Price of Tea (episode #1648)

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.

The word smarmy describes somebody, what Grant, ingratiating, dripping with insincerity. Unctuous. That’s a good word for it. Oily in their praise or their commentary.

Well, what I didn’t know until recently is that the word smarmy may be the result of a contest.

Oh, I didn’t know that either.

Yeah, this was news to me. It turns out that in 1899, a journal in London held a competition where they asked readers to send in new words.

And the journal put it this way. Most families have a few pet words of homemade manufacture, which are often far more expressive and picturesque than anything in Webster’s Unabridged.

So all these readers sent in clever coinages, like one of them was screel, S-C-R-E-E-L.

And supposedly, screel means to feel the sensation of hearing a knife-edge squeal on a plate, which I think is a great word.

But another reader sent in the word smarmy, and they defined it as saying treacly things that do not sound genuine.

Now, the verb to smarm, meaning to smear, had been around for a few decades, specifically referring to smearing oil on your hair.

But the first instance of the adjective smarmy, at least the first use of it that anybody has been able to find in print, is the one sent in as part of a magazine contest looking for made up words.

And I learned this from a new book by Ben Yagoda.

It’s about British words and phrases that have been imported into American English.

It is called Gobsmacked, and we’ll talk about it later in the show.

I’m looking forward to hearing about the book, Martha.

And you and I are both looking forward to hearing from our listeners.

Call us 877-929-9673.

It’s toll-free in the United States and Canada.

Or send us something through your keyboard.

You can find all the ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

I’m doing great. Who are you and where are you?

I am Mary Beth Endicott, and I’m in Greenville, South Carolina.

Greenville, South Carolina. Mary Beth, welcome to the show. What’s on your mind?

Okay, so I have oftentimes been in a hotel room that the number of the room is 409, but when we refer to it, we say 409. We don’t say 409. We don’t say 409. We say 409. Why do we say O and not the zero? I was actually talking with a friend recently, and she goes,

Oh, no, I’m a mathematician. I’d say 409.

Of course.

Oh, really?

I was like, okay, that was interesting. I hadn’t thought about it that way.

Isn’t there a cleaning fluid by the name of 409? And that’s how they say it?

There is a cleaning fluid.

Yeah, and they don’t say 409.

Correct. They don’t. They say 409.

That’s true.

You know, what’s really interesting is that that capital O, that O sound, standing in for zero goes all the way back, if you can believe it, to the 16th century and possibly even earlier.

And I’m thinking about in Shakespeare’s King Lear, which was the early 1600s.

The fool says to King Lear, thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning. Now thou art an O without a figure.

That is, the king used to be in a lot better shape, and now he’s reduced to nothing.

So that’s fascinating that that O has been around for a very long time.

Yeah, and there’s other strange separations here, right, Martha?

So the British are more likely to say zero or not.

What’s also interesting, too, is that in writing, the use of the word O, like O-H, to mean zero, shows up a whole lot later.

Like it doesn’t come around till the 20th century or so.

But I want to go back to what Mary Beth said about her scientist friend or mathematician friend, which is there are these very specific applications where we are always going to say zero.

Like if something can be measured or counted or if there’s a string of mixed numerals or letters like a postal code or a seal number.

So we might say the temperature was below zero, but we would never say below O.

Or there was zero increase in population or there are between zero and three guards on duty.

Right, right. Or I put out 12 phone calls and I got O back.

You wouldn’t say that.

Right, right.

I got zero back.

Or you might say I got zip back.

Right.

That’s an Americanism or North Americanism.

Of course, everyone ever says 007 to refer to James Bond.

Right.

Yeah.

True.

Wow.

I’m going to be thinking about this.

But really what we’re talking about, Martha, isn’t it, at first it’s the visual similarity, right? They look the same on paper.

Also, it’s a little more efficient.

But also, interestingly, zero has O as its final syllable.

So it almost feels like a short name.

True.

So it’s like a shortened version.

Yeah, but Martha’s got you exactly right, Mary Beth.

This is a long, hundreds of years of this.

But people know in circumstances where they have to be clear, they say zero.

We all do it, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Mary Beth, I’m going to be thinking about you every time I run across this now.

I’m glad I can leave a lasting memory for you.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, take care of yourself and thanks for calling.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Cheers.

Bye-bye.

We enjoy your show tremendously.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You can find all the ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org, where you’ll also find all of our past episodes and how to listen to us by podcast.

Here’s a word that I think is worth reviving.

