Secret Code (episode #1687)

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

It’s the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And, Grant, I have a wee quiz for you.

A wee quiz?

All right, fire away.

Okay.

What do these three terms have in common?

Banana quit, invisible rail, and ticking doradito.

Ticking doradito, invisible rail, and banana quit.

These sound like the games the people at the National Positives League come up with.

They all show up with bags of Bananagram tiles, and they just invent stuff on the spot.

It’s incredible.

And and then when they stop playing, it’s a Banana Quit?

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, I don’t know.

What, what are they?

Banana quits, invisible rail, and what was the last one?

Ticking Dorado.

Ticking Dorado.

All three of those, all the birders are raising their hands right now.

All three of those are names of birds.

Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.

I think…

So, Dorado, I’m maybe hearing a connection to Dorado, meaning golden there.

Exactly, exactly.

It’s a, it’s a yellow bird.

And so the ticking might refer to the sound that it makes because that thing is a great tradition in bird naming, naming them according to their sounds.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And I think invisible rail has to do with the fact that it’s rarely seen.

And the rail goes back to a Latin word that has to do with, with a sound, like sort of a screech.

And they’re beautifully camouflaged anyway, so this must be an incredible bird.

It’s hard to find.

Yeah.

And then the other one, banana quit.

What is happening in there?

Is that a reference to color?

Yeah, it does have a yellow belly, but apparently banana quits also hang around.

Bananas, I think they like bananas.

And the quit, may be a reference to, again, the sound it makes because they’re also grass quits and orange quits.

And I learned all this from a list of birds posted by bird expert Robert Francis online.

Well, we will link to Robert Francis’ list of amazing bird names, and he has some beautiful pictures as well.

You can find that all on our website at waywordradio.org.

And don’t you quit.

Call us (877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Doctor.

Hi, how you doing?

My name is Nick, I’m calling from Stanton, Virginia.

All right.

Well, we’re glad to have you, Nick.

I hope you’re doing well as well.

Yeah.

Doing pretty good.

Doing pretty good.

You guys have had a lot of occasions where you talk about your favorite words and how they change.

Well, mines have been the same since, like, high school.

Right?

And this is now the second time it’s gotten me on the radio.

Was that right?

Alright.

Who are we competing with here?

Well, the last occasion was a local classic rock station around here where I live.

They had basically posed the same question.

Call in.

Tell us your favorite word.

And I called in, and, you know, they greeted me, and I just said, flabbergasted, and then hung up the phone.

They actually aired the call, and then they used that clip of me saying flabbergasted and some, like, promotional material in the next couple months.

Oh my We’re gonna do exactly the same thing.

Yeah.

Well, my favorite word hasn’t really changed.

Still flabbergasted, but it occurred to me listening to your show and thinking about it that I really can’t make up what it comes from, where that word comes from.

You know, I get gassed in there from, like, a ghast or something, but that’s about all I can gleam.

Well, now, first of all, tell us why you love this word, flabbergasted.

You know, I just feel like it’s got that those consonants like you guys talk about where it’s just snappy.

It comes off the tongue in a way that just feels almost provocative.

Mhmm.

Flabbergasted.

Right?

You know?

Yeah.

The syllable stress is just right.

Right?

Mhmm.

And as a rhythm like a drummer person, that really speaks to me, I guess.

Drummer.

But also flatter is fun to say, right?

The bobo sounds.

Right, right.

Several things that you said here just, really are great.

One is you tried to parse the word based on your previous knowledge to figure out what its roots are, And that’s such a good way to get more into understanding what we say and where it comes from.

Like most etymologists, you kind of ran up against the wall.

Most etymologists don’t have any good theories on where this comes from.

As a matter of fact, there are no good theories as far as I’m concerned, and I would call this firmly origin unknown.

Most authorities agree that the ghast part at the end probably is related to aghast, meaning kind of astonished or horrified at something that’s happened.

But the flabber part is where we get stuck.

And there are some similar words in French and some other languages that might have to do with fables and and storytelling that perhaps are related.

But really, it’s a long string of tenuous similarities that don’t really have citations in the historical record because that’s what I look for as a lexicographer.

But I will say, and I think Martha knows where I’m going with this, one of the most remarkable things about flabbergasted is that we have a really well written chronicle of when it popped onto the scene and became a popular word.

There was the August 1772 issue of Town and Country Magazine.

That’s how old this is.

A piece that’s commenting on new words, and among them is the word flabbergasted.

And want to read this to you.

It’s written by an anonymous author, and he’s describing the type of people, who use such word as flabbergast.

And he call, he says that they are, quote, a set of beings in this metropolis without any characters or whatever.

They are a kind of amphibious animals, between fools and wits, fops and slavans, riks and enthusiasts.

