Straight and Narrow (episode #1659)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

We asked for your favorite opening lines from books, and boy, did you all deliver.

We heard from Tim Lancelot in Pueblo, Colorado.

He said, I immediately thought of a line I read as a fifth grader in the 1970s, and surprisingly, it was still unchanged in my memory.

It goes, the great fish moves silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.

Do you know what that is, Grant?

Ooh, I don’t know.

That sounds mysterious.

Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

It does, doesn’t it?

Oh, is it Jaws?

Yes, yes.

It’s The Beginning of Jaws by Peter Benchley.

Peter Benchley.

Oh, the great fish.

Yeah.

What a classic.

What else do you have, Martha?

Well, I got one more for you, and I think you’ll appreciate this.

It’s from Keith Chafee, who lives in West Hollywood, California.

And the line is from Patrick Ness’s novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go.

And it begins this way.

The first thing you find out when your dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.

It’s true.

We all suspect that about our pets, don’t we?

Yeah, what if that dog could learn to talk?

We’re like, yeah, I don’t want to hear that.

Thanks.

I mean, yeah, I guess I imagine, you know, that my own bear has, you know, he always looks worried, you know, like he’s thinking about.

Just note for the listeners, Martha does not have a bear.

No, no.

She has a dog named Bear.

Named Bear.

Oh, you’re right.

I do not have a bear.

I have a big old pit bull mix named Bear.

He’s a lovely fellow.

He’s the handsomest thing ever.

We would still love to hear from you about your favorite opening lines from books.

And I’m going to tack on a request for your favorite closing lines as well.

What’s that final oomph that an author has just delivered you that left you reeling?

Send them to us by text 1-877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Phil Ains from Omaha, Nebraska.

So I’m calling today because my friend and I have been arguing whether or not straps are handles for over a decade.

Whether or not straps are handles.

Yes.

Is this a drunken conversation or a sober conversation?

Maybe a little bit of both.

You know, it’s been 10 years, so there have been many, many arguments.

Okay, gotcha.

All right, tell us how this started.

How did you get to talk about straps and handles?

So about 12 years ago, a couple buddies and myself went on a vacation, and while we were on vacation, we were all wearing sandals, right?

And one of us suggested, hey, if we wanted to take our sandals off and pick them up, the straps are the handles for the sandals, to which the other one began to argue.

And it has just never been resolved.

So if you are walking down the beach and you kick off your flip-flops and pick them up by the straps, are those straps handles?

Do your sandal straps become handles?

What side are you on?

I’m not sure if I want to tell you because if I ask your opinion, I don’t want you to make me feel better just because it’s me.

Wow.

You’ve heard the show enough.

Sometimes we disappoint people.

Martha, are we going to disappoint Phil today?

Gosh, I don’t know.

I mean, I’m thinking about you’re taking off.

Are they sandals?

Are they flip-flops?

What kind of, you know, does it have a strap between the toes?

I mean, let’s get specific here.

Yeah.

See, we were originally talking flip-flops, but I don’t know.

Let’s say you’ve got a gym bag and you pick it up by the shoulder strap.

Is the shoulder strap a handle?

Sometimes they have both a strap and a handle.

That’s true.

I’ve got a backpack like that.

Oh, man.

And you all have been arguing about this for 10 years?

For 10 years.

All right.

So what we’re talking about here is intention, right?

So let’s not get into the semantics.

Semantics are misleading.

And I say this as a dictionary editor because the dictionary just describes how people actually use words.

They’re not commands.

Dictionary definitions aren’t orders.

They’re not directions or instructions on how to use the language.

They’re descriptions of how we use the language.

So let’s not go there.

But we can talk about is design intention.

How this particular feature was meant to be used.

And then we can talk about the word utilize.

That’s where I was going.

Yeah, because we have the words use and utilize, which are a famous grammar bugaboo.

But they’re different in one regard that applies here, which is when you use something, you use it how it was intended.

When you utilize something, you use it in a new way, perhaps how it was not intended to be used.

Okay.

Well, Phil, tell us your side of the argument.

What’s your side?

Okay.

So I believe that straps are never handles under any circumstance.

I think that at best, a handle can be strapped to something.

And if you are holding something by the strap, it’s just strapped to your hand.

And I believe this because I think that the intention by which the thing is built denotes whether or not it’s a handle.

So if it is built with a handle, that handle was put there with the intent to be used as a handle.