It’s kinch, K-E-N-C-H.

To kinch in the 13th century meant to laugh loudly.

I love that.

Kinching.

That’s funny.

Part of my family has the family name Kinchin, so I wonder if they were all laughers.

It could be.

You’re reading. You come across a word you don’t know. You look it up. You’re unsatisfied with what you find.

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Call us with that word. 877-929-9673.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hey there.

This is Jim Rogers from Columbia, South Carolina.

Hey, Jim. Welcome. What can we do for you today?

Well, I called because my wife and I have started to notice over the past few years that when we are watching sporting events, that sportscasters are using a phrase that is on the season.

And they typically mean by that, that what has happened during this particular sports season. You know, for example, they might say that a certain team is undefeated on the season, or they might give a statistic like a pitcher’s got a certain number of strikeouts on the season.

And as we’ve heard it, you know, we look at each other and we kind of feel like that’s sort of a funny expression and not something that we heard in the past, you know, before the last 10 years or so.

But we also kind of are curious, is it grammatically incorrect with the use of that preposition? And because it seems to me like what they’re really saying is this happened during the season, or even maybe in the season would be better than on the season. So, but anyway, that’s what we were calling the chat about.

Yeah, so on the season, and it sounds weird to you, rubs you the wrong way.

Yeah, that’s right. And, you know, and I’ve thought about it some more.

And, you know, like if you think about when fruit is ripe, you know, the fruit is in season. It’s not on season.

Yeah. So it just doesn’t seem like it’s an appropriate use of the word.

Yeah, I can see what you’re saying about during the season.

So, you know, the Cubs scored 12 runs per game during the season. I just made that up.

But you could also say for the season.

And on the season strikes you as odd because it is language particular to sports.

So you have identified something that is real, and you’ve successfully kind of separated it out from the mainstream language, which is why it sounds odd.

But in sports, since, believe it or not, the 1880s, this particular construction has been legitimate.

So you can find, particularly when this first shows up in the sports pages in the 1880s, they’re almost always talking about money.

So they’re talking about the receipts or the revenue of a particular sports team.

So here’s a real quote.

David Rose says Kansas City is $8,000 ahead on the season.

Or it is said that the Jersey City Club lost $12,000 on the season.

Or Detroit are said to be $11,000 behind on the season.

So it’s interesting that in the beginning, they’re always talking about the revenue for a team, but eventually they start talking about runs.

And it’s not just baseball.

You might find it in horse racing or cricket or American football.

So they might talk about points on the season or goals on the season or wins on the season.

And so it’s one of those truisms that Martha and I always say, which is if something sounds odd to you, there’s almost always a chance that it belongs to another group.

And in this case, it’s sports writers or insider people who are inside sports and have their own jargon in it, and it leaks out occasionally.

Oh, wow. Yeah. And I would have never thought that it came, at least started with referring to money and earnings.

Yeah. Yeah. And it makes a little more sense there, I think, to talk about money.

So you’ll find that actually talking about money in that way is even older than the 1880s.

And you’ll find that people talk about it, for example, in theater.

They’ll say that a producer is something like $10,000, thus far ahead on the season.

So that’s an actual quote from the 1880s.

So it’s not a stretch then to go from money to points or runs or goals or what have you.

Right.

And, you know, I’ve never heard it used outside of the sports context.

And so it’s interesting that it does get used in some other situations.

Well, it did, but it seems to have settled in sports and kind of not settled in any other field.

Do you think the use of it has increased?

Because I don’t feel like I heard it as much 10 years ago.

You might be suffering from something known as the recency illusion, which is once we hear something, we notice it more.

And maybe the frequency hasn’t changed, but the acuity of your perception has changed.

Understood.

Like I just bought a red car, and so now I see red cars.

That’s right.

Yeah, we have the same thumb.

We bought a Nissan, and now I see the exact model of Nissan everywhere.

Well, thank you for your question.

Thanks for talking with us.

Well, thank you both.

Appreciate it.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

What’s the word or phrase that’s caught your ear that way?

There probably is a great story behind it.

Call us and we’ll talk about it. 877-929-9673.

I just came across this expression in social media.

If somebody does something really well, you say they ate and left no crumbs.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think that came up on the American Dialect Society’s Worthy Year nominations either last year or the year before.

Yeah, it’s a great one. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember we had that conversation with the woman who did hairstyles for theatrical productions.

Remember the woman from Maine and she was talking about, yeah, about how that haircut really ate.

Yeah, so it’s connected maybe. Oh, I love it.

