Rock, Paper, Scissors

Hey there, it’s Martha. Recently we heard from a listener named Wendy. She writes,

I feel that listening to you makes my brain cells grow. I don’t know about that, but each week Grant and I do try to bring you a zesty mix of information and entertainment. And we do this without funding from NPR or from any radio station. We’re independently produced, and that means we need your help. So please go to waywordradio.org, click on that top button at the far right that says donate, and make your year-end tax-deductible contribution today.

A Way with Words.

Think of it as Miracle Grove for your mind.

Thanks.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Grant, you love your cell phone, right?

Yes.

Right?

What, do you have a little Android?

Mm—

Yeah.

Got all your phone numbers in there.

Yes.

Synced with your Google Calendar, right?

Sure.

All the word games, that sort of thing.

Oh, right.

The word games.

Right.

Okay.

Question for you.

What would you feel if I took your phone away from you?

Just for a few days, how would you feel?

I’d cry.

I would rather give up my postal mail, my landline, and half the electricity in my house.

Whoa!

I ask you this, Grant, because there’s a word that’s been circulating lately on the internet, and it’s a term for that fear of being without one’s mobile phone.

Yes.

Have you run across that?

I have seen this.

Gnomophobia?

Gnomophobia.

Yeah.

I got gnomophone, right?

Yeah, or else you’re afraid of little elves, you know, nomophobia.

But I suspect that you feel the same way I do about this term, which is that it was coined apparently four years ago by some market research firm and has been promoted by marketers and by journalists.

So probably a flash in the pan.

But what I’m thinking is we still need a term for this, because when I think about being without my mobile phone, you know, my palms get sweaty and I just get anxious.

So we’re talking about withdrawal, right?

Yeah, yeah, withdrawal.

And, you know, I’ve been trying to come up with a term for this.

The only thing that I can really come up with so far is delirium tremens.

What do you think?

Dial.

Dilerium, yeah.

So the word dial is in there at the beginning.

Yeah, yeah.

But the feeling that you get when you’ve left the house without your phone, I mean, it’s like having a phantom limb or something.

It is.

Yeah.

I have a ritual phone wallet keys mama boy.

Oh, right.

That’s what I say to myself when I leave the house with my family.

Phone wallet keys.

Yeah, phone wallet keys mama boy.

That is hysterical.

Those are the things that are important to me.

Yeah, because if you don’t have that phone, you feel naked out there.

Yeah.

And it’s not just the phone part is the least important part of the phone.

Good point.

It’s the email.

The email.

The calendar.

The calendar.

It’s the navigation.

It’s like finding the things that, you know, where’s the nearest park?

Where’s the bathroom, right?

Exactly.

Is there another way to this beach?

What’s traffic like?

Exactly.

What does Yelp say?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, I think we need a term for this, and I just know that our listeners can come up with a better term than nomophobia.

What’s your term for not having your phone and really wanting it?

877-929-9673.

See? You need your phone.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tina calling from Kewaskam, Wisconsin.

What can we do for you today?

I thought of a word that we use around our house a lot, which is gobbledygook.

And does anyone else use that word, and how do they use it?

Yes, they do.

Yes.

And there’s a great story.

And Martha has a great entry for it in one of her books.

I do.

We love this kind of etymological question because the etymology is very clear.

Yeah.

Well, it goes back to Congressman Maury Maverick, who was a Texas congressman.

And in 1944, he was quite the stickler for language, and he was the chair of a congressional committee, and he was very upset with the jargon and blather coming out of so many Washington offices.

I mean, can you imagine, Tina?

Sure. For a politician, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. OK. So he was he was unhappy with the bloated kind of writing that people were doing.

And so he issued this official memo to the people who worked for him, urging them to speak in plain English and be succinct.

And one of the things he said was that this kind of blather is gobbledygook.

He called it gobbledygook.

And later he was interviewed about this, and he said that he wasn’t quite sure why the word gobbledygook sprang into his mind, but it reminded him when he would read these badly written papers, it reminded him of strutting turkeys back home in Texas.

And they would gobble, gobble, gobble.

And then at the end of the gobble, he said, there was a kind of gook.

Boy, I wonder if my husband heard that on another radio show, maybe Rush Limbaugh or something.

Oh, it’s possible.

Yeah, the kind of bureaucratic and political effluent isn’t limited to Washington.

He’s also used it to, like, schmear stuff on gaskets and things, because we’re farmers out here, so schlup some of that gobbledygook on there.

Oh, really?

Interesting.

Schlup some of that gobbledygook.

Is it schlup or schlub?

Schlup.

Schlup.

Schlup.

Interesting.

With a P.

So it just means like some random substance.

Yeah, schlup it on there.

The rest of us might say goop.

He says gobbledygook.

Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Well, wonderful.

Well, now I feel enlightened.

Clearly you were already.

Or you wouldn’t have called.

You wouldn’t have called if you weren’t enlightened.

And I tell all my friends A Way with Words, yeah.

Thank you, Tina.

You are a lot of fun.

I’ll probably call back again with a couple new words.

Okay. Thanks, Tina. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Shlop that gobbledygook.

So the question on my mind, though, Martha.

Yes.

