Spit Game (episode #1427)

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.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in the first century, it covered the city of Pompeii,

And it left a lot of things intact, including ancient graffiti.

And I’ve been looking at some of the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, and it’s really fascinating.

It’s sort of a reminder that some things never change.

A lot of the graffiti is really personal.

It mentions people by name, like Celidus the Thracian makes the girls moan.

There’s a lot of naughty graffiti, if I remember correctly.

There’s a lot of awfully naughty graffiti that I can’t share on the air,

But these personal ones are really interesting.

A lot of it’s boastful, like Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th Legion, was here.

The women did not know of his presence.

Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion.

Good going, Floronius.

Yeah, right?

And then I really like this one.

It’s, I’ve caught a cold.

That’s it?

Yes.

I’ve caught a cold.

Yes, and there’s something so touching to me about that.

Pituita me tenet.

I’ve caught a cold.

You know, it’s like when you’re sick and there’s nothing you can do, there’s nothing anybody else can do,

But you want people to know that you’re sick.

Yeah, hear me.

I don’t know.

There’s something really touching and also kind of funny about all of this.

I love ancient graffiti.

I have a colleague who is studying ancient graffiti in Greece, bringing her students around to do it.

But my favorite place for older graffiti, I won’t call it ancient, is the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

So there’s this whole temple that was built very like 19 B.C. Or something like that.

In it is 200-year-old graffiti left by Europeans who went to Egypt.

So it’ll be like soldiers and Egyptologists of the period who, you know, even though they were studying this culture and bringing these artifacts back, didn’t have a problem with leaving their mark on it.

You would never see a modern academic or soldier do that sort of thing.

Right.

Probably not.

Yeah.

Isn’t that something?

I mean, it’s just this human urge to leave our mark, to be seen, to be heard, right?

I guess now it’s in social media.

Right.

Yeah.

Social media is the natural extension of the handprints on the cave wall.

Yep, and some of that’s filthy too, but we won’t go there.

This is a show about words and language.

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

Or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, how are you?

This is Claudette McCann from Tallahassee, Florida.

Hi, Claudette.

We’re super groovy over here.

How about you?

Hey, Claudette.

Hi, I’m doing well.

What’s going on?

Well, I was driving home one day, and I love listening to your show, which I know everybody tells you, but I really do.

I had just, we can only text at stop signs when you’re not driving in cars, but oftentimes those are pretty quick.

And I had this text message going back and forth with one of my daughters, and she was asking me where the baby wipes were.

So I sent my text back, and then I get this hug from her, and I thought, okay, let me see what I actually texted.

So it was like, where are the baby woes?

And I thought, well, I can understand that there could be a problem if you can’t find the baby white.

But my text said, woe.

So I thought, well, you know, and it’s happened several times where I’ll get this huh back from somebody.

So I’ve decided we need to coin the phrase, instead of read between the lines, it needs to be read between the autocorrect.

I agree with you completely.

Because it almost sounds like a philosophical question.

Where are the baby’s woes?

That’s right.

Or the baby woes.

Yes.

The baby woes.

And he is pretty woeful because we do need to find the whites.

Yeah.

A little bum needs some TLC, huh?

Yeah.

Ever since I got an iPhone and started using Siri and using Siri to dictate because I’m too lazy to type.

Oh, my gosh.

You’re a modern woman.

You’re not lazy, Martha.

Don’t talk about yourself like that.

All right.

I’m efficient.

You’re forward-thinking and modern.

But Siri is ruining my life.

Well, she does have her own interpretations of things.

She does.

It’s not that she’s ruining my life necessarily.

There are a lot of misunderstandings, but there are a lot of really funny things.

In fact, I’ve started with my friends using the acronym LTTS, which just means let that typo stand, because sometimes they’re really funny.

Well, they are funny.

I mean, the other day my daughter said, I’m going to try to sleep for a little bit.

Abscond to your house afterwards.

Abscond?

I’m gone.

What did she mean?

What did she intend to type?

She was really trying to say, and come to your house afterwards.

Oh, okay.

I’m sure, you know, I got the gist of it.

That sounds more exciting to have gone to someone’s house.

Right, that’s right.

Claudette, my question for you is,

Have you adopted any of those things into your texting?

Because I’ve certainly done that.

I have a friend, when she’s coming to the house,

She will say, any needs?

Like, should I stop by the store and pick up anything?

But it came out once Ganymedes,

And Ganymede, of course, was the youth with the erotic attachment to Zeus.

And this is a moon of Jupiter.

Yeah, yeah, it’s a moon of Jupiter, too.

But we just use Ganymedes now when we want to say any needs.

Do you have anything that you’ve adopted into your texting vocabulary?

No, I really haven’t done that.

Maybe it’s because they’re too random for me.

But, you know, that would be interesting.

But, you know, chances are I’m not going to adopt anything that’s cute and intentional.

But Googling around, I do see a handful of other people who use the expression read between the autocorrect.

And it’s always the cases that you describe.

It’s where, well, you know what I mean.

It’s like it’s pretty clear that unless you want to be mean or just pretend to be dense, you’re going to get what they meant.

But there’s also a joke in there somewhere.

Claudette, I’m betting that a lot of other listeners are going to let us know words that they’ve adopted from autocorrect mistakes.

What do you bet?

Oh, they probably will.

And maybe I should.

