Sound of a Kiss (episode #1392)

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.

Let’s talk about kissing.

Okay.

In English, if you want to render the sound of a noisy kiss, you usually write something like moi, right?

Yeah, sure.

M-W-A-H.

Or M-U-A-H for some people.

Yes, something like that.

That’s what I would write.

Yeah, in parts of South America, you would write C-H-U-I-K.

Chwink.

Chwink.

Oh, nice.

Nice, right?

And there are different spellings for this kind of thing all over the world.

But if you ever need a sophisticated term for the sound of a kiss,

You can always use the one that linguists use,

Which is bilabial lingual ingressive click.

Nice, right?

Bilabial linguist.

Say it again, please.

Hey, baby, give me a bilabial lingual ingressive click.

Perfect, perfect.

And there actually is a linguistic reason to have a term for this

Because in parts of southern Africa, there is that sound, that sort of kissing sound in certain languages.

Very interesting. We don’t have that as part of our sound inventory in English, though.

We do not. We do not.

Not quite that way, anyway.

We do not, but I’m adding that to my vocabulary. Bilabial lingual ingressive click.

We want to talk about all kinds of language this hour.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send your stories about language in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Josh. I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hello, Josh. Welcome to the program.

Thank you. I have a question that’s been in the back of my mind about a problem that arose at work about a word.

Okay.

Great.

Okay, so the word that’s in question here is the word pussyfooting or pussyfoot.

Okay.

As in pussyfooting around.

Right.

Just a bit of background.

A couple years ago, it was an educational setting at a school, and we were at a meeting.

And, you know, this kid really needed help, and people were really, you know, beating around the bush.

And even being evasive about some stuff, and they just were noncommittal about it.

So I said the word, you know, guys, let’s not pussyfoot around.

And this colleague of mine, a female colleague of mine who was, you know, several years older than me, really put me to task.

And I think she said something like, how dare you use that word?

And I took her to mean that it was, you know, sexist or something.

Nobody wanted to touch that because there was a lot of, you know, professionals in the room and I didn’t respond to it.

I wanted to de-escalate the situation.

So I just chose a different word.

So I guess my question to you is, is the word pussyfooting around or pussyfooting itself offensive in any way?

Or does it have a history of that?

And if so, could you explain about it?

Wow.

My heavens.

This is loaded.

So nicely done on handling that situation exactly as it should be handled.

Move on is always the question, particularly because you had a kid’s future at stake here,

And it wasn’t about the language.

It was about the kid, right?

Exactly.

And it was an English teacher, so I was really surprised to be put at task about word where it’s really about, like you said, the kid.

But anyways, the word is just, I take it to mean treading lightly like a cat would.

Exactly.

So I just don’t know.

Yeah, treading lightly.

It’s exactly what it means.

Pussy footing means to have feet like a cat.

You have soft little pink paws with the fur.

Right.

I imagine a cat, you know, when they make their biscuits, you know, they do that little kneading.

Milk treading.

That’s not to say that cats don’t knock stuff off the counters and shelves all the time.

We’ve got two issues here.

One of them is we’ve got a colleague who didn’t understand that this word is harmless.

And then the other issue is, does that make you liable for her misunderstanding?

I mean, does this obligate you somehow to accommodate her ignorance?

You’re right.

I didn’t think of that issue about, like, am I liable for her being offended?

I have an opinion on this, Martha, but I’m going to hold it back for a second to see what you think.

Well, I’m wondering about this woman, too, if she was just looking for something to be offended by.

Good question.

Was she particularly angry or upset at the way the conversation was going otherwise, Josh?

Well, it’s really funny that you bring that up.

We were friendly, but you know how there’s some people in the workplace that tend to be more critical than others?

She might have been seen as that kind.

Interesting.

I would go for caution here.

Now that you are aware that some people don’t know that pussyfoot is not vulgar, it isn’t, it absolutely isn’t, it behooves you to use something else like tread lightly instead.

I’m sorry, in some cases, particularly in the workplace, we have to accommodate the ignorant and just take the safe path.

At home, I mean, you can have this and make it a big, full discussion.

But in the workplace, you’ve got to take the most conservative route.

Yeah, and this is a really tough one because in and of itself it is an innocent word.

Yeah, it’s from Pussycat.

There’s a word for kitties, for cats, the little mouser guys.

Yeah, but now you have me paranoid about saying it.

I mean, it’s hard enough to say Pussy Riot on the radio.

Right, exactly, but yet it’s on every news outlet.

NPR uses it all the time.

It’s in print in all the newspapers, headlines on the front of magazines at the newsstand, right?

Yeah.

So it’s really interesting here.

But again, we’re—

So is there any history of sexism because of the overtones of the word?

Has it ever been used that way?

Put down women in any way or no?

I wouldn’t say that.

Not in my experience.

Have there been some one-off uses of it in that way?

Maybe.

Certainly you could load it with innuendo if you wanted to,

And you could turn it into vulgar uses if you had the mind to.

But for the most part in the historical record,

The word is simply used to mean somebody who literally treads lightly.

