Salad Days (episode #1582)

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.

Listener Justin Masterson shared some slang from his favorite hobby with us, and that includes terms like drain, gobblehole, and live catch.

And Grant, I know you know what this slang is from.

Right. I don’t need a death say for that. That’s pinball language.

It is indeed. A drain can be both a noun, and that’s the space between the flippers where you lose the ball.

And it can be a verb and that’s the act of losing a ball.

And a gobble hole is a hole that swallows up the ball, as you might imagine.

And a live catch, I love this one, that’s when you hit the flipper so that it hits the ball at the exact right time to cancel the ball’s momentum.

Right. And then it just balances on the flipper, and then you can have a moment to think about what you want to do with that ball, where you want to send it, you know.

If there’s a special place to get more points or get a multi-ball going.

There’s a satisfaction in that, isn’t there?

Just balancing it there and deciding where you’re going to send it.

I spent many hours with the Addams Family pinball game. Just so many.

The Addams Family?

Yeah, there was something perfect about that.

I don’t know if it was just me and my friends, but we loved that game.

And I’m talking not as a teenager, but in my 20s and 30s.

Oh, really?

Very good, yeah.

Would Thing come out if you got to?

I think there was somebody came.

I think it might have been, I don’t remember.

Somebody came out and spun around, but it was very good.

Well, we’ll share some more pinball slang later in the show.

And we’d love to hear from you about slang that you use in your hobby or any other question about language.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Caitlin. I’m calling from Rye, New York. I love the show. Thanks for having me.

Hi, Caitlin. Thank you for the kind words.

Hey, Caitlin, what’s on your mind?

Well, I’ve been wondering about the term salad days. Like people say, oh, those were your salad days.

I’m like, what does that mean? Like, I love salad, but, you know, salad has some baggage.

It’s like all those smiling ads of women laughing with salad.

You know, lots of different kinds of salad.

I’m just like, what does this mean? Those were your salad days.

When have people said something to you about your salad days? What was going on?

I think I heard someone, like an older person, say, oh, those were your salad days.

And I’m like, oh.

What does that mean?

That noise says so much to me.

Yes, I was flummoxed.

Did it sound positive?

The impression was that it was a positive, like the youthful days of salad or, you know, like those were the good days.

And, you know, I feel like I read once that salad was served only before a meal in California.

It started in California because people were so hungry and they only came around so seldom that the only thing they could do was give them some salad while the main meal was being prepared.

And that’s why salad is eaten beforehand.

So I don’t know, you know, if it’s a positive or what.

But that’s what I’m wondering.

Oh, this is fabulous.

What would you say if I told you that salad days is an allusion to something that Shakespeare said?

Oh, really?

Yes.

Yes.

The first recorded instance that we have of this term salad days is in his play Antony and Cleopatra.

And Cleopatra is in love with the Roman general Mark Antony.

But she remembers an earlier dalliance that she had with Julius Caesar.

She says, my salad days when I was green in judgment, cold in blood.

This is hot and cold.

Exactly.

She’s talking about her youthful, immature days when, you know, it’s sort of like salad is fresh and green and crisp.

So she’s talking about her younger days.

And, you know, so it’s a positive thing.

In fact, over time, people have come to use the term salad days to talk about a wonderful period in their life, even if they’re older, my salad days.

But it’s a very positive term.

And so there’s a direct correlation to the green in judgment being green in general.

That’s the idea of new green, like a new grass growing or newly sprouted seed, right?

Mm—

Mm.

Flavorful.

Yeah.

Crunchy.

Oh, that’s so mean.

Crunchy.

Back in your crunchy days.

I think it’s lunchtime.

That’s fascinating.

I would not have known it was such an old term with a literary.

It is.

Yes.

We don’t know if Shakespeare actually coined the term, if it had been floating around, but his play is the first record we have of anybody saying salad days.

Well, that’s fascinating.

Thank you.

Thank you for answering that.

I really appreciate it.

Take care.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Thank you.

Thanks, Caitlin.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

She sounds like she’s in the middle of her salad days.

She does, doesn’t she?

Green with youth.

It doesn’t sound particularly misspent, though.

She’s spending a lot of time in the salad aisle at the grocery store.

