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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.

Grant, I learned a new term this week.

I wonder if you know it.

Oh, try me.

Foster flunk.

Nope.

Nope.

Never heard of it.

What is it?

Well, I learned this from Scott Kaiser, who listens to us in Hammond, Indiana.

And Scott sent us an email that said, Scott writes, that’s the flunk.

The foster flunk.

Foster flunk. Isn’t that great?

I wondered the same thing, actually, how people give up the animals when they’re fostering them.

I know.

Sometimes it’s a really long foster period, right?

Yes, yes.

One of our kitties, Bianca, she’s a sweet little tabby.

She’s got a bent tail.

She has adorable green eyes.

She was fostered with a friend of ours, and their story was they gave her up to us.

We adopted her because they were moving across the country, and that makes a lot of sense to me.

But I also know that the need for kind families that can foster animals, rehabilitate them, introduce them to kids, introduce them to other animals, there’s a desperate need for that.

So you kind of got to cycle the animals through sometimes and put them elsewhere on the adoptive schedule.

Yeah, it’s almost more important in a way.

Well, Scott says that he’s flunked three times.

That’s the best kind of flunking.

Yes, yes.

He has a Lhasa Apso, a Shih Tzu, and a Bichon.

Oh, nice.

Thanks, Scott, for that.

Isn’t that great?

Foster flunk.

And it’s a thing.

I went to Google.

It’s a thing.

Foster flunk.

We heartily encourage foster flunking on this show.

And we encourage you to give us a call.

This is a show about language and everything related to it.

877-929-9673.

Send us an email to words@waywordradio.org

Or try us on Twitter at the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Katie and I’m calling from Denton, Texas.

Hey, Katie, welcome to the show.

How can we help you?

Yeah, what’s up?

Thank you so much.

Something’s been bothering me ever since I moved for school.

I lived in Houston, Texas for my entire childhood and grew up calling the road that goes by the highway the feeder road.

This is what I knew it as, like, my whole life.

And so as soon as I moved up to DFW for school, I would say the feeder road, and people would look at me like I was crazy and would say that it was called the access road, and people actually got kind of, like, upset about it until I started calling it the access road.

They did, yeah.

It was kind of a big deal at one point.

So I have graduated to calling it the access road, but I guess my question is, is there a certain name for it?

Am I wrong in calling it the feeder?

Because I don’t know, I just kind of personally like that better.

First, Katie, let me just say, they should not have been giving you a hard time.

I mean, you listen to the show, so you know that’s our attitude, right?

Right.

Because we have different words for things sometimes.

That is part of the delight of language.

Absolutely.

And it turns out in Houston, where you’re from, they call it the feeder road.

So you’re fine.

You grew up with that.

Everybody around you called it the feeder road.

You’re normal in Houston.

But the generic term for it is usually frontage road.

You’ll probably find that in a lot of Department of Transportation glossaries for a variety of states.

Actually, there’s an interesting fellow.

I think he’s in San Antonio.

He calls himself the Texas Highwayman.

And he’s got a website called TexasHighwayman.com.

And he’s got a really great glossary where he talks about this and specifically says, feeder road is what’s used in Houston and around there, and a couple little pockets here and there in other parts of Texas.

Most people call it the service road or the frontage road or a variety of terms, but these are these roads that are parallel to the main highway, and every once in a while you can go off of them onto the main highway, right?

Feeds the traffic, right?

Yeah, it feeds the traffic.

It makes a lot of sense.

And if there’s a traffic jam on the main road, they serve to provide a release valve for that traffic jam so people can get off and go take another route to their destination.

But do check out his website.

His name is Brian Purcell, TexasHighwayMan.com.

He’s got really good stuff on there about this and a whole bunch of other highway stuff.

Okay, well, I’ll have to check him out, and maybe I will keep on calling it the feeder road, and people can just, you know, deal with it.

Yeah, you know, we run across this all the time where people have their own experience with language.

They have an idiolect that differs from maybe a new workplace or a new school or a new family member or something.

And there’s always this period of reconciliation where you kind of negotiate, right, am I going to take on your words?

Are you going to take on mine?

Are we going to do it 50-50?

And it sounds like it didn’t go well for you for this word, but there’s nothing wrong with saying feeder road instead of access road or frontage road.

Yeah, you’ll start a lot of conversations, right?

Or stop down a lot of conversations, too.

That’s the problem.

I think it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but apparently it is.

I hope we’ve been some help to you.

Oh, yes, you definitely have.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Take care now.

You too.

Bye-bye, Katie.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

Grant, I think you’ll appreciate this.

We were talking a while back about pouting, and that prompted Tyler Connelly from Silver City, New Mexico, to write and tell us that when he was a little kid, his aunt used to say when he would pout, his aunt used to say, stick that out a little farther and I’ll write the Ten Commandments on it with a mop.

Yeah, in my house, we call that shelf lip.

Shelf lip.

Yeah, you put the pout out there and you can set books on it.

Oh, shelf lip.

I like that.

Yeah, I did some digging on that.

If you stick that lip out a little farther, you’ll step on it.

