Squeejawed Red-heads and Grockles

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And

Yes, I would like to buy some Swedish furniture and assemble it myself.

Very good, Grant. I think you know what that was, really, don’t you?

Yeah, I think that was Old English.

It was indeed. It was Beowulf.

Martha, I am impressed. That is fantastic.

But how many times a day do you get a chance to speak Old English?

How many times in my life?

Anyway, there’s a good reason that I’m reading you the first few lines of Beowulf.

We received an email recently from Isaac Hirschbein of La Mesa, California, and he had an intriguing question, Grant.

He writes, how far back in history could I go and maintain a simple conversation and be reasonably understood in English?

Could I make my way during Elizabethan times or earlier?

It’s a great question, don’t you think?

Yeah, and you know, it’s one that the science fiction writers and the people who write books about,

Even Mark Twain, when he wrote about a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur’s court.

Oh, yeah.

They kind of skirt around that issue, don’t they?

Yeah.

Because that’s what, Beowulf was what, the 8th century?

Right, right.

Right, and I didn’t understand a word you said.

It sounded like Swedish to me.

Exactly, exactly. Well, it has those Germanic roots.

So going back that far, you’d have a pretty tough time of it.

Well, we’ll talk about that a little bit later in the show, but first let’s take some of your calls.

You can ask us about any aspect of language. Just call 1-877-929-9673.

Or send us an email in modern English, if you wish, to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Cheryl calling from Montevideo, Uruguay.

Oh, hello.

Uruguay.

So, Cheryl, what’s on your mind?

Well, the question I had, I was actually listening to Fresh Air the other day on the podcast.

That’s how I get your show as well.

Awesome.

And her guest, Terry Gross’ guest, said,

Olly olly oxen free.

And now, of course, I don’t know if I’m actually saying that right or not.

But, of course, it’s what I remember yelling when I played hide and seek as a child.

Now, where was that?

Either you have a really great accent or you grew up in the United States.

I’m originally from Portland, Oregon.

Okay.

All right.

As I said, when I was a kid, I always thought it was olly olly oxen free.

She spelled in my head.

I spelled it O-L-L-Y, O-L-L-Y, O-X-E-N, free, F-R-E-E.

And eventually, I remember, I think I was about seven or eight, I asked my grandmother,

Why are there oxen in hide-and-seek?

And she said she remembered it as all the, all the outs in free.

All the people who were out hiding got to come in free, and I guess the game started over again.

And where was she from?

She was from Austin, Texas, and it surrounds.

So my question is, what was the original phrase,

And did some sort of elision happen with all the to become Ollie and oxen from out in?

What was the original?

And does it vary over English-speaking North America?

Absolutely it does.

And your instincts are quite correct there.

The Dictionary of American Regional English has lots of entries on this phrase.

As I recall, the original phrase was, all who are out may come in free.

Wow.

Which, of course, is, yeah.

I mean, that’s a mouthful for a little kid to say.

It’s a lot longer.

Yeah, no kid’s going to say that for more than a minute before they change it.

Yeah, now, Cheryl, I will tell you that growing up in Kentucky, the way I heard it was not the way you heard it.

You heard it, ollie ollie oxen free?

Mm—

When I was really young and we were playing this game, my friend Susan, who used to spend summers in the Deep South and then come back to Kentucky, came back from the Deep South saying, ollie ollie ump free.

Oh, I’ve never heard that one.

Ollie ollie ump free, like umpire.

Ollie ollie ump free.

And because she was more forceful than the rest of us and we thought she was really cool, all of us in my little group in Kentucky started saying ollie ollie ump free.

That’s one example of how that kind of thing can change.

But Grant, I mean, you’re a big fan of children’s games.

Yeah, this is something I love reading about this kind of folklore.

But we didn’t use that phrase.

I only know it from the Charles Schultz Peanuts comics.

Lucy uses it in one of those.

I’ll see if I can dig that up to post on the website.

But you know, Cheryl, Martha’s right.

In Dare, I counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

There are nine different uses of this term.

Nine.

And one of my favorite ones of all time, though, is the one that spelled O-L-E-O-E-L-E-O-L-S-E-N, all in free.

Ole, Ole Olsen, all in free.

Olsen, where is that, in Minnesota or someplace?

No, no, it was actually, well, southern Illinois in the north central Pacific states and a little bit in the northeast.

So it was just that’s how far it got corrupted.

And your instincts about how it changed are exactly right.

Things that are shouted just tend not to hold their form.

Here’s another great one from Utah.

Olly Olly Oxford all in free.

Interesting.

Well, thanks for answering my question, and it’s really been a pleasure talking to you both.

Cheryl, thanks so much for calling from Montevideo.

All right.

Well, I’ll say saludos del Uruguay, and hasta luego.

Saludos, besotes a todos.

Besos.

Ciao.

Bueno, ciao, ciao.

If you’ve got a question about this sort of thing, we’d love to hear about it.

If it’s just something you want to tell us, you can bring it to our discussion forum,

waywordradio.org/discussion, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

You can also call us. The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mark from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

What are you doing in Winston-Salem?

I’m a pediatrician.

Oh, wow.

And a word nerd, too.

Excellent. Great combination.

One of our people.

