See A Man About A Horse

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. And Grant, I was looking at one of our favorite publications the other day, The Onion, the satirical newspaper, and I love this headline.

Did you see this? Underfunded schools forced to cut past tense from language programs.

Yes, very funny.

Yes, I loved it. The story started out with a dateline of Washington.

Faced with ongoing budget crises, underfunded schools nationwide are increasingly left with no option but to cut the past tense from their standard English and language arts programs.

You’ve got to love that. The past tense as history.

One of my favorite all-time Onion stories is a copy editor’s revenge takes form of unhyphenated word.

And it goes on to say, Bruce Huntoon said the hyphenated compound modifier is the most extreme step he has ever taken, adding that he drafted a resignation notice that he will hand in should his superiors notice the omission.

And, of course, obviously they’re not going to notice the missing hyphen.

Ooh, sabotage.

By the way, you’ll find a link to that story and the other ones that we’ve mentioned on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org.

And if you want to talk with us about any aspect of language, call us at 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sharon in Chula Vista.

Hiya, Sharon.

Hello, Sharon.

What are you doing?

Well, I am. I’m working, actually.

But I’m happy to be able to speak with you guys.

Oh, great. So you have the kind of job where you can slip off and make a phone call?

Absolutely.

Good.

She works at a phone bank.

Right.

Thank goodness, no.

No, okay.

Well, what’s up?

Well, I’ve got a question.

I was talking with a friend, and we both used the same common saying, and we found out we were saying it differently.

And you’ve probably heard, well, that will tide me over until dinner.

Like if you’re going to have a snack and it will tide you over, something will tide you over in some future time.

And it turns out she says, tie me over, as in T-I-E, and I say tied me over, T-I-D-E.

So she thinks it’s like, you know, when you tie a bow, two ends of a ribbon together, and they meet.

And I was thinking more like, I don’t know, the ocean tide comes in and out?

I really don’t know.

It was kind of a weird saying when I thought about it.

Is there money on the line?

A bed of some sort?

Dinner?

Car wash?

No, not too much money.

Maybe our friendship, but…

Well, that’s worth an unlimited amount, so we can’t put a price on that.

Maybe just the pride of being right.

Well, you’ll be happy when we tell you that it is tide me over.

Okay.

With a D, T-I-D-E.

Wow.

And it comes from sailing or seafaring, and it’s an expression that you might use when there’s an obstruction in the waterway, say a sandbar or something, some kind of barrier, and you wait for the tide to come in to lift your boat up over that obstruction.

Oh, okay.

It’s pretty straightforward.

Okay.

Sharon, is your friend a poetic person?

I mean, I’ve never heard that.

She is very poetic.

Oh, maybe that explains it.

Yes.

One of the things that happens in American English in particular is that we often swallow our Ds.

So I can really see how you might pick up that phrase, tide me over or tide you over, and the D would almost disappear.

So you might think it’s not there, and it might sound like tie me over or tie you over.

Right.

And my friend speaks flawless English, but initially she did come to this country, and English is officially her second language.

Where did she come from?

It’s now her first language, but I could see, you know, learning a language, how you could just hear tie me over instead of tied.

Oh, right.

What was her nationality?

Taiwanese.

Taiwanese, all right.

Oh, well, yeah, just tell her it’s Tide Me Over and shake her hand and make her buy you dinner.

All right.

Thank you so much.

All good then, Sharon?

You’re welcome.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Sharon.

Bye-bye.

It is a, it’s funny, it’s not really offensive, Tide Me Over.

It doesn’t really cause all the sirens to go off, does it?

No, it doesn’t.

No, not at all.

I like it, Tide Me Over.

Tide Me Over.

It sounds a little naughty.

I thought you were going to ask her if her friend was from Tide One.

Oh, no.

I’m allergic to those things.

I know.

Puns.

I know.

If you’ve got a pun-free missive, just send us an email to words@waywordradio.org, or you can call us at 1-877-929-9673, and don’t forget about our discussion forum at waywordradio.org.

Yeah, that’ll tide you over.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Well, perhaps.

Hello.

I guarantee you do.

What’s on your mind?

Who is this?

This is Bruce Mock.

What’s on your mind, Bruce?

Well, basically it’s this.

What gives with the noun commentator?

I mean, we’re in the football season now, and I understand that a sports commentator might provide colorful analysis of the plays or the players in the game, not do the play-by-play.

And we’re in the political season now, so are the political commentators or the pundits are providing constructive criticism, shall we say, of politicians?

But do any of these commentators actually commentate?

I don’t think so.

It’s just one of those words that just every time I hear it, I kind of cringe.

Me too, Bruce.

I mean, when I hear the word commentator, I think, well, isn’t that a product of Idaho?

Well, yeah.

Oh, that’s an old problem, actually.

That would be the common reaction I have and my daughters have.

And I’ve looked it up, of course, and it says, you know, they provide critical analysis or they’re a critic or an analyst.