Yeah, yeah, it’s even more intense.

That person gave a speech sheet, ate and left no crumbs.

It was a whole meal.

Yeah, exactly.

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

More word love to come. Stay tuned.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and coming in in a cloud of dust, wearing a 10-gallon hat, and twirling a lariat, it’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

Excuse me as I kick off my spurs and we get ready.

They make a little too much noise as I cross my legs.

You know, we’ve covered different styles of cryptic crossword clues here.

We’ve done anagrams, sound clues, charades, but this is one, a rather rare type that is nonetheless very fun, I think.

It’s the spoonerism.

Yeah, I want a reaction from Spoonerism.

You guys must love Spoonerism.

Oh, boy!

There you go.

My favorite utensil.

Excellent.

Now, the Reverend William Archibald Spooner, of course, is famous for, in late 1800s London, supposedly mixing up the syllables in spoken phrases to comic effect.

You have tasted two worms, instead of you have wasted two terms, he supposedly said to a student.

It is kistamary to cuss the bride, is alleged to have been his, you know, these are, you know, apocryphal, of course.

Now, a cryptic Spoonerism clue is easy to spot because it typically references the reverend, and the clues I’m about to give you are not standard cryptic clues, but they get the idea across and down.

For example, to us, it is to abruptly bring something to an end.

To the reverend, it is a closed trial.

So to us, it is cut short.

And to the Reverend, it’s shut court.

Oh, boy.

All right?

Okay.

Now, you’ve got two ways in on this, and there are two of you.

Now, if one of you gives me the spoonerism, the other can correct it and vice versa.

Okay?

We’ll try that.

We’ll see how it goes.

All right.

Here’s the first one.

To us, it is a collection of an entire TV series, typically in a cardboard container.

To the reverend, it is a wager on the Boston Baseball Club.

So a socks bet.

Right, that’s the reverend’s version.

Very good.

And a box set.

A box set, yeah.

Box set and socks bet.

You’ve got it right away.

This is going to be great.

To us, it is soft sugar candies that resemble legumes.

To the reverend, it is dungarees that cover your stomach.

Jelly jeans.

And jelly beans.

Very good, yes.

To us, it is snacks taken along on a hike.

To the reverend, it is illusions performed by men.

Oh, I know.

Well, on a hike, I take trail mix.

Right, and so let’s take…

Male tricks.

Male tricks, yes.

Very good.

Gotcha.

To us, it is a college official who has a lot of work on her plate.

To the reverend, it is a legume with vertigo.

It’s not vice provost.

Yeah, I guess it would be a busy dean.

Oh, a dizzy bean.

A jumping bean.

A dizzy bean, yes.

It’s a game of legumes today.

Now, Spooner supposedly said, the Lord is a shoving leopard.

May Sod rest his goal.

And that’s it for us today.

I want to do a shout out if the people in the unincorporated community in Indiana called Lake Bruce can hear us.

I just wonder how often they break loose.

Nice.

Very good.

Very good.

Let us know, Lake Bruce.

John, thank you so much.

Thank you, guys.

And you can break loose those questions on us.

Call us 877-929-9673 to talk about any aspect of language whatsoever, or send your stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Sarah Forsley. I’m calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hey, Sarah. Welcome. What’s up?

I was looking at some cake recipes in Joy of Cooking, and one of the recipes described something as being like earrings for elephants.

And, well, I guess I have like a positive association with cake and icing.

So I thought it was a good thing.

But when I asked my mom, who would have been alive when that edition of Joy of Cooking was published, she said she thought that sounded like maybe it wasn’t good because why would elephants need earrings?

So anyway, after a quick Google search, we didn’t find the answer.

But it was a Sunday, so I was listening to your show and thought I would call it a day.

Okay.

Yeah, we can do this.

Do you remember the recipe that it was in?

No, I don’t.

And I’ve poked back through my book, and I think I just, there’s too many pages about cakes and icing.

Right.

You find yourself, like, how did I get all these cookies?

Where did these come from?

Baking in your sleep.

The elephant isn’t in the index?

I will say that, fortunately, at the Internet Archive, where they have a wonderful library that Martha and I both use for our research, they have a lot of past editions of The Joy of Cooking.

And if I look up earrings for an elephant, I find that it’s the recipe for the orange-filled cake.

That does, yes.

That absolutely sticks out to me now that you say that.

And here’s what it says.

And I love the tone of this.

It says, most recipes for orange cake prove to be disappointing.