Well, I’ve got a question that I thought had been answered years ago,

And just recently I found something new that confused me.

The whole nine yards.

Oh, boy.

Well, I’d always liked the idea that there were nine cubic yards of concrete in a cement mixer

And that a fancy ball gown would take nine square yards of material.

And then I heard that nine sails on a square-rigged ship,

Or hanging off the horizontal yards, would make a whole nine yards.

So I like those explanations.

And recently I was reading a historical magazine.

They were talking about the D-Day invasion,

And they said that Eisenhower visiting the troops before they launched the invasion,

The heavy bombers had machine gun ammunition in 27-foot-long belts,

And they called it the whole nine yards of ammunition.

So what gives?

You know, the whole nine yards is, I would say it’s the Moby Dick of etymology, you know, and all these etymologists and now you, Mark, are searching far and wide.

And the answer to this question remains deep below the briny depths of the English language.

But your skepticism is very well placed, Mark, because that theory about the whole nine yards coming from nine yards of ammunition has been debunked in a number of places.

A person who does a good job of that is Dave Wilton at wordorigins.org.

For one thing, they never measured ammunition that way.

You know, you measured it in terms of rounds.

And one of the really exciting developments in this field came a couple of years ago when a researcher found a newspaper article from the 1970s where a returning prisoner of war from Vietnam mentioned the phrase the whole nine yards or all nine yards or something like that.

And this researcher, Barry Poppick, who’s one of the most dogged etymologists out there, actually tracked down this former POW to ask him about his understanding of that term.

And he said he’d heard it during flight school in the 1950s.

Aha.

That actually jibes very well with what we already know about the term then, doesn’t it?

Yeah.

Because a lot of the, as I remember, a lot of the early uses we can find with this term in print,

All of them from after 1960 are related to the Air Force or some kind of flying, right?

Right.

Right.

Right.

And, Mark, have you heard the one about the Scotsman and his kilt?

No.

Okay.

Well, it’s probably just as well because it’s a filthy joke.

And that’s involving nine yards.

We probably can’t talk about it on the air.

Maybe we could put a link to it on our website because Barry Poppik has it on his site.

But anyway, this is the story that the returning prisoner of war told Barry Poppik, that there’s sort of a naughty story involving a Scotsman and his kilt and nine yards.

So we may be closing in on the answer, but we’re not sure.

There’s a second story to that, Mark.

Last fall, somebody found the earliest use so far known of the term in print.

And people are often surprised to find that it’s 1962 and was in a car magazine.

And it didn’t have anything to do with Scotsman or kilts or airplanes or anything like that.

It’s just a pretty straightforward use of the term.

But as we always say, or I often say on the show, this is still an orig unk.

All these theories are unproven.

Well, I tell you what, Mark, if you do find the answer, let us know, because you will be greeted as visiting royalty among the linguistic world.

Oh, good.

Hey, Mark, this was a lot of fun. Thanks.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mark. Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye now.

If you’ve got a question about the origins of, well, one of the classic stumpers of all time, by all means, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And that discussion forum I keep mentioning is at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Craig calling from Superior, Wisconsin.

Craig.

Hi, Craig.

How are you doing?

Good.

How are you guys?

All right.

What’s on your mind today?

I was hoping you guys could give me some information on the word squeegeod.

What?

What is it?

Squeegeod?

Yeah, squeegeod.

How do you spell that and what does it mean?

I’m not sure how to spell it, but I would spell it S-Q-U-E-E-J-A-W-E-D.

Now, Craig, where did you hear this word?

The only person I’ve ever heard use it is my mother, and she uses it to mean crooked or not square, out of whack, not level.

And you’ve not heard anybody else use it but your mom?

I haven’t, so I was kind of wondering if it was a regional word and I’m in the wrong region, or if it’s something she just made up, or what’s going on?

No, I don’t think you’re in the wrong region, Craig.

But I’m so glad you brought this word to our attention because I’ve seen it only in print and very rarely.

But it’s one of many, you know, it’s so funny about English.

What does it say about us that we have so many words in the English language for something that’s askew like that?

You know, like you’re hanging a picture and somebody’s helping you and they’re saying, no, no, no, it’s still a little bit squeegee-jawed.

Right?

I guess that means we’re less than perfect.

Yeah.

Auntie Goglins, Slouchwise, Cattywampus, Catawampus.

And there are a few that end in Jod as well, like Whompy Jod and Whopper Jod and Whomper Jod.

Not just Jod, but G, Jog, Gaw, and Haw are common endings.

And the beginning can sometimes skew or ski.

So you can mix any one of those beginnings with any one of those ends, and somebody’s used it.

Interesting.

So have you adopted it into your own vocabulary, Craig?

Absolutely. I use it whenever I can.

Right. And people look at you and think, what?

Actually, it seems like they understand it, so I don’t know if they’ve heard it or the context makes it obvious or what.

I think it probably does.

Well, Craig, thanks for reminding us about that word.

Sure, absolutely.

All right.

Take care.

Take care of yourself, Craig.

Bye-bye.

You bet.

Bye.

If a question about language has you lopper-jawed or anti-goglin or catty-wampus or skew-jawed, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or you can email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Coming up, it’s a visit from one of our quiz guys.

