Safe as Houses (episode #1672)

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

One of the expressions I’ve been sharing when you and I do live presentations before audiences is temperature blanket, also known as a weather blanket.

And I can’t believe the response I’ve been getting. People love these terms.

Yeah, I love them too. I didn’t know them before you started talking about them in these presentations.

What I learned from you is that this is like a knitted blanket or it could be a scarf where the colors of each row represent the weather on that particular day in that particular place.

So it’s like a diary in yarn, you know, different blues for cool and different reds for warmth and so on.

Yeah. So you end up with this long garment, maybe a scarf or a blanket with these striations. It kind of blends from one color into another and shows the weather across a stretch of time.

And they’re just gorgeous, gorgeous documents. And I love talking about them because they’re such a lovely way to store information.

For me, they go hand in hand with Kipu, the knotted cord record keeping of the Inca, or the Marshallese stick charts, those navigation tools used to map the ocean.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just like that.

Yeah. But I’ve discovered it goes much deeper, Martha.

It does?

Yeah. There are a lot of people who make weather and temperature blankets and scarves for themselves. And they’re beautiful, lovely stuff.

But since 2017, there has been something called the Tempestry Project, T-E-M-P-E-S-T-R-Y. The people involved are not only crafting the weather into tapestries, but they’re doing it for historical periods.

They’ve standardized it. Makers are even extending the concept backward through time. They’re doing what amounts to weather blankets for things like their grandparents’ lifetimes.

Oh, my gosh. That is beautiful. And I love the word tempestry. That’s just incredible.

I just love the idea that maybe at some point in the future, you know, a thousand years from now, this archive of these tempestries will be discovered.

And, you know, it’ll be people like, oh, yeah, now we know the weather, you know, in 1820. And this thing’s keeping me warm, too. It’s amazing.

Well, I went online after you talked about this, and I looked up weather blanket, and there are some beautiful, beautiful examples online.

Where can we find out more?

Every good knitting site has information on temperature and weather blankets and scarves, but the tempestryproject.com is where to go for their particular focus.

Okay, tempestryproject.com. And if you want to focus on other aspects of language, the phone line here is always open for calls and texts in the U.S. and Canada.

That’s 877-929-9673. And we welcome your messages on our website from anywhere in the world. That’s waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Nikki Redman, and I am in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Welcome to the show, Nikki. What can we do for you?

Well, I have heard a story over many years from my mom, and it involves a joke that has perplexed me for a long time.

My mom worked at the state hospital in Rochester, Minnesota in the 70s, and it had various halls, some for people with mental illnesses, some for people who are battling addiction.

And so one day she was walking down the hall and there was a man leaning up casually against the wall.

And she saw a couple of people pass by him before she went past. And each person paused for a second and then kept on walking.

And it looked kind of odd. She kept going. And right when she got up to him, right as she was passing him, he very casually said, you dropped your pocket.

And of course, it caused my mom to stop and immediately like pat her pockets and then take a second and have her brain sort of catch up.

And then she looked over at him and he had this half smile. And she just kept on walking. And she has told me about this for years.

And a few years ago, I was here in Charlotte at a local bar. And I heard somebody mentioned this joke.

And I stopped them and I said, oh my gosh, my mom has told me about this up in Minnesota, this happened to her. And I’ve never heard it until this day with you saying it.

And the person said that they had lived in New Orleans, somewhere in Louisiana, somewhere around there, and that they were a musician and that buskers and things would say this joke to get people to stop.

I was listening to your show and thought, I wonder where this joke comes from, you know, because it’s just such a funny little thing.

And I’ve only heard it from two people in my life in two very different areas of the United States.

So just to recap, you’re cracking me up, by the way, Nikki. You dropped your pocket is what this person said to your mom, which is ridiculous because unless your pocket’s torn, you don’t drop a pocket, right?

It’s so dim. It’s stuck. It’s not dropping.

Correct. And so it’s just a ridiculous thing to say.

Yes. I love it.

But, you know, there’s a—so I don’t know if folklorists have a fixed name for these kinds of pranks.

But in books of folklore, these kinds of pranks are often under the heading of made you look.

Made you look. Because there are other types of pranks just like this.

And this particular one is often found, but I haven’t found it in any books of folklore, but you know where I find it? In high school yearbooks going back at least 30 years.

What? Yes. Including being used to distract opponents on the basketball court.