They have not the invention to form any opinion of their own, and are the mere echoes of coffee houses, newspapers, and playhouses.

That’s from more than two hundred and fifty years ago, yet it is so similar to complaints about new language today.

Wow.

That is absolutely fascinating.

And and, you know, it’s funny because I feel like this guy is kind of indicating and using the word provocative to describe it earlier.

You know?

And I I think that compared to a gas, there’s almost been, like, an indignant to it.

It feels like.

Yeah.

More like being gobsmacked.

It’s like you open your mouth, and then you sternly shut it immediately or something, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I can see the face now.

Like, the UFO rises above the horizon and you are flabbergasted your mouth agape, but then not agape.

Right, right, right.

I I don’t think I’ve ever heard you guys not be able to find the origin.

That’s a first for me.

Nick, we’re just really good at saying it.

We don’t know, but not in those words.

Thanks so much for calling.

Yeah.

Take care.

Thanks for having me.

It’s Alright.

Been Bye bye.

Alrighty.

Bye bye.

Call or text (877-929-9673.

Here’s another great bird named predicted ant wren.

I just love these.

Predicted ant wren.

So a n t w r e n?

Yes.

Ant wren.

Oh, wow.

So where does the predicted come from?

They calculated there was a gap in the, the phylum.

They found the bird there fell on the spot?

Yeah, pretty much.

Biologists did a genetic analysis of birds in the Western Amazon and predicted that there would probably be a new species of antran.

And darn if in 2013 they didn’t find one, hence the name predicted antran.

I am predicting that you are going to call or text us to our toll free number in The US and Canada, (877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hey.

How are you?

This is John from Louisville, Kentucky.

Thank you for having me.

Hi, John.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

So I heard in a song in the maybe 2009.

It was a Jay Z song, and at the end of the song, he was making a reference to a alcohol bottle.

And he said he didn’t want a magnum.

He wanted a medusulin.

And I had never heard that before.

To this day, I’ve never heard that reference in any way.

And I did some research on it, and, this didn’t come up with anything referring to a medusa, if it’s a particular bottle shape or I know it’s a certain size, but Mhmm.

I was wondering if you guys could help me out with that.

Yeah.

What what album and song was that from Jay Z?

Do you remember?

So for all of the people who gave their computers viruses with LombWire, one upon a time Back in the day.

There was a little gem I got called ghetto techno.

I believe it was something that, didn’t make the blueprint three album, but I just got it offline.

Okay.

And it’s Jay Z and Timberland.

At the end of the song, he references a medusela.

Yeah, John.

That’s definitely ringing some bells, and it’s all about size.

I don’t know the what the exact lyric is, but usually, when you’re talking about the size of bottles of wine or champagne, The term is either methusela or methuselum, it’s a big, big bottle of wine.

A standard bottle, holds about seven fifty milliliters.

A magnum holds two times that much, you know, two bottles of wine.

A methuselah holds eight bottles of wine.

So it’s a big bottle of wine.

What’s really interesting about this is you may have heard the word methuselah before referring to the guy in the Bible who lived for nine hundred sixty nine years.

He was really, really old when he died.

Okay.

Is that the reference to the volume just being an extraordinary high number more than usual?

Exactly, exactly.

What’s super interesting about this is that Methuselah or Methusalem is one of a whole list of, biblical terms, mostly kings in the Bible who are associated with these increasingly oversized wine bottles.

So you have Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Methuselah, Salimonazer, Balsasar.

And the really big one is Nebuchadnezzar, which is 20 bottles worth of That’s a tub of wine.

Yeah, that’s a tub of wine.

Yeah, there are lots of other ones as well.

But apparently, this tradition started as something of a joke because the first one, Jeroboam, which denotes a bottle, that’s the equivalent of four bottles of wine or champagne.

It’s a play on the name of the biblical king Jeroboam, who is described in the book of kings as a mighty man of valor who made Israel to sin.

How about that?

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Interesting.

Yeah.

That’s very interesting.

Yeah.

Well, you guys were awesome.

That’s it.

I appreciate you answering my question.

Like I said, I and I figured maybe I was spelling it wrong or something of that nature, but I believe it was a methuselom.

And it it wasn’t really in a lyric.

It was just more of a bit of a, you know, swag talk at the end of the song.

Gotcha.

Sure.

And you just let the song ride out with that in, like, everybody else ear etherped if you care.

You know?

And it works.

Alright.

Thanks for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Keep on joining us.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

Take care.

Bye.

I will take care, John.

Bye bye.

All right.

Well, whether the size of your question is piccolo sized or whether it’s Nebuchadnezzar’s size, which is much bigger, give us a call or text toll free.

877-929-9673.

