Stars and Garters (episode #1458)

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.

Grant, I have three words that have something in common.

I love you.

No, what are they?

I know.

What are they?

They are flummox, butterfingers, and the creeps.

Flummox, butterfingers, and the creeps.

They were all coined by the same person.

How did you know?

I guessed.

I don’t know who it is.

Are you serious?

Is it all…

Oh my gosh, I was going to give you the hint that they were all…

It’s a baseball writer.

Well, no.

No?

No.

And I shouldn’t say coined because we’re not sure that they’re coined, but the first citation for them…

Is it Shakespeare?

It’s not Shakespeare.

It’s another author a little later.

I don’t know.

Prolific dude in the Victorian.

Swift.

Good guess, but no.

No, I don’t know who.

No, and a guy who came up with a lot of crazy character names, like…

Dickens?

Yes.

Dickens.

Oh, okay.

Nice.

The first citations for flummox, the creeps, and butterfingers are all by Dickens.

And where did you learn this?

Well, I learned it from the Oxford University Press Oxford Words blog.

Oh, nice.

That’s really cool.

Yeah.

And there’s also a new book called What the Dickens, Distinctly Dickensian Words, and How to Use Them by Brian Kozlowski, which also is a delightful dip into all these different words that he didn’t necessarily coin, he might have, but he for sure popularized them.

Because he was so popular, any word that he used was sure to be repeated by others.

Yes, yes.

One of those authors who was enormously successful in his day and wrote more than a dozen novels and just had this kind of linguistic exuberance.

That’s a great way to put it.

Flummoxed.

Well, if you’re flummoxed about a thing having to do with language, we would love to give you an answer.

877-929-9673.

And don’t have the creeps about the microphone.

You can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nathan Jones.

I’m calling from San Diego, California.

Hi, Nathan.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help you?

Hi, I had a question about my last name.

You know, the football season has started.

And I started to notice a little bit more that there’s a lot of African-American football players with the same last name.

And I wasn’t sure if somewhere along the line there was like an interracial couple or something.

But I was wondering how that may have happened.

And the last name is what?

Jones.

Jones. And that’s your last name as well.

Yeah.

And are you African-American?

No.

Okay. And do you have any theories on this?

Well, I heard from my history teacher that back in the early 1800s, when there were slaves, African-American slaves, that they were named after their masters.

Yeah, the British last names belonging to African-Americans are real obvious evidence of the slavery history of the United States.

It’s true.

Jones, however, is also a super common last name.

It has something to do with when Henry VIII made Wales part of England, everyone started making everything really English, and a lot of the old traditional Welsh names just started disappearing.

And Jones, which means basically son of John, became a really common last name.

And then a lot of those Welsh folks came to the United States, and they had large families, and they became prosperous and popular and spread throughout the country.

And still, Jones is like the fourth most common name in the United States.

Wow, I never knew that.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s like after Smith, Johnson, and Williams.

It’s funny because Johnson also means son of John.

It’s just a different configuration, different etymological origin.

And Evans from Welsh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the slave history of the United States meant that when slaves were bought or sold, they often took the name of the landholder or the slaveholder, and they often kept those names after they were freed.

Although sometimes they took whatever name they wanted.

They may have taken the name of somebody that they respected or a famous leader, or they may have taken the name of somebody else in the community who agreed to help them and guide them.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that’s a great question.

Thanks, dude.

Really appreciate it.

How old are you, by the way, Nathan?

I’m 12.

12.

Well, it’s a great question for a 12-year-old.

Give us a call another time, all right?

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care.

Thanks, Nathan.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Margie.

Hi, Margie. Welcome to the show.

Where are you calling us from?

Thank you very much. I’m from Kemp, Texas.

What can we help you with, Margie?

When I was a kid, I grew up in southern Georgia, but my mom actually grew up in New England.

She was back in our car out the drive one day, and she accidentally bumped a little pine tree and said, stars and garter belts, which I’ve always wondered about.

She never said it since.

Just the one time?

Just the one time.

Yes, just that one time.

She never ever said any type of expressions or anything, so I remembered it.

Stars and garter belts.

So she said it in surprise at the accident?

Yeah, but where did she get that?

I’ve never heard it.

Well, there’s actually some history behind that term.

In Britain, the Order of the Garter is the highest order of British knighthood.

And often when you get that kind of honor, you get a medal that’s in the shape of a star, like a really super fancy star.

Ever since the 1700s, stars and garters has referred not only to those medals, but just sort of metaphorically to that kind of honor and the people who hold them.

And I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, my stars.

Oh, stars. Well, somewhere along the way, that got mixed up with stars and garters.

Oh.

And so it sounds like your mom had a little variation on it, stars and garter belts.

Yeah, and truthfully, back when I was a child, I visualized a different type of garter belt.

A different type? What do you mean?

It was before pantyhose.

Yeah, I remember those.

The one to hold up your stockings.

