Mustard On It (episode #1440)

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

There’s a game making the rounds on the internet, and it’s called If You Added ING to a Movie Title, How Would the Plot Change?

Oh boy.

So, for example, Gone with the Wind.

Gone with the Winding?

Mm—

The story of what happened when we all started wearing digital watches.

Gone with the Winding.

Yeah.

Or how about this one?

Dude, where’s my car?

Turns into Dude, where’s my caring?

And that’s about, you know, the bleakness and apathy of urban life.

Oh, no.

And the great thing is that on our Facebook group, our listeners are having a field day with these.

So I wanted to share some of these.

This is from Baron von Boren.

He suggested the Blair Witch Project, which becomes the Blair Witch Projecting.

High schooler Blair Witch reads too much into the inflection of her friend’s work.

And Tom Sarve suggested Jesus Christ super staring.

Jesus wins every staring contest he enters.

These are so great.

Angie J. Bean wrote The Right Stuffing.

There must be sage.

Julia Child’s special Thanksgiving edition.

Oh, you want to?

I’m not even going to do it.

And now that I’ve started reading these, I’m just, I can’t stop.

I can’t stop thinking of these.

Every movie I run into, I’m adding ING to the end of it.

So on Twitter, is there a hashtag for this so I can search and find more?

Movies with ING?

I bet if you search, you’ll find a ton of them.

Probably.

Probably.

And there’s a discussion on our Facebook page, and I will share some more later in the show.

Yes, please.

This is a show about language and everything connected to it and some stuff that’s not.

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Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elizabeth. I’m calling from Dallas by way of Philadelphia.

By way of Philadelphia? How do you do that?

You’re in two places at once?

Yeah, yeah, two places at once. But my home is in Philadelphia, but I’m here in Dallas.

Okay.

All right.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I was recently listening to another call-in show, and I heard someone use the phrase, Rest on our morals, which I’ve heard, always heard, rest on our or your laurels.

And I was wondering if it’s just a one-time misuse or is it a completely different idiom?

And it was really interesting because it was used in an idea of a political use, which I found really interesting.

Rest on our morals? Is that what it is?

Yeah, it was in the context of gun control in New York City.

And it was sort of like, yeah, we can’t rest on our morals.

We can’t just make laws based on what we feel it has to be for the greater good.

At least that’s how I took it.

But it was such a completely out-of-left-field thing that I’ve never heard before.

Yeah. It’s kind of creative.

I mean, you’re sure they said morals?

Pretty sure.

He had not a very strong accent, so it was pretty clear that he was saying M and not L.

I have seen this only very, very rarely.

I don’t think it’s a thing.

It’s usually a mistake.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s what I figured, that it was just a misuse.

But it was such an interesting idea.

I could see it being an intentional bit of wordplay.

Yeah, but it sounds like they weren’t using it with irony or anything like that, right?

Well, rest on your laurels means just to stick with what you’ve already accomplished, right?

I think it’s like you’re not supposed to just rest on your old accomplishments.

You should always try for more. Is that right?

Right, right. The laurels, there is a reference to the ancient tradition of crowning winners with wreaths made out of fragrant laurel leaves.

That’s why we have terms like poet laureate or Nobel laureate.

It was an award for accomplishment.

So if you’re resting on your laurels or resting with your laurels, then you’re just goofing off because you’ve already accomplished.

Yeah, I made an award-winning film in 1972. What more do you want from me?

Something like that.

Yeah.

So here, it doesn’t sound like, It sounds like he might have meant the wordplay.

I’d have to hear the show to know for sure.

Yeah, if you hear a phrase like that, You can always go to the egg corn database on the internet.

Egg corn is a joking term that linguists use for phrases like that, like spreading like wildflowers instead of spreading like wildfire, that kind of thing.

And I’m looking right now, and I don’t see that listed there.

So I think it was maybe a one-off or a two-off.

Yeah, yeah.

I don’t know.

It was so interesting in the context that it was used that I was like, Man, is this something that I’ve missed for all these years?

Or maybe something that needs to be popularized in this political season, huh?

Rest on your morals would mean just because I know I’m right, I’m going to continue to do the thing I’ve always done.

Yeah, I think that’s sort of what he was saying.

Like, you can’t just decide what you’re going to do and have that be it forever.

Yeah.

You know, you have to sort of take things in context.

I like it.

As a bit of wordplay, I like it.

I think it works.

Yeah, I really liked it, too.

Nice.

Thanks, Elizabeth.

That’s awesome.

You may be popularizing it now.

That was great.

Well, thank you so much.

It was really awesome.

All right.

Cheers now.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Elizabeth.

Bye.

You know, by the way, that wreath, that laurel wreath, the Greek word for that is stephanos.

Phonos, which is where we get the name Stephanie and Stephen.

Oh, interesting.

Yes, crowning those folks with glory.