Yeah, but if you’re green in judgment, as Cleopatra was, I guess you’re not so.

It’s the idea that you’re just not wise yet.

You haven’t made all the bad decisions that will give you wisdom.

Well, it would be an excellent decision to call us to talk about language.

The number is 877-929-9673 or send us your questions in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

You’ll recall our conversation with Lana in Evansville, Indiana, who said that the women in her family all call each other Gert or Gertie affectionately. And then she found out that one of her friends does the same thing. Everybody in their family calls the women Gertie or Gert.

And we were all speculating as to why.

And we did hear from Annabelle Nielsen in Melbourne, Australia, who said that on her mother’s side of the family, they do the same thing.

They use Gertie as kind of a generic name or term of endearment.

And she wonders if it came from the name of Gertrude Lawrence, who was a famous English actress and performer in the early 20th century.

She won a Tony in 1952 opposite Eul Brynner in The King and I.

But we also, Grant, can’t rule out the Jack Benny radio show.

Oh, yeah.

But, you know, I’ve been a fan of the Jack Benny radio show for a long time.

But there are these two operators, telephone operators with thick accents, who do these great routines where they mock Jack Benny when he’s waiting for them to connect a call.

And they’re Mabel and Gertrude.

Gertrude.

Gertrude.

Mabel.

What is it, Gertrude?

Guess who’s on the line again.

Oh, is it Mr. Thinks he’s wonderful?

You know, I can’t even do the voices, but we’ll post a link to them.

But these two characters went on for decades on radio and television.

And the Jack Benny show was top rated for a very long time in this country.

Its influence can’t be understated.

So I just wonder if there’s not something.

However, they never called her Gert or Gertie as far as I know.

It was always Gertrude.

But yeah, they did have that relationship.

It was always the two of them, right?

Two of them kind of like just talking smack about Jack when he was just waiting impatiently for them to connect his call.

Yeah, so I can see female members of a family using Gert or Gertie or Gertrude.

Let us know what you think.

877-929-9673 or send your thoughts about any aspect of language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

This is Quincy Orhai in Bozeman, Montana.

Hi, Quincy in Bozeman.

Welcome, Quincy.

What can we do for you?

This came up the other night, and we were talking about how strange the word burrito is.

In America, it almost always means a little packet of some kind of often spicy food wrapped up in a flour tortilla.

But, of course, the word comes from the word burro, which is a jackass or a donkey.

So how did we get there? How did we get there from here?

Yeah, that’s a good question.

Let’s see. So why do we call the food that? Why do we call it a little burro?

Yeah, burrito.

Burrito, yeah, because that ito suffix is a diminutive, which means that when you tack it on, whatever word you tack it on to, you’re indicating that now it’s a new word that’s indicated as a little smaller or maybe cuter or more adorable.

Right.

In Spanish, burro obviously means the animal. But as a carpenter, I happen to know that burro is also, at least in Mexico, the word that’s used for sawhorses.

Well, there are a couple different theories, stories, about why we call the food burrito burrito. And one of the basic ones is that the idea that this big tortilla, this flour tortilla, looks a bit like a blanket. And you fill it full of things, just like you would fill the back of a burrito. So it looks kind of like the blanket that you would throw on the back of a burro before you loaded it up and it carted your stuff off for you.

Another idea is that the burrito is, once it’s full, it’s bulging. Sometimes when you put stuff on the back of a burro, you tie it up. You tie the blanket up or you tie the canvas up, and it bulges, and a burrito that’s really loaded down with the fillings of beans and meat or whatever just bulges in the same way.

But there’s another story that I found in the Dictionary of Chicano Folklore that talks about burros on the trail with vaqueros, which are the Spanish word for cowboys, are kind of the regular companions of horses. And they bring burros along as pack animals, but they also kind of calm the horses at night, you know, when there are coyotes around and so forth. And vaqueros on the trail would bring burritos because they’re easy, they travel easily. You put a little cheese, a little beans, you wrap them up and they keep all day long. And they were so common, they were kind of like the common companions to the vaqueros in the same way that burros were the common companions to the horses. So they were kind of like little burros to the vaqueros, burritos. And I don’t know if there’s anything to that, but that’s one story that they told.