Linda Young from Berea, Kentucky wrote us in response to our conversation about how to label the feeling of joy when your child meets a milestone like graduation where you’re so proud and excited, but at same time you’re sad because they’re leaving that stage of life.

And she says she calls it a sad abrasion.

A sad abrasion.

That’s just a good straightforward portmanteau.

Yeah.

Two words pressed together to make a new Yeah.

Celebrating you’re happy, you’re sad because your child’s growing up.

Well, press those numbers on your telephone.

You can call or text (877-929-9673.

Stay put.

We’ll be right back to Untangle the Web of English.

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 the guy who always turns wordplay into a contact sport, and he is dressed for it.

Our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

Hey, John.

Nice shinyards.

Got got my pads on.

This is gonna be it.

Those are some big shoulders, buddy.

Let’s get into it.

Yeah.

Alright.

You know, one vowel combination you see more often in Latin is AE, like in Caesar.

You know, it’s pronounced Caesar in classical Latin and Caesar in medieval or church Latin.

But of course we say Caesar, of course.

In print it’s known as a ligature or combination of two vowels called ash.

You’re familiar with that, right?

Sure.

Sure.

I’m gonna give you a clue to a word with A and E together, an English word.

This is or a loan word.

Pronounce it however you wish.

Are you ready?

Yes.

Okay, good.

A and E together, AE.

A dessert named for when it was historically served after church services, and we’re not sure why it’s spelled this way, it might be intended as a trademark.

Ice cream sundae.

Sundae is correct.

S u n d a e.

Shakespeare could have used this word for his late romance about magic, betrayal, and forgiveness.

It means a chaotic, turbulent situation or a whirlpool.

Maelstrom.

Maelstrom is right.

Well done.

Now let’s talk about people.

Like many people you might know who share a name with a biblical angel whose name means he who is like God.

Oh.

You probably know many of these.

Michael.

Michael is correct.

Oh, yeah.

M I c h a e l.

Or we could talk about a fictional character whose name means God will hear.

I’m sure he will hear because in the first line of the novel he says he wants you to call him Ismael.

Ismael.

Yes.

Let’s travel to Valencia, Spain.

I’m feeling kind of peckish for another AE word.

This loanword from Catalan means a wide flat pan, like where you might cook a dish of rice, saffron, sausage, chicken, shrimp.

Paella.

Paella.

Yes.

Now I’m hungry.

Now all of this quiz stuff hurts my head.

What I really need is exercise.

And as a child of the seventies, I’m a fan of what physical conditioning from the words for air and life.

Aerobics.

Aerobics.

Aerobics, a e r o b I c s.

Of course, I need music for my workout.

A fleeting dance craze in the 1960s inspired a song by the Maytals that gave a name to what Jamaican music genre?

Reggae.

Reggae.

The song was called Do the Reggae, r e g g a y, and they changed it to r e g g a e, Reggae.

Well done, guys.

Thanks, John.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank if you must have described me as a maestro, that would be fantastic.

There you go.

You’re a maelstrom, not a maestro.

See you next time.

Bye, John.

See you next time.

Thank you, guys.

Well, we have a lot of fun on this show with John, and we’d love to have some fun with you.

So call us to talk about any aspect of language.

(877-929-9673 is toll free in The US and Canada.

You can always email us wordswaywardradio dot org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, yes, I’m Karina and I’m calling from Maryville, Missouri.

Hey, Karina.

We’re glad to have you on the show.

What’s on your mind today?

So I am having a debate with my mom about if bowl as in a bowl of ice cream and bowl as in a a male cow sound the same.

And I think the more important part of this is that we think differently on it because she thinks that it’s they’re two different words, and I think they’re one word.

Oh.

However, we want to know why we hear the same sound differently.

Oh, this is so good.

Let’s here.

So we’re talking about two words.

One is B O W L, and the other one is B U L L.

And for you, they sound the same, but to your mom, they sound different.

Yeah.

Okay.

I got answers for you.

We have answers for you.

Karina, this is something that’s happening in several parts of the country.

It’s called a vowel shift, vowels just kind of get nudged in one direction.

And when one vowel moves, another vowel moves.

So you usually end up with pairs of words that start to sound like each other.

Sometimes they start to sound different, but the when the vowel merger happens, it’s known it’s because they’re start to sound alike.

So we also have PULL and POOL that sound alike.

Do those sound alike to you?

Yeah.

Pool and pool.

Funny I hear They sound similar, but not quite the same.

Not quite.

But, yeah, but they’re different.

And I hear the difference when you say it.

What about H U L L and H O L E?

Whole and whole.

I don’t hear them exactly the same.

Yeah.

Okay.

That’s good.

So there’s a couple other things.

So this vowel merger is happening in parts of the country.