But if you were to grab something not intended to be used as a handle and utilizing it as a handle makes it not a handle by definition.

Yeah. But again, you’re you’re you’re Phil, we’re going to disappoint you.

I’m going to disappoint you. I don’t know what Martha’s going to do.

You’re just dwelling too much on semantics of it.

You’re taking refuge in semantic twisty-turny maze of arguments.

And just kind of enjoying the delight of conflicts of intent versus definition here.

And a handle doesn’t have a strict definition and neither does a strap.

Are you using it as a strap? Then it’s a strap.

Are you using it as a handle? Then it’s a handle.

But Grant, would you be picking up your sandal by the handle?

I might be picking up the sandal by a handle lit by a candle.

I don’t know.

Yes.

And I might dandle the sandal lit by a candle by the handle.

All right.

All right.

I’m going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

No.

I’m right.

But I’ll listen to you, and the next time I tell him to go grab something, I’ll make sure to call it a handle.

No, but really here, this is the language thing.

The language thing is what the speaker intends and what the listener receives are not necessarily the same.

And even though they might not be the same, even though they could be in conflict, that doesn’t mean that either party is wrong.

And this is the reason that language is not logical.

And it blows a mathematician’s minds because you cannot, and engineering people’s minds because you cannot apply strict logic to language because of that.

This is why I love your guys’ show.

Why is that, Phil?

Oh, I love thinking deeper about things.

So this is exactly the kind of thing that I’ve always loved.

And when you said math and engineer, you are on the right track there.

Engineer or mathematician?

I like to think of myself that way, I guess.

Okay, see, I knew it.

I knew it.

You’re looking for logic where there is none.

Well, it’s a great thing.

My friend will never be hearing this radio program.

Oh, I’ll find him.

I’ll email your friend.

He’ll know.

He’s going to bring it up in your weakest moment and say, by the way, I heard this clip.

Phil, I don’t know if I can handle any more of this.

I feel like I’ve got a handle on the situation.

Okay, well, good, good.

Well, we’re not strapped for answers, as you can hear, so call us again sometime, all right?

It was a pleasure.

I love you guys’ show.

Keep doing what you’re doing.

All right.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Take care, Phil.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Kick off your shoes and settle back for a conversation with us, 877-929-9673.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

My name is Lorena.

I’m in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

What’s going on?

I was enjoying your show one evening, and it occurred to me that my little etymology game and discussions between my fiancé and I, there’s a place for them.

And one of the times that we were thinking about it was the word quid is British slang for, you know, the exchange.

Oh, it’s five quid or however.

And I always suspected it came from a Latin root, quid pro quo.

Okay.

What made you think about this?

My stepdad is British, and so these terms come up, and you have to learn quickly and don’t ask questions why.

They just are.

Right, yeah, because that dialect is so different that if you have to stop every single time you hear something different, you’re like, whoa, you’re just going to break the conversation, right, and never get anywhere.

Yeah, exactly, and just roll with it and don’t even look at him like he’s got five heads.

It just is.

So quid for a British pound, you said you had a theory that it’s from Latin?

Yes, I imagined it just only because the only other time would be quid pro quo that I’ve heard that word.

Yeah, and do you understand what quid pro quo means, I guess?

Right, exactly. The interchange exchange, one for another.

Right, yeah. So that word quid means, what is it, Martha thing?

Yeah, something, anything, or what.

I always turn to my resident Latinist here on staff, Martha Barnette.

Yeah, yeah.

Quid in Latin means something or anything.

So quid pro quo is something for something.

Yeah.

But, you know, what’s funny is all of the lexical works that I have, dictionaries and reference works and books that specialize in Latin phrases that are in English, they all say, specifically for quid referring to money, British money, its origin unknown.

We’re not sure that that quid is the same as the one from Latin.

And there’s another little quirk there, which is there’s a quid that means a cut or a wad of tobacco that actually may be more likely as the source for the quid meaning money.

Because if you imagine a wad of paper money, it looks kind of like a wad of tobacco.

And that comes from Old English.

That quid.

It’s just the coincidence that it’s the same as the Latin quid.

But that’s also kind of like a big fat question mark, like a big glowing blinking red question mark on the dictionary page.

If you could do that on a printed page.

All we don’t really know about that quid is that it may be related to cud.

You know, you chew both of those.

Exactly. You can hear the phonetic similarities there, right?

Yeah, quid and cud.

So, unfortunately, you’re getting what I famously call the orig-unk, origin unknown here, Lorena.