Yeah, and I never thought about the kind that a guy might have worn way, way back in time.

The Order of the Garter.

And now, bless my stars, it has something to do with thinking the stars controlled your destiny.

Right, right.

Yeah, I can understand that.

Yeah, yeah, we actually get the word influenza from that notion.

Seriously?

Yes, yes. Influenza comes from an Italian word that literally means influence and referred to the influence of the stars on your health.

Oh, wow, that’s neat.

Yeah, Margie, so you got all that history just from your mom backing into a pine tree.

Thanks, Margie.

Yes, thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

My stars and garters.

That’s sort of an antiquated expression now.

I don’t really, I mean, if you’re saying it, you’re saying it for effect, sort of like millennials saying the bee’s knees.

Oh, right, right.

Reference to the 1920s, yeah.

My stars and garters.

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

I came across a phrase the other day that I really like that describes something that’s really difficult to do, like a huge challenge.

That would be a hard fight with a short stick.

A hard fight with a short stick?

Yeah, or if somebody looks like they’ve had a bad day, you could say, you look like you’ve been in a hard fight with a short stick.

Right.

So somebody’s got some reach on you, right?

Yeah.

And they’re swatting you up against the head.

Yeah, yeah, I don’t know.

I just had a visceral connection with that phrase.

877-99-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Nick from Chalk Mountain, Texas.

Chalk Mountain, Texas.

Welcome to the show.

How are you doing?

Well, thank you.

I love your show.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

What’s on your mind?

About 35 years ago, a long time ago, I was involved in a business transaction.

I was in Dallas at the time, and there was a woman.

She was German, and her name was Gunilla.

And I remember my wife and I invited her to go out to dinner, and it was a business dinner, and it was near Christmas, and it was one of those evenings where, you know,

Absolute total strangers, just had a great time over a bottle of wine, and it was just a perfect, comfortable, beautiful evening. And at the end, she uttered something in German. I don’t remember exactly if it was a word or a phrase, but in any case, I asked her to translate, and she said, it translates as, oh, beautiful moment, please linger. And I always thought that was a great thing, and I would love to know what that word or phrase is in German.

What a beautiful story. That’s great.

I think I know what you’re talking about. I’ve had a few of those in my life where absolutely everyone and everything was perfect for a little while, and there were no complaints, and there’s still a glow many years later.

Interesting. Did you have the impression that Ganillo was a lover of literature?

Well, I can’t remember much of any specifics about the conversation, but I know when she came up with that, that word or phrase or whatever it was, that she was very, I guess, proud of her language and proud that it could express things like that kind of a sentiment.

I was impressed as well.

I wish we had a word in English for it.

Exactly.

The Germans often outdo us there, don’t they?

Well, you wouldn’t think the Germans. You would think Italians or French or something, but it was German this time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, actually, what she was quoting, I’m betting, is one of the most famous phrases in German literature. And it comes from the tragic play Faust by Goethe.

Oh.

You know, like a Faustian bargain is a bargain where you sell your soul to the devil. And that was the plot in this play where Faust is depressed and the devil comes to him and says, you know, I’ll do anything for you, give you anything you want as long as you’ll agree to serve me in hell after you die. And so the deal that the two of them made was that Faust agreed that if he ever had a joyful moment, pretty much like the kind of moment that you’re describing, that he just wanted to linger forever and ever, this moment of perfect bliss. If Faust ever got to that point in his life, then according to their agreement, he would die and go to hell.

Now you’re scaring me.

Well, you didn’t. That’s the good news.

Well, that’s right. That’s right. I certainly did not.

But yeah, and that passage translates as Faust telling the devil, you know, when they’re negotiating this agreement, he says something to the effect of, oh, beautiful moment, please linger. And then that will be the cue for me to die and go serve you in hell. And that beautiful German phrase is, für viele doch du bist so schön.

Well, I’m not sure I’ll remember that.

It’s probably the most famous phrase in German literature. Verweile doch du bist so schön.

Wow.

It starts with a V.

Well, thank you for sharing this evening with us.

Well, thank you for your show. We enjoy it. And thank you for having me on.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We are going to put that full German phrase on the website so you can find it for yourself. But the English version that they use is really quite beautiful, isn’t it?

Yeah, I think I’m going to adopt that one.

Beautiful moment. Please linger.

That’s nice.

Yeah.

What more do you need?

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter @wayword. A Way with Words is a show about family, history, and culture all wrapped up in language.

Stay with us.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette. And joining us now from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hey, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hey, Grant.

How’s it going?

What is up?

Well, I had a great time a few months ago watching the Olympics, of course, like everyone. Of course, my favorite is the Parade of Nations, which is awesome. But while I’m watching it, all I can think of is wordplay using country names.

Oh, boy.

Oh, what a surprise.

Well, treat the names of the countries literally or phonetically. I’ll clue two words. If you guess them and put them together, you’ll get the name of a country.

