Sleepy Winks (episode #1584)

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. The 19th century English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton is said to have coined the phrase, the pen is mightier than the sword, but he’s best remembered for the first line of his 1830 novel called Paul Clifford. And that single long sentence, with the help of a semicolon, a dash in parentheses, reads, It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets. For it is in London that our scene lies, rattling along the housetops and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

I actually like that!

Yeah, it needs some editing, but I think that’s the problem. I think I didn’t pass through enough eyes before I reached the page. But I think I still want to read the rest of that. It’s pretty interesting.

But as it happens, that sentence inspired the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest, which, as you know, Grant started at San Jose State in 1982. And this is where contestants try to write these extravagantly awful and clever first sentences that reflect that kind of florid language and the rapid points of view and that kind of thing.

Well, the latest winners were just announced, and I wasn’t crazy about a lot of them, but I really like this runner-up. It’s from Mark Meaches in Dallas. And he writes, Irony, bombasted Inspector Simons, is when someone believes themselves more clever than anyone else in the room, but they are in fact careless and foolish. And the murderer, Matilda Danner.

Yes, Matilda, you killed… Wait, where’s Matilda?

She did. I want to read the rest of that. That’s good, yeah. We’ll share a little bit more later in the show, but for now, we want to talk with you about any aspect of language whatsoever. So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your questions and comments about language to words@waywordradio.org. And if you know of a particularly bombastic passage of writing that we should know about too, by all means send it along. Or write one.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Damien from New York City.

Hi, Damien. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Damien. What’s up?

Hello. So I have a word that my grandmother used to use all the time, and I’ve never heard anybody else use it. I was wondering if you could tell me where it comes from and what it means. It’s kind of gross. It’s a word for the stuff that accumulates in your eyes when you wake up from a nap or wake up in the morning. You know, some people call it like sand or eye boogers, but she would call it cheapas.

Cheapas.

Yes.

Cheapas.

Cheapas.

And she was Hungarian and she lived in northeastern Pennsylvania. So those may be some clues that lead us to what it means.

Yes. I believe that’s a gigantic clue. That’s actually the answer.

Oh, really?

Yes, yes. She was just speaking Hungarian to you because…

Really?

Yes, the word in Hungarian is cipa, and you might have tried to look for it, but it’s a little bit hard to find because the spelling is C-S-I-P-A, cipa.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought to spell chipas, C-S-I-P-A. Those Hungarians.

So she would tell you to wipe the chipas out of your eye or something?

Or chipot?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you’ve got some chipas in your eye. Yeah, in Hungarian you might say chipasachamed, which means you have gummy eyes or you have sleep in your eyes. It’s because chipot means kind of gum or gooeyness.

Oh, wow. Okay, well, all has been revealed. That’s wonderful. Thank you.

Yeah. There’s apparently a bunch of words in Hungarian for it, like mjálka, slime. Believe it or not, it’s spelled S-L-E-J-M. Akóni, turha. But I like chýpa. I think it’s adorable.

I don’t know the sound of it.

Yeah. I like it, too. I just imagine little birds putting grains of sand on my eye in the night.

Yeah. Little elf birds, you know, preparing shoes and putting sand there. And I don’t think anybody knows where chippa comes from, but it is very similar to the Turkish word for this, which is chapak. So some people think it might come from, you know, might have been borrowed into Hungarian from Turkish.

Interesting. Do the Hungarians have a chippa man like we have the sand man?

No, but the Germans do. They don’t have a chippa man, but they have a different… Yeah, they have a sand man. They also have a sand man. The Germans call it Augenbutter, meaning eye butter, and a phrase that translates as sand seeds. So many different words for this.

I’m a hard no on eye butter.

Eye butter, yeah. The French, even worse, they call it chassi, which ultimately, through a long winding path, comes from the Latin word for poop.

Eye poop?

So eye poop. Okay. Aren’t you glad you started us down this long winding path? The Portuguese word remola may compare the eye goobers to honey, which I think is very nice.

Oh, like mel, yeah.

Yeah, mel, yeah, exactly. Around the world in 30 names for eye butter.

Oh, I could keep you here for an hour, my friend. Sleepy buds, dozy dust, sleepy men, sleepy wings, crusties.

Damien, why?

The older Scots language, they called it rack or gar, gar with two R’s or one R. Well, English gowned, too. Nobody says gowned, but that’s an old word for it as well. Or we can get medical and call it hardened periocular discharge.