I like that one, too.

But shelf lip, I like that.

Yeah, family word.

Yeah, it’s like German schipschen.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Charlene Seifert calling from Arlington, Texas.

Hi, Charlene.

Hi, Charlene.

Welcome.

How are you doing?

Thank you.

Very well, thank you.

I’d like to talk about the word snarky and all of its various iterations.

Oh, yes.

And the reason for that is because I thought I had actually coined the word back in the 60s when we were in the military and my kids were 3 and 10.

And they’d get snotty and barky and ornery, and so I’d say quit being snarky.

And in the early 80s, when I became a trial attorney for the federal government, I bought myself a 300ZX and had snarky as my license plate from 82 to 85.

Nice.

And now, of course, I see it in all of its iterations, adverbs, adjectives, nouns.

So I looked it up, and all I could find was Lewis Carroll’s The Tale of the Snark.

So I leave it up to you to tell me if I really coined the word or if it was a real word before I started using it.

And how are you going to feel if it was already a word?

Not terrible.

Amused more than anything else.

Oh, okay.

All right.

The bad news is you didn’t coin the word.

The good news is you can continue to keep using it.

Well, that’s good.

Is Tale of the Snark the origin of it?

It isn’t. No, it actually isn’t. It is a prominent usage, but it’s actually unrelated.

We consider that an etymological tributary.

It really doesn’t come into play in the history of this word.

In fact, it goes back to a verb, snark, from the mid-1800s that originally meant to snort or to snore.

Imagine that somebody does something that you disapprove of and you’re like,

You’re like kind of snorting at them like that.

That’s a snark.

So you do the snark.

The verb becomes to find fault with or to nag and then becomes the adjective to be snarky.

And here we are in the 2000s still using some forms of the word.

Well, apparently it wasn’t in really common usage because I’m an avid reader

And I didn’t really see it used as much as it is today.

And starting, I guess, in the probably 2002-2003 time frame.

And that’s why I thought, well, they co-opted it.

It certainly is undergoing a heyday, isn’t it?

I think your sense of that is correct, that over the last couple decades, snark has become a well-known slang term.

But words do that. They ebb and flow. They have periods of revival and survival.

Sometimes they die out completely.

I often talk about the word chad from the Bush-Gore debacle with the Supreme Court and all the hanging chads,

Which is a word which had only really been used outside of the polling business,

The election business, in like mills of cloth mills, textile mills.

And then there it was suddenly having this huge resurgence.

And snark, I think, in my mind, is heavily associated with the rise of the Internet.

Yes.

Particularly because there’s a kind of a particular Internet tone in which you talk to people

Where you’re kind of funny and kind of mean.

And that’s how I think about modern snark.

Okay.

Well, I really appreciate this because, as I say, I knew I wasn’t going to get into Merriam-Webster or any of the other dictionaries,

But I just was amazed to see so many uses of it.

Well, the nice thing is you have spread this to your family, and they use the word because you used it, and that’s something.

Well, family, friends, and anybody who read my license plate.

Obviously, somebody read it who didn’t like me because I quit using it in 85 when the window of my car was shot out on the freeway going home.

And that convinced me that it was either me as a trial attorney or the license plate.

But I wasn’t going anywhere, so the license plate had to go.

Oh, man. So now you just have a random number on there, or do you have a different word?

No, I just have a random number on there.

The custom license plate is don’t shoot.

If I could figure out how to abbreviate it, I just might.

Martha.

Thank you very, very much for your call, Charlene.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

You know, it’s interesting, too, Grant.

We were having that conversation just a couple of episodes ago about words that start with S-N, right?

Like snooty and snobby.

Yeah, all related to the nose or something like that.

Snark.

I think of snark being one of those words, don’t you?

Yeah, well, it is.

If it comes from snort to snore originally, and then you do that particular, I didn’t do the noise very well,

But you do that noise sometimes when you don’t like what was said or done, but you don’t want to use a word.

Yeah.

Like a,

Exactly.

That’s it.

That’s a very good snort.

It’s not quite a harumph, though.

No.

No, it’s different from a harumph.

Yes.

Snark and a harumph are very different creatures.

Yes.

Different number of legs and eyes, for one thing.

You snarked very well there.

877-929-9673.

You know, sometimes I just like to page through the dictionary of Smoky Mountain English.

It’s so delicious.

That great dictionary by Michael Montgomery.

Yes, yes.

What did you find this time?

This time I found the phrase, throw it over the hill.

Throw it over the hill.

I’m going to throw it over the hill.

I don’t know what that is.

Well, according to the dictionary, it means to go home.

You know, time to throw it over the hill.

Okay.

But I did some digging on that, and it turns out that a lot of people use throw it over the hill to simply mean get rid of it.

Oh, I see.

And that reminds me of my father’s people back in the hills.

I can just see them saying, I’m just going to throw it over the hill.

North Carolina.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Throw it over the hill means just get rid of it.

Get rid of it.

Go home.

Wrap up the evening.

Yeah.

Yeah, wrap up the evening.

I like that.