Okay.

Okay?

Right.

For example, a cylindrical metal container, the acronym that’s likely on the back of your toothpaste would be CAN and ADA, the American Tentable Association.

Oh, dear.

Canada.

And that gets you Canada.

Got it.

Now, it might be typographic or it might be phonetic, but let’s just go someplace else. Let’s go to another country. Here we go. The first one is an interjection used by Ebenezer Scrooge. Precipitation.

Bahrain.

Bahrain.

That’s very good.

Okay, nice.

A group of Cub Scouts. An academic grade on a test.

Pakistan.

Cuba.

Cuba.

No.

Oh.

No, a more general grade on a test.

Oh, Troop.

Mark.

Mark.

Something Mark.

Right.

That’s, you’re right. On the right track.

Denmark.

Yes, Denmark.

Denmark.

To talk and talk incessantly, a light switch position.

Gabon?

Yes, Gabon.

Oh, Gabon.

Nice.

Nice.

Very good.

Very good.

Well done.

The partner of from on a gift tag to move from one place to another.

Togo.

Togo.

Yes.

Nice.

To go.

You might find that on your fast food bag. Who knows? Next is a place for rest and relaxation and massages. A two-letter word meaning fashionable or current.

Spain.

Spain.

Spa-in.

Spa-in.

Nice.

A triangular sail set in the front of the forward mast, a slang term for a rear end.

Slang.

Bum, butt, rear.

Jib, bum, jib, jib.

Jib is right.

Jib.

You ever call your bum a brawler?

Yeah, we were going to the same place, right?

Djibouti.

Djibouti.

Djibouti is right. I think I’ve actually heard that rhymed in hip hop.

Djibouti?

Yeah, it’s a booty with booty.

A men’s fashion accessory, pale or weak in appearance?

Taiwan.

Taiwan, very good.

I think we’ve hit Martha’s wheelhouse this week.

Finally found my wheelhouse.

Propel a boat with a paddle, an abnormal mental state characterized by great excitement, euphoria.

Romania.

Romania, yes.

Finally, these are your two clues. Thus, Obama’s firstborn.

I can’t remember which.

Somalia.

Oh.

Yes.

Somalia.

Somalia.

It took me a second to remember which one was born first, but there’s no word I can think of with Sasha in it. I was thinking sick in last.

You guys did fantastic on your geographic tour.

You always say that, John.

Wow.

Thanks, John.

You’re my friend, buddy. Give her best to the family, all right?

You too.

Take care.

I’ll see you next time.

All right.

This is a show where we talk about all aspects of language, so call us 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is J.W. I’m from Cedar Hill, Texas, near Dallas.

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

Well, I was wondering why a factory is called a plant. I did a little bit of web research and found a lot of things about it, but not why.

Okay, so you don’t work in one, necessarily.

No, no. I work in a ministry, and we have the phrase church plant. But, you know, you could substitute the word planting for that, and it would make perfect sense what the analogy is. But with a place that produces cars or something, it doesn’t make any sense. And at first I thought maybe it was an archaic thing. I grew up in the Midwest, and there’s plants everywhere. But then I thought, no, they talk about on the news today that GM plant in Arlington, Texas, is going to make all the SUVs or whatever it is now. They still use that term, and it just doesn’t really make any sense to me.

Well, just to be clear, what is a church plant? I mean, I’m picturing Palms on Palm Sunday, but that’s not what you’re talking about, right?

No, no, no. It’s a new church. Like when a denomination or a large church starts a new one, then they’re planting a new church, usually in an area that’s underserved, like an urban area.

Got it.

It’s the same principle, though, as for the factories or the manufacturing, which is you are physically putting something in place. When you plant a plant, you are putting it in the ground. You’re affixing it to that particular position. And so we’re talking about the physical putting of something down onto the ground.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, it occurred to me at one point that maybe a satellite factory, aside from the main one, could be planted, just like a church.

But I couldn’t find anything to substantiate that, you know, that that was the case.

Or maybe that originally it meant a secondary, you know, place that’s put in.

No, it’s nothing more complicated than the fact that it’s just put there.

A thing that you plant is a thing that’s put there.

There are some extended uses of plant, which to me are really interesting.

When you said church plant, I thought about physical plant used in discussions of facilities, which often refer to not so much the location of the buildings, but actually what is in them.

Like we have a giant cooling and heating system, or we have a big machinery over there, a printing press, and this is all part of the physical plant of the building.

And then in the UK, they have a really interesting use of plant, which refers to heavy machinery.

Like backhoes and tractors.

And so you will see signs about plant crossings.

Oh, really?

No, they don’t mean that Tolkien’s Ents are marching across the road.

They actually mean this is where, say, dump trucks and bulldozers and so forth are coming back across the road.

That’s interesting.

That’s very cool.

Building a plant.