I think you guys need to release, in A Way with Words, a sleep pajama set that has all the names for this on it.

Yeah, there we go, right with footies. That’d be nice. And a cocoa mug. Merch tie-ins.

Damien, you’re a genius. I appreciate it. And thank you so much for calling. I want Chippa.

Thanks for having me on, guys. I love the show. Take care.

Bye-bye.

I’m adopting Chippa.

I love that.

Take care. I want a mug with that on it.

Thanks, Damien. Bye.

Thank you. Well, maybe you’ve got a cute or clever term for the eye crust that you get at night. Let us know, 877-929-9673. Or tell us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, last week I decided to go back and read George Orwell’s 1984 because I was really curious whether it would frighten me as much as it did when I was in high school. And the truth is, when I reread it last week, it frightened me even more.

Oh, I can imagine. But I guess it was probably also a nice linguistic trip, too. This is the source, of course, the title. 1984 is often used as a dystopian reference. Big Brother comes from there. Double Speak was popularized by that book.

Right. And so I was thinking about those terms associated with the novel, but there was also a little expression that jumped out at me that I didn’t remember at all, but I really like, and that’s the expression, scrape acquaintance. He talks in the book about this guy, Winston Smith, who’s trying in this dystopian society to get information about a possible secret rebellion. And he writes about Winston Smith making plans to get information. And he says, he would go into the pub and he would scrape acquaintance with that old man and question him. And I just love that idea of scraping acquaintance. I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary and it talks about scraping acquaintance meaning to get acquainted with by careful effort and insinuation. So you’re not really befriending somebody. You’re sort of getting acquainted with somebody toward an end. Isn’t that interesting?

Oh, nice. Yeah, that is very interesting. I’ve never heard that either. I’ll have to add that to my list of phrases to savor, but save and use just once in an important moment.

Scrape acquaintance.

There’s stuff that, there’s language that you learn that you can’t just drop willy-nilly, right?

Yeah.

You’ve got to keep it. And just there’s one right moment. It’s like the celebration champagne that you’re saving.

Right, right. We’d love to hear about the words and phrases that strike you when you’re reading novels, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ganyan, and I’m calling from Newport, Oregon.

Hi, Ganyan.

Hi, Ganyan. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

Well, I have a question about the difference between engine and motor.

Okay. You’ve been helping with the car, repairing engines or something?

Yeah, we have a whole bunch of cars and stuff, and we work on our cars all the time.

Change the oil, and I just thought of it. What’s the difference between that, kind of?

Okay. Any ideas?

Well, I don’t know. Maybe one’s like gasoline and one’s diesel, or maybe one’s like bigger than each other. I don’t know.

Or inboard or outboard engines.

Okay. You put some thought in this. This is good. There is a difference. Let me ask you, how old are you? What grade are you in?

I’m in sixth grade. I’m 12 years old.

Okay. So have you done any physics classes yet?

I’ve done a couple, but I haven’t done anything really on this.

Okay, well, let me tell you, this is a little bit of a physics answer, and it’s pretty simple stuff, because we’re going to be talking about power and force in the physics sense.

And that’s really the difference between the idea of a motor and an engine.

The two are, in everyday speech, used interchangeably, but there is a distinction.

An engine converts or transfers power into movement, motion, or some other physical force.

A motor is a type of machine that supplies power to other devices.

So a motor would supply power to an engine, if that makes sense.

So I know that we call the engine in the car the motor.

Sometimes we even call the whole car a motor.

I mean, in the UK, that has traditionally been the term for a car sometimes is a motor.

But in a more specific sense, that’s the difference here is one converts the power and one creates the power.

Oh, that’s cool.

Yeah, the engine converts it and really makes it into movement or motion, and the motor creates the power.

That’s pretty cool. Wow, yeah, I never even thought of it that way.

Yeah, so you can have an electric motor or a gasoline motor or a diesel motor.

There were, when I was growing up, I think there’s still out there, little physics kits that let you work with some of the stuff.

Where they’re a little more advanced than tinker toys, but they let you do things like build simple machines.

Where you can power windmills and power different things.

And you can work on these basic physics ideas.

And you can really start to understand some of the concepts.

You might dig around and see if you can find one in your budget.

Or at a thrift store or something.

And see if that will help you understand the concepts a little more.

