Space Frogs (episode #1647)

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 a biologist and you and your fellow researchers have discovered several new species of frog. How do you decide what scientific names to give to them?

Well, you might name them based on their appearance or where they’re found. Or in the case of seven newly discovered tree frogs in Madagascar, you might name them for the sound they make. Now, all of these frogs belong to the genus Bufus, B-O-O-P-H-I-S. And the noises that they make reminded biologists of some of the sound effects from Star Trek. So they gave these frogs scientific names that included Bufus Kirke, Bufus Picardy, and Bufus Janeway.

I love it. So we’re talking about the sound of phasers and tricorders and transporters. That’s amazing. I just imagine these little guys in their little Starfleet costumes saluting each other.

You know, I did mess around with AI and made some images like that. They’re pretty funny.

Oh, that’s wonderful, Martha.

Yes, if you’re a fellow language weirdo, we would love to talk with you. 877-929-9673 is a toll-free number, 24 hours a day in the United States and Canada.

And if you go to our website at waywordradio.org, you’ll find a dozen ways to talk to us and all of our past episodes.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. My name is Patricia. I am calling from Jacksonville, Florida.

Jacksonville, great town. What’s on your mind?

So during COVID, my husband and I obviously started working from home. And I did not realize after all these years being married to him that he used corporate jargon. It was a new side of him that I was not aware of and thought maybe it was just, you know, that day.

But it continued. And then obviously the days turned into weeks and months and we had a few discussions about it. And, I just didn’t never understood. I don’t, it’s, it’s just not something that I do, but, he is a circle backer. He does unpack things. He does take deep dives. He drinks the Kool-Aid. He will talk about low-hanging fruit. And so, you know, we had many discussions about it. But there was one in particular that he still uses from time to time when he’ll now work from home and it is fight the good fight. And so he’s a sales manager and obviously, you know, he’s often motivating his staff and he has, you know, meetings where he’ll use some inspirational terms. He finished a meeting one time and I said, why are you saying fight the good fight? What does that mean? And he’s like, well, you know, it’s just, it’s a motivational thing to say. So I thought, you know what, I’m going to throw it over to a way with words and see what fight the good fight means. Where does this come from? So he just uses it like go get them tiger, which is a rally cry to his salespeople. And now, you know, I am only hearing his part of the conversation. I’m not hearing them. So yes, I’m assuming it’s always kind of rah, rah, fight the good fight. And he’ll say somebody’s name at the end. So I’m like, oh, you know, this, yeah, this is like, go get them. You can do this.

Well, Patricia, that’s so interesting that you’re saying that he’s using it as a term of modern corporate jargon, because I can tell you about the history of this phrase. It goes way, way back. And it actually gives us a chance to talk about a wonderful word for a particular rhetorical device. You should spring this one on him. It’s polyptoton. Polyptoton. Okay, spell that. I will. P-O-L-Y-P is like polyp. P-O-L-Y-P-T-O-T-O-N. Polyptoton. And it refers to the rhetorical device where you repeat a word in different forms in the same sentence for emphasis or contrast or for just rhythmic effect.

So, for example, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. You’ve got fear as a verb and fear as a noun. And then you have things like, you know, judge not that you not be judged, which is interesting because that comes from the Bible and so does fight the good fight. How about that?

Okay, very interesting.

Right. It goes all the way back to Paul’s letter to Timothy, or the letter that’s attributed to the Apostle Paul, where he’s giving instructions to a younger believer about leading the church and setting a good example and being godly and kind and gentle.

And amid all this advice about doing all these kind and gentle things, he says, fight the good fight of the faith. And that’s where we get the phrase.

Yeah.

So it goes way, way, way back.

And that letter to Timothy also includes the phrase that gives us the love of money is the root of all evil. But also not far from keep the faith also comes from there.

Right.

Oh, wow.

But one interesting context about that letter is, as Paul is supposedly writing this letter, he’s in prison because he’s been sentenced to death by Nero, Emperor Nero.

And so he’s giving all this gentle advice about the new church and Ephesus and just not concentrating on himself at all, just really thinking about the other person.

Yeah, so I don’t know, your husband may be talking about, you know, fight the good fight over the name of a workshop or something. But it’s got some heavy duty stuff going on in its history.

Yeah.

Well, Patricia, fight the good fight and keep the faith.

And we’ll talk to you another time.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Keep it up and, you know, just circle back whenever you can.

