To do something on the spur of the moment, or to act spontaneously, comes from the idea of using a sharp device to urge on a horse. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Spur of the Moment”
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.
In 1936, there was a craze sweeping North America. It was written about on front pages of major newspapers from coast to coast, and it involves wordplay. We’ve talked about it on the show before. They were knock-knock jokes.
Oh, knock-knock jokes. Yeah, written about on front pages of newspapers across the country. And it’s funny to go back and look at these newspaper articles. They’re just kind of breathless talking about this parlor game that everybody was playing. And it strikes me as so interesting that there was a point where knock-knock jokes didn’t exist. And then all of a sudden, they exploded.
Yeah, they were. And they’re still with us. Yeah, they’re still with us. And they were pretty goofy back in those days, like knock-knock. Who’s there? Oklahoma. Oklahoma who? Oklahoma and wash your face.
Yeah, that’s not so good. Not so good? Well, how about this one? Knock-knock. Hi, Watha. Hi, Watha who? Oh, what a good girl until I met you.
Oh, no. They’re terrible, right? Can I give you my son’s favorite one? Yes. Can I? Okay. Will you remember me in a day? Yes. Will you remember me in a week? Yes. Will you remember me in a month? Yes. Will you remember me in a year? Yes. Will you remember me in a century? Yes. Okay. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Well, you forgot me already.
Knock-knock jokes. They’re great. There’s an endless supply and to me it’s just so funny that in 1936 they were a huge thing and then they got replaced by other parlor games about a year later. But they’re always kind of stuck around. They’re in books and articles. Every kid knows a bunch. They’re always kids, right?
Yeah. They’re always kids. They’re always kids. But on the front page of newspapers, that’s surprising. Yeah. Yeah. Big story. A way to lighten the news perhaps. I guess so. All around it was war and famine and then you throw in the knock-knock jokes and lighten it up a bit.
Yeah. It went a bit way faster than Pokemon. It did. Pokemon Go. I’m still winning. Pokemon went. I’m still winning. Well, this is a show about all kinds of goofing around when it comes to language. So call us, 877-999-9673 or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.
Hello. You have A Way with Words. Hi. This is Mallory Steele from Colorado. Welcome to the show, Mallory. Hi, Mallory. Hi. What can we do for you?
I was wondering where the word freckles comes from. Freckles, like the dots on your skin? Mm— Yeah, okay. Do you have freckles? Yes, I do. Yeah. Lots of them. Lots of them, yeah. Oh, lots of them. Okay. Okay. So they’re the subject of conversation a lot in your household? Mm— Because no one else in my family has very many freckles.
Oh, I see. So I was just wondering. -huh. Yeah, it’s a funny word, isn’t it? It is. It’s got kind of a funny sound to it. Mm— Well, a couple of things we can tell you about the word freckle. For one thing, it’s really, really, really old. It goes all the way back to the 14th century.
Oh, really? Wow. Yeah, which is pretty darn old. And it probably goes back to a much, much older root that has to do with scattering. I picture seeds, like almost scattering seeds or something like that. Huh, interesting. Yeah. And, you know, it’s kind of funny. In German, the word for it is zommersposen, which means summer sprouts, literally.
So again, I think you have the seed idea there, sprinkling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. So it comes from a really, really old root and probably comes to us through one of the Scandinavian languages, Old Norse, something like that. Well, thank you. That’s very interesting. Well, we’re more than happy to help. Thanks for calling.
Yeah, thank you. All right. Take care now. Thanks for your question. Goodbye. All right. Bye-bye. But freckles, you said it was a funny word, like pickle, right? Like pickle. Other words, it’s automatically funny. With a K, yeah. K is always a K? Mm— What was it? The Sunshine Boys, where they make the joke about pickle always being funny?
Yeah. Yeah. Words with a K. 877-929-9673. Hello. You have A Way with Words. Hi. This is Dale. Dale Wright from San Diego. Hi, Dale. Welcome. Hi. What’s up? How can we help?
I’m Dale Wright. I’m from San Diego, California. I’m from San Diego, California. I’m from San Diego, California. I was born and raised there, but I also used to live with my grandmother and grandfather in Charleston, South Carolina, when I was very young, about 11, 12. So when I was there, I made my grandmother angry one day by staying out way too late, and she asked me what took me so long to get home, and I gave her a very detailed explanation on what took me so long to get home from the movies, and she looked at me and she got very upset, and she said, “Boy, you’re as deep as the sea,” and I had no idea what that meant, but I knew she wasn’t paying me a compliment, and I knew she was very upset, and that saying just stuck with me.