For a time, it only meant a detective or a gumshoe.

Somebody who was kind of sneaking around to gather information in order to prove a case.

All right, Josh, carry on, and thank you for being thoughtful, all right?

Thanks so much.

Yeah, sure.

All right, bye-bye.

Thanks, guys, bye.

Pussyfoot goes back to 1890s, shows up in literary uses mostly,

Eventually starts to be used, again, mainly used in the beginning to mean

Just to walk softly when you’re up to something.

And then later, it shifts to the use that Josh had,

Which was to avoid dealing with a difficult subject.

Right, right. Handle something delicately.

The whole call reminds me of something a therapist once told me,

Which was you can be right or you can be in a relationship.

You know, I mean, Josh was right.

And it’s not just romantic relationships.

Exactly.

It’s all of your wonder ones, right?

Exactly, a work relationship.

What’s at stake here is the question.

And that’s really what Josh was asking us.

Exactly.

And what was at stake was collegiality.

Exactly.

What at stake was the future of a child.

He handled it perfectly.

Yeah, he did.

He was not distracted by the fact that this woman called him on his word choice.

Yes.

She clearly was spoiling for a fight in my eyes.

That’s what I think.

Yeah.

That’s what I think.

But well done.

What words have come up at your workplace that have all of you all talking?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, we talked recently about mean book reviews and how we didn’t like them.

But I found one that I’m afraid I really like.

It goes, the covers of this book are too far apart.

Isn’t that awful?

I’ve heard that one before.

Who is that?

Who said that about whom?

Well, I’m glad you asked because it was attributed to Ambrose Bierce.

But like so many quotes, they get attributed to people.

If you go to Garson O’Toole’s site, quote investigator.

He traces it back even farther.

Okay.

Doubtful that Beers came up with it.

Nobody famous said it, but somebody did.

Right.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

That’s mean, but it’s clever.

If you want us to sort out some ambiguity, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Tell us about an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Find our Facebook page or our Facebook group, or send us a quick message on Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Yvette.

Yvette, welcome to the show.

What can we help you with?

Hi, Grant. Thank you. Actually, I have a dilemma.

Okay.

I’m calling regarding the spelling of, well, the two spellings of dilemma, the one with two M’s and the one that’s MN.

Interesting.

Dilemma and dilemma.

No, it’s still dilemma. It’s still dilemma.

Wait a second. There are two spellings of dilemma in your world?

Yes, in my world and apparently many others from what I hear.

Wow. Parallel universes do exist.

I first learned Dilemma with MN, and I think it was around elementary school.

And I attended a military school in kindergarten, and then the rest of elementary school was in a private Catholic school.

Both of those were in New England.

But later on in life, when I started college, I realized it’s MMA.

And so how long did you spell it as M-N-A, D-I-L-E-M-N-A?

Well, to be quite truthful, I still write it out, but then I spell check myself and I correct it.

Oh, wow.

Interesting.

That’s a horrible habit.

So your question is, what’s going on here?

Yeah.

Is it a regional thing?

No, it’s a mistake.

Okay.

Really?

And you know, you’re not the only one.

You are right.

There are lots of people that have been taught to spell dilemma with an N.

Dilemma has never had an N in it.

Never.

My theory is there’s so many people who say this that there was a misprint in a widely used textbook and everyone just assumed the book was right.

That’s all I can think of because there’s no reason for it to be spelled with an N.

None of the dictionaries have it.

In the historical record, it’s very rare.

And yet there are people, so many people alive today who swear they learned it from a teacher in school.

Absolutely.

We had a caller many, many years ago, and I think he went to Catholic school.

Yes, I was going to say that.

Exactly right.

So I’m wondering if there’s a particular textbook used in the Catholic schools or I don’t even know.

Yeah, because I remember we told them it was just with two Ms.

And then we got all these emails and all these calls from people who said, no, no, no, I was taught that way too.

I have to tell you, this kind of underscores what I’m saying is that God bless them.

I love teachers, but when they go wrong, they leave permanent damage.

That is correct.

It’s a souvenir from your schooling.

Yeah, a souvenir from your schooling.

That’s a nice positive way to look at that.

Thanks for calling.

And if you find out anything more about, if you remember the teacher or the year or the textbook,

Give us a call or drop us a line and let us know, all right?

We will get to the bottom of this one.

We will figure out where this mass delusion came from.

All right.

Sounds good.

Thank you so much.

Take care now.

Thanks, Yvette.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

It’s cool word time, Martha.

I have a cool word for you.

Okay.

There’s a word for rain that evaporates before it hits the ground.

Before it hits the ground.

Yeah, it’s virga, V-I-R-G-A.

I did not know that.

I did not know that either.

Isn’t it astonishing that they’re so specialized in the meteorological trades

That they should use that word?

Yeah.

And it comes from the Latin, from a word meaning rod or stripe.

Oh, sure, sure, sure.

So you can imagine the streaks of rain coming down, but failing to reach the ground.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I believe that’s related to the word for slash.

Isn’t it virgule?

Yes.

Very good.

Exactly.

That’s exactly right.