And thanks for unpacking that.

We will.

And we love that you’re helping us think outside the box.

Yeah.

Give us another field report sometime.

Yeah.

We’ve got real synergy with you.

You should call again.

Yeah, do ping us. Good idea. Bye, Patricia.

Bye-bye. Thanks.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. My name’s Dave. I live in Northern Virginia and close to Washington, D.C.

And I had a question about a couple of words that seem a little bit contradictory.

So let me just give a little bit of background.

I’m a copy editor for a think tank in Washington, right? We write a lot about numbers and trends in data over time.

So there’s only so many ways that you can write about this stuff.

So we’re writing about increases and decreases.

So one of the things that I started seeing come up in our writing is this term, meteoric rise.

So it’s like the word meteor with IC on the end, so meteoric rise.

And the first time I saw that, I thought, okay, no big deal.

There’s nothing really weird about that.

But I realized that, okay, so those of us who are Earthbound, we think about a meteor as falling from the sky, right?

So how could that be used to describe a rise?

And then I realized there’s another one that I came across that’s similar to this, which is a precipitous increase.

So it sounds like the same root as precipitation.

But it’s a precipitous increase.

And again, it’s kind of like rain, unless it’s raining horizontally, right?

Rain is going downward.

So how could an increase be precipitous?

So, yeah, I was just curious, kind of like, what’s the history of these terms?

And it looks like they became a lot more popular, you know, early in the 20th century, but especially took off maybe around the 80s.

Tell us about the think tank.

Are you talking about rain and meteors in the papers that you’re copy editing?

No, not at all. It’s actually, you know, it’s demographic data, it’s public opinion.

So it’s kind of like, you know, so political favorability, things like that.

So things that are, and we do a lot of data visualization.

So if you look at the page, you can actually see increases and decreases, and you can see when things are going sharply up or sharply down.

Let’s take those in reverse order.

So precipitous is really interesting here because the notion that is coming with that word, those connotations, their steepness and an acute angle.

So what you’re talking about with precipitous isn’t rain falling or something coming from the sky.

You’re talking about the angle of the rain, I guess you would say, straight up and down or close to it.

So you can’t have a precipitous rise because it’s steep like a precipice.

I see, precipice. Okay, that makes a little more sense.

Yeah, so that’s where we’re getting that.

Now, meteoric rise is a little more complicated because we can’t forget that meteoric is an adjective here.

And so it’s modifying rise.

And you have to have rise because meteoric on its own, as you noted, doesn’t mean go tall, go up, go high.

What it means is to move fast and bright for a short amount of time.

So that’s what’s happening with meteoric.

Meteoric does not contain a notion of going up.

It just is about the speed and the brightness and the duration.

So that’s why you need rise at the end of it to indicate the upward trajectory of whatever it is you’re talking about, the line on your graph, so to speak.

Okay, interesting.

Yeah, you don’t really hear about a meteoric fall, do you?

You do, actually.

It’s usually meteoric rise, do you?

Yeah, if you look at the corpora, these large bodies of text that linguists and lexicographers analyze to see what’s really happening in language in the aggregate, you will see meteoric talking about all kinds of movements up and down, sometimes even sideways.

And meteoric often appears on its own or as a post-nominal adjective that is coming after a noun.

So meteoric doesn’t only describe our eyes.

Yeah, it’s doing some really interesting stuff.

So as Martha knows, Greek is the origin here. Meteor is from a word meaning thing in the air.

And so if we just think about the meteoric item being up, you know, it doesn’t have to move up.

It doesn’t have to have a trajectory of up.

It’s just up.

So again, we’re talking about brightness, duration, and the swiftness.

Those are the three things that are happening with the meteor.

Dave, I bet you run into a lot of semantic satiation as a computer, you know, where you just stare at a word for so long and you just think, oh, is that right? Is that spelled right? I can’t remember.

I do. It’s kind of the curse of micro editing.

You know, it’s sort of like, you know, if you stare at words for too long, sometimes they will stick in your head and you start overthinking, like, does that really make sense?

And we just don’t want our readers to be looking at this and scratching their head and saying, hey, that’s weird.

Right. That is the definition of a good copy editor.

You want stuff to pass unnoticed, but still deliver its message and meaning.

Well, thank you, David, for your call.

Good luck out there in the copy editing trenches.

All right. Thank you so much. Bye.