Wow. Yes. We’re like somebody’s trying to make the free throw that’s going to clinch the game.

And somebody says, you dropped your pocket.

Yeah, it reminds me of when I would play pool and one of the tactics that you would use if you wanted to get in someone else’s head right before they take a shot is to just ask, hey, do you breathe in or out when you take your shot?

Yes. Or it’s, I mean, hey, badda badda in softball is kind of formalized now.

But I bet there was a time when hey, badda badda was that kind of distracting chant, right? And there were others of these.

A famous one, which is far more established, is hey, your sock is untied.

I like it. And you can find that back, too. An even more famous one, which many people have heard of.

You probably know this. Your epidermis is showing.

Oh, yes. Right? So it’s in that same class of made you look prank.

Yeah. I mean, it’s not as silly as your shoelaces untied, but it’s in there.

And even more well-known, and again, also not as silly, but is you have a spot on your shirt. And they don’t.

And then they look down. And when they look down, you flick their nose, right?

Right. But of course, you know, the better ones are ones that you don’t even have to really interact beyond saying those words.

Yeah, yeah. Moving on.

But this has been around for so long.

So long. So do look up your epidermis is showing folklore.

Do look up your socks are untied or your sock is untied folklore. And you’ll get somewhere closer to this.

And I highly recommend The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren by Iona and Peter Opie. That’s O-P-I-E.

Even though it doesn’t specifically have you dropped your pocket, it really hits very closely to exactly the same kind of humor and made you look kind of feeling that you’re talking about.

Yeah, well, Nikki, you made us look at this phenomenon. So thank you.

Well, thank you. This will add another line to the conversation when my mom tells this story next.

So it won’t just be a repeated story. Let us know how it goes. Nikki, thanks so much for calling.

Take care now. Thank you. Bye-bye.

All righty. Bye.

The number to call to share all these things is 877-929-9673.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sarah calling from West Lafayette, Indiana.

Hey, Sarah, we’re glad to have you. What’s up?

So I am a psychology major. So I have to read and write a lot of papers that will evaluate what I would always call the efficacy of a treatment.

But there’s a lot of people that say effectiveness. So I’m wondering what the difference is between those words because I always use the word efficacy.

But then I hear other people say effectiveness.

So someone has to be wrong.

Okay.

This is a really good question, particularly because of what you’re studying.

So you’re studying?

Psychology.

Yeah.

And the people who are using effectiveness are?

Like clinical psychologists that are studying like the, what I would say, the efficacy of like a different therapeutic method or something like that.

And so they’re using the word effectiveness in their writing or in professional papers?

Yes.

Okay.

That will be like the title of the paper.

Okay.

We’re getting right to the heart of it because I think the difference here is whether or not we’re talking about clinical trials or we’re talking about public health.

So if efficacy is mostly about clinical trials, so we might talk about a vaccine’s efficacy.

And then we’ll talk about, say, a vaccine once it’s used after it’s rolled out.

So it’s performance when it’s rolled out because people don’t, say, store it properly or ship it properly or they missed their second dose or they just don’t use it correctly.

And so then we talk about effectiveness.

And so efficacy is about under controlled conditions and effectiveness is about non-controlled conditions.

And so that’s where you run up against differences generally.

Efficacy tends to pair with words like controlled conditions, specialized evaluations, clinical trial, treatment.

Effectiveness tends to pair with words like applied settings, everyday performance, policy, strategy, outreach, enforcement, prevention effort.

You see where we’re going with this?

Yeah.

Okay.

That makes a lot of sense, which that implies that I’ve also been using it wrong for a couple of years now.

Okay.

I appreciate that.

What’s encouraging here is that, A, you’re recognizing that you can change the way you use the word, and B, you’re still getting your degree, so you’re learning.

And that’s okay.

So when we’re in the process of learning, we’re not done yet.

So we’re still on our way.

So great.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Thanks for calling. I never thought about this, Sarah.

Right? They’re so similar.

I saw the word one more time and I said, you know what? I have to call.

We’re glad you did.

There’s just a ton of these words where we have near synonyms and they’re just not synonyms, you know?

Well, would you say they’re wrong-wrong or just used, you know?

Well, this is one of those cases, Martha and Sarah, where in a field we have a professional use and outside of a field, if you’re not dealing with an academic paper, which is why I asked about academic papers, it doesn’t matter very much.

