have one letter.

One letter.

One letter. For example, the town of E. It’s a little town in northern France,

And it just has two main streets which come together to form the shape of the letter Y,

And they just call that town E. And then there’s another town in Norway, in northern Norway,

And it’s just the letter A with one of those little circles on top.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’m told it’s pronounced like the O in born.

So, o.

O.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, so far, our trip is going to be it, it, o.

Right.

We’re going to sound like donkeys when people are like, where are you going?

We’re going to be it, o.

And then, you know, I guess we could go around the United States, too.

I mean, I don’t know that we have any one-letter towns, but we do have a couple of three-letter towns.

There’s Op in Alabama.

I used to know some.

OPP?

Yes.

You know me?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

No, but I knew somebody from Op.

You did?

Yes.

From Op, Alabama, which is named for Henry Op, who was an attorney.

And then also in Alaska, there’s the town of Eek, E-E-K.

Oh, no.

They need to get a pied piper in there.

What?

A pied piper?

Mice.

Eek a mouse.

Eek them out.

Eek a mouse.

Yeah, they got to get a pied piper in there.

I thought maybe it had a cliff or a precipice or, you know, really big.

Or maybe it’s from a native language.

What do we know?

Well, that is correct.

It’s from a Yupik word that means two eyes.

Eek.

But it’s spelled E-E-K.

That’s mysterious.

I know.

I like that.

Yeah.

I’m imagining a cliff that looks like a huge face that stares at you when you’re on the water.

With the two eyes.

Yeah.

But I’m wondering if we have listeners who live in or near another town like that.

Yeah.

What’s the town near you that’s got a really short name or, heck, an interesting or funny name?

We’d love to hear about it.

877-929-9673 is a toll-free number in the United States and Canada, 24 hours a day.

We’d love to hear from you.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elisa from Dallas.

Hi, Elisa from Dallas.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

Well, I had a situation at work the other day.

I work in an emergency department.

Oh, I’m putting on my HR hat.

And we were crazy busy with it being October at the time and everybody coming in for the, you know, flu COVID strep.

And I told our tech, I said, you are really humming along today.

And she goes, excuse me?

I said, you’re really humming.

And she goes, that’s pretty rude.

I said, maybe we’re not talking the same language.

I said, you know, humming, like, you know, the engine, like it’s humming along.

You’re not clanking.

You’re just ticking by getting things done.

And she goes, that is not what humming means.

I said, well, what does it mean?

And she goes, humming means you stink.

And we got into an argument.

We pulled all of our coworkers in on it.

We asked them if they knew what humming meant.

Most people don’t use it because apparently this is not something that your typical 20 or 30 something year old says anymore.

Most people, when I gave my definition, said that makes sense.

One person said that they agreed with her definition.

And so we went to Google, and Google said that British slang for humming is stink, but it didn’t give an explanation why.

Wow, what a story.

Well, it is true that hum is an old verb used in Britain that means to stink.

And somebody who’s humming is very smelly.

Like how old?

Like back to the 19th century.

No, it’s older than that.

Is it older?

Yeah, the noun is to the 1700s.

Oh, yeah, the noun.

Wow.

But I think humming for stinky, it’s pretty old.

Some dictionaries have taken a crack at it.

One refers to the humming of fermentation in an active manure heap.

You know, there’s a lot going on.

So the sound of the flies buzzing as they lay their eggs.

Yeah, I was going to say, another dictionary says, perhaps with reference to the activity of flies or other insects in rotting matter.

You know, there’s a lot going on in your compost heap.

Seriously.

Yeah, so people have talked about humming manure or humming ham.

I mean, it’s pretty gross.

Thanks, Alisa.

This is what we needed.

She works in an emergency department, right?

That’s true.

She’s seen worse.

This is nothing for her.

There are a lot of things in the emergency department that are definitely humming.

I can guarantee you that.

I think you’ve just given us a new code word.

There’s a hummer in the emergency room, and I don’t mean an SUV.

Well, you have given us new lingo to use in the emergency department.

And the word picture is just perfect.

So thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Zach, and I’m from Tallahassee, Florida.

Essentially, I’m in Gen Z, and I spend a lot of time online.

And often something that comes up, essentially, when people talk about relationships online or celebrities or characters that they love in relationships,

They’ll often associate those relationships with what they call ship names or a name that’s, as you say, representative of their relationship.