For upon reading them, you find that they are merely sponge or butter cake with an orange filling.

This one calls for orange juice in the batter plus orange filling and icing.

Earrings for an elephant with no apologies.

And so I think they’re talking about, it’s not quite a bad thing.

I think what the authors mean here, because I think at this point,

Rombauer wasn’t the only one writing it.

I think they’re just talking about an elephant is already a magnificent,

Beautiful creature and doesn’t need jewelry,

But we’re going to put some on it anyway.

So orange on top of orange on top of orange to make the best orange field cake possible.

That totally makes sense.

Yeah, so I was right and my mother was right, too.

Yeah, I think so, yeah.

It’s not a common idiom, but I do find it here and there.

And almost always there’s a notion of absurdity because an elephant is an absurd character, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I’m thinking about elephant earrings now.

I mean, are they proportional to the elephant?

Are they these gigantic earrings?

I think they are.

Are they like earrings that I would wear, you know, like these little bitty, you know, posts?

I’d say they’re enormous.

Yeah.

And orange.

So I haven’t done the full dig on this, but it looks like this particular line first showed up in the editions of Joy of Cooking in the 1960s.

And for almost, for more than 30 years, that line continued to be in there.

But I think if the recipe itself is even in there, that line is no longer in the more recent editions of Joy of Cooking.

Because, you know, they make substantial updates every time.

But it’s such a great phrase.

Isn’t it? Yeah, it’s colorful.

Yeah, that’s kind of a theme. Well, I’m glad I have a really old one then.

But look up that recipe for orange-filled cake.

You’ll find that line about earrings for elephants.

And send us a picture when you make it.

Yes. Send us a cake.

Yes, express mail a slice to you.

Perfect.

Wonderful.

We’ll be right over.

I’ll help do the dishes.

Sarah, thank you for your time.

We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Have a good one.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

My name is Ahmed Mohamed, and I’m calling from South Carolina,

And I have a question that I’ve been thinking about a lot,

And maybe you can help me with it.

Oh, well, great, Ahmed.

Let’s hear it.

So the background story is that my native language is Arabic, and I am slightly familiar with French.

And I noticed that in the English language, we use a lot of words.

Most of them are names of places or names of people.

But some of them are from foreign language origin, either from French or from Arabic.

And the best example I can mention is the poet that probably a lot of Americans will be familiar with called Khalil Gibran.

Now, Khalil Gibran is how we pronounce it in Arabic, but I’m sure the English speaker will pronounce the name Khalil a little bit different because you don’t have the letter ha.

And the second example I will mention is Qatar, which we call Qatar, the country of Qatar.

And in the French, I have the other example.

We say, for example, we have croissant, but most English speaking, they probably say croissant or something, some other variation.

So that’s a long introduction.

But my question is, for those of us who are familiar with the language of origin, when we’re talking in English, should I just say it the same way other English speakers do, or should I say it the proper way in the original language?

Oh, what a good question.

Yeah, that word proper in there is going to be a point of contention, I think.

Yeah, so let’s talk about the word croissant, which is how most North American English speakers would say it.

We’re talking about the crescent-shaped breakfast pastry, right?

Right.

Yeah.

There are four things that we want when we’re communicating.

One is to be understood, number one, by far and away.

And if pronouncing it the way the word is pronounced in its original language gets in the way of you being understood,

Then it’s probably not a good choice.

And you should pronounce it in the anglicized way, as most English speakers say it.

So with a food item like croissant or broccoli, it’s pretty easy to make that choice.

But when we start talking about places, then we have this heavy weight of history on us.

And when we talk about personal names, then we have this other notion when we communicate is to be respectful.

To be respectful of other people and other cultures.

And so you can try to pronounce Khalil Javran’s name like they say it in other languages or in an original language.

It’s Arabic, right?

But if you’re not a speaker of that language, you’re going to have a really hard time.

But you do want to try to be as respectful as possible.

I remember, Martha, we had a caller from a fellow named Luis, and his co-workers kept calling him Louis, but his name isn’t Louis.

It’s Luis.

And that’s because it’s not respectful for them to mispronounce his name because they don’t even try.

And so that’s part of it, I think, Ahmed, is trying to be respectful.

At least you’re making the effort.

And I think the third thing is be authentic to yourself.

It’s a little pretentious sometimes to pronounce stuff in French, even though everyone around you only knows it as an English word to say croissant, you know, instead of croissant.

I just got back from Paris.

Yeah, Paris.