But I did not know that about the word.

V-I-R-G-U-L-E.

So they’re both related.

Interesting.

Cool word time.

Thank you.

If you’ve got a cool word you want to share, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

What weird thing do they say out your way?

Stay tuned to A Way with Words.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us on the line from New York City is John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hey, buddy.

What’s up?

It seems that in Gotham City, anyone with an at the end of their name can be a Batman

Villain, right?

Okay.

The Joker, the Riddler, the Mad Hatter.

Now, at least those guys had good gimmicks.

Now, suppose you had an at the end of your name, but your evil villain style wasn’t quite

Up to snuff.

Now, I imagine Batman would get pretty tired of dealing with your issues.

So, we’re going to find some guys like this.

I want to warn you that when I playtested this, some of my playtesters had two answers, gave other answers, alternate answers, which I found perfectly wonderful.

So if you got either one of those, that’ll be fine.

Now, these are going to be words that end in usually K-E-R or L-E-R.

Oh, really?

For example, now this woman is mostly annoying, but she could be dangerous.

She has the power to make very tiny, loud explosions, but she can make a whole bunch of them in a row very quickly.

Watch your fingers around…

The firecracker?

The firecracker, yes.

And her other name is The Ladyfinger.

Oh, very nice.

The Ladyfinger.

Here’s another lame villain.

This villain constantly annoys Batman by trying to set him up with her niece.

Oy vey.

Matchmaker.

A matchmaker, yes.

Most of these villains are just annoying, basically.

This one villain plans elaborate heists,

Themed after the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.

The Trekker?

The Trekker, yes.

The name for people who are obsessed with Star Trek.

The Trekker.

This one dude is a pretty serious crime lord.

It’s just that for some reason, all of his crimes have something to do with fishing.

The Angler?

The Angler, yes.

Now, one of Batman’s most vexing villains is not really a villain herself.

She just makes excuses for other villains and gives them no reason to stop their nefarious crimes.

The Enabler.

Yes, the Enabler.

Fear the Enabler.

This one has two possible answers.

Let’s see what we get.

A member of several crime syndicates,

This villain stays behind the scenes

And uses his amazing accounting powers

To take care of the financial aspects

Of several evil organizations.

The bookkeeper.

I like the bookkeeper, yes.

No, but another answer.

Yeah, what else?

You got another one?

The comptroller.

Yes, the comptroller.

I think it’s actually pronounced controller

Even though there was an MP in there.

Yeah, I just love that word,

So that’s why I wanted to use it as a Batman villain.

Now finally

Batman has never been able

To capture this one villain

Whose power is the ability

To force everyone

To follow

Every single little rule

To the letter

He always gets off

On a technicality

The nitpicker

Nitpicker’s good

I have another one for that

The quibbler

Quibbler

Oh that’s good

Maybe there’s a bunch

I like the stickler

Oh good

That’s good too

Oh the stickler

Now

Batman Arkham Asylum

Is not going to play itself

So I got to get home

To my Xbox

Thank you guys very much

Give the Xbox our love.

I will.

Sends it right back to you.

Wouldn’t want to keep you away from it.

Thanks, John.

Thanks, John.

We’ll talk to you next week.

It’s always a pleasure.

Talk to you next week.

All right.

And if you want to talk with us about language, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Charles Moss.

I’m Tom from Lynchburg, Virginia.

Oh, hi, Charles.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

Well, I’ve got a question about the expression of Breaking Bad.

Breaking Bad.

Okay.

That term, I’ve always heard it growing up in Virginia.

It’s kind of just a slang for, you know, departing from being nice.

As in, like, if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to break bad on you.

You heard it long before the show then.

Right.

And Vince Tilligan’s from Virginia.

And, you know, I’m a fan of him going back to the X-Files.

He wrote and worked with that a lot.

And he, you know, when he created Breaking Bad, I read an interview and he was saying that it was an expression from back home.

I don’t think people outside of this area really knew what that was about until the show.

And I was wondering if it was just in the South or whether it was just like Virginia, North Carolina or what.

I liked your description of what it means to break bad.

I think of it as breaking away from the pack.

You break away from the pack of regular, well-behaved people and go out on your own and get a little wild, right?

Yeah, just like Walter White, you know?

Yes, exactly.

So he goes from being this boring chemistry teacher who’s been diagnosed with cancer to being like a drug lord.

Right.

He literally broke away from the, like, ordinary life that he otherwise would have lived.

You’re right.

Vince Gilligan, who is the writer, director, and producer of Breaking Bad, has given numerous interviews where he’s almost always asked about this term, at least from people who didn’t do their homework.

And he told the New York Times in 2009 that it did come from his background in Virginia.

And he mentioned it was to raise hell.

That was the expression he used.

He said, Jim was down at the bar the other weekend and he got really drunk and he really broke bad.

He totaled his car.

So we’re not just talking about your gossiping.

We’re not just talking about you had three more drinks than you should.

We’re talking about you shut down the bar, you wrecked your car, you went home, lit the house on fire, walked around the neighborhood with no pants.

That’s what we’re talking about.