We have talked about the Edcorn database before, but I just want to mention that.

It’s E-G-G-C-O-R-N.

It’s hilarious, and it’s a bunch of really good-natured people who run a really nice site where they just find these curiosities of language.

My favorite one, favorite new one that I found, it’s in the database, of course, because they’ve got so many of them, is Pinecone, C-O-M-B, instead of Pinecone, C-O-N-E.

Pine comb?

Yeah, like a comb for your hair made out of pine instead of cone, C-O-N-E.

Okay.

And these are people who are honestly misunderstanding that.

I can see how that would happen.

Yeah, they think it’s pine comb because pine combs, when they spread out their, I don’t know, they’re not leaves.

What are those called?

Kind of like the seed.

Yeah.

But anyway, they have kind of like a serrated kind of edge.

It looks kind of like a comb.

Yeah.

Okay.

Comb for a woolly mastodon or something.

Yeah.

This is a show about language and everything related to it and some stuff that’s not.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Gary.

I’m from Wiley, Texas, which is near Dallas.

Okay.

Wiley.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

Well, thank you.

So a few weeks ago, I was playing golf with a buddy, and we were driving up to the green, and I said, there’s your ball in front of the green.

He said, no, it can’t be my ball.

I put too much mustard on it.

It said it has to be behind the green somewhere.

And then he looked at me and said, where does that come from anyway?

And I said, I don’t know, but I say it too.

And it was interesting because he was raised in Colorado and I was raised in West Texas.

So it’s something that we both say, but we don’t know where it comes from.

Interesting there.

So mustard.

So you’re meaning that it went really far?

Yes, yes.

And so we both played Little League baseball, and we both remember our coaches, when they were telling us to throw the ball harder, they would say, hey, put some mustard on it.

So, yeah, put a little more energy into it, basically.

This is good.

Yeah, we can do something with this.

There is a mustard dating back to the early 1900s, a slangy term meaning, as it’s defined in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, keen spirit in opposition or courage.

Or just kind of generally used for vim or vigor or force or just like, you know, you’ve got a lot of mustard in your son, go get him, that sort of thing.

But then by the 1970s, it’s transformed fully into baseball.

And it means basically just the force on the ball.

There is a really interesting little note, though.

In 1907, there was a thesis about baseball language that was published,

And they used the longer expression, all to the mustard, meaning good condition.

So you might say, he’s all to the mustard.

He’s ready to go.

Put him in coach.

That sort of thing.

So we have a lot of different mustards.

But they all go back to mustard being the spicy condiment.

And not this puny, bland stuff that’s artificially yellow today, but the real spicy stuff.

The stuff that will make you wave your hand in front of your mouth because you’re on fire.

Okay.

Well, that’s great.

Thanks.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Gary.

You too.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

You wondering where a word came from?

Call us.

877-929-9673 or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

My new favorite term today, anyway, is sneeze horn.

What is a sneeze horn?

Your nose.

Oh, okay.

Good.

Yeah.

Sneeze horn.

That makes sense.

Your schnoz.

Yeah, right?

Let me wipe your sneeze horn.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha.

This is Lee James Irwin calling from Falls Church, Virginia.

Hi, Lee James.

Welcome.

How are you doing?

Just fine, thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have a question about new words.

Your show is terrific in digging out the roots of words back in history,

But new ones are coming up all the time.

And the ones I have in mind today are words that describe the intervals or the breaks in radio programs like yours,

Usually a musical interlude, and then on to another segment.

But I don’t know what you call those things.

And why have you been thinking about that?

Well, I don’t know, just curious.

I listen to BBC a lot, and they don’t do that, and commercial radio doesn’t do it so much, but a lot of NPR programs do.

Yeah, it’s true.

You used one of the words that is used, interludes.

I can think of about five different terms for music between segments,

But they all have slightly different or maybe substantially different purposes.

Interludes is one.

Sometimes the interlude is music that’s played between segments by the national show

So that the local stations can do, say, news or weather on top of that music bed

Or just simply replace that interlude.

So if the local station doesn’t break away from the national content,

There at least will be something on the air.

Button is one that’s used a lot for the music in between segments.

And I think, I’m not 100% sure this goes back to what are called cart machines

That had these cartridges that looked a lot like 8-tracks

That you put in them like a stack of 4 or 6 or 12 or something,

Each one with a button next to them.

And each one of these had a particular kind of music on it.

You could just press it, and then it will play into the system.

And it’s a loop.

It’s a tape loop.

So it’s always ready to go as long as you haven’t just played it.

Oh, here I thought it was just fastening the segments together.

Mem, could be.

It could be.

Of course, we don’t have zippers.

Another one is Stinger, but this one’s, again, it’s music between segments,

But it tends to be kind of an identifying music bit, like a tone.

It’s like the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, something like that.

Oh, yeah.

Some very distinct, like you think, oh, yeah, that’s my station.