Yeah, we find burrito as a similar food dish mentioned in a dictionary of Mexicanism as far back as 1895 in Guanajuato and in Mexico City itself. And it pops up again and again in the 20s and 30s and 40s here and there, but usually in the northern states of Mexico and in the southwest of the United States. But anyway, there’s some other theories that we don’t need to share here. But basically, that’s why we think that they’re called burritos.

Wow.

That’s pretty amazing.

So it actually has quite a long history.

Absolutely.

I think it’s time to go make some chilaquiles.

I know.

That’s making me hungry.

Thank you for your call, Q Quincy.

Yeah.

Good luck on the show.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

More of what we say and why we say it as A Way with Words continues. You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette. And joining us now is that international man of many mysteries, John Chaneski.

Hello, baby. How are you?

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. How are you guys doing?

Hi, darling.

Yes.

You have a quiz for us?

I do. You know, this week it’s one of our staples, the takeoff. Now, it’s a variation on a National Puzzlers League puzzle type, but it’s very simple. You take a word, take its first letter off, hence the takeoff, and a new word is left behind. Now, I’ll read a sentence that contains clues to both the original word and the resulting word, and you tell me both of them. This week, we’re taking off the letter H from the beginning of all these words. If you have a pencil nearby, maybe this could help you, okay?

For example, I crept down the passage from room to room, and the entire house was empty. Now, the word passage clues the word…

Hall.

Beginning with H. Hall, right? And the word entire clues the word…

All.

All, right. That’s all there is to it. I mean, that’s all there is to it. Well, that’s all there is to it.

Yeah, here we go. Put a flame under that chicken and get ready for lunch. Put a flame under that chicken and get ready for lunch.

Right.

It’s not fire and ire. Now remember, all these will begin with H.

Oh, H, okay.

Heat and eat.

Heat and eat, yes.

Now you’ve got it. Just keep following the row of shrubs around the boundary of the property.

The hedge and the edge.

Hedge and the edge, yes. Nicely done.

From where the ship was anchored, we could see the house and the green shelter of shrubs and vines beside it.

The harbor and arbor.

Yes, very nice. Good.

From bottom to top, the doorway is a little more than seven feet.

Tricky.

Height and eight.

Yes.

Oh, very good. From bottom to top is height, and a little more than seven is eight. Remember in Back to the Future 2 when Marty and his levitating transporter made those guys crash into manure? That was a little too much.

It was his skateboard hoverboard.

Right.

Oh, hoverboard and overboard.

Yeah, that was a little overboard with the manure on that one.

Right. Hoverboard and overboard. Nice.

Finally, often as I sit in front of the fire, I feel like the luckiest men on the planet. These are tricky because they’re pronounced differently.

Yes, they are.

So in this case, it’s sitting by the hearth, and you’re the luckiest man on earth.

Yes, terrific.

Nicely done. You guys did really good on that takeoffs quiz. Takeoffs H is done.

Well, thank you, John. Great talking with you. And we’d love to talk with you about any aspect of language whatsoever. So call us, 877-929-9673, or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Ego from Northbrook, Illinois.

Hi, Ego. Welcome. What can we do for you?

Having been born in Amsterdam and then moved to Japan and then coming to the States, I’ve always been curious about language. And about 30 years ago, when I first came to the U.S. for undergrad, I realized whenever people would ask me, how are you? And I start to explain how my life has been or how that weekend has been. People would start to just lose interest and walk away. I have heard from other people from different countries, similar experiences. And this is probably something natural of how a language evolves. And my question is, well, at some point at the beginning, was it actually meant to ask how people are doing? As a proof of that, has there been something in any literature, Old English, where a conversation is described and the person who answers that actually answers more than just, I am doing well or I’m doing fine?

Ego, I’m curious what your experience was with greetings before you came to the U.S.

Well, I don’t remember my days in Holland anymore. I was nine when I left. And in Japan, there is not an equivalent, so to speak, for how are you expecting the answer to be just a short answer.

Yeah, there’s not the polite conversation.

Well, just a greeting would be, yes, of course, there will be a greeting, right? Konnichiwa or ohayabuzaimasu.

Right.

But it’s not asking how you are doing.

