Slang Quiz with Ken Jennings

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And who better to play the A Way with Words slang game than our contestant today?

I mean, really, this guy’s been dubbed the Michael Jordan of trivia, the Seabiscuit of geekdom.

And in 2004, his six-month run on the TV quiz show Jeopardy set all kinds of records.

He continues his puzzling today on the Game Show Network.

Ken Jennings, welcome to A Way with Words.

Thanks for having me.

It’s great to have you here.

Ken, you’re the most celebrated champion that Jeopardy! has ever had,

But what makes you think you’re going to do well on the A Way with Words slang quiz?

Frankly, I think I will do terribly. I do this kind of thing to stay humble.

Excellent, excellent.

Well, Ken, I’d like you to meet Grant. He’s a real humble guy.

Oh, sure, yeah. Sure I am. I’m very humble.

Ken, nice to meet you, buddy.

Hi, Grant.

And before we get started, Ken, I always have to ask,

Do you have a favorite slang term you’d like to share with us?

I had to think a lot about this.

My least favorite slang term is cougar.

But my favorite took a lot more work.

But I finally realized what I really like is like diner waitress slang of the 1930s.

Nice.

So like saying Adam and Eve on a raft instead of poached eggs on toast or something.

Like that is my kind of slang.

Very nice.

Lots of color, right?

Well, Ken, let’s see how you do on our slang quiz.

What I’m going to do is give you a clue that uses an unusual word or expression.

And then I’ll give you three possible meanings for that word.

Only one of them, of course, is correct.

And not that you’ll need help, but if you do, Martha will be standing by,

And the two of you can try to puzzle it through, all right?

I’m really humble, too.

I will probably need the help. That sounds great.

Okay, here we go.

I got it.

A few years ago, William Buckley wrote in The New York Sun that

The Brumagem moral fanfare imposed on the controversy

Reminds one of the desperation with which losers will attempt to cope with disappointment at the polls.

What does Brumagem mean?

B-R-U-M-M-A-G-E-M.

And again, that sentence is,

The Brumagem moral fanfare.

Is it A, rustic country or rural?

Is it B, worthless, fake or sham?

Or is it C, repellent, sickening or repulsive?

Brumagem is the word.

B-R-U-M-M-A-G-E-M.

See, this is tough.

I mean, I like that I don’t have to answer in the form of a question,

But I don’t like that I’ve never heard this word before.

Oh, my gosh.

Let me see.

Brummagem.

I like the sound of it.

I’m starting to think it has rummage in the middle, you know?

Like, it has rummage sort of hidden in it.

Sure it does.

It also has mage hidden in the middle,

So give all your 20-sided dice and guess.

But just based on the sound of it,

Sort of the rummagey sound of it,

I’m sort of leaning B here.

What was that, a fake or junkie?

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, worthless, fake, or a sham.

Should I not take a guess, or should I guess, do you think?

Guessing is totally fine.

We’re not Sherlock Holmes.

We won’t chastise you for guessing.

I am no expert on your game.

Okay, I will guess B.

How about that?

Yeah, it’s great.

It’s exactly right.

Brummagem means worthless, fictitious, sham.

It’s probably a corruption of Birmingham, as in England,

Where it is said that many cheap trinkets and jewelry used to be made.

So Brummagem, it’s an interesting word.

And you’ll still find Brummagem used today in newspapers kind of as a joking way to refer to Birmingham and the people who live there.

I am going to start using Brummagem on a daily basis.

It’s a good one.

To work it into my vocabulary.

All right, try this one.

This one you may already know, but we’ll see.

We’ll see.

18th century farmer Randall Burroughs, who died in 1799, includes this passage about men he hired to work his fields.

He wrote,

They seem to make slow progress. At night they refused to eat the pluck of the pig, alleging it did not agree with them.

This I considered an idle excuse and resolved to consider it an unreasonable daintiness.