If you go to urbandictionary.com, you’ll find a number of people have mistakenly assumed that it was a term from the southwest of the United States, but it’s not.

The first time to break bad shows up in a really firm way where we know it’s the same slang term is in the 1960s.

And it is almost always in the 60s and early 70s from African-American speakers and writers.

So you’ll see it show up, for example, in 1969 in a play by Alice Childress called Wine in the Wilderness, a comedy drama where there’s two people talking back and forth.

And the man, the woman asked the man for some food and he brings her a hot dog.

And so she goes on this long riff about a hot dog, how a hot dog’s not food and you can’t bring me something better in this.

And he’s like, baby, don’t break bad over something to eat.

The smart set, the jet set, the beautiful people, kings and queens eat frankfurters.

And so in their mind, Breaking Bad is just getting angry or kind of just stepping over the line a little bit in a conversation.

But eventually it starts being exaggerated.

It’s not just getting angry anymore.

It’s really having a heck of a time.

It’s Breaking Bad.

Yeah, it’s Breaking Bad.

It’s a big deal eventually.

So it kind of escalates.

That’s my understanding.

I’ve just grown up with it.

So I just assumed it was something that people used all around the United States.

But evidently not.

How does that feel to see a term that you think of as your own from your own hometown go national or international?

I mean, I think it’s kind of cool, really.

That Vince Gilligan actually calls attention to Virginia as being part of the inspiration.

I don’t know.

Yeah, it’s sort of like liking a band before everybody else likes it, right?

That’s what I was thinking about, right?

Sometimes you feel betrayed because they were yours.

But sometimes it’s like, yeah, you’re like, too right.

Yeah, you better love these guys.

They’re awesome.

The whole world should know about this band I love.

Well, that’s interesting. You answered it very well.

We do our best. Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Bye, Charles.

Bye-bye.

Take care now.

We should point probably to this play by Alice Childress.

It’s really hilarious.

It’s written in the African-American vernacular,

But it’s really a perfect use of the language of the 1960s among African-Americans.

It’s great.

Cool. Give me the name again.

So the play is called Wine in the Wilderness.

It’s from 1969, and it’s by Alice Childress.

Is that with an H or without? Wine?

Wine.

As a drink.

Wine in the wilderness.

W-I-N-E.

Very good.

And if you have a question about language, call us 877-929-9673.

Did you see these reports circulating about a new processed potato product called mash tags?

No.

These are potato snacks that are supposedly pressed into the shape of symbols that you see on Twitter.

So they’re these little potato-flavored snacks that are supposed to appeal to the younger generation,

The folks who are into social media.

And so they’re little hashtag shapes and little at signs and little smiley faces.

So you can make hash browns out of the hashtags.

Exactly. Exactly.

And they’re going to be sold in the U.K. First.

I don’t know if they’ll make it to this country or not.

But it got me to thinking about what other Internet-themed foods need to be invented.

-oh.

So, of course, I’ve been hard at work, as you can imagine.

Do I need to put on my pun helmet?

Yes.

Well, let me strap on my pun armor.

That’s right.

You need to engage the force field right now because here they come.

First one is inter-natella, which you can spread wide on your toast.

Inter-natella.

Inter-natella.

Okay.

More popular in Europe than it is here.

Eggs TML, which are eggs made completely from scratch.

So this is like a markup language for talking about food.

Yes, yes.

Eggs TML.

One little thing goes wrong in the recipe, the whole thing is a mess.

And dill pixels.

These are little bitty, little, little, little bitty dill.

So like you would put a spoonful of dill pixels on your burger.

So even smaller than a gherkin.

Yes, much, much smaller than a gherkin.

Okay then.

But you know what?

We’ll get on that at the factory.

You know what?

I’m betting that our listeners can come up with many more Internet-themed foods.

All right.

Bring it on.

All right.

Internet-themed foods.

Send them.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Clayton from Joplin, Missouri.

Hi, Clayton.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What’s up?

Well, I had a question for you.

The other day, one of my coworkers was in my classroom, and I was emailing another coworker for her birthday.

And I sent the Ryan Gosling hey, girl meme to her.

Tell us what that is for folks who don’t know.

Well, it’s just a picture of Ryan Gosling, and it says hey, girl on it, and then it says all kinds of various things.

So the first one that I saw said, hey, girl, hope you do well on your finals.

And this one was just, hey, girl, happy birthday.

And it’s usually, you know, an attractive picture of him.

Okay, and it’s like, hey, girl.

Right.

Yes.

A little more sexy.

Yeah.

So anyway, I said I was sending that and thought it was funny.

And I told him about it.

And he said, ooh, Ryan Gosling, he’s so handsome.

So I sort of talked my head a little bit as if to say, you know, what would your wife think about you saying this?

And so we went on to a conversation that since then has lasted a few weeks as to exactly how you call someone of the same sex attractive,

But not saying that you’re attracted to that person.

There’s a distinguishment there.

So your co-worker is heterosexual and married to a woman?

Yep, he is.

Okay.

And so for him to say that, you’re like,

Oh, I didn’t know that you liked guys, basically.