And we’ll take more of your calls.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined once again by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Hello, Greg.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

Hi, Greg.

Hey, Greg, I’ve been meaning to ask you a question.

-oh.

It’s my turn to ask you a question.

If Grant and I have a morbid fear of your giving us a quiz on Friday the 13th, does that mean that we suffer from plisskidekaphobia?

Oh, I thought you were going to say quizkidekaphobia, which is bad, too.

I like plisskidekaphobia a lot.

I don’t like it.

No, I don’t.

It’s being afraid of meeting me and nine of my relatives.

Oh, what do you got over there anyway?

I should say up front that I’ve borrowed this idea from a fellow puzzle guy, Puzzle Master, Will Shorts.

So I want to say that right up front before somebody writes in and says, you know, this is just like a puzzle Will did on his show.

That’s because I stole it from him.

All right.

But I have a title for it.

I’m calling it Categorical Allies or Dandy Dyads.

And I’m wondering if you notice anything about the spelling of the pairs of words in those titles.

Categorical allies and dandy dyads.

Dandy dyads.

Categorical.

I’m stumped.

Well, there’s two Ds in both words.

Close.

Closer.

Where the words meet what’s going on.

Oh, okay.

Oh, I see.

There’s a…

This is very da-da puzzle.

The second word you’ll notice begins with the same two letters that end the first.

Right.

Categorical allies and dandy dyads.

Wow.

The way this puzzle is going to work is that I’m going to give you the first word and you have to come up with a second word that’s in the same category as the first and begins with the same.

And begins with the two letters that the first one ends with.

Gotcha.

Suppose I gave you the word French.

What’s another item in the same category that starts with CH?

Chinese.

That’s good.

Oh, good.

Food or nationalities, either one.

Yeah.

Languages is what I was thinking.

You could have said Chechen maybe or Church Slavonic.

But Chinese was the most likely answer.

Okay.

So if you guys understand what’s going on, I’ll give you your first one.

Has that ever stopped us?

It’s never stopped us before.

Well, good.

Here we go.

First word I’m going to give you is grape.

Grape.

G-R-A-P-E ends with pear.

Peach.

Pear and peach.

Persimmon.

Both good answers.

Ooh, persimmon.

All right.

You don’t get three times as many points.

I don’t.

That was good.

All right, here’s another one.

Omega.

Name’s with a G-A.

Gamma.

Gamma would be it.

Absolutely.

Great job over these.

Why?

Well, we’re going to move for some harder ones.

My quiz technique is unstoppable.

It’s a good thing I’ve got 30 of these.

30?

Oh, right.

Quickly.

Gosh.

All right, going on.

Here’s a word you’ll be familiar with.

Brain.

Brains.

Brains.

Brains.

Brains.

N-S.

N-S.

No, brain.

Oh, I said singular.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Brain, I, N.

Intestine.

Oh, gosh, Grant, you were just cleaning up on these.

Yeah, also inner ear, but I was thinking of organs in particular.

Wow.

Okay, yes, so here’s another one.

Juno, J-U-N-E-A-U.

Thanks, thanks.

Okay, so she was a goddess.

Not that, not that spelling.

Not that kind of Juno?

J-U-N-E-A-U.

That’s spelling.

This is far-fetched, but you could say Aurora Borealis because they’re both in the north.

Yes.

It’s a big category.

Things in the north.

There probably is a Wikipedia page for things in the north.

But this is – now, Juneau is something very – a little more specific than that.

Right.

It’s a city in Alaska.

It’s a city.

So there’s Auburn or Augusta, Maine, capital kind of thing.

Well, Augusta would be good.

A capital city.

There we go.

Perfect.

So Juneau ends with AU, and then Augusta is another capital city that begins with AU.

Austin, Texas also would have been a legitimate answer.

Here’s one perfect for you verbivores.

Adjective.

Adjective.

Adjective.

Verb.

Verb, absolutely.

Another part of speech.

Parts of speech.

Adjective ends with V-E, and verb starts with that.

How about Mali, M-A-L-I?

Mali.

Liberia.

Another African country beginning with L-I.

Or, isn’t there another one?

Yep.

Mali.

It’s in the northern African country.

Libya.

Libya.

Yes, that’s the one.

How about this one?

Hello, goodbye.

What about yes and no?

No.

Hello, goodbye.

Hello, goodbye.

Yellow.

You say yes, I say no.

It’s a Beatles song, hello, goodbye.

Oh, hello, goodbye.

So yesterday.

Yesterday or yellow submarine would be good.

How about one more?

One more.

Well, I’ve got a bonus one.

So why don’t we do that one?

Okay.

Because I found a – we talked about this earlier.

I found a string that links four members of a category together in a row.

All righty.

Now, I’ll give you the first one, and you try to get through four.

The first one is Alabama.

So are they all states?

So they’re all states, yes.

We used to actually play this game, but only with the last letter.

It was a road trip game.

It makes it a little harder when you get two letters.

So Alabama.

-huh.

You can’t really do Massachusetts.

You can’t do anything with that T and that S.

Tee-tsy fly, but that’s not a state.

Yeah, there’s no state that starts with T.

Yes, tsunami.

So what else?

Maine is not a bad one.

Then you can go to Nebraska, and then you can go to Kansas.

There you go.