Yeah.

But they never see the word commentate.

And that just, where did this word come from, or how did it become so widely accepted, at least in the media these days?

Well, you know, the word commentator is actually older than commentate.

Did you know that?

Commentate actually comes from commentator.

It’s kind of the reverse of what you’d expect.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, commentator goes all the way back to the 14th century, but back then it was more somebody who’s writing a commentary.

Right, Grant?

Yeah, like a biblical commentary.

And then in the 19th century, we get commentate shows up.

So they verbed the noun.

Okay.

But the thing about this, they actually are commentating, right?

I would think they would be commenting.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with you.

But Grant’s right.

I mean, this word has been around for a long time.

But I do think it sounds weird.

Why aren’t they just commenting?

I can understand that I hadn’t thought of the word commentary.

If it came from that or vice versa, perhaps I can see where it came into being.

It always struck me as a word that just didn’t belong, like it was a made-up word.

It sounds a little awkward.

It’s like orient and orientate.

Orientate sounds fine to the British, but most Americans kind of are repulsed by it.

Yeah, preventative.

It just sounds a little bit pretentious to me.

It sounds like something that Howard Cosell would have started, but it just sounds smart.

Pretentious is the way I feel about it.

What about, Bruce, what about aviate?

Does aviate bother you?

Aviate?

Yeah, the thing, what an aviator does.

Okay, that’s consistent with this, yeah.

And it’s consistent in another way, too, is that aviator in this case is also the older form, and aviate is a verb noun that came much later.

Here’s the thing, is your question is, is commentate okay?

And is there a better word for it?

I think commentate’s fine, because no matter what you see in your dictionary, and actually I think what you read from the dictionary is appropriate, they are commentating.

It’s a specific task that sportscasters and people who are observing a scene do when they describe it in their microphone to the audience in the world.

And they’re commentating.

I don’t know a better word for commenting.

Commenting is not quite right.

Commenting to me seems like a much subtler task.

It sounds more casual, doesn’t it?

Yeah, with a little less force and a little less of the kind of charisma and color that we get from our sportscasters.

Okay.

I guess I’ll just have to live with the word and get used to it.

Well, I don’t think it’s going away.

I do it the same way every time I hear it.

Well, it burns my latkes, too, I have to say.

But basically, I guess the short answer is that it’s formed from the word commentator, which has been around for a long time.

I hope if we didn’t help, we at least diverted you for a few minutes, Bruce.

You did. I appreciate that.

It’s nice to call you and get the straight story on this.

All right. Thank you, sir.

Does that mean I have to agree with it?

No, absolutely not.

I’ll send Martha after you, though, so she’s a tough one.

All right, take care of yourself.

Take care.

All right, bye, Bruce.

Bye-bye.

Wow.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Amit.

I’m calling from La Jolla.

Hi, Amit.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Doing just fine.

Thanks for taking my call.

I have one question. I’m originally from India, and I came here as a graduate student almost 20 years ago.

And when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, my first roommate was from Idaho.

And he used to say that I need to see a man above the horse.

And that’s when he would go to the restroom.

Okay.

And the first time he said that, you know, I looked out the window to see if there was really a man waiting with a horse outside.

There wasn’t, was there?

Because I knew his family dealt with horses.

They used to bring in horses from England, and then they would, you know, sell it to other people in the U.S.

So they were in the horse business.

Oh.

But, you know, I have since then wondered where did that expression come from?

Have you heard the variation of it, which is I’m going to see a man about a dog?

No. I mean, the only time I heard that expression was from my roommate, and he used to use horse all the time.

Well, the reason I ask is because the version that has people going to see a man about a dog is the older version, and the horse version is not only newer, much newer, but it’s much less common as well.

Okay.

The first appearance of it is in a play called The Flying Scud by an Irish writer.

We don’t know at this distance whether it meant that they were going to go to the bathroom or they were just leaving the room or they were just looking for any excuse to get away.

I see.

But we do know that by the time the American prohibition showed up in the 1920s, that is when alcohol was illegal to sell and to consume, that people were using it to mean to slip off to get a little hooch.

So then you’d go to the bathroom after that.

Okay.

And then we’d go to the bathroom after that.

And I guess after prohibition, there’s not really much use for that kind of expression.

And I think that’s when it became far more common for it to be pretty clear, in print anyway, that people meant that they were going to go use the facilities.

There was just another euphemism, a way of parting company without explicitly saying something crude about your having to go use the toilet or anything like that.

English is this wonderful repository of all kinds of euphemisms for that.

I like the one that ladies of the 19th century would say, I’m going to go pluck a rose.

Oh, I see.

Or Grant, one of my other favorites is, I’m going to go visit Miss White.

I see.

I never heard that one.

I tend to like the cruder ones.

What a surprise.

There’s one, I’m going to go drop some friends off at the lake, if that makes sense to you.