Oh, it’s 9 o’clock.

I’ve got to throw it over the hill.

Wrap it up in old newspaper.

It’s finished.

877-99-9673.

Share the language you’ve inherited from your family as A Way with Words continues.

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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 joining us now on the line is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

It’s great to be back.

How are you guys?

All right.

How’s New York City treating you?

I’m doing great.

It’s not treating me.

I’ve got to pay.

Oh, yeah.

That’s an old one.

That’s a good one.

Yeah.

You know, I am glad I have you guys as friends because you’re so smart.

And I’m so the other way from smart.

What? No.

No, really.

Because, you know, I’ve come across some items and I just don’t know what they’re for.

For example, I have here a cave.

It’s a cave that would allow a large mammal to hibernate the winter.

But what’s it for?

Well, it’s forbear.

Yeah, it’s very good, Martha.

See, that much I figured out, and I think you can help me figure out the rest.

Okay.

Here are some things.

What are they for?

All right.

This is the accelerator pedal from my car.

What’s it for?

For gas.

For go.

For go.

It’s for going.

For going, okay.

Golly, I see where this is going.

This is a rod and a reel.

What’s it for?

Forecasting.

Forecasting, yes.

She got it right away.

Now we’re rolling.

Now, this is an attache case that contains many legal documents.

What’s it for?

For brief.

For case, for document, for court.

For court.

Yes, for court.

For court.

Very nice.

This appears to be a beach umbrella.

What’s it for?

Shadowing.

Good.

Foreshadowing.

Is that it?

Yes.

That’s nice.

Foreshadowing is right.

Very good.

This is called a Brannock device.

If you know what it is, can you tell me what it’s for?

For shoes.

For feet.

Feet.

For heels.

Measure.

For toes.

For soles.

For.

For.

It’s a thing that measures your feet.

Right.

Right.

In order that your shoes should.

For fit.

For fit.

For fit.

For fit.

Very good. Forfeit. Let’s take it.

Okay. These last three go together, okay?

I have a fan letter addressed to each of three famous actors.

The first says, Mr. Green loved your work on Bonanza.

Who’s it for?

Forlorn.

It’s Forlorn, yes.

The second says, Mr. Damon loved your work in The Martian.

Who’s it for?

For Matt.

Right.

Finally, the last one says, Montgomery loved your work in From Here to Eternity.

Who’s it for?

Forklift?

No.

Yeah.

Is it forklift?

Oh, forklift.

Forklift.

Oh, that’s great.

That’s the best one, John.

I don’t know why you saved it for last.

I did save the best for last, yes.

Oh.

Wow.

I feel like we needed a forklift.

I know.

Do you do this to your kids and your wife?

Do you just sit at the table like, nobody’s getting up until you get these right?

No, you know what it is?

I feel like I’m going to retire by the time I get home.

As for me, I’m done for.

That’s me.

Oh, okay.

Well, thanks, John.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah.

Take care now.

We’ll talk to you next week.

See you next week.

Bye, John.

If you guys have got a quiz, a joke, a riddle,

Something you want to share that you think is fun or interesting

That might stump us, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Email us words@waywordradio.org,

Or heck, share it with everybody else on our Facebook group.

There’s like 5,000-plus people there,

And you’ll have a good time talking about it.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how’s it going?

Great, who’s this?

This is Sean Freeman.

I’m calling from Billings, Montana.

Hi, Sean, how you doing?

Hey, Sean.

Great.

What can we help you with?

Well, I have a question.

My brother is an English teacher, and so I usually trust him on what he says. But at the same time, he’s kind of messed with me a lot as I’ve been growing up since he’s my older brother and all. So I don’t know if I should trust him or not on this.

Okay, let’s hear it.

So he says that people commonly mispronounce the word forte when referring to a strength. He says when referring to the musical term for loudness, that’s fine because it comes from the Italian root for loud. But when referring to strength, it comes from the French root. And so he says you’re supposed to pronounce it fort instead of forte. And I’ve never called him out on it. And I’ve never heard anybody else say fort instead of forte. And I don’t know if it’s one of those things where it used to be that way, but it’s kind of becomes common to say forte now or if you write or what.

You’ve summed it up pretty darn well.

I think Grant and I are probably on the same page about this because the word is just skunked. I mean, you know, it’s a no-win word. I always try to find another word besides that word.

Right.

The F word.

Let me spin this around a different direction. The thing is most people, 99.99% say forte. And then there’s the tiny percentage of people who insist that that’s wrong. And the problem with that is that they’re wrong because not just because of usage, it’s because even though it doesn’t come from Italian, it comes from French. And in French, you don’t pronounce it fort either. You say fort.

Well, I’m glad I’ve never corrected anybody on it. And, well, I usually try not to correct people in colloquial, you know, conversations anyway because I just feel like if it’s not something scholarly, I don’t really, you know, I’m not one of those grammar Nazis on Facebook or anything like that, you know.

Yeah, that’s a great policy.

So does your brother just, like, go around giving people unsolicited language advice?

Oh, I think he does, yeah. He kind of likes to be right and likes to tell other people they’re wrong.