It sounds pretentious.

And whether or not it’s authentic to the original language.

And I think the fourth thing, and a distant fourth, is you want to help other people pronounce things correctly and save them from embarrassment.

But at the same time, there’s no reason for you to show off your own erudition or knowledge in a showy, demonstrative way.

So those are the four things.

I had the sense that Ahmed wasn’t showing off, for example.

Yeah. Oh, no, I wasn’t saying that.

Yeah, when you mentioned the author of The Prophet, I really had to think about who in the heck you were talking about for a second there.

Because, you know, I grew up thinking of him as Khalil Gibran.

And now you’ve educated me as to the correct pronunciation of it.

But it made me stop and sort of get distracted.

And I think that’s the other issue, you know, is that we’re always trying to communicate clearly and in the most, in the easiest possible way.

Make, you know, your writing and your speaking easy for the listener.

And I really had, I tripped on that at first, I confess.

That’s why I was talking about the number one goal is to be understood.

So, Ahmed, is all this kind of clicking for you?

Yeah, no, it definitely makes sense.

And I think there are, to me, there are two parts to this dilemma.

First one, if you are an English speaker and cannot say Khalil, I will not expect you to say it.

And I am okay with you saying it.

However way it is easier for you.

The best example of that is my name.

My name is Ahmed.

But if you say Ahmed or Ahmed, I’m perfectly okay with it because I understand that your intention is not to butcher my name.

You’re trying your best, and that’s how you say it.

But for me, who can’t say it, the original language that it was written in, that’s why I always have the question in my head.

And I’m torn between what you said.

No, I don’t want to be a show-off and say, oh, I can speak Arabic.

Oh, I can speak Greek.

Blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, like, okay, I know in my head that it’s not Khalil

Gibran, it is Khalil Gibran. Right. Khalil Gibran.

Yeah, those are all excellent points.

And I heard a word in there that I think really applies here, the word torn, because you are straddling multiple cultures when you know more than one language.

You’re straddling more than one phonetic inventory.

You’re straddling different pools of knowledge.

And it is hard to know which side to go to.

And sometimes you can’t.

And every circumstance, every moment can be different.

Than the last one. And you kind of have to reassess every single time one of these words that lives in two cultures or more than two cultures comes out of your mouth.

All right. Well, thank you very much. That has been helpful. And I really appreciate the show.

The person whose English is my second language and didn’t even start learning it until I was a grown-up person, this show is always helpful to understand more about the language and its origin and how things came to be pronounced this way or that way or written this way or that way.

So I appreciate it.

Our pleasure.

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us, Ahmed.

Yeah, we hope you call again.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye.

I would love to hear some more feedback from our listeners, because we have listeners who speak all kinds of languages and have lots of experiences like Ahmed had, and we’d love to hear about it.

Yeah, and the number is 877-929-9673, or send all of your thoughts an email. We love getting email. words@waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

This is Charlotte Jones. I’m from western Kentucky, near Kentucky Lake, a little town called Princeton.

And we were having a conversation regarding cobwebs and spiderwebs.

Usually I think in the house that we have cobwebs.

And the other morning, a tiny little spider was industrially making a connection between a box on my vanity and a cabinet.

And that got me to wondering about the inside-outside names for their products.

So you’re thinking that maybe cobwebs are inside and spiderwebs are outside?

Well, that was the first connection that came to my mind.

Yeah, so there’s a couple different ways we can go with this.

One, let’s do talk about the difference between spiderweb and cobweb.

Although literally they mean the same thing, which is this, you know, this delicate lacework of thread put together by this arachnid.

We do find that there’s some semantic differentiation, if I can get technical.

And it’s not so much that a cobweb is inside, it’s that it’s an old spiderweb.

A cobweb is one that is probably covered in dust and may be falling to rags.

While a spiderweb is one that may still have a tenant.

The spider may be still luring insects to their doom.

That makes perfect sense.

And then the cob and cobweb, obviously we know what the web is.

So this is that wonderful lacework of fibers.

But cob is an old word for spider, and it comes from a word C-O-P-P-E, which goes back to Old English.

So we’re talking one of the oldest words that we still use today in English.

If you’ve ever read The Hobbit by Tolkien, there’s a ditty that Bilbo Baggins sings in the forest to these giant spiders.

And he says, Addercop, Addercop, down you drop.

Well, Addercop is another old word for spider.

And that cop in Addercop is the same as the cob in cobweb.

So the cob probably comes from a word meaning head because a spider is kind of looks like all head, you know.