Yeah, I’ve heard dropping the kids off at the pool.

Right, exactly.

That’s another variation.

So there we go.

Dates from the mid-1800s.

The older version is about a dog, and these days it just means go to the bathroom.

Go to the bathroom.

All right.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate you taking my call.

You’re welcome.

Thank you for your call.

Okay.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, if you’re visiting Miss White or plucking a rose and think of a linguistic question, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Stay tuned for WordPuzzle and more of your calls on A Way with Words.

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

And I’m Grant Barrett, and we’re joined once again by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Hello, Greg.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

Hiya, Greg.

Nice glasses.

Thank you.

They’re still working.

They’re still working.

I’m not running into things anymore.

What I find disconcerting about the glasses is that now I can see the script in front of me, and I can see Grant across from me.

He’s like, before, yeah, it’s too much input.

It’s much better when I can only see one thing in focus.

My at all.

So what do you have on those pages?

Well, speaking of Grant, this week’s challenge is called Missing Links.

How is that for a transition?

Party whore.

Now, this is not about prehistoric beasts like the Tyrannosaurus or the Allosaurus, but about that contemporary beast, the Thesaurus.

Yes.

So imagine you’re looking up a word like imp in your handy Thesaurus, and you notice a word in the entry, and you turn to that word, and you notice mess around in that entry.

So the question is, what word is the missing link that got you from one to the other, from imp to mess around?

So it’s a word that has to mean both imp and mess around.

Exactly.

So an imp is what, a goblin or a gremlin or something like that?

Well, here’s a hint.

The missing link, as it would be, is a kind of animal.

Aha.

So to mess around.

It might also appear in an entry related to wrench, as in blank wrench.

Monkey?

Oh, monkey.

Monkey, yes.

Oh, okay.

And monkey is an imp is a monkey.

It’s kind of synonymous.

And to monkey with something is to mess around with it.

Right.

Sure.

Right.

So for each one of these, I’ll give you the first word and the last word.

And you have to tell me what word is the missing link between them.

And again, in true Darwinian fashion, the missing link will always be an animal.

Just one link, though.

Oh, nice.

Just one link.

Here’s a pair for you.

What’s the missing link between school and angle?

I’m thinking fish and anglers and schools of fish, but that doesn’t…

That’s perfectly good.

Oh, is that it?

That’s exactly what I was looking for.

Yeah, it’s a little…

School isn’t really synonymous with fish, although you can find it in the entry for fish.

Also, that was tricky, so angle was a verb.

Yeah.

Fake out.

Angel is a verb.

You guys know all the parts of speech, right?

Here’s another pair.

Deliver and stomach.

Deliver and stomach.

If you can stomach something, you can take it.

And if you deliver something, you can take it somewhere.

And the animal is the take, of course.

I just saw one of those.

I’m picking up loud.

Hello.

So what’s another synonym for stomaching something in that sense?

Tolerating.

No.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

That’s a type of fish in the Amazon.

The tolerated.

I don’t think I can blank another minute of this.

Endure might be another word.

Endure.

It’s going to be a common one probably.

Right.

They’re all the same.

Come on, Grant.

Animal found in the Pacific Northwest.

Badger.

Otter.

Grizzly.

Bear.

I don’t think I can bear.

Salmon.

Bear.

Oh, bear.

Oh, bear.

To bear a child is to deliver a child.

Okay, okay.

To stomach something is to bear it.

I see.

Bear.

All right.

Okay.

All right, here’s another pair for you.

Coward.

Now, Grant’s already noticing that it starts with the three letters of cow, but that’s a different puzzle.

Okay.

Coward.

Actually, it ends with the four letters of war.

There we go.

Coward and showdown.

Ooh.

A little bit of a tricky one.

The coward is pretty straightforward, but showdown is a tricky link.

Coward.

I’d work with coward as your starting point.

Would you work with coward?

Okay.

A coward is someone who’s a yellow-bellied.

How about a yellow-bellied sapsucker?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

And we’ll play a game of yellow-bellied sapsucker.

No, no, no.

Well, a coward is a chicken, but what does that have to do with showdowns?

Oh, to play chicken.

To play chicken is a kind of showdown.

Oh, right.

The game is a kind of showdown between two people.

Yeah.

There we go.

Good teamwork there, Grant.

It’s in a James Dean movie.

Isn’t there some scene where they drive right at each other in the car?

Yeah.

Oh.

All right.

Here’s another pair for you.

Highway and weapon.

Highway and weapon, and it’s related by an animal.

Well, a weapon, that’s an animal, is a dart?

Oh, there are all kinds of animal names for weapons.

There’s weapons, too.

Lane, road, street, thoroughfare, parkway, freeway.

Bazooka.

Home pass, underpass.

There are weapons.

There are weapons.

There are all kinds of…

Lance, dart, arrow, lance.

Bazooka.

You said bazooka.

Boy, little boy.

Atomic bomb.