Maybe one of these days I’ll find one that I think is particularly cute or compelling

Or that has just a secret meaning between the person I’m texting and adopt that one.

Okay. Well, let us know, okay?

All right. Have a good day.

Take care. Drive carefully. Bye-bye.

Tell us about how you read between the autocorrects.

What has it done to your typing?

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jill Lippincott calling from Miami.

Hey, Jill, welcome.

Hi, Jill, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What’s up?

Well, so I’m a big watcher of the British police procedural shows on my PBS stations.

I like to watch Vera.

I like to watch Smith & Bailey.

And they use a term on them when they are interrogating a suspect.

And it’s grassing or to grass somebody, as in to inform on someone or to tattle on someone.

In the United States, we would say we would rat someone out or rat on someone.

And I was just wondering where that comes from, to grass someone.

To grass.

Yeah, I remember reading this for the first time in a prison narrative, like a first-person story about somebody’s time in prison.

It was a great story.

And I was like, I have no idea.

It’s interesting. It goes back to rhyming slang. So in old British slang, to shop someone would

Mean to inform on them. So you’re basically shopping information about a person. I know

That they’ve gone out robbing houses in the night and you trade that with somebody else for favors

Or to get out of your own conviction, that sort of thing. So you’re shopping on them.

But the rhyming slang for to shop is grasshopper. So if you’re a shopper, you turn into a grasshopper,

Shopper, someone who informs, you become a grasshopper. And then grasshopper as rhyming

Slang was shortened to grass as a noun and verbed as well. So now if you grass, you inform on

Someone. So the meaning changed even though the form of the word transformed over time. And grass

Goes back, oh, 1920s probably, maybe even a little bit older than that. And to shop someone dates

Back, oh, 1800s at least.

So you’re talking about like the Cockney rhyming from the east end of London.

It may not be Cockney rhyming.

You know, it’s often thought by people in the Americas that all rhyming slang is Cockney

And it isn’t.

There’s tons of rhyming slang that has nothing to do with Cockney.

So it could just be standard British rhyming slang.

Well, very interesting.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, sure.

Thanks for calling.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks for calling.

Take care, Joe.

My pleasure.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Yeah, I really like that.

So grasshopper was used as a noun or a verb?

So if you shop someone, you inform on them.

Yeah, and you are a grasshopper?

If you are someone who shops, then you’re a shopper.

The rhyming slang for that is grasshopper.

Grasshopper is shorted to grass as a noun, which then becomes a verb to grass.

That is so cool.

And we don’t use it on this side of the ocean.

No, definitely.

That’s a very clear divide there.

No American would use that unless they were being pretentious.

Great.

Well, call us with your language question, 877-929-9673,

Or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

You know how we say in English that the grass is greener in the neighbor’s yard?

Yeah.

Meaning?

It means everything always looks better when you don’t have it.

Yes, exactly.

The Japanese expression that says the same thing is the neighbor’s flowers are red.

Oh, and yours are wilted and the leaves are falling off.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning. I’m Wanda Comet, and I’m calling from Monta Vista, Colorado.

Hi, Wanda. You said Wanda?

Yes, that’s it.

Wanda, welcome to the show.

What’s happening, Wanda?

What’s going on?

I would like to know where the word horn-schwaggle came from.

How do you schwaggle a horn, or what does that have to do with anything with it?

Horn schwaggle.

Have you been swindled lately?

No swindled, no bamboozled, but horn schwaggled, maybe.

You’ve been horn schwaggled.

Somebody pulled one over.

Congratulations.

Yeah, and by horn schwaggled, we mean, as Grant suggested, to be tricked or swindled or embarrassed, something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s a word we don’t know the origin for.

It’s an American word, though, right?

Yeah.

It’s one of these words that seems of a piece with a lot of rambunctious frontier words,

Words that people came up with on the frontier back in the 1830s, 1840s.

So these long words they made up to sound important.

Yeah, to sound like they came from Latin or something.

But probably to mimic the people who were self-important rather than actually put on real air.

There are lots of different variations of it, like hornswoggle and hornscriggle and hornsnoggle and hornswaggle and hornswargle.

It sort of sounds like what it is, right?

Oh, yeah.

You know, there are a lot of words like that, like honeyfuggle, which sort of means the same thing, or bumswiggle.

It’s just sort of a silly-sounding word, we think.

Bumswiggle?

Bumswiggle.

Sounds like the latest dance craze.

That’s not like twerking, is it?

I don’t know.

I don’t know if it’s like twerking.

I don’t even know if it’s bum swiggle or bums wiggle.

But bum swiggle.

I’ll be bum swiggled.

I’ll be horn swoggled.

I’ll have to try to bum swiggle one of these days.

All right.

So that’s about all we have on that.

Well, thank you very much.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Wanda.

Take care now.

You bet.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Try us on Twitter @wayword.

And, you know, we’ve got a really lively Facebook group where you can find thousands of people just like yourself talking about language.

More Wordplay for Word fans.

Stick around.

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 Paradin.

We’re joined by our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

I’m back again.

Got some quizzes, I hope.

I do.

I have one right here.

Dictum is one of my favorite word games in my book, Super Party Games, Fun and Original Ideas for Ten or More.

Where can you get that book?

My house.

It’s out of print.

I’m waiting for the film to come out.

Now, dictum is called dictum because if you look up the word dictionary in the dictionary, dictum is the very next word.