But you have got to think a little further beyond that. If you say konichiwa and you mean good day, do they mean to tell you that it is a good day? Are they wishing you a good day? I mean, it still is the same kind of speech. And we have a name for that, for the how are you and the konichiwa. They’re all phatic speech, P-H-A-T-I-C.

Well, one of the best definitions I’ve seen calls it speech used as a social cement that relies heavily on stereotyped language. But it’s not necessarily empty speech or hollow words. This kind of speech communicates ideas or feelings rather than direct information. So it’s got some use. And so we don’t need to look to the historical record to say, well, did they originally once mean it? When they say, how are you, did people used to actually reply with information? Because it doesn’t matter. Most languages have some kind of phatic speech to one degree or another, although some have more and some have less.

It has to do with about how they treat politeness and honorifics and respect in their language and in their culture.

So there’s so much happening with language like that.

When you go to the grocery store and you have a conversation with the clerk, how are you can say that you’re sociable?

And if you reply back, I’m fine, thank you, it communicates that you are sociable too.

And this is important information between two human animals.

That is so interesting because when somebody says, well, I’m doing fine, answers it in that way, I actually feel the opposite that, oh, that person is just going through the motion rather than being interested in a conversation.

And they may be just going through the motions.

But the important thing here is you have given them an out.

So what’s happened here is you have allowed them not to answer the question because they didn’t want to.

And you’ve participated in a societal agreement where you have done the conventional thing of asking them how they are.

And they’ve done the conventional thing of replying, I’m fine.

And you didn’t demand a real explanation of them, which might make them uncomfortable or might make an awkward situation or might make them have to tell more than they want to.

And this is important that you give somebody, you make somebody comfortable.

You gave them an opportunity to be comfortable and they took it.

Interesting.

Well, I keep a list of things that make me realize when I notice I have been Americanized.

And one of them is when I just answer, I am doing fine or I’m good.

That sounds like an interesting list, Ego. You’ll have to call us back with more of those.

Yeah, it does sound like a really good list. I want to point out that there’s an English linguist named Walter Redfern. He’s the guy whose definition of phatic speech I kind of quoted earlier.

And he also talks about on those occasions when we don’t have this kind of the social cement, the social conversational cement, we miss it. When we don’t have it, we feel uncomfortable and we’re not quite sure why. And there are occasions where we expect it and it can feel wrong or appropriate not to use it, like funerals or times of crisis or disaster, or when we’re writing letters of protest or letters of reference. So these are occasions where the formulaic conventional speech is sometimes more appropriate than saying the original thing or the really trying to break free from the almost cliché of the situation.

Well, I got to say, it’s good to talk to you, Ego, and I really appreciate you taking the time.

And we’d love to hear from you again about your experience as a multilingual person in the U.S. and Japan and wherever.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Okay. Thank you so much.

All right. Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye.

Martha, you can sum it all up by saying that fatic speech is what Anatole Broyard called friendly noise.

Friendly noise. I love that. Friendly noise.

Well, if you’ve got a question about words and language or fatic expressions, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Or we’d love to read about your experiences in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

We heard from Frances De La Penna, who lives in Bluffton, South Carolina, and she said that her mama’s expression for when supper is assorted leftovers is cream of Frigidaire.

It sounds so fancy.

Creme de la Frigidaire.

Creme de la Frigidaire.

Yeah, right.

Thank you for that, Frances.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Diane Houston Floyd.

I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Diane, what can we do for you today?

Well, I was calling because I was interested in understanding where the word gumshoe came from.

I was watching a rerun of a television show, and one character turned to another character in the show and said, great, you’ve hired yourself a gumshoe.

Oh, yeah. That’s an old-fashioned word.

-huh. Was this some kind of mystery or detective story?

Yes. The characters were thrown back in time to this kind of film scene where they were charged with finding a missing person.

I see. Okay. And so they hired a gumshoe to help, huh?

Yes.

And you figured that a gumshoe is probably some kind of detective or something like that.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

It’s not somebody who has gum on their shoe.

Well, kind of.

Well, not chewing gum on their shoe.

Right.

Let me put it that way, which is what I thought when I was a little kid.

I thought a gum shoe was kind of a loser, you know, somebody who stepped on gum on the sidewalk and had gum sticking on their shoe.