You know, if I’m just discussing this on Facebook, it doesn’t matter quite so much.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Well, Sarah, thanks for the question.

Yeah, that’s awesome.

Okay.

Good to know.

All right.

Keep kicking butt out there and good luck with the degree.

All right.

Yeah, good luck with your studies.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Words on Parade 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 coming through the door, holding his head erect and whistling a happy tune so no one ever knows he’s afraid,

Is our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

I just escaped from a musical, and I’m so happy to be with you guys.

And I have a quiz for you I think you’ll enjoy.

Now, on the TV show Family Guy, there’s a running gag that Brian Griffin is occasionally annoyed when Stewie Griffin pronounces W-H words with,

Now follow me here,

A distinct voiceless labial velar approximate.

Yes.

That is with a breathy H sound at the start.

Right.

So, all right.

The origin and classic example from Family Guy is cool whip.

What’s that?

Could you have, can I, can I get some cool whip?

You want some cool whip?

Why do you say, why do you say that?

Why do you say whip, whip?

That’s how he says it.

And he does it, I think, just to annoy Brian.

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

One word is a W word, and the other is a WH word.

Let’s annoy Brian all the more by pronouncing all of them like Stewie.

What do you say?

Oh, boy.

Okay.

Here we go.

So, I was in a contest, and I made a very high-pitched sound with my lips,

And that earned me first place.

So you whistled.

But what’s a W word?

I assume it’s an adjective.

For first place?

A winning whistle?

A winning whistle, yes, exactly. Very good.

He may be young, presumptuous, and overconfident, but he is worth millions.

Worth millions. Young and overconfident, so he’s a whippersnapper.

A whippersnapper, but is he…

A wealthy whippersnapper?

He is indeed a wealthy whippersnapper. Very good.

I saw him disembarking from a ship on a pier and aborist with.

Disembarking from a ship.

I’m going to guess that one of them’s wharf, right?

Yeah, it’s not too far from Cardiff.

A Welsh wharf.

Yes, a Welsh wharf. Very good.

At the dog show, I witnessed a small, muscular, greyhound-like beast

That filled me with awe.

A wily whippet.

A winning whippet.

Wonderful whippet.

Yes, a wonderful whippet.

Very good.

I found a device I could not identify,

And it was very, very strange.

A weird whatchamacallit.

Exactly, a weird whatchamacallit.

Yes.

Oh.

I was going to say whidget.

Weird whidget?

Could be a weird whidget.

Finally, a triple.

Poor Ahab, totally obsessed with that untamed,

Savage cetacean, Moby Dick.

The white whale.

Yes.

What’s the other W?

He’s untamed and savage.

A wild white whale.

Yes, Moby Dick, the wild white whale.

That was wonderful, you guys.

I’m going to retire my stewing impersonation for good.

Thank you, John.

Give our best to the family.

Thanks, you too.

And we’ll talk to you next week,

And we’ll talk to you, the listener, just now.

You can call or text us toll-free, 877-929-9673.

Talk to us about language books, reading, writing, slang, new words, old words, and expressions that befuddle.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha.

Hello, Grant.

Hello.

This is Miley calling from the Dalles, Oregon.

The Dalles.

I am calling to ask you about a phrase that my mother uses that really struck me recently.

So we were sitting having a chat and coffee and she suddenly held up her hand and said,

Hold on, my hearing aids are going gunny bags on me.

I know exactly what she meant by that.

She’s used that phrase for various things.

But it struck me then, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else use that phrase.

And what are gunny bags?

And what do they have to do with her hearing aids not working?

And so I thought I would love to talk to you about that.

Her hearing aids went gunny bags, meaning they went haywire or they became broken?

Yes.

So I knew that she meant they stopped working.

Stopped working.

And I’ve, yes, I’ve always heard her use that primarily with, I always felt like mechanical

Things that hadn’t, weren’t functioning properly.

Like, oh, the dishwasher is gone, is going gunny bags or gone gunny bags.

And I knew that meant the dishwasher wasn’t working.

But I asked her about it recently and she said, oh, no, it’s not just mechanical things.

It just means anything that doesn’t work.

And Miley, you all are from Oregon?

No, not originally.

I grew up early on in Ohio, but my mother actually was, her father was in the military.

So she grew up all over.

And I asked her, you know, where do you think you picked that up?

And she said, oh, I just picked it up at home.

And I said, is it a military term?