Boob. So, sad trombone, make that noise for yourself there.

Oh, that’s perfect. That’ll just continue in my imaginary game of, I highly suspect.

All right.

Well, Lorena, have fun down there.

You call us again sometime with some more of those Briticisms, will you?

Yes.

I’m sure I’ll have many more.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Thank you guys so much.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Lorena.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 in the United States and Canada.

And if you’re listening by podcast or somewhere else in the world, there are lots of ways to reach us at any time.

Find them all on our website at waywordradio.org.

Does your family talk funny?

Share your stories as A Way with Words continues.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, a program about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And climbing down from his gravity boots to join us is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hey, John.

Hi, John.

Your face is a little red.

I’m a little dizzy, yeah.

But it’s fine.

Yes, and I feel good.

I feel good being upside down for a while.

But now that I’m right side up, I got a little quiz for you guys.

And this one has the jaunty title of phonetic head and tail swap.

Now, don’t be alarmed.

Don’t be alarmed.

We’re just going to look at words that, when you swap their first and last sounds, they become each other.

They become other words.

Phonetic head and tail swap.

Okay, let’s try this.

Yeah.

It’s simple.

For example, the word look.

If you swap its head and its tail sounds, you get cool.

Cool.

Cool, right.

That’s cool.

Cool.

And it’s phonetic because you’re not just switching the letters.

The L stays the same, but the K becomes a C, or the C becomes an L, or whatever.

Now, I’ll give you a sentence that clues two words, which are head and tail swaps.

Here we go.

I enjoy the sensation of the page in my hand.

Oh, page in the hand.

I do love the tactile feel of the leaf of a book.

Yes, that’s one of the reasons we read books.

Yes, for the feel of the leaf.

Good.

Sir Lancelot, you’ve bent the prong of that fork.

You’ve bent the prong of that fork, and that’s not euphemistic.

No, it’s not.

It’s actual.

You’re a bit my Wookie.

Okay, so what else is the prong of a fork but a tine?

Oh, tine and knight.

Tine and knight.

Tine and knight.

Yes, very good.

Now, my finger is so rigid, I can’t clench my hand.

Oh, so it’s stiff.

Yeah.

And you can’t make a fist.

That’s correct.

So stiff, I can’t make a fist.

Okay, just lightly touch the hedge.

Oh, bush.

Brush the shrub.

Brush the shrub, yeah.

Like I said, you know, I could make these longer.

I could say, hey, when you put your car in, be sure you just, you know, lightly touch the hedge, but, you know, you really only need lightly touch and hedge.

I’m trying to make them short.

Thank you.

All right, good.

Hey, don’t poke my emblem of office.

Don’t make me touch the sign always that’s exactly always good advice don’t poke the emblem of office logo bad batch oh bad don’t don’t jab the badge don’t jab the badge man.

Another one of those where you go by sound not spelling yes exactly where the the j become the DGE becomes a J.

There we go.

Hey, you guys did fantastic on that quiz.

Good job.

There’s something great about getting calls from people all around the United States and Canada and the world who want to talk about the languages that they speak.

And we’d like you to be a part of it.

Toll-free, text or call 877-929-9673 or send us email to words@waywordradio.org or just talk to us through our website.

There’s a contact form on every page.

Words@waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ashley. I’m calling from Tallahassee, Florida.

Hello, Ashley. Welcome to the program. What’s up?

Thank you. So I’m calling because I was hanging out with a group of friends, most of whom were parents, and my husband and daughter were there as well.

And I called out to my husband to ask him for something, and I addressed him as dad.

And one of my friends asked me, did you just call your husband dad? She seemed a little mortified that I’d done this.

So I said I did. And I asked her, what do you call your husband?

And she said she calls her husband by his name.

So we started asking around the friend circle.

And most of the folks said they referred to their partner as either mom or dad when they were talking to their kids, like go ask dad or go ask mom.

But when they talked directly to their partner, they used their actual name.

So I was just calling because I was wondering why folks do this and if it’s odd that folks do this or if it’s a regional thing and trying to get kind of a better understanding.

Oh, interesting. So were you calling him dad in front of your kids, your kid?

Yes.

So my daughter was nearby, but then later when I talked to my husband about this, we realized that we were calling each other mom and dad even when our child wasn’t in proximity to us.

Okay.

So he calls you mom and you call him dad?

Yes.

And I will say that I have noticed, this was maybe like five years ago, that recently we don’t do this as much anymore.