So the idea of dictum is that I’ll give you a word.

You have to give me the closest, bold-faced main dictionary entry after it.

The head words.

The bolded head words.

Yes.

For Christ’s sakes.

And Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate, which I have here in front of me.

I also have here in front of me the 10 words following each word.

The closer you get to the keyword, the better.

Oh, so it’s like kitchen pennies.

Okay.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

For example, if I gave you the word dragoon, you might say drake.

Now, that’s pretty good, but that’s only worth two points.

The word dragster is better.

It’s worth eight points.

But the entry drag queen is the closest entry worth 10 points.

Okay.

Okay.

Wow.

The one that appears most closely behind the word that you give us.

Right.

Most closely after.

No, we’re not actually keeping score points, but we’ll see how you guys do.

Grant and Martha, head to head.

Here we go.

Okay.

The first word is contrary.

Contrast.

Ooh.

Contrast.

Is that the word you’re going for?

Yes.

I’m going for contra.

No, that would be later.

I mean, that would be earlier.

Contrast is good.

Contrast is worth 10 points.

It is the next word.

Very good.

Can you get one more out of the next 10?

What do you think?

Well, contrastive, but I don’t know if that’s a head word.

Yeah, contrastive.

That’s nine points.

Nicely done for 19 points.

I’ll give you the next ones.

We have contrasty, which means like in photos that has too much contrast.

Contravene, contravention, contreton, contribute, contribution, contributory, and contrite.

Nice.

Okay.

Any of those would have done very well.

Here’s your next one.

Ready?

Emasculate.

How about embarrass?

Yes, embarrass.

Very good.

Very well done.

That’s four points.

Very good.

So there’s more.

There’s some further up.

Four points.

The 10-point word is embalm.

Oh, good.

Oh, and embark, right?

Embank, embankment, embarcadero.

Embargo, embark.

And you got embarrass.

Embarrassingly, embarrassingly, and embarrassment.

That’s not bad, guys.

Here we go.

Here’s the next one.

Ready?

Mausoleum mausoleum i probably don’t have to spell it for the benefit of many of the listeners but i

Will m-a-u-s-o-l-e-u-m mausoleum maven how about 10 maven is maven is nine nicely done first and

Second one very good maverick maverick is eight points that’s the next one you got the first three

In a row. Nicely done. Oh, very good. Okay, let’s

Keep going then.

Mavis. Mavis is the

Next word. That’s number seven.

It’s a kind of bird.

Yes, it is. Yeah.

Are we up to maw?

Maw is number five. You skipped

One. You skipped… Hang on to

Mav.

We did maverick.

We did maven. You skipped a rather obscure word.

I’ll give it to you. Okay, what is it?

It’s mavornine. Spell it?

Oh, yeah. M-A-V-O-U.

W-R-N-E-E-N.

What is it?

Something Arabic.

Maverneen, my darling.

Yeah, in Irish, right?

Maverneen in Irish, yes.

And the last five are, you got maw, mawkish, max, maxi, and maxilla.

Hey, you know what?

You guys did fantastic.

You got lots and lots of points there.

Fascinating quiz, really.

Quite a second.

Challenging.

Thanks, John.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks a bunch.

We’d love to talk with you about any aspect of language,

So call us, 877-929-9673.

Send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

You can find us on Twitter at the handle Wayword, and we’re on Facebook.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Renee from Plano, Texas.

Hi, Renee. Welcome.

Hello there.

Hi, I’m originally from Persia,

Where there’s some intermingling of French terms in the Persian language,

Especially in the medical field.

But the word that I’m interested in knowing about is a familial term, nanu, which is what we call my paternal grandmother.

I have never heard anyone else’s grandmother call this and always wondered where it came from.

One day I happened to be watching a movie called Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn,

And I heard them call an elderly lady nanu, so I thought this might be a French term after all.

Are you sure it was Roman Holiday?

I think it was, but I could be mistaken.

There’s a movie called The Fair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.

Oh, yeah.

It’s a great film.

And in this film, I believe his grandmother’s name is Janu.

It’s a name, though.

It’s not like a familial title.

It’s J-A-N-O-U.

And I actually have known a woman named Janu in New York.

And so maybe that’s what you heard.

It sounds a lot like Nanu.

But to get to your point, though, there are throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean countries,

Some of the many nicknames that you can have for grandmothers,

And there are a ton of nicknames,

There are a ton of like the formal names and then the nickname ones,

Are related to Nanu.

They sound like Nani, Nene, Nana, Noni, so Greece, Armenia, Italy.

Even in Ireland and the English-speaking countries,

You will often have grandmother called Nana or Nana.

I had a Nana or a Nanny or that sort of thing.

Oh, of course.

Yeah.

Of course.

Wonderful.

Well, that is so good to know.

And thank you for telling me, because whatever movie it was, I just saw a little snippet of it,

And I thought, that’s a lovely, charming movie.

It was many, many years ago.

It is a charming movie.

I recommend you get Affair to Remember and watch it.

It’s really charming.

It holds up very well.

And they’re a lovely couple together, which is really nice to look at and good actors to boot.

Wonderful.

Well, I really love your show, as English is my second language.

And when we arrived in the U.S., my parents always stressed how important it was to really learn a language completely,

Because they themselves had tremendous love for language and literature.