Right. So you can think of Brangelina for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie or maybe Everlark for Katniss Everdeen and Peta Malark from the Hunger Games series.

So I’m essentially wondering, I’ve seen a lot online.

It’s been present for pretty much the entire time I’ve been online.

And I’m wondering, is this a new thing, like a Gen Z thing?

Is it just from the online space?

Or has this thing of ship names, of naming a couple, been around for longer and doesn’t have any historical significance?

Wow, that’s a big one.

Ship names. We should talk about ship as well. That’s part of the jargon of the pastime, isn’t it?

Yeah.

So Gen Z, that puts you as being born in what decade?

The 2000s.

2000s.

2002.

2002. Okay, great.

And so, yeah, and then the universes, the fiction universes that you talked about also help us kind of picture where you’re at.

But a lot of this is older than that.

There are two fandoms, I think, that we really need to talk about when we talk about this.

One of them is the X-Files, and the other one is Star Trek, because these two were really fundamental in kind of getting this started.

Star Trek, in particular, even before the rise of what we think of as the kind of modern, fully public Internet,

People were already pairing up characters in Star Trek in fanzines on paper.

They were pairing up Spock and Kirk.

And they were doing things like putting them, just abbreviating the relationship as K slash S, which is where we get this slash fiction term from.

And slash fic, as you know, usually means fiction, fan fiction for gay characters that in the original universe, they weren’t gay.

But the fans say, well, what if these two characters got together?

What would that be like?

What kind of relationship would they have?

Let’s write some imaginary fiction and picture what could happen if they got together.

So that’s one of the ways that two names were combined, K slash S, on paper.

And so this would be at least as early in the 90s and maybe as early as the 60s.

I don’t have the details on that.

But I know that it was happening very early on.

But this whole idea of calling it shipping and talking about shippers and talking about ships really started with the X-Files.

And this is all abbreviating relationship and relationship or relationship shipping.

When the X-Files started in 1993, there were these two characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, and they were both very attractive people.

And the show was mysterious and thrilling and ambiguous.

And the Internet and its chat forums were exploding in popularity.

And everybody, some people, really wanted those characters to get together.

You know, they wanted these two sexy, hot people to get together.

Of course they did.

So that is really where those terms shipping and shipper and stuff came out of.

And you can actually find examples of these as early as like the mid-90s, 95, 96, 97, around there.

Yeah.

And that’s really interesting.

I don’t know what I was thinking, if maybe you would go past, you know, beyond the Internet’s history.

But it’s really interesting to see that it was even, you know, the ship names of the K slash S was present on paper.

I had not heard anything about that before.

Yeah, if you Google Kirk Spock slash fic, you will come up with some really great articles on the origin of this.

And very well researched because people who are into that sort of thing also are just meticulous in uncovering the history of their passion.

And if you remember, the original Star Trek wasn’t that many episodes, and people always kind of wanted more, so they went ahead and wrote them.

They went ahead and wrote their fan fiction and wrote more episodes because they just couldn’t stand that there wasn’t more of it.

And you’ve got to kind of love that, that humans, when they love a thing, they just make more of it.

And now that ship has sailed.

Well, I’m really glad you asked that question, Zach.

We appreciate your calling.

Yeah, take care, Zach.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I think the last time we talked about something related to this,

We got so many emails from devoted fan fiction and slash fiction fans,

And I love hearing from them.

By all means, send us email to word at waywordradio.org

And tell us whatever you know that we left out.

We’d love to hear from you.

Does your family talk funny?

Share your stories as A Way with Words continues.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette and floating into view in his hover car and removing his flashing headgear. It’s an Android. Oh, no, wait. It’s our quiz guy, John Chalosky. Hey, John.

Hi, John.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

Let me get down off this.

There we go.

All right.

Today’s quiz is pretty interesting.

I think you’ll like it.

There is a letter of the alphabet.

This letter can be very bothersome for audio engineers

Because when it’s said, it causes a small blast of air to hit the microphone,

Making an annoying sound.

Now, I won’t say the letter, but it comes between O and Q in the alphabet.

See if you can figure that out.

We’re going to make this quiz nicer to the ear of our audio engineer.

I’ll give you a clue to a two-word phrase.

Both words in this phrase begin with the annoying letter between O and Q.