We more call each other by like our nicknames or like our pet names.

So I don’t know if that’s because my friend said something and I was embarrassed or if it’s just our child is out of the house more because she’s going to public school or not really sure what the change was there.

I’m surprised that more of them didn’t do it, too.

Yeah, honestly.

I mean, it’s a lovely honorific, right?

Well, yeah.

So, Martha, it’s been a few years since we talked about this, but I don’t think my opinion on this has changed because we do this in my house.

I call my wife Mama, even when my son’s not around.

Sometimes I’ll call her Sarah.

But the kind of thing is, it’s like there are two people in the world that get to call her Mama.

Her son and her husband, because she is the only Mama in the house.

And she’s the one that made me a father.

So it’s for me, it’s a privilege to call her that.

And you’ve been calling her that for 18 years.

Yeah, 18 years. Yeah. So a very long time. So it’s a term of endearment. And it is a little weird. So in public, I don’t call her mama because who knows who will turn around, you know.

So, Martha, you hit on the right thing there, I think. It’s a privileged name, you know.

Yeah, a privileged name. That’s a good way to put it. Was there an element of teaching your daughter who’s who? I mean, did it start out that way?

Yeah, I’m thinking that’s probably what it was, especially since she was homeschooled for most of her life and we were all just together all the time.

Yeah, so there is a lot of that going on.

So you’ll say, go ask mommy or daddy will help you.

And there’s also this kind of reinforcing the roles.

Like you mentioned very importantly, I think, that it’s about is the child present?

And if the child is present, addressing him as dad or daddy will make a lot of sense to a lot of people because it’s within the context of the child understanding.

And it’s a habit you form very early before you’re even sure that the child understands.

Before the child even speaks, you start using these names for each other because you’re teaching.

And this is a habit maybe that’s hard to break once they do understand and once they do start speaking.

So I think that Grant and I agree that it’s a pretty individual thing.

It’s not like there’s a regional component to this.

It’s not generational either.

We find this mentioned in Charles Dickens’ work as far back as the 1850s.

Oh, wow.

I do have a linguistics term for you if you want it.

And some cultures, parents’ names are changed when their child is born.

So they become, you know, like my son’s name is Guthrie.

So I would then be called Guthrie’s dad and that would be my new name.

But using your husband, instead of using his name and calling him dad or daddy, is a kind of technonomy as it’s known, where he becomes referred to by his relationship to the child.

T-E-K-N-O-N-Y-M-Y, technonomy.

So it recognizes him as a parent.

And it’s a form of respectful address.

Yeah, so you can feel just fine about doing that.

I’m interested that you seem to be doing it a little bit less now that your daughter’s out of the house more.

So you’ll have to check back with us when she’s of driving age or something and let us know.

Yes, for sure.

Well, thank you so much.

I love all you had to say about that.

Just hearing what you had to say made me feel a little emotional.

So I love that so much.

Yeah, parenting is just all about emotions, isn’t it?

Everything.

I feel like being a parent expanded my emotional palette by like a thousand percent.

Yes, totally agree.

All right.

Well, Ashley, take care of yourself and give everyone, give dad and the little ones a squeeze for us.

All right.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate you both.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Ashley.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

We heard from Linda Helms in Charlotte, North Carolina, who wrote,

When my granddaughter was little, she used a word that I love and still use.

When the wind was blowing, she would say,

It’s winding, ma.

How sweet is that?

It’s winding.

It’s winding.

It’s not winding.

It’s winding.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, take that noun and turn it into a verb.

Sure, a little bit of gerund action there.

For some reason, it seems purer to me.

And there’s something about a word coming from a child that strips it of all the pretense, right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

It makes you look at it all over again.

Children have added so much to the family lexicons.

Share them with us, 877-929-9673.

Text or call toll-free 877-929-9673 to share the family lexicon in your house.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lauren from West Kentucky.

Hi, Lauren. Welcome to the program. What’s up?

We had had a question of which is the correct way of saying this phrase.

Is it straight and narrow?

Or is it said straightened arrow?

Who’s we? You said we was trying to figure this out. Who’s we? Family members?

Well, I would hope me and some other people, and I’m not the only person getting this confused.

The question from the show, if I’m remembering correctly, it was a few weeks ago.

What’s the saying that you heard wrong and have been using wrong all this time?

And when I met my husband, you know, 12 years ago, I used the phrase, and to this day, I couldn’t tell you which one I thought it was and which one it really is.