Gum shoe comes from the fact that shoes are sometimes made with gum rubber.

And gum rubber is from a rubber tree.

And if you have a shoe that has a gum sole, then it’s going to be a very soft sole.

And you’re going to be very, very quiet when you’re tiptoeing around.

And so a gum shoe is a detective who can sneak up on you or eavesdrop on you because they’re wearing shoes that don’t make any noise.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Yeah, compared to what came before that, before there were rubber-soled shoes, I mean, we’re talking wooden soles or leather soles, which are louder.

You’re just going to hear a lot more noise.

The term gumshoe has been around since around the turn of the 20th century.

And what’s interesting is that it’s also been applied to not just detectives or police officers, but prowlers and thieves.

But most often I think you hear it in connection with those detective novels.

And it’s one of those kinds of terms that you’ll hear and read when you’re in that genre.

Yeah, about 100 years ago you could read newspapers where they’d talk, though, about politics and politicians and their gumshoe methods and their gumshoe campaigns to try to get their way, to try to get voters on their side or try to get a bill in Congress to happen.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, that’s interesting.

Diane, thank you so much for calling.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me and answering my questions.

You all have a great day.

Thank you.

You too.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Be well.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Definitely one of those old-fashioned words you don’t hear anymore.

I wonder if detectives today still call themselves gumshoes.

Like, is it something that you would say jokingly about yourself if you were a police detective?

That’s a really good question.

I think when I think about people in that profession, I usually hear them say private investigator.

Okay.

Private investigator.

You don’t hear private eye that much.

No.

Remember that?

Yeah.

Private eye or P-I.

Well, if you’ve got any listening, let us know.

Do you call yourself a gumshoe even in just 877-929-9673?

Hi.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Dan Croft.

I’m calling from Atlantic Beach, Florida.

Hi, Dan.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

I grew up in a community in southwestern Ohio.

And when I was growing up there, we referred to everyone’s subdivision and their particular community as a plat, P-L-A-T, as in, you know, what plat do you live in? We’ll come over to your plat.

And it was just a normal term of communication.

But when I got to college and subsequently when I used the term Platt, people looked at me like I had two heads.

They’d never heard that before.

So it feels like that was maybe a, I don’t know, like a very specific regionalism or something.

And I was curious about the origin of that phrase Platt for a subdivision.

This is all kind of clicking for me.

Let me ask you some questions.

Did your Platt have names?

Yes.

So every Platt did have an individual name.

I grew up in an area called Knollwood.

Other subdivisions were called Sugar Creek or Terra Estates.

It was a very suburban area.

Well, the reason I ask is because a plat is kind of a more jargony term.

To plat a place is to make a detailed map or chart of it.

You show the outline and the key features, the boundaries, and probably where it fits in with surveys and other plats.

And so usually it’s a piece of land.

A plat is a piece of land that plans are being made for it.

Perhaps you have to submit that plat to the county or another governmental body to get approvals for what you’re going to do.

A family looking to buy land and build a house might spend a lot of time looking over platts.

If the area is yet to be built up, they’re trying to find the best location without knowing exactly what or who will be nearby once they buy the land.

Plat is a well-established term. You’ll find it if you spend any time looking at old surveys or old plans for a neighborhood.

But what’s interesting to me is that you use it interchangeably with subdivision.

A lot of times subdivision comes from being a divided part of a plat. That’s where subdivision comes from.

In the U.S., we call neighborhoods that are smaller pieces, are smaller plots of a plat, a subdivision.

So it sounds like there’s some mixing of the terms there, and I’m not surprised.

My other question for you would be, were you the first generation to live in that neighborhood?

Not really. I mean, the community was developed. It was a post-war community that was developed primarily probably from the 50s through, I don’t know, the 70s.

But there were multi-generations there. Because I could see people who still had within the family’s memory of moving in when it was still brand new.

And they had spent the time kind of researching where they would buy and build and looking at the, you know, the surveyor’s maps and the plats and stuff.

But plat, the word, by the way, is directly related to plot, P-L-O-T, meaning a charter map made of a piece of land or a nautical root.

It’s just a variant pronunciation of it. And there was a slow diverging, a specialization of the meaning of plat and plot over time as each one kind of took on new connotations.