So I have always enjoyed learning new words and figuring out how there are similarities across various languages.

And hope to have passed this down to my own son.

So thank you so much for all that you guys do.

Renee, it sounds wonderful.

Can I ask a favor of you?

Can you say goodbye in Farsi for us?

Of course.

Of course.

Chod off as do son Aziz.

Oh, that’s beautiful.

Thank you very much.

Hale Mamnoon.

Oh, you’re welcome.

You’re so sweet.

Thank you so much.

You know, language, you know, we see the commonality of the world of humanity through language

And how we are so much alike, whatever language we speak, you know.

The human heart is the same.

So that’s what’s so important.

I agree.

I love that.

The human heart is the same.

Oh, my gosh.

Beautifully expressed.

Beautifully expressed.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

But this is it.

Did she not nail it?

She nailed it completely.

We’d love to hear about Your Human Heart, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org and on Twitter @wayword.

I have another bit of ancient graffiti that apparently appeared on lots of different walls in different places.

I wonder, oh wall that you have not yet collapsed.

So many writers’ cliches do you bear.

Oh, so it’s a commentary about the sameness of graffiti, which is still the case.

Yes.

It’s always interesting to me in Reddit and the picture forums where somebody will post, oh, I saw this funny thing on the wall of the bathroom.

And I’m like, wow, I know for a fact that is at least 100 years old because work is done about 100 years ago on this stuff.

But to them it’s new.

Oh, yeah.

And then the question is always, who’s bringing a Sharpie to the bathroom?

That is always the question.

Why do you have a Sharpie on you?

Come prepared.

That’s true.

Plan ahead, right?

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi.

This is Brandy from Milwaukee.

Hey, Brandy from Milwaukee.

How are you doing?

I’m well, and you?

Groovy.

What can we do for you?

I heard the phrase spitting game used to refer to the way a young man might try and talk to a woman if he likes her.

And this came up in a discussion about love and keeping love alive.

And one of the people in this group, who was about 50, said back in his day, the guy wanted to talk to a girl, they would call it rapping.

And so he asked, I don’t know, you know, what do we call it today?

And a person who’s about 20, she put spit and game out there.

Yeah, there we go. That’s it.

Spit and game? That doesn’t sound very romantic to me.

It doesn’t sound very romantic at all.

We’ve got some history here.

We can break this down into component pieces and learn a little bit more about it if you want.

Okay.

The part that interests me the most about this is game.

I love the idea of game as what you’re up to.

Your game is your strategy.

And it definitely comes from African American English.

Probably dates easily into the 1960s, maybe older than that.

And for a long time, game was just how you behaved on the street, how you behaved around your friends, how you behaved when you were hustling, when you’re out there trying to make money or get a job or do whatever it took to get by.

And then you start to see pop up in the 1970s people talking game.

And it’s exactly the same meaning.

Their talking game, meaning, oh, I saw this sweet lady and I talked some game to her and we’re going out tomorrow night, going to the clubs.

And then 1990s or so, maybe even a little earlier, two bits of slang merged.

We already had to spit, meaning to talk, but it came from rapping.

It came from the old school emcees in the club doing their thing live on the microphone, you know, not for tape, not for a CD, not for recording.

It’s just, you know, think of the late 70s, early 80s.

Maybe you’ve seen some of the movies about the time period.

If you’re on the mic, you’re spitting.

You’re spitting rhymes.

You’re spitting lyrics.

And then so later, by the 1990s, spit joined game.

So instead of talking game, you started spitting game,

Which means you are telling a lady everything that you have in mind

For the two of you to become a couple and get to know each other better.

It’s your best shot.

Yeah, it’s your best shot.

For a while there, you might have said you were macking on somebody,

But we don’t really use that much anymore, do we?

Macing.

Yeah, you know that one?

Yeah, to mac on somebody is to hit on them.

Is that like Mac Daddy?

Yeah, it’s like that.

Okay.

Exactly, yeah.

Okay.

So that’s the short version.

If you want a book that’s got some good stuff on this,

Randy, take a look at Randy Kearse’s book, Street Talk.

It’s the official guide to hip-hop and urban slanguage.

He’s very thorough in terms of what he includes.

He doesn’t take words very far back,

But he’s got a pretty decent natural understanding

Of a whole big segment of slang

That doesn’t get a lot of attention

In most of the official dictionaries.

Okay, awesome.

That’ll help me get around better in Milwaukee, I think.

I’m new to this area,

And I’m hearing these expressions all the time,

And I want to know what’s going on.

Take care now, Brandi.

Call us again.

Thank you, you too.

Bye-bye.

We’ll be in touch.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Call us with your language questions,

And we’ll be on it like a bonnet,

877-929-9673,

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

As an English major in college, I pretty much memorized or felt like I memorized the book

On Writing Well by William Zinser. Do you remember that one? It was a fantastic book.

He died recently, and I’m reminded of a quote from him that I really like.

He said, ultimately the product any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.

I often find myself reading with interest about a topic I never thought would interest me, some scientific quest perhaps.

What holds me is the enthusiasm of the writer for his field.

And that is just so true, right?

I like that.

I mean, I’ll read about potatoes if somebody’s writing about them with passion.

So fare thee well, William Zinser.

Yes.

What writers have had the biggest influence on your writing?

You can write to us about it at words@waywordradio.org or call us 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Benjamin. I’m calling from San Diego.