Yes, bingo.

You could also go Maine, New Mexico, Colorado if you wanted to.

Whoa.

But I thought it would be fun to see if listeners can come up with a string of more than four items in a given category.

And, I don’t know, they could post it on the forum at waywordradio.org.

That’s not a bad idea.

Great idea.

That’s terrific.

But a tight forum can’t be like things in the north.

Yeah, things in the north would be not a very tight category.

How about things?

You’re right.

Mounds.

Stuff on earth.

I found a string of 1,600 words.

They’re all mounds.

It’s amazing.

Well, thank you.

This was a lot of fun.

I’m glad that I got so many right.

I know.

What happened?

What’s going on there?

This was the easy day.

Well, thanks, Greg.

You’re welcome.

Thank you.

And if you’d like to puzzle us with a word question, call us at 1-877-929-9673.

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

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Kelly from Indianapolis.

Hello, Kelly.

What’s going on in Indianapolis?

Well, I have a question that’s been bothering me for a while.

When I was a little kid, and the kids from the neighborhood, we would all be playing and running around and chasing each other.

There was always something that we would yell at each other, and it’s never really made any sense to me.

I’ve never understood where it came from or why this thing exists.

And I’ve looked it up a number of places, and I can never really find a good enough explanation.

Okay, bring it on.

Well, so the phrase is, I’m going to beat you like a redheaded stepchild.

Whoa.

I would like to know where it came from, why.

I’ve looked it up and have seen, you know, it’s listed on Urban Dictionary that the redheaded stepchild is just a child without birthright.

But I don’t understand why it’s so violent.

And also, I’d like to know if there’s any way to know who the first redheaded stepchild was.

Do you have any theories yourself about where that might have come from?

I don’t.

I have a friend who thinks it’s from the movie Problem Child, but I find that really depressing, so I hope that’s not my answer.

That’s way too new for it to be true.

The expression is much older than that.

Yeah, you can cross that one off.

The expression predates the movie era completely.

Well, almost completely.

Yeah, what, early 1900s, right, Grant?

1910 is the earliest use that I know of.

Yeah.

Yeah, and generally it refers to somebody who’s unwanted or badly treated.

And I’m not sure that we know who the original red-headed stepchild was or red-haired stepchild.

And historically there have always been these stories floating around about redheads having a fiery temperament or that they’re really different from everybody else, that they’re really red-hot lovers, so they’re somehow dangerous or the product of an extramarital affair or something like that.

And do you know that it was just a few months ago, I don’t know if you saw this, Grant, there were all these news reports in England.

In the UK?

Yes.

Yeah, I saw that.

I don’t think I’ve seen that.

Well, they were talking about the ginger beating or ginger teasing, which is what they say in the British Isles for somebody who had hair.

They call them ginger.

And apparently there was a woman, she was crying at the abuse she remembered getting when she was in school on the playground for having red hair.

Merciless teasing.

I mean, kids are heartless anyway.

Yeah, yeah.

And there were all these stories in the British press about this one family of redheads who were driven out of their neighborhood by these local thugs who kept picking on them.

Yes, supposedly because they had red hair.

And there were all these stories in the media about gingerism.

And you can go to YouTube and see all these interviews about, I mean, you know, we’re laughing and it’s kind of funny.

But at the same time, it’s really kind of creepy.

It’s awful.

Yes.

It’s like one of the last minority groups that people tend to think it’s okay to make fun of.

Now, Kelly, I have to ask, do you use this expression as an adult or do your ears just prick up?

No.

No, I actually do not.

I try to resort to violence as little as possible.

Good for you.

It’s not something that I use at all, actually.

Kelly, thanks for a very interesting question.

Well, thank you.

All right.

You guys have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Kelly.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

My colleague, Ben Zimmer, who you may know by reputation, he works at Oxford University Press.

He’s one of the language log guys at the Language Log Blogs.

He uncovered a 1919 use in a classified ad of this phrase that I think bears repeating here.

You want to hear this?

Absolutely.

And that’s the mixed phrase.

He says, I own a frame building with two flats and two stores, all vacant except one store.

Can find no one to give it a better attention than is commonly given by a woman’s second husband to her cross-eyed stepchild by the first wife of her first husband.

Oh, gracious.

Properties at Wentworth Avenue is all clear and needs many repairs.

Make me an offer.

Wow.

That’s just about as derogatory as you can get.

But he did use the cross-eyed stepchild version, and that’s from 1919.

So you can see that it hasn’t always been redheaded stepchild.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Catherine, and I’m calling from New York City.

My question is in regard to these three charming young ladies whom I’ve been privileged to know since they were in their diapers.

I just love them so much that I feel like they’re my nieces or my godchildren, but they’re not.

So, in fact, the only way that I know of to describe who they are to me is to use this long, kind of awkward phrase, the kids I babysit.

My question is just what does one call one’s best-loved young friends when those friends are not blood relations?

And particularly, what’s a descriptive term I can use to substitute for the phrase, the kids I babysit?

Oh, wow, what a great question. It sounds like you have a wonderful relationship with them.

I do. They live right down the street from me, and my sister babysat for them before I did.

Martha, I think this might be as difficult to fill as the one for an older romantic partner, something other than boyfriend or girlfriend.