I just think perhaps for women there are other distinguishing attractive words,

But it doesn’t seem like there are as many for men.

So that was confusing to me.

This is a tough one.

It is a tough one.

And it all depends, like, do you mind giving the wrong signal?

I don’t care.

Right.

If I say that a man is attractive and people go,

What are you, a homosexual?

I might be like, as far as you know, is it any of your business?

Because I don’t really care about that.

I don’t care about being judged.

That’s not the world I live in.

I actually got a chance to ask his wife this a few days later and what she thought of it.

And she basically said, why does it matter?

Well, yeah.

That’s a good point.

I thought that was good.

I think we’ve got some answers here, Clayton.

It’s a great question.

You know what’s going to happen.

You’re going to blow up our email box with this one.

Great.

So drop your email bombs at words@waywordradio.org or try us on Facebook and Twitter.

We have a lively audience there.

Or just give us a call, 877-929-9673.

If you’re heterosexual and you’re a man, how do you describe another good-looking man?

And women, what do you think?

Clayton, thank you so much for calling.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Thanks, you too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We’ve talked on the show before about book spine poetry.

You know, when you pile up a bunch of books and you read the spine and the titles form a poem.

And Stan Carey had a wonderful one on his blog the other day that he called Antarctica.

This is a stack of books read from the side.

It goes, skating to Antarctica, desolation island, a place apart where the wasteland ends,

Soul on ice, into the silent land, the other side of you.

Nice.

I like that.

That’s a really nice poem.

And I like that it’s the sum total of a lot of people thinking carefully about titles of books as well.

That’s a beautiful way to put it, yeah.

So the stacking of the books might be accidental or maybe he arranged them that way.

But there’s a lot of independent thought behind each one of those.

If you’ve made your own book, Spine Poetry, we’d love to read it.

You can email it to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, sir. This is Jim Liner.

Hi, Jim. How are you doing? Where are you calling from?

Fort Worth, Texas.

Welcome to the show, Jim. How can we help you?

When I was a youngster growing up in the country in North Carolina,

The backside of our farm would join the people that lived off the dirt road,

Kind of isolated, and we’d go by there when we were working in that part of the farm

To get some fresh water.

And when we would stop there, the little lady in the house would come to the front door, and she’d say, alight and come in.

And she was pumping some fresh water, and she was very pleasant.

Anyhow, so I asked my dad one day, I said, what does she mean?

She said, alight and come in.

He said, well, if you notice, that tree out in the front yard, it was a rock about 18 inches high with a flat top on it.

And people used to tie their horses up there, and they would step down from their saddle onto that rock.

And so that’s where she said, alight and come in.

So I know that’s a long out-of-use term, but it was in use when my dad was away because he recognized it.

Well, Jim, I think it’s a really beautiful term, and I’ve seen lots of different versions of this kind of expression,

And it’s exactly what you’re talking about, get off your horse and come in?

Right.

I’ve seen it as a light and look at your saddle or a light and look to your beast.

How about that?

Yeah, which you would say to somebody if they’ve been riding on the road all day long to get to where you are

And you want to invite them in, so you tell them to get off the horse and loosen the saddle, you know,

Look to your beast, make sure that the horse is okay, and then come on in and have a cup of water or coffee or something.

Exactly.

Iced tea.

Yeah, iced tea, sweet tea, right?

In that part of the country, for sure.

Mm—

I’ve also seen light and cool your saddle.

I like that one.

Yeah, which I think is just such a beautifully evocative expression.

You know, you can just picture, you can almost smell it, can’t you?

Mm—

Yeah.

It’s been a dry, dusty day.

You’re a little sweaty.

The horse is sweaty.

Yeah.

Long road ahead of you, long road behind.

Mm—

Somebody pleasant pops up and offers you a break, you’ll take it.

But the light here in the word is doing something else.

This isn’t the same light like the light that is on the ceiling, right?

Or the light from the sun.

No, no, no.

A light, a light means like you land.

Right, like a butterfly might light on a flower.

Exactly.

Different kind of light.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, so it’s not the same word even though it’s spelled the same.

English is loaded with all these similarities.

Right.

Yeah.

A light in this case means to step down and come forward.

That’s right.

To step down and come forward is a great way of putting it.

Well, James, I’ve got to tell you, thanks for bringing this expression to mind.

It sounds like something maybe we could bring back because you do get out of a car, right?

Yeah.

But you get out.

That sounds like blah.

I’m going to alight from my automobile and step into the house for a cool one.

Yeah.

It’s such a hospitable phrase, I think.

Yeah.

It’s beautiful.

I agree.

Jim, where in North Carolina were you?

I just have to ask because you sound just like my dad.

Well, near Chapel Hills, Route 2 Hillsboro.

Okay.

My dad was from Alexander County.

Up in the mountains, huh?

Yes, sir.

Born at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain.

There you go.

Well, Jim, we appreciate your calling.

Very good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Thanks, Jim.

You know, Grant, speaking of that word light and a light,

I have to say that as a Southern Baptist preacher’s kid growing up,

My brother and I used to like to be naughty,

And our way of being naughty was to tell Bible jokes.