As deep as the sea? D-E-E-P? Yes. Okay, deep water. You’re as deep as the sea. Yeah, and did she use it more than once, or just that one time? Only when she was very upset. It only came out now and then, in the two to three years I was with them. I believe I heard that saying once or twice, maybe three times, and she definitely wasn’t paying me a compliment.
Oh, so she says, “You’re as deep as the sea,” does that mean you’re in as deep trouble as the sea is deep? Yes, that meant there was more trouble to follow, because she was not happy with my behavior. Gotcha. That’s a good one, and that sounds like probably that was the politest way she could say that you were in deep doo-doo.
Absolutely, yes, there was more trouble to follow. Well, I’ll tell you, I first heard a variation of it when I listened to ham radio operators as a boy. One or two hams were bickering on the air, and it was hilarious to me. One of them was in Florida and one of them was in Michigan, and one of them told the other one, “You are lower than whale poop.” I guess that would be pretty low.
So it’s a variation. So it’s just talking about being deep into trouble, but being low as in not worthy of attention or not behaving at your best, being common in the worst way or ordinary in the worst way. Well, it sounds like you turned out all right, though. Oh yeah, absolutely. After the discipline from New York City, and especially Charleston, South Carolina, they taught you well. Trust me, they taught you about respect for parents, teachers. You was going to go to church on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesdays. That goes without question, but it was very helpful. It kept me out of trouble for the whole part.
Dale, we want to thank you for calling. All right. Thank you very much. Take care now. Thanks for sharing that memory. Bye now. You’re as deep as the sea. I was going to say that maybe he was prevaricating. Maybe he was kind of lying to her, and he was stacking it up, suggesting he was piling it deep.
Well, he’s in deep anyway, in deep trouble. Yeah. Call 1-877-929-9673. You remember our conversation about the word “ruminate”? Mm— Stomachs. Stomachs of cows, right? Right, and how cows chew their cud. The cud comes back up. Yeah. Ruminate can also mean to be thoughtful, to be turning something over in one’s mind.
That prompted Mark Premock from Fort Worth to write us with a poem that his Aunt Frances Fagey-Greenburger made him memorize when he was a kid. It goes, “A gum-chewing boy and a cud-chewing cow. To me, they seem alike somehow, but there’s a difference. I see it now. It’s the thoughtful look on the face of the cow.”
That’s pretty good, yeah. Yeah, she taught elementary school students, and she made all of them memorize that poem. And I looked it up, and apparently there are different versions of this poem that were really popular. At one point, in fact, it appeared in an Ann Landers column. You remember the old advice column? Mm— A couple of times, people really …
I think a lot of adults really dug that poem as a way to get kids not to chew gum.
That points out the discrepancy.
We think of ruminate as usually a good thing, also from the cow chewing its cud and looking thoughtfully off into the horizon, and yet you don’t look thoughtful when you’re smacking gum in your lips, right?
No, you don’t.
A cow looks smarter.
A cow looks smarter than you when you’re chewing gum.
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha.
This is Molly, calling from Allen, Texas.
Well, hello, Molly.
Welcome to the show.
What’s up?
And what can we do for you?
How can we help?
I have a question about a phrase, “the diamond in the rough.”
I was in a conversation online about a month ago, and there seemed to be a disagreement about what it means, and I always thought it was fairly clear, but there was a lot of people involved, and it was split almost down the middle.
I always understood that the phrase meant something that has a lot of potential but isn’t quite there yet, so an uncut diamond has a little bit of work that needs to be done before it can really shine, and the other interpretation seemed to be it was like a rose among thorns, so a bright spot among a bunch of not-so-bright spots.
So I’m wondering if that’s a regional thing or a generational thing, or if you’ve ever heard of it.
Well, I think I’ve seen the same thing, the same split and understandings.
It may help to go back to the origin of this.
It is a diamond term from the diamond industry.
A rough diamond is a diamond that’s unshaped, basically the way that it came out of the ground with the dirt and other stone taken off of it, and so a diamond is a rough where you look at this uncut diamond and say, “I can see the beautiful gem that we can make out of this. I can see the piece of jewelry in my mind that this will be a part of.”