We do love those moments that you share with us about when you’re at work and a language thing strikes you and is like, oh, no, am I doing this right?

Well, we can talk about it and figure it out together. 877-929-9673.

More about what we say and why we say it.

Stay tuned.

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 tiptoeing through a big old field of tulips

Is our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

Hi, you know what?

I’m just going to put my ukulele down over here.

I’m recording today from the Brooklyn Public Library.

By the way, the downtown branch, because there was too much construction outside my apartment,

And they have rooms available here, and I highly recommend if you need a room,

Avail yourself of your local public library. They have other stuff too, of course.

Now, recently I read the phrase hugger mugger, which means secretly or in a jumble,

But it just inspired me to make a quiz full of two-word answers that end in E-R.

For example,

Back in the day they used glue for these, but these days they more often use magnets,

So the rear of your car is much less likely to get damaged.

It’s a bumper sticker.

Bumper sticker.

I thought of another one that I think will come up later, so I’ll save it.

Good, good.

That’s a good instinct.

I like that.

So now these are by and large tracheic dimeter.

That is two syllable words that each have the stress on the first syllable.

All right.

In any case, let’s get all hugger mugger and answer, answer.

Here we go.

It was once used to wrap meat, but these days it’s much more common to find it as a packing material or used in art projects.

Butcher paper.

Yes, butcher paper.

In the UK, they are more commonly known as caravans, but if you hook one up to the back of your car in the US and live in it as you cross the country, this is what we call it.

Not tractor-trailer, because that’s O-R, but…

Right.

It is a trailer, but it’s…

Yeah, known as caravans, in case something trailer.

Camper trailer?

Yes, it’s a camper trailer.

Yeah, camper trailer.

Gotcha.

I didn’t use rhyming answers because I’m allergic to them, but here’s one.

It’s too bad that car accidents are so common that they deserve their own nickname, but here we are.

Fender Bender.

Fender Bender, yes.

That’s the one I thought of earlier.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, you know when the guy came up with that, he was like, I got a good one.

Fender Bender.

It’s like, oh, Gary, please.

Right.

From its Wikipedia entry, it is widely used in applications such as radiation

Dosimetry, radiological protection, experimental physics, and the nuclear

Industry.

Ooh.

Scatter or something.

I don’t know.

Scatter.

It’s a device, by the way.

Oh.

Geiger counter?

Yes, Geiger counter.

And, you know, this is, it’s actually a triple.

It’s actually a Geiger-Müller counter.

Oh, nice.

How about that?

Thank you, Hans Geiger and Walter Müller.

All right, let’s call it what it is.

It’s a house that’s falling to pieces and needs too much work.

Fixer-upper.

It’s a fixer-upper.

Let’s be honest.

Now, whether you call them latkes, acara, banuelos, or mouchever,

You’re going to need flour, eggs, and a few other things to coat them with.

Tater fritter.

Oh, fritters in here, yeah.

You need some flour and eggs, and you’ve got to mix it up.

You want to coat your thing with that, yeah.

Fritter batter?

Yes, fritter batter.

It’s fritter batter.

Now it’s a thing.

We just made it a thing.

Listen, guys, I have to go on a cruise down the Dnieper River,

So I’ll see you later, Gator.

Oh, I was going to say that.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

You can send a message to me and Martha and John through our website at waywordradio.org,

Where you’ll find a TOFI number for the United States and Canada, a WhatsApp number for the rest of the world, and lots of social media handles.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Brenna calling from Rapid City, South Dakota.

Hi, Brenna. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I kind of had a question around a saying that was really common in my household growing up.

I grew up in northwestern Nebraska, and I used this saying recently at work.

And my colleagues all kind of looked at me like, what does that mean?

And so the saying is one side or a leg off.

And the context that I recently used this thing or phrase in was we were on the elevator and we were trying to let somebody off.

And so they were at the back of the elevator and I kind of said to the group, one side or a leg off, which to me means, you know, get out of the way or you might lose an appendage, I guess.

But really, it just means get out of the way, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

And they were like, why is this woman threatening violence?

Right. Yes.

And here’s the other funny thing is, is I’m a nurse.

We’re in the hospital.

And so, you know, amputations are a real thing.

Oh, no.

One side or an appendix out.

Right.

Yeah, I could have said that too.

Oh, my goodness.

But, but it was just this moment where I was like, okay, that did not land or translate.

And so I said to some of my colleagues, I was like, have you, have you ever heard of that thing?