It does.

Yeah.

Well, Charlotte, we’re delighted that you and your friends talk about language and to the point where you called us.

And we hope that they’ll call us as well with more questions.

Well, there is no doubt about that.

And we enjoy you all week in and week out and had no idea that we would be reaching back to old English for this one.

So that was delightful.

Delightful learning point today. Thank you so much.

Thanks for calling.

Well, clear the cobwebs from your mind and give us a call 877-929-9673.

Toll free in the United States and Canada. Talk to us about language. Tell us what you’re thinking.

More lust for Lex 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.

Earlier in the show, I mentioned the book Gobsmacked, The British Invasion of American English.

It’s by Ben Yagoda.

He’s a retired professor of English and journalism, and he writes frequently about language.

This book is based on his blog, where he examines scores of British words and phrases that have been imported into American English, especially since the turn of the 21st century.

Now, his blog is called Not One-Off Britishisms.

And these are words like cushy and cheeky, dodgy, kerfuffle, and non-starter.

And another one of these is bonkers.

I did not realize until I read this book that bonkers apparently originated in British military slang and possibly had to do with getting bonked or struck in the head.

And early uses of bonkers meant to be drunk.

Wow, I had no idea either.

Yeah, I could see that making its leap given the close alliances in the various wars with the UK.

And in fact, this book includes a whole chapter on British military slang that’s found its way into American English.

And it also has chapters on the language of sports and food and what he calls insults and naughty bits.

And then there are the slight differences in grammar, you know, such as using plural verbs with nouns that you might expect to take a singular verb, as in, say, you know, the home team are undefeated.

What I didn’t know, Grant, is that this usage is showing up more and more in American sports writing.

That was news to me.

I’m not surprised given the way that the United States consumes a great deal of English language content from around the world.

I mean, the Internet is this great Englishizer or Anglicizer, right, where all of the Englishes experience each other and borrow and kind of cross-pollinate.

And it’s kind of a really wonderful thing to see.

Yeah, yeah.

Cross-pollination is a really good word for it.

And I’m thinking about television, too.

I’m thinking about all of us who learned words from watching The Crown or The Baking Show.

Well, I’m thinking also about ginger for red-haired people, which traditionally wasn’t a North Americanism.

But after Harry Potter and South Park used it in that way, it’s kind of become a thing.

So this book by Ben Yagoda is called Gobsmacked.

We’ll have a link to it and more about it on our website.

We’d love to hear what you’re reading, 877-929-9673, or send your book recommendations to us in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is David from just outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

Hi, David from just outside Nashville. What’s up?

I was recently visiting my two brothers.

We grew up in Akron, Ohio, and we hadn’t been together in a while, so we decided we’d meet back there. None of us live there anymore.

But we were driving around looking at some old places, including the house I grew up in and looking at the changes. And at one point I said, I don’t remember that sidewalk being there. And my older brother, who’s old enough to remember things better than I am, he said, Oh yeah, that sidewalk was there when we were kids right there next to the devil’s strip. And I said, Devil’s strip. That’s a term I hadn’t heard since I couldn’t remember when, but it did ring a faint bell. And it turned out that the double strip, I know how some sidewalks in the city are right up against the curb, but in this neighborhood in Akron, the sidewalk was set back from the curb by about four feet. And in that four feet was another strip of grass. And he, my brother told me not only that that thing is called the double strip, but as far as he knew that Akron was the place that called it a double strip and that they didn’t call it that anywhere else. And so I said, This sounds like a job for A Way with Words.

Yep. Yep. Absolutely. 100%. Right, Martha?

Yes, indeed. And I’m not at all surprised that you haven’t heard it in Tennessee, because Devil’s Strip is pretty much located in Akron, Ohio, and that part of Ohio.

And it goes by lots of different names around the country.

For example, if you lived in one of the western states, David, you would probably call it the parkway or the parking.

Or in Washington State, it’s called the parking strip.

Yeah, a boulevard in Minneapolis or Treebelt in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Tree Lawn in Cleveland.

Berm in North Dakota.

Yep.

And in the south, in the deep south, Louisiana and Mississippi, you might hear it described as neutral ground.

And that idea of neutral ground or sort of no man’s land, that is, that strip doesn’t belong to the city and it doesn’t belong to the homeowner. That may be behind the idea of calling it the devil strip.

And David Grant knows where I’m going with this because the term devil strip figures in one of the greatest stories of forensic linguistics ever.