So that particular meaning of a diamond in the rough as a person who is unpolished, literally, and we’re talking about two different meanings of unpolished working nicely here, that’s the one that is far more common in my experience.
The other one, I could see it working, but it’s not a term I would use for that.
I wouldn’t say she’s a diamond in the rough if she was the bright spot surrounded by a bunch of dopes, you know?
Mm—
Yeah.
Keeping lesser comfort.
Would you do that, Martha?
No, no, no, no.
It seems very clear to me it’s the rough versus the smooth planes of a diamond.
With a little bit of work, we can polish this person up into something nice.
Exactly.
Yeah, that’s what I thought, but it just seems strange like maybe its meaning has changed or is starting to change in some context.
I don’t know.
I just thought it was odd, and that’s why I wanted to call you the experts.
There’s no harm in the meaning varying a little bit, and certainly the context matters as much as the phrase itself, and I could easily see someone using this in the second way and it working perfectly well and being utterly ordinary to everyone around, so it’s not a really big deal that there’s a meaning split on this.
Okay.
Well, thank you so much.
Yeah, sure.
Thanks for calling.
Thanks for your call.
Appreciate it.
Have a good day.
Take care.
Thank you.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Hello.
You have a way with words.
Hello.
This is Derek Levers.
I’m calling from Heartland, Vermont.
Heartland, Vermont.
Welcome to the show.
What’s up?
What’s on your mind?
Well, they’re fairly well known for being pretty vociferous and having a lot of words.
Oh, yeah.
They make a lot of sounds, too.
And she disappeared at one point.
She got out of her cage outside, and she flew off.
And I eventually did find her.
And one of the reasons I found her was because she’d gone about a quarter of a mile away from home, and I was out calling for her.
And finally, she decided to answer.
This was a day after she disappeared.
And the answer was, “Got a grape?”
Now, the thing that brought up the subject here, as far as I’m concerned, was I started thinking a while back about what is a word and what could reasonably be considered a word.
And so, when a lot of people — I put out that she was missing on our local listserv, and a lot of people responded.
And inevitably, when somebody hears that I have a parrot, one of the first things they say is, “What does she speak?”
And if so, what does she say, and how many words does she have?
And so, getting to this question about how many words does she have, I decided to start writing them down to see if I could come up with a number.
And then, that’s when the question really occurred to me.
What exactly is the word?
I mean, there are things that she does that are clearly communication with me.
And I understand them perfectly, and other people around me understand them perfectly.
But I can assure you they’re not in the lexicon.
But the basic question is, what is a word?
What is a word in this relationship that you have with the bird?
And what’s the bird’s name?
Trouble.
Trouble.
Wonderful.
Derek and Trouble.
I might respond with the question that I would ask, because I don’t think “What is a word?” is the question here.
I think the question might be, “Does this bird have language?”
Because there we can get a little more precise.
The bird definitely knows the words, for sure.
But the bird knows how to understand them and how to speak them.
But my understanding is that birds like this don’t have language, because they require two things to have language.
One is, they need to have a kind of two-way communication known as recursion.
So they need to have basically ideas embedded in ideas.
So you might say, “The car you want to buy is the car Sheldon sold to Sonya.”
Right?
And an animal that has some kind of communication, including Coco the gorilla, parrots, dogs that can hear humans and respond to human commands, don’t understand those kinds of recursive statements.
They can’t understand that idea embedded in an idea, or the idea that refers to another idea.
They also usually have a problem with reference, where, for example, we use pronouns in place of other people’s names in order to not have to say their name over and over.
And animals tend to have a real problem with that.
What they need is gestures pointing to the person, or they need the person’s name, or they need the person to be present.
Another thing that probably is missing here that shows that this bird doesn’t have language is there must be generalization.
And by generalization, I mean widely different things that humans would classify under the same category need to be understood as that same category by the creature.
So a real common example when this is discussed in language classes is, “What is a ball?”
Is a ball a golf ball?
Is it a basketball?
Would an animal understand that a bowling ball, or a ping-pong ball, or a ball that is red versus a ball that has stripes, that all of these are balls, and usually animals don’t understand that.
Okay, if I may, using a very simple concept here, she will frequently, when I uncover her in the morning, because I usually cover her, she will start off fairly quickly with, “May I have breakfast, please?”
Okay, and she might continue to use that same expression.
However, after a while, she gets a little frustrated, and she says, “May I have a grape? May I have an apple?”