And everyone was just like, no.

And so I asked a couple more people, and then I thought, am I, like, is this a real thing, you know?

So I, of course, consulted Google, and Google didn’t really, you know, help me out.

You need real arbitration here, real adjudication.

So I checked in with my parents.

My dad is really the person who used this phrase the most growing up.

You know, it’d be like keeping moving a big piece of furniture and would say one side or a leg off, like get out of the way, you know.

And so I asked him and my mom about it.

And it actually turns out that my dad adopted this phrase from my late maternal grandmother who used it all the time.

And so she she has passed on many years ago now.

But my mother shared, you know, that she was she was a super energetic person and she was always like, move, move, move, go, go, go.

And so she used this phrase a lot.

Once I had her leg off, she’d be, you know, busting through the house or whatever.

And my dad adopted it because, you know, he just thought it was a funny thing.

But neither neither of my parents know where it came from.

Well, I got to say, Martha, there’s no am I remembering correctly, there’s no regional or national component to this.

Not that I know of, but it’s definitely not just their phrase. And I’m picturing him moving furniture and people worrying that, you know, one of the legs of the chair or the table were going to come off.

Oh, sure, yeah.

So I can see how that could be confusing and confusing for the folks in that elevator, too.

But this expression has been around since at least the early, early, early 1900s.

And it means exactly what you said, you know, move it or lose it.

Get out of the way.

Well, it’s funny that you should say move it or lose it because that that’s an expression that didn’t come around till much later, like the 1960s.

But it’s the same idea.

The losing it is a limb.

Yeah, it’s the very same idea.

And so, yeah, it means just what you said.

It’s not limited to your family.

The writer Nelson Algren back in 1951 published a book called City on the Make about Chicago.

And he described Chicago as not so much a city as it is a vast way station where three and a half million bipeds swarm with a single cry.

One side or a leg off.

I’m getting mine.

Oh, my God.

Which is a great way.

How funny.

Yeah, it’s a great use.

It’s kind of like gangway, meaning get out of the way.

Well, Brenna, call us again sometime.

Let us know about the language and jargon in the nursing environment maybe.

Or another time you felt silly in an elevator.

Yes.

That sounds great.

Thank you guys so much for your time.

All right.

Take care.

Keep up.

Good luck.

I just want to say thanks for the nursing and all the medical care.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

I absolutely love it.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

We know you work hard.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

We love to hear these strange encounters with language where one of you had more than one head.

Tell us the time that you felt like an alien because something you said just didn’t ring out like you thought it would.

877-929-9673.

It is a magical phone number that is toll free in the United States and Canada, 24 hours a day.

Leave us a voicemail.

In an interview about her 2010 book, The Warmth of Other Suns, the epic story of America’s great migration,

Isabel Wilkerson described her writing process, and I really appreciated it.

She said, it’s basically the same challenge that any writer has.

One word followed by another word followed by another word as evocative, as poetic, as lyrical, as vibrant as you can possibly make it.

And then write that next sentence.

And there you go.

It’s consistency and perseverance, right?

I loved her description of one word following another word.

And you just make those decisions again and again and again in each sentence and then each paragraph like that.

And this is how she writes wonderful books like The Warmth of Other Suns and Origins, which are fantastic books.

We’d love to hear your writing process.

Tell us about how you put your books together.

Email words@waywordradio.org or call us toll free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Well, hi, this is Sherman calling from Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, my granddaddy had a saying that I just love.

He would use it when, let’s say, a difficult, hard task had been accomplished by somebody who was probably not really well suited for that task.

And he would say that they had done it through main strength and awkwardness, which I think is just one of the best things I ever heard.

And I wonder if other people have said that, too.

Main strength and awkwardness, is that three things or two?

I guess it’s your main strength coupled with your awkwardness.

Main strength and awkwardness.

And so you said it was things that they weren’t well suited to.

Like what kinds of things are we talking about?

I think of things like, you know, putting up a shed, you know, working with your hands and creating a shelter or, you know, building something and just making it.

It’s almost through your sheer force of will.

Yeah.

So main strength itself is idiomatic.

It’s an expression that goes back to the 1500s.

And you’ll find main used in that way with main force or main courage or main logic.

And all of these have to do with this, like, just like you said, kind of brute whatever.

Brute courage, brute force, brute strength.

They’re pure willpower and pure muscle.