How is this Maverick related to the Maverick, the one which we get the term Maverick, the one that was the big deal in the 2008 political election?

Yes. That was another Texas politician.

Was he related to this same Maverick?

Yes. Yes. That was his grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick.

And so this is a family of loud, plain-spoken folks who got no problem with saying what’s on their mind.

Exactly.

And Samuel Augustus Maverick was known for having a mind of his own and not following convention.

And one of the things he would do is let his cattle run free and not brand them.

And so if people saw an unbranded animal, they would say, oh, that must be a maverick.

And so the metaphor went from cattle to politicians.

Oh, interesting.

Very good.

Call us with your questions and stories about language, 877-929-9673, or send them an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Brad.

Hi, Brad. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks so much.

What can we help you with?

Well, you know, I grew up playing a game called Paper Rock Scissors.

I’ve also heard a call of Rochampeau and Cowboy Ninja Bear, believe it or not.

And I was just curious if you could let me know the history of the game.

You said Rochampeau with a P?

You said Cowboy Ninja Bear?

Cowboy Ninja Bear and Rochampeau.

No, with a B, I’m sorry, not P.

Cowboy Ninja Bear, that’s like what I wanted to be when I was three.

All of those together.

And a garbage man, right?

Sure, everybody likes that.

Yeah.

So you’ve been playing this for your whole life?

Is this something you learned as an adult?

How does it work?

No, no.

You know, you grow up playing it as a kid.

If you can’t figure out who wins, if you basically have equally good positions, it’s often a tactic used to figure out who’s equally good position is ultimately better.

Right.

Who’s it, maybe?

Who’s the one who goes first and that sort of thing, right?

If you’re playing a game.

Yeah, right, exactly.

So it’s kind of a choosing game.

It’s kind of like eeny, meeny, miny, moe sometimes, right?

And sometimes it’s just a matter of who has to do the distasteful thing rather than the fun thing.

Right, right.

It could be a choosing game or a game of chance or whatever you want to do.

So which one did you learn first, though?

Did you learn just rock, paper, scissors?

See, I call it paper, rock, scissors.

My wife calls it rock, paper, scissors.

No, wait.

I call it scissors, paper, rock.

Always have.

Rock, paper, scissors is the more common order, though.

For real?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

Huh.

I always thought it would make more sense in the pecking order to have a paper, rock, scissors.

Why?

Because they’re equal.

Each one is better than one of the other two and worse than the other two.

So they’re supposedly equal.

Yeah.

Right.

It is cyclical when you look at it.

Although there’s a little bit of psychology that says that most amateur players of this game,

Because there are big leagues for this, will choose rock first almost every time.

Is that right?

Yeah.

And they’re less likely to choose scissors.

Scissors is the stronger first choice.

Oh.

Because most people won’t choose scissors first.

Really?

Yeah.

So it’s like opening game theory in paper rock scissors.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had no idea.

I think Brad and Martha beat Grant.

I do.

Yeah, you’re the minority.

Well, you know, we played a version that I invented where you introduced a stick of dynamite, which beat everything.

What do you mean?

It’s one finger in the palm of your hand.

Oh, really?

It’s cheating, though.

Because we play that once, right?

There are some variations that instead of three elements, you have five elements.

And so that’s a little more complicated.

Five?

Yeah, it includes Spock and some other things.

Like hold your hand like Spock with the, like this, with the V in the middle, the two fingers on each side.

Oh, really? Spock, paper, scissors? No, wait.

No, no, five elements, not just three.

Spock, paper, scissors.

Wikipedia has all this junk about it.

I don’t know how accurate it is, but you can check it out.

That’s right. There you go.

And so if you go into the historical record pre-internet,

You’ll find that this game has existed in Asia and Europe for a very long time.

The Rochambeau probably was the earlier American version of the game.

And then once the West started visiting the East,

That is, say, Americans and Brits went to China and Japan,

They picked up some variations there.

And so in the late 1800s and particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, you start to see the Japanese version of this game being described in these diaries and histories that are being sent back by military people and missionaries and people who like to travel, travelers and so forth, where they literally describe the game in Japan exactly like we play it today.

And even the words for it supposedly are related to something like jankenpon or jankenpo or even just kinpo.

Which means rock, scissor, paper, or stone, scissor, paper.

Well, Rochambeau sounds French to me.

Yeah, it does sound French, and there is the famous Rochambeau

Who was involved with the American Revolution.

There’s no connection as far as we can tell.

There’s no evidence for or against that guy being connected.

We do not know. Nobody knows.

And all of the evidence, supposed evidence that I’ve seen about Rochambeau is bogus.

But anyway, so there’s a long history of this kind of thing.

It’s a choosing game.

And if you Google choosing game, you’ll find a lot of different ways that we decide who does the thing that nobody wants to do or who gets to do the thing that everyone wants to do.

It’s a way of deciding.

It’s a fairness issue.

We are humans.

We have this innate need, particularly as children, to develop a system for fairness.

They are naturally at a disadvantage to the adults around them.

And they struggle to be recognized as a whole human being and to feel big.

And that’s the language that they often use.

I am big.

I’m not a little person.

I’m not half of a person.

And so they always look for these ways to be recognized as an equal.

And these rituals of deciding who goes next are part of that working out the fairness of a situation.

It’s funny.

I’m a lawyer, and you still see that somewhat between judges and lawyers.

And I read a brief, or I’m sorry, an order a few years back coming from a federal district court in Florida, I believe,

Where the parties before the bench couldn’t work out a discovery dispute in the litigation,

Which usually you don’t need to get the court involved very often in those circumstances,

Or at least they don’t like it when you do.

And so the court ordered them to play a game of paper, rock, scissors on the courthouse steps to conclude their dispute.

Why don’t we decide everything this way?

This is great.

It might be easier.

You know, we could cut out a whole election season if we did this.

Hey, there’s an idea.

Wouldn’t that be nice minus the commercials?

I’m liking this idea.

You know what we’re going to do?

We’re going to link to a bunch of sources for this.

There is a world league for this where they have all these rituals involved,

And it’s pretty interesting stuff.

And, frankly, it’s the kind of thing that I love teaching my son because he gets it right away.

I’m guessing the World Paper, Rock, Scissors League has beer involved.

You think?

Yeah.

It might.

Oh, man.

Well, thanks so much for your time.

Yeah, sure.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Great question.

Okay.

Thanks, Brad.

Bye-bye.

Tell us your variants on Rochambeau or Scissor Paper Rock.

877-929-9673.

Send all your language questions to words@waywordradio.org.

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And on the line is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

How you doing?

What’s cooking, bro?

I’m doing great.

I was walking through the farmer’s market on the way to the studio here and just enjoying it.

It’s so warm out.

I smelled lavender and apples and perfume.

And you thought of me.

It was a great day.

Of course I thought of you.

New York hasn’t smelled the same since you left, just so you know.

I did bring those shoes and socks with me.

That’s good.

You know, guys, this is not the time of the year for the words of the year,

But I’ve written a puzzle called Words of the Year.

Okay.

So let’s do it.

I’m going to give you clues to several words.

Each one will contain a three-letter abbreviation for a month of the year.

For example, if I gave you the clue, this ancient demonym also applies to something that can harm your computer, you might say.

Virus.

Yeah, a particular kind of virus.

Trojan.

Yes, Trojan.

And it has J-A-N in it.

Oh, good, good.

Now, yeah, if you’re near a piece of paper and you want to write down the three-letter abbreviations for the month, that might help you.

How did you know what I was doing?

Also known as a TLA.

A TLA?

Yeah, three-letter abbreviation.

Three-letter abbreviation.

That’s right.

We’re just going to keep abbreviating things today.

Okay, we’re going to do one of each.

We already did January, so that’s out.

That’s off the table, okay?

Here we go with the first.

And but and or are famous examples of this word type.

Conjunction.

June.

Conjunction.

That’s it.

Very good.

I like you give the word and give the month.

I appreciate that.

You’re welcome.

As Archie Bunker once said,

I’m not a man of carnival instinctuals like you,

Illustrating what?

Malapropisms.

Malapropism.

What’s the month?

April?

Oh, yeah.

APR.

I was spelling it in my head.

Capital punishment has never been a detergent to crime.

He used to say that, too.

Nice.

This 1944 film takes place entirely on the titular craft.

They could have used a few more of these on the Titanic.

Lifeboat?

Lifeboat.

And the month?

Is my Feb, F-E-B, February.

February, very good.

This is a person whom can tell you when to use who and when to use whom.

A grammarian.

Augustus Caesar.

Yes, a grammarian, right.

Caesar is correct as well because we have March in there.

M-A-R, good.

Now, this word means to begin something, like a presidency, perhaps?

Inaugurate.

Inaugurate.

And the month is?

August.

O-U-G.

August.

Cool.

Right.

Fits right in there.

This is the only answer that does not appear in the middle of the word.

It’s a drink of bourbon, sugar, and mint over crushed ice.

Oh, yeah.

We had them in Louisville at the Derby.

They’re awful.

Julep.

Julep from Persian for rose water, I believe.

Gulab.

Very good.

I love getting extra information here.

And there’s our July right there.

Julep.

There you go.

Here’s another drink.

This one is made of orange liqueur with lemon juice and brandy.

It’s also an accessory for a motorcycle.

Sidecar.

Sidecar in our month?

December, D-E-C.

Yes, also hidden in there.

What month is that?

December.

Very good.

Someone who watches you while you take a test is not just a spectator.

They are most likely this.

A proctor in October.

Your October proctor is here.

Here he comes.

Good.

A Boston fern, a wandering Jew, and an African violet are all examples of these.

Tricky.

One more time, please.

A Boston fern, wandering Jew, and an African violet are all examples of these.

They’re all plants.

They’re all house plants.

Yes, house plants.

What’s our month in there?

Oh, look at you.

SEP.

Very good.

For September.

Very good.

Nice work, guys.

That was great.

And we’ve come to the end of the year.

Thanks, John.

Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got a question about anything that we talk about on the show or want to do a little wordplay yourself, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or tell us the whole thing and email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hey.

Hi, who’s this?

Oh, my name’s Ben.

I’m calling from Olympia, Washington.

Olympia, Washington.

Hello, welcome.

Welcome, Ben.