Wow, what a buildup.

It is.

You want to hear this, David?

Oh, do I? After that? Of course I do.

Well, many years ago, the police in Illinois were struggling to narrow down a list of subjects in a kidnapping case.

And they brought in a linguist named Roger Shy and asked him to analyze the ransom note.

And the kidnapper had demanded that $10,000 in cash be left in a trash can, quote, on the Devil’s Strip at the corner of 18th and Carlson.

So Roger Shy, the linguist, asked the police, do you have any suspects from Akron, Ohio, by any chance?

And they were stunned.

But it turned out that, indeed, one of their suspects was from Akron.

And the cops confronted this suspect from Akron, and, indeed, he confessed.

And the reason that they solved this case at that point was that it’s sort of a telltale piece of vocabulary.

Shibboleth. Thank you. That was the word I was looking for. Yeah, it’s pretty much associated with Akron or in that area of Ohio. How about that? That’s amazing.

The reason it’s called Devil’s Strip, I mean, we were trying to figure it out, and my wife came up with an idea that, you know, it’s close enough to the street that you’re in danger land there. You’re kind of toying with the devil if you’re that close to the strip.

Maybe, but there is a pattern of use of the word devil as an adjective just to refer to land that is unproductive or unused.

So it’s possible what your wife thinks, but I think more likely it’s just about it being an unused or unusable strip.

Well, thank you and thanks for the great story. I appreciate it. Take care now.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

So you’re talking with your siblings and you realize that you all say something that nobody else says. Well, this is the place to talk about that. 877-929-9673.

Lucy Hodge from Louisa, Virginia, wrote us about a phrase that her mother used to use when Lucy and her brother were misbehaving as children. Her mother would say, I’m going to put you both in a wet paper bag and see who falls out first.

That’s worth a snort.

Isn’t that fantastic?

What did she mean by that?

Just like get away to make them shush and calm down?

I would think so.

I tried doing some digging on this.

And, of course, you know, people talk about not being able to punch your way out of a wet paper bag.

I’ve never seen that phrase.

And I think it’s just probably one of those great things that make kids stop and say, huh?

Right, right.

It totally resets whatever emotional track they’re on.

They just can’t think for a minute and they forget what they were fighting about.

We’d love to hear the funny things that your parents and grandparents say.

Send them along.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Paul Gattone.

I’m from Tucson, Arizona.

Hey, Paul.

What’s on your mind?

Well, when I was a kid, if you were having a discussion or a disagreement with my dad, he would say, what does that have to do with the price of beans?

I mean, I knew what it meant, that it meant something was irrelevant, but I was wondering where the heck it came from and the origin of that particular saying.

So it was a way of dismissing you from the conversation.

Yeah, dismissing me from the conversation as bringing up something that was irrelevant.

Was there anything else that he said instead of beans when he was talking about the price of something?

Well, he also would say, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

That’s what I was looking for.

Because that was a lot more common.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

Meaning, what does that have to do with anything?

But other people have said, instead of beans or tea in China, they’ve said fish or cheese or meat or eggs or eggs in Russia or tobacco or wheat.

And all of these are a way of acting as if the person who’s interjecting their comment is even more out of place than they actually are by acting for a moment as if you were talking about something even further afield than you were.

And you know what?

It goes back quite a ways.

It’s at least to the 1830s.

Right.

Well, my dad was a kid in the 30s.

Beans were cheap then.

There you go.

Yeah, beans were probably cheap back then.

But you’ll find the price of whatever, so cotton or furs or beer.

But the price of tea in China is a very common phrasing of it.

Right.

My wife said that her father used to use that expression, too.

Yeah.

You know, I find it to be one of those expressions that’s kind of falling by the wayside because it doesn’t.

It just rings weirdly to the modern era, I think.

Yeah, and it just takes you out of the conversation, right?

It’s not inclusive.

Well, there you go, Paul.

Hope that helps.

Great.

It did.

Thanks very much.

I appreciate being on the show.

Yeah, take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.

What do beans have to do with all the words in the dictionary?

I don’t know.

Give us a call.

877-929-9673.

On the A Way with Words Facebook group, Confidence Stimson posed a really interesting question.

She wrote, my mother used the word katish, meaning to describe a woman who was of the privileged class and expensively dressed.

Now, this was spelled K-A-T-I-S-H, katish.

She used it in a derogatory sense, as in, oh, she thinks she’s so katish.

Is it a real word? Has anybody else ever heard it, or did my mother just make it up?