I see. Well, that helps. Thank you.

Yeah, but we are on the air in Ohio, and we will hear from other people probably who use Platin that way.

And if we get something, if we can put together enough data, we’ll be sure to talk about it on the program, all right?

Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks very much for your time, and you’ve helped me answer something that I’ve always been curious about.

So thank you. Take care, Dan. Glad to help. Appreciate it. Take care, Dan. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. This show’s about language examined through family, history, and culture.

Stick around for more of A Way with Words. 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. 30 years ago, Taro Alexander was 19 years old and newly arrived in New York City. On his first visit to Washington Square Park, he says,

I remember looking around at everyone in the park and just kind of watching everybody talk. It just struck me how easy it seemed for people’s mouths to move. And I remember being this 19-year-old kid and just wanting that, wanting that ease of speech.

Taro Alexander is one of some three million Americans who stutter. That’s roughly one percent of the population. He went on to found the Stuttering Association for the Young, which is abbreviated SAY, and that’s an organization that works to address the physical and social and emotional impact of stuttering.

And one of the things they do is offer this summer camp where kids who stutter can come and connect and find acceptance and build their confidence. And it’s dedicated to the idea that every single voice should be heard.

And that summer camp is the subject of a marvelous new documentary called My Beautiful Stutter. And Grant, this movie opens your eyes to just how immensely frustrating it can be to be a person who stutters, how lonely it is and how utterly exhausting.

Yeah, they tell the story in the movie of the young girl, Sarah, who comes home from school and she’s quiet. And ordinarily, the parents think of her as a talkative child despite her stutter.

And she finally explains, I have spent the whole day trying to talk and the whole day dealing with people who are impatient and frustrated with me. I am just exhausted. I just need to not talk right now.

And when they go to the SAE camp, these children find out that they aren’t the only ones. And they have a kinship, a brotherhood and sisterhood with other children and form these tight bonds with people who know their struggle.

Yeah, it’s a very moving and informative film. And I think it’s one that everybody should watch. It’s called My Beautiful Stutter.

And you can find the film My Beautiful Stutter at mybeautifulstutter.com. It’s also available on Apple Plus and Discovery Plus.

We’d love to hear about the film and books that you enjoy, that you think that we would enjoy too. 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org. Or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Paige. I’m calling from Michigan.

Hey, Paige. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

So, though I’m calling from Michigan, both me and my spouse, we were raised in Louisiana. And that kind of plays into my question today.

So, my husband and I were at an arts and crafts store one day. And he’s an artist. And I said, oh, do you need some more pencil colors? They’re on sale.

He looked at me and he goes, pencil colors? What do you mean? I said, you know, pencil colors, like they’re on sale. Do you need any? He said, you mean colored pencils? And I said, colored pencils, pencil colors, you know, same thing. He goes, no, that’s not the same thing. Why would you ever say pencil colors?

So it got me thinking that I called them pencil colors growing up and all of my, that I could remember, that was the word we used in school. Oh, get out your pencil colors. You know, we’re going to color this coloring sheet in elementary school.

So I had a suspicion of maybe where the phrase came from, but I took it to my Facebook. And I asked my Facebook friends because, you know, what else do you do in 2020? But ask your Facebook friends.

I got kind of a varied response, but most of the people who responded saying, yeah, that’s the phrase I use for the colored pencils were from South Louisiana. So I was thinking that maybe we call them pencil colors, or it’s more common to call these writing utensils pencil colors because of the French influence.

And I was just wondering if you’ve ever heard about that or if you had any thoughts.

Wow, this is wonderful because I don’t think this is in any of my dialect dictionaries. Martha, do you have any record of this pencil color?

I don’t. And one question that springs to mind immediately, Paige, is what do you call crayons? Like those waxy, colorful things.

Yeah. We just call them crayons.

Okay. Okay. All right.

And the reason we ask is that crayon is French for pencil. And it’s very confusing to ankylophones because that’s one of those faux-zami. It’s one of the very obvious mistakes that you might make.

I think you might be right. And I have a couple things to add to that about it coming from French. Because in regular French, you would say crayon de couleur to mean colored pencil.

Again, crayon doesn’t mean English crayon in French. It means pencil. So you’re basically saying pencil of color, which sounds like pencil color.