I recognize that.

That’s the little tones that they play.

Bumper music.

This is typically, though, a music bed underneath, say, a commercial or an underwriter credit or something like that.

One more here.

I guess it’s a bridge.

Some people use bridge, just like they borrowed from the music itself.

You know, a bridge connects two parts of a song.

In this case, a bridge connects two parts of a show.

So it’s stingers and zippers and bumps.

Oh, my.

Well, yeah, no zippers.

I don’t have a zipper in there.

But button will be in public radio.

I believe that’s the one that most people use is button.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Well, now I know more than I did this morning.

I thank you very kindly.

Right on.

Our pleasure.

Happy to help.

Thanks, Lee James.

All right.

So long.

Take care.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673.

You can also email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Stay tuned as we take more questions about language from you

As A Way with Words continues.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us now is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hiya, John.

Hey, bud.

What’s up?

Hey, Martha.

Hey, Grant.

Things are going great here.

You know, I’m in New York, one of the greatest cities in the world.

I really wish I could go see more theater.

Okay.

I can’t afford to go anymore, but I can certainly imagine how much fun it might be.

For example, there’s that show.

I think it’s a musical adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s autobiography.

What’s that show again?

I have no idea.

Oh, I’m trying to figure out this setup, Martha.

Yeah.

What is her autobiography called?

It’s got to have something with Elvis.

Elvis Lives.

No, it’s a famous show.

It’s been around for many, many years

But it must be about Elvis and Priscilla.

Oh, that’s right.

It’s called The King and I.

That’s what it is, that’s that show.

That must be a great show.

I love his music.

There’s our premise.

There’s a show going on right now.

I’m pretty sure it’s about the Department of Geological Sciences

At some university, I guess.

School of Rock?

Yeah, that’s it, School of Rock.

It seems to be pretty dry to me.

But, you know, they make musicals bad of anything these days.

How about this one?

There’s a show about young upstart employees at a sportswear manufacturing company.

I guess they like different teams or whatnot.

There’s got to be some conflict in there somewhere.

Guys who work at a sportswear manufacturing company.

They make shirts.

They make shirts.

Yeah.

Some milliner’s.

Jersey Boys.

Yes, that’s them.

The Jersey Boys.

Very good.

There’s a show about the internet and email and this guy, he gets a lot of ads because he clicks on the wrong thing.

It’s sort of a cautionary tale.

Bad links.

Spamalot.

Yes, Spamalot is correct.

Very good.

There’s this show about a guy, he falls in love with a girl who works at a carnival and he tells us all about her, but it’s not carnival.

My Fair Lady.

Yes, My Fair Lady.

Very good, Brent.

One of the best ones of all time, by the way.

Very good.

How about a show about California, Oregon, and Washington

And how that whole part of the U.S. got settled?

It’s quite an interesting tale.

How it all got settled.

Wagons Ho, Painted Wagon, How the West Was Won.

West Coast.

Well, there’s one word.

West.

Is it west?

Side.

Story.

West Side Story.

Yes, West Side Story.

Nicely done.

All right.

Ever since that musical about cats, I’ve enjoyed anthropomorphic beasts,

Like the ones that must be in that show about the bears and their hibernation every year,

And they sing and dance and whatever.

Bears?

And they sing and dance?

Yeah.

Dancing and dancing bears.

Thinking of Phil Harris singing Bear Necessities in the jungle.

Technically, it’s about any animal that hibernates.

Spring Awakening.

Yes, that’s it.

Very nice, Martha.

Nice.

She pulled that one out.

All right, these last two are very weird.

Okay.

There’s a show, it’s a musical.

I think it’s about candles.

The spark?

Wicked?

Wicked?

Yeah, that’s the show.

Dude.

Finally, this has got to be the weirdest show ever.

You walk in, and the curtain goes up,

And there’s another curtain right behind it,

But it’s been torn in two,

And it just stays that way for two hours.

No intermission.

Rent.

Yes, rent.

Nicely done, Martha.

Martha is on top of it.

A game for Martha, right?

You guys certainly got up to speed.

Cool, John.

Thank you for enlightening us.

I got on a list of shows.

I need to go see you next time in New York.

Thank you, guys.

I’ll see you on the aisle.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Thanks.

We want to hear from you, so call us, 877-929-9673,

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Tweet us at Wayword and find us on Facebook.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Martha Wild from San Diego.

Hi, Martha, how are you doing?

Martha Wild.

Two Marthas.

Two wild Marthas.

Two wild Marthas.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you, Martha?

Well, I have a question that has to do with a large controversy that’s happening in a group that I’m part of. I do a lot of English country dance, contra dance, and I’ve done more dance. And there’s a move, there’s a dance move that we’ve used for years, and it’s been used for hundreds of years, as far as we can tell. And the move is called a gypsy, where you walk around the other person, you look at them and you walk around them. And in Morris dancing, actually they usually call it a half-gyp or a whole-gyp if you go all the way around.