Why am I blanking on this?

I know this.

Grant is becoming a thesaurus right here.

He’s listed every word.

I’m just reading the entry for weapons.

Is it the full moon again?

If you drive in New Jersey, you drive on the New Jersey park.

There you go.

Oh, man.

I was thinking all these sophisticated weapons that cost billions and have buttons to push.

You’re thinking of like a pole.

With a sharp end.

A pointed stick, really, as far as sophisticated as I go.

But think, when you were in the schoolyard getting beaten up for knowing too many words, if you’d had a pointed stick, it would have helped.

That’s right.

I had a pointed stick.

I had a bigger pointed stick.

They had a bazooka, and it just didn’t work out.

Well, hey, Greg, this was much better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Gosh, thanks.

No, really.

Well, thanks, Greg.

That was loads of fun.

And if you’d like to have some fun with us on the air, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can poke the bear with a sharp stick by sending us an email to wordswaywardradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Simone from La Mesa.

Simone, welcome.

Hi, Simone.

Hi.

What’s going on?

I have a question about dinner and supper.

Oh, I’m not sure what time it’s going to be.

Well, fried chicken, spinach, corn on the cob, cornbread.

How does that sound?

It sounds good.

All right.

What’s your question about those words?

Okay.

I was reading Anna Green Gables, and it says breakfast, dinner, and supper were very silent meals.

Breakfast, dinner, and supper were very silent meals.

And did that sound funny to you?

Yeah, it did.

Because when I think of supper and dinner, I think of them like just maybe supper as a synonym for dinner.

So I was wondering why they use dinner maybe as lunch.

That’s a very good question.

And I think you’ll find that a lot of people will have that question.

How old are you, Simone?

I’m 12.

I think after this phone call, you begin to understand what most of us get, which is that dinner is often understood in parts of the country to mean lunch, the midday meal.

And it’s kind of interchangeable.

There’s always confusion about this.

And it does cause some confusion, but I think the way that she laid it out there in Anne of Green Gables, it’s pretty clear that she didn’t mean that they were having the evening meal twice, right?

Mm—

And, Simone, who is the author of that book?

The author is L.M. Montgomery.

Mm—Lucy Maud Montgomery.

And she was a Canadian.

So, Grant, I wonder if there’s a Canadian difference there as well.

That’s a good question.

I have a couple Canadian dictionaries, but I don’t know that they have any notes at all on the prevalent use of dinner or supper.

I don’t really know.

But I do know that even in the United Kingdom, in Britain, particularly in the South, they’re known to be swapped around so that dinner sometimes applies to the lunchtime meal.

So, Simone, what do you think of the book so far?

It’s a really good book.

Yeah?

What do you like about it, Simone?

I like that Anne has a really big imagination and she talks a lot.

She sounds like a fun character.

She sounds like your co-host. Come on.

Yeah, she does sound like Martha, doesn’t she?

Well, did we help you or did I just make a mess of it, Simone?

Oh, no, that was very helpful.

Yeah.

All right. Well, I’m glad to hear it. Some people use dinner to mean lunch.

Okay. Thank you.

All right.

You’re welcome. Enjoy the book and good luck with your studies.

Are you going to invite us over for supper?

I’d have to ask my dad on that one.

Okay.

Is he a good cook?

Martha, you’re so bold.

Wear your southern manners.

You don’t invite yourself to someone’s house.

Hey, she said her dad was a good cook.

We’ll be there.

Okay.

All right.

Thanks a lot for calling, Simone.

Okay.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

All right.

If you’ve got a question about something you’re reading, a word that stumps you, or something that’s confusing, Martha and Grant can help you out.

The number to call is 1-877-WAYWORD.

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

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

And if you have a dinner invitation for us, we’ll bring our own flatware.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Nancy.

Hiya, Nancy.

Hello, Nancy. Where are you calling from?

San Diego.

How are things in San Diego? Oh, wait, I know that.

Well, how are you, Nancy?

What’s on your mind today, Nancy?

Well, I’m good, but I have a question about a word.

All right.

I work in a situation where I authorize treatment for people, and we had a question come up of what does biweekly mean?

Does it mean twice a week or every other week?

Oh.

Well, that would be really important in your line of work, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It makes a difference between eight times a month versus twice a month.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So did you guys come to any conclusions?

Well, we looked it up on the Internet, and we found both descriptions of the word.

I did find that semi is what they said would be twice weekly.

So semi-weekly as opposed to bi-weekly.

But I’ve seen the definition both ways, where biweekly could be twice a week or twice a month.

Yeah.

But semiweekly is open to misinterpretation as well, isn’t it?

Do you think?

Probably.

How so?

Well, because it doesn’t clearly say twice a week.

Semiweekly could be three times a week.

What, you’d sort of go to treatment?

Right.

Well, semiweekly means not weekly.

So something less than weekly, which could be twice a week or three times a week or even four times a week.