And he said, what did you just say?

And we realized that I had been saying this phrase wrong all of my life.

While I believe I understand the meaning, it means, you know, I’m on a higher path.

I’m doing good in my life now.

I’m doing right things.

I don’t know which way is correct to say it, but I believe them to mean the same thing, however it’s phrased.

So you’re talking about it’s either straight and narrow or an arrow that’s been straightened out, right?

Correct. Correct.

Okay. All right. And they do sort of mean the same thing, but the one that’s correct is straight and narrow, the three-word phrase.

Sure.

Meaning, you know, a path that you follow that’s very straight and very narrow and often refers to behavior, you know, doing everything meticulously and virtuously.

But this expression is really interesting, Lauren,

Because actually the original version of straight and narrow featured a different kind of straight.

It featured the word straight spelled S-T-R-A-I-T.

Okay, and that’s like a geological feature?

Exactly, exactly.

A strait is a narrow passage, whether it’s in geology or, say, in a maritime context.

You know, you’re going through something very, very narrow.

And think about the term dire straits, you know, like sailors traveling in dire straits.

And you also see that strait in the thing that they put on people.

A straight jacket was originally spelled that way.

The idea is something very tight, very narrow.

But here’s what’s really cool about this expression, straight and narrow, with the straight spelled S-T-R-A-I-T,

Meaning really narrow, goes all the way back to the biblical book of Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount.

Isn’t that interesting?

Wow.

And nobody knows that when we use it, you know, just in passing conversation.

Martha does.

You are exact.

Well, yeah.

This is why we pay you the big bucks, right?

Kentucky preacher’s daughter does.

Yes.

You know, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives all this advice, you know,

Blessed are the meek, judge not, do unto others.

And right after he gives that advice about doing unto others the way you would like people to treat you,

Immediately afterwards, he talks about how you must behave in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

And in modern translations, that verse starts out, enter by the narrow gate.

For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction.

Meaning, you know, it’s a really narrow path that you have to follow to get into heaven.

But if you go back to the King James Version, it doesn’t say enter at the narrow gate.

It says, enter ye in at the straight gate with straight spelled S-D-R-A-I-T.

And so originally, originally the term straight and narrow literally meant especially narrow.

Take that super narrow path of righteousness.

But over time, because this expression is so confusing and you thought it was straight and narrow and other people thought that it was straight and narrow, which also makes sort of sense, doesn’t it?

Sure.

And that was the worst part about not knowing for sure is I could have explained any of them as being correct.

And it’s interesting to hear this explanation that straightened arrow, the object, a straightened arrow, feels more like you’ve been on a bad path and now you’re on a good one, which isn’t necessarily what the biblical definition, you know, what they were trying to say.

They were just telling you from the get-go, you’re going to have to take the harder road to get where you want to be. It’s not going to be easy at any point.

Right.

Well, that’s a really good point.

Well, Lauren, thank you for your call. We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

You guys have a great day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. You can also call us and write us with all your goofy stuff. That toll-free number, it’s a texting number as well. 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lisa, and I’m calling from Greensville, South Carolina. And I was wondering about a word that I have heard in the South used. It’s jihaw. And I did some digging into it a little bit, and on an urban dictionary, I found that it usually refers to something that is broken. But the use I’ve always heard it with is like two people not getting along. Like, don’t sit Sarah and Beth together at the dinner party because they don’t jihaw. And I was just wondering what the origin of that word was, if you knew.

Jihaw. How would you spell it?

J-E-E-H-A-W. Jihaw. Like yeehaw, but with a J.

Yep. That’s one of them. Sometimes people spell it with a G. Actually, more often with a G. G-E-E-H-A-W. And it’s two words. Because it started as two words. You know when you’re driving your mule team as one does, Lisa?

Of course, every day. You know, you’re driving the crops to market as one does. And you’re directing the animals and you might shout G and Haw. That’s what this is referring to.

Oh. Yeah, or horses or sled dogs even, which maybe is more common, you know, in the kind of folklore of the United States today. So G means a right turn and haul means a left. So you say G and to get the animals move to the right and haul to get the animals move to the left. So if people don’t G haul, that means they don’t follow the directions and work as a team together. They don’t work in the traces together, which is actually another expression we have.

We have variations on, how does it go, Martha? Something about…

Like, don’t kick against the traces?

Yeah, there’s that expression about people kicking against the traces, which means they don’t take direction well, or people not working as a team together, generally is what we’re talking about.