It’s like you’re just doing it without a lot of finesse, without a lot of elegance, you know?

You’re not very refined, but you got her done.

And then by the mid-1800s, we start to see main strength and other things being paired together.

And the earliest version that I can find is main strength and stupidity.

And the first use I find of that in 1845, they write, as sailors say, main strength and stupidity.

And they’re talking about how much of sailing has to do with pure muscle power.

You know, it does not require an advanced degree.

You know, there are no doctorates on a sailing ship required at all.

It’s muscle.

But you’ll find other things, main strength and prodigious awkwardness,

Main strength and pure awkwardness, main strength and ambition and ignorance

And stubbornness and roughness and determination.

And you can hear all of these nouns all have this idea of clusteredness, you know, pure drive, energy, and almost animal energy.

Yeah, I was thinking simply determination, but okay.

It sounds a little more brutal than that.

One synonym you might run across is to bullet through.

You know, imagine doing something with the force and energy of a massive bowl, you know, B-U-L-L.

I’ll cut you through.

Okay.

Okay.

What do you think of that, Sherman?

I just think it’s fantastic, and I’m going to continue using it for myself.

And thank you so much.

This has been a blast.

Yeah, yeah.

Thanks for sharing.

We really appreciate it.

Take care of yourself.

Great.

You too, all.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Talk to us about your main strengths and your awkwardness when it comes to language.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Augusta calling from Denver.

Hey, Augusta, welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

So one day we were watching a show or something and my boyfriend said,

Have you ever noticed a lot of British people say six instead of six?

And I never had.

But of course, since then, I noticed it a few times and it made me start thinking about why that is.

And if it’s because it’s easier to say, since sixth is definitely a little awkward to say.

So I’ve never heard someone from the U.S. say it this way.

So if that is the reason, it’s funny to me that we got our language from the Brits and we say it the way it’s actually spelled and they kind of use a shortcut.

So let me make sure that I understand the words and the pronunciations that you’re talking about.

So you’re talking about the term that comes after fifth, right? S-I-X-T-H?

Yeah.

And how does it sound to you when you hear British people pronounce it?

So it’s almost as if it’s spelled S-I-K-T-H.

Okay.

So you’re hearing S-I-K-T-H.

And where are you encountering British people?

Television shows? Yeah, mostly in shows. Yeah. Like what kind of shows? Are we talking

Bridgerton or something like that? Yes. Or even more, more modern shows. Like we were just

Recently watching Love is Blind UK. Yeah. I think my wife watches that. It’s very successful here.

So it’s interesting that you’re not hearing it in the United States because it does happen here as well. And you’re absolutely right that that X-T-H in the word sixth, that is known as a consonant cluster, three consonants in a row, is difficult to pronounce.

It’s hard to say. And if you look at the history of the spelling of the word, you can see that reflected over the many centuries of the words of history. You can see it reflected in the variety of spellings that were a little more literal. They were transcribing what people said.

You can see that X often disappear or turn into a K or just turn into a hard T or something else. That said, there are a lot of usage guides that specifically say don’t say it with the K sound. Make sure you pronounce that X in there because otherwise you sound uncareful or inattentive to your speech.

I want to address the notion, though, that it might be interesting that the Americans say it one way and the British say another because we got our language from them. As a matter of fact, they got their language from the same place we got our language. So all of the current dialects of English are descended from the same common roots.

And there has never been just one English. So we’re not a child of British English. We are siblings with British English of a previous collection of versions of English. It’s complicated.

So we’re not. But we do sometimes keep older forms that the modern British English speakers don’t use anymore. Like the way we use gotten. Gotten are different. But anyway, that said.

So, yeah, you will hear sixth. I don’t know that it’s more common in the UK. I have not come across any pronunciation studies of that. But I do know that it has occurred in Scots English more often, such that it’s sometimes recorded in Scots dictionaries as the exact spelling. Not an X, but a K. S-I-K-T-E-H.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Cool. So that’s what we know, Augusta. Does that work for you?

Yeah, thank you so much.

Yeah, our pleasure. Call us again sometime. Take care of yourself.

Okay, I appreciate you having me. Thanks.

Yeah, bye-bye.

Thanks, bye-bye.

You know, Grant, now she’s got me thinking about how I say that word sixth. And I’m thinking about when I talk about when I was in sixth grade, you know, sometimes it just sounds like sixth grade. You know, there’s that consonant cluster of five consonants there, sixth grade.