Hey, Benjamin, welcome.

Hey there, what’s going on?

I grew up in New Jersey, and I always referred to a sloppy joe as a sandwich that was not what everyone else referred to as a sloppy joe.

My Sloppy Joe was a, like, deli sandwich with, like, pastrami and coleslaw and other things, like a triangular, unusually on, like, a rye.

And everywhere else I go in the country, they refer to Sloppy Joe as, like, this meat sandwich with ground beef and sauce and stuff.

And I did a little bit of research on the subject, and it seemed like it was really specific, like a couple of towns in North Jersey where I was from.

And I was wondering where that came from.

So a couple of towns in North Jersey, was it just like one deli chain or something?

No.

So my mother is from New Jersey.

And apparently she grew up near a deli.

I think it was called Kabotchnix.

And when over there she would order this Sloppy Joe tray,

My whole family would be really excited.

And it was a really fantastic sandwich.

And it was really funny.

I think in college I had a girlfriend come over,

And my whole family was talking about, like, oh, we’re getting Sloppy Joes.

We’re ordering Sloppy Joes from the deli.

It’s going to be so exciting.

And the whole time, she’s very confused.

She’s like, why are you getting all excited about, like, lunch food, like a ground beef sandwich?

And we’re like, oh, what are you talking about?

They’re delicious.

And she’s like, okay, you guys are getting really excited about what she perceived as, you know, was it a manwich or whatever.

Yeah, right.

A ordinary food.

Yeah, crumbly, yeah.

That’s awesome.

That is great.

So what did she say when the food arrived?

I mean, did she, like, just, was her mind, did she walk out?

Was her mind blown?

Did she break up?

She was pretty quiet and quietly enjoyed the sandwich.

And it was, like, not until, like, two years later, I have since married her,

Not until, like, two years after the fact, she was like, yeah, you guys,

I had no idea what you were talking about.

Sloppy, just sloppy.

It’s not even that sloppy.

It’s not even that sloppy.

And a guy named Joe didn’t make it.

It’s funny because I feel like most New Jersey food that I think of,

That I miss about living on the East Coast of New Jersey,

They’re generally New York foods,

Like a really good slice of pizza, a decent bagel.

I was shocked when I went other places,

Even a little bit further south than New York,

And I would say Sloppy Joe,

And it was just, I always had to remind myself

That people had no idea what I was talking about,

And they thought I was getting really excited

About a crumbly, messy, leaky sandwich.

A truly sloppy sandwich.

Yep, yep, and that’s completely consistent

With what I see here in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

There’s even an entry from somebody who says,

When I was growing up in South Jersey,

A sloppy joe was a ground beef sandwich.

Once I moved to Central Jersey,

I found out that a sloppy joe here

Is deli sandwiches made from turkey,

Coleslaw, and Russian dressing.

That’s crazy.

Yeah.

But it’s nice that the, you know,

New Jersey can have its own thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, when I grew up in Kentucky,

Certainly sloppy joes were that, you know,

They made your hamburger bun all wet

And they were like falling over the sides.

It was ground beef and just raw.

It was like a manwich, like you said.

There’s a method.

You have to protect the bread with other ingredients.

Like what?

We’ll talk about this off mic.

There’s a way to stop the soggy.

There’s a whole sandwich theory that we can get into.

Maybe we’ll start another podcast called Sandwich Theory.

I’m mostly vegetarian anyway.

That definitely is still a problem with the sloppy joe that I’m aware of, the soggy bread.

You’ve got to have a quick get done before you’re very – even though you have three slices of bread in there,

You’re running through with your fingers, and it’s not going to be too long before you got still the delicious,

Not as sloppy as the regular or other sloppy joe, still meat all over here.

Right, right.

Hence the sloppy.

That’s why you do it at home, because you literally put it on the bread,

And not four seconds later you have a bite in your mouth.

Like, there’s no distance between applying the meat to the bread and eating it.

I think a little bit of the sogginess is part of the magic.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

You know, there’s lots of other names for these kinds of sandwiches,

The meat version, not the New Jersey version, right?

All these different names for loose meat sandwiches.

Yeah, which is totally different.

And the names change if they have sauce or don’t have sauce.

We’ve got taverns and slush burgers and I don’t even know.

Spoon burgers.

Spoon burgers, barbecues.

Yeah.

Oh, dear.

Well, thank you so much, Benjamin, for sharing.

I’m glad that you married the gal.

Anybody who’s willing to put up with your linguistic quirks is probably worth keeping.

Absolutely.

I really appreciate your time.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, sure.

Take care.

Thanks.

Give us a call again sometime, all right?

Have a great day.

All right, bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye.

Oh, those calls always make me so hungry.

Seriously, right?

I am literally leaving the studio and going to go get lunch.

And there is no place in San Diego that’s going to serve the sandwich that he described.

Bring me a pint of coleslaw, will you?

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language.

Or you can email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

And find us on Twitter at Wayword.

Here’s some more ancient graffiti that I like.

This was from the wall of an inn.

The message is, we have wet the bed.

I admit we were wrong, my host.

If you ask why, there was no chamber pot.

Oh, right.

I think that’s the equivalent of a comment card in today’s hotels.

So they chiseled this in the wall?

Yeah.

Why not?

One star.

Don’t go there.

I’m going to yelp the hell out of this.