That’s really, like, insupportable behavior.

That’s really, like, yeah, that’s not really good manners, is it?

Well, he thinks he’s helping them, I think, you know?

Yeah, and that’s the problem, right?

Well, if it’s his students, that’s one thing. You said he was an English teacher. Fine. He’s hired to do that for his students. But, I don’t know. Family members, if they’re not his kids or in line at the store, no.

Yeah, well, I’m thinking more probably, you know, friends on Facebook or something. If they forget, if they use the wrong your or the wrong their or something.

That’s a private message, though, maybe, if at all, if any message at all. That’s the thing you do behind channels where everyone else can’t see it.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, I agree with you there.

Just to be clear, forte is the now accepted pronunciation. The people who insist that it isn’t, all of their arguments that I’ve ever heard are incorrect. They fly in the face of usage. They fly in the face of etymology. They should probably not be saying that anymore.

Yeah.

I mean, they argue that people are confusing it with the Italian for strong forte that you see in musical notation.

Or for loud.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Loud, strong.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They both go back to a Latin word that means strong gives a Spanish fuerte. But the word is fully anglicized.

Yep.

It is in the language as forte. It is no longer a foreign word.

Yep.

And I don’t use it.

Yeah, you’re right.

I just avoid it.

Martha’s advice was good, Sean. It skunked in this business. We got that from Brian Garner, who is a great language expert in Texas. And skunked means it’s so disputed, though, that just to be on the safe side so that people aren’t paying too much attention to your language or paying attention to your message is best avoided in formal writing and speech.

Okay, and I’m surprised he made a big deal about it because he’s somebody that’s always telling me, preaching that language is something that, you know, evolves. It’s not stagnant. And so, you know, it’s like when people complain about, people my age complain about the word bay or cray-cray or something.

Well, we had our own, you know, slang words that our parents didn’t like, too.

We did.

Cat’s pajamas, bees’ knees.

I think that’s a little before your time, Martha.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I’m going to definitely let him know to stop correcting people on that.

Yeah, well, that’s our advice. Good luck with that, Sean. And if he wants to call and argue his point, we’re welcome. Have him give us a call, all right?

All right, sure thing. He might want to do that. Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Sean. Thank you.

If anybody wants language advice from us, they can solicit it at 877-929-9673, or they can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org, or hit us up on Twitter at WayWord.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Gina. I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

All right. Welcome to the show.

Well, I had a conversation with a co-worker a few weeks ago concerning the words that you use when you drop something on the floor. So, for example, if I dropped milk on the floor, I would say that I wasted the milk. She said that, no, you should say you spilled the milk. Now, I understand the word spill, and I’ve used the word spill, but the word that I would use most of the time is wasted.

Interesting.

She says that wasted is a word that you use for, like, resources or if you’re wasting electricity or you’re wasting water, that you would not waste the milk, the milk spilled.

Well, Gina, let me ask you, is it all right to ask what kind of work you do?

I’m a teacher.

Oh, you’re a teacher. Yay. We’re big fans of teachers. What age group do you teach?

We both teach pre-K.

Pre-K. Four and five years old.

Gotcha.

Do you still use the word waste if it’s something that you can pick up and use again? Say, I don’t know if the kids, like, if you had a big box of paperclips or crayons or something, and when the kids knocked that over and the stuff spilled all over the floor, would you still say you wasted it?

I think I would, because my natural inclination is to say wasted. I love that. That is the word that I use.

This is fantastic. This conforms to something that Martha and I know to be true.

Yeah, there’s a great entry in the Dictionary of American Regional English, one of our favorite reference works in the world, that talks about exactly this, using the word waste to mean spill. So you’re not alone, Gina, at all. This is something that—

Oh, I’m not? Okay.

No, no. You are not.

No. No, it’s all many, many years of other people saying the same thing. To mean the same thing. In fact, there’s a beautiful map in this reference work that shows exactly where this usage is distributed through the South. And indeed, it’s in Texas as well.

Oh, so it’s regional.

It’s regional. It’s also chiefly among African-American speakers.

Yeah.

And it looks like it’s really common in Florida.

Is that Florida?

No, South Carolina.

No, South Carolina.

There we go.

Yeah, isn’t that interesting?

Yeah, really common in South Carolina.

Wow.

Yeah.

I just find that fascinating because I personally did not grow up using it that way, but I really like the sense of that. I mean, you’re talking about something that doesn’t involve necessarily judgment or that you’re being irresponsible, right? You’re just knocking something over. And it’s not like you’re criticizing them. You’re saying what happened.

I’m actually saying spiel, but I just don’t use the word spiel.

Exactly.

Perfect.

Yeah.

And did you grow up in Texas, Gina?

Yes, I grew up in Texas. I grew up in Dallas, Texas.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, it’s very cool. As we say, you’re not alone. There are lots of people who use it, and it’s been studied by linguists. Looks like Louisiana, they do it as well.

Mississippi as well.

Tennessee.

So don’t cry over wasted milk, I guess.

Yeah, exactly.

Don’t cry over wasted milk.