It tends to be the younger generation because that’s where language change always happens, almost always happens.

It’s become a fixture of the dialect.

So this is a part of the country that includes Northeastern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, parts of Texas, parts of the Pacific Northwest, parts of Utah, and other places.

So these pockets around the country, not necessarily a contiguous blob on the map.

But the other thing that’s happening here is, and this sounded what you were most interested in, is the fact that you can’t hear the difference, but your mom can.

Yeah.

And so there’s something that linguists call categorical perception.

It’s where during early childhood, during your language acquisition, your brain maps the acoustic boundaries of these phonemes.

And now phonemes are basically the sound building blocks of spoken language.

They’re more than letters, kind of less than words.

And it’s just the essential building units of language.

And so because of this categorical perception, if you grow up as you did, Karina, in an environment where the vowels in B U L L and B O W L sound the same, they’re the same functional sound, then your brain learns to ignore slight differences.

You just won’t hear the acoustic variations.

Your mom, on the other hand, grew up in an environment where they were substantially different, and so her brain does hear the difference.

She does notice the acoustic variations.

That’s interesting.

Yeah.

And it’s so pronounced, this categorical reception, that it is incredibly common for people to not only hear the difference in between certain words or certain sounds, but they believe there’s no way they could possibly miss the difference.

And they get a little upset when you point it out.

They get really worked up about it.

You can even show them like the sound waveforms where you record them and turn them into a visual graph that shows the sound and show visually how they’re different.

And they will still stubbornly deny it.

You know, I’m thinking about how some people pronounce the word B O T H.

Oh, yeah.

We’ve talked about that.

Do you say b o t h with an l sound in it?

Like both, Karina?

I say both.

Okay.

You say both.

And your mom says both as well?

Yeah.

She says both.

Okay.

Yeah, because I know a lot of people who will say both, and they will swear that there’s no L in the sound that they’re making.

Yeah.

That’s interesting.

The L is particularly problematic.

For example, in the pairs that we talked about earlier, bowl and bowl, hole and pool, hole and hole, they all end in that L sound.

And that L at the end of the syllable is known as, what is known as a dark L.

So the physical act of pronouncing that dark L kind of requires the back of the tongue to raise toward your soft palate.

That movement of the tongue pulls the vowel that comes before the L in a new direction.

And that’s kind of how the vowel shift begins.

That’s very interesting.

This makes me think of, I learn Ukrainian, and there’s a little bit of a soft sign.

Mhmm.

And it has a little bit of an l in it.

Like, it’s like if I’m gonna say if I’m gonna say, like, the sound I, but I have a soft sign at the end, it’ll be l.

Yeah.

Perfect.

That is such a great example because Ukrainian and Polish both share phonemes that are very similar to what we’re talking about here.

You’ll find that same kind of soft L in in Polish as well.

Cool.

Yeah.

That’s so cool.

Karina, you you stumbled upon something that many linguists have researched and studied.

So that’s the cool thing is you’ve, like, kind of plugged into this large data set of information.

But also, when you notice these generational differences, you start to feel like, wait, it’s like being in a hot tub and feeling the water temperature heat up.

You’re like, I’m in the middle of something going on.

I’m in the middle of this kind of carnival of language.

Well, Corina, we hope you’ll call us again sometime.

Yeah.

And good luck with your Ukrainian studies.

I only know one word.

Vaselka.

It means rainbow.

That’s cool.

All right.

You take care, Karina.

You too.

All right.

Bye bye.

Bye.

All right.

Bye bye.

Well, maybe you’ve been having a conversation with a family member back and forth, back and forth, talking about some aspect of language we would love to talk with you about at (877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

My name is Bill, and I live in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Hello.

Well, great to talk with you, Bill.

What’s up?

Well, my wife and I were teachers on in an Aleut community, the Island Of Saint George in the Bering Sea.

And one of the words that people use there that I this has always been interesting to me is the word calidor.

Now, a calidor seems to be a arctic entryway or a mudroom.

You know, you come through one door, and then you come through the real front door.

And it’s not heated.

But I I always wondered where the word calidor came from.

All right.

So let’s talk about this room for a second, because this is kind of particular to cold climates.

It’s the place where you leave your dirty boots, your coat, your outside gear, and where you leave your muddy stuff so you don’t track all that back into the house.

Correct.

Yeah, I would call that a mudroom.

Yeah, mudroom.

In our Arctic entry, I heard you say that’s another term for it in Alaska, sometimes storm porch, or I think that’s rare, or even just porch.

But we’re talking about, so one door on the outside, you enter this room, you dump your stuff, and then you go into the inside.

In a cold climate, it keeps the house insulated so you’re not opening the main door right into the outdoors.