Oh.

Oh, okay.

Old category of humor that I missed out on, apparently.

That’s right.

Right.

Well, let me share some of it with you.

One of our Bible jokes was, when were cigarettes mentioned in the Bible?

And people said, I don’t know.

And then we would say Genesis 24, 64.

And Rebecca lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel.

Yep. Preacher’s kids. They know where it’s at.

We were bad. 877-929-9673.

More stories about what we say and how we say it. Stay with us.

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.

Suppose you’re at a social gathering and you’re introduced to someone you’d like to get to know better.

Once you’ve exchanged pleasantries, then what do you reach for as a conversation starter?

What’s that one question that you fall back on that you feel hits the sweet spot between being too nosy and being too impersonal?

For me, when I lived back east, I would usually say, what do you do?

Right.

What do you do?

When I was in New York City, that was the thing.

Totally permitted.

Right, right. But you come out here to California and I don’t.

And also during the recession, I stopped saying it too because the answer would be too complicated and sometimes a downer, right?

So what do you say, Grant, when you want to get to know somebody better?

Oh, it depends. And now that I’m married, the conversations go a lot differently.

That’s, well, yeah.

I mean, it’s part of it, right?

Good point.

Who are you here with? Might be a question when I was a bachelor.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

It’s a way of determining whether or not she was open to me getting her a drink and having a conversation and getting to know each other, right?

Yeah, that’s interesting.

But also, I do ask that question now, but I have different intentions.

Right.

Oh, how do you know our host, basically?

Right, that’s a good one.

Go to a party, and they’re like, oh, well, we went to high school together, and you’ve got a whole conversation.

Or we’re involved in a startup together, you’ve got a whole conversation.

Or sometimes it’s a great answer, like, I don’t know, I’m his butcher, and he just invited me when he was in the store the other day.

And you’re like, oh, my God.

Yeah, and you’re like, okay, love this.

Interesting.

I’ve been thinking about this because Deborah Fallows, the linguist, has been writing about this over at The Atlantic online.

And she started thinking about it because she went to South Carolina and found that one of the questions that’s asked very quickly is, what church do you go to?

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

Yeah.

And she was surprised to hear that, but I certainly heard that growing up when I was in the South.

In Kentucky, that’s what the question was?

Well, interestingly enough, in Kentucky, specifically in Louisville, Louisvillians are notorious for asking, where’d you go to high school?

Oh, that’s the same in St. Louis.

Oh, is it really?

Where I’ve spent much of my childhood or lived near.

Yeah, St. Louis.

Because it’ll tell you a lot of things right away.

Like, did you go to school in the city or in the county?

And were you in a rich neighborhood or a not-so-rich neighborhood?

There’s a lot of information.

Right, right.

And that one question.

Yeah.

Our question for you is, what do you ask people when you don’t know anything about them, but you want to find out more?

Is it where they went to high school, what church they went to, or something else?

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, who’s this?

Hi, Grant.

Hello there.

Hi, this is Shana from Somerville, Massachusetts.

How are you?

Hi, Shana.

What’s going on?

So I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish kind of environment, and I work in the Jewish community

Now, and I’ve noticed that a lot of times people use Yiddish grammar constructions,

But in their English.

For example, people would say, oh, I’m eating by Martha’s house tomorrow, meaning they’re eating at Martha’s house, which is the same way you would say it in Yiddish.

And I don’t know, I just kind of was wondering if that was a phenomenon with other languages.

If there was any more you could tell me about that, I found it really interesting.

Yeah, I encountered a similar phenomenon when I lived in New York City.

For a time, I lived in a building that was entirely Orthodox Jews.

And so I countered the same thing as well, where you’d get what’s called, this is the word, the calc.

C-A-L-Q-U-E.

A calc is when you take the pattern, usually the syntax of language A, and you match the words from language B to that syntax.

And so it sounds a little odd to the people who speak language B natively.

So a calc is sometimes it’s just a word.

The classic example is the word skyscraper, which has been calced from language to language.

It’s Graziel in French and something similar in German and something similar in Spanish.

But they literally translate to each other across all these different languages.

And so because of the long history of, for example, Yiddish speakers in New York City,

We see some patterns in New York City, even among people who are not Jewish,

That are related to the original syntax from Yiddish as it was spoken mainly in Eastern Europe.

For example, if Martha and I go out for dinner and I’m like, you know, this is not a good choice.

We didn’t really do well.

She’s like, what’s not to like?

Look at this.

We’ve got beautiful food, great vegetarian fare.

The wine is good.

The sunlight is good.

We’ve got friends nearby.

So the what’s not to like is also a classic borrowing from the structure of Yiddish.

With a little bit of German thrown in there.

Because don’t forget that German was the most, it was the number two language for a very long time in the United States.

So when Yiddish showed up, it kind of fit naturally into some places where German had already been spoken and left some residue of its own.

Interesting. That’s really cool.

So there are a ton of people who’ve researched this sort of stuff.