Yeah, that would be great.

Yeah, I would love to do that.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure.

Gannon, thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks for raising the question.

Stay curious, my friend.

All right, I will.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

We welcome questions from our younger listeners.

The number is 877-929-9673, or send your questions an email to words@waywordradio.org.

This show is about language seen through family, history, and culture.

Stay tuned for more of A Way with Words.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and leaping in the doorway with papers in his hand and a grin that can’t be beat is our quiz guy, John Chaneski. Hi, John.

Hello, Martha and Grant. Leaping in the doorway is the only exercise I get, so I got to do it every single time.

Now, this quiz is a bit of a variation on one we’ve done before, common bonds.

I’m going to read you a list of items.

All of these things have been described in the titles of movies, TV shows, songs, books, common vernacular, whatever, using the same adjective.

You tell me the adjective.

For example, if I said apple, chill, bang, bird, gulp, you might say the word…

Big.

Big, yes, of course.

Big apple, big bang, big chill, big gulp.

Big bang, big bird, big gulp.

Yes, exactly.

If you need a deeper hint, I’ll give you a multi-word clue that something like fish in a small pond, big fish in a small pond, like that.

Got it?

Gotcha.

Good.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Here’s the first one.

Prince.

Mermaid.

Foxes.

Rascals.

Tramp.

Little.

Little.

Little, yes.

Just like the house on the prairie.

Nicely done.

Supper.

Gasp.

Resort.

Laugh.

Straw.

Last.

Last.

Very good.

Night.

That’s K-N-I-G-H-T.

Mile.

Deal.

Lantern.

Berets.

Green.

Green is right.

Green night.

Green berets.

Green mile.

Bone.

Money.

Papers.

Valentine.

Business.

Funny.

Funny, yes, Martha.

Nice.

My multi-word clue was thing happened on the way to the farm, but you didn’t need it.

That would have been an easy one.

Yeah.

Season.

Window.

House.

Source.

Mic.

Open.

Open.

Yes, open season.

Open mic.

Open source.

Open window.

The open window.

Very scary story, by the way.

Here’s another.

Child.

City.

Ear.

Peace.

Sanctum.

Inner.

Inner.

Inner is correct.

I think sanctum is a big giveaway on that one.

Yeah, that was.

There’s always one.

I wouldn’t have gotten it without sanctum.

Yeah.

All right, here’s the last one.

Opera.

Cowboy.

Force.

Needle.

Jam.

Opera.

Cowboy, force, needle, jam, space.

Space is correct.

Yes, you got them.

You got all of these, and you’re fantastic.

These are all adjectives, and my adjective for you guys is brilliant.

Nicely done.

Oh, wow.

But you’re the guy that came up with the puzzle, so you’re brilliant squared.

Oh, and you’re sweet.

And square.

Square.

Thanks, John.

Bye-bye.

We’ll talk to you next time.

Take care.

And we’d love to talk with you, too.

So call us 877-929-9673 or send your thoughts and stories and observations about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

This is Chuck Hampton calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Chuck. Welcome to the show.

Well, I’m a member of a van owners group called the Winnebago Solus Owners and Wannabes.

Because it’s for people both who have bought one and people who are hoping to buy one.

And a conflict erupted recently when an administrator of the group changed the spelling of wannabe.

It had been spelled W-A-N-N-A-B-E with just a single E at the end.

And he changed it to Winnebago’s Solace Owners and Wannabes with two E’s at the end.

And that ignited quite a bit of controversy.

A lot of people felt it should be one E, and others felt it should be two E’s, and I was afraid we were going to have a big split over this.

Oh, dear, like a Baptist church.

Exactly.

I was hoping to get a little clarification about what y’all thought might be more correct, or even if either of them would be correct.

Since I’m not sure that’s really proper English, but I was hoping there would be some guidance one way or the other.

What was the administrator’s argument for spelling wannabe with two E’s on the end?

It seems like someone had suggested to him that it should be with two E’s because there’s another van owners group with a similar name.

And actually more than one, and some of the others are using it with two E’s.

Ours was using it with one, and so it was presumed that we were wrong and they were correct.

I personally don’t have any idea.

I know that looking at it, either one, neither really looks right.

But when, at least phonetically, with two E’s, you can tell how that should be pronounced.

Whereas with one E, you know, you might think it’s one A or something rather than one of the…

Just if you were trying to look at the word and guess how it should be pronounced.