And this goes back well into the early 1900s in a variety of forms, definitely in a rural context, obviously, because there’s this farming connotations here.

I like the idea of using that kind of word when you’re talking about a fancy dinner party. You know, people all dressed up and dripping with diamonds, but boy, they don’t jihaw. I’m imagining like a state dinner, you know, with all the world’s leaders.

Well, thank you so much because they would use that word often when they were talking about people who didn’t get along. And I had never heard that before.

I hope that helps, Lisa.

All right. Thank you.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Well, if your language isn’t Jihan without your spouse or your family, we can help you sort it out. Give Martha and me a call, 877-929-9673, or you can text that same number toll-free in the United States and Canada.

More lust for Lex as A Way with Words continues. 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 think you will agree that English spelling is a hot mess.

Hot, boiling mess. And, you know, people have complained about irregular English spelling for centuries, and some of them have been upset enough to try to fix it. But the problem, as you know so well, is that when it comes to language, it’s really hard to impose changes from the top down. It gets messy very, very, very quickly.

And for a look at just how messy and often how funny these attempts can be, you must read a wonderful new book by Gabe Henry. It’s called Enough is Enough, Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell. The second enough in that title is spelled E-N-U-F, as you might have guessed.

In any case, one of those would-be spelling reformers was Ben Franklin, who proposed removing six letters from the alphabet, C, J, Q, W, X, and Y. And he also did things like urging that we take the I out of friend and spell the word busy as B-I-Z-I. Now, obviously, that didn’t work.

But also, for a while, Mark Twain gave it a shot. He was assuring people that fixing English spelling would rid us of bugaboos like diphtheria and pterodactyl. And Twain was, in fact, part of a so-called simplified spelling board that was assembled by Dale Carnegie. And he assembled this group of intellectual all-stars that included a Supreme Court justice and the presidents of Stanford and Columbia universities, a former secretary of the Treasury, and others.

And this board decided two things. First of all, they were going to focus solely on subtracting letters, never adding new ones. And the second thing they resolved is that they would never describe this as spelling reform. They would instead describe it as spelling simplification, because they figured that somehow that was easier for the public to accept.

And in 1906, this group released a list of 300 simplified words that they said everybody should start using. So people should spell through as T-H-R-U and though as T-H-O, but they should also spell the past tense of look the way it sounds. So L-O-O-K-T, if you can believe that. And New York City school officials agreed and soon children across that city were being taught these spellings.

And there was one other person who was really impressed by this, and that was President Teddy Roosevelt. And in August of 1906, he issued an executive order that all public federal documents must be written in this simplified phonetic spelling. Talk about executive overreach. The results were laughable, and newspapers had a field day. I mean, you can just picture all the editorial cartoons of that time. There was one of Roosevelt shooting up a dictionary.

But within months, Congress pushed back and the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that government documents go back to the old spelling. So the result was this big humiliation for Roosevelt. And even Mark Twain came around because later he declared in a speech, simplified spelling is all right, but like chastity, you can carry it too far.

That’s pretty good. And of course, one of the problems with this, and I’m sure the book talks about this, is that when we start simplifying spelling, we kind of simplify it for just one dialect because words aren’t pronounced the same in English everywhere.

Right. So we start running into these problems where your vowel isn’t my vowel and your consonant isn’t my consonant.

That’s a really good point. And of course, it’s all a result of the mishmash that is the history of English spelling. I mean, there were so many different historical forces. And then, as you said, dialectal variants. It’s amazing that we have agreed to spell as many words the same way as we have.

So this book is Enough is Enough by…

By Gabe Henry. That second enough is spelled E-N-U-F, and the subtitle is Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell.

Of course, we’ll link to that on our website when we post this episode. If you’ve got a book you’d like to recommend or you want us to talk about, send it to words@waywordradio.org. Call or text 877-929-9673. That’s toll-free in the United States and Canada.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi.

Hi, my name’s Laurie, and I’m from the Boston area. I want to ask something that my grandfather used to say. As my brothers and sister and I were growing up, my father’s father, he’d occasionally take us aside and say, did you know?

In medials are in clay, none are in fine turrets and oak nunners.

And you’d say, what are you saying, Grampy?

Oh, you’re going to have to repeat that again for us.

I will. I will.

He’d say, you speak English, listen again.

And he’d repeat, in Medielsa, in plain Nanna, in pine towers, in oak nutters.

Which he had no idea what he was saying.