Well, I am originally from the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, a town called Uniontown about 50 miles south.

Yeah.

And there’s a lot of words in the Pittsburgh region that seem to be unique to the Pittsburgh area.

There was one word in particular that I used for years, and I just assumed everybody around me knew what it meant.

And it wasn’t until I was like 22 that somebody said, what the heck are you talking about?

And that word was read up.

This place is really a mess.

Let’s read it up.

We really need to read up the place.

And it means pick up.

It’s not like a deep cleaning, but to gather up all the books and stack them and put your clothes away and things like that.

I read the place up.

Yeah, apparently people just didn’t understand what I was talking about for about a decade of my life.

People from the other 49 states are now going, read up?

Because it’s really not that common.

I mean, maybe a little bit of Ohio and some of the adjoining states, but really it’s highly focused in this area, right?

Yeah, yeah.

If you hadn’t told us, I would have said, oh, what part of Pennsylvania are you from, by any chance?

Yeah, because we would have known.

Yeah.

And there’s a little bit of local hometown pride in Red Up, right?

People kind of know that they’re known for saying it, right?

Well, Ben didn’t know that.

He was 22.

He wasn’t finished with his education.

He learned.

Yeah, that’s right.

And now I am very proud, actually.

Yeah, yeah, because it’s a perfectly legitimate term in that area, exactly the area that Grant described.

And it comes from an old Scottish term that means to clear or clear out, like clear out the land, you know, or clean out.

What, you mean like to take out the stones and the stumps from the field before you plant it?

Yeah.

Okay.

That kind of thing.

Yeah.

And it’s usually spelled R-E-D-D.

And sometimes you’ll see red off, like red off the table, but usually it’s red up.

Meaning to clear the table.

Yeah.

Okay.

If I remember correctly, it’s not etymologically related to ready, but there’s a nice synthesis there, right?

There’s like some contribution between these similar words.

Right, and RID.

And RID, right.

RID as well.

They all kind of influence that term.

But we’re talking a little good long history here, aren’t we?

Very, yeah.

I mean, this goes back to the, as soon as people started recording American speech, this term popped up.

Right.

Yes, people were remarking on it.

Okay, so you’re plugged into a long history there, Ben.

Well, I wonder why it’s only in that particular region where people held onto the word and, you know, continue to use it.

And I continue to use it out here in the West Coast.

Good for you.

Well, there’s a lot of reasons for that.

I mean, it’s a whole show in itself, but the very short version is a little bit of hometown pride.

It’s a very useful term.

Those two things alone will keep a term in use, even if outsiders aren’t using it.

Yeah, and the Scots-Irish settlement.

Yeah, I mean, you’re going to speak like your parents.

You’re going to speak like your parents and your neighbors and your family, and that’s who you’re learning your language from.

And as long as they’re saying it, you’re going to say it.

I bet you $1,000, though, that you haven’t taught it to anybody outside of Pennsylvania.

They might understand it, but I bet they haven’t actually used it, right?

Right.

My partner, Crystal, she doesn’t use the term, but she’s not offended by it anymore.

Okay.

Anymore?

She used to be?

Yeah, she was like, what are you talking about?

She’s from Kentucky, eastern Kentucky, so she’s got all kinds of language on her own.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Have her call us sometime.

Those are Martha’s people, more or less.

Those are my books.

Ben, this was a lot of fun.

Thank you for calling.

You’re welcome.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for taking my call.

Sure.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

I enjoy it.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

What do they talk about in your part of the country?

Send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elizabeth Erickson from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Elizabeth.

Welcome.

Hey there.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Sure.

Delighted. What’s going on?

Well, my question is this.

I’m born and raised in Dallas and from very northern parents.

And so I had, you know, a lot of, I had been living in London and had thought that I prepped my vocabulary for all of the word differences.

You know, things like eggplant being aubergine and, you know, pants are really underwear over there, things like that.

But I had been living in London and studying at the university there, and about three weeks in, somebody came and asked me for a plaster.

And I just kind of looked at them funny and was, you know, racking my brain for what they could mean, had no idea what they meant by a plaster.

And the woman who was from the U.K. was increasingly frustrated with me that I didn’t know what she was talking about.

And someone else came over and gave her a Band-Aid.

And so I finally made the connection that apparently in the UK, a Band-Aid is a plaster.

So I just was curious where the origin of that came from, because it’s just not at all a common word that I would associate with a bandage, nor is it something that anyone had ever told me or I had found in any of my research before moving there.

Plaster is really interesting.

You used to, when you had a cut or a simple wound, there were a variety of different compounds that you could make with all different kinds of substances that you’d slather on there to disinfect or protect or even to seal it.

And then you would wrap a bandage around it.

And a lot of these plastery substances were sticky.

So you could actually make them, dip your bandages in this substance, and then when the bandage dried, you could just store it until you needed, and you’d wet it.

And I printed out some instructions.

Like, you could lick it.

Some of them would say, lick the bandage and then apply it to the wound.

And then the substance would become wet again.

You’d wrap it around your wound and let it dry, and there you go.

It would stay on.

I mean, that’s what you want.

You want a bandage that will stay on so you don’t have to keep holding it there.

Yeah, on top of a poultice.