I don’t have anything at my fingertips to refer you to, but I would really encourage you to Google the word Kalk, C-A-L-Q-U-E, in Yiddish and English.

So Google those three words together, and I believe you’ll come across some really comprehensible stuff written by experts who’ve, sometimes from within the community and sometimes without, have studied this.

Is a phenomenon. Yeah, you could also Google

Structural borrowing. That’s another term

For it. And it’s not just

New York City, of course. I mean, in Wisconsin

You hear a lot of things like that, you know,

Where the streetcar bends the corner around.

You know, or throw the cow

Over the fence some hay once.

And the come with construction that people

Associate with Chicago and the Great Lakes

Region, that also probably

Is a Germanic borrowing from German.

Right.

To come with me.

Yeah.

Shannon, do you have any other examples from your experience?

I made a little list of things I was hearing.

We like lists.

So I know from, like, I don’t know.

Oh, right.

What do you know from matzo balls?

You’re from the Midwest.

Yeah, that would be a great example.

Hold by or hold with.

I was having a discussion with a co-worker about our policy in regards to paying for coffee in the office.

And he was like, okay, I agree with what you’re saying.

I’ll hold by you, as opposed to holding by somebody else’s opinion.

Oh, interesting.

I’m not sure I’m explaining that quite right.

I think I got it.

Okay.

So, like, yeah, kind of going in accordance to someone’s opinion.

In Jewish law, you’d say, oh, I hold by Rabbi so-and-so.

So, I don’t know.

That’s just kind of a construction that has branched out, I’ve noticed.

Okay.

What about if I say, if you and I meet,

We both come home from work at the same time,

Some dinner you want?

Instead of saying,

Do you want dinner?

Do you use that one?

Yeah, that’s definitely

One I hear a lot.

Giant books have been written

On the influence

Of Yiddish and English.

It won’t take you long

To find them.

But thank you, Shaina,

For sharing what you know

And what you’ve experienced

On your own.

It’s always nice

To abstract ourselves

From the academic world

And get the real world experience.

Thank you for talking to me.

Yeah, sure.

I’m really excited.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Call us with your language questions.

877-929-9673.

Or you can send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

Grant, I have another Bible joke for you.

What kind of car did the three wise men drive?

Oh, I’m afraid to answer this.

I don’t know.

They drove a Honda.

They all came in one accord.

I think we also used to say the wise men were firefighters because they came from afar.

But that’s because I grew up in Kentucky.

Where a fire is when else far.

Preacher’s kid jokes from Martha.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Ed Cobb calling from West Pollitt, Vermont.

West Pollitt, Vermont.

Well, welcome to the show, Ed. How are you doing?

Hi, Ed.

I’m doing fine, thanks.

All right. What can we help you with?

Well, several decades ago, I guess, I’m retired now, but at work,

I was reviewing a document for one of my colleagues,

And I changed comprises to is comprised of.

And years later, I realized that I was wrong.

I should have left it the way it was.

And I was wondering, you know, if you had some sort of guideline or mnemonic or something like that that we all could use for determining when you use is comprised of or comprises or is composed of.

So you’re coming to us with decades-old guilt?

Yeah.

I absolve you.

You’re forgiven.

Go and sin no more.

Yes, I was really embarrassed when I realized it later on.

So, Ed, you’d like a mnemonic device for dealing with things like comprise and is comprised of, correct?

Or is composed of or composes or, you know, that whole sort of collection of things there.

Yep. I have a mnemonic device for you. Don’t ever use is comprised of.

Okay. That’s sort of what I thought.

Yeah.

How’s that?

Don’t ever use it.

Yeah, just don’t. It confuses people and it confuses the issue.

But comprises has to do with getting your arms around something.

It goes all the way back to a Latin word that means to grasp.

And so comprise is something that something big does.

Whenever I say the word comprise, in fact, I move my arms.

Grant can see me doing that now.

It’s like I’m hugging a tree or something.

She looks like seeing the butterfly stroke in the studio.

Yeah, so comprise means to contain.

So you would say the alphabet comprises 26 letters, for example.

Right.

Okay.

Or contains 26 letters.

And that’s really pretty much what you need to know.

That’s pretty much the one use.

If it’s not that use, don’t do it.

Well, I sort of have kind of thought that maybe the word includes would be a good substitute in the construction of the sentence grammatically.

Not necessarily logical, but if you could substitute includes for comprises and it makes grammatic sense,

I think then you’d be okay using comprises.

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a good…

Kind of synonym of includes,

But it might not make logical sense in what you’re trying to say, but…

Yeah, includes or contains.

Okay, yeah, good.

I think you’re fine.

So you could say the alphabet is composed of 26 letters,

But it comprises 26 letters.

Right, exactly.

So it should be comprised, should not be followed by of,

And when in doubt, just use another word, as you say.

That’s the safe route.

Just avoid it comprised if you’re not sure about it.

Right.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Well, very nice talking to you.

Yeah, you too.

Nice talking with you.

Thanks for listening.

Take care.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Language is interesting and so are you.

Call us with your story, 877-929-9673, or tell us all about yourself in email, words@waywordradio.org.