So I’m kind of leaning towards two E’s, but I don’t know that I can resolve this argument without bloodshed in our group.

Maybe a van race.

Van rage, exactly.

Or who can load in and load out fastest.

Yeah, this is an interesting one.

I can see the argument about adding that extra E, making it easier to automatically know how it’s pronounced.

But I don’t feel like it’s that unusual of a word.

There are occasions, particularly when it was new in the 1970s, where wannabe was spelled with a hyphen between the wanna and the B.

And wanna is a standalone kind of contraction word for want to has existed for at least 100 years.

So that’s got its own life and story beyond its existence inside the word wannabe.

But the single E spelling is by far and away, like 99 to 1, the most established spelling of wannabe.

Okay.

Yeah.

Did not realize that.

Now, you can change the spelling if you want to be different, but just doing it to go along with these other groups.

I mean, let’s face it.

Where is this group?

Is this an online group?

It is an online group, and we have members from all over the United States.

It’s actually a really active group, and it’s something we learn a lot from each other about all the ins and outs of RVing through this group.

So it’s been a lifesaver for me.

Yeah, I bet.

Going along with the group for learning from each other about vans and RVs and stuff is one thing, but the expertise in the group isn’t language necessarily.

I’m glad that you came to us.

Yeah.

But, you know, what’s funny about this is the older form of a wannabe is actually would-be.

Talking about people as a would-be or using would-be as an adjective.

The would-be sailor or the would-be soldier or the would-be actor was used in pretty much the same way.

And that we would never add an extra E to because it clearly looks like would-be,

But that was always hyphenated.

And so very clearly two words with a hyphen in it.

Chuck, you almost had me persuaded there with the misreading it.

I was thinking Wanabi, you know, sometimes when I look at it and then with Winnebago,

You know, Winnebago, Wanabi, what’s that?

Like a Japanese name or something.

Yeah.

What’s a naughty or something?

Yeah.

Exactly.

So I was laid in that way.

But since, you know, he mentioned that, you know, the vast majority are going with the single E, that’s pretty persuasive.

So the argument is still raging and it hasn’t been settled yet?

There hasn’t been any discussion of it here in the last couple of days.

But the admin has not budged.

He’s left it with the newer version where there’s two E’s at the end.

But I’m sure when this conversation comes to light that it’s going to reignite the Civil War.

I mean, there is an option here just to embrace it and make a new logo for the group that has like a bee driving, you know, RVing around the country or something, right?

Incorporate the bee logo.

We could do that.

We could maybe rebrand it and avoid any future altercations.

Yeah, I mean, just take a little bit of humor and avoid the skirmishes.

Well, Chuck, keep us posted.

I want to know if our conflict resolution helped.

I will do that.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Thank you so much.

Take care now.

Appreciate it, Chuck.

Bye-bye.

Happy trails.

The Bull were Litten contest where you try to write a florid sentence has a lot of different categories.

And in the Western category, I really like this entry from Ben Connor in Wilmington, Delaware.

After commandeering the Black Dog Saloon for a day and a half to lay out every map, zoning ordinance, and land deed in the territory,

And after checking and rechecking their cartographic calculations,

Tumbleweed Mulligan and Johnny Trigger McAllister

Were forced to admit that there just might be room in this town for the both of them.

Got the zoning maps out, didn’t they?

Went down to the courthouse and paid their fee to the county clerk.

Can’t you see them stroking their chin?

You know, there just might be room.

They got the calipers out there measuring things, spyglass, the whole bit.

I wonder if they even paid to have the land surveyed.

Send us your terrible sentences, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Miles. I’m from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi, Miles. Welcome to the show.

It was a couple weeks ago. I was just out on a drive and I was listening to the show.

And then I got back and I was sitting on the porch.

And it’s not so much anymore,

But the leaves were really hanging onto the trees this year.

And I just had a thought.

I was wondering if there was a word or a phrase

For when the leaves are still in the trees

And there’s snow on the ground,

Or if there’s, you know, when the leaves are falling

And there’s snow on the ground.

I know it seems a little kind of plain,

But there was a couple of years ago on Halloween

That it snowed about six inches, and there was a lot of leaves on the trees.

It’s just a really bizarre sight.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s really evocative, isn’t it?

And I love thinking about those kind of liminal periods, you know,

Between seasons when you have that nice mix of, say, snow

And leaves falling at the same time.