Yeah.

It’s like a poultice.

Yeah, but it’s a tiny poultice sometimes.

We’re not talking like a big lump of substance necessarily, right?

It doesn’t have to be that much.

We’re talking like a paper cut or, you know, I don’t even know, a nail scratch or something like that.

Something you would use a band-aid for.

Yeah, something you would use a band-aid for.

There you go.

And so over time, this became formal because the factories started making these bulk items.

And they were a little different from the ones you might make yourselves.

And then vinyl and plastic were introduced, and they were a little different still.

And they were called sticking plasters originally, and now they’re generally just plasters.

So the language changed a little bit, and the thing itself changed a little bit.

And the distance between the original thing and what we have now in the UK as a plaster is very different.

They accomplished the same task, but they looked different.

And it’s funny, we have a similar history in the United States with Band-Aid,

Which is a brand name that has almost become a generic, not quite,

Where they had incredible marketing power.

They owned the marketplace for a long time.

They were the only ones really making a very successful product that you could apply to a wound.

Was it sort of a newer, was plaster, you know, end of the 19th century kind of a thing,

Or did it show up earlier than that?

What was the time frame that it really, that you guys found it first started showing up?

It really became, well, the plaster as the sticking plaster was well in hand, well established in the 1800s.

And then sticking has slowly disappeared.

You’ll really only hear it now in historical fiction of very old people who are trying to be formal.

Well, this girl was 20-something.

But did she say sticking plaster or just plaster?

Just plaster.

Yeah, she would just say plaster.

Almost nobody will say sticking plaster unless they’re being ironic or they’re very old or they’re trying to sound old-fashioned on purpose.

And do you suppose if you’d asked her for a Band-Aid, would she?

She probably would not.

She gave me a very quizzical, annoyed look, so I’m sure that she probably would have no idea.

But they are very, I mean, because of American media, I mean, Brits are usually pretty, our terminology more so than we are with theirs.

Yeah, yeah, because the Band-Aid was a Johnson & Johnson product.

Starting in the 20s, the early 1920s.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

That totally answers my question.

We try.

That was great.

Thank you so much, Elizabeth.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673, words@waywordradio.org.

Give us a call.

Give us a letter.

One of the Twitter feeds I’ve been following lately is called Yiddish Project.

It sends out a little bit of Yiddish and English in 140 characters or less,

And I’ve been learning some Yiddish proverbs that way.

And I like the one that goes, ask advice from everyone, but act with your own mind.

And the reason I like that is because it’s an echo of my father’s expression,

And as you know, he grew up in the hills of North Carolina.

His expression along those lines was,

Marth, milk all the cows you can, and then churn your own butter.

Nice.

It’s the same idea, right?

That’s very good, yeah.

One thing I love about Proverbs.

Call us with your stories about language, your Proverbs, your idioms, 877-929-9673,

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

And you can always tweet us or find us on Facebook.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hello.

This is John Day.

I’m calling from Delray Beach, Florida.

Hi, John.

Welcome.

Hey there.

Delray, down there by Boynton.

It’s beautiful.

It really is beautiful.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, what would you like to talk with us about?

My father and I were watching the Super Bowl together and having a beer, and the announcer said something to the extent of, well, he took a chance with that route, and it really paid off.

And my father shakes his head and says, yes, improper English.

And I said, really? What do you mean?

He said, well, they should be saying root, not route.

And he said, now where did you come up with that being proper?

And he said, well, when I was a kid, I went to Catholic grade school,

And they would go through those words and explain the definitions

And what was proper, proper pronunciation, and that.

So that’s his explanation of why root is correct and not route.

So, John, was he saying that by root, did he mean a path or did he mean a big win?

No, a path. And we discussed that. And if you route the enemy, it’s a both military term and also applies to the NFL as well.

Right.

Wow.

Well, this is a great field report, Grant, because this is what sticklers taught for years and years and years, that the pronunciation was root, like the French.

Right.

And there’s no evidence for that except for personal preference being perpetrated by small-minded pedants, so to speak.

And I’m going to say that, just boldly say that, because there is no historical reason that that word could not be either or both of those pronunciations.

Right.

Or route. Both are acceptable in modern

American English, whether it’s in the UK

Or the US, and have been for a very

Long time. And I think particularly

In the military and in the fields

Of transportation, you know, we’re going to route

You a different way more than

Route you a different way, I think. Right, right.

Yeah, the verb is almost always route

Anyway. The noun can go either way.

Yeah, I think it would have been un-American

If it was definitely route.

Yeah, so

I’m going to

Route this package to the right recipient.

Right.

Right.

But you might also say, I have the longest postal route or the longest postal route.

Either one of those works.

Yeah.

Well, I’m just glad that my father and I are both correct.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, it’s hard to shake those early lessons where you have a powerful figure in

The classroom who you come to trust, and most of their advice is rock solid.

And every once in a while, their personal preferences are passed off as absolutes.

And it’s hard to distinguish what is just them talking about their own ideas

And what is actually universal.

It’s hard for a kid to know.

So the NFL announcers are entirely correct then?

They’re totally fine.

They’re 100% fine.

In this case.

Yeah, in this case.

They have a myriad of other sins, but this is what they’re fine.