What we’ll do is substitute the slightly less offensive letter B in the place of the letter between O and Q, like this.

This is a skill that some drivers have trouble with when it comes to inserting their car between two others.

The answer would be…

I still have trouble with barrel-ell parking.

Barking, sorry.

Barrel-ell barking.

Barrel-ell barking.

Very good.

You seem to have it.

This sounds perfect.

Let’s begin.

It’s like we’re gang members.

We just don’t say the letter from the other gang’s name.

Otherwise a war could break out.

Grant and Martha in a gang.

Sign me up.

This item is small and green.

It contains three or four tiny little vegetables.

It’s found on a bean plant.

A bee bod.

A bee bod, yes, a bee bod.

If you don’t like to do the dishes, you can buy a stack of these, eat off them, and then just dispose of them.

Vapor plates.

Vapor plates for potato salad.

Potato.

Vapor plates is correct.

This artist created the works Guernica, the old guitarist, and the Weeping Woman.

No.

Bablo Begaso, the painter.

That’s the painter, Bablo Begaso, yes.

You don’t yet have all the rights to your invention secured, but you want to get it out to the public.

Batten bending.

Batten bending is correct. Very good.

This describes movies like The Patriot, Shakespeare in Love, or Bride and Prejudice, which are set in the best.

A beard piece?

A beard piece, yes.

A lovely, lovely beard piece.

This term was in wide use before J. Jacques and Son Limited trademarked it for their brand of table tennis.

Oh, Bing Bong.

Bing Bong.

Yes, Bing Bong.

Also a character in the movies.

That’s right, yeah.

Pixar movies.

Bing Bong is just about a proprietary ebonim.

This is ridiculous. I don’t know why it’s so funny.

Yeah, it’s a little ridiculous.

Now, you knew he was coming. Here he is.

He famously bicked a beck of Bickle Peppers.

Oh, no.

Beater Biper. Beater Biber.

Beater Biber. Beater Biper.

That’s the quiz, guys. It has been my pleasure.

Thanks, John. We’ll talk to you next week.

We do more than goof around with the alphabet in our quizzes here.

We talk to you, the listener.

We’d like to hear what you have to say about language.

What are your thoughts, stories, ideas?

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And if you’re not in the United States, you can talk to us through our website where you’ll find a contact form and a WhatsApp address.

That’s at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

My name is Jane.

I’m calling from Denver, Colorado.

And my questions are about the way we talk about the difference between versus listening to an audio book.

I grew up doing both. I love listening to audio books. I love reading.

But somehow, whenever I want to tell somebody that, oh, I read that book, I feel the need to almost apologize and say, oh, but I actually just listened to the audio book.

And so I’m hoping we have maybe on the horizon a better and more useful and more graceful term to use instead.

Is it guilt, Jane?

I don’t know. I have been kicked out of a dinner party over this discussion before.

Oh, really?

Wait, what? You’ve got to tell us about that.

The host had a very strong, I think, undertone or under feeling that reading a book is in some way more valuable.

And I kind of agree that it is more difficult, right?

You’re kind of translating a written word into a spoken word in your mind and using that to create an image.

And so it’s kind of like, you know, reading through a foreign language, if only for a medium.

But I staunchly believe that the similarities in the way we experience books through our ears or through our eyes are very, very similar.

And so I wouldn’t give ground on that.

And he rather abruptly said, oh, man, I think it’s smelling out.

You should probably get home.

Oh, wow.

So, yeah, just kind of a funny story.

Yeah.

And if he had listened to an audio book on the way home, then he would have gotten some more reading done.

Right.

Or some more listening anyway.

As a matter of fact, I think we listened to your podcast on the way home from that.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah.

Jane, I have the same kind of, I don’t know, self-consciousness about audio books.

I listen to a lot of them now, and I absolutely love them.

There’s a different layer of experience. It’s not necessarily better or worse, but

Well, in some ways, I think it is better. I mean, there are some amazing narrators out there who add

All kinds of things to text. And I really, really appreciate that. But I, you know, I’m with you.

I do get a little bit self-conscious. And the other thing that is interesting to me is that,

Well, a couple of things. One of them is that sometimes when I’m talking about one of those books to somebody else, I can’t remember if I read it on the page or listened to it as an audio book.

You know, it’s just kind of it’s it’s in my mind. The other thing is that the vast majority of the time I end up buying the print copy afterward.