877-929-9673.

More conversation 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.

I know very little about professional wrestling,

But it’s amazing what a taste of the sport you can get from just looking at the vocabulary.

There’s a wrestling newsletter called Pro Wrestling Torch,

And it has online a glossary of a lot of the terms that they use in professional wrestling.

And I learned so much.

I learned that to blade is to cut oneself,

Usually with a small portion of a razor blade with tape wrapped around all but part of a milliliter of the cutting edge.

And then the exposed portion is run across the skin.

To cause a clean cut so that the wrestler actually starts bleeding,

Particularly in the head because the head wounds bleed more than other ones.

And so it’s…

It’s part of the showmanship of it, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So the other guy looks like he’s hitting you,

And maybe there’s some gentle contact, but it’s not enough to break the skin.

And you’re like, when you put your hands up there to see if you’re bleeding,

That’s when you do the cut and you pull your hand away and there’s the blood.

Yeah, and it’s called juicing or gigging or getting color.

And there’s also a term in wrestling, red means green, which is an old phrase that’s used to point out that the wrestlers who bled would get a bigger payoff.

If it leads, it bleeds.

Isn’t that something?

Another way of saying that, right?

Yeah.

If it bleeds, it leads.

Yeah.

Another one is canned heat.

What’s canned heat?

Well, heat is the noise of the crowd, the fans cheering.

And canned heat is when the cheering and booing is added to a wrestling TV show in post-production.

Oh, I have no doubt that they do that.

Isn’t that great?

Yeah.

Got to make it seem exciting, right?

Yeah.

Well, you’re a slang guy.

You picked up some slang from wrestling?

I absolutely have.

I’ve done some digging on this before.

There are a couple of terms that really struck me, so I looked into them.

One is kayfabe.

You and I have talked about this off mic.

Kayfabe.

Kayfabe is your persona.

Even off of the mat, even in public, even in front of TV where it’s not really about wrestling,

They’re supposed to keep their persona and supposed to not break kayfabe, as it’s called.

Occasionally, when a well-known wrestler will die, his fellow wrestlers will break kayfabe to express their regrets and give their best to the family.

But generally, they keep their persona.

And the personas are broken down into two major types.

One is the heel, which is the bad guy.

And the other one is the baby face, which is the good guy.

And my favorite other term is baby face turn, T-U-R-N.

And a baby face turn is when the good guy goes bad.

And like yeah you find like you know the golden boy comes out and suddenly when the locker room

Clears and they’re all out there for the big brawl at the end of the show it’s all the bad

Guys on his side you’re like wait a second he’s been misleading us this whole time he’s actually

A big deal he’s a bad guy he’s turned like i loved it when i was a kid i loved it yeah

We used to watch wrestling with my grandfather from keel auditorium in st louis bulldog brown

He was great i loved these guys and this is small time wrestling you know in a small time

Place, but it was a lot of heart, a lot of fun.

Obviously, it’s showmanship.

Obviously, it’s theater.

Obviously, it’s not a sport.

But these guys are committed to an art form, which has got a long history.

It’s wonderful.

And it has a great vocabulary and language.

We should post a link on our website to this glossary because it’s really fantastic.

Absolutely.

And if there’s some language that you know from professional wrestling or anywhere else,

This is the place to talk about it, 877-929-9673.

Send in an email to words@waywordradio.org or send it to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi, Grant. This is Linda. I’m calling from Lexington, South Carolina.

Hi, Linda. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Linda. What would you like to talk with us about?

A co-worker of mine and I were sitting together in the office,

And a Bruce Springsteen song came on Dancing in the Dark.

And, you know, that song’s been around forever.

And we’re just sort of bobbing along to it.

And I stopped and I kind of started paying attention to the lyrics.

I said, you know, this song’s kind of a bummer.

He goes, what are you talking about?

I go, well, he just said he wants to change his clothes, his hair, his face.

He’s living in a dump.

And I said, and he goes, I never really noticed that before.

I said, yeah, neither.

And I looked up to more of the lyrics and it’s just really a downer of a song.

Well, my question is, there are a lot of other songs like where it sounds upbeat,

But the lyrics are really kind of terrible.

You’re kind of just jamming along, you know?

And I thought, is there a word for that kind of song where a song is upbeat sounding, but the lyrics are really a downer?

Yeah, that’s weird, isn’t it?

It catches you up short.

Up a beat music, but downer lyrics.

Yeah.

Do you remember 99 Red Balloons?

99 Red Balloons.

Yeah.

And that’s such a perky, fun little song.

You could almost see it on a children’s show, but it ends up being about war and bombing out a city.

Right, right. And you’re just bobbing along to it, especially the German version. I don’t know what she’s saying.

Exactly. Yes, yes. Yeah, I think it’s even worse in the German.

Gosh, one word, I don’t know, the best term I’ve seen for that is lyrical dissonance.

Lyrical dissonance.

Yeah. I mean, you’ll find that, although I don’t think that’s very colorful.

But, you know, it’s sort of the dissonance between the lyrics and the music.

But you’ve identified a phenomenon that I think we can all relate to.

I don’t know. Do you have any others?

Well, you know, years ago we talked about on the show about the interesting word agathacacological,

Which means something that’s both good and bad.

It’s got really obvious Greek roots, if you know a little bit of Greek at all.