I belong to a group, I call the dances some of the contra-dances, and we have a shared list on the Internet, and one of the callers wrote in and said that he’d been approached after one of the dances by a new dancer that had come in and said how much they enjoyed the dancing and what a great group they had, but they couldn’t believe they were using this terrible ethnic slur, gypsy, to refer to this dance move. And so this caused this whole huge controversy in our group about whether we should completely drop this word because it’s an ethnic slur to the Romani. And I have to say that the person who brought this up was not Roma. It was somebody else who had heard it, I guess, somewhere.

And then this other group that says, but wait, we don’t even know the provenance of this term. Maybe it comes from a different origin. And someone looked into it and said that in Welsh, gyp means to glance at someone, and it may have come from that originally, especially since Morris dancing is close, the Cotswolds are close to the Welsh border. I don’t want to be culturally insensitive and be promoting a word that’s an ethnic slur. But on the other hand, I also don’t want to get rid of, you know, over 100 years of using a term that may be completely innocent. I thought I would ask the word mavens what their feeling was about this sort of difficult situation.

Oh, boy.

Wow.

And, Martha, are the two sides pretty evenly divided?

It seems about so. There’s a very large contingent that is coming up with other words like gimbal and geier and… on the wave. Geier and gimbal on the wave. Around to completely avoid the word. But on the other hand, you have to explain it every time to the people who already know what the move is and have to train them to a new word. And of course, everybody’s using different words. So it’s for the ones that are changing over and are being totally PC. And then there’s the other group that says, no, we’re not going to change. So and there’s a lot of vitriol going on.

Yeah, I can imagine.

Yeah.

And so for the people who oppose it, would etymology be key? I mean, if you could definitively say that this word, gyp or gypsy, doesn’t come from or isn’t associated with that ethnic group, would that make a difference, do you think?

I think it would for some. I think for some it wouldn’t. For some they don’t want to say a word that might be misconstrued and misinterpreted by other people. On the other hand, it’s not as if we have a huge Roma population. I mean, I’ve been using this word for 30 or 40 years, and I’ve never had anyone say boo about it. So I don’t think most people that we deal with have a negative connotation in their mind about it. And for some people, I think that if it had a different etymology, they’d say, this is a different etymology, and therefore it is an innocent word, and it’s just two words that are similar to each other, too bad.

Right.

So, yeah.

I think I’d be one of those people. Let’s clear some of this away as a distraction for a moment. The gyp here does not come from Welsh. There is a word meaning something like look or glance in Welsh, but it probably would be pronounced geep. My Welsh is terrible, but this is what I’ve been told. And we do have a strong etymological connection between gyp and gypsy going back to the Romany people. So the Welsh thing is just somebody looking for an easy out, and it’s not a path to be taken. It’s just a superficial similarity that should be ignored.

The other thing here is we have strong, in this industry, and you may know more about this than we do, there’s a strong understanding that this type of dancing could actually come from the Romani people. Morris dance in particular has some substantial evidence that suggests it was borrowed into the British culture from the travelers. This is all distractions here. The real interesting thing here for us is, what can you do to make the half of the people who are unhappy, happy?

I don’t know, because if everyone changed the word and picked a word that was new, I think the half that wants to be PC would be happy. But I don’t think the half that had to change all their dances and rewrite everything and watch their language constantly and not say the word they’re used to would be happy.

Yeah, it sounds like you’re in a difficult bind here because I don’t see an out. Somebody’s going to go away unhappy here. The thing is, it does come from, and my understanding is, and there are better authorities than me on the internet, but all the evidence, the print evidence suggests that even though the dance moves themselves date back to the 1600s at least, the term itself is relatively new, dating from perhaps the early 1900s. And so that’s really interesting.

Another interesting thing about it is we do see gyp and gypsy used interchangeably in early documents showing these dance moves, which, again, allows us to ignore the Welsh connection. The third thing is, do you feel that this term gypsy is pejorative? Well, it turns out the Romani do. They don’t use this term for themselves. And actually, most of the places in English where gyps or gypsiers use are negative or pejorative or insulting or intentionally meant to describe something that is bad or terrible.

Yeah, it’s interesting. The American Heritage Dictionary describes it as often offensive.

Often, yeah.

Often. I had never realized that it had a really negative context. There are place names in North America, in Canada, the United States, mountains or features of geography which have very pejorative, such as the N-word, as part of their names. And these, so it’ll be N-word peak or N-word river or what have you, right?

Yeah.

Or squall.

Or squall. Squall is another one. Almost universally, people understand that these terms need to be changed or simply not used. Even though they’re just referring to a mountain. Even though they’re not meant to directly insult a people, even though they’re not meant to hurt feelings, right? We know. At least all well-educated, forward-thinking, kind of considerate, sensitive human beings think this, right?