This might be as difficult as that.

Yeah, it’s funny because there are all these Victorian words that just almost cut it.

Like, you know, you might call that a paramour or something.

Exactly. That’s a great analogy.

The same way, though, that we wouldn’t call you a governess, we couldn’t call the kids charges or wards.

Let’s just try a few things on you and see how these sound.

You guys let me know.

Martha, you chime in here.

What if you just called them your friends?

I thought about that, but then that doesn’t get in the employer-employee part of the relationship.

Here, let’s just try a few things here.

What about Padawan?

What?

What is that?

From Star Wars.

Padawan learners.

These are the young apprentice Jedis.

The very young kids as they start out are called Padawan learners.

Oh, that’s awesome.

I love that.

You like that word?

Yeah.

I like that word.

I’m just wondering if I use that, will people be like, what are you talking about?

Yes.

Well, you know.

I would be.

What about just calling them your sidekicks?

No.

Oh, no, no.

I’m just kind of brainstorming here.

What about kid fellow?

One word, kid fellow.

Kid fellows.

That’s kind of good.

Or kid mate.

Associate kid.

Like associate plus kid.

I know it’s a horrible blend.

My child associates.

Perfect.

My child associates.

That’s kind of cool.

They would like that.

Well, what do they say?

How do they describe themselves?

They always just say, that’s our babysitter.

I mean, I’ve never heard.

If they send you a gift.

If they send you a gift.

Or give you a birthday card.

How do they?

Did they just sign it with their names?

Or do they put something like your whatever’s?

So and so and so and so.

They actually always call me by my full name because the youngest one loves Spider-Man, and my last name is Watson.

So she thinks of me like I’m Mary Jane Watson.

So the whole family has started just calling me a Catherine Watson.

And that’s what they call me.

Well, maybe we should start that.

Maybe we should start a trend where those little kids are called Watsons.

What do you think?

Oh, that’s awesome.

I like it.

Maybe we can start it right here.

You know, but when you, Martha, when you start testing your power to make words last, you soon find exactly how insignificant you are.

I know.

Oh, that’s true, and we don’t really want to face that.

Oh, but Catherine, I bet we can pull this off.

I think Watson’s kind of nice, you know?

Because Watson’s kind of like a common, like it’s used for other things, too.

Yeah, but then you’d have to have Watts daughters.

Here’s what we’re going to do.

It’s entirely possible that the three of us have, even with our massive brain power, that we’ve missed a trick here.

So we’re going to throw this open to the listeners.

Okay.

And we’re beseeching.

The sirens are up, the lights are lit, and the bat signal’s gone out.

And we’re looking for your term for kids who are babysat.

What do you call them?

What is the generic term for these folks?

This is really important.

Not a long phrase, like one word or something really easy to say.

And transparent, too.

Yeah, that really works.

Put it on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion.

It seems like it’s a whole undescribed terrain, the whole babysitter, nanny, caretaker realm.

You betcha.

You betcha.

Thanks for helping me, you know, explore it.

All right.

Keep your ear to the ground.

Stay tuned.

We’ll let you know how it turns out, all right?

Thanks a lot, and have a great weekend.

Okay, you too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you want to tell us what you think this should be, we’re all ears.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or you can send your ideas for this particular word to words@waywordradio.org.

Well, earlier we promised you an answer to the question, how far back in time could you go and still expect to understand and converse with native speakers of English?

We’ve definitely ruled out being able to make out much of Old English, which was spoken in, oh, about the mid-5th century until the early 12th century.

Oh, definitely. No chance at all.

But what about Middle English, say the time of Chaucer, which was the late 14th century?

I don’t think his English is much easier to follow.

Hearing it is a challenge, that’s for sure.

There are a few experts that have done readings of Chaucer.

And it’s really thrilling to listen to because you almost feel like you can make out the words if you just listened a little harder.

Now, reading it, though, you can actually get some meaning out of it.

The spelling is different.

But there’s a fantastic Middle English dictionary, freely available online, brilliant work, and it would pick up any slack that you needed.

You can read it.

You can actually make out words in Chaucer without a lot of help.

The spelling’s odd, but, you know, patience will carry you through.

Right.

And then by Shakespeare’s time, things get a lot easier to understand, right?

Yeah, definitely.

In fact, I have a book by David Crystal.

He’s that amazingly prolific language expert.

And he was asked a few years ago by the Globe Theater in London to figure out how one of Shakespeare’s plays would have been pronounced in those days.

And so Crystal did all this linguistic detective work and figured out the pronunciations and helped train the company’s actors to speak the lines pretty much the way they were spoken back then.

And he describes that experience in this wonderful little book called Pronouncing Shakespeare.

He talks about how there are a few differences, like reason was pronounced raisin, and voice was pronounced vice.

But, you know, Shakespearean English is still pretty darned understandable for the most part.

Well, if you want to hear what Shakespeare’s plays probably sounded like when they were first produced, we’ll put some examples on our website.

That’s waywordradio.org.

We’ll also put up links to audio clips of Middle English and Old English, so you can listen and decide for yourself.

So get thee to our website.

And if thou hast a question about language, get thee to a phonery and call us.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Get ready for our slang quiz, and we’ll take more of your calls right here on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And it’s time for Slang This, our puzzle about slang.