And I’m so glad that you asked about Calador.

And, you know, Martha, you and I talk about so much of language and there’s, we can get excited about stuff.

But the words that get you really excited usually are just this, stuff like Calador because it has traveled through so many languages.

To reach you, Bill, that word comes into the native Alaskan languages from Russian, from when the Russians controlled that part of Alaska.

Oh, yeah.

Everybody in St George Island had Russian names.

Absolutely.

And, and you will still hear these borrowed words peppered in the native languages and occasionally in English.

So Russia controlled what is now Alaska from around the seventeen thirties to the eighteen sixties.

But even before and after that, there were many Russian speakers in the region.

And one of the words they brought with them was this word that sounds like corridor, corridor, and it means corridor or hallway.

And, they used it to refer to this this hallway or, or corridor that you would enter before entering the house.

But they got it from Germans and the Germans got it from the French and the French got it from the Italians.

And it wouldn’t be in Italy.

It was a word for a particular kind of hallway or corridor and fortifications.

So originally it is literally the word corridor as we use it in English, but modified from all this travel that it’s done.

And so now you find it in a whole bunch of Alaskan languages, such as Alutik, Supiya, Alyutsa, Yupik, and some others.

It’s just kind of incredible.

And even, I love this, even you will sometimes hear it very anglicized as Kelly door, as if Kelly was the Irish name Kelly.

Of course, it’s Oh, maybe it’ll go back to Europe.

Yeah, exactly.

It might.

You never know, but it’s got a ton of spellings, as you might guess.

So C A L A D O R or K E L L I D O O R.

Most people want to turn that last level into the word door, D O O R, but it’s not actually, it’s a kind of an etymological fallacy that’s where it comes from.

Well, I’m glad to hear that because I’d never seen it in print.

I’ve only heard it.

Yeah.

You’ll find it in the Dictionary of Alaskan, language, and a whole bunch of people in Russia and in The United States and Canada who’ve studied the remnants of Russian language throughout that part of Canada, have spent a great deal of time kind of logging these lexicalisms and recording them so they’re not completely lost to history.

Wow.

Thanks.

And now it’s made it all the way to Fredericksburg.

That’s right.

And our show in English.

So from Italy and through, like, a half dozen languages to reach this spot.

Well, thank you.

That was fascinating.

I knew it was.

It seemed like it started like, oh, Bill doesn’t even know what he’s in for.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

My name is Lee, and I’m calling you from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Welcome to the show, Lee.

What’s on your mind?

Thank you.

I’m happy to be able to share something with you.

My mom and her sister were twins.

As a matter of fact, we kids call them heckle and jackal.

They were always up to something.

And of the twins always sound something to argue about.

One afternoon, my grandmother and I were sitting in the kitchen, and the twins were at it.

And they’re getting louder and louder and louder.

Mind you, it was probably over a lipstick.

My grandmother was a five foot sturdy Danish firebrand.

She she she booked no nonsense from anybody.

Mhmm.

As it continues as the argument continues, she gave me the eye.

Rams stood up, put her hands on her hips, marched herself into the living room.

Of course, I was her shadow.

She got up to the twins, and she looked at them and very sternly said, I’ve had it with you two.

You two are so loud.

You sound like fishwives.

Fishwives.

Fishwives.

Yes.

She used that expression.

I, that’s the first time I heard it.

But she did continue to use it throughout her life if anybody was getting loud.

There’s a fishwife.

Yeah.

Well, that expression has been around for many, many years.

It’s not just original to her.

To yell like a fishwife or scream like a fishwife or coral like a fishwife or scoop like a fishwife or swear like a fishwife.

All of those mean when you do that, you’re doing it loudly and harshly and often with colorful language.

I don’t know if that was the case in your No, that wouldn’t have been the case there.

But the word fishwife is really interesting because the wife in fishwife actually goes back to the old sense of weefe in old English, which means simply woman.

So a fishwife was a woman, married or not, who was selling fish.

And if you picture a crowded fish market hundreds of years ago, women are selling fish and they’re having to advertise these highly perishable items over the noise of their competitors, other fish sellers, then they’re gonna be loud and maybe trying to get you to come over with some coarse language or something like that.

And so fishwives working in the fish market acquired this stereotype for these booming voices and uninhibited language.

And the most famous fish market in London was the Billingsgate Fish Market.

It was, it was near the Tower Of London, and, Billingsgate itself has come to mean You’ll coarse sometimes see it, in books or hear people use the term Billingsgate to refer, to How about that?

I’ve never heard that.

The weef that you were talking about, we see that’s still an alewife or midwife.

It’s pretty fossilized when it appears.

That old meaning of just woman.

Wifman is the root of It’s woman.

Yeah.