And when we look in Gypsy and Gypsy in this dancing, I think I see a strong comparison there. I think even though it’s difficult to change the name, you should. And I know that you can’t change it in all the dancing all across the United States and the English-speaking world. I know you can’t, but at least among your peer group, you might come up with something. Even if it’s just a shortening like G or jazz, I don’t know, just something relatively similar, but it’s clearly not that word.

I don’t know what it is. I think I’m on the same page as Grant here, Martha. I mean, it’s a really tough one. You know, the more you read about the history of the Romani people and the oppression and prejudice and maltreatment, are you giving up that much if you give up that word? What about the hundreds of years of dance before? What did they call it then? Maybe you can go back to the earlier term and that would satisfy some people who want to know that it’s not strictly out of sensitivity that you’re doing. It’s a reach back to the roots because, as you probably know, this is a revived tradition anyway. It’s not, you know, it’s brought back from ancient manuals and a lot of stuff was amended and added in the 1970s.

And kind of even fabricated just to make it look authentically historic when it’s not necessarily so.

Yeah.

Well, Martha, it sounds like this is going to go on for a while. Maybe you can take our thoughts back to the group and see what they think.

Oh, definitely, definitely. And I think you’ve persuaded me. I wanted your moral compass on this.

Okay. Martha, let us know how this goes, okay?

Okay, I will. Thank you, Martha. And we do want to know. It was great talking with you. Keep us updated, all right?

Thank you so much.

Okay, thank you. Take care now. Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye. You know, we know that you listening have an opinion on this. And bring us your best information. Tell us what you think. Should they drop the term? Can you think of suggestions they can use instead of gyp or gypsy? Do you think that it’s offensive or no? 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Another entry for the game, if you added ING to a movie title, how would the plot change?

Yeah. This one on our Facebook group comes from Sandra Churchwell Voss O’Brien. She suggested adding ING to Erin Brockovich. Erin Brockoviching? Brockoviching? Brockoviching.

So she’s complaining?

Right, an Irish lady complaining. Erin Brockoviching. That was brilliant.

Okay, Erin Brockovich. I wonder if you can do that to a lot of other people’s names. Let’s see. It doesn’t work for very many other names.

No, no. A few. Send us your movie titles, words@waywordradio.org, or find us on Twitter. Our handle is Wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gary from Wethersfield. I’ve been listening to your show for probably more years than I want to admit, but this is the first time I’m calling in.

Well, bless your heart. And where is this place?

Wethersfield, Connecticut.

Oh, Connecticut. All right. Welcome to the show, Gary. How can we help?

Okay, I’ve always wondered about the use of the word late, as in the late David Bowie. I’ve heard the late John F. Kennedy and even the late Abraham Lincoln. But, you know, what about the late Cleopatra? Is there a time limit on this?

The late Cleopatra.

Yeah, there’s no hard and fast rule for that, Gary. And I’ve seen all kinds of suggestions. Some people have said in the past that 30 years should be the outside. But then more and more, you know, as time goes on, I see that people suggest even shorter periods of time, like 15 years. I think William Sapphire suggested 15 to 30 when he was alive.

The late William Sapphire.

Well, yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. How long ago did he die?

That’s been less than 10 years, I think.

Yeah. How long were the late John F. Kennedy?

No, I mean, you might use the late John F. Kennedy if you were talking in a historical context. If you said something like the Civil Rights Act was passed in honor of the late John F. Kennedy because it was close to that time, right, 1964.

My favorite recommendation comes from Brian Garner, who writes a lot about usage. And he suggests just five years, that after that, it’s not really that relevant. It’s short for lately deceased. That’s the point. That’s the clarification.

And you’ve touched upon something that has always been in my mind when you said that John F. Kennedy, the late John F. Kennedy, blah, blah, blah, Civil Rights Act. To me, the late has always suggested that there might be some doubt in the listeners or the reader’s mind as to whether or not the person was dead at the time you were talking or the time you were talking about.

Yeah, that’s useful. Specify the late, like you may not have known that William Sapphire was dead. So saying the late William Sapphire will clue you in. Yeah. After a certain point, we all know that somebody is dead. But the late Cleopatra, you’d only say that as a joke. And Martha and I both laughed or snickered when you said that because we recognized that as an inaccurate usage, right? Yeah. She’s extremely late.

But, you know, another point about this is that it’s a gesture of respect as well. It’s a term of respect, you know, you wouldn’t necessarily talk about the late terrorist, for example.

Right.

Oh, that’s a good point. Interesting.

I once used the term the late Gilgamesh.

You did?

And only one person in the crowd react to it.

And what was their reaction, Gary?

Oh, it’s just a raised eyebrow. We chuckled a little bit about it.

Yeah. I think the other people didn’t know who Gilgamesh was.

Oh.