Today’s contestant is Gary Macy in Santa Clara, California.

Gary, welcome.

Thank you so much.

How are you doing?

Hi, Gary.

What’s going on?

It’s warm and sunny here as it usually is in California.

Yeah?

Yeah, we’re enjoying that very much.

And so what are you doing there?

Well, actually, at the moment I am sitting in my office, I teach medieval history at Santa Clara University.

Oh, awesome.

Okay.

Yes, it is.

That’s pretty cool.

So you’re translating Latin or something and taking a break?

Yeah, that’s it.

You know, it’s knights and saving ladies in distress from dragons and things like that.

Oh, cool.

Cool.

Well, Gary, as you know, to get past door number one in this challenge, we like to ask you what your favorite slang expression is.

Do you have one for us?

I do.

The one that I use a lot, I used to be at administration when I turned to the dark side, but I’ve since been cured of that.

But when I was at administration, I used to make piles on my desk of all of the different things that came in.

And my favorite pile was the NMP file.

NMP?

Yeah, not my problem.

And that was one of my favorite expressions.

And I would just write NMP, NMP, NMP.

And then I could forget about it.

It was something about which I could do nothing or about which I wish to do nothing.

Right, right, right.

NMP is one of my absolute favorite expressions.

Gary, that’s nice.

I’m going to borrow that one.

Me too.

I was going to say, I’m going to steal it.

I don’t know where it comes from or even if it comes from me.

I have no idea.

I just like it.

But it’s not your problem.

That’s exactly it.

Who cares where it comes from?

Or, you know, a question for you in any case.

I’m going to add that to round file and file 13.

This is kind of the appropriate places for things that aren’t my problem.

Wonderful.

Okay, well, Gary, we’re going to go on to your next challenge.

Grant is going to present you with a slang term, and he’ll give you three possible examples of how it might be used in a sentence.

Now, only one of those is real and the other two are something he just made up.

So, Gary, your task will be to choose which one of those three is actually the slang term.

You got it?

I think so.

Okay, Grant.

It’s your problem.

All right.

Here we go.

The first word is quizam.

Q-U-I-Z-Z-A-M.

Quizam.

All right?

Okay.

And the first clue is, on my first trip to Turkey, I made a horrible faux pas.

I stepped into the quizam without taking my shoes off first.

All of the worshippers looked at me like I was leaving fiery footprints of hellfire.

The second clue.

I aced all the quizams in trig class.

They may take longer to do than quizzes, but they’re easier than midterm exams.

And the third clue.

You better put a quizam under the leg of that table or else you’ll spill your drink.

So which one is it?

Is it A, a place of worship in Turkey?

Is it B, a test that is harder than a quiz but easier than an exam?

Or is it C, something that props up the leg of wobbly furniture?

Wow, Gary, what do you think?

Well, I actually think it’s number two, but I’m not going to go with that because I’m wrong so often.

So I think I’m going to go with number three because I wish it was that even if it isn’t.

You wish that you had a name for the things that you shove under the legs of wobbly tables.

Exactly.

It is the second one, though.

It’s quiz plus exam.

Oh, I should know that.

I’m a college professor.

I give them all the time.

It’s not that common.

I mean, it’s slang.

Not everyone knows all slang, so you’re forgiven.

But quiz plus exam, it’s not quite a pop quiz where you get five questions and you’re done in ten minutes, but yet it’s not like a really honors exam that you spend hours on and you, you know, affects your grade for the semester.

So, quizam.

I thought it might have been a superhero.

Shazam.

Kind of a nerdy superhero.

Well, Gary, maybe you’ll have to start giving quizams to your students.

Yeah, I can start next week.

They’ll love me.

Yeah, just tell them it’s an old Roman tradition and they’ll suck it right up.

All right, here’s the second one.

This word is snirt, S-N-I-R-T, snirt.

And the first clue is every stuntman knows the snirt.

It’s where you’re just standing there alone, doing nothing, and then you do a faceplant like you’ve been hit from behind.

The second clue.

A certain 1970s actor is known for wearing a snirt.

If the word ever got out that his hairy good looks were aided by one of those matching toupee and mustache combos, then his publicist would have her work cut out for her.

And then the third clue.

The pretty snow lasts for about ten minutes, then automobiles churn the snow and dirt into snert.

So, Gary, which is it?

Is it A, a pratfall that appears to have no cause?

Is it B, a full set of fake hair for the head and face?

Or is it C, a mixture of snow and dirt?

Oh, it’s got to be three.

Because I lived in Wisconsin for, grew up, I was born and lived in Wisconsin for many, many years.

And that’s exactly what it is.

If it isn’t it, it should be it.

You’re right.

You’re right.

And all of Wisconsin is shouting at the radio.

Snort, snort, snort, snort, snort.

Absolutely.

It’s a simple one, snow and dirt.

And if you notice, there’s a little bit of a pattern there in the two questions today.

They’re both blends where they take two words and they mix them together and make a second word.

Anyway, thanks for playing, Gary.

It was a lot of fun.

We won’t tell your students that you got a 50%.

Did I get anything?

No.

Do you get anything?

You absolutely do, Gary.

Get this.

We’re going to send you a copy of Grant’s book.