You know, a series of kinds of food where she clearly knows that the foods are part of breakfast.
Right, because she gets them the first part of the day, shortly after you take it off.
I mean, it’s really easy to look at animals’ conditioned behavior and think that we’re seeing language there.
What we are seeing is communication.
She is definitely communicating, but it isn’t language in the way that humans have language.
Yeah, and I would say that “may I have a” is not four words either.
It’s almost like once.
She’s learning bunched phrases, bunched words together.
She’s learning clusters.
I’m afraid I have to disagree with you.
Do you really?
Yeah, they’re pretty…
I’m an English teacher, so I really do understand part of this anyway, although you’re way over my head, but they’re pretty well connected.
It’s pretty much of an interchange.
What you’re thinking, I’m afraid, and this is…
People train their animals, right?
And the animals respond to the training.
Okay, in my case, I just live with this bird.
I really don’t make that much effort to train her.
She picks up things on her own, and she picks up things from different people.
She actually speaks in different people’s voices sometimes.
She alters phrases quite a bit, and she tries out different possibilities in order to get to a particular concept.
I think it’s a little more sophisticated than you’re giving credit to, just in terms of the fact that most people, I think, train their animal by offering them food or something of that nature, and then when they “respond correctly,” they give them a reward of food.
I’ve never done that.
But you do.
You feed her.
You care for her.
I mean, the relationship that you have might not be planned and organized training, but it is nonetheless the kind of stimulus and response.
It is very much, you do something, she understands how that can benefit her, and she tries to get you to do that thing again for her.
So that is the relationship of the caretaker, the person, and the animal.
It’s very much a two-way street.
What I’m looking for here would be evidence that you could, say, show her a guava and that she could recognize that as a fruit, and say that, “Give me that fruit,” or “I want fruit.”
Well, I think she certainly could do that if she knew what a guava was.
Well, there we go.
That’s what I’m saying.
A human would look at the guava and immediately say, “Oh, I recognize that,” even though I’ve never seen it before.
“That looks like a fruit to me.
I want that fruit.”
And usually the animals can’t do that consistently time after time.
They have to be taught that.
Anyway, it sounds like what you’ve got there is a wonderful bird, and they have a really long life, right?
Yeah, they say they’re 60 to 70.
That’s incredible.
Really?
And it sounds like you’ve got a great human-animal relationship there, something that all of us could envy.
She’s around 25 now.
You’ve had her her whole life?
Pretty much, yeah.
Does she listen to the show?
She doesn’t listen to this one.
She did a while back.
She used to like “Walker, Texas Ranger.”
Nice.
Yeah?
Did she pick up any vocabulary from “Walker, Texas Ranger?”
That was the problem.
There was an advertisement on the show, when it wasn’t showing, for “Walker, Texas Ranger,” it said, “Walker, Texas Ranger.”
And she picked that up.
But here’s the thing that was very interesting, and I didn’t do this somehow or another.
She changed it from “Walker” to “Squawker.”
Oh, nice.
That’s outstanding.
Derek, trouble sounds like a lot of fun.
If you get a chance, send us a picture of trouble.
I’d love to see the bird.
Okay, I’ll do that.
Actually, I’ve got a little video of her dancing.
Oh, nice.
Excellent.
Even better.
I want to thank you for taking all your time to explain this great animal to us, really sounds like a wonderful creature.
Thank you.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
I guess the thing I should have told Derek is that humans, even though we do have a language, which is this really magnificent trick that no other animal seems to be able to pull off, we do fall back on nonverbal communication and other kinds of getting our point across without having to put the full resources of language to use.
I’m nodding my head.
Yeah, there we go.
It’s the body, it’s the face, sometimes it’s silence.
We communicate in a lot of ways.
And so what is happening between him and his bird is very similar to what happens to him and other human beings.
They’re both getting their message across to the other person without language.
It’s not that language is the only way to tell people things.
It’s just that it’s a far more sophisticated form of telling people things or telling creatures things.
Yeah, more complicated for sure.
I was talking at the beginning about these newspaper articles that were talking about this knock-knock craze in 1936.
And in this article that’s titled “Knock-Knock, latest nutsy game for parlor amusement,” it talks about what was popular before knock-knock jokes.
And it says, “Before knock-knock, it was ‘handies,’ in which players otherwise considered normal look on a coily, lunatic expression, made signs with their fingers, and then shouted triumphantly, ‘What’s this?’