But it still refers to, from almost a financial or business organization sense, all of the equipment and machinery that together makes up this operation or this enterprise.

That’s the plant.

Who knew?

I see. So not so much the building as just the totality.

Everything. Yeah. All of the non-human physical resources, basically.

Interesting. So if you or I were driving in England and we saw a sign that said plant crossing, we would expect this building to be coming across.

No, we would get our cameras just in case.

There you go.

More than likely it’d be a bulldozer or something like that.

I would be expecting elms crossing the street really slowly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you so much for your call.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk with us on the air, or you can always send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Did you see this discussion about what you call it when somebody steps on the heel of your shoe and the shoe comes off?

I call it getting a flat tire.

Yes, that’s what a lot of people call it.

But there’s a whole large part of the people in the United States who don’t have any word for it.

Oh, really?

But everyone is, of course, that’s a flat tire.

You call it a flat tire.

Yeah.

So you’re walking behind them and you accidentally step on their heel and their shoe comes off and that’s a flat tire.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure. Who’s this?

Janice from Jericho, Vermont.

Well, welcome to the show. How can we help you?

I have a question about the word jackpot, which I always thought meant, you know, I always heard it mean something like, you know, you win a prize, something great happens, you hit the jackpot.

And back in the late 60s, I started working with racehorses at Belmont Park Racetrack in New York.

And several times I’ve heard people there refer to jackpot as something like getting into trouble.

You know, like if you had trouble with the police, you were in a bit of a jackpot.

And then I’ve never seen it on the Internet used in that way.

I tried looking it up.

But interestingly, I was just reading a book a couple of days ago that uses jackpot in that connotation.

And it’s kind of a book about South Boston police and politicians back in the 70s, which were predominantly Irish.

And thinking about the racetrack, the first few times I did hear it used that way, it was from Irish guys who had come over to the U.S. to work with the horses.

So I’m kind of wondering if that’s something from Europe, that connotation.

Well, the clues that you’ve given us are interesting, but they’re red herrings.

The horse racing in the Irish are just coincidental to your learning of it, but not really important to the history of the word jackpot.

And this meaning of the word jackpot actually goes back to the very earliest days of jackpot when it was a new word.

It referred to a new kind of poker where in order to open the bidding, you had to have two jacks.

And so the money in the middle of the table kept getting larger until somebody had two jacks and could start the bidding just for that one kind of poker.

So in the 1860s, probably earlier, the word jackpot really starts to be common.

It shows up in police journals where people are reporting on gambling crimes or certain kinds of embezzlement related to it.

And the word jackpot really has this kind of mystery around it in the early days because sometimes it’s just legitimately a gambling word.

But other times it’s not really clear what they mean.

Do they mean somebody spent all of his wages at the table playing jackpot or trying to get the jackpot and that’s the tangle that he got into?

But it really starts to settle out with these two different tributaries, the meaning of jackpot, one referring to just a big pot of money that you win, another referring to different kinds of trouble, including in the logging business, where a jackpot even today is a tangle of logs, either on the ground or in the water, something you’ve got to clear up before you can pass.

I’ve just only heard the track.

I’ve never heard anyone else use it as something negative.

I’m not surprised. The track is still this wonderful place.

For somebody like me that likes to wallow in slang, the track is a really great place to go because some of this stuff just continues to persist.

The gamblers use it without a second thought.

They’re not doing it in a knowing, winking way.

That slang is just a part of the business.

It’s interesting. In rodeo lingo, to be jackpotted is to be sort of all caught up, tied up with a fallen steer or a fallen horse.

There we go.

You know, your legs mixed up with theirs.

And that kind of goes nicely with the tangled up logs and branches that you find in logging.

Yeah, just a big mess.

Forestry, yeah.

A big mess in general.

Right, exactly.

A big mess.

But anyway, yeah, so what happens is we just have these two persistent meanings of jackpot that kind of have continued on their own separate paths since the very beginning of that particular kind of gambling.

Yeah, so that’s interesting because I had never heard it until I went to the racetrack, and I’ve really never heard it used that way since.

How’d you do with the horses?

Nobody ever wins, you know.

Well, you’re not a stupor, are you?

The house always wins.

You’re not a stupor, are you, running around picking up tickets people have thrown down just to see if they threw down a winner?

Oh, there’s all kinds of scams going on at the racetrack, let me tell you, all kinds.

Sometimes the trainers are the most surprised when a horse wins.

Oh, is there?

Right, because you might be in the business for other reasons, right?

Exactly.

Well, most of them are in there for the bet.

It’s all about gambling.

All right.

Thanks a lot for calling.

Yeah, thanks for your answers.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, sure.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye.

877-929-9673.

Grant, do you like Pop-Tarts?

I do.

I love them.

One of my favorite foods, actually.

Is that right?

The best thing to do is put a Pop-Tart in a toaster and then butter it on top of the glaze that’s already on there.

Oh, on top of the glaze?