And Grant, I had no idea, but as somebody pointed out on the group, it’s in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

And it’s spelled different ways, C-A-T-I-S-H and K-I-T-A-S-H, in the same way that Confidence spelled it.

And it means fine, elegant, or stylish.

And it’s pronounced a couple of different ways, Katish or Katosh.

And apparently since the 1890s at least, it’s been used in the north central part of the United States.

Any idea on its origin? Maybe from cotillion or something like that?

I was wondering about that, and there’s been some speculation, but nothing really clear.

I had no idea that this word existed and that people use it.

You know, Martha, we could do this for another 50 years, and you and I will be surprised by language every week.

Surprise and delight.

We’d love for you to surprise and delight us.

You know that electronic block that you have, the shiny front that you’re always looking at?

That’s actually a telephone.

You can punch in this number, 877-929-9673, and you’ll go straight to us 24 hours a day.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

My name is Rose.

I’m calling from Lebanon, Virginia, down in Appalachia.

And I had a question relating to a phrase that my great-grandmother used to say.

Oh, boy. Let’s hear it.

Okay. So this started with her and has transferred to my grandmother and then to my mother.

The night before the first day of school each year, they would come into our rooms and sing school butter, school butter.

And we’ve never had an answer as to where this came from.

School butter. S-C-H-O-O-L-B-U-T-T-E-R. School butter.

You got it.

And were they laughing?

Yeah. Was this fun?

Or taunting? What was this like?

It was more of like, get excited, school better. It’s happening.

And so this is four generations of women who passed this down. Do you use this yourself now?

I do actually, yes. And I use it in many different ways. I’ll use it for work or vacation.

I love it.

Well, you might be further encouraged to learn that it’s got at least 350 years of history.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So it does show up again and again in the new world in North America, but the deep history of it is in the UK and Ireland, where originally it started with this idea of basically schoolboys beating on other schoolboys. It was kind of a hazing ritual.

And the connection here is that in order to make butter, you have to beat it or whip it.

Right?

So it’s these multiple meanings of beat.

You are beating someone like you would beat cream to make butter.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

So what they would do is they would shout school butter, and it was the worst insult.

And if somebody shouted school butter at you, you would have to fight them.

You would have to take them on.

Oh, no.

One of the quotes says, this piece of discipline is inflicted in Ireland by the schoolboys on persons coming into the school without taking off their hats.

And it is there called school butter.

So there are a lot of different reasons that you might be victimized by school butter.

But here in the United States, it does show up again and again in Appalachia.

And there’s a rhyme from East Tennessee that’s a little more elaborate than what you sang to us.

It’s school butter, chicken flutter, rotten eggs for your daddy’s supper.

And there’s a wonderful footnote in this folklore.

And it says, it’s a cry of defiance to a boy who is disgraced by having to go to school.

Any schoolboy will fight anybody, no matter what his size, who calls school butter to him.

But it sounds like over the many years, school butter has lost some of that negative potency and has just become a fun rhyme.

Yeah, I’m curious as to how it transferred into that.

Well, you often find that linguists call it amelioration or semantic bleaching, where the potency of something, the potency of its connotations or denotations fade and all that’s left is kind of the form of it rather than the meaning or weight of it.

It’s fascinating. Okay.

So now you’re going to have to recite that whole poem.

School butter, chicken butter, rotten eggs for daddy’s supper.

Well, I will have some very pleased long generation of women.

Yeah, absolutely.

Tell them 350 years of history going back to the deep folklore of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Right. Fascinating. Wow.

All right. Well, take care of yourself and thanks for calling.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

All right. Bye-bye.

Earlier I mentioned that contest where a London journal asked readers to send in their own words that they’d made up.

And another one that I really liked was whifflement.

A whifflement is, let me guess, does this have to do with missing the point?

Like you whiffed it?

Or being surprised?

No.

A whifflement, according to this reader of that magazine back in 1899, is an object of small importance.

Okay, whifflement.

Yeah, yeah.

Don’t bother me with those whifflements.

At the end of every trip, the bottom of your day bag has got a lot of whifflements in it.

How did this get here?

Exactly.

It’s pens and coins and receipts and pen caps.

A lozenge or two, yeah.

Right, granola crumbs, raisins, I don’t know.

Yeah, little whifflements, I love it.

877-929-9673.

A Way with Words senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

Tim Felten is our engineer and editor, and John Chaneski 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 nonprofit’s volunteer board.

Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Merrill Perlman, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

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

So long.