A favorite one was wiggling all five fingers of the right hand under the downturned fingers of the left.
The answer was, ‘Quintuplets taking a shower.'”
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall.
It just makes me want to be a fly on the wall in those parlors where these young people are having just wild fun playing “handies” and then telling knock-knock jokes.
It must have been really great back in those days.
That sounds like a rip-roaring good time.
Call us with your language amusements, 877-929-9673, or send them to us in email, words@waywordradio.org.
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Trish King.
I’m calling from Nevada, California.
Hi, Trish, welcome to the show.
Hi, Trish.
Well, I was just wondering about the origins of the term “the spur of the moment.”
I had just—I guess I was talking to somebody and I decided to do something in the spur of the moment, and then I couldn’t figure out where on earth that came from.
But everybody seems to know what it means.
Mm-mm—
Any ideas at all?
No, not really.
I mean, I thought, I mean, the spur, what that could mean.
I really don’t, actually.
I was also thinking in terms of, like, at the nick of time, you know, if both of those had something to do with a sharp object.
But I really couldn’t figure it out, and usually I can.
-huh, -huh.
Well, it’s pretty simple.
It just goes back to the idea of a spur being that thing on a cowboy’s boot that urges a horse to go forward, you know, kind of kicks the horse, pricks the horse, and urges it forward.
So it actually comes from this country in the 1800s?
No, it’s much older than that, but it does come from something you wear on your boot to spur a horse on.
Yeah, yeah, the word “spur” comes from—is really old, but “spur of the moment” is much more recent than that, a couple hundred years.
“spur of the moment” or “spur of the occasion,” the idea is that that moment or that occasion is what urges you on to do it, like a spur on a boot.
Okay.
Well, that’s simpler than I thought it might be.
Thanks, Trish.
Okay, thank you.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
All right, bye-bye.
All right, bye-bye. 877-929-9673 is the number to call, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
♪♪♪ I was thinking the other day about some of my favorite words that come from Arabic into English, including “coffee” and “sugar” and “giraffe,” but recently I came across another that I didn’t realize comes from Arabic, and that is the word “ghoul.”
Ghoul, G-H-O-U-L?
Yes.
In ancient Arabian folklore, a ghoul is a kind of shape-shifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, and it comes from an Arabic word that means “to seize.”
Ooh, interesting.
It feels so much like a Celtic word to me, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Or like that it would go way back into the millennia, into the roots of English.
I know, doesn’t it?
Yeah, but it’s only been in English since the 18th century.
Ghoul.
G-H-O-U-L.
Give us a call at 877-929-9673, email words@waywordradio.org, and talk to us on Twitter @wayword.
More conversation about what we say and how 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.
There’s a particular adjective that divides people when it comes to how they pronounce it, and it is spelled D-I-V-I-S-I-V-E.
So there’s more than one pronunciation of the word?
Yes.
Okay, and what do you say?
I say “divisive.”
Divisive?
Mm-mm—
And so does Hillary Clinton, so does Jeb Bush, but Jeb Bush’s father says “divisive.”
Divisive.
Divisive.
And also in the divisive camp are Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.
I’ve checked them all out.
They all say “divisive.”
Is there an age?
There’s no age barrier there, right?
Or age gap?
No, there’s not really an age gap there.
And what’s interesting is that “divisive” as a pronunciation wasn’t even mentioned in dictionaries until 1961.
Oh, that’s really interesting.
But I wonder how much longer before that it existed.
I mean, surely it wasn’t brand new then.
Right.
And it’s interesting for what it’s worth to look at the American Heritage’s usage panel, because in 2013, “divisive” was the preferred pronunciation of 88% of their usage panel, which is made up of people of letters.
And back in 2001, the short “i” rhyming with “permissive” was acceptable to only 16% of the panel, but by 2013, it was deemed acceptable by 65% of the panel.
So it’s really interesting to me that it’s a pronunciation that seems to be changing under our feet, and also following the usual patterns that we talk about in language.
You know, if somebody influential starts using a word…
Then it catches on.
Yeah.
And here we see the division that already existed between “division,” right, and “divide,” right?
Exactly.
And so is the speaker going to inherit the vowel sound from one word or the other?
It’s one of these things that’s going to be interesting to watch.
Another one like that is “dissect.”
I mean, I had a biology teacher in junior high who got all over us because she was saying, “Look, it’s got two “s”s in it.