It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, it can be kind of magical,

Don’t you think?

Yeah, it definitely was. I remember we were out working on a conservation site, and it’s a feeling that it doesn’t come often.

And I think the term you used, liminal, is a great way to put it. It was really magical, yeah.

You know, the only term that I’ve seen specifically for that, and it’s a made-up term, is that some people refer to snowlage, you know, like foliage.

Sure, sure.

That’s the only one I know specifically for that, and it’s just a, you know, sort of joking made-up term.

I wonder if we need a term.

Yeah, yeah.

We need to make something up ourselves.

There are so many expressions around the world for sun showers, like the donkey is getting married or the devil is chasing his wife.

Maybe we could create a similar metaphor that talks about the leaves falling on the snow, like Mother Nature making the bed or something.

Yeah.

I believe in Japan, historically, the falling of certain kinds of leaves on the snow has been compared to the writing of words on white paper with a brush and ink, which I think is exactly right.

Oh, yeah. I like that.

Just imagine certain kinds of dark purple leaves falling on perfect white snow.

Yeah, I know we have words for really light snow, you know, just a dusting on the ground, which can occur when leaves are still on the trees.

Like cat snow, where you can just, there’s just enough snow that you can track a cat that way.

And in springtime, there’s onion snow, which I think is just such a tasty term, onion snow.

But that’s on the other liminal end, you know, when it’s just starting to become spring and it snows after onions are planted.

But I think that’s really evocative too.

But I don’t know of a specific term.

Well, Miles, we have a whole raft of creative listeners who come from different cultures and different experiences and have great minds that can come up with stuff.

So maybe somebody knows a word or an expression for that feeling or the sensation or the moment or the idea of leaves falling on the snow.

And if we come up with something, we’ll share it.

Okay.

Yeah, I would love that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the call, Miles.

Take care now.

Yep.

Take care.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marlena from Dallas, Texas.

Hello, Marlena.

How are you?

I’m good, thanks.

How are you doing?

All right.

We’re glad to have you.

What’s on your mind today?

Well, I was reading a book that was written in the 1930s, and I noticed one of the words that they used sounded out of context.

And the sentence was, the grouch and the brainstorm are not for us.

So I happened to have a dictionary written in 1934 around, and I looked up the word brainstorm.

And I was really surprised by the definition that I read.

Let’s hear it.

So the definition is a violent, transient mental derangement manifested in a maniacal outburst.

Wow.

And what was the sentence in the book again?

The grouch and the brainstorm are not for us.

They are not.

The grouch is definitely not for us.

I don’t know about the brainstorm.

Yeah.

What did that mean?

What was it in context?

It was in context to making sure that we’re taking care of ourselves emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and not sort of acting out.

And so when I read that, you know, grouch, that made sense.

But brainstorm, the way that I use that word today, I couldn’t really understand why that was something I needed to be careful of or not do.

And so that’s why I looked it up.

Yeah, that’s really fascinating because today a brainstorm is something really positive, right?

You get people together and you just throw ideas and see what sticks.

I always love collecting those puddles after a brainstorm, you know, because you get new ideas.

It is really interesting that early on the term brainstorm really had that kind of meteorological phenomenon happening inside your head.

It meant a fit of rage or a sudden change of mood or behavior.

And you go back and you look at, say, newspapers in the 1860s, and there are a lot of accounts of trials where people blame some crime that they committed because of a brainstorm that they had.

You know, that it was that it was an actual mental phenomenon that made them lose control.

And it wasn’t until the early 1920s that we started to see a change in how people talked about brainstorms.

And in fact, there was a collection of college slang from Johns Hopkins University in the early 1930s where they defined a brainstorm as something different.

They defined it as a sudden and usually fortunate thought.

So it really has undergone a revolution.

And Grant, there was that famous trial that used that term brainstorm in a whole different way.

Yeah, that’s right. Prior to the 1920s, brainstorm and kind of the mental illness meaning was mostly British and not very American.

But in 1906 and 1907, there was a huge scandalous trial where a millionaire, Harry K. Thaw, shot to death the famous architect Stanford White in a crowded theater in front of a thousand people for his treatment of Thaw’s wife, who was the beautiful actress and model Evelyn Nesbitt.

And this was enormous. You can’t even imagine how huge this was.

One of the defense’s arguments was that Harry Thaw was a victim of a brainstorm, and that made him insensible to his own actions.