It sounds like something played backwards.

I’ve heard that it can sound like Latin, or it does not sound like English.

But he’d say, in Medielsa, get it?

In mud eels are.

It’s like eels are in mud.

Yes.

In Medielsa.

And then in clay, none are.

In clay, none are.

And then in pine, tar is.

In pine, tar is.

And in oak, none is.

In oak, none is.

That thing, it’s been passed on in our family.

In fact, I taught it to my oldest grandchild who’s 13.

He gets a big kick out of it.

And my question is, is the way he’s talking, is that a thing?

And his parents and all his siblings were born in England.

Oh, gotcha.

Okay.

North of England, a town called Blackburn.

And he was the first one.

Then they moved to the United States, to Newbury, and he was the first one to be born there.

This is a good clue because the great British folklorists, Iona and Peter Opie, who I’ve talked about on the show numerous times because I love their work.

They have a book called the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.

And other sources and other reference works have also talked about this.

But they’ve kind of collected what is known about this expression that your grandfather used.

Because it’s an established expression.

And it’s said so fast like that to make it sound like false Latin.

It sounds mystical or magical or like something you might hear in church.

And one of the things that they point out is through a complicated path of research works.

Is that a version of this shows up in a medical manuscript from 500 years ago.

Is that right? 500 years ago?

It’s very similar.

And then we find versions of it again and again, popping up well into the 1800s when it becomes more common.

And the other thing about this, and maybe you know this already, but there’s two more lines that sometimes go with this, where you follow it with, goat eat ivy, mare eat oats.

That’s like the song from the 40s.

Yes.

Yeah.

A little lamb, a little lamb.

Wouldn’t you like to eat?

Yeah, exactly.

And so that goes back 500 years.

The original version in Henry VI’s time was, is thy pot anticollant?

Is goat eat ivy?

Mare eat odies?

Is thy cock like a rooster?

Meaning rooster.

Yeah.

So it’s funny.

So it’s like this song, which became big in 1943.

Actually, it goes back to like the 1400s.

Wow.

Crazy, right?

I found even when I tell it people, even if I say it slow, in my deals are, they still, you’ve got to have it broken down even more than that.

There has been some work done by linguists using this particular expression that you relate here from your grandfather in transcription exercises where they get people to try to write it out phonetically just to see how people hear and how they can best describe what they’re hearing in text form.

And people almost always write it differently from each other.

People can’t really hear it when it’s said at speed like that.

It’s very hard to parse it and break it out into its separate words.

And it’s partly because it’s all these one- and two-syllable words.

Isn’t it? Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Laurie, I think it’s beautiful that you’ve passed that down to a whole other generation.

Yeah. I mean, it goes from my grandfather to my father to us to my children to my grandchildren.

So that’s five generations right there.

Oh, wow.

But I’ve experienced five generations, but not that it was for five centuries.

How about that?

Right.

How about that?

Well, this has been a delightful…

Laurie, thank you for sharing your memories with us and sharing this.

One more time before we go.

Let’s hear it really fast.

In Medill’s ring play, none are in pine towers and oak nunnas.

We’ll put it on the website for everyone to enjoy.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Share your linguistic memories with us, 877-929-9673.

One more story that I want to share from the book Enough is Enough by Gabe Henry about English and spelling.

And it has to do with the first National Spelling Bee, which was held in 1908 in Cleveland, Ohio.

And the competition was a little bit different from the way it is today because the students competed as teams.

There were eighth graders representing four different cities, Cleveland, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Erie, Pennsylvania.

And the Spelling Bee was held at a conference of the National Education Association in Cleveland.

So that meant that they had 6,000 spectators watching this competition.

And one of the best spellers was on the Cleveland team, and that was 13-year-old Marie Bolden.

Now, Marie was the daughter of a postal worker, and she had learned to spell by studying the local newspaper every day.

Now, Marie was black, and in the days leading up to this contest, the New Orleans team threatened to boycott it because, as the Cincinnati paper reported, several of the New Orleans children balked at the idea of spelling against a Negro girl.

But eventually, after a lot of controversy, the team relented and they came to Cleveland.

And this competition included both oral and written portions, hundreds and hundreds of words.

And as it turned out, the Cleveland team won, and the best score of all the members of that team belonged to Marie Bolden.

So Marie Bolden was the first National Spelling Bee champion.

And I looked this up in a newspaper database.

The next day, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, this paper that Marie had studied so assiduously every single day, ran a big article about that competition, listing every single one of the hundreds of words that were in that contest.