I like that.

Gina, thank you so much for your call.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or ask us on Twitter at WayWord.

We asked you to send us your eponymous laws, eponymous laws being those joking bits of wisdom that are named after somebody like Murphy’s Law.

And Peg Breckel wrote us to say that she used to be a pharmacist, and when she was working, she needed to eat while she was on the job because it was so busy there.

So Peg’s law is the number of customers who come to the counter is directly proportional to how good your food tastes hot.

I can totally relate to that.

You get the hot soup ready to go, the fresh, warm sourdough bread, the cup of tea, and then there’s eight people show up.

Mr. Jones at the front of the line.

Yeah, I like that.

There are a lot of those eponymous laws that are directly proportional.

This is directly proportional to that, right?

Mm—

You can share your eponymous laws or any other stories about language at words@waywordradio.org or call us.

That number is 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Alice calling from Tampa.

Hi, Alice.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, Alice. What’s up?

Hello.

Thank you for having me.

I’m such a fan of your show.

I just found it.

Nice.

Well, welcome.

Glad to have you along.

So I was listening to all the questions, and I came across something when I just moved down here to Tampa.

I’m originally from Chicago, and I lived in Atlanta for a couple of years before moving down here.

And when I talk to people here, if I don’t know them that well, especially since I just started with a new company, in response to basically just acknowledging someone, they’ll say, you know, yes, ma’am, or no, sir, yes, sir.

Everyone looks at me and says, oh, look at what you picked up living in the South.

And I’m like, what? No.

I don’t think that’s a Southern thing.

I think it’s a polite thing, but I don’t think it’s particularly Southern.

You said it all the time in Chicago.

I did.

I’ve said it all the time for as long as I can remember.

In Atlanta, too.

Yeah.

Did they feel it was normal there?

No, they really didn’t.

And I worked in higher education in Atlanta, and I worked with people that had advanced degrees.

So, you know, when you’re addressing them as doctor, that was fine.

But the minute I said, yes, ma’am, or no, sir, they just looked at me kind of puzzled, like, why are you using that?

So my question to you guys was, is it dying? Is it going away?

Who taught you to do that? Was it your parents that taught you to do that?

I would assume so. My mom is from Chicago. My dad is from the South. He’s from New Orleans.

And my dad is quite a bit older.

My dad has the same age as many people my age’s grandfather.

Oh, gotcha.

So it might be an age thing.

Do you have siblings who also say ma’am and sir when the occasion arises?

I do.

I’m curious, can we ask your approximate age or your generation? Are you a millennial or a Gen Xer?

I’m 30.

Okay.

Okay, 30.

That makes you just on the edge of millennial then.

Yeah.

Well, I think solidly as a Gen Y millennial or something like that.

Sure.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts on this, Martha.

How about you?

Yeah, I do.

One is I do think that there is a strong tradition in the American South of using ma’am and sir that isn’t still apparent in most of the rest of the country.

I think the data show that to be true.

I think my own experience shows that to be true.

I do also know that we’ve had probably since the 50s a real conflict in America between an increasing informality and a need for other people to show respect through these old traditions and these formal modes of speech.

So it hasn’t completely gone away, but there’s a lot of push and pull on when to use it, whether you call somebody by their first name or you say, you know, Ms. Barnette or Mr. Barrett.

We have a lot of this, a lot of these things have fallen away, but yet it’s not so disappeared in parts of the country that we can say that it’s done.

But it still catches me up short, I have to say, when I hear it.

I mean, usually if I hear it, I think it’s from somebody who was in the military or is in the military.

Yeah, certainly here in San Diego, we hear it a lot from military folk who will just, as a matter of habit and custom, say, yes, sir or yes, ma’am.

Okay. I didn’t even think about that.

I think you’re in a good position here.

Because this isn’t a habit that is easily taught later in life.

And although people may wonder at why you’re being so formal, I don’t think there’s a downside to it unless they think you’re being prissy or that your formality is a way of removing yourself from the situation to show.

Sometimes when you’re angry with somebody, you become very formal and people get these cues from you that formality means that you do not want to engage with them on a one-on-one personal level.

But I would say probably most of the time people are going to say, oh, oh, look at her. She’s super polite. How nice is that?

I’m trying to think of the last time that I used either one of those.

And I think it was when I was pulled over for speeding.

Oh, talking to a very formal situation, right?

When we talk to people in positions of authority, that comes naturally to most of us to say sir or ma’am.

Yeah, but it sounds like it comes trippingly off your tongue.

If you’re worried about saying the wrong thing or giving the wrong message, certainly you’re not giving people the language they were expecting to hear.

I don’t think you’re doing yourself any damage.

I think you’re doing yourself a big favor.

I think most people feel a little flattered by that little extra token of respect.

Yeah, especially when it comes naturally to you, which it sounds like it does.

It doesn’t sound like a put-upon at all.

Okay, good.

Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate your time.

Yeah.

But you didn’t call Grant or me, sir.

No, I’m curious.

I didn’t. I didn’t. And I think because I didn’t have the opportunity for you to ask me something and I didn’t have a quick answer for it.