It sort of had that flavor to me.

But she said, oh, gosh, I think my mother used to say it more often.

So that’s what I heard from her.

Oh, it’s so interesting because, you know, it’s not all that common to go gunny bags,

Meaning to become broken, to fail suddenly.

So you can say this about people who go a little nutso.

You can say this about machines that stop working.

You can say this about plans that fail to work.

Or you can say this about a situation that just erupts into chaos,

The go-gunnybags.

And so typically when you see it written out, it’s G-U-N-N-Y-B-A-G-S.

Usually is one word, always plural, and sometimes it’s two words.

And what we’re talking about here are usually given as gunny sacks in other forms.

A gunny sack is made of, Martha, what would you call this?

Kind of a coarse fabric.

Gunny is a fabric that originally was made of, is this jute? Is this kind of originally from India? And actually, the word originally comes from Indian languages, as in the continent of, or the country of India. So it’s a little bit of a pleonasm. Gunny means sack. So gunny sack means sack sack. Kind of redundant. Redundant, yeah.

But used to be in the countryside, you would have these anywhere. Maybe you would pack grain in them or straw or just kind of a multipurpose bag that you would just use around the farm. But it’s weird that it would go gunnybags. I mean, what’s negative about that? Well, I have a couple of clues. And that is that in the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, there is an entry. And it’s the verb to gunnybags something. And what it means is to put out a fire with gunny bags. And what you do is you beat a fire with gunny bags to put it out. And I don’t know that it’s related, but it’s the best hint that I have.

And my suspicion is that somewhere in there, there’s a connection that to go gunny bags means to get so desperate to a situation that you’re resorting to the gunny bags as your last ditch remedy to solve it, to fix it. This absolutely otherwise multipurpose item becomes your tool that, you know, for some reason, it’s kind of like when things go haywire. Things go haywire because a piece of hay wire, wire used to bale hay, gums up the machine, you know. This otherwise innocuous piece of metal gums up a really expensive bit of equipment. So it’s just, I don’t know. In there somewhere, I think it’s an intersection of a gunny bag.

Yeah, yeah. I’m thinking about the frantic action of trying to put out a fire with a sack, you know. It’s just kind of chaos and frantic. Yeah, I could see how that would be. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel very urgent in a way when something goes guinea bags. We need to fix it right now. Particularly with hearing aids and things like that. We need to get it fixed now.

There’s one other interesting note to this. And that is there is a fiction author by the name of Judith Jance, J-A-N-C-E. And she has the earliest use of this, I can find, 1993 in her novel Failure to Appear. But not only does she have the earliest use of this, I can find, she uses it in novel after novel. And I just wonder if there’s something about Judith Jantz and this expression. And she was raised in Arizona, I believe. I just wonder if there’s something about her that spread this expression. There must be, because my mother is a great, great reader, and I know that she has read all of Judith Jantz’s novels.

Oh! Yeah, that is exact. She thought it came from her mother, but I betcha it came from those books. That’s amazing. There’s like six or seven of them that use this expression to go gunny bags. Oh, that would make so much sense. Amazing. A lot more people are going to be using it after this call, I’m sure. It’s a great expression. It really is, to go gunny bags. And it’s got an internal rhythm to it as well, to go gunny bags. Yes, or went gunny bags. It’s going gunny bags. So you know it’s going south there.

So thank you so much. This was such a delight to speak with you. And my mom and I both enjoy your work so much, and we so appreciate you. That’s really nice. Thank you so much. Yeah. Give her our best. Have a wonderful day. You too. Take care of yourself. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye. Give our best to your mom. Thank you. I will. Bye-bye.

Call us and tell us what you know about gunny bags, 877-929-9673, or send any question at all about language to words@waywordradio.org. Writer and editor Gwen Moran has a helpful newsletter called Bloom Anywhere. And recently in it, she described going for chemo treatments at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Manhattan Breast Cancer Treatment Center. She writes that she was telling her oncologist how she needed to get going on her bucket list. And then she writes, he stopped and looked me in the eye. We don’t say that here, he said. Try a different name for it. And she thought for a moment and then said, OK, how about I need to get going on my bliss list? And he said, much better.