Yes.

For real?

Yes.

What flavor?

It’s so indulgent.

It’s like 9,000 calories.

Oh, my gosh.

All of them.

On top of, really?

I like the chocolate.

I like the cinnamon.

I like the strawberry.

Oh, my gosh.

Okay.

What are the holes called in Pop-Tarts?

Vent holes?

I don’t know.

Blow holes?

The purpose is venting them.

I don’t know.

They have a name.

What are they?

Yes.

They’re called either docking holes or docker holes.

Docking holes.

How did you find this out?

I was reading about crackers.

Oh, that’s cool.

So crackers or Pop-Tarts or any kind of manufactured food like that that has the perforated holes in the top to let the air out?

Yes.

There are devices that are dockers that put docking holes into.

That’s cool.

But do they also move them around, the docking devices?

I wonder.

They have like two purposes. They put their prongs down into the food to make the holes, but at the same time they can move it to like a different belt or different channel or something.

Yeah, I’m not an expert on Pop-Tart production. Can you tell that I’ve watched 20 plus seasons of how it’s made?

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you know, they make this flat, you know, layer of the food. And then they put the docking holes or docker holes. I’m going to amaze everyone the next time I butter a Pop-Tart.

Yeah, exactly.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Bruce.

Hi, Bruce. How you doing?

Hey, Bruce. I’m doing very well. It’s so good to talk with both of you.

It’s good to talk with you, too. Where are you calling us from?

The Tampa Bay, Florida area.

Excellent. What can we do for you?

My wife and I spent a week in Fort Myers, Florida earlier, or just this past summer, and we visited the Thomas Edison Winter Estate. And it was fascinating. It was such a wonderful place to visit.

There was a plaque describing the rules of the Seminole Cottage. That’s what they called the estate there in Fort Myers. And Thomas Edison’s oldest child, Madeline, she was the only daughter, had a very funny wit, very quick-witted, and they said sometimes even caustic. Her name was Madeline.

And one of the rules for the guest at the Seminole Cottage was don’t cabbage unto yourself all the fish poles. This has been done by guests, thereby incurring the grave disapproval of the entire family. I had never heard the word cabbage used in such a way, and I thought that it was worth sharing with you.

And you took cabbage to mean what?

To gather all the fish poles to yourself instead of sharing them. Baking them all up and putting them in the water so you had a greater chance of catching all the fish.

Okay. I’ve never heard fish pole before. I’ve always heard fishing pole.

That’s interesting.

Me too. Fish poles. I thought that was equally as unique.

Yes. And to cabbage unto yourself? That’s almost biblical.

I know. The unto, I think.

That’s right. The 11th commandment, thou shalt not cabbage unto thyself. All the fish poles.

There’s a long history to this. It comes up now and again because it’s not completely archaic. Cabbage, a verb meaning to take, pilfer, steal, plagiarize. And it’s got 400 years history or so in the tailoring business.

There’s long been a custom among people who make clothes that if someone gives you a bolt of fabric to make, they say, a suit or a dress, that you get to keep the extras, the remnants, the scraps, and whatever little bit is left on the roll. And that is called cabbaging, or actually the material itself is called the cabbage. We don’t know why exactly.

There are a couple of French verbs that maybe it comes from. More than likely, it just looks like a bunch of cabbage leaves. Maybe the pile of scraps that you’re going to turn into, say, a pillow or a tie or a hat or something. Maybe they look like a bunch of lettuce or cabbage leaves.

And then quickly, though, that kind of came borrowed probably about 50 years later, starts showing up just to mean to crib, as in like when you crib somebody’s notes, that means you steal the school notes of the kid who sits next to you or to plagiarize. And it becomes broader over time just to mean to steal or even just to take without the intention of depriving somebody else. You’re probably going to give it back. But you borrow with some force without getting permission first. And then now we have it today where apparently it just means to hog things.

So hogging all the fishing poles for yourself. How about that?

Very interesting.

Yeah, cool, right?

Yes, very cool. Thank you so much for calling.

Thanks, Bruce.

It’s my pleasure. Thank you both.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Here’s a quote. Either the cutter or the proprietor might sell the cabbage privately and not put the money through the books. So cabbage is a noun meaning the thing that was taken.

Oh. And there may be some connection here to illicitly gotten money. And the connection there is more clear. Green leaves of money. Like lettuce. Lettuce is slang for money too, right?

Mm—

So much stuff all rolled up into one word.

877-929-9673.

Here’s another term that was either coined or popularized by Charles Dickens. It surprised me. The word dustbin.

Dustbin. I wouldn’t have expected that at all.

I know. Not at all. But they can’t find an earlier citation for it. So dustbin just means a place that you put your household refuse, right? Your dust.

Your dust. Interesting. The dustbin of history.

877-929-9673.