Of the word woman.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So there you go.

How about that, Lee?

I think that’s great.

You take care of yourself and Thank you.

Be be good.

I am.

Yes.

You take care.

Was great speaking with you.

Bye bye.

Bye.

Take care.

(877-929-9673 is this magical toll free number that works in The US and Canada.

You can call or text it or email wordswaywardradio dot org.

More word love to come.

Stay tuned.

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

I’m Grandparent.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

I just read a remarkable book.

It’s the true story of a woman who encoded sensitive information during the Cold War – Inside notes of music.

The book is called Notes of How a Quartet of American Musicians outwitted the KGB.

The musicians belonged to the Klezmer conservatory conservatory band, and Klezmer, as you know, is the traditional music of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central And Eastern Europe.

And if the name Klezmer conservatory band rings a bell, it may be because you heard one of the group’s many appearances on the old Prairie Home Companion show.

In 1985, four young members of that band traveled to what was then the Soviet Union.

And officially, they were tourists, but unofficially, they were going to several cities specifically to meet refusenics.

Most, but not all of whom, were Jews who’d applied to leave the country and, as a result, were harassed or denied work or wrongfully imprisoned by Soviet authorities.

American activists had asked the band to smuggle information about refuseniks in and out of that country.

That’s when the band’s saxophone player, a woman named Meryl Goldberg, came up with an ingenious plan to create a secret code using musical notation.

So starting with the note A for the letter A, she assigned the remaining letters to notes rising through several octaves, and she used sharps and flats to expand the number of available symbols.

So eventually, she had this written score that looked for all the world like piano sheet music.

But encoded in that music was vital data.

It had the names of streets and landmarks and directions and information about contacting new refuseniks.

And she even gave each song a fake title, like the one for the refuseniks in Moscow was titled Mosquito, and the one called Rigoletto was all about somebody in Riga.

Now, if you actually tried to play that music, of course, you’d think, well, that song sounds pretty weird, but it got right past the KGB.

And it turns out that Goldberg is not the first person to hide letters in music because Johannes Brahms encoded the name of his true love in one piece of music, and Johann Sebastian Bach did something similar with the letters of his own name.

Now, might be wondering, like, how did he do that?

But the trick was that in German musical notation, the letter H stands for B natural, and the letter B stands for B flat.

So he created this famous musical cryptogram called the Bach motif.

It’s really fascinating to read about.

But part of this book read like a spy novel because it is this firsthand account of how frightening it is to be under constant surveillance in a police state and threatened and literally followed everywhere.

It was only for a few days, of course, in Goldberg’s case.

But the book itself is also a moving testament to the power of music shared across cultures, and it’s an inspiring reminder that even small acts of resistance can change lives.

I think you’d like it.

It’s a wonderful sounding book exactly down my alley.

The title and the author again?

The title is Notes of How a Quartet of American Musicians Outwitted the KGB, and it’s by Meryl Goldberg who co authored the book with Vince Houghton, who, as it happens, directs the National Cryptologic Museum at the government’s National Security Agency.

We’ll, of course, link to that on the website.

Martha and I love to receive your ideas about the next book we should read.

You can email them to wordswaywardradio dot org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Jill from Indianapolis.

Hey, Jill.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

What are you thinking about today?

When we move to Indianapolis not too long ago, when we go to restaurants, all the servers say the word we, and they’ll say, what would we like to order?

Are we ready for the check?

Would we like dessert?

And it drives us crazy because the server is not eating with us.

We’re the guests, and I don’t understand why they don’t use the pronoun you.

And Jill, where did you move from?

From Chicago.

Okay.

I’m so sorry.

We didn’t hear those types of greetings at all when we lived there.

Interesting.

Are you eating in a different kind of restaurant in Indianapolis?

You know, similar restaurants.

Of course, Chicago has great restaurants.

Mhmm.

But even, you know, the moderate restaurants in in Chicago, we did not get the wee, and it’s everywhere in Indianapolis.

That’s so interesting to me because it it is everywhere.

That that waiter using the waiters using we is pretty much all across North America in in English, and and versions of it even happen in French and Spanish.

So I’m just it’s so interesting that you didn’t remember it from Chicago.

Yeah.

It’s it’s it’s it’s highly unusual for us to hear that in general.

So and it’s interesting that you’re saying it’s all over North America because we eat, you know, we travel a lot.

And in certain towns, you hear it, and in other towns, you don’t.

Well, there’s there’s something called the recency illusion where when you when you notice something, then you keep noticing it.

And I’m wondering if now when you travel, if you will start to notice this is everywhere.

Because it’s been studied by linguists for decades, and reports of it come in from all across, again, English speaking North America.

But I wanted to get to the bottom of how you feel when a waiter uses we that in that way.