Thanks, John.

Much appreciated.

Outstanding.

Take care.

Okay, take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

That’s a hard one to swallow to find that something that you learned a long time ago could have gone the other way.

Oh, tell me about it.

Could have gone a whole other route.

Call us with your language stories.

Did you have a dispute with your parents over a term?

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877-929-9673 is the number to call.

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

I’ve been reading the old publications again, looking for slang and things.

And there’s this great collection of slang from 1888 in a journal called the Chautauquan.

The Chautauquans were like the TED Talkers of their age, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Going around doing speeches and the like.

Yeah, Chautauqua.

And then one particular list here, now these are amateur lists, not professional, comes from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

And I wondered if any of our listeners were familiar with some of these.

We could find out.

Have you ever heard somebody use first to mean just?

As in, she is first eight years old, meaning she is just eight years old.

She just turned eight?

Yeah.

How about this?

Coffee soup?

Coffee soup.

Yeah, that’s bread with coffee poured over it.

Oh.

Anybody in Pennsylvania use that?

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Coming up, letters from our inbox and more answers for the obsessively curious lingua file.

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More at nu.edu.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

A few episodes ago, I told you about touring language immersion schools for my son, who is turning five this year.

We got a huge response.

We sure did.

An email and voicemail from people who were more than willing to tell us their opinions and their experiences about language immersion schools.

So I just wanted to share a couple of these with you.

Nathan went to a German immersion school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he said it was like one large puzzle.

He loved it and had no problem with his English skills.

And this is one of the questions that comes up among people who don’t know anything about language immersion schools.

Sure.

Does it hurt your language?

And what I found in doing the research, because of course I researched it, Jeff.

What?

What I found was that there is a little bit of a delay in the advanced English skills, but it’s not more than a year or two, and they’re caught up by third or fourth grade in general.

And look what you get.

Yeah, look what you get.

But, yeah, they’re also, like, working full time on another language on the side, right?

Yeah.

So their total language acquisition is enormous.

Their English language acquisition is a little bit reduced, but they catch up very quickly.

Nathan said the German school didn’t hurt his English, and he went on to take English honors.

So that’s a plus.

Sandra, who lives in Encinitas here in California, she said her grandchildren go to a Spanish immersion school, and she said her granddaughter is great.

She reads, writes, and understands Spanish first grade, and she says they seem to accept and adapt to the variety.

So this is the other thing that the research shows is that the language immersion becomes the new normal for these kids.

They just stop thinking of it as exceptional.

We think of it as exceptional because if we didn’t have that opportunity, it seems unusual to us.

My wife and I grew up in basically monolingual communities in the Midwest.

Yeah, I did too.

And so for us, any language that we speak, we learned in school.

You know, we didn’t learn it from the parents or grandparents or the community around us.

One more from another Sandra.

She was telling us about a Spanish immersion program in Redwood City, California.

She says her family, all English-only speakers, took a bit of a risk enrolling her in the immersion classes.

But since she was starting at such an early age, it was easy for her family to learn along with her.

And this is the other thing that we heard at both of these schools that we went to and that we found out in our reading, is that a lot of these schools have programs where the parents can learn as well.

And sometimes it’s the other parents who may already speak this language getting together to do these after-school or weekends programs to teach the monolingual parents what they need to know to help their children in their schoolwork.

That’s really cool.

And I like that idea of this community coming together over a…

I mean, they could be building robots.

They could be doing anything.

But in this particular case, they’ve decided to get together over a language and become friends.

That’s fantastic.

And have a relationship there instead of sending their kids off to the school as if it was a one-way relationship.

I love that.

That’s great.

So the general sense of all these emails that we received is that language immersion is mostly a positive experience.

And where it’s negative, it usually comes from some misunderstanding about what the results are supposed to be.

There are some people who refuse to believe that learning a second language doesn’t have to hurt your first language.

They will not believe that children can learn five or six languages easily.

Yeah.

Easily.

And be fluent in all of them if they have this full immersion experience in all of them and have community of people who speak these languages and their family speaks these languages and they have standard instruction in these languages.

You know, that reminds me of when my little brother was born, my mother said, love doesn’t divide, it multiplies.

Exactly.

You know, the same thing.

I mean, your storehouse of knowledge just gets bigger when you learn another language.

Yeah.

More is open to you.

You learn to see the world in a slightly different way.

And frankly, all knowledge is good knowledge as far as I’m concerned.

Right on.

Wouldn’t you say?

Yes.

I’d still love to hear your stories about language immersion.

Did you go to a language immersion school or did you send your kids or have your grandchildren gone?

Send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or call us and tell us about it, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Denise Lawless from Webster, New Hampshire.

Hi, Denise. Welcome.

Hi, Denise. Welcome to the program.

Thank you so much.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Within the last month, a couple of people have said to me, I’m really jonesing for something.

And then Martha used the phrase, you had a puzzle guy on.

And after you chatted with him a bit, Martha said, well, we’re really jonesing for a puzzle.

And I thought, I know that it means you want something, but where does that come from?

Good question.

It’s a great question.

Do you know any heroin addicts?

Not personally.

Actually, I didn’t know one.

We all lead rich and varied lives.