And I think generally agathacacological could describe this kind of song.

So the good part is the peppy music and the bad part is the meaning of the words.

I also thought about the Italian word chiaroscuro, which is both light and dark.

And then I thought, and this is even further out, there’s a French word.

You probably know the art term trompe l’oeil, which means to trick the eye.

Well, there’s one for the ear.

It’s trompe l’oeil.

Oh, wow.

I kind of like that.

But this is specifically for kinds of phrases in French that are almost tongue twisters.

They depend upon the tendency in French for final consonants not to be pronounced.

Or there’s a lot of words that sound exactly the same but are written very different.

So any one of those, maybe, if you wanted to try to launch them out there.

But I do like, I like lyrical dissonance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I like Agatha Cacological.

I mean, the Agatha, of course, is from the Greek word for good.

And that, you see that in the name Agatha.

And then the cacos is like bad, like cacophony.

Oh, there we go.

Yeah.

That kind of thing.

Wow.

But lyrical dissonance is so much easier to say.

Well, it is.

I don’t know.

Agatha Cacophony.

But there’s so many other songs out there.

I did a search just for fun, and I’ve seen some people have written some articles about this.

And another Bruce song, Born in the USA, You Can Call Me Out by Paul Simon, Eddie Grant, Electric Avenue, Prince, 1999, Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People, Hey Ya by Outkast.

And I thought of another one, Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon.

And I thought of that one because one of the greatest uses of alliteration is one of the most horrible lyrics, I think, in music.

Little old lady got mutilated late last night.

Oh, that’s horrible.

In Little Little A?

Like, a little old lady died in that song, y’all.

Oh, no.

I didn’t know that.

And you’re like, da, what game, da, da, da, do with my spreadsheets.

Really?

Yeah.

In Electric Avenue.

Wow, I didn’t know that.

I’m going to have to go back and listen.

All right.

Thanks for your call.

Rock on, Linda.

Thank you so much, y’all.

Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Well, there’s a giant Reddit thread about this.

Oh, dear.

Yeah, I bet we’re going to hear lots and lots from listeners, too.

So I think if you Google songs that have happy music but sad lyrics, you will find the Reddit thread at the top of your search results.

Oh, I bet you will.

And it’s fun but also sad.

You’re like, oh, you’re ruining it for me.

Oh, now you’re sad about it.

Well, no, but I’m just saying like I don’t want like where the lyrics are all super hypey positive and the music is all super hypey.

You should just be really happy, mister, just to hear this song.

I don’t want any part of that.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

If you’ve got a question like Linda’s, we’d love to have it.

Also try us on Twitter at Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

We put the call out for limerizations,

Those passages in literature converted into limerick form,

And John Fisher came up with one.

He’s from San Antonio.

He writes,

There once was a batter named Casey.

Who would cinch Mudville’s win prima facie.

But he swung twice and missed, then after patrons there hissed,

Swung again, but did not get on Basie.

Brilliant, right?

Brilliant.

Very good.

Send us your limerizations to words@waywordradio.org

Or call us.

The number is 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Bob Fields.

I’m calling from Orwell, Vermont, a little tiny town that has more cows than people in it.

More cows than people.

There are two terms that we learned when we moved to Vermont.

One of them is flatlander, and the other one is woodchuck.

And they relate to whether the person is a native Vermonter or not.

We’ve been told that a woodchuck is someone who’s a native Vermonter,

And in fact, we were told that it is a native Vermonter with at least one or two, maybe even three generations of Vermont residents,

People who were born and lived in Vermont, whereas a flatlander or some new doesn’t come from Vermont,

But in fact comes from out of state, which seemed a little bit of a kind of a joke for us

Because we came from California to Vermont where the mountains are 12,000 to 14,000 feet high,

And in Vermont they’re a mere 4,000 feet high.

A mere 4,000 feet high.

We were just wondering what the background between those two words is, because they seem kind of interesting.

And we’re just kind of wondering how native Vermonters ever got to be called woodchucks, as opposed to flatlanders.

It’s not 100% known, but the best guess is a really solid one.

Most authorities, most Vermonters who study this stuff, suggest that it just simply has to do with all the firewood.

There’s a lot of firewood in Vermont.

It seems like everyone’s always cutting, stacking, hauling, burning firewood.

And so the woodchuck as a creature to call the locals just seems like a natural fit.

You’re always chucking wood around, aren’t you?

Well, yeah.

No, maybe.

In fact, I live in an old, well, what is now an old derelict apple orchard that was started in 1894.

And we do certainly cut a lot of firewood.

Applewood is a great burning wood.

We just always wondered.

We never thought it had to do with the firewood.

We always thought it had to do with the animals.

Oh, yeah.

That makes a lot of sense.

Well, it’s the animals too, I mean, because they’re local and that’s the local.

Woodchuck is mainly used for groundhogs in the Northeast anyway.

Interestingly enough, woodchuck is also sometimes used by New Yorkers who live upstate New York to refer to themselves.

So it’s not exclusive to Vermonters.

The term flatlander is even more interesting in that it’s used to describe outsiders or people from away in other parts of the country, not just in Vermont and New Hampshire.

So you’ll find people in the Pacific Northwest who use it as well, which is cool.

But generally, it’s referring to people.

If you come from Flatland, the suggestion there is that you don’t know what the hard life is

Because you’ve never had to walk uphill or work uphill.