What are we ordering?

How are we doing?

Are we still working on that?

What what does that strike you as?

So the the waiter or the server is not eating with us.

They’re not ordering with us.

They’re not going to split the bill with us.

Because I look at the word we as inclusive of everyone in the party, including the person speaking.

Okay.

So you’re taking it literally then.

I I wonder if there’s any element of feeling like there’s there’s a a whiff of condescension, you know, the way that that some doctors will talk to an elderly patient or something like that.

I I don’t know because we even we’re starting to hear it in the veterinarian’s office.

They’re talking about the dog, and they’ll they’ll speak about the dog and says, are we having intestinal issues?

And it’s like, well, we’re not, but the dog is Well So there I just wanna kind of address the larger issues here.

So it’s it’s it’s easy to get annoyed by something that we’re where we’re not sure what’s happening.

And I just want to just say, although I don’t want to take away that it’s valid to be annoyed by it, it is 100% legitimate language, and it’s got a real role that’s happening here.

Commercial language is kind of its own thing, and these commercial exchanges require this weird interplay and balance of power and control.

And your waiter, by using we, is trying to negotiate that.

For example, using we kind of puts them on the same footing as you.

And actually, although it does feel like they’re inviting themselves to sit down and have some of your meal, what they’re trying to do is show solidarity and show that they’re that they’re they feel like you and that they’re part of your experience.

And it demonstrates just by that one pronoun use that they’re considering your thoughts.

They’re being empathetic.

But I do want to say Martha brought up a really important point, and part of what can rub us the wrong way about that we, although it may be well intended, and I think you have to assume on the part of the waiter that they mean well, is it does mimic the same language that we encounter in caretaking situations.

Caring for animals, caring for elders, caring for sick people, and…

Children, Yeah, using that we is a language that we use, and it can’t come off as condescending.

But I don’t think that’s how it’s met.

When it turns into a singsong, So how are we doing?

What are we having today?

Then it’s even worse.

And I think that is definitely on the the weight person.

When they fall into this, this rote recitation and kind of singsongy fashion, That means that they’re being careless with their language.

Jill, I would love to hear from other servers.

I know we have a lot of people in the restaurant business listening to the show, and I would be very curious to know what they think about, using We themselves.

Great.

Well, I’ll enjoy listening to what everyone else has to say.

So thank you for your time today.

Right.

Thank you, Jill.

Take care now.

Okay.

Thank you.

All righty.

You can leave us a message anytime.

(877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Mindy, and I’m calling from Crescent, Iowa.

Hello, Mindy from Crescent, Iowa.

What’s on your mind today, Mindy?

Well, I am calling about a term that I’ve only ever heard from family stories about a certain family member.

And the story gets a little spicy, so I should say beforehand that everybody here is in this story is gone from us, so I’m not spilling the tea on anybody.

But my mom had a great aunt Julia, And so I grew up around the Thanksgiving table hearing stories about Aunt Julia.

And she was described as fearsome to be to me by my mom.

She said she and her cousins would run when they saw her coming down the street.

And, she apparently once threw up my grandpa irritated her and she threw a bologna skin and that was kind of was one of the family stories.

But despite this disagreeableness, Angelie had a son named Herman.

And whenever Herman is brought up in family stories, he was always referred to as the Woods Colt, w o o d s c o l t, Woods Colt.

And so I always just thought it was kind of a funny term and every time, like I said, every time he was mentioned they’d say, Oh, the Woods Colt.

And so finally as an adult, I decided to Google it and found out that it’s basically a euphemism for a child born out of wedlock, you know, as they would have said back in the day.

And so when I asked my mom about it, she said, well, there was a man that they thought was Herman’s father, but they weren’t sure if he and Julia were married.

And so that whole thing is kind of murky.

But, anyway, was just such an interesting term that I’ve always been curious about the origins of it.

So that’s why I’m calling.

Well, a woods colt is a really interesting term.

It’s had some changes over the years.

The the use that you have is how it’s mostly used today, somebody who was born out of wedlock.

And the origin of it is just about horse breeding or animal husbandry, where, ordinarily, if you want to get the best animals out of your stock, you make sure that the right male and the right female of the animal breed.

So you get potentially good offspring.

But occasionally, animals will get loose and end up in the woods where they may have liaisons that you did And not so when the cult is born, you may not know the parentage, and it might blow your whole plans for a good breeding stock right out out of the water.

So that’s what a woods cult is.

This idea of these animals who were, mismanaged or managed themselves and have have different lineages than you would plan as as a farmer.

But, some other versions of this, Martha, is back as far as the eighteen thirties.

Let’s see catch colt and grass colt, c o l t, old field colt, bush colt, straight colt, Yeah.