We’ve all got a heroin addict there somewhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, anyway, yes, I do, actually.

Well, I ask, and it’s not really, it’s kind of a joke, but I ask because it comes out of the language of heroin addicts in the early 1960s, probably in the 50s, but we know for certain that by 1962 it was already a part of the lingo.

Oh, I just want to say that’s not why I was using it with our puzzle.

Well, like so many slang.

Well, you do have an addict problem when it comes to puzzles, Martha.

Yeah, I love those puzzles. Can’t get enough.

Put that down. That’s enough of that.

The interesting thing about this term is because it’s wonderful slang, it behaves like slang.

So it does a lot of things. One, it doesn’t hold itself to one part of speech.

It becomes a noun and a verb, and jonesing is the most common form of it.

You’re like jonesing for something.

Also, because it started as this insider group slang and a very disreputable part of our culture, which is drug culture, it left that culture, entered mainstream language, and became a little blander and just lost a little bit of its color.

If I’m using it, yeah, it’s bland.

Now, as far as the origin goes, do you remember this from movies in the 1970s?

It starts to pop up in movies and books and newspapers.

And these days, it’s everyday slang.

I mean, I assume even 11, 12-year-olds are using it and not really knowing it came from heroin addicts in the 1960s.

So, Denise, have you heard it as a noun?

I’m not sure I’ve heard it as a…

Oh, I’ve got a Jones for something?

Yeah, I’ve got a Jones, exactly.

I guess that would be it.

Actually, this is hilarious because one of the people that used it said she was jonesing for her granddaughter.

Whoa!

She doesn’t know where she came from.

Yeah, but you know, we don’t want to commit the etymological fallacy here of thinking that a word can only mean the thing that it first meant.

Sure.

It changes, and they can be free and unfettered from their original source.

So that’s what happened to Jones, and we’re good here.

Now, as far as the origin goes, the only theory that floats out there that, as far as I know, has any legs, and they’re not very strong legs, very rickety, in fact, kind of spindly chicken legs, that support this theory is there’s an alley in New York called Jones Alley, and there’s another one called Great Jones Alley.

And the idea was that back in the 50s and 60s, these were a place where druggies would kind of hunch next to the trash cans and shoot up, or that’s where they would score, the dealer was there, that sort of thing.

There’s almost no evidence to support it.

Yeah, but I like it.

You do like it?

Yeah.

Now, do you know the term fiending?

Do you ever hear that, or fiening?

Fiending.

Yeah, I actually have like a mad fiend for something.

Yeah, but fiend is a verb.

And sometimes they drop the D and people don’t even realize that it.

Yeah, but it would be related to like being a fiend.

Yeah, that’s right.

Again, it’s another one of those terms that means a strong craving and it comes from drug culture and shows up in popular culture and songs and stuff.

That’s great.

Cool.

Yeah, well, thank you so much.

Yeah, sure.

Thanks for listening.

Yeah, I love it.

I hope we made your day.

You make my day every week when I get to hear the show.

Denise, thank you so much for your call.

Thank you so much.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye.

877-929-9673, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Louie from Valrico, Florida.

How are you today?

Great, how are you doing?

Where in Florida is Valrico?

It’s just outside the east of Tampa.

Okay, very good.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

How can we help?

Well, I had a question about something that I’ve heard for a good long time.

It’s an idiom, and it kind of denotes surprise or an exclamation.

And it goes like this.

Well, don’t that tear the rag off the bush?

And I think the first time I heard it was when an improper relationship was discovered somewhere in the community, and somebody remarked that about it.

But then 20, 30 years later, I heard it once again in a similar context, and I was just wondering where that idiom gets its origin.

So in both cases, it had to do with an improper relationship?

It did.

Being revealed or something?

Being revealed or discovered, yes.

Interesting.

Yeah, don’t that tear the rag off the bush or don’t that take the rag off the bush?

This is one of these expressions that we just can’t be completely sure about.

One of the most colorful stories I’ve heard about it is that maybe it has to do with shooting matches in the Old West.

You put a rag on the bush and then shoot at it, and whoever shoots it off the bush wins the prize.

But we don’t really know whether that’s a legitimate story or not.

It also might be a variant of don’t that take the cake or don’t that take the biscuit or something.

Well, that would make more sense in the context that I’ve heard it before, yeah.

And it’s got a couple hundred years’ worth of history, both in the U.S. and the U.K., and what we do know about this term is that it’s not necessarily related to anything to do with sex or the sexy parts of the body or a woman’s time of the month or anything like that.

So even though there might be some words there in common with that, it has nothing to do with that.

I didn’t even go there.

That hasn’t crossed my mind either.

I’m just, you know, I muddle in slang.

I wallow in the dark corners of language.

Well, don’t that take the rag off the bush, Grant.

I was just trying to stop some email from coming in.

But, yeah, it means it takes the cake or, well, don’t that beat all.

Yeah, yeah.

Something you’d say with surprise or astonishment, right?

Yeah.

So not necessarily a clandestine relationship or anything like that.

No, it could be anything that surprises me.

It’s almost always something you’d say about something you’re observing rather than something you’re participating in.

That’s what I do notice.