I do the exact same thing.

I love to reread, so anytime I’m drawn back to a book multiple times and I really feel like, man, I’d love a way to quickly reference this without scrolling through several hours of somebody talking, I’ll make sure I have a copy on hand.

And what’s wrong with that?

Nothing as far as I’m concerned.

But I think I come down on the side of, so what?

You listen to it and you took it in.

And, you know, I mean, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that medium.

And the question that Grant raised about, you know, what do you call that?

I read the book.

There are some verbs out there being used.

Some people call it ear reading.

Some people call it audio reading.

Some people call it experiencing.

The verb audibled is out there, but it doesn’t have a lot of play.

So I could say listened to the narration of, which is long and awkward.

But I think audio read and ear reading are widely used and have a good chance of lasting.

Do you really?

I like audio read.

That’s nice.

Or ear reading, you know.

I don’t know.

What do you think, Jane?

I quite like audio read, mostly just because I think ear read is kind of an awkward transition from the first dip song into the rest of the word.

Oh, perfect.

Yeah.

So well said.

I want to add two things in here.

I think the experience for listening to fiction and the experience for listening to nonfiction is different.

Oh, that’s interesting.

For example, if I’m listening to somebody talking to me about science versus somebody reading to me science fiction, the first is not harmed at all by listening to it.

Where the second might be harmed a little bit.

Wait, by fiction?

No, no.

I think that fiction sometimes is better in print than it is listened to.

Really?

In my experience.

I was prepared for the argument that you can’t learn geometry through your ears.

I don’t ever consume geometry in print or listening to.

I’m surprised to hear that stories which were, you know, originally oratory in our history, that that’s the part that you find harmed by the page.

So much of this is personal taste, isn’t it?

That maybe there are no universals here.

The other thing I wanted to say is I listened to two drama podcasts, one from BBC and one from RTE, which is the Irish national broadcaster.

And those cannot be. I don’t have enough experience with drama in print to render them properly as a reader. And the only way I’m going to get maximum value from them is having them dramatized for me by professionals.

Like the same way I don’t get enough from Shakespeare reading it. I have to see it performed in order to be as an ignorant consumer to be properly, you know, informed how Shakespeare should be consumed.

Seeing the words.

Yeah. Well, I do also get things from the words that I’m saying, like, as somebody who is not a Shakespearean, I need to see the performance to really get the maximum value.

Yeah, I think there are probably a lot of books that are better on the page. Like Cormac McCarthy’s books have a startling lack of punctuation. And that lack is almost a character through the book, like it changes the way the book feels. And you don’t always get that through your ears.

But on the other hand, I think there are plenty of books, like I believe the author Neil Gaiman, whenever he has a book performed as an audiobook, he wants to do it himself.

I think he said in the foreword of Coraline that he prefers to have his books spoken aloud and to do it himself because that’s how he hears them in his head.

I love that.

So I would say that to some extent it’s up to the author which one would be better for that book.

Yeah, but I don’t think that my experience listening to the books is so significantly different that I want to have a different word to say what it is that I did.

Okay, yeah, I think it’s fair to use the verb read.

I think audio read sounds a little bit apologetic to me.

I’m going with read.

I like read.

Take care of yourself and good reading.

You as well.

Thank you so much for your time.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Jane.

Bye-bye.

Put your beautiful voices in our voicemail at 877-929-9673.

That’s toll free, 24 hours a day in the United States and Canada.

We got a WhatsApp message from Tammy Armstrong who said,

When someone would be talking about a subject that nobody else knew anything about,

My father-in-law would say, I had one of those, but the wheels came off.

I am adopting that one.

Yeah, it’s another one of those expressions you just kind of toss in as a non sequitur just to be a part of the conversation.

What’s the one about the rhubarb?

Yeah, do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?

Yeah.

877-929-9673 is toll free in Canada and the United States.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is James. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Charlotte, North Carolina. Well, we’re glad to have you, James. What’s up?

There was a word that I heard when I first moved to the area that I wondered where it came from.

I heard somebody say, so-and-so had a baby.

And they asked, well, how much did the baby weigh?

And the response was, oh, he was a big one.

The baby, whoa, seven pounds, two ounces.

So, whoa, instead of weighed.

Yes.

And I’ve tried to find out where that came from.

Where did you come from, James?

And they didn’t say that there?