It’s pronounced “dissect.”
But that one has definitely flipped.
Right, so it’s “dissect.”
You dissect a frog.
Yeah.
You dissect a frog.
Interesting.
I love these.
I do love these.
And some of this comes up again and again and again with no real permanent movement one way or the other, right?
Sometimes a word doesn’t completely switch.
The other pronunciation lingers and never completely goes away.
Yeah, and I’m wondering if some people say both of them at different times and don’t really notice it.
If you don’t catch yourself.
Yeah.
Maybe you’ve said it one way when you were a kid, but then you learned better in school, but somehow the kid pronunciation still comes out sometimes.
Right.
I noticed that Cory Booker of New Jersey also says “divisive.”
Divisive.
Yeah, and I think some people thought originally when this was being discussed years ago, people thought it was kind of prissy, like maybe a Northeast affectation or Ivy League affectation, but I think it’s becoming more and more common.
Well, this is a show about all aspects of language.
If you’ve got a question or just a comment, 877-929-9673, email words@waywordradio.org.
Talk to us on Facebook.
We’ve got a Facebook page and a really active Facebook group, and you can tweet us @wayword.
Hi.
You have A Way with Words.
Hi.
This is Ann.
I’m calling from Dallas.
Great.
Well, welcome to the show, and what can we do for you?
Thank you.
I just had a quick question.
Our 15-month-old daughter came down with croup this month, and over the course of the week, I kept hearing my husband tell people she has the croup, and so we kind of laughed about it, and I said, “I really think you just say croup,” which then got us wondering why you say you have the flu, you have a cold, but then you just say you have croup.
So I think it has to do with article adjectives, and I just was curious about that.
Oh, that’s a really good question.
So croup, as you understand it, is a disease of the throat.
Is it an infection or inflammation of the larynx and something else in there, right?
Correct.
Right.
When we talk about things like “the flu,” we are using that article in that way, right?
We’re using a definite article to mean “the flu” in a way that indicates to other people that we are aware that it’s currently being transmitted and passed around.
The flu is a thing which the hearer probably has heard of, right?
So, like, did you go to the store?
Not the store, but I went to the other store, right?
We do this when we try to be really specific, for example, with the definite article.
And with the thing like the croup or croup, it’s not really infectious, as I understand it, right?
Correct, yes.
Right.
And so it’s not a thing where the other person may have heard of cases of it going around or an epidemic happening or some seasonal thing, right?
And so it’s just croup.
Interesting.
However, those articles, the definite article, can be really fluid.
Some people do say “the flu.”
Some people just say “flu.”
I understand in the United Kingdom, they are just as likely to say, “She’s home with flu today,” as they are to say, “She’s home with the flu today.”
But you don’t say, “I have the cold.”
No, you don’t.
You say, “I have a cold.”
Right, “I have a cold.”
Or, “I caught cold.”
And so “cold” doesn’t take the definite article because it’s such an ordinary thing.
We don’t need to call it out with special, specific attention by using the definite article.
“I have a cold.”
It’s so fascinating to me.
Yeah.
We pick up these little cues from learning language, and so we all kind of learn, unconsciously, the behavior that we need to take when we talk about these certain kinds of diseases.
That said, there’s a lot of variation on this.
I do know, for example, diabetes has a form, kind of a colloquial version or a dialect version, where it’s called “the sugar,” which is really interesting, and it takes that definite article, “the sugar,” she’s got to watch her sweets.
Interesting.
Thank you so much.
It’s been such a fun conversation in our household.
She’s all better, right?
Yeah, she’s better.
She’s doing great.
Very happy again.
Thank you.
Okay, very good.
Well, Anne, thank you so much for calling.
Well, we’re such a big fan of y’all.
Thank you so much.
Oh, it’s our pleasure.
Take care now.
You too.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye, Anne.
877-929-9673. (upbeat music) A few weeks ago, we asked our listeners to come up with literary limericks, and we heard from Bonnie Woolley, who listens to us in Abu Dhabi, and she wrote this one.
“There once was a lass on a ledge. Her lover below was on edge. Their love while like magic, they knew would be tragic. Regardless, their truth they did pledge.”
A Romeo and Juliet?
Romeo and Juliet.
Oh, very nice.
Exactly.
I wonder if she could do the whole play with that, right?
Yeah, there’s a challenge.
All of Romeo and Juliet in limerick form.