And his point was that a bucket list suggests those big things that you want to do before you kick the bucket, before you pass on. But reframing your thinking as having a bliss list involves lots of smaller steps toward a goal. And as Moran explains, in many cases, the very process of accomplishing what’s on our bliss lists is a big part of the bliss itself. You know, taking pleasure in the little things, the small moments along the way. And, you know, Grant, thinking about this has actually changed my vocabulary. I’m making a point of replacing the expression bucket list with bliss list. I think it feels much more manageable. It’s a small tweak, but I think it’s really effective.

All right. I have a proposal that in construction projects where they have a punch list, which sounds really negative, they also use bliss list. Punch list being all the little random items that you have to do before the project is done. Sure, sure. And just think how great you’ll feel afterward. You know, it’ll be bliss. All the grout and caulking and broken things have to be done. It’s a bliss list, you tell your contractor. He’ll get it. Yeah, just reframe it. Think about it differently.

Anyway, I really enjoy this newsletter by Gwen Moran. It’s called Bloom Anywhere. You can find all of our past episodes and a zillion ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, my name is Chris and I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas. Hey, Chris, we’re glad to have you. What’s on your mind today? I’m a musician. I’m a professional musician. I’ve been my entire life. Been everywhere, like all over the world. And of course, I love for languages from being with so many different people.

My question is, where are the origins? Because as you know, as shorthand, we say when we have a job, we say we have a gig. And I hear it more often now, like you hear the term gig economy, and I’m just kind of wondering where it came from. And yeah, just pretty much anything you know about the word. And where have you heard gig around the world? I’ve heard full-on French speakers say gig when they’re talking about going to play a show. I’ve heard it in China. I’ve heard it in the UK for sure. And, of course, here in the United States, in every part of the United States, from Las Vegas where I used to live, New York City where I have friends who work there, L.A., and down here in Texas, we all say the word gig when we’re going to go do a show.

Yeah, it’s the established word for doing musical engagement, right? Correct, yes. Yeah. And then from music, it branched out to doing any kind of short-term engagement outside of music. So let’s say a gig as a computer technology expert, which is what I used to do. I used to call them IT gigs, where I was doing a short-term couple weeks as a fill-in IT expert, you know, fixing somebody’s computer setup. But the gig economy actually is a relatively new expression. That two-word expression was coined by Tina Brown, the editor. But in 2009, it’s relatively new. So that’s actually a new expression. But gig, referring to a short-term engagement, originally did start out in music. But before that, we’re not really sure where it comes from.

There are a lot of unexplained histories of different terms that are gig-related and spelled gig and kind of sound like gig. The history of the word is often confused with a lot of other words that are spelled or pronounced the same or similar. But most likely they’re coincidences because simple words tend to be reinvented or reappear in a language. So it’s pretty easy to twist meanings until they resemble each other. So we’re not really sure where it comes from before that. It’s possible it’s even related to the word jig. We just don’t know. Or French words related to a type of dance or a type of music. We just don’t know. It’s all very rather confusing.

But yeah, there is a supposedly people credit UB Blank, who was a jazzman with the word gig related to music from 1920s.

But there’s a high chance that it’s older than that.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Wow, okay.

So it doesn’t come from music, or did I misunderstand that part?

That’s what I was saying earlier.

It’s very unclear.

There’s a really strong…

So what happened was music made it well-known, and then it branched out from there.

But it’s not clear in the early days whether or not music was the sole source of the term.

Gotcha, okay.

It’s hard to know.

Slang is like that, you know?

Slang is always very hard to track down into early days.

It’s often transmitted orally and doesn’t show up in print until it’s more well-established.

Well, I’m glad that you spent a few minutes with us, Chris.

Really appreciate it.

This is a dream come true.

I love you guys.

I love the show.

And share some more musician language with us.

We love that stuff.

Oh, I’ve got more, yeah.

I’m starting to write them down now.

So, yeah, I’ll definitely reach out to you guys again.

Excellent.

We look forward to that.

All right.

Be well.

Thank you all.

Take care, Chris.

Thank you.

You as well.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Share the language of your profession or hobby.

You can email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And you can reach us from anywhere in the world.

Just go to waywordradio.org/contact.

Grant, I’ve been really enjoying the TV series Down Cemetery Road.

Have you seen it?

No, I haven’t.

I think you’d like it.

It’s a thriller that’s also very funny in spots from the creator of Slow Horses.

And it’s also funny because it’s anchored by the brilliant Emma Thompson.

Oh, I love her to pieces.

Yeah.

And I’m picking up some great British slang that I didn’t know already.