And it’s what we call a calc. You’ve probably heard us mention that word on the show before, that C-A-L-Q-U-E. A calc is when a word is moved from language A to language B, and it just simply translated directly, exactly, word for word.

Right. I mean, obviously, we’ve taken the duh or the of out, but it’s otherwise a calc. In Louisiana French, it might sound a little bit more like crayon or couleur, something like that, because they do a ja for the Y rather than a ja.

And the other thing I’d add to this is there’s a tradition in small town newspapers in America to post the materials list for students for the coming school year in the newspaper.

So in newspapers all across Louisiana and actually in Mississippi, starting in around the 60s, well into the 2000s, you can find student supply lists where the teachers are asking for their students to bring pencil colors.

Not colored pencils, but pencil colors. And it confirms what you think. And nowhere else in the United States do you find that listed. Only in those two states, in Louisiana and Mississippi.

But I think you’re right. I think it really is a French term migrated into English and kind of settled there. And that is that. And also the French influence is apparent in Mississippi.

People kind of forget that being just on the other side of the river isn’t much of a barrier for the language, the French influence, to pop over.

So you’ll find it in Macomb, for example.

The earliest that I find it is 1939 in a wish list from a little girl writing to Santa Claus.

Aww.

That’s very sweet.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much.

That kind of confirms my thoughts, and I really enjoy that.

Paige, thank you for calling.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Yes, you have a great day.

Thanks, Paige.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

If you use pencil color to mean colored pencil, and you’re not from Louisiana, let us know, because we’ll put some pins on our little mental map here, and maybe we can learn a bit more about where this term is used like that.

Again, pencil color is a noun, meaning one colored pencil.

That’s 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Nina Simone was one of the most iconic, beguiling performers of her generation.

She was born in 1933 in tiny Tryon, North Carolina.

And at an early age, she fell in love with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

And she also accompanied her mother, who was a minister, playing gospel music in the local church.

And later, the townsfolk took up a collection to send her to study at Juilliard in New York City.

And eventually, although she was trained as a classical musician, she had to support herself.

And so she began singing in nightclubs.

And it turned out that she was absolutely mesmerizing.

She ended up touring the entire world and recording lots of records.

And her song, Young, Gifted, and Black, became an anthem of the civil rights struggle.

And her story is told in the children’s picture book called Nina, a story of Nina Simone.

It’s by children’s book editor Tracy N. Todd, and it’s illustrated by Christian Robinson.

And Simone’s life story is a complicated one about persisting against immense challenges and finding often this hard-edged, defiant voice of protest against racial injustice.

And Todd does a wonderful job of distilling all this down into an inspiring story for children.

And if you know the children’s book Last Stop on Market Street by Matt DeLaPena, which won a Newbery Medal and a Caldecott Honor a few years ago, the illustrator Christian Robinson illustrated this one as well, so you know it’s a beautiful book.

And what’s also super cool about this book for children is it includes an afterword with a more detailed account of her life and a bibliography that’s really helpful if you want to start exploring more about Nina Simone’s life.

So the book is Nina, A Story of Nina Simone.

Oh, that’s lovely.

Thank you, Martha.

And we’d love to hear your book recommendations for kids or anyone, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hello. This is Lou from North Carolina.

Hey, Lou, welcome.

I heard your radio program, A Way with Words and Phrases, or whatever the name is, and I had an interesting phrase that my dad used to use when we were younger.

And I remember it because when we would go out with him to the store and ask for things, we’d usually get the same response from him.

And it was, not today, Josephine.

And as a kid, I never knew who Josephine was.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, when I got older, I figured, you know, Josephine sounds a little, you know, Renaissance-type, old-time reference.

And I was thinking maybe since my dad was a sort of an amateur thespian, you know, he had been in some plays back where he grew up down in Charleston, South Carolina.

And he may have brought this phrase in from a Shakespearean play or something.

But that’s something he’d always say to us.

Not today, Josephine.

Yeah, so there’s a story behind that.

And the story is that the Empress Josephine was not able to give Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte an heir.

He desperately wanted a male heir.

And so this is the early 1800s, and their marriage started to break down, much ill will on each side.

He was incredibly unhappy.