I thought maybe they pumped their fist in the air to say, yeah, down with Gilgamesh.

So is that helpful, Gary?

I mean, no hard and fast rule, but…

Yeah, very good.

Oh, well, good. Well, good. We’re glad we can help. Thanks, Gary. Very good. Take care.

Take care. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. We were talking earlier about the game of adding ING to movie titles. On our Facebook group, Michael D. Britton suggested a couple of work-related ones. You add ING to the movie Network. Networking. Networking. It’s a LinkedIn special. Or Strangers on a Train. Strangers on a Training.

Oh, no. Two corporate professionals discover love in an all-day seminar. Strangers on a Training. Send us your movie titles with ING added to change the plot. words@waywordradio.org. Or you can call us with one. The number is 877-929-9673.

More conversation about what we say and how we say it. Stick around. 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. In the early 1900s, a guy named Grenville Kleiser was an instructor in public speaking at Yale Divinity School, and he wrote a whole bunch of books on elocution, better speaking, better writing, how to win an argument, that kind of thing. And one of his books was called 15,000 Useful Phrases, which is a pretty daunting title in and of itself. And I didn’t count them all, but they’re probably about that many and sort of consistent with education in those days. The book offered all of these models for people to imitate. He encourages people in the book to take these phrases and say them aloud, read them aloud, write them out in order to become better writers. And he’s got a whole chapter on similes, striking similes, and they’re all gathered from some of the best poets and writers of the day.

And what I found in looking at an entire chapter of similes was that there’s sort of a fine line between genius when it comes to simile and similes that are completely dreadful.

Okay. You’ve got examples of both.

I do. How about this? My head was like a great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper.

I love it. Was that your bad one?

Yeah, that one.

I love that one.

Do you? That’s outstanding. I like absurd things like that.

Well, I do too. What’s the good one? Let’s hear the good one.

A good one.

I bet I hate it.

Okay. I like this one.

Okay.

Like a summer dried fountain.

Oh, that’s nice. That reminds me of one that I wanted to share with you.

Okay.

To mourn like the pines on an autumn night.

Oh, I like that very much. You can hear the murmur of the pines in the dark, right?

I like that very much.

Yeah, so what makes a good one and what makes a bad one?

That’s what I’ve been wrestling with. For me, it’s always been a little bit like poetry. We’ve talked about this before, where I think that life experience informs poetry, and poetry is more interesting the older you are. And perhaps it’s the same for similes and metaphor and that sort of thing, those other figures of speech. Just a little more knowledge of life in general leads you to understand the implications, connotations, and denotations of a particular turn of phrase.

Really? You mean so when we’re younger, we appreciate ones that…

No, we appreciate them less.

Yeah, that’s what I mean, appreciate them less. Like when we’re younger, we might be more impressed by one like, incredible little white teeth like snow shut in a rose.

Maybe. Or how about this one? Moody as a poet.

I like moody as a poet.

But it’s really straightforward. There’s no art to it, right?

Well, I think some of the ones that are more elaborate are the ones that I find the most irritating. You know, something like, he snatched furiously at breath like a tiger snatching at meat.

Yeah, that’s going to fail the writing contest pretty much.

Yeah, but then this one, like stepping out on summer evenings from the glaring ballroom.

There’s something so sensuous about that and simple.

Three of the ones we liked have to do with seasons.

Seasons.

Seasons, like summer.

Oh, yeah, interesting.

Well, we want to hear the similes that catch your ear.

Call us 877-929-9673 or let us know what makes a good simile in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tom.

Hi, Tom. Where are you calling from?

Hey, I’m calling from Anderson, Indiana.

Anderson, Indiana. Welcome to the show, Tom.

Hey, Tom. What’s up?

All right. Thank you very much. It’s good to talk to both of you.

My pleasure.

I’ve got a simple question.

I’ve always used the phrase in a nutshell, and I was just kind of curious about if this is a thing that’s here locally in the United States or if it’s a global phrase.

Where did it originate from?

I was just kind of curious about that.

So you use it when what?

When you’re explaining something simply?

Yeah.

You know, if you’re talking to somebody and you’re just talking about something specific and they say, yeah, that’s basically it.

They’ll agree with you and say, basically, you got it in a nutshell.

That’s basically it in a nutshell.

Gotcha.

I use it all the time, but I just never really had any idea of the origin.

I figured you guys would know.

Yeah, we do.

This is a really, really clear etymology.

It goes all the way back to antiquity, as a matter of fact.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The Roman historian Pliny, who died in 79 AD with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, writes that Cicero, the orator, claimed that the entire Iliad, Homer’s Iliad, was once written on pieces of parchment and put into a nutshell.

That it was that small, this manuscript.

So there’s a reference to a manuscript that’s absolutely tiny and could fit into a nutshell.

What kind of nut are we talking about?

That’s so amazing. I had no idea that that was really, really amazing.