Good long entries for this, both in the Dictionary of American Regional English and the Oxford English Dictionary and in the much older English Dialect Dictionary.

Just a strong, great dialect term that occasionally surfaces in the best literature and are in the mouths of the best speakers.

But interesting that, Louie, that you didn’t hear it for another 20 years, huh?

I’ve only heard it here in the South.

I grew up in West Florida, and it didn’t seem odd to hear it there, but what really got my attention was hearing it down here in Tampa, which is more a cosmopolitan area.

That’s really interesting.

Yeah, that is.

I don’t know if there’s a southern component to it.

One of the earliest uses that we can find in print is from Davy Crockett.

So that tells you a little about it.

So when Martha says the Old West, she means the Old West.

When Ohio was actually the West.

The frontier, yeah.

Pre-Alamo.

Yeah, yeah, pre-Alamo, exactly.

Great term.

Don’t tear the rag off the bush.

It’s an expression of surprise.

Louie, how do we do?

Get everything you need?

I think so.

It does tell me that I’m, how shall we say this, unsettled by a discovery.

There we go.

There we go.

But it probably, you know, the shooting contest origin is not a bad idea, right?

The idea that you would tie a rag on a bush and then try to shoot it off, and if you could, you were a heck of a marksman.

Yeah.

It’s an idiom that only has fit into one context for me, so you’ve helped me expand it a little bit more.

So I might start using it myself a little bit more frequently.

You’re hanging out with too many cheaters and womanizers.

We live close to the same main road.

Nice.

Louis, you’re a treat.

Thanks for calling.

Much appreciated.

Thank you very much.

All right, bye-bye.

Good talking to you.

Take care, Louis.

Bye-bye.

We’d like to hear from you, your stories, your questions, your information, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And we’re all over Facebook and Twitter.

We’ve talked before about anti-metabole.

That’s a sentence like, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Also called chiasmus from the Greek word for ex.

Well, I found another great example of this that I wanted to share with you.

We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.

Not exactly the same thing, but sort of.

That’s true. Who said that?

The great philosopher Alfred E. Newman.

Nice.

What, me?

Where are you?

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Janelle calling from Rockford, Michigan.

Hi, Janelle, how are you doing?

I am good, how are you?

Well, fantastic, thanks for asking.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have always been curious about the phrase, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

And the meaning and usage is self-explanatory, but I’ve always been curious to learn how the phrase originated.

Basically, what was it that the Romans did that we must do?

Well, as far as we know, the idea may go back all the way to the 4th century.

I mean, I would have…

Really?

Yeah, I would have thought that it went all the way back to the ancient Greeks.

Maybe the Greeks were just like, when you’re in Rome, do as the Romans do, we’re better.

But we do see references to it as early as the late 4th century AD in the writings of St. Augustine.

Because in the early Christian church, there was some inconsistency about the practice of fasting on Sundays.

In some cities, people in the Christian church did it.

In some places, they didn’t.

And he moved from Rome to Milan.

And he asked the bishop of Milan whether he should fast on Saturdays because he did in Rome, but nobody did in Milan.

And the bishop said, when I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday.

But here in Milan, I don’t.

And so you get that kind of idea.

And then you see it again and again in various writings.

And so these writings are closely studied by scholars for centuries, right?

Because people look to his work as a source of inspiration or a source of understanding about theology and philosophy, right?

Yeah, yeah. So I think it would have been influential.

And any scholar for the centuries following that probably would have had that as part of their coursework, right?

Yeah, you would think. You would think.

But you may be pleased to learn, Janelle, that also we first see it in English, as far as I know, the expression, do as the Romans do, in the letters of a pope from the late 18th century.

And in that case, the translation of his letters says do as the Romans do.

And in that case, they’re talking about taking naps in the middle of the afternoon.

Nice!

Oh, well, I’ll go with that one.

Me too. I like that.

Does it say hammocks and hot cocoa also?

No, no. It says red wine and pasta.

Oh, okay. We each have our own.

Was that any place close to what you were thinking about, Janelle?

I actually just had no idea.

You know, you tend to use that, or I use that expression whenever I travel somewhere and just to partake in like local customs or activities or what have you.

But I was just curious as to where it originated.

But I had no idea that it would have anything to do with any, you know, theological philosophies or, you know, dealing with early Christian church and things like that.

So that’s just fascinating.

What really appeals to me about it is how accurate it still is.

It’s still the best advice when you’re traveling.

Like, don’t read your guidebook.

Read the local newspaper if you can, and you’re going to have a much better time of it.

The locals don’t read guidebooks, so don’t read the guidebook, right?

Right.

Yeah, and take a nap in the afternoon.

Yeah, the philosophy still stands true today.

Yes, it does.

Janelle, thank you for calling.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, when in doubt about a linguistic matter, call us 877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s a slang word from 1888 that I’m pretty sure some of our listeners still use.

This is from Johnson Station, Mississippi now.

Okay.

A spider as a skillet, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you use that?

No, but I’ve heard it in the South.

I’d like to hear from you if in your family or in the history of your family, you all use spider to mean a skillet.

I want to hear a little bit more about how that came about and where you’re from and a little bit about your family and your history and stuff.

Did you make a red-eye gravy in it?

Yeah, exactly.

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