It’s called The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang.

Perfect for an election year, right?

I was only kidding, but that’s wonderful.

I know that book.

I like it very much.

Oh, you already have it?

No, I don’t have it, but I’ve used it, and I know it.

And I was only kidding.

I mean, just being on a show is satisfaction enough and should be for anyone.

All right.

Wow, there we go.

Well, you’re getting a book anyway, whether you like it or not.

I like it.

All right, Gary.

Well, thanks for playing.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you, Gary.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

And if you’d like to play our slang game on the air, just give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Marcella from San Diego.

Hi, Marcella.

What’s going on?

How are you?

Green, yourself?

Very well, thank you.

The reason why I’m calling is because even though English is my second language, I’ve always had this difficulty trying to apply the rule about the prepositions on and in.

You know, I was taught that on means on top and in means inside.

And sometimes when you use it as a preposition, it doesn’t always work that way.

For example, why are we on a boat if we’re actually inside the boat?

Or do we go on a plane if we’re actually inside the plane?

We’re not riding on top.

With our hair blowing.

That’s right.

And, for example, why are you on my mind but in my heart?

-huh.

Right?

Oh, wow.

So I’ve always been curious as to how do we apply that rule.

Wow.

And, Marcella, what is your first language?

Spanish.

Okay.

Okay.

Prepositions are notorious for being quirky and difficult to master from one language to another.

And, you know, I mean…

Oh, you’re telling me. I remember doing that in French, you know.

Yeah?

Yeah. Do you know French, Marcella?

No, not really.

The one that gets everybody to start in your very first semester of French class is à Paris, that means in Paris or at Paris, or en France, which is in France.

And things, but you can only use those prepositions, a and on, with those particular words.

You can’t swap them around.

It means something else altogether.

That’s right.

It’s like in December or on a specific date in December.

Right.

Right.

And I’m thinking also about Spanish prepositions.

I mean, it’s tricky for English speakers to learn your prepositions.

For example, you would say in Spanish, wouldn’t you, Marcella, the equivalent of, I dreamed with Antonio Banderas, right?

Yes.

Rather than I dreamed about or I dreamed of Antonio Banderas.

And dreaming with Antonio Banderas is something kind of different.

And, Marcella, don’t even get me started on por and para.

I mean, you must hear English speakers messing those two up all the time.

Yes.

Yeah.

And, I mean, I don’t know what you tell English speakers about how to figure those things out.

I mean, it’s sort of the same way in English.

There’s not a hard and fast rule for determining that in and on.

You just kind of have to muscle through and hear it and make mistakes because—

Memorize. Lots of memorization.

Your English is very good, so I bet your sense of what is correct is already fairly well developed, right?

Yes, I’ve been here for 17 years.

Yeah.

And, yeah, of course I’ve learned a lot, and reading helps a lot.

The thing is you probably then know that if I said that Martha was in the boat, the mental image that comes up is a canoe.

And if I say she’s on the boat, the mental image comes up as like a ferry boat or a cruise ship, right?

This is the kind of thing that is impossible to teach except by example to read a lot of examples, which is why all great language teaching ultimately amounts to reading a lot in that language.

I think English is a little less forgiving preposition-wise than a lot of other languages.

I actually think that Spanish is a little more forgiving, as poor as my Spanish is.

Well, I have to agree with you on that one.

You think so?

The best thing that I could say to anyone who’s listening and they want some help in this regard, because it really seems, Marcela, like you’re actually doing superb because you recognize the difference here, is that there are collections, there are books of idioms out there.

All the major dictionary publishers have them.

Buy one or two, spend some time with them, make them your bedtime reading or your bathroom reading, and before you know it, you’ll get it and just start to click.

All right.

All right, well, thank you so very much.

I really enjoy your show every Saturday or Sunday.

Whenever I’m able to listen to it, and I really appreciate you having me on the show.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye, Marcella.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you’d like some more information from us, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

This is Jared, who lives near York, England, but is originally from Sheboygan County, Wisconsin.

Sheboygan County, Wisconsin.

How did you get all the way over to, where did you say York?

Yeah.

Wow.

It was a long, strange trip, let me tell you.

What are you calling us about?

I subscribe to one of these listservs, one of these kind of groups on the Internet.

Somebody sent a message to the group saying that they had been out wandering around over the weekend going somewhere, and they had to fight their way back through the grockles.

Through the grockles.

I thought, well, gosh, I haven’t heard that one before.

After eight years of living here, it was a brand new word.

So I thought, well, I’ll Google that, as you tend to do these days.

And I’ve determined pretty quickly that grockle meant tourist or outsider, or somebody who was only temporarily in the area kind of clogging up the roads, as it were.

So I checked with the rest of the people in the group, and they said, oh, yeah, that’s right.

That’s generally the way we take it.

And I said, well, where does that come from?

And, of course, that’s when the real discussion began.

Yeah.

Because everybody said, oh, well, it’s originally Cornish.

Oh, no, no, no, somebody else said it comes from a different area of the country altogether.

And the real question isn’t so much of how it’s used or what it means now, but where does the word come from?

Because there just didn’t seem to be any clear consensus about that.

And after about a day or so discussing it on this listserv, we all kind of just gave up.

And I said, well, you know what?