A little bit of slang that I didn’t know that I came across, and I feel a little bad because it’s been around for a while, but it’s Russell My Jimmies.

Russell My Jimmies.

So let’s say that you’re on your Facebook account, right, and you’re scrolling past pictures of cute babies and birthday wishes and something from a business that you follow, that sort of thing.

Mom’s got something on there, right?

And then you see a post of like a car accident.

Your jimmies are rustled because you suddenly go from feelings of happiness to feelings of nervousness and fear and maybe even disgust or outrage, that sort of thing.

So your jimmies are rustled.

That rustled my jimmies.

Huh.

Is that American?

Yeah, it is American.

And I don’t think it has anything to do with the sprinkles on top of ice cream.

Right.

Some people call them jimmies, but it could.

I’m looking into it.

Interesting.

Yeah, if you use the expression rustled my jimmies and you know it, say, from way back, give me a call.

877-929-9673, or let Martha and me know about it at words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Pat from Eureka in the far north of California.

Oh, yes, of course. We know where that is.

Hi, Pat.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What’s going on?

I didn’t grow up in the U.S. I grew up in the U.K., but I’ve lived here for 20 years,

And I think I’m fairly well-assimilated language-wise.

There’s one American term that I’ve never been able to wrap my tongue around.

The term that I can’t deal with is bangs for a fringe of hair.

So you would call it a fringe of hair?

I would call it a fringe.

So what’s the difficulty with bangs?

I can’t see the relationship between the words and what they’re representing.

Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I can see why that word sounds strange.

Because, you know, you have the song, the Surrey with a fringe on top.

Sure.

Just like a fringe of hair.

Right, right.

Okay.

Yeah, well, Bang has an interesting history.

You know, at first it meant to strike violently back in the day,

And then it referred to any kind of sudden or violent movement.

And Bang took on this other meaning of abruptly or suddenly or completely.

I went bang up to somebody and talked to him or sort of like smack dab in colloquial English.

But if you cut your hair bang off in front, you cut it straight across.

So it’s a bang cut.

And there’s a word in the horse world for a bang-tailed pony.

That is, their hair is literally cut straight across.

But in American English, we took it and kind of modified it a little bit, right?

So no longer is it just the straight cut.

It’s any hair that hangs in the front.

Exactly.

So it’s related to that idea of a bang-tailed horse, too.

That was a way to count them, too.

And you had a whole big roundup.

You could keep track of which horse was which by starting to cut the ends of the tails off.

And if you look in the old, I don’t know, magazines and stuff that you can find online,

You will find places where people compare a woman’s hair cut this way unfavorably to the rear of a horse.

That’s not very complimentary.

Well, there was a time when you simply didn’t wear bangs.

It was decades when bangs were completely out of fashion.

So once they started to come back into fashion, there was much humor about that,

Much jocular kind of riposte and that sort of thing, just the teasing, gentle stuff sometimes, but sometimes not.

Being compared to a horse’s ass isn’t good at any point.

Yeah, no, I think I’d pass on that one.

Pat, have you been here since the 80s?

Did you see bangs in the 80s, like in the Midwest and Texas and places like that?

No, I came in the early 90s.

Okay, so they were astonishing in their anti-grav cap capabilities.

They stuck out forward, and I’ve got my hand up here, like a garden rake.

And they were hard and crusty from the hairspray.

And this was bangs in the 80s and 90s, at least where I lived in the Midwest.

Well, we call them a bouff.

A bouff.

Just a bouff.

Not a full bouffant, just like the front part, right?

And the whole rest of the head could be lank and kind of greasy, but the bangs were perfect.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But they look like they would hurt you.

Yes, exactly.

Right, right.

It’s like the prow on a ship or the cow catcher on the front of a locomotive, you know?

So did that time in with like head banging on the dance floor or anything?

Oh, completely different groups.

Completely different groups of people.

They never hung out.

Anyway.

Oh, Pat.

Pat, so did we do a bang up job?

Did we solve this for you?

I think so.

All right, good.

You don’t sound completely convinced, Pat.

But she’s confused now.

That’s our job.

She’s thinking about the rear end of a horse.

You got it right from the horse’s mouth.

There we go.

The right end, the correct end.

Better than the other end of the horse.

That’s right.

Pat, thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

And that’s the least of the confusions between the two Englishes, right?

The least, yes.

If you’ve got something that confuses you about the way they talk across the pond,

Or heck, the way we talk here in the United States, give us a call.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

One more preacher’s kid joke for you, Grant.

Oh, boy.

We used to say this one, my brother and I.

Kiss it out.

When was tennis mentioned in the Bible?

I don’t know.

When Joseph served in Pharaoh’s court.

Oh, wow. I didn’t think you’d like that.

No, I appreciate your joke once in a while.

And you say it was such delight on you. You have this impish look on your face.

I do.

877-99-9673.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

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We’re coming to you this week from the Recording Arts Center

At Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Take care.

Sayonara.

You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato.

Tomato 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 like pajamas and I like pajamas

I’ll wear pajamas and give my