Yeah, isn’t that crazy?

Yeah, probably a walnut.

Something like that, because if it’s in a coconut, it’s not that amazing, right?

Right, right. But supposedly this has got to be tiny, tiny writing because supposedly the Iliad itself contains over 500, 1000 Greek letters.

So that’s going to be either really tiny writing or a really big nut.

Right.

And so then you see this in English, like all the way back to the late 16th century, people talking about an Iliad in a nutshell.

And the phrase after that was, I’ll give you an Iliad in a nutshell or something like that.

And eventually it was shortened to, it was put into a nutshell.

It was shortened into in a nutshell.

So the context or the meaning behind it has actually changed over time then.

Yeah, it went from being just at one particular work being made so small as to fit into the tiny quarters of a nutshell to being anything made short or brief so that it could figuratively fit into a nutshell.

That’s really amazing.

Yeah, right? The roots, the roots of what we speak.

Yeah, it’s really odd. We have a lot of little phrases and sayings that I guess we kind of take for granted that we use them, but maybe we really don’t know the real meaning behind them.

Tom, you put it in a nutshell.

That is exactly what this show tries to do.

That’s what we’re all about, for sure.

Thanks, man.

Appreciate the call.

Hey, thank you very much.

Take care now.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

For a moment of linguistic kind of joy, the fact that we can actually trace this one to its roots.

Because usually it’s like, I don’t know, but I think this one we have it.

Some say, others say.

Yeah, this one’s pretty clear.

Not much doubt here.

And Shakespeare used it that way in Hamlet.

He’s the great popularizer.

Yeah, in a nutshell.

In a nutshell. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Talk to us on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

And join our active Facebook group where there are thousands of people talking about words and language.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary and I’m calling from Kenai, Alaska.

I adopted four African-American girls several years ago.

And then one of my daughters went on to have a baby.

And I was combing my granddaughter’s hair one day and she said to me, don’t mess with my kitchen.

And I said, what do you mean your kitchen?

And then she pointed to the back of her hair with a nape of her hair hits the top of her neck.

And I was like, what does that mean?

And she couldn’t tell me.

And I’m sure my daughters got it from one of their mothers of their friends.

So I was just wondering what that meant and where did it come from?

So are you all from Alaska originally, or do you hail from somewhere else?

What are we talking about here in terms of migration patterns and geography?

Well, I have been in Alaska for over 40 years.

My kids are all adopted.

They’re from various—most of my daughters are born and raised in Alaska.

But the only thing I can account it to is that they do have friends whose parents come from the South.

And it’s possible that they—I’m sure that’s where it came from.

I’m sure my daughters had friends, and their moms were combing their daughter’s hair, and then somehow my daughters picked it up.

And my oldest daughter then said it to my granddaughter.

So it was the hair or the neck or both together?

It’s the hair and the neck. It’s mostly the hair and the nape of the neck.

Gotcha.

It is an African-American term, for sure, mostly common.

I mean, white Southern Americans will also use it.

The Dictionary of American Regional English has some citations for it going back to the 1970s, but the earlier roots for it are even more interesting to me, and that they come from the Scots language.

We have those back to at least the 1830s.

But in that particular case, it refers to like a twist of rope or a knot and a string or anything that’s like kind of twisted together, very much like you would do with a braid or certain hairstyles at the back of the neck.

Yeah, that word is kinch, right?

Yeah, kinch, yeah.

Yeah, and I mean sort of a kink.

Oh, kink.

A kink, yeah.

And so clearly when we have a great long history of the Scots language influencing American English, especially in the American South.

And I’m sure that that’s the homological origin for that.

Well, I guess it surprises me that it comes from all that far back.

Yeah.

But knowing that they moved into that area, it doesn’t surprise me.

So it has nothing to do with kitchen?

No, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with kitchen.

No, it’s just a coincidence that they sound the same.

There’s a lot of those kinds of coincidences in language.

But you hit upon, like I said, a perfect part of it.

It’s very strongly tied to African-American language in the United States.

It’s not all that common among white American English speakers.

It might be reinforced by the use of hot irons.

I’ve heard that as a false etymology, you know, that it’s like, you know, the kitchen is hot and you’re using a hot iron back in that area.

But it’s not actually the origin.

It’s just kind of a false support.

Yeah.

So there you go.

That’s the best we can do.

Well, thank you so much.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, I had no idea where it came from.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

All right.

Thank you.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk with us about language.

You can also email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I want to share some more similes from this book, 15,000 Useful Phrases by Grenville Kleiser.

Okay.

Like footsteps upon wool.

I really like that one.

Footsteps.

That’s nice.

So that’s if you tread lightly.

Yeah.

Or what about this one?

Quaking and quivering like a short-haired puppy after a ducking.

I can just see that little puppy after, you know, after it gets ducked.

Yeah, I can see that too.

That’s nice.