Yeah. Nancy, I think you have demonstrated by calling exactly the reasoning behind what I’m going to say, which is that I’m not one for banning words and I’m all about free speech and all that.

But the words biweekly and bimonthly need to be banned.

They need to be taken out to the trash and burned.

We need to just remove them from the language because they’re not useful.

The only place where those two words are fixed in meaning is in the publishing world.

You know, if you get a bi-monthly magazine at home, that means you get it once every two months.

And a bi-weekly magazine is one that you get every two weeks.

But other than that, Nancy, I say just, you know, put them in one of those hazardous materials things and get rid of them because they are just useless.

I would agree.

You’re going to have to pretty much stick to twice a week and twice a month.

What’s the best alternative to mean every two weeks, every other week?

How about every two weeks?

Every two weeks or every other week.

Yeah, or twice a month.

These are words that are just especially in your field, Nancy, but I think just in general.

Otherwise, you’re going to miss your biweekly meeting because you don’t know when to go.

Right.

Exactly.

It’s very frustrating.

It would be easier if people would just say what they mean.

Right on.

Well, you don’t have any argument here.

Okay.

All right, Nancy, thanks for your call.

Thank you.

Thanks, Nancy.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Get it?

Bye?

Oh.

All right.

Har-har.

Har-har.

If you’ve got a question about language, by all means, email us, words@waywordradio.org, or you can talk about it on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org, or call us, 1-877-929-WORD.

Grant, we were talking earlier about the goofy story in The Onion headlined,

Underfunded schools forced to cut past tense from language programs.

There was another headline there that I loved. It went,

The word you use to denote long sandwiches in your region is ridiculous.

Gotta love that.

That’s a good one.

One of my favorites, from The Onion, of course, is,

Someday I will copy edit the great American novel.

And it’s a story about a nobody copy editor who dreams of being somebody important.

If you’re chewing on a question about language, why not choose to pick up the phone and give us a call.

Call the numbers 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can join us on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org.

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

Join us on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is C.J. Walker in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hiya.

Well, hello, C.J., what’s going on?

Not a lot.

We’re just trying to keep warm here.

And in doing that, my good friend, Regina Zupin,

Noticed a headline in the Indianapolis Star editorial page

That said,

Voters may tell legislators that ethics matter.

And she said,

Does that sound right to you?

And I looked, and we decided we both prefer ethics matters,

That ethics should be treated like a singular,

That it’s kind of a singular concept,

Not a collection of ethics, this ethic and that ethic and that ethic,

And that it would require a singular verb.

What do you think?

Ooh.

That’s a toughie.

Yeah, that is a toughie.

And I wish I could ask my dad, who was a professor of ethics for 25 years,

Couple of hours south from you in Louisville University of Louisville or Spalding or he was

At the seminary there in Louisville the Baptist seminary there oh yeah and I wish I could yeah I

Wish I could ask him but unfortunately he’s no longer around available no no he’s not taking any

Calls well I bet he would think of ethics as a singular kind of a concept not a collection of

This ethic and that ethic.

It’s like politics or sports.

Those are like singular concepts.

Even though they have an S on the end, they’re not plurals.

Yeah, ethics is like politics in that politics tends to take a singular verb

When you’re talking about the art and science of governing.

And same for ethics if you’re talking about the general nature of morals

And moral choices.

Exactly.

H.W. Fowler said ethics is the science of morals and morals are the practice of ethics.

But it does get a little bit complicated, C.J., when you talk about individual rules or standards, like somebody has a work ethic that’s admirable or an ethic that a legislator has an ethic that prevents him from taking bribes or something like that.

Most of the style guides you see will say you can go either way if you’re not talking about ethics in general, though.

To me, I’m with you in thinking that I would say ethics matters, but, you know, it really depends on the meaning there.

Right.

I would say ethics in general.

Well, I’m trying to think if it were a bumper sticker, you know.

Yeah.

Well, if the larger article talked about specific cases where ethics had been violated,

And they had case one, case two, and these were all represented different ideas of breaking the law

Or doing something illicit, then maybe you do have a case there for ethics as a plural.

Of this ethic and that ethic.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think most of the style guides will tell you it can go either way,

So that’s probably why the Indianapolis paper left off the S there.

They made it a plural verb.

And it didn’t sound right to us.

We didn’t think of consulting any style guides.

We said we just wanted to ask the way with words.

Here we are.

Hello.

Well, we appreciate your thinking of us and calling us while you’re reading the paper and discussing that.

You and Regina?

Regina, yeah.

Awesome.

All right.

Well, thank you for your call, CJ.

Thank you.

It’s terrific to hear from you.

Great to hear from you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we will answer questions about all matters linguistic.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Get ready for a slang puzzle and more of your calls right here on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. And it’s time for Slang This, our weekly puzzle about slang.

Today’s contestant is Zach Giolongo from Providence, Rhode Island. Welcome, Zach.

Hi.