So this word was bandied about, used by the defense, but mocked by the prosecution, and of course was in headlines and in newspapers all across the country.

And I think maybe there was a kind of a reinterpretation stemming from that trial.

So, yeah, you’ve really zeroed in on a really fascinating revolution.

I hope you have a newer dictionary than that.

I do. I do.

Marlena, thank you so much for sharing your reading with us.

And anytime you come across something else worth a natter, give us a call, will you?

Sure will do. Thank you so much.

All right. Take care.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

If you’ve ever sent a really important email, but then you found yourself tearing your hair out because it had an embarrassing misspelling right there in the first line…

That’s me.

Yep. Been there, done that.

Or maybe you sent a text with a typo that changed the whole meaning of what you were trying to say.

Well, cheer up. There’s no need to blame yourself anymore.

You can always blame Tutty Villis.

Tutty Villis?

Tutty Villis.

In medieval lore, Tutty Villis was a demon who served the devil by introducing errors into writing.

And early on, Tutty Villis was a demon who rode around on sunbeams and hitched rides on raindrops, all the better to eavesdrop on priests and other church folk and collect all their idle words and their sloppy praying or words they skipped in the liturgy.

And he would hover around in the air when nuns were in more casual conversation and scoop up their idle gossip.

And then he’d stuff all these things in a big sack and collect them for Judgment Day.

Wow.

I know. It’s pretty scary. Can you imagine?

I’m in so much trouble.

And over time, as the centuries passed, he came to be thought of as this demon who introduced errors into medieval manuscripts, you know, that the monks were copying by hand.

And eventually, printers picked up Tutty Villis as this kind of patron saint, or maybe patron demon, is a better term, who’s responsible for all those errors in typesetting.

So, Grant, I think it’s safe to say that Tutty Villis lives.

Tutty Villis is alive and well in the digital era, and he’s in my computer.

Yeah, so I guess we should spell his name.

Actually, it’s spelled a whole lot of different ways.

I don’t know if these were misspellings or errors, but his name has taken lots of forms.

But the one that you can search for him with is T-U-T-I-V-I-L-L-U-S, Tutti Villis.

Tutti Villis.

Oh, and he’s got villain right there in the name.

It sounds kind of like Italian for all villain or complete villain.

Yeah, it’s not, but it could be.

It’s not, but it could be.

Well, we’d love to hear about your famous typos, the ones that you can’t forget, the big mistakes that you made that you’ll never live down.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

We’ll link to more information about Tidavillis and its spelling on our new website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Will calling from Queens. How are you guys?

Queens, New York. Hello, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me. I’m calling in with a word that I was introduced to when I first started out working in EMS in New York City.

And the term is Skel, spelled S-K-E-L-L, which when I first heard it, I assumed was a kind of shortening of skeleton.

But after years of using it without really knowing the etymology, I decided to look it up and learned that it was actually from a 17th century English term that was more or less the same.

But initially it meant kind of someone who would feign either being injured or crippled in some way to work better as a panhandler.

So it was kind of more specifically a con artist.

And in law enforcement, the fire services and EMS in New York City, the term scale, which is a contraction of the original word, is used as a noun to describe someone who’s kind of a little bit sketchy or potentially criminal.

I just had no idea that it was so directly linked back to the 17th century to a kind of similar term and that it survived all these centuries in this one kind of grouping of professions.

Yeah, that’s kind of the problem with that etymological story is that it’s a big gap between it being used in the 1600s and then popping up in Brooklyn in the late 1940s, which is where it first appears in the U.S.

It’s like we’re talking 300 and something years where it literally doesn’t appear in print at all.

And then suddenly scale pops up in Brooklyn.

I just have a hard time buying the etymology.

I agree that skelder was a word and I agree it means work as a beggar to commit little scams and frauds to make a living.

But that gap just as a lexicographer just makes me pause and really question that as the origin.

But I love what you’re saying about Skel being this term.

It’s like, why is this term only in New York?

Why is it only used by the EMS and the police and the fire services?

Skel is derogatory, though, right?

Yeah, it’s kind of the equivalent of calling someone like a lowlife or a getchy dude.

There are a lot of related slang words like Skelgel, the term for hand sanitizer.

Oh, have you used that one?

Yeah, the main term we use for it.

Oh, really?