And that is literally one of the pronunciations over the many centuries has been where sixth, S-I-X-T-H, sounds like six, S-I-X. Because our teeth and our tongues want to do something different and we have to force them to behave.

Yeah, well, maybe you’re listening as closely to pronunciation as Augusta is. You can call us to talk about pronunciation or any other aspect of language. Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

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.

We heard from Nora Carruthers in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and she wrote to us to say that she’s intrigued by the name of her great-great-grandfather. His name was Workman Hardlabor Honeycutt.

I’d hire him.

Right. There’s a man with three jobs. He’s working a double shift from the day he was born.

Yeah, yeah. I found that really fascinating, too. She said that her mother said that his first and middle name reflected the family’s Quaker religious beliefs and the importance of and the sanctity of hard work.

Workman Hardlabor is an example of a virtue name. These are also called grace names, and they’re used in several cultures to express the virtues that a parent hopes that their child grows up with. And these have been used among Quakers and among Puritans in the early colonies in the United States.

A lot of them are hyphenated, like hate evil, be courteous, search the scriptures. But I think my favorite is preserved, which means saved from sin. And there was actually a guy in the early 19th century named Preserved. He was a prominent New York shipping merchant, and his name was Preserved Fish.

But serving fish like these canned tuna or something.

Yes, yes. These sardines in a can with a key top.

Yes, but apparently he was well known and he is a distant relative of Hamilton Fish, the future governor of New York.

How about that?

You know, sometimes these are called hortatory names. It comes from the same Latin word for urging that gives us words like exhort. Thanks to Nora from South Carolina for bringing this to our attention.

And you can share your memories and your odd family names to words@waywordradio.org or try us on our website where you’ll find all of our past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, Martha, this is Libby from Kentucky.

What’s on your mind today, Libby?

Well, my daddy, growing up, he always said this saying that whether he was telling a story or agreeing or disagreeing with someone, he would say, I’ll tell you what’s the truth. Like, Martha looked pretty at service today. And he would say, yeah, tell you what’s the truth. She sure did.

I did not know if that was a family saying or if that was regional or things like that.

I tell you what’s the truth.

So that comes before whatever the statement is that he’s saying?

Yes, ma’am.

Yes.

Yeah, that’s a regional. I’m assuming he’s from eastern Kentucky or North Carolina?

Well, if he was still alive, he would be in his hundreds. And he grew up in Sevierville, Tennessee. And then his family, of course, he did not grow up. He was born in Sevierville. And then they moved to Middlesbrough, Kentucky.

This expression, I’ll tell you what’s the truth, is particular to that part of the country.

Oh, wow.

It shows up in the dictionary of Southern Appalachian English. But if you find fiction and personal narrative and folklore, a variety of places, there is almost always a connection to North Carolina or Eastern Kentucky.

But yeah, I tell you what, the truth is very similar to an expression that more people probably have heard, which is, I’ll tell you what, which people might recognize from the cartoon King of the Hill said by the main character Hank Hill.

I’ll tell you what.

So these two expressions are very similar.

I think it’s great. And it sounds exactly like I was hoping. But like I said, I didn’t even know I said that until a friend of mine from Indiana said, I love the way you say, I’ll tell you what’s the truth. And I didn’t know I said it.

You know, and then I thought, Lord, if Martha and Grant ask if my kids say it, I don’t know because I don’t, you know, I don’t hear it.

When Grant said that, you know, they use this expression, I’ll tell you what, on this TV show, I’m thinking, why are we even talking about this? I use it all the time.

I’ll tell you what.

Yeah.

But you’re also from Kentucky, Martha.

I tell you what’s the truth.

Yeah.

I tell you what’s the truth.

Yeah, I don’t say that.

But it’s so interesting that, you know, when somebody points out an expression that you use that you just think is, you know, the way everybody talks.

But I guess not.

I’ll tell you what’s the truth, Libby. It’s been a delight to have you on the show.

Well, I appreciate y’all so much, and I appreciate how supportive you all are of the Appalachian community and all culturals.

And I appreciate that so much.

Thank you very much.

Oh, thank you.

We try harder every week.

Thank you, and take care of yourself, Libby.

Okay, you too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

How do they talk out your way?

We’d love to hear about it. You can call us at 877-929-9673 to talk about it with us or send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, excellent. This is Eric Jacobs calling from Tucson, Arizona.

Hey, Eric.