How are you doing?

Hello, Zach.

Good. How are you guys?

Doing fine.

Great. What do you do in Providence?

Well, I work at an independent school, actually, across the border in Massachusetts, where I run their after-school programs.

And then my night job is I work in a lot of comic book industry stuff.

Oh, yeah. Are you the guy who writes POW and Biff and Zap and that kind of thing, or what?

Sort of.

I do a lot of lettering for Japanese comics, so a lot of it turns into having to redo sound effects and things like that for North America.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh, interesting.

That’s pretty cool.

Do you have a slang word for us today?

Well, being originally from the Boston area, I’m always really interested in the word wicked, but not as an adjective.

Like, you know, that’s wicked or, you know, the wind is wicked.

But when you use it as, you know, you guys are wicked good at words.

-huh.

So it was an adverb.

Yeah.

That’s kind of the East Coast equivalent of California’s hella.

Yeah, I think so.

It just seems so synonymous with the region to me.

Wicked good.

Yeah, those socks.

How about those socks?

Yeah, they did wicked good.

They did wicked good.

Or wicked well, I guess.

Well, Zach, we’re going to move on to your next challenge.

Grant’s going to present you a slang term, and then he’s going to give you three possible examples of how it might be used in a sentence.

Now, Zach, only one of those is real, and the other two are just something that he made up.

So your task will be to choose which one really is the slang term.

You got it?

I got it.

Okay, Grant.

All right, here we go.

And if you need help, just ask Martha.

She’ll be standing by going, what?

I’ll be going, pow, biff.

Zap!

Hi-ya!

All right, here we go.

Zach, the first phrase is to go shucks.

That’s three words, T-O-G-O-S-H-U-C-K-S.

And the first clue is she was all, let’s look at the paint ship book.

Eggshell this, burnt sienna that, blah, blah, blah.

If I hear one more word about wallpaper or paint, I’ll go shucks and end up in the loony bin.

All right.

Second clue.

Ooh, it’s a bit spendy, isn’t it?

But Father will surely love it.

Maybe we can go shucks on it.

You pay half, I’ll pay half.

And then the third clue.

The factory had a rule that everybody had to go shucks, which was another way of saying they wore the company’s dark blue coveralls with no pockets.

That prevented them from stealing.

So those are your three clues, Zach.

Is to go shucks, does it mean to go crazy?

Does it mean to split the cost of something between two or more people, or does it mean to wear an outfit without pockets?

Oh, let’s see.

I was hoping there would be something, you know, like, oh, gee shucks, something like that.

I’m inclined to say the one about wearing an outfit.

The third one.

I think that.

The third one, yes.

Because I’m thinking like shucking corn, some sort of an outer covering.

Like an employee shucks pencils or something from the supply bin.

Yeah.

It makes sense to me, Grant.

Unfortunately, it is actually the second one to go shucks.

No, yeah, it’s to go Dutch or to split the cost, to share the cost of something with somebody else.

And there’s a variant, which is to go shags.

And shags, apparently, in English dialect, means a share.

So to go shags, to go shares with somebody.

Let’s try another one.

We’ve got one more for you.

The next word is hat catcher.

That’s H-A-T hyphen C-A-T-C-H-E-R, hat catcher.

The first clue is, the president always travels with a hat catcher in his entourage.

At the sound of gunfire, this fellow is supposed to hug the president’s head to protect it.

B. The church stopped holding dances because of the hat catchers.

We’d go out to the cloakroom for our things afterward, and everything would be gone.

Coats, boots, umbrellas, hats, you name it.

And then C. When I was a kid, I was a real hat catcher.

I idolized the firemen. I’d hang around the fire station helping to clean the trucks, wash the sidewalks, anything.

Because I thought they were the toughest, coolest people on earth.

So, Zach, is a hat catcher A. A secret service agent specifically employed to shield the president’s head?

B, a person who steals items left in a cloakroom or a coat check area,

Or is Hatcatcher C, a fan of firemen?

I don’t think it’s A, which whenever I hear someone say that,

It usually means that it’s A.

I’m going to go with B at an event or a party, right?

Someone who collects everything?

Well, it’s the person who steals the stuff from the cloakroom.

That’s the clue, anyway.

The person who steals items are left in a cloakroom or coat check area.

Oh, I see.

Let me rethink this then.

I’m going to say C.

That’s exactly right.

That is indeed what a hat catcher is.

Oh, wow.

I guess the idea is that if you can just think about this hallmark moment

And this little glowing commercial featuring Americana,

And the truck pulls in, and the little boy is standing there looking in awe at his idols,

And the fireman throws down his hat at something like that.

Right.

It’s nicely done, Zach.

I gave you some toughies today, but I think you bore up under the pressure very well.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Nicely done, Zach.

And, hey, for playing the game today, we’re going to send you a copy of Grant’s book.

It’s called The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang.

Cool.

I’m excited.

All right.