So thank you, ma’am, for bringing that up.

Right. You do respect us.

Well, Ms. Alice, it was very nice to talk to you. Thank you so much for your call.

Thank you. You guys keep up the wonderful work.

Our pleasure.

Thank you, ma’am.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk with us about language, or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Find us on Twitter at WayWord, and we have a very active group on Facebook.

More conversation about what we say and why we say it as A Way with Words continues.

I wanted to say I learned a lot from you guys, especially the man.

Bye.

Aw, yeah, we like him too, Chris.

If you’d like to support this show and to keep helping kids like Chris, go to waywordradio.org/donate and make a meaningful gift.

Thank you very much.

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.

We were talking, Grant, a few weeks ago about the phrase sharp as a marshmallow sandwich.

Yeah, it means not very bright.

Right, right.

Describing somebody who’s not quite all there.

And that prompted an email from Scotty Myers in Milwaukee, or as he says, from the land of elbow benders.

That phrase reminded him of something that he heard a few years ago when he was traveling to a friend’s lake house for Fourth of July.

He writes, I decided to stop in Beaver Dam, a small town between Milwaukee and Madison, to put my leg on a rail and blow the foam off some suds.

I went inside the bar, ordered a beer, and just sat there to listen to strangers tell stories to the bartender, a thirsty ethnographer.

A fellow at the bar starts talking about how he went to Burger King the other day and ordered a bacon cheeseburger.

The cashier told him they didn’t have bacon cheeseburgers, sorry.

Cashier went on to say, however, that the grill cook in the back could make a cheeseburger and put bacon on it.

I thought you’d appreciate this, Chris.

Where is this going?

Well, this perplexed and aggravated the fellow there telling the story.

That sounded an awful lot like a bacon cheeseburger.

After uttering a few curse words, he said, that kid was as sharp as a bowling ball, referring to the cashier.

He was about as sharp as a wet bag of marsh. A wet bag of marsh. And Scotty says it was a wonderful thing to hear in my first time hearing it, a wet bag of marsh.

And so then Scotty went on the internet and found that the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn often says he’s about as sharp as a wet bag of mice.

So Scotty’s wondering if a wet bag of marsh is something that’s hyper localized.

He suspects it may be because Beaver Dam is near the Horicon Marsh, a national state and wildlife refuge.

But I want to know.

What state is that?

Wisconsin.

Wisconsin.

Wisconsin.

Oh, I don’t know.

Wet bag of marsh. Did you look it up? I did. I couldn’t find anything, but I told Scotty we have lots and lots of listeners.

So Scotty and I are both wondering if anybody else has ever heard this term. Sharp is a wet bag of marsh. I like it a lot. M-A-R-S-H. M-A-R-S-H.

Let us know, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, is this Martha?

Yes.

Who’s this?

Hi, Martha. This is Joel. I’m calling from the Bronx in New York City.

From the Bronx.

Hey, Joel.

How you doing?

Hi, Grant.

Well, I actually work at a large Broadway show and have a big cast and crew from lots of different places.

And we have some differing opinions about the frequency of usage for a certain word in English.

And it’s caused a lot of, like, debates.

And I thought, you know, I know just who to call about this.

Great.

Well, the word is, depending on how you pronounce it, auntie or auntie.

And it’s not the pronunciation that we have a problem with.

The problem is the usage of it.

Someone at work said something along the lines of, I’m going to Texas to visit my auntie.

And this got us talking about it.

And many of the cast members who are not black say that they have never heard this word used outside of the African-American community.

And they assume that it was part of the African-American dialogue.

And that surprised me because I’ve been black my whole life and I’ve never used this term in that way.

And then I brought up Auntie Em and Auntie Mame and Auntie Ann’s pretzels, but everyone still seems to think that there’s something inherently African American about the usage of the word auntie.

So I guess my question is, is there any evidence that the word auntie is more prevalent in the black community than in other American communities?

This is a hard one.

This is a good one, though.

This is a really good one.

And I love that you brought the evidence of white instances of auntie.

I have one of my own, my younger sister who is white.

All of her niece and her nephews call her auntie.

And we’re not black or African-American at all.

And they’re from Missouri, so they’re not particularly southern.

The reason it’s complicated is because there is an auntie usage in African-American vernacular English.

But it’s the auntie that you use for an older woman who is not related to you, but you respect.

So let’s say your neighbor lady or someone down at the shops or somebody like that or somebody at church who you want to show her some respect.

You might not call her Mrs. Smith.

You might call her Auntie Smith or whatever her name is, Auntie Becca or something like that.

Who knows?

But that’s very specific, though, to somebody that you’re not related to.

I think that’s exactly the way that they were using it, because they also use it at work to refer to each other or when they don’t know somebody.

And I hadn’t encountered that. I’m from New England, and I didn’t really use that word in that way.

And I wasn’t sure if that was something that is particularly African-American.

Well, it’s Southern, too.

Yeah, it is Southern also. But as you know, not every African-American or Black English speaker has all the same features in their dialect that the other ones do.