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 Barrett. You know, I’m a refugee from the dictionary business. It is a business that has not gone all that well over the last 30 years, right? Layoffs, big projects canceled, books that people trusted just disappearing because no new editions are being made.

Yeah, or not being finished.

Not being finished, which is why there’s some good news on the horizon that I want to share that comes out of the dictionary business.

Oh, great. There’s a British lexicographer by the name of Jonathan Green who has for decades, I think it’s almost 35 years, been working on a database of English language slang. Now, he’s published a bunch of smaller works, and he has published a three-volume version of what is called Green’s Dictionary of Slang. But now he’s done something new.

He’s taken that entire database, and he’s put it online mostly for free. Oh, wow. You can go and there’s 132,000 terms. You can look them up, get the word, get the meaning, an etymology if there is one, at no cost to you. It’s really interesting.

And so this man’s life work is now available on the Internet. And it’s like one of these success stories out of the dictionary business that is just amazing to me. I know he’s had setbacks. He had publishers change. Money that was promised didn’t come through maybe. He’s had to kind of finagle some help from people here and there. But he’s done it finally. And it is a really good work. Green’s Dictionary of Slang at greensaddictofslang.com.

That is fantastic news.

Right? You know his work, too. You’ve heard of Jonathan Green.

Well, of course. Yeah, yeah. I have his books. But to have that online and have it searchable.

Have it searchable, right? And so what’s happened to me is now, you know, I have this like pantheon of these great works. The essentials, as I call them. You know them.

Yeah. The Oxford English Dictionary. The Dictionary of American Regional English. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, Garner’s Modern English Usage, and now you can add Green’s Dictionary of Slang to this canon of essential language works that make your job and my job easier, but also just generally understanding this crazy English language easier.

Yeah, yeah, and slang is such poetry. I can’t wait to get to my computer and look that up.

I agree, yeah. Slang, Poetry of the People. That’s the title of a book by Michael Adams.

There you go. It absolutely is poetry.

Yeah, yeah. So where do I go to get this poetry?

So it’s greensdict, that’s D-I-C-T, of slang.com, Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

Well, this is a monumental advance.

Yeah, and congratulations to Jonathan. I know it’s a big moment for him.

Yeah, yeah, life’s work. Wow.

Well, we talk about slang and family stories about language and grammar and word origins, all kinds of things here on this show. So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your questions and stories about language and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Casey from Dallas, Texas, and I’m calling with a question in responses to I’m sorry that are acceptable or appropriate that don’t imply the acceptance of actions. It struck me that all of the conditioned responses I know of to I’m sorry are like, oh, it’s okay, or don’t worry about it, or no problem. But the problem I’m having specifically is with people who are apologizing for things that they do all of the time. Like at work, we have a couple people who are late pretty much every day, and every day they come in with some apology.

And at first I was like, you know, it’s okay or don’t worry about it or whatever,

But I’ve gotten more and more frustrated with it.

And I don’t know how to appropriately show that without like a full long conversation

Because we’ve had those full long conversations as well.

And they didn’t work.

And they didn’t work.

And, you know, I think it’s something that some people just don’t have a sense of timeliness.

In a workplace, I feel like it’s inappropriate.

And I don’t want to continue their thinking of, hey, this is appropriate or this is okay.

Do you get the feeling that they’ve grown used to using the apology as a crutch, as if that forgives their shortcomings?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like it’s a, well, I apologize.

So I don’t know what the problem is.

Right.

Right.

I see that.

I have seen that in the workplace as well, where some people, I guess, conditioned by their parents to believe that the apology made everything better.

Right.

Right.

Exactly.

And it was a conditioned response to, you know, oh, I did something wrong.

I should come in and apologize and then everything’s forgiven.

Yeah.

Then I fixed it.

But it’s the first step.

It’s apology and then working on your behavior.

Exactly.

So you’re looking for what are you looking for exactly?

And are you a boss?

So I guess I well, kind of.

I am one of the head technicians at my office.

Okay.

But I don’t have full responsibility of these people who are completely late.

Got it.

So I’m not trying to assert authority.

I just want them to know that, yes, I’ve heard their apology because I’ve tried to ignore their apology before and just pretend that it didn’t happen and then move on with the day so that I’m not saying, oh, it’s okay.

But at the same time not really having a big conversation about it.

So I’m looking for something, and then they come back to me and are like,

Oh, did you hear my apology?

And I’m like, oh, yeah, okay, let’s move on.

So something that maybe doesn’t connotate that the action is okay,

But I’ve heard them and that kind of thing.

Yeah, I mean, the message that you want to convey is I hear you,

We can work around it this time, but I don’t want it to happen again

Because we don’t want to keep working around it.

And you don’t really want to have that conversation every single time.

All right.

How is this going to be different?

Exactly.

Exactly.

And so I don’t necessarily, you know, want to have a long conversation every time about,

Well, you’re late again.

Like, but I just want them to know that it’s not acceptable to me.

Yeah.