Why, my question for you, Ken, is why would Burroughs think it’s an unreasonable daintiness to not eat the pluck of the pig?

What is the pluck of the pig?

A, is it the heart, liver, and lungs?

Is it B, the feet and ankles?

Or is it C, the boiled whiskers off its hide?

Wow, that’s great.

I think I am definitely eating at the wrong, like, Southeast Asian restaurant.

I have never been offered the pluck of a pig.

I think it might be more a southern restaurant, but okay.

Like, just as a non-pluck eater, like, I’m sort of, like, as a layman, I’m sort of leaning C,

Because it seems like you might pluck off the whiskers.

But then again, that’s crazy talk, because you can’t eat a pig’s whiskers.

Like, even I know that. It’s just hair.

It’s kind of like fairy dust, right?

Exactly.

It doesn’t really exist.

Well, I mean, even if they exist, I don’t really know if, like, we ever eat animal hair in any form, do we?

I can’t think of an example.

So the choices, again, are A, the heart, liver, and lungs, B, the feet and ankles, or C, the boiled whiskers off a pig’s hide.

Which of these is the pluck of a pig?

Well, look, I’ve gotten, like, hundreds of questions wrong on national TV, so I have no ego about looking like an idiot.

Okay, okay.

I’m just going to guess feet.

How about that?

B, feet.

Unfortunately, the pluck of the pig is the heart, liver, and lungs.

And here, listen to this.

Listen to this.

If I said that you had pluck, I would say that you’ve got a lot of guts,

That you have the stomach for whatever we’re about to undertake, right?

That is where we get plucky from.

Yeah.

So I don’t know why it’s called the pluck.

My only theory is that it all comes out at once when you’re gutting an animal.

I have no idea.

But we do use pluck in a way that’s very disconnected from this incredibly biological sense, don’t we?

He’s got a lot of pluck.

He’s got a heck of a liver and lungs.

You’ve got a great set of lungs.

I guess that’s sort of trouble if people understand that literally.

Yeah.

All right, so you’re one for two here.

Let’s see how you do on number three.

Are you ready?

Okay, I’m going to pull this out.

I’ve got faith.

You’re going to pluck it out.

I think this one might be easier, but we’ll see.

Abounds with multiple meanings for many of its words.

Which of these is another meaning for daylight?

Is it A, the space left in a wine glass

Between the liquor and the brim?

Is it B, a coconut that is not yet ripe enough

To fall to the ground?

Or is it C, in the Orkney Islands,

The 12 days between Christmas and Three Kings Day?

Wow.

It seems to me like the wine thing would make more sense,

Because there actually would be some space in the glass

For light to shine through between the wine and the brim.

And also it would be more like the colloquial thing where we say,

Oh, he’s got a little daylight here, he’s got a room to maneuver,

You know, like a football running back.

Right, about NASCAR drivers or football.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

That would be my guess.

You’re right on it.

You’re right on it.

I just want to say it’s A, the space left in a wine glass

Between the liquor and the brim.

There was an old toast that I found in an old book that goes like this.

When people were drinking bumpers, bumper is a cup or glass that’s brimming with alcohol, like right to the top.

The toastmaster would call out, are the glasses full?

No daylights, no heel taps, tops and bottoms.

Not so much as would blind a midge’s eye is to be left.

In other words, he wanted to make sure that people were going to have full glasses to start with and then drink it all.

A heel tap is a small amount of alcohol that’s left in the bottom of a glass after drinking, which is another expression.

You got two out of three.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much for playing with us, Ken.

That was great fun.

It was a real pleasure.

Thanks for teaching me something I didn’t know.

That’s always a nice way to study it.

You know what?

I’m going to have to be even harder about it next time.

I thought I was really going to pull these all out, but you did really well there.

Thank you so much.

It was a pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks for playing, Ken.

You can find out more about Ken Jennings and his new book at ken-jennings.com.

And if you want to try to stump us with a question about any aspect of language,

Email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.