I’m going to talk to the experts.

But let me just ask you first, how are you spelling, grockle?

G-R-O-C-K-L-E is the way it was relayed to me.

So it’s not like a muggle.

It’s not like something from Harry Potter then.

No, no.

In fact, one of the people on the listserv said that they had heard it when they were a child.

So that would have been in the 60s or 70s.

So, I mean, I think I can pretty securely date it for at least 30 or 40 years back.

Yes, exactly right.

There are a number of different places online that you can actually find a fairly accurate etymological history of this.

One of the most accurate places, though, was Michael Quinian’s newsletter that he sent out quite some time ago, probably in the year 2000.

I don’t know if that original version is still online.

But he quoted correspondence that he had with editors at the OED.

And to make a long kind of fabulously interesting etymological story short, it comes from the 1964 movie The System, which starred Oliver Reeve.

They were shooting in Devonshire, I believe, and they picked up the term from some locals.

And the locals claimed that they learned the word from a fellow at a local swimming pool who was working there for the summer and thought that one of the old ladies looked like a dragon-like creature that was in a cartoon called Danny and his Grockle.

Oh, my gosh.

It’s spicy to say that that is the best history that’s so far known out of this term.

So I can see how it immediately became a derogatory term for anyone.

And, you know, in certain parts of the country, as you well know, it’s flooded with tourists at given times of the year.

And there’s always that love and hate relationship between a tourist destination and the people who work there and the tourists that come and give them all their money.

And so the term came to be used to apply it to the tourist, although sometimes it just means a punter in general without having to be a tourist.

A punter makes a lot of sense to me, absolutely.

And York, where I live, we have a lot of tourists.

And again, that love-hate relationship exists because we like the money.

Right.

I say we now because I’m sort of a native.

But we like it when they go home at the end of the season.

You like the money, the grockles not so much.

Well, it is awfully hard, I must admit, when you live outside of an old medieval city, when you go in to do some shopping and the streets are just so crowded that it’s hard to get around.

Yeah, you think this is nice.

We don’t have to have heavy industry to support the town, but I wish they weren’t all standing around taking pictures of themselves in front of the cathedrals.

All right.

Well, take care of yourself, and thanks for calling today.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you want to discuss, though, British English or Canadian English or American English or anything else, by all means, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And as you just heard, we do welcome calls from anywhere in the world.

Well, Martha, it’s time for some leftovers.

We got a lot of feedback on a call we took a few weeks ago about dinner versus supper.

Did you see all those emails?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

They just kept coming.

They did, and comments on the discussion forum, too.

A lot of people said that dinner is the largest meal of the day, period, no matter what time of day it’s eaten.

And in fact, many mainstream dictionaries, if you look it up, do say that, that dinner is the main meal of the day, whether it’s the middle of the day or the end of the day.

Of course, the problem here is that a lot of people said something different.

We got an email from Andy in Independence, Missouri, and he spoke for a lot of listeners when he wrote about meals during his childhood.

He put it this way.

He said during the week the meals were breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but on Sunday they’d be breakfast, dinner, and supper.

Dinner, he says, was for the formal Sunday meal only.

Donna in Indiana, however, wrote to say, on our farm, meals are breakfast, dinner at noon, and supper in the evening.

Lunch is something we serve to the men mid-afternoon, perhaps in the house, but often either sent to the field with them or taken to them.

Lots of listeners agreed with her, too.

Then there’s Karen in San Diego.

Karen wrote to say, my husband and I grew up in Oklahoma where the evening meal was and still is referred to as dinner.

Supper was occasionally used for a very late meal eaten after dinner.

She also says, my husband did not hear the evening meal regularly called supper until he went east to Connecticut to attend Yale.

And we have never heard the noon meal referred to as dinner anywhere we’ve lived.

Grant, who knew there was so much to say about breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

We all have an opinion on food and when to eat it, right?

Well, that’s true.

If you look, though, at the Dictionary of American Regional English, you’ll see that they have a map there of dinner and supper.

You’ll see that for much of the country, dinner is simply the evening meal.

That’s probably the majority of people in the United States.

But for parts of the lower Mississippi Valley states and the South Atlantic states, it’s a bit more commonly used as a word for the midday meal.

So to summarize all of this, this is a dispute about usage.

It falls into the same category as soda versus pop versus Coke and so forth.

There’s what you know and there’s what you don’t know, and usually what you know seems right.

In this case, it depends on the day of the week, the size of the meal, whether you’re in the city or on a farm, and where in this great nation you live or Canada.

Wow, that’s a lot of variables.

I loved it, though, because everybody did chime in.

They had something to say on the subject, and we did a survey without really meaning to do a survey.

I know.

We could map this all out and we’d have data points, right?

Yeah, it was amazing.

It really was.

We always welcome your feedback about our calls.

Whether you think we got it right or we got it wrong, we want to hear from you.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

And you can send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

And furthermore, you can always leave your comments for everyone to see at our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion.

That’s our show for this week, but you can always call us with your questions about language.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673 or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

Tim Felten is our technical director and editor.

We’ve had production assistance from Michael Bagdasian and Dana Polakowski.

A Way with Words is produced at Studio West in San Diego.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, inviting you to join us next week right here on A Way with Words.