We each have our own thing, right?

We’ve got our own history, our own heritage.

We come from a different part of the country.

We have different sizes of family, and they’re from their own places, and they have their own habits.

And all of these things matter.

So there’s no reason that you necessarily would automatically know it.

Especially if you’re from New England.

Yeah, especially if you’re from—it is very heavily Southern.

Yeah.

You know, the thing is, I think what makes it complicated in my mind, you guys, is I’m not 100% sure that this is a tradition that isn’t waning so fast that we’re all talking about a relic almost.

Yeah, because it could be an age difference.

But what also is interesting is there’s a lot of, the reason why I use the word black, not African American, is there’s a lot of South Africans in the show that I’m in.

And they use that word in that way as well.

The same way.

Yeah.

Oh, that’s really interesting.

You know, there’s a book of Caribbean English that I read quite a while back that had something along the lines of, I’m going to get this wrong.

But the theory was that there were some usages in Caribbean English that can be directly traced to some of the terms of respect used in some of the African languages spoken by the people who came across as part of the slave trade to work in the sugar plantations.

And I don’t know how sound their theory was, but for what it was worth, that was their theory.

Joel, how old are the folks in the cast?

How old are the folks who are having these conversations?

There seems to be an age divide because many of the people who are, you know, it’s a big show.

So some people are in, the people who are using the word in that way tend to be 40s and up, I would say.

Interesting.

And with the younger people sort of catching on to the lingo.

So it’s almost become, you know, when you work in a group of people who work together eight shows a week, you develop your own little vocabulary.

We’ve become part of our vocabulary at our job.

Oh, that’s so cool.

That’s cool.

What’s your role, by the way?

If I can change the subject for a second.

What do you do, Joel?

Oh, I’m a singer in The Lion King.

Oh, how about that?

Oh, wow.

That’s fantastic.

This is one of the most successful Broadway shows of all time.

Yeah.

But because of the nature of the show, there’s people from South Africa in the show.

We have many Spanish speakers.

And it’s a multi-ethnic and multicultural show.

Oh, it sounds like a great place to be.

People of European heritage.

So it’s a big, big old mishmash.

Well, I will tell you that the data that have been collected by lexicographers and linguists over the decades show that it is more common in the African-American community.

And I don’t know if you can hear the giant asterisk in my voice.

That asterisk is that the data is old.

And so the data isn’t from this decade even.

It’s from like many decades ago.

So at one time it was true.

And I don’t know whether or not it’s true now.

I would love to send a linguist backstage to hang out with the cast.

I mean, what a rich mix of language.

Well, Joelle, there’s the best answer for you.

But I do appreciate you bringing a lot of information to bear here.

I love that it seems to be age-graded.

That’s the term that we use, that it tends to be in the older folks and not the younger folks.

That may be a really strong indicator that it’s on its way out as a custom.

Oh, it’s a shame to see it go.

Well, you can do it, though.

But you guys have the power to bring it back and make it real, you know, spread it out to your other communities.

The next show that you do, teach them.

I will. I will, definitely.

Take care and break a leg, all right?

Thank you so much for calling.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very, very much.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, if you use Auntie in your house, we’d love to hear about it.

Help us add to our data set to figure out if this is a thing that’s on the way out.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

This term was new to me.

Do you remember when people were all exercised about the Powerball, the giant Powerball?

Yeah, one and a half billion dollars or something like that.

Yeah, people were talking about joining the three comma club.

Oh, is that what that is?

Yeah, yeah, for billionaires.

Three commas?

Because there are three commas in your bank account.

That’s two commas in front of the decimal, not behind.

Yes.

Unlike us.

Three commas in the bank account, not three commas in the…

Yeah, buying a lottery ticket to join the three comma club.

Yeah, I’m still in the one comma club.

Right. 877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Victoria Pittman-Waller from Dallas, Texas. And I was calling about the word kibitz or kibitz.

Kibitz or kibitz.

My husband and I use it differently.

I’ve always thought it meant to joke with somebody.

And he always uses it as in chat with somebody, which is, you know, subtle but yet different, you know,

Because it’s very specifically joking is the way I was always taught it was.

Yeah, it’s complicated.

You look at a mainstream American dictionary, they’ll basically give you two definitions. One

Will be to just kind of chit chat with somebody. And the other one will be to kind of overlook

Something that’s happening and offer your opinions or advice from the outside. But if you look in

More specific works that deal specifically with Yiddish and Yiddish English, which is where Yiddish

Flavored English, which is where we get this term, you will find much broader definitions,

Including one that has something about to joke or crack wise.

And so it turns out that you’re both right, depending on the context.

Oh, but he’s right.

His is the more traditional definition.

Mine is the more kind of…

Yours was the one that said you thought it was about joking, cracking wise.

Yeah, I thought it was about joking and specifically joking.

And he uses it as chatting with or talking to.

And is it kibitz or kibitz?

It’s both.

Kibitz is the more traditional pronunciation.

But kibitz is also used.

Okay.

Well, that solves it for me.

Thank you so much.