There’s a challenge.
Anybody have too much time on your hands?
Actually, we heard from Tony Pro, who lives in San Diego, who wrote us another one that has to do with the ancient Achaeans, the Greeks, in other words.
“Sing goddess the wrath of Achilles, who gave Agamemnon the willies, and sent down to hell the Achaeans as well, ’cause this king thought his girl was the bee’s knees.” (laughing) Well done, Tony, thank you.
Yeah, and he’s got the important humor element that the limericks are supposed to have.
That’s good.
That’s not quite the full story, but it’ll do.
It sums it up pretty well.
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Sarah Burkhalter, and I live in Rockwell, Texas.
Hi, Sarah, welcome.
Hey, Sarah, what’s up?
So, back in September, I hit my head and fractured my skull.
And because of that, I have what’s called verbal apraxia and speech aphasia, which means I have a tendency to either forget words in the middle of trying to say them or the motor skills from my brain to my mouth don’t connect, and then I can’t fertilize the word.
Like, I physically can’t say it.
And so it happens a lot when I’m at work because I’m more prone to it when I’m stressed out, and I was just wondering if there was an easier way to explain it to people other than forgetting words, ’cause it’s not quite the same as just forgetting a word.
No, it doesn’t.
Is this something that you expect to get better over time, or is this a lifelong condition from here on out?
I have some coping mechanisms, and it’s gotten easier, but I don’t know if it’s permanent or not.
How do you cope?
Well, I usually run through quick synonyms and antonyms of the word that I’m forgetting, and then I can usually come up with it.
A lot of the times, people help me out by offering suggestions, and usually that can trigger remembering the word.
But sometimes it’s just gone, and I don’t remember it until a couple of days later.
Interesting.
And, Sarah, is this a job where you have to work with the public and communicate with people a whole lot?
Yes, I’m a teller at a credit union, so I work with the public all day long.
So you have a lot of specialized language.
Yes, it is.
But is it everyday words, or is it the jargon?
Is there a class of words that seems to escape you more readily?
I mean, it’s completely random.
So a few weeks ago, I was taking a member of their receipt from a transaction, and I forgot the word “deposit,” and I felt really dumb forgetting it.
And as I was handing them the receipt, I was like, “Here’s your receipt for your…”
And the member was like, “Deposit?”
And they were really confused.
And it’s kind of embarrassing sometimes when it’s really easy words like that.
I’m sorry.
That sounds really tough for you.
Yeah, frustrating.
It can be.
It can be.
And what’s the short way?
Because you don’t want to give somebody…
Like, you’ve just given us your full story.
Every single time.
And in that particular case…
No.
I try to explain it like, “Oh, I just forget words sometimes.”
And everyone’s like, “Oh, I always forget words. It happens to me all the time.”
But it doesn’t…
I think it’s undercutting it.
Like, they don’t really understand how hard it can be and how embarrassing it is sometimes.
Yeah.
I’m looking inside myself and thinking, “How would I react to that?”
And I’ve got to say, you’re handling this with exceptional grace.
I don’t know that everyone else in the world could have a public-facing job and not, like, after week one, demand that the boss give them a job behind the scenes.
Because it must be a constant reminder that there’s something not quite right.
Yeah.
It’s different.
Because what’s frustrating is because I remember being so eloquent with my words before I hit my head.
And now, afterwards, sometimes I struggle, and it can be really tough sometimes.
It reminds me a little bit of speaking in a second or third language.
I was going to say the same thing.
Where the complex thoughts that you have come out childish, and you just know you haven’t done them justice in that second or third language.
Yeah, but you do find ways to word around it.
I mean, that’s one of the things that they try to get you to do in foreign language classes, is never revert to your native language.
But find a creative way to word your way around it.
And it sounds like you’re doing exactly that.
But what to say.
That’s the question.
How to describe it.
I’m afraid I can’t come up with anything better than you.
There’s a number of different words, most of them really archaic or rare, that mean to have a word on the tip of your tongue or to pursue a word that you can’t remember with a lot of energy.
But they’re all needing their own explanations, and none of them will work for this situation.
Sarah, you’re so articulate, though.
I’m wondering what it is about that particular need to explain to somebody.
What do you want to communicate to them?
I had an injury, and now I have difficulty with words?
I just don’t want anyone to think less of me because of my inability.
You know what?
I don’t have an answer for you, but I want to thank you for your honesty and sharing this story with us.