Maybe you can illustrate it, you know, put little…

Hey, give me a call.

I can do that.

All right.

Pow, snap, bang.

Cool.

Word. All right. Thanks, Zach. Thank you. And if you’d like to play our slang game on the air,

Give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Frank Brist of Sioux Falls, South Dakota,

Colin. What’s your question, Frank? Okay, me and some of the other students at school,

We were having a discussion about the longest word in the English language,

And somebody mentioned anti-disestablishmentarianism.

And it’s a complicated word,

And I really didn’t know how to spell it or anything to actually look it up.

And I know I’ve heard it somewhere.

I think I heard it in high school somewhere.

One of my teachers used it.

But I don’t know what is the longest word.

Is that word a word?

Anti-disestablishmentarianism?

Yes, that’s 28 letters long.

Usually it’s one of those long stunt words, you know, sort of a Guinness Book of World Records word,

Sort of like, you know, how they get together and build the world’s longest submarine sandwich.

But who cares?

It’s not really that useful.

What you’re saying is that you’re saying that this word is only generally used to talk about the word being really long, right?

Outside of that conversation, it’s not much used at all.

Well, Frank, to answer your question, that it is actually a word more or less.

There was a movement in the late 19th century to disestablish the Church of England as an organ of the state.

There was definitely the word disestablishment floating around then, and people kind of played with it and added little parts onto it.

And we ended up with anti-disestablishmentarianism.

But as both of you have sort of suggested, it’s kind of one of those words that you learn in junior high or high school and then start using to show off.

But it’s not the longest word in the English language, certainly not the longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary.

I don’t know if in your medical studies, Frank, you’ve run into pseudo-pseudo-hypoparathyroidism.

Oh, yes.

You have?

Yes, I have.

Now that you mention it, yeah, I remember one of the doctors talking about it.

Yeah, and I guess I take it, Frank, I mean, maybe you can tell us what pseudo-pseudo-hypoparathyroidism is.

I cannot tell you. I think I was not paying attention that day.

Now, I know when I worked at Oxford University Press, we got this question a lot,

And I know that the Oxford dictionaries include a still longer word, and it’s 45 letters.

Oh, yeah.

This is also a medical one.

It’s supposedly a lung disease.

But, again, it’s probably more of a stunt word than it is a word that you’re actually ever going to put to use.

And it’s pneumono-ultramicroscopic silicovalconiosis.

I believe that’s how you say it.

Volcanoconiosis.

Pneumono-ultramicroscopic silicovalcanoconiosis.

Yeah, and that’s 45 letters.

45 letters.

That’s right.

And both of you, I mean, since we have a medical expert here, I mean, I gather it’s a kind of lung disease, right?

Yeah.

But the thing is, you know, I remember talking to my colleagues about this.

It was a word created to be long.

That’s why it was created, not because it was going to be put to use.

But you know what defeats all of this?

It’s the chemical formulas and the protein names.

And those can be as long as a chemical formula.

I mean, they’re very complex where each molecule could be named.

Now, maybe they’re not technically words so much as they’re formulas,

But there’s one protein name that has 180,000 characters in it.

You know, actually, Frank, what we should do is put some of these on our website,

Waywordradio.org, so that you can take a study break and go have a look at them.

Yep. It’ll make you feel better about your neurology homework.

Oh, yeah.

All right. Thank you so much for your call, Frank.

Yep. Thank you.

All right, Frank.

Good luck with your studies.

I will.

Yeah.

All right. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Call us, 1-877-929-9673, or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org,

And we will put a link to a lot of cool words like that on our website.

So do drop by.

Do drop in.

Grant, remember a few weeks ago we had a caller who wanted to know

Whether commas should go inside or outside the quotation marks.

Yeah, I remember that.

Something about how in American English, commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks?

Right, because they’re little bitty and don’t have any body fat, and they need the warm embrace of that quotation mark.

Oh, that’s right. I mocked you for that, didn’t I?

I believe you did, as I recall.

But I wasn’t really clear about what to do about exclamation marks and question marks,

And not surprisingly, many of you wrote to point that out.

So to clarify, commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks, as I said.

But in the case of exclamation marks and question marks, you put them inside the quotation marks if they’re part of the quotation and outside of the quotation marks if they’re not.

So, for example, the exclamation mark goes inside the quotation marks if you have a sentence like,

Listen up! He yelled.

The exclamation part, of course, is part of what’s being quoted there.

Listen up! He yelled.

On the other hand, in the following sentence,

I wonder who said a fool and his money are soon elected.

The question mark there isn’t part of the quotation, so it goes on the outside.

So to repeat, it goes, I wonder who said, comma, quote, a fool and his money are soon elected, close quote, question mark.

Got it.

And we should also mention that we’re talking about punctuation in prose, not punctuation in computer code, as some listeners wrote in about.

I do a bit of PHP and Perl coding myself, so I know what you’re talking about.