I’m from the eastern part of the state.

And I had never heard this before.

Until I moved to the western part of the state.

Okay. Yeah.

And have you heard that woe any other way

Except when talking about babies and weight?

I can’t recall hearing that word

In relation to other things

Only when they were discussing the newborn.

You’ve heard it more than once in talking about babies.

Yes, I’ve heard it more than once.

Okay.

What I think is happening here is that it’s a possible pronunciation of the word word,

W-E-R-E, in the U.S. South.

As you know, in parts of the South, people don’t pronounce their R’s.

It’s called lack of roticity, after the Greek letter rho, R-H-O, which stands for the R sound.

So it can sound like whoa, like that, exactly like you say it, or whoa.

And so this is recorded in the dialect dictionaries as one of the sounds that W-E-R-E is pronounced as.

It would sound very much like whoa.

And so you could see somebody saying the baby were eight pounds as a dialect way of saying the baby was eight pounds.

Very interesting.

That’s my guess.

I don’t have any way of knowing without gathering more data on this.

You’re a good field worker here.

You’ve delivered good data, which I appreciate.

You know, nothing like having a good researcher out there accumulating good data.

I’ve been listening out to see if I hear it many more times.

But so far, it’s usually in connection with discussing the baby.

Yeah, that’s interesting that it should just be that one particular domain of life, just with the little ones.

Well, James, if you come across it anywhere else, by all means, give us a call or drop us a line and let us know.

I’d be really interested to hear more about this.

And of course, others listening can also let us know.

All right. I’ll be sure to do that.

All right. Well, you take care of yourself, and thanks for chatting with us today.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks for calling, James.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Well, if you’ve heard this usage or you’re curious about some other aspect of how they talk where you live,

We’d love to hear about it.

877-929-9673 or send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Robin. I’m calling from Jacksonville, Florida.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Well, I’ve ridden horses my entire life, and there’s a particular collar, and it’s called a rat catcher.

And I always thought maybe it came from hunters, like fox hunters.

So it’s like a rat catcher with the jack ruffles and whatnot.

But I’ve just never really understood it.

I’ve worn one my entire life, but I didn’t know where it came from.

So by a collar, you mean it goes around your neck, not the horse’s neck?

That’s correct.

And what does it look like?

Are we talking about stiff fabric?

You could picture that you button your shirt up and it already has a straight collar on it.

It goes about to the middle of the neck.

And then there’s a separate button, and you put an extra collar around it, and it’s called a rat catcher.

Yeah, there’s a long history in the horse world of calling clothes rat catchers, and not specifically that kind of collar.

But a long time ago, about 100 years ago, it referred to informal clothes.

So you have this formal fox hunting outfit, as you thought, which is exactly on the money.

Which has a stock tie.

Yeah, but also it refers to the entire mode of dress,

This very specific costume that you wear to go fox hunting.

And then you had the kind of clothes you would wear, I think they called it cubbing.

On practice days, maybe?

Practice days, and they called it cubbing as well, when you would go after something, the young.

It is literally because when you wear them,

You look like you’re wearing the kind of clothes that rat catchers would wear.

And so it was early 1910, two writers.

It seems informal.

Yeah, because it seems informal.

And I’ve grown up knowing it was formal.

But words change, and it’s been a long time, you know.

I’m so interested in that.

I really appreciate this.

Rudyard Kipling and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, two writers, both used it separately in 1910 in their writing.

Yeah.

But you’ll find things like ratting jacket or rat catcher to refer to a blouse.

Or ratcatcher to refer to a tie,

Sometimes ratting suit, which refers to tweedy civilian clothes.

So it’s kind of all over the place.

Tweedy, like tweed.

Yeah, made with tweed, that’s right.

Tweedy civilian clothes.

Yeah, and so all of this is just really about being in opposition

To the very formal traditional fox hunting clothes that you would wear.

Oh my goodness, I am so glad to hear this information.

It’s just been a question on my mind since I was a little girl.

Well, thank you so much for spending some time with us today.

We really appreciate it, Robin.

Oh, I appreciate you as well.

Thank you very, very much.

All right.

Take care now.

Take care, Robin.

Thank you as well.

Bye-bye.

Goodbye.

Well, Robin had been wondering about that term since childhood, and I’m betting you

Have a term like that as well.

You can give us a call to talk about it, 877-929-9673.

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.