Well, that’s interesting. Thank you.

Yeah, sure. Really appreciate the call, Bob.

Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

There’s a blog by Sean Caravan called Inkeeping Insights in Stowe, Stowe, Vermont.

Yeah.

And so this is his description of the difference between Flatlanders and Woodchucks.

He says, flatlanders don’t chuck wood.

Flatlanders pick up the phone and dial a number they find in the classified section of their local paper.

A few hours later, wood chucks arrive, usually in a rusting pickup truck filled with split wood,

A mix of hardwoods which they stack for the flatlander in exchange for cash.

Well, that pretty much explains it all, doesn’t it?

Yeah, that’s Sean Caravan of the blog In Keeping Insights in Stow.

Nice.

We’ll take your questions about what they call locals and outsiders.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Find us on Twitter under the handle Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

A friend sent me a climbing dictionary by Matt Samet, or Samet, S-A-M-E-T.

It’s just called Climbing Dictionary, put out by Mountaineers Books.

And there’s a couple of things that interest me about this book.

The first one being, I’m surprised by how much French has contributed to the jargon of the English-speaking world when it comes to climbing.

That makes sense.

Rock climbing, the handholds and the equipment, that sort of thing.

Some of them are really fun.

This one is my favorite.

I may actually steal this for non-climbing experiences.

It’s a high-gravity day, and the definition is a sub-desirable day on which all routes, even easy ones, feel impossible due to an ironic hypothetical increase in gravity.

Oh, my gosh.

That’s totally applicable to life.

Yeah, it’s the days when you wake up and you’re like, oh, why does everything seem so hard today?

Blame it.

High-gravity day.

Yes.

Yes.

That’s a great one.

High gravity.

And there’s a ton of fun stuff in here.

I love the ones where they talk about physical features in a non-obvious way, like a chicken head.

Any idea what a chicken head is?

Is it a rock formation?

It is, yeah.

So it’s a little kind of lump of rock that for some reason didn’t erode away.

Maybe it’s made of a different material.

And it sticks out like a chicken head.

And you can use it as a handhold.

Oh, a chicken head.

Yeah, of course.

So it’s one of these natural occurring handholds.

Oh, of course.

I like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, and then dirtbag, which is not a very nice term for somebody who’s really into climbing.

So this is the Climbing Dictionary by Matt Samet, S-A-M-E-T.

Let us know the slang from your workplace or pastime, 877-929-9673, or send it an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rikki from Walnut Creek.

Hi, Rikki. Walnut Creek, California, I guess.

Yes, yes, California.

Hi, Rikki.

What’s up?

I am calling because I was in the middle of a discussion with my friend a while ago,

And my friend said something along the lines of, oh, my gosh, that person fit the description to the teeth.

Now, I know there’s an expression called to the teeth, and I have a feeling my ears were just playing games with me

Because I can’t imagine he said to the teeth, and he says he didn’t.

But it still brought up the question, where does to the T come from?

To the teeth, like the things in your mouth, the white heart things.

Yes.

Oh.

I have never heard to the teeth.

I know about to the T, but I’m still curious to know about where to the T even came from.

Yeah, yeah.

There are a couple of those expressions in English.

To the teeth means completely, like if you’re armed to the teeth,

You’re armed all the way up to your teeth or entrenched to the teeth.

Oh, so it is to the teeth.

Okay, great.

That’s a different thing, though.

That’s about being prepared.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Actually, your instinct is correct.

It is to a T.

To a T rather than to the T.

Yeah.

To a T.

It’s usually with the capital letter T.

And we’re not sure of the origin, but I would say our best guess is that it’s a shortening of the English word tittle.

Which means a little bit of something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tittle is like the tiniest thing, like a dot on an eye, something like that.

And a T is even tinier than a tittle.

It is?

Well, it is because it’s just one letter of the whole word.

Yeah.

The first letter of the word.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

To a tittle.

I don’t think I ever even heard that word before, so I learned more than I was bargaining for.

Well, the tittle, most people know it in the expression jot and tittle.

I’ll have a jot and tittle of the votes or something like that.

Yeah, which actually goes…

Jot and tittle?

Yeah, jot, J-O-T, which related to the Greek letter iota.

Yeah, jot is.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah, which is absolutely tiny in ancient Greek.

It goes under the vowel often, and it looks like a speck, like a little flea.

How interesting.

But yeah, yeah, in the Greek New Testament, Matthew 5.18, it talks about one jot or one tittle.

So it’s something really, really, really tiny.

It does.

It uses the word tittle.

Yeah.

In King James.

King James, yes, sir.

I like that word, tittle.

And I wouldn’t have known that.

I’m Jewish.

I know the Old Testament.

Right.

So are you going to switch to saying to a tittle instead of to a T?

I might just.

Yeah.

Why not?

Why not?

Start conversations.

Or stop them.

Take care now.

Yes, yes.

Thanks so much.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye now.

One jot of tittle.

A jot in the tittle of something.

It’s just a little bit of something.

Teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny.

A teeny, tiny.

A minute, microscopic.

It’s armed to the teeth, or it fits me to a teeth.

Got to get those articles right.

Right.

And no relation to T-shirts.

Those came much later, 1920s.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

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Things have come to a pretty bad day.

That’s all for today’s broadcast.

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The show is coming to you from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye-bye.

So long.

What’s that?