You probably already do.

But one of the expressions is safe as houses.

This is safe as houses.

Oh, yeah.

Sure.

That just means very, very safe.

Right.

Right.

And it comes from either the idea of a house being, you know, solid structure or maybe from the idea of houses traditionally being a good property investment.

So safe as houses.

Let us know new words and phrases that you’re coming across.

877-929-9673.

There’s more A Way with Words to come.

Stay tuned.

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.

Stephan Fatsis is a former sports reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

And you may remember his earlier book, Word Freak, which is about diving into the world of competitive scrabble.

A few years later, at age 43, he actually trained to become a place kicker with the Denver Broncos.

And the result was his book called A Few Seconds of Panic, which is pretty understandable.

Well, he’s also passionate about dictionaries.

So you probably won’t be surprised to learn that he managed to get himself embedded as a lexicographer in training for a while at America’s most famous dictionary company, Merriam-Webster.

And while he was there, he struggled to write definitions and revise older ones and make the case for new words that he thought should be added.

And he describes all this and lots more in a lively new book called Unabridged, The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary.

It’s a comprehensive history of dictionaries, particularly in the United States.

And of course, that covers a lot of ground from Noah Webster all the way to current controversies over what gets in and what stays out, how words are defined, and disputes over sensitive usage and slurs and pronouns.

And the book is really a love letter to dictionaries in general and to the work of lexicographers in particular.

And Grant, you and I have always said that sports writers are often among the best writers at newspapers.

And I can tell you that Unabridged is a very writerly book.

He brings you along as he describes, for example, the wonder of pulling open a drawer of citations at the Merriam-Webster offices and seeing what he calls the sweep of history on little paper rectangles.

And you get a sense of the nerdy thrills that he got from contributing new definitions for words like burkini and alt-right and microaggression.

And it’s also interesting to read about words that he tried to get into the dictionary but couldn’t.

So this book is also about the future of dictionaries and their place in the culture.

And, of course, as you know so well, Grant, that’s somewhat in doubt, especially in the age of the Internet and AI.

We’ve talked about that a lot.

Yeah, I was interviewed by Stephan for the book because I was at dictionary.com at the time.

And dictionary.com was bought out and so went through some various transitions for that.

But Merriam-Webster is kind of the last mainstream dictionary publisher standing.

So it’s a real difficult time for dictionary publishing.

And Stefan addresses that in his book with, you know, charm and taste and a little bit of humor.

Yeah, I mean, we think of dictionaries as sort of these cultural icons.

But as he points out in the book, they’re also businesses.

And they’re in some trouble.

Yeah, they certainly are.

And he definitely approaches the sweep of it with the magazine writer’s eye.

So that it’s not too far down into the weeds.

And I think that anybody who appreciates the dictionary as a cultural artifact will enjoy this book.

Right. It’s called Unabridged, the Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary by Stephan Fatsis.

We’ll have a link to that book on our website.

And, of course, if you have questions about how dictionaries are made, I’m more than willing to answer.

You can reach me at words@waywordradio.org.

And if you have language questions in general, you can talk to us on the telephone.

Call or text toll-free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dennis.

I’m calling from Leds in South Carolina.

Hi, Dennis.

I know you guys periodically look at words that are related to a particular hobby or something.

So I have a unique one for you today.

Okay, fire away.

Well, I’m an amateur radio operator.

My call sign is KG4UL.

And hams, we have a term we call an Elmer, E-L-M-E-R.

If you look up Elmer, Elmer is an old English word that means basically someone who is a noble or famous.

But the Elmer I’m talking about is a ham radio Elmer.

And a ham radio Elmer is someone who is basically a mentor who will teach a new ham what they need to know to get their license.

And after they get their license, helps them out learning how to be a good ham, basically.

Oh, that’s cool.

Yeah, what a lovely term, right?

Yes, and I have a little history on it here, too, for you.

Oh, good. So you know where it comes from.

Well, this is the best I’ve been able to find.

There is a magazine called QST. It’s an amateur radio magazine.

And there is a gentleman who is now deceased.

His name is Rod Newkirk. His call sign was W9BRD.

And he wrote in his column in March 1971, he was talking about people who mentor amateur radio licensees, and he called them the unsung fathers of amateur radio.

And his mentor was a ham named Elmer.

So Rod thought that every new ham should have an Elmer, so the name is stuck, and now Elmer means helping.