There’s also, I think it’s related just because it’s almost identical, but in South African slang, there’s a term, Skelm, S-K-E-L-M, that essentially means the same thing.

It’s kind of low-life, kind of sketchy dude.

Yeah, and they’re related words in German and Dutch, but again, it’s the same problem.

It’s existed in South Africa continuously, fortunately, since the 1800s, only in South Africa.

Again, how does it get to South Africa, to New York in the 1940s?

We just don’t have it.

I’ll tell you one thing, though.

When it first appears in the late 1940s in New York, it’s in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, always in this column by George Curry.

And he talks about scales over and over again.

He’s bothered by them.

And he doesn’t describe them in the way that scale is used today.

He talks about them as bums who panhandle for smoke, which is a kind of cooking sherry laced, as he calls it, with the cheapest and foulest whiskey to be had.

And that they bother people for a buck for a cup of coffee.

And he says that the bums are mostly people from out of town, Boston most likely, always that New York-Boston reverie.

That sounds right.

You know, I’m betting that you have all kinds of great slang that you could share with us in a future call.

I really hope you’ll call back and bring us more.

Amount of kind of jargon and kind of weirdly specific terms to go through, but I’ll have to.

Call back when I have another good one. Oh, yeah, please do. Take notes and call again.

Thank you so much for sharing your background. And it sounds like you’re a good digger when it comes to word research, so keep at it.

Yeah, will do. Thanks. All right. Take care now.

Thanks for calling. Bye-bye. Sure thing. Bye.

Here’s another entry that I really liked in the Bulwer-Lytton contest. This one’s from Father Jerry Kopasek in Elma, Iowa.

He writes, one time at the hoagie shop, the actress Ms. O’Hara asked what the tiny pimento stuffed thing in my cheddar bread sandwich was, and I had to respond, we all live in a yellow submarine.

Oh, terrible.

I know.

Terrible.

I’m sorry, Grant.

Oh, I’m mortally wounded.

We all live in a yellow submarine.

Marine.

Marine O’Hara.

I get it.

You get it.

That’s why you’re groaning.

Like I ate that yellow sub.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, guys.

This is Stacy from Denver, Colorado.

Hey, Stacy.

Hi, Stacy.

Welcome to the show.

I had a question for you guys about a phrase that I’m hoping you can help sort of settle for me.

The phrase is let alone. And the way I would use it is to compare two things. So, for example, if you ask me to cook a Thanksgiving dinner and I’m a terrible cook, then I would say, oh, I can’t even cook for myself, let alone cook Thanksgiving for 10 people.

So I would compare like what you’re asking with something that’s even less than that and say, I can’t even do this. So forget about this other thing. And I would put the more extreme thing at the end.

So that’s how I always heard it used. And that’s what makes sense to me. But I feel like lately in the last probably two or three years, I’ve been hearing a lot of people using it the other way around.

Where they’ll put the thing in question at the beginning and then the lesser thing at the end. So they’ll say like, oh, I can’t cook Thanksgiving, let alone cook for myself.

To me, this just sounds so wrong. This is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Like it just feels totally backwards. I’m hoping that you can just settle this for me officially.

Yes, we can provide you some relief. Dr. Martha, we can help her, right?

Yes, and we have some great magazines while you’re waiting.

Yeah, I think you really nailed it exactly right. Traditionally, the harder thing should come last. In your version, you said that I can’t do X, which is an easy-ish thing, let alone Y, which is a harder thing. And that’s pretty much how it has been and ought to be.

And you’re right. People do often put the difficult thing first. They say, I can’t even Z let alone X. But what they should be saying is not even X. So kind of what they’re mixing here is these little idiomatic expressions, all which are used to provide this range of possibilities of what they are or not capable of doing.

And let alone, let’s admit it, is kind of a weird expression, right? Let alone is not, it’s idiomatic. It’s hard to break down. What does let alone mean? It’s not really a modern phrase at all, right? So it’s kind of opaque. When you hear it being used, it’s pretty easy to misunderstand it.

Yeah.

Right?

True.

That’s true.

But there are different phrases like that.

Yeah.

It’s the same kind of construction. To say nothing of, you know. Never mind. Or much less. Or still less.

Yeah.

And all of these can be used in the same way or they can be misused in the same way. So it’s kind of an understandable mistake, particularly with let alone, especially with let alone. Because let alone is just this odd little bird. If you saw this and you had your camera, you’d take a picture of it because it would be this strange, you know, all the little brown birds and this brightly colored one, you know.