And above all those words was a big picture of Marie under the headline Best Speller of All.

Is that a lovely story or what? Oh, yay.

Of course, you deserve it.

If you’ve worked that hard and beat so many people at a national level, you deserve your accolades.

Well, that’s a lovely story.

And we’ll link to that book, Enough is Enough, about the spelling in the English language on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ed Sadowski calling from Williamsburg, Virginia.

Well, hello, Ed. We’re glad to have you. What’s up?

Well, I would like to ask you a question that concerns baseball.

And I’m a bit of a baseball nerd, a seam head, I guess you might call me.

My question is, concerns the term high cheese.

And I hear broadcasters using this, and it refers to a really good, hard, high fastball.

And they say, well, this guy is bringing high cheese.

And so I guess my question is, what in the world does cheese have to do with the speed of a baseball?

All right. You sound like a man who knows something about baseball.

Who do you follow in the MLB?

Well, I’m a Baltimore Orioles fan.

Okay.

But yeah, my interest in baseball goes all the way back to the 1940s, I guess, when I was a child.

But after I retired from my professional career, I lived out a Walter Mitty dream and became the PA announcer for the College of William & Mary Baseball for 20 years.

Oh, wow.

So I’ve heard all the terms, but this one, I’m usually able to explain most of them, but this one I can’t.

Oh, yeah, but you’ve got the lingo down, it sounds like.

So, yeah, so cheese alone is just a fastball, right?

So that’s a ball that’s high in the strike zone, maybe about head height of the batter?

That’s usually what they usually say he’s bringing high cheese.

Now they can say, I’ve heard them say, well, he’s throwing cheese, but it’s usually high cheese, so like a fastball that’s high up in the strike zone, yes.

Have you ever heard it called alto queso, the Spanish words for high cheese?

No, I haven’t.

Sometimes you’ll hear that.

And it’s not surprising since baseball is popular in so many Spanish-speaking countries like Venezuela and Cuba and Puerto Rico and so forth.

Dominican Republic.

Dominican Republic, of course.

Yeah, DR has had some amazing players over the years.

The thing about the cheese part of it is it’s probably connected to when we talk about somebody being a big cheese, meaning the high-muckety-muck or, you know, big mahoff, somebody who’s like a big deal.

And that probably comes into English from Hindi and other Indian languages where the word cheese meant thing.

So if somebody’s like the big thing, that means that the top item, the number one important person of the place or the moment or the situation.

And so when we talk about a baseball being cheese, we’re talking about that’s like, that’s the pitch, right?

So a fastball is, for a pitcher, the one they need to have, right?

And out of all the pitches they have, like, nobody really gets to the majors without a good fastball.

Okay, okay.

And its origin going back to something that’s a high muckety-muck, something that’s high.

That’s right.

And so a good fastball is highly sought after.

And so, yeah, they kind of all fit together.

My goodness.

Well, aren’t you smart?

I never even in my wildest dreams ever thought about it in that terms.

Yeah, we always have to talk about Paul Dixon.

He was a fantastic lexicographer.

And if you don’t, Ed, have a copy of the Dixon Baseball Dictionary, I highly recommend it.

He has done some great work and worked with a lot of great baseball people and lexicographers to really put together kind of the definitive work on the lingo of baseball.

It’s just good stuff.

Oh, very good.

Well, Ed, you take care of yourself.

And thanks for your call.

Thank you very kindly.

It was my pleasure and my honor.

And thank you, and you have a great, great week.

You too. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language or send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

We talked in an earlier episode about phrases that express profound skepticism.

That’ll happen when pigs fly, you know, talking about an event that is pretty much impossible.

And we heard from Guillermo Ratana in Tucson, who sent us an idiom in Spanish along those lines.

It goes, cuando la rana crie pelos, which, as you can imagine, means when the frog grows hair.

I’m imagining a whole life cycle of a frog with hair.

Like, ultimately, he grows bald and gets a toupee.

And it’s this whole thing.

Yeah, if you see a hairy frog, something impossible has happened.

Well, something impossible can be possible.

Call us 877-929-9673 or text us at the same number.

A Way with Words senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

Tim Felten is our engineer and editor.

And John Chaneski is our quiz master.

Go to waywordradio.org for all of our past episodes, podcast links, and ways to reach us.

If you have a language, thought, or question, the toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada.

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Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Merrill Perlman, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

So long.

Bye.