And maybe I suspect that we will have people in the audience who can come up with the non-medical verbal apraxia or aphasia.
Those are words that most of us don’t know.
But maybe somebody out there has already been through this and will have a word for us or an expression for us or even just comfort.
But maybe the only answer is just knowing that other people have gone through this.
I don’t know.
Yeah, Sarah, thanks for reminding us that there may be something else going on.
You know, my dad always said, “Always be kind to people. You never know what burdens they’re carrying.”
And I think this is a great example of it.
Well, thank you so much for giving me some comfort that it’s not just me.
No, it’s not.
And we’ll throw this out to the whole audience, and we will find out if there’s another way to explain this easily so you don’t have to tell the whole story.
We’ll find it, all right?
All right.
Thank you so much, Martha and Grant.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Take care now.
Sure.
Thanks, Sarah.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Email words@wewordradio.org.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Woo.
Woo-hoo.
Don’t get excited.
It’s just a joke.
And there’s the crying one.
Boo-hoo.
Oh, I haven’t heard that one.
How about that?
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Europe.
Europe-hoo.
Europe-hoo.
Hello.
You have A Way with Words.
Hi, Grant and hi, Martha.
This is Kate Ross, and I’m from Middlesex, Vermont.
Middlesex, Vermont.
Welcome to the show, Kate.
Thank you.
What’s going on?
So I have a question about the word “porky.”
I was always labeled “porky” when I was a kid because I would — basically, it was when I was standing up for my rights, essentially.
When I would question my parents’ authority over me or, you know, that kind of thing, I would get hit back with, “Don’t get porky with us.”
And I know that “porky” relates to, you know, somebody who’s overweight.
I’ve heard that before, but that wasn’t the way it was being used with me.
It was more that I was just questioning their — telling me what to do, as kids do, right?
Yeah.
Are your parents American?
They both are American, yes.
Huh.
Interesting.
The reason I ask is that I don’t know of a meaning that really fits for P-O-R-K-Y, but I know of a word, P-A-W-K-Y, that tends to be used in the United Kingdom and not here, that really fits this very well.
And the Oxford English Dictionary has a bunch of terms that it kind of glosses as proximate synonyms, including artful, sly, shrewd, arch, roguish, jaunty, or having a sardonic sense of humor, haughty, proud, insolent, impertinent, particularly that last one.
And it would just be really interesting to me if this “porky” was an American variant of the British “pocky,” because it would fit so nicely, and I don’t really have another meaning for “porky” that really fits perfectly here.
Oh, that’s really interesting.
There is one entry in the Dictionary of American Regional English from New York State, and it says, “When you can see from the way that a person acts that he’s feeling important or independent, he is surely blank these days.”
It was part of the survey that they did, and they had one response that was “porky.”
Oh, really?
Well, the other cool thing that we can do is ask our listeners, because I’m betting that we’re going to hear from people who have also heard the word used that way, maybe from New York State.
Right.
Great.
Great.
Kate, thank you so much for your call.
Thank you, too.
Take care.
Thanks, Kate.
Bye-bye.
You, too.
Bye-bye.
So do you know that word “porky” like Kate use it?
Give us a call at 877-929-9673, email us words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.
Here’s a quotation I like from the philosopher and essayist Montaigne, who 450 years ago said, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.”
Oh, right, because he’s a worrier.
Right?
Don’t worry, be happy.
It’s true.
The worrying takes as much off of you as the thing actually happening.
It sure does.
And I remember reading about some study where something like 85% of what you worry about doesn’t actually happen.
Yeah, but are you protected?
I mean, does the worrying stop it from happening if it’s a thing within your control?
Oh, maybe that’s it.
That’s it.
I mean, that’s my belief.
It’s like taking an umbrella so that it doesn’t rain.
Being completely devil-may-care with no worries at all, I don’t know if I could ever pull that off.
Maybe we should try it, just for a week.
Is it possible?
I think I’d have to sleep the whole week.
There’s an idea.
Want more A Way with Words?
Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org or find the show on any podcast app or on iTunes.
Our toll-free line is always open, so leave us a message at 877-929-9673 and we’ll take a listen.
We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter @wayword and look for us on Facebook.
This program would not be possible without you.
Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.
Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten, director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.
In New York, we thank quiz guide John Choneski and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.
A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.
From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.
And I’m Grant Barrett.
So long.
Bye-bye.
[Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