My question is, my wife says it a lot, and it’s, oh, he’s walking in tall cotton. What do they mean by that?

So I work out in Marana, Arizona, which is about 25 minutes away from the main suburb of Tucson. And I actually drive by the cotton fields every day, watch them harvest it, watch them with big machines. Nobody’s picking cotton anymore.

I speculate it means, you know, somebody who’s not bending over all day, they’re picking cotton so their back’s not sore.

They’re probably in a better mood from somebody who’s been bent over all day.

That’s just my speculation of where it came from.

Yeah, that’s part of the imagery.

But also, if the cotton is high, you’re having a good cotton crop.

And so you’re going to make a lot of money this season.

So to be in tall cotton, to walk in tall cotton or high cotton, all of these have connotations of things going well.

Okay. I would think from the financial perspective, that makes sense.

Yeah. Sometimes it’s not about financial, though. It’s about your mood, to be in a good mood or to feel comfortable or well taken care of.

So there’s just a lot of connotations of something positive going on in your life.

There’s a coarser version, which is pooping in high cotton with a different word for poop, which is an even more emphatic way to say that somebody is doing so well that they can do their body’s business in a thriving, happy way.

It’s hard to talk about this stuff on the radio, but I think you get the point.

Yeah. So this is, I mean, most terms, I’m assuming, they were literal in sense, and they’ve caught on, and now it’s just the same.

Exactly. There’s a reason that this expression is far more common in the southern part of the United States and Texas.

And I’m surprised, I didn’t even know cotton was grown in Arizona, but there we go.

Yeah, where Arizona has the five C’s, right? It was a copper, cotton, cattle, climate, and citrus.

Oh, that last one with a different sound.

That’s fun.

Anyway, so there you go.

It’s about successful cotton.

That’s all.

Good crop.

Excellent.

Well, thank you so much for that.

Take care of yourself, Eric.

Thanks for calling.

Yeah, thank you so much.

All right.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

I learned a fascinating word the other day. It was lacryphagy.

Lacryphagy.

Mm—

This sounds like something to do with a columbarium.

With a columbarium? How interesting that you would say that. Now, why would you say that?

You know what a columbarium is.

Well, yeah, it comes from the Latin word columbo, which means dove, because it looks, a columbarium is where you put ashes.

And it’s like, you know, what do you call those things that doves, like a dovecote?

Dovecotes, yeah.

But some people think it has to do with the little puffs of white smoke when you’re cremating a body.

Oh, no.

They look like little doves going up to the heavens.

But no, what is the word again?

Lacryphagy?

Yeah, L-A-C-H-R-Y-P-H-A-G-Y, lacryphagy.

Oh, tear eater?

Yes, yes.

Somebody who eats tears?

Yes, yes.

Basically, tear eating.

What is that?

What is it?

This is so cool, Grant.

You’ve got to look up lacryphagy because scientists have observed that insects, like especially flies and bees and butterflies,

Sometimes crawl up to the eyes of other animals and they’ll sip on the animal’s tears.

It’s because tears contain a whole lot of protein.

It’s like a protein shake for butterflies.

You can find pictures on the Internet of butterflies sipping from the eyes of caimans,

You know, those crocodile-like animals.

Oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen pictures like that.

That’s called lacryphagy.

Horses with flies at their eyes, and it looks very irritating.

That could be the same thing.

I think certain kinds of bees will do that as well.

But lacryphagy, you know, it’s from the Latin word lacrima, which means tears.

You know, there’s lacrima Christi, that white wine.

Somebody who’s lacrimose is all teary and mournful.

But lacryphagy just made my heart sing.

Lacryphagy.

I could see that being used metaphorically to describe someone who tries to make others cry because they feed off of that negative energy.

They feed on their tears.

Yeah.

The Lachrymphagy.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Diana Will and I’m calling from Tucson, Arizona.

Well, welcome to the show, Diana.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have a 65-year-old mystery.

And my mystery is the word Amadon.

And when I was really young and the oldest of four ruffian siblings, my Irish grandmother would come over and babysit us so my mother could get a moment of clarity.

And she would chase us around the house yelling, you Amadans, you Amadans.

So I took that to mean kind of like we were little rascals or something.

But I’m 75 now, so that was 65 years ago.

But it’s been actually a passing fancy of mine over the years.

Of what that actually meant.

And then lo and behold, one day in 1995, I was watching Braveheart with Mel Gibson.