Or what about the sky was like a peach?

Does that work for you?

The sky was like a peach?

The sky was like a peach.

Yeah, I think it does.

Does it?

For some of these require, I want to know more about the scene and the author.

I know.

But some of them do their own work, like tiny bits of poetry.

Exactly.

And that’s one of the reasons that I’ve been enjoying going through this book.

Well, we’d love to hear your similes, 877-929-9673,

Or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Grant and Martha.

My name is Robin, and I bring greetings from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi, Robin.

We accept your greetings from Madison, Wisconsin.

Thank you very much.

From all of Madison?

That is the most formal introduction.

From the Empire City.

Oh, nice!

I want the golden key.

We’d like to get over there soon.

What’s up, Robin? How can we help?

Well, I am calling because I would like to know the genesis of the expression to throw your hat in the room ahead of you.

I believe I grew up knowing this expression.

I don’t remember my parents ever using it.

It’s just something that I must have just known from popular culture.

I grew up in southern Ohio, and so that is my question.

And how would you use that?

Yeah, what does it mean?

Well, the reason that I began thinking about this is that I have a small habit of buying things or making small home renovation projects and surprising my husband with them.

And on an occasion recently, I had a new oven and cooktop put in the kitchen.

And the day that it was installed, I was out.

And when I came home, my husband was home ahead of me.

So I came in the house, and I took a hat, and I threw it in the room where he was sitting.

And he asked me why I was throwing things at him.

And so I proceeded to try and explain, you know, the expression throwing your hat in the room ahead of you.

And he just looked at me very blankly and said, oh, well, it must be another one of those Appalachian things, since that is the area where I grew up.

So you threw the hat into the room. Why exactly?

Well, I understood the expression to throw your hat in the room ahead of you was to see if anyone shot at it.

So it was just trying to be certain that there wasn’t an imminent attack about to happen.

Is it safe to enter, basically?

I don’t know why, but that’s how I’ve always associated it in my head, was to throw a hat in to see if it was shot at.

Okay.

Well, as far as I can tell, it’s not regional.

But if you were reading the newspapers in 1983,

You might have heard Ronald Reagan say it to Margaret Thatcher or something like it.

Actually, it didn’t come to light until many years later.

It turns out that there was a period when, if you remember, the United States invaded Grenada.

And he wasn’t sure, Ronald Reagan wasn’t sure how the U.K. would handle it.

And so he is quoted in some transcripts that came to light later.

I’m reading something from the BBC here.

It says, the president phoned Lady Thatcher to explain the action he’d take it.

And he says, if I were there, Margaret, I’d throw my hat in the door before I came in.

And she says, there’s no need for that.

And he meant he wasn’t sure what she would think about the U.S. invading this country without telling the U.K. first.

But it’s not the earliest use I know of.

I actually found one in a biography of Harry Houdini from 1931.

The author is J.C. Connell.

And this biography was a huge hit at the time, widely republished.

Even now, sometimes it’s reprinted.

And in there, it said that Mr. and Mrs. Houdini fought so much that, well, one of the things it says is that when they were with company, he would raise his right eyebrow three times as a signal for his wife to stop talking.

And the other things that it says, if she became angry, he would leave the house, walk around for a while.

And then when he returned, he would throw his hat into the room.

If it were thrown back out, he would take another short walk and repeat the hat throwing when he came back.

And so I don’t know that.

Well, we may become known as Mr. and Mrs. Houdini then.

Yeah, I don’t know that that’s the origin, but certainly it was a bestseller for the time.

It’s really difficult to search for this.

But if you do, you will find this hat throwing described in a number of biographies,

Amateur biographies that people have written about their grandparents or their great-grandparents,

Most of them dating to the early 1900s.

And in their family lore, apparently their grandparents or great-grandparents

Went through this same ritual of one of the husband testing whether the wife was angry at him

By tossing his hat into the room.

So there’s some precedence for this.

But it’s not particularly Appalachian at all.

Oh, good.

Good. Well, that’s very interesting.

I thought maybe you were going to say that it was in one of Ronald Reagan’s movies.

Oh, you know, it could have been.

I wouldn’t be surprised.

Yeah, he did so many old Western flicks.

Maybe we’ll have to have a movie fest and see.

And I’m assuming that metaphorically your husband didn’t throw the hat back out.

I mean, a new oven and hey.

Well, you know, actually it took him over 24 hours to even notice it.

It turns out he hadn’t even seen it and he didn’t know what was going on.

You should keep upping your game and build another story onto the house and see if he notices.

A new car in the driveway.

Exactly.

Robin, thank you very much.

You are so welcome.

I look forward to listening to your program every week.

Nice.

Thank you so much for bringing it to the air.

Our pleasure.

Thank you, Robin.

Cheers now.

Take care.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if a word or phrase has you stumped, call us at 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

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.

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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 producer 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.

Thank you.