I wanted to tell you about a book that I’ve been giving to friends and family lately.

It’s part memoir and part cookbook.

It’s called Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts, and it’s by novelist and poet Crystal Wilkinson.

Wilkinson opens the book this way.

People are always surprised that black people reside in the hills of Kentucky.

Those not surprised that we were there are surprised that we stayed.

In fact, Appalachia is home to almost two million black residents,

And her book is about the foodways and the folkways that are passed down through five generations of one such family,

Namely her own, and about what she calls the kitchen ghosts who preceded her.

She writes,

The art of cooking and engaging with my kitchen ghosts made me realize that food is never just about the present.

Every dish, every slice, every crumb and kernel also tethers us to the past.

With a novelist’s ear, she listens to and then she relays the voices of those ancestors.

And she shares memories from her own childhood, like seeing her grandmother cook.

She writes, I watch her stir and pour and flip and taste.

I take note of how she twists her mouth when the steam hits her face, signaling the potatoes are ready for mashing.

I know the ease in her shoulder when the fried chicken has reached its crispy golden perfection.

Grant, this is a sumptuous, sensuous book, and it includes some amazing recipes for Appalachian comfort food,

Like blackberry cobbler and hot milk cake and dressed eggs and pimento cheese with a kick.

And there are beautiful, beautiful images, not just of the food, but of Wilkinson’s family and that part of the country.

It’s just a real treasure.

What is it about the tie of the land and food that surpasses the generations that we can move away and still feel that call?

Yeah, exactly.

And I mean, this is what she talks about again and again in the book is just, you know, feeling the presence of those kitchen ghosts, those women who came before her and moved in the same ways and combined the same spices and smells and techniques.

I mean, I can remember specific meals from like 1972, you know?

Really?

Yeah.

I can remember kitchens from the 70s, the specific people and moments.

It’s the strangest thing.

Right.

And just the way that a whiff of something, a whiff of biscuits or something like that can just take you immediately back to your childhood.

Tell us the title and author of that book again, Martha.

Yes, it’s Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts, Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks.

It’s by Crystal Wilkinson.

Of course, we will link to that from our website at waywordradio.org as we do all the books that we mention on this show.

Martha and I are big readers, and we’d love to hear what you’re reading and recommending to your friends.

Send us an email to words@waywordradio.org, and you can call us toll-free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

And if you’re anywhere else in the world, there are a lot of ways to reach us.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Tim, and I’m from Tucson.

Hi, Tim. We’re glad to have you. What’s up?

Well, I’m calling about a word that, or a phrase actually, that I’ve been a choral singer for quite some time, since way back in the early 60s.

And way back when I was about 15, I first heard the word, and it refers to when a piece is particularly difficult and requires a lot of extra work, you are supposed to do wood shedding, which means doing a lot of work about the details, about the performance, about the right notes, about the right rhythm, things that are particularly difficult.

And I’ve never heard it used in any other realm of my life.

And I’m just wondering where this started and whether it really applies only to musicians.

Woodshedding, W-O-O-D-S-H-E-D-D-I-N-G, woodshedding?

That’s correct.

And so is this something that you do alone or do you do it with the rest of the choir?

Well, ideally, it should be done, you know, in both.

But generally, it’s with a group because and it has, you know, like each section might have to rehearse a short phrase separately.

And then you have the next section do it.

And then those two do it.

Then you do, you know, each one has to get this all figured out by themselves.

Then you have to start all over again and do the whole thing.

It’s, you know, just a lot of detail, kind of frustrating work.

At least that’s what I consider woodshedding to be.

And ideally, if you also do the same thing at home, eventually you’ll get a beautiful piece of music.

That’s right. Yeah, that’s exactly how it’s used throughout music, whether your people are singing or playing an instrument.

And it goes back to the early 1900s.

There’s a quote from a newspaper from Kansas in 1908.

It’s several of us would like to see our tuba player get busy woodshedding on that tuba solo.

And doesn’t that sound so contemporary?

Doesn’t that sound like something someone could say today?

Well, yeah.

I wouldn’t want to be around that.

Well, there’s an important point, Martha.

That’s why.

So the first uses of chatting were the idea of retreating to a private space to do something like smoke or drink or get up to other mischief so you wouldn’t be detected.

It’s something that you would want to do alone so that other people wouldn’t harass you.