Look at this little let alone over here.

Yeah, look at this little let alone. And you’d be showing to all your bird friends.

So I think you really nailed it. And I think it’s a forgivable mistake, but it is an error. You’re not the only person who’s noticed this. Linguists have been researching complementary alternation discourse constructions. That’s what they’re called.

That’s what they’re called.

Yeah.

And we’ll link to some very highfalutin academic papers when we post this to the website. They’re pretty heady stuff.

Yeah, when I said there were magazines in our waiting room, these are not those. These are the ones. No pictures. These are the things we give you when you haven’t been following the diet we give you or taking the pills like we recommend.

I would expect no less.

We’ll link to them anyway because you might find some benefit. So just to be clear, since we said so much, let’s make sure we talk about this one last time. It should be, I can’t even toast bread, let alone cook Thanksgiving for 10 people. So it’s the easy thing first and the hard thing second.

Yes.

Right.

Gotcha.

Perfect.

Well, Stacey, thank you so much for calling.

I’m glad you feel better, Stacey.

I do. Thank you for the medicine.

It’s definitely cleared up for my case. Come and see us in six weeks. We’ll take the cast off.

Okay.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Happy holidays to you guys.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Stacey.

Bye.

Well, if there’s a word or phrase you’re wondering about, give us a call. 877-929-9673 or send it to us in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant and Martha. This is Jonah calling from Baltimore, Maryland.

Hi, Jonah.

Hey, Jonah.

I’m a private music teacher. And as one of my 10-year-olds was packing up after our lesson, we somehow got to chatting about states we visited. So I asked him if he knew his state capitals. And he’s a really confident kid, so he emphatically said, of course I do.

So I said, okay, so do you know the capital of Maryland? And without missing a beat, he shouted, M.D., which I laughed at. I laughed and I said, no, I mean the capital city. And then he just looked at me confused and went, oh, no, I don’t know those.

That’s so cute. So he used the initials, the capital letters.

Yeah, he used the capital letters. And, you know, I guess it’s an honest mistake.

Sure.

And when it comes to different uses of the capital, the word capital ending A-L, I guess he was justified in answering the question that way. He just chose a different sense of the homonym.

But then I got to wondering about the two different spellings of capital, ending A-L and O-L, which they’re obviously two related words but with divergent spellings.

Yes.

Specifically, I was wondering if you could clarify how we ended up with those two words and why when we refer to capital city, it’s not spelled with an O since that’s where the capital building is situated.

Right. Exactly.

Yeah, you’ve zeroed in on the big difference that confuses a lot of people because, as you suggested, you only use the O for the Capitol building, whether it’s the U.S. Capitol building where Congress meets in Washington or, in your case, the state house in Annapolis.

That’s the Capitol, C-A-P-I-T-O-L, where the legislators meet. But it’s in the capital city, A-L. And a lot of people have trouble remembering which is which, but the trick I use is either to picture the round dome of the capital, which sort of looks like an O, or you can think about the letter O standing for only one, that one instance of when you use the OL in the case of the building, and all the other uses of capital are AL.

And you’re right that there may be a connection between the two. The A-L capital, which we use for a lot more ideas, like the main thing or a capital letter, it goes back to the Latin caput, which means pertaining to the head.

And so you get all kinds of meanings coming out of that kind of capital, like great or capital in money, as a matter of fact, like venture capital. That’s originally from Latin pars capitalis, the first part of a loan that’s not the interest. And then the meaning expanded.

The OL version, capital, goes back to ancient Rome, where the great temple of Jupiter, which was this magnificent temple in Rome, was located on the Capitoline Hill.

And there’s a story in antiquity that is probably apocryphal about them starting to dig the foundation for this temple.

And they found a head when they were digging.

And it was belonging to somebody named Tolias or something like that.

But that’s probably just an etymological myth.

But basically, they go back to the Capitoline Hill, which was with an O, and then caput, meaning head, for all those other terms.

Okay.

So, Jonah, I’m going to repeat that story from your student.

I think that’s hilarious.

That’s a great one.

Yeah.

MD.

It was really good.

Thank you for the call.

Good luck with the students.

Yeah, thanks for taking my call.

All right.

Take care.

Thanks, Jonah.

All right.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

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

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For his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

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

Bye-bye.

Thank you.