Lot of euphemisms for those things.

Yeah, particularly in horse breeding country, but not only there.

Mindy, we’re really glad you called.

Thank you.

Take care.

Well, I’m glad, like I said, it’s been a term I’ve heard my whole life, so I’m glad to be able to put some context to it.

So thanks for your time.

Sure.

Bye bye.

Bye bye.

Well, what’s the word or phrase that’s been circulating in your family for decades?

And it’s finally time to ask about it.

(877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi.

Who’s this?

Grant.

Hi, Grant.

This is Marilyn from Boston.

Boston.

Hi, Marilyn.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

I can it.

For you?

So I grew up in Boston, over a town outside of Boston, Arlington.

And in the early eighties, I moved to New York City.

And then fast forward, thirty eight years later, I moved back here because of COVID.

I’m now retired, and I volunteer at a food pantry, wonderful food pantry.

And recently something happened, and I said, well, them’s the berries.

And the folks that heard me had never heard of it before.

And I said, really?

So I said, Well, the meaning is that that’s life or that’s how the cookie crumbles.

And I remember that we used to say that all those many years ago.

But I don’t ever remember saying it when I was in New York, or hearing anybody say that.

So anyway, so I asked my longtime friends that grew up here in my family of when they heard Thumbs and Berries, and everybody to a person knew it.

But the people in in my town, in Arlington, so the people that did not know it, even though they were local, they’d never heard of it before.

And I said, well, maybe it’s an Arlingtonian thing, which would be bizarro.

Marilyn, was it always a kind of expression that meant tough luck or that’s the way the cookie crumbles?

Or did you also sometimes mean something was very good or very bad or just kind of an extreme form?

Well, here, actually, I did speak to somebody and they said, Well, that’s a good thing.

That’s…

Them’s the berries.

That’s good.

But 90% of the people I asked here said, Well, that’s the way…

That’s life.

That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Gotcha.

How interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, the berries can mean either one of those extremes, actually, you know, whether it’s good or bad, you know?

It’s the berries.

Or if, for example, you’re at the end of your rope or you’re out of patience with somebody, you might say, Well, that’s the berries.

You know, that’s the very end of my patience.

You’re working my last nerve.

And I think Grant is asking about if you ever understood it any other way because I think more commonly, if you use the expression the berries, if somebody says, You’re the berries, they mean that you’re terrific or you’re the very best.

And this expression is strongly associated with, 1920s slang, you know, that era of the bee’s knees and the cat’s pajamas and the eel’s ankle and that kind of thing.

But there’s actually an earlier form that goes back to at least early nineteen hundreds of all to the berries, meaning thoroughly first rate and exceptionally attractive.

But there are lots of different kinds of, variations of that as well, right, Yeah.

The the all to the berries actually is descended from all to the good or all to the bad, which is from the early eighteen hundreds.

And that comes out of bookkeeping or finance.

Refers to the credits and the debits on a financial ledger or a balance sheet.

And so that all to the good and all to the bad kind of turned into a snow clone as we call them, where the the pattern and the, expression is kind of replaced with other things to kind of repeat the pattern.

And so you would get people in gambling or bookmaking, as they call it, who would write about losses, or winnings when betting or wagering all to the good or all to the bad.

And then by the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, other forms start to appear where that good and bad are replaced with things like peaches, all to the peaches, all to the pickles, all to the velvet, all to the mustard, all to the elegant.

But then, of course, the berries one for some reason was the one that lasted, and then the berries as a standalone expression, lasted where the other ones did not.

Well, I don’t know what is about my town, but maybe there’s a little negative part here.

Mostly everybody says, Well, down to the berries.

You know, that’s the way it goes.

Yeah, yeah.

At the very end of something.

Yeah.

The cookie’s already Yeah.

Yeah.

Get used to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Get used to it.

Marilyn, thank you so much for calling.

And also, I just want to say, good on you for volunteering at the food bank.

We appreciate that.

Yeah.

You are the berries, Marilyn.

I am the berries.

You guys are the berries.

I feel like The mustard, but okay.

Take care of yourself.

All right.

Take care.

Bye bye.

Bye bye.

Well, we hope you go all to the phone, or you all go the phone and call us, (877-929-9673.

A Way with Words senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

Tim Felten is our engineer and editor, and John Chaneski is our quiz master.

Go to waywordradio.org for all of our past episodes, podcast links, and ways to reach us.

If you have a language, thought, or question, the toll free line is always open in The US and Canada.

702-0673.

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

It’s supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Although we’re not a part of NPR, we thank NPR stations throughout The United States that carry the show.

And special thanks to our nonprofits volunteer board, Michael Bresslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Merrill Perlman, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Until next time, goodbye.

So long.