And if your work is depending upon their work and your work is delayed because they’re late.

Yeah.

And you’re more of a peer.

I’m wondering, do you have a supervisor over the two of you that you could?

Yes, we do.

And we have a supervisor, and she has discussed this before,

And we’ve even put in place programs to reward good behavior,

Such as bonuses if you come in for three bucks straight on time and all that stuff.

But it doesn’t seem to be affecting anything.

Casey, I got to tell you, in these particular cases,

You know what I usually say is words aren’t going to fix it.

As much as I believe in the power of words, I mean, witness this radio show, as much as I believe in persuasive talk,

And sometimes there are certain people who are really receptive to just phrasing it the right way, framing it in the right way,

I think you have done everything within your power to fix this, and there is no magic solution here.

It’s either you just grit your teeth and put up with it, or they change their behavior, or they get canned, and that’s actually probably the best solution.

If you’re late to your job, that’s like one of the easiest defenses to fire somebody for.

Yeah.

Right?

Being late?

Yeah.

That’s kind of like the minimum requirement for a job.

Be on time.

Maybe right after wear clothes.

I don’t know.

Yes, I completely agree with you.

And yeah, thank you for at least hearing my question.

But all that you can do, I think, really is grit your teeth, seriously.

Choose your battles.

Choose your battles.

Yeah.

And maybe the late in the day, you’re like, you find some work that you don’t want to do, and it’s their work now because they made you work extra in the morning.

I mean, maybe that’s the way it goes.

Can you come to some agreement with them?

Like, I’ve got this task that I really hate.

You’re consistently late.

Will you do it for me as a way of showing me that you really truly are sorry?

Yeah, I can certainly come up with some ways to do that.

And I’ll talk to my supervisor and discuss maybe some solutions in that direction.

The good thing about this call, Casey, is that we’re going to crowdsource the answer for you.

I’m betting we’re going to hear from lots of people who have had similar situations and maybe they had better ways of dealing with it.

But I got to say, your manner and your presentation, everything you’ve told us clearly, and we’re just getting one side of this, sounds top-notch and professional to me.

It sounds like you did all the right things.

Excellent.

Well, thank you guys so much.

I really appreciate it, and I love your show.

Thank you very much.

Take care.

Hang in there.

And we’ll let you know what we come up with, all right?

All right. Sounds great.

Cheers. Bye.

Take care.

Bye.

Well, we know you want to help, Casey.

You have an opinion.

Maybe there are magic words that can help her solve this problem of the co-worker who’s late.

Maybe there’s a thing that she can say that will kind of put this all in perspective for that other worker.

We don’t know.

But if you have those magic words, send them to words@waywordradio.org or call us 877-929-9673.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hello. I’m Ruth Jones from Traverse City, Michigan.

Hi, Ruth. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Ruth.

What can we do for you?

I grew up in the thumb area of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

And there and everywhere else I’ve lived,

I’ve heard people make comparisons by using the words

Different from or different than.

But I know some folks use different to

To make those same sorts of comparisons.

And I’m just wondering if that’s a regional difference

You hear local folks saying different too?

No, I’ve never heard anybody local say different too.

But I think it’s on media or in books.

Right.

I encounter it frequently now, and I’m wondering.

Maybe you’re reading or watching or listening to things from the U.K.,

Because it’s much, much, much more common, and it’s characteristic of the U.K.

I do hear BBC on public radio.

There you go.

There you go.

That’s why you’re hearing different too.

And then I read authors who are British.

Yes.

I don’t know any American that would use different too,

Except either as imitation or as pretension.

Yes, exactly.

Okay.

Okay.

That explains it.

We still have the problem of different from and different than.

Different than.

Which one do you use?

Well, I use different from, but I hear different than just as often.

-huh. Well, you’re in the majority there.

The vast majority of people who speak American English are going to say different from.

And that’s changing some.

People are saying more and more different than.

But the idea there is that 18th century grammarians were insisting that you should use different from

Because than is a word that’s generally used with comparative adjectives like bigger or louder or

Taller.

Grant is taller than I am.

His voice is deeper than mine.

There are instances where you would use different than if, say, it’s followed by a clause and it makes it easier and more succinct.

For example, if you said something like our financial projections are different than they

Were a year ago.

That would be easier to say than different from they were.

Yes, that sounds right.

Or sounds familiar anyway.

Right, right.

So that would be the exception.

But that’s it.

Different to is something that you’re going to hear from people in the UK.

And different from is the safe choice in the US.

Yes, exactly.

For the most part.

Well, thank you very much.

Nice talking with you.

Thank you very much.

Great talking with you.

Take care now.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, how would you feel if I told you I was going to put a spider in your biscuit?

A spider in my biscuit?

Well, I know of the spider that’s the part of the stove that the skillet goes on, right?

Yeah, yeah, but no relation.

No relation.

I don’t know.