And the actual ham radio mentor who inspired Elmer was Elmer Froedhart Jr., W9DY of Madison, Wisconsin.

He died at the ripe age of 93.

Oh, wait, so we know the guy that the term was coined from?

Yes, yeah, that’s kind of unique.

We actually have some positive history here.

Oh, that’s really cool.

Yeah, that’s a wonderful story.

Yeah, Elmer P. Froedhart Jr. died in 2016.

I believe. But you’re right. He was from Madison. And he helped a lot of novices, right? Helping them, showing them the ropes and keeping them passionate about the hobby.

Yes, absolutely.

I’ve sort of been at Elmore myself a lot.

I’ve taught classes, you know, help people get their license.

I’ve worked on the test teams.

Amateur radio licensees are allowed to get their own testing facility.

They don’t have to go to the FCC anymore.

We can actually give ourselves our own exams.

So we’re also unique in that aspect.

That’s really cool.

And did I hear you use Elmer as a verb? Can you use it as a verb?

Yeah, we’re Elmering.

Helping out. You know, one thing I love about this is that there is another slang use of Elmer, just kind of in general slang, and it’s somewhat old-fashioned. Elmer is a term for a rube or a rustic or someone who’s unsophisticated, a sucker, particularly a target for a confidence man, someone that you target with your scams.

So I love that the term can be rehabilitated as somebody positive.

Yeah, yeah.

So we’re not all Elmer Fudd’s, I guess.

No, no, not at all.

Well, Dennis, this is just a lovely, lovely word.

That’s really nice.

What do you think about other people adopting it for mentors in general? Or do you think it should remain in the ham radio universe?

I’d like to keep it.

-huh.

Yeah.

Understandable.

Understandable.

But it’s such a beautiful notion, this term for mentoring, that comes from an actual person.

Thank you for sharing.

And 73s to you, Dennis.

You know some ham lingo.

A little bit, yeah.

I’ve been a shortwave DXer for a long time.

Oh, Lord.

Good.

Good.

Nice to hear that.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

All right.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Keep up the Elmering.

Take care.

Well, as Dennis noted, we always love hearing about the slang and jargon from different hobbies. And so if you have one and have some words to share, we’d love to hear about it.

877-929-9673.

You and I did a lovely event here in San Diego for the public radio station KPBS, and one of our attendees recommended this anime to me that I’m looking forward to launching into.

In English, it’s called The Great Passage, but it’s about a young man stepping up to take over a lexicography project as a new lexicographer.

Yeah, and it’s called The Great Passage. And he steps up to take over from a veteran lexicographer.

And I’m just so looking forward to this.

It’s just this one-time, 2016, one-season show about a major publishing company called Genbu Shobo.

I thought I would mention this to anyone who really likes anime and really likes dictionaries.

It’s something I’d love to find out if anyone else has watched it.

That sounds like something I can share with my 26-year-old.

Hit me up if you watch the Great Passage anime, words@waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning. My name is Heather and I’m calling from Fairbanks, Alaska.

Welcome to the show, Heather. What can we do for you?

Well, something I have long found confusing is the use of present tense when speaking of past events, most often by historians and sometimes by radio journalists or others.

So I have a bunch of questions about that.

Who or what group decided that historians should follow this apparent convention?

All right. Where are you hearing this?

Radio mostly.

Yeah. Any particular program or person?

No. Lots. Lots where they have historians speaking.

Okay. Yeah.

And sometimes just radio journalists.

Yeah. There’s a clue there that I want to latch on to, and that’s the historian part of that.

And you’ve got a couple pieces there.

If we put them together, we’ve got our answer.

And that is that there is a special tense of English called historical present.

And that’s what they’re using.

It’s an actual established tense where it sounds like the present tense, but it’s actually the past.

It’s very confusing if you don’t know about it.

So why do they do that?

Well, it adds an immediacy to it.

So they’re talking about the past events in a way that allows you to avoid those cognitive adjustments so that you’re not switching constantly back and forth between time periods.

Those tense changes can disorient you.

So you don’t have to track those causalities or move between timelines.

And so it gives you this stable platform and keeps the argument kind of fluid.

There’s a show on the BBC called In Our Time with Melvin Bragg, although I think he’s just retired, which is well known for this.

And I think documentaries often do this.

So when a historian writes that Caesar says or claims something, it’s because the texts and the information that we have exist right now.