But also, when you do something like practice an instrument or singing, it’s so that you don’t harass other people because this repetition is so annoying to others.

They do not want to hear you do scales.

They do not want to hear you play the same part over and over and over because it’s frustrating to them.

And so you do it in private. You do it alone, perhaps in the woodshed.

And so that’s the whole concept of woodshedding.

You’ll find throughout the years, up through the jazz era, people like Tommy Dorsey using this expression and the great blues artists using this.

And even today, people still talk about it in every part of music.

They talk about woodshedding.

So, yeah, that is, it’s still an expression.

You’re not the only one that uses it that way.

So that’s what we know, Tim.

Well, that’s great.

Thank you.

Because, you know, I had kind of assumed that it started, you know, in Kentucky or West Virginia where I was born, you know, that taking someone out to the woodshed and punishing them, you know, by beating them or something.

So this is really interesting to find out.

No, it’s just about the woodshed being separate from the main house as a place that you can go and not annoy others with your, you know, just doing your solo over and over and over and over.

Yeah, it’s interesting because there is an early use of it, too, in the field of law to prepare or coach a witness before a trial or a deposition.

And it’s about the repetition, right?

It’s private.

Well, it’s about going someplace that’s really private and discreet, you know.

But yeah, wood shedding a witness back in the 19th century.

So, Tim, thanks so much and good luck with the choir.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Stephanie Thompson in Mammoth Lakes, California, wrote to us to say,

My then three-year-old son and I were talking about our dog having a tummy ache.

He asked me, is it going to crack?

Oh!

He thought it was a tummy egg.

Oh, a tummy egg! No!

But I’m just imagining those little round tummies when the puppies and the kitties have too much to eat.

And they’re so bulgy, right?

And you do kind of want to hold them as if they’re going to burst.

And pat them, right?

Right.

Give them little scritches.

But that’s the cutest thing.

I know.

A tummy egg.

Send your little cute things to us.

Words at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Judy.

I’m calling you from Forestville, New York.

What’s on your mind?

So my aunt, who recently passed away, told me her husband had a saying he used to say about 55 years ago when my cousins were kids.

And he’d tell the kids to go get their bib and tucker on when he wanted to take them out to eat.

What did he mean by that?

Now, my understanding was it meant to get dressed up.

Oh, to get dressed up.

Where does this phrase come from?

And is it still used at all?

If someone told you to put your bib and tucker on, Judy, what would you do differently?

I think it would mean, you know, to get clean clothes on.

Okay.

Yeah, very fancy clothes, as a matter of fact.

Yeah, to get your bib and tucker on means to dress up in your very finest, you know, in your Sunday best.

Bib and tucker is three words, bib, like a bib that a baby wears, and the word and, and then tucker.

And this phrase goes back to, actually, the practice itself goes back to the 17th century.

We’re talking about specific clothing that was initially worn just by women and girls.

And a tucker was a bit of lace that’s worn around the neck and the top of your bodice.

And presumably it’s tucked in.

And then a bib is sort of like a shirt front.

And bib and tucker referred to a certain kind of dressy dress that women and girls would wear.

And later this expression bib and tucker came to refer to men getting dressed up as well.

Men were told to put on their best bib and tucker for the evening out.

So it goes back to an old way of dressing.

It’s a great, great saying.

It’s a great phrase.

What do you like about it?

It makes me want to go get some nice clothes on or going out to eat somewhere.

Yeah, it makes me want to get out of my sweatpants.

Thank you so much for spending some time with us, Judy.

It was the first time I had heard your show, and I look forward to listening again.

Thanks for listening.

Take care of yourself.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You don’t have to put on your fancy clothes to give us a call 877-929-9673.

Toll free in Buffalo, in Canada, and anywhere in the United States.

And if you’re somewhere else in the world, go to our website and find our WhatsApp number.

That’s at waywordradio.org, where you’ll also find all of our past episodes.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. My name is Julia Stilwell, and I’m calling from Hampton, Virginia.

Hi, Julia. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

When I was a little girl, I was horribly afraid of thunderstorms.

And my grandmother would always try to help me feel better by telling me that it was the old man dropping his sack of potatoes in heaven.

Aww.

Which is very sweet. And probably from that clue, you might be able to guess that my whole family, both sides, immigrated from Ireland during the Irish potato famine.