I just want to kind of plug into something you just said, though.

Just to be clear, his isn’t necessarily more correct than yours.

They’re both correct.

It’s completely dependent upon context.

His is a little more common, but that doesn’t make it more right.

Okay.

Well, of course, you know, it would always be true.

The woman has all the subtleties, right?

Perhaps.

Absolutely.

No, I’m kidding.

I’m kidding.

I’m kibitzing.

I’m just joking.

That’s right.

You know, it’s interesting that the origin of it, it goes back to a German word that means to look on at cards, you know, when people are playing cards and to offer advice and that kind of thing.

But before that, a word relating to a kind of bird, which makes a loud, annoying noise.

Right, right.

That has a reputation in folklore of being a kind of meddlesome bird.

So all those kinds of meanings are sort of swishing around.

That’s a nice thing about Yiddish.

Oh, it has something to do with meddling as well as giving advice.

Yeah.

It’s interesting.

So unsolicited advice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Unsolicited advice.

Exactly.

Most of the senses of the word kibitz have something to do with interfering.

Yeah.

Where you are not really the primary player or participant.

There’s a stage show happening, and if you’re kibitzing the audience, that means you’re chatting the audience.

So if this stage show is happening and you’re shouting things to the actors, you’re kibitzing from the audience.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, good.

Thanks, Victoria.

Thanks for calling.

Take care now.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to kibitz with us.

Or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Don Davidson.

I’m from Colorado.

I’m Montrose, to be specific.

I teach at Colorado Mesa University, and I’m glad to be on the way with words.

I enjoy it, and I use it all the time.

Well, welcome, Don. Glad to have you here.

You bet.

The question that I have for you guys is having to do with an idiom that I’ve heard since I was pretty young,

And that idiom is in regards to when somebody asks you how things are going to work out or what the results are going to be.

And that idiom is called the proof is in the pudding.

And I’ve often wondered where that came from.

The original phrase was the proof of the pudding is in the eating, which makes a whole lot more sense, doesn’t it?

Sure it does.

And that saying or versions of it has been around for centuries, hundreds and hundreds of years.

But more recently, in the last hundred years or so, we’ve just sort of shortened it to the proof is in the pudding.

And there are a couple of things to say about that pudding.

One of which is that it’s not what we think of as a dessert.

It’s more of a savory meat mixture that’s stuffed into casing like sausage.

Pudding has long in English been a word that refers to that.

And so, you know, if you’re testing pudding, that kind of pudding, then that’s a really important thing to do in pre-refrigeration days.

You know, you’re really testing it to see if it’s okay.

Because, you know, sausage over history has been kind of an iffy matter.

If you think about the word botulism, for example, that word comes from the Latin word for sausage.

You know, you’re checking for foodborne illness.

So you want to test out that pudding.

It’s like testing food.

Yeah, so the proof means to test.

Right.

It’s not about proof as evidence.

Exactly.

It’s about the act of testing.

Yeah, it’s the same proof that you see in like page proofs for a magazine or a book or a proving ground.

It’s a testing ground.

So the proof of the pudding, the testing of the pudding is in the eating, was the original use of the phrase.

And now we’ve just kind of lost that.

Well, that’s very good.

Yeah, I guess that begs the question in that particular instance.

If you were going to eat it, the proof would be in the pudding, and I guess proof might be not getting ill.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

That’s exactly it.

Well, thank you very much.

That was very enlightening.

I speak in idioms all the time because of my advanced age and also my enjoyment of English, particularly spoken language.

And I look forward to using this in my course at Colorado Mesa University and seeing if we can incorporate that into my lessons.

Bring out a sausage tray for everyone to test.

Yeah, who goes first?

I’ll do that. Thank you so much.

Okay, thanks for calling.

You bet. Bye-bye.

Take care, Don.

Well, Don had a great question.

We know you have questions too.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Join us on Facebook.

We’ve got a really great active Facebook community.

And you can also send us a message on Twitter @wayword.

Remember our conversation about finding a different way, a new and different way to say I miss you to somebody?

Maybe you’re in a long distance relationship.

Yeah, that rings a bell.

Right.

What can you say besides I miss you?

I like what Chuck Flores said.

He wrote us from Dallas to say that the phrase he likes is, I miss who I get to be when you’re with me.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I like that feeling as well.

Yeah, yeah.

You’re a better person when you’re with certain people.

Exactly.

The person who just brings out the very best in you.

I miss who I get to meet.

And then on the other end, people bring out the worst in you.

Fortunately, they’re all strangers.

877-929-9673.

Do you want more A Way with Words?

Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Or find the shows in any podcast app or on iTunes.

The toll-free line is always open, so leave a message for us at 877-929-9673.

We love to get your emails at words@waywordradio.org,

or you can hit us up on Twitter @wayword,

and look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen to each other

and the way we think about language,

and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producers Stefanie Levine,

director Colin Tedeschi,

and editor Tim Felten in San Diego.

In New York, we thank production wizard James Ramsey,

quiz guide John Chaneski,

and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of WayWord, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Bye-bye.

So long.

I’ll see you next time.