And we have them in our hands. The information that we know about is true and present. And it’s not a past event. The information is. It’s present. It’s real.

Do you have feelings about this one way or the other about this kind of presentation?

Yes, I do. Very confusing because apparently it’s very difficult for the people doing it verbally to follow consistently.

And I hear almost every time historians switch between present and past tense when talking about past events because they don’t like to use past participle, subjunctive, and other tenses we were taught in school.

And so I’m always having to guess whether, what are they talking about nowadays? Are they talking about the past?

I could see how it could be confusing, particularly if they’re inconsistent.

It’s a tradition thing more than it is like one body of people got together and decided it would happen.

Okay. Thank you very much.

All right.

Thanks for calling, Heather.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Yeah. I appreciate your show.

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

And you can find all of our past episodes free to listen to at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Melissa Chappell. I’m calling from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Hello, Melissa. Welcome to the show.

Yeah, so I was calling to ask about a phrase that my grandfather used to say all the time.

He used to say, like, if he was eating food or something and we asked him how it was, he would always say, it’s gooder than snuff, but not near as dusty.

And I’ve always been interested as to where that came from.

He originally was from Texas.

He was a truck driver, and he was transferred up to North Carolina.

So I don’t know if it’s a Texas thing or if he picked it up in North Carolina, but I’ve always been interested to know where that phrase comes from.

Gooder than snuff, but not near as dusty.

Do I have that right?

Yes.

Snuff as in the tobacco that you sniff up your nose?

Absolutely, yeah.

Was he a snuff taker?

No, but we always had it in the house for, like, bee stings.

Bee stings?

Oh, for bee stings.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, yeah, because the tobacco in the product would draw out the venom.

Okay.

Right, right.

And it was dusty, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

When we’re talking about snuff, we’re talking about that smokeless tobacco product that’s made from pulverized tobacco leaves or really finely ground.

I’ve seen lots of variants of this, like I’m finer than snuff, but not near as dusty.

Some people say that, you know, when you ask them how they’re doing, I’m finer than snuff and not near as dusty.

Finer than wine, but gooder than snuff.

Yeah.

Gooder than taters, better than snuff.

Yeah, because there was a time when snuff was quite popular.

You know, it was it was a treat for people, that little hit of nicotine.

There was a time in Congress where there were boxes of snuff in in the U.S. Congress.

I remember seeing this because there used to be a box of snuff on the Senate desk of the vice president.

But apparently Senate business was, yes, and Senate business was interrupted so often by these long processions of members who were seeking snuff.

And so back in the day, Vice President Millard Fillmore ordered that that box be removed and they put boxes on either side of the congressional chamber, one for each party so that people could line up separately.

So there was a time when this was a really positive thing.

You know, you get that hit that makes you sharp and alert and is kind of a stimulant.

And that’s where we get the expression up to snuff.

It goes back to the early 1800s.

So I don’t know that it’s that popular anymore, you know, once people began to learn about the effects of tobacco.

In fact, my mamaw in North Carolina, I remember her sitting in a wooden rocking chair on the front porch and she would dip snuff.

That’s a little bit different.

You stick it in your lower lip, and then she would spit out the brown juice into a can.

Yeah.

Okay.

Gooder than snuff, sweeter than a Sunday hymn.

I like that one.

Oh, that’s nice.

But yeah, so we’re talking almost 100 years of this expression.

Oh, that’s really cool.

Yeah.

But it’s nice that you’ve got this memory of your granddad, and it’s something that he used, and it echoes in your mind.

Yeah, it’s funny because my dad started to say it eventually because Grandpa would say it all the time.

And do you say it now, Melissa?

I do, actually.

And people look at me funny.

They’re like, what?

Yeah, sure. Own it.

Yeah.

All right. Well, Melissa, thanks for calling.

We appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that memory.

No, awesome. Thank you so much.

All right. Take care of yourself. Bye-bye.

Thank you, too.

Bye-bye.

Call or text toll-free 24 hours a day, 877-929-9673.

We had a voicemail from Lita Longa, and she says that in her native Cuba,

If you want to say somebody’s working really hard, you can say that they are sudando tinta,

That is, they’re sweating ink.

Oh, I love it.

You know, especially for writers.

Yeah, perfect. Sweating ink.

Sweating ink all afternoon.

Trying to meet that deadline.

877-929-9673.

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Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

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

So long. you