There are specific rules in programming that will trump any kind of prose style that we’re talking about here.

All right?

So if you’re quoting computer code in a prose document, my advice is to set the code off by line breaks rather than with punctuation.

For all you computer programmers out there.

And, hey, Grant, by the way, do you know who said a fool and his money are soon elected?

Will Rogers.

How did you know?

Did you Google that already?

Are you that fast?

I have my brain link working now.

You know, Wi-Fi directly implanted into the frontal lobe.

Oh, right, the implant.

Good, good.

Congratulations. I’m hoping I get one of those soon.

If you have a clarification or quirky question to share, call us.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, I’m Cheryl from Indianapolis.

Hiya, Cheryl.

Hello, Cheryl.

Hi.

Welcome.

Thank you.

I’m curious about the origins of a word, and the word is charney. It’s a word that we used where I grew up in southwestern West Virginia. And we used it to indicate if something was very dirty and needed cleaning, such as, oh, my house is charny, and it would be in disarray and a big mess. And so I was just curious if you had ever heard of that word or knew of the origins.

Wow, I love that word. There’s a word often pronounced kjarn or kjarny. Did you ever hear that pronunciation?

No.

What about carin?

I’m familiar with the word carrion.

Right. Like a dead animal. Is that kind of what you’re referring to?

It is. And that’s where all the words that I said come from. And you’ll find a wide variety of dialect pronunciations of this word, a good dozen at least, throughout rural America, especially in the south and what they call is the South Midlands, which is basically around the Ohio River Valley down to the northern edge of the true south. And they all do come from the word carrion. And they don’t necessarily mean dead animal flesh.

Yeah, that’s pretty gross. They mean dirty or filthy. But my theory then is that your word charny perhaps is just another dialect variation of that same exact word. One of them is K-Y-A-R-N-Y, charny. And it’s so close to what you said.

Oh, yeah, that sounds reasonable. Cheryl, I’m curious about your use of it. Would you use it to describe like a filthy sink or would it be all your clothes all over the room? How do you use?

More of something actually dirty.

Okay. You know, something that’s actually dirty. I guess if your whole house was dirty and messed up and things were lying about, that would also apply. But usually if something’s like really dirty. And I’ve always described it when I used it in conversation and people didn’t understand what I was talking about or how to pronounce it. If you have the word yarn, like the thread, and replace the Y with a C and then put the EY on the end, that would be charny.

Charny. Well, there’s something about that Y sound that’s just fabulous, isn’t it? I mean, you can just see the person sort of flicking their hands to get it off of them metaphorically. Charny. Charny. Don’t you think?

Yeah. I mean, the nasalness of it is kind of indicative of something?

Yeah.

All right. Yeah, you know, or Grant, you would appreciate it. You know, this diaper’s charney.

Okay, well, thank you very much.

All right.

You’re welcome. Thank you for calling us.

-huh.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Charney. I love it. Charney. Charney. If you’ve got a regional word or a colloquialism or something they said back at the old homestead, we’d love to hear about it. The number is 1-877-929-9673. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, do you remember a couple of shows ago we had a call about the origin of the term G-job?

Sure, that was Titus, and he worked on the crew of Fox 24, right?

Yeah, he wanted to know about the use of the term G-job, meaning a job that nobody wants to do. I never heard the term, and I don’t think you had either, Martha. And so we threw the call out to our listeners, and boy, did they ever respond.

No kidding. Most of you wrote to say that it’s a joking reference to the expression government job. Pete from Ramona, California, emailed to say that he’s heard the term G-job for decades in the aerospace industry. And there it’s used to describe personal work done on company time, like making 10 copies of the Little League schedule on the work copier. And then Vicki and Larry Gilmore emailed us to say that they think G-job was also used in that same industry in a derogatory sense, as in the phrase, good enough for government work, that is work that’s barely good enough to pass.

You know, that’s not quite how Titus described it, though, is it?

No, no. He said it was a job that nobody wanted. I don’t doubt that there’s more than one G-job, but I’m wondering if maybe there isn’t still a more specific use of it in Hollywood. And any one of our listeners who works in Hollywood wants to email us or call us and let us know, I’d be happy to take that call and find out.

Yeah, so Brad and Angelina, give us another call and let us know what you think.

Yeah, we’ll see you in Paris next week. Thanks. You can find more about that discussion on our website. That’s waywordradio.org. Or if you’d like to ask us a question on the air, fire away. The number’s 1-877-929-9673. Or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Well, that’s our show for this week. But you can always call us with your questions about language. The number’s 1-877-929-9673. Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org. Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine. Tim Felten is our technical director and editor. We’ve had production assistance from Robert Fung and Dana Polakowski. A Way with Words is produced at Studio West in San Diego. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett, inviting you to join us next time right here on A Way with Words.

Let’s call the whole thing off. But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part. And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart. So if you go for oysters and I go for oysters, I’ll order oysters.