And the Scottish, was it William Wallace, I believe, was fighting in the 13th century.

And he mentioned fighting the Amadons.

Now, that was 800 years ago, and that was in Scotland, right?

So I still persisted in wondering about it.

And I couldn’t really find anything about Scottish history and the Amadons.

How did it go from being like a 13th century, perhaps warring tribe in Scotland, to coming out all these 800 years later out of the mouth of my Irish grandmother calling us Amadons?

I’m just really curious.

I’m imagining a bunch of children painted blue running around the house.

Right?

The secret answer here is not so secret, which is Amidon mentioned in the movie is not a tribe.

It just means fools.

Idiots.

So he’s basically just insulting them.

Oh, no.

So is it Scottish or is it Irish?

It’s both.

Yeah.

It comes from the shared Celtic language roots, the Gaelic and Gaelic roots.

Yeah, so it’s often spelled in Irish, O-M-A-D-H-A-U-N.

Interestingly, in the subtitles of the movie, they spell it A-M-E-R-D-A-N,

Which is not one of the established spellings of the word.

But you’ll also find it spelled as A-M-A-D-A-N with an acute accent on the final A.

And it might go back to Irish words meaning madness or craziness.

I’m not really sure.

But it is a very old word, and it is not surprising.

It wouldn’t have been surprising if that film were reliably historic.

It would not be surprising to find that word in a document from that far back.

Does it go back older than the 13th century?

Oh, I don’t know if it’s older than that, but it’s definitely got many centuries of use in it.

I mean, humans love to call each other rude names and have forever.

So, yeah, I’m not surprised.

In more modern writing, you’ll find it in Frank McCourt’s wonderful book, Angela’s Ashes, where one person says that he is sometimes called a dittering omadon, which means a dittering fool.

But generally fool is the translation, although simpleton is sometimes used.

Somebody who is just, as they say in the American South, just not right.

Oh my gosh, grandma.

Oh, grandma.

So I assume when she was chasing you, it was in a lighthearted way and not an angry way.

No, it generally was, yeah.

I mean, we were always laughing about it when she would chase us like that, but I’m sure we had been doing something wrong, which would…

Oh, of course.

What’s life without a little bit of doing wrong?

Yeah, well, that’s interesting, because I was always looking up, oh, O-M-O, Ramadan, and when I would do it to Siri, and I’d go, what’s the meaning of Ramadan?

And it would give me the, say, well, Ramadan is…

Oh, no.

I ended up thinking you guys would have the answers.

If you want to find out more about this through Google, look for the spelling O-M-A-D-H-A-U-N.

And that’s going to give you more options.

But you’ll often find it anglicized even among the Irish as Amidon.

So they still say it?

Yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, you will find it on Irish TV shows, Irish movies, Irish fiction, Irish nonfiction.

Yeah, it’s definitely still in use.

Oh, I never thought to ask my relatives who still live in Ireland.

I’m going to have to call them when I hang up.

Diana, I’m glad we were able to help you.

By the way, I do recommend that book, Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.

It is sad and moving, but it is beautifully written.

I did read it.

I did read it.

I did read it.

I did read it, but I don’t recall seeing the word Amazon.

Yeah, Tiz, I think, is the next one, right?

Yeah, Tiz is the next one.

And, yeah, I remember it in a scene where a teacher is sort of haranguing the students in Angela’s Ashes.

He uses that term.

Yeah, that’s the scene I was referring to.

Oh, well, I have the book actually on my shelf.

There you go.

Worth a reread.

Have a look.

Diana, thank you so much for spending some time with us.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Take care of yourself.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

All righty.

Bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

We love to talk to you about the memories you have of your parents, grandparents, and your relatives.

And we love to hear about the things the young kids are bringing home from school.

Language is so fascinating, and you can be fascinated with us, 877-929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us through our website at waywordradio.org.

You know, the singer Celine Dion grew up in the French-speaking part of Canada,

But there’s something really fascinating about her name.

If you go through it and say all the individual vowels.

Celine Dion.

Mm—

Yeah, if you just say the vowels one by one.

Oh, I got it.

Do you?

Yes.

And I’m not going to get you to say it.

Did she grow up on a farm?

E-I-E-I-O.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Martha and I love your silly jokes.

You can email us at words@waywordradio.org or tell them with all the relish you can spare on the phone at 877-929-9673.

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Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting,

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Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

You