I guess I would be a little worried that you’d gone over the deep end finally.

Finally.

She’s finally there.

What is it?

Well, it’s an expression that means to communicate bad news or to injure a person or put a spider in your dumpling.

Put a spider in your dumpling.

Grant, I’m going to put a spider in your dumpling, but we’re going to have to walk home.

Nobody wants a spider in their dumpling.

No, nobody wants a spider in their biscuit.

877-929-9673 or Twitter @wayword.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

My name is Chad Ecker, and I’m in Omaha, Nebraska.

Great.

I’m doing well.

Welcome to the show, Chad.

How can we help?

Well, I had this question about a little language quirk that I kind of grew up with my mother saying, and I actually didn’t realize it was kind of out of the ordinary until I was older.

Something she would do, and I think she got it from her mother as well, she would end every telephone conversation with Mbai, which I’ve never heard her say, like, in person.

It was always just at the very tail end of the phone conversation.

And I didn’t know if that was an idiosyncrasy of just my mother or if this was kind of a regional kind of thing.

I don’t know.

I was just kind of curious about it.

And I wonder sometimes if I do it unintentionally.

Yeah, I’m wondering if you do it, too.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I didn’t know.

Because, I mean, in, like, the Lincoln, Omaha area, we’re kind of known for our lack of specific kind of regional dialects because of, like, we’re telecommunication capital of the world.

I don’t know if that’s still true.

So I always find it kind of interesting, the little things that are kind of different.

And that’s kind of one that’s always stuck with me.

Well, I know one other person that does it for sure, and that’s my father.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

He’s in his 70s from Missouri, you know, St. Louis area mostly, although originally from southeast Missouri.

He has some traits of various southern forms of speech, but he does it.

He’s always done it as long as I know.

It could be a serious conversation, say, with the bank, or it could be a conversation with, say, my son, his grandson, but he’ll close it with mba, mba.

Right.

That’s something I’ve noticed.

There’s no, like, tone to it.

When my mother uses it, it could be a curt m-bye or a very pleasant m-bye.

It has no reflection of any tone in her voice or anything.

Interesting.

It’s always the very last thing.

It’s never m-bye, talk to you later.

It’s just m-bye.

M-bye.

There are phonetic things here, pretty simple.

You basically have the elongation of the lips staying closed before you do the B sound.

So because you’re voicing the m-ba, m-ba.

So you’re just dragging out that.

You can do it to any word that begins with it.

You can do mm-basket.

You could do mm-birch tree.

Mm-baby.

And so it’s just holding that sound just a little longer before you release the lips to make that b.

But do either of you think that the mm has a meaning itself?

Because I think it does.

Well, there are a number of amateur theories on the Internet where this is discussed, say, on the straight dope forums, for example, where people think that they’ve just dropped the good in goodbye or that they’ve just slurred some other syllable before that.

But I don’t think that.

I think it’s actually just the word bye alone with the initial sound being elongated.

Really? What do you think?

Well, it’s never like, it’s just, it seems like it’s just part of the bye.

It’s never, she’s never responding to anything when she says, it’s never like, because I’ve also, I talked to my cousin who grew up in western Nebraska, and she uses K-by at the end.

So I don’t know what that’s about.

But for that, it seems more like she’s saying, okay, bye.

But for my mother, it’s just part of the bye, and there’s no, I never sensed any other meaning in it, I guess.

That’s so interesting.

For me, the mm has a meaning.

I guess I’ve just always assumed, it’s my own amateur theory, that the mmm is short for mmm— which sort of acknowledges everything that you’ve just talked with the other person about.

And you’re sort of agreeing to conclude the conversation, hang up, and you’re just saying mmm-bye.

But it’s mmm-bye.

Oh, interesting.

But I have no evidence for that whatsoever.

And I’ve only known one or two other people to do it, but it’s definitely noticeable when they do.

My father does it as a reflexive conversational closing.

And so it comes at a very particular moment in the conversation when we are doing the slow wind-up to the end.

Because most Americans don’t do abrupt closings in a conversation, particularly on the telephone.

We do, okay, bye.

I’ll talk to you then.

All right, talk to you later.

Love you.

It’s nice to see you.

Okay, bye.

And there’s a bunch of these, one right after the other, different ways of saying goodbye, different ways of closing the conversation.

So for him, it comes toward the end of that chain of closings, and it’s not any kind of consent or assent or anything like that.

Chad, we’re going to probably get a bunch of calls and emails about this to learn some more about MBAY and who says it and where.

I think there’s one mention of it on Urban Dictionary for what that’s worth, but I don’t know of any professional linguistic techs that have studied this particular closing.

If we get more information about this from our listeners, we’ll talk about it on the show, all right?

All right. Well, thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right. Bye.

Bye-bye.

We love talking about language and all of its weirdness.

Clearly.

877-929-9673.

Want more A Way with Words?

Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org or find the show in 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 Chaneski 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.