He was actually a philanderer of the First Order.

And apparently he sired numerous children with other women, but not with his wife.

And she complained that he was practically impotent.

And she even had a little saying in French, which was Bonaparte et bon a rien, which means Bonaparte is good for nothing.

The rumor went around that she was the problem and that she was, how should we put this, rumored to be very fond of the pleasures of the bedroom, that she was voracious in the sack, so to speak.

The idea was that he couldn’t keep up with her in the bedroom and that he would say, she would ask for, you know, a bedroom encounter and he would reply, not today, Josephine, pas ce soir, Josephine, or not tonight, Josephine.

This is completely apocryphal. There was no no truth in it.

We don’t think he ever said exactly that.

There’s no record of it because the story doesn’t really appear until the early 1900s, more than 100 years later.

But that’s where it comes from, this idea that the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was rejecting the amorous advances of his wife.

That was the expression that he would say, not today, Josephine.

And so you would hear this repeated, and it was turned into a musical number by Florey Ford in 1915.

And although it originally did have that bedroom activities connotation, of course, after a while, it was like your father used it.

Just a funny way to refuse anyone anything, no matter what they were asking for.

So do people still say that, or is that just one of those bygone expressions, you know, like nine yards and all that stuff that has sort of like passed on, you know, to, I don’t know, history.

I don’t think it’s that common, Lou, but you’ve certainly helped to popularize your dad’s phrase today.

Yeah, talking about turning down somebody insatiable.

Yeah.

Well, let’s hope it turns out well for whoever chooses to use it.

Yeah, but these days there’s nothing amorous or romantic or bedroom about it.

It’s just a funny way to refuse people.

Well, very, very nice. He had a lot of phrases he passed down.

You know, he’s kind of an interesting guy, but I learned a lot from my bed.

Well, thank you for sharing those memories with us today, Lou.

Thank you very much. Take care, Lou.

Thank you.

Thanks, Lou. Bye-bye.

Well, what’s the word or phrase that your parent used, and you wonder if maybe anybody else in the world says it?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Paul Velleman.

Hi, Paul, where are you calling from?

Camden, Maine.

Camden, Maine. Welcome to the show, Paul.

Well, I have a new puppy. He’s a beagle mix. And when I get him up in the morning, he’s all wags and kisses. And he was licking my face a few mornings ago. And I said, you’re getting your licks in. And then I paused for a minute and realized, oh, gee, that’s like hitting somebody. And that shouldn’t have anything to do with my puppy’s tongue. I’d better call Grant and Martha.

What is your cute little puppy’s name?

You have to tell us.

His name is Max.

Max.

Oh, Max.

Getting your morning kisses from Max.

He’s partly beagle.

Partly beagle, yeah.

Well, what we can tell you about lick, Paul, is that it’s a really, really old word.

It’s been around for more than a thousand years.

It goes back to Old English lickion, which means the way you use the word to describe what your dog is doing.

It means to pass the tongue over a surface.

But this word lick gives us a great example of what we call polysemy, when a word has a lot of different meanings.

It’s this simple, basic word that’s had a lot of time to put out a lot of different shoots and branch out in different ways to indicate different things that are related to that fundamental root.

And by the 16th century, the word lick also came to mean alongside that original meaning.

It came to mean to beat or strike or thrash, which is kind of an intensification of that motion, I suppose.

But also at that time, there was the verb to lick up, which meant to defeat or vanquish.

And that was used in an early influential translation of the Bible, which talks about an army licking up the enemy the way that an ox would lick up the grass in a field.

So there was there was that sense of it as well.

But as you noted, it means a whole lot of different things like a small amount.

You know, he hasn’t done a lick of work.

And I think most recently, kids on TikTok have been posting video of things that they’ve licked.

That is things that they’ve stolen.

They show off their latest devious lick on TikTok.

So it’s kind of a Swiss Army knife of a word.

Interesting.

Give us some scratches behind the ears to Max for us, will you?

Well, thank you very much for explaining that.

I was flummoxed.

Well, glad we could sniff it out for you.

Take care now.

Appreciate it.

Thanks very much.

All right.

877-929-9673.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler.

You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or email us words@waywordradio.org.

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

A nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations

Who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow

For his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye-bye.