Here recently, my son got married, had, I guess, a seventh grandchild, but his wife is Hispanic.

And it got me to thinking about what other cultures, what type of references did they use or stories did they tell to their children about storms or thunder?

And I was just curious to get some info on it.

What a great question that is.

Martha, I think there are a lot of similarities across cultures, aren’t there?

There sure are.

I mean, it’s the same sound wherever you go, right?

Yeah, there are lots of phrases in English, anyway, involving potatoes.

And to explain the sound of thunder, like the potato wagons are rolling.

Or I have a friend who used to say, the tater wagon’s going over the bridge.

Or the potato wagon broke down.

Somebody used to say, God is dumping out potatoes and washing them off, which I really like.

And another one from Appalachia is the Lord’s bread wagon or the Lord’s corn wagon is going over the bridge or, you know, rumbling along.

They talk about the Lord’s bread wagon.

And let’s see, what else?

Oh, I know somebody who used to say the angels are moving the furniture.

Oh, yeah, or God or the devil or St. Peter.

Oh, I have heard that one.

Yeah, or St. Peter’s going bowling.

Oh, yeah, every place that you’ve heard those with potatoes, you can replace them with bowling balls or you can replace them with barrels.

Well, that is true.

So it doesn’t have anything to do with my Irish heritage.

No, it could.

It just has to do with potatoes falling.

Sounds like that.

Well, I don’t know.

Maybe the Ukrainians also would use potatoes because they also have a potato-heavy culture.

There are some gentler ones that I really love, that clouds are bumping together, angels are baking cookies.

And a modern one that I absolutely love is God is taking out the garbage cans.

That’s good enough. That definitely is what that sounds like.

Right? It’s that thumpity-thump-thump of a garbage can that doesn’t have very much in it.

So, Julia, when your family used this expression and you were a little kid, was this reassuring to you?

Yes, it was.

You could picture it.

Even now, today, when I hear it thunder outside, I think of some man up there dropping his bag of potatoes.

Yeah, a kindly old fellow, and the potatoes mean food eventually, right?

Yep, that’s it.

But you know what, Julia?

I bet that we have listeners out there with other versions of this and possibly other versions in other languages.

So I hope you’ll stay tuned and listen for more.

I listen every week.

So I definitely will stay tuned.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Well, thank you both so much.

Our pleasure.

Call again sometime, Julia.

Thanks for calling, Julia.

I will.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Well, as Martha said, we want to hear what you learned to say was happening in the skies

When thunder and lightning happened.

What was the folklore that was passed down in your family?

877-929-9673.

And you know what?

We’re on Blue Sky, Mastodon, and Threads.

You can find us there.

Get those handles and addresses on our website at waywordradio.org.

I really appreciated this quotation from Iranian-American poet Solmaz Sharif.

She said, the duty of the writer is to remind us that we will die and that we aren’t dead yet.

And I just so appreciated that because that’s part of the human dilemma, isn’t it?

Knowing about mortality and yet grasping what is here in front of us here and now.

Our opportunities, our moments, our chances, and making them for ourselves and appreciating what others have made for us.

Right.

What have they presented before us and how can we make the most of them?

Yeah.

Right.

Other people presenting poetry to us is an opportunity.

Right.

I think, right?

They’ve made something for us that we should savor and appreciate.

I love how she describes it as the duty of the writer, you know, I guess, whether you’re writing prose or poetry.

Right.

You shouldn’t just dash it off because it’s something that you have to do.

You dash it off because it is your duty to do something well.

And it’s something you will leave behind for others when you’re gone.

Right. Carpe diem.

Oh, Martha, deep thoughts.

Where’s Jack Handy when we need him?

Send your deep thoughts to us, words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words senior producer is Stephanie Levine.

Tim Felton is our engineer and editor.

And John Chinesky is our quiz master.

Go to waywordradio.org for all of our past episodes, podcast links, and ways to reach us.

If you have a language, thought, or question, the toll-free line is always open in the U.S. And Canada.

1-877-929-9673.

A Wayword Words is an independent nonprofit production of Wayword, Inc.

It’s supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Although we’re not a part of NPR, we thank NPR stations throughout the United States that carry the show.

And special thanks to our nonprofits volunteer board.

Michael Breslauer, Josh Eccles, Claire Grotting, Meryl Perlman, Bruce Rogo, Rick Seidenworm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

So long.

Bye.