Stub Your Toe (episode #1606)

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. The brand new seventh edition of the official Scrabble Players Dictionary is now out, and Grant has been embiggened with 500 new words.

Embiggened. Is that one of the words they added?

It is indeed. You can play embiggened now.

What else did they add?

Well, there are all kinds of great words that you can play now. You can play yama, which is the yogic practice of controlling your breath. And it added egg corn.

Oh, egg corn. That’s a great linguistics term. That’s when you mishear something, but you mishear it as something that sounds very reasonable.

Exactly. Like, for example, somebody says, oh, it was spreading like wildflowers. You know, the correct phrase is spreading like wildfire, but spreading like wildflowers is a lovely image.

And also, one of the really high-scoring words that you could play with this new official dictionary is the word fauxhawk.

Fauxhawk. Oh, I think I had that in my dictionary that I put out in 2006.

This is, it’s not a real mohawk, but it’s your haircut where it sticks up in the middle.

Well, we do love talking about dictionaries, and we love talking with you about language. Call us toll-free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary from Flagler Beach, Florida.

Welcome to the show.

Well, for many years we lived in St. Croix in the United States, Virgin Islands. And the cruisers, Virgin Islanders, had this funny saying when they had too much to eat or drink. Like you would say, hey Joe, how was your Thanksgiving? He’d say, girl, we ate and drank like knocking dog. And I never knew what that meant. And I was wondering if you had any clue.

Oh, I love this question. I lived on St. Croix for six months. Knock and dog. It meant that you, I think you ate so much, you were just falling over like, I don’t know.

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. It’s about abundance. And nobody’s quite sure why it means abundance, but it goes back to the 1870s.

1870s.

Yeah. There’s a report in a Bahamian newspaper talking about all of the fruit from Jamaica that’s arriving in New York and how much the New Yorkers love it. And it uses the expressions, says all of the fruit which we have in this country to knock dog, as the native saying goes.

That’s amazing.

Yeah. Sometimes it’s used in other places like Trinidad and Tobago to mean very cheap or a low rate of pay. But you’ll also find it mentioned in Guyana as well. And it probably pops up in other Caribbean islands too.

So one example sentence in the Dictionary of Trinidad and Tobago English is, she was a very ostentatious woman and she was not prepared to hang up any curtains that were knocking dog and cat in the village.

Oh my goodness, I love it.

That means cheap. So a lot of times it’s just something that’s in excess or it’s just like there’s so much of it that it’s like almost worthless.

No fooling.

Oh, that’s great.

Yeah.

Great.

It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?

It’s very strange.

Language is so strange. And, of course, in the Caribbean, it’s English, but they have French influence and Dutch influence and people that have settled there. In fact, the U.S. Virgin Islands, there’s a lot of Danish influence.

Yeah, although it’s not as much as there might be for as long as the Danes held St. Croix.

Yeah, the Danes bought it in 1900, I think.

Yeah, well, I remember when I was in St. Croix, there was a Danish couple that decided to retire there thinking that there would still be some Danish spoken. They did not last very long because there was no Danish spoken.

No, no.

That’s funny.

Oh, well. Mary, I’ve got to say thank you for reminding me of the lovely time I had in St. Croix, which, by the way, is still a lovely place to go.

It is. I’d love to get back again someday. We haven’t been in quite a while.

Me too. And Mary, we will talk to you again sometime soon. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you for answering that question.

Bye, Mary.

Bye-bye.

Our website is just knock and dog with answers to your language questions. You can find them at waywordradio.org. Or if you’ve got something new that we haven’t touched on yet, you can find tons of ways to reach us at waywordradio.org/contact.

Grant, remember our conversation from a couple of weeks ago about words that are fun to say, you know, the words that you carry around with you and you just say from time to time because they’re fun to say.

Oh, yeah.

Oligopoly.

Oligopoly.

Oligopoly.

That’s the domination of a market by just a few producers.

Oh, that makes sense.

Yeah, like oligarchy is the rule of the few.

Yeah.

Well, that conversation prompted an email from Sue Ann Barnes, who lives in Jackson, Tennessee. She wrote to us about a scene in a 1955 movie called The Glass Slipper. And it’s a really dated movie, but there’s this lovely scene where an older woman is talking to Cinderella. And she says, Cinderella, Cinderella, such a beautiful word. I like it very much. There are other words I like very much, like windowsill and elbow.

Elbow.

And I like apple dumpling, too.

Apple dumpling.

It’s a comical word.

Apple dumpling.

Pickle relish.

That has a nice snap to it. I just, I really got a kick out of this little passage in a 1955 movie where somebody’s celebrating the sound and feel of words. I noticed that they all had L’s in them. And I also noticed that the Cinderella was a lot like cellar door. If you remember, I wrote something for the New York Times a number of years ago about how cellar door and celadon have long been said by many people to be words they consider to be very beautiful to hear and to say.

That’s interesting.

Those L sounds. And sometimes people pick words that are beautiful to say because they connote something beautiful like mother or love.

I remember that essay of yours from the New York Times, and we should link to it on our website.

Absolutely. And we’re still collecting the words that you love to say, either because they’re goofy or funny or they chip off the tongue so perfectly. Send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Okay. My name is Ruth, and I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hi, Ruth.

Hello, Ruth.

Hi. I’m glad to be on. I’ve been able to sing. I have a very nice voice. For many years, and I always sang this song, and I’ve never realized that I didn’t know what I was, I didn’t know what the words meant. It’s a song from Roger and Hammerstein, Sound of Music, and it’s the song about Maria. So it says, how do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you say a name that means Maria? A flippity gibbet, a will of the wisp, a clown.

Now, there’s the place. I don’t know what a flippity gibbet is, and I sure don’t know what a will of the wisp is. So anything you can do to help me would be wonderful because it’s kind of embarrassing to sing long songs you don’t know.

Yeah, I love the sound of music in that part of the movie where they’re just trying to figure out how you solve a problem like Maria. Because she’s kind of flighty or just her behavior is more erratic than other people’s, right?

And what’s really cool about this expression is that Will-o’-the-Wisp is rooted in some very, very old folklore. And it has to do with this ghostly light that sometimes hovers over marshes and swamps. It’s probably swamp gas caused by decaying vegetation. And you don’t see it that much now. But hundreds of years ago, when there wasn’t artificial illumination, this was something that people talked about. And folklore about this glowing gas usually involved stories about a mischievous sprite or fairy who lured people into following that light at night. And they ended up in swamps or they ended up in marshy ground or going through briars and that kind of thing. And so a will of the wisp was a kind of supernatural trickster who bewitches people.

And earlier than will of the wisp, we have the expression will of the torch. And that refers to this fairy or sprite who’s luring people into the swamps.

And will of the torch or will with the torch eventually became will of the wisp or will with the wisp.

Here’s the key. The wisp is an old word that means a bundle of sticks or a handful of straw that you would light like a torch. And so this word, this expression goes from the sneaky sprite who’s luring people into dangerous places, and then more generally in modern times to an elusive goal or somebody who’s got that behavior that’s mysterious or confusing.

Here’s another cool aspect of that, Ruth. In parts of England, this glowing swamp gas was sometimes represented by another mythical figure, another character who carried a light to lure unsuspecting people, and that character was Jack of the Lantern.

Does that sound familiar?

Of course.

Very true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s now memorialized in our glowing Jack O’ Lanterns.

And there are so many different versions of these stories, but they all have to do with that kind of glowing swamp gas.

How cool is that?

Fantastic.

That’s wonderful to know.

And wonderful to know that I’m not, you know, that I’m singing something, well, quite like the Maria in the story.

What a genius Rodgers and Hammerstein and music is for all of us.

Oh, absolutely.

And you mentioned flibbertigibbit.

That’s another fun word to say.

In the 16th century, that meant a chattering woman or somebody who’s kind of flighty.

And it’s probably just a nonsense word.

But Will-o’-the-Wisp has that fantastic history behind it.

Yeah, the flippity jibbit might represent the sound of somebody chattering, doing that.

You can’t even quite make out what they’re saying.

They’re talking so much.

Almost onomatopoetic.

Thank you so much for talking with us, Ruth, and take care of yourself.

Thank you, and all good health and safety to you, too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There are lots of ways to reach us.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Toll-free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

We also have phone numbers for Mexico and the United Kingdom on our website at waywordradio.org/contact.

Here’s some excellent writing advice from the author Zadie Smith.

She says, put your manuscript in a drawer until you become its reader rather than its writer.

And Grant, that makes such a difference, doesn’t it? I mean, the corollary to that, the other advice is start that project early enough that you have time to put that thing in the drawer, right?

Right.

And so often that is not the case.

How many of us, raise your hands, wait till the last minute so you have no time to let the manuscript age like a good wine or cheese?

If you’ve come across writing advice from somebody who really knows what they’re doing, we’d love to hear about it.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send those great quotations to words@waywordradio.org.

More about language and how we use it 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 Martha Barnette.

And here he is, that handsome man, our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

You guys look great today.

Thank you very much.

I’m so happy to be here to share a puzzle with you guys.

This one is sort of near to my heart because my family and I are big into Renaissance fairs.

You know, we attend the one in New York just about every year.

And yes, we do so in costume.

Shout out to my cosplayers.

We were at the fair once and I saw a cosplayer in armor, but he was also sporting pretend cuts of meat.

Now, I was abashed not to be the one who figured out he was supposed to be Sir Loin of Beef.

Oh, dear.

This knight is Sirloin, but what other knights could there be?

A lot.

A Camelot.

I’ll grant a knighthood.

You tell me the name.

The surname of the knight.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

For example, for being the last contestant left on a popular reality competition show that has taken place in Borneo, the Amazon, and the Australian outback, I hereby dub thee?

Survivor.

Survivor, yes.

Survivor.

I will warn you I will be using this regal voice for the entire quiz.

For your excellent craftsmanship, providing porcelain chamber pots to the castle, I hereby dub thee?

Ceramic.

Ceramic, yes.

Well done.

For exemplary service, keeping a sharp lookout on our enemies without their knowledge, I hereby dub thee…

Surveillance.

Surveillance, yes.

And his brother, Sir Reptitious.

Yes, both of them, a double knighting. Very nice.

For discovering that our swords would cut more accurately with the addition of a row of sharp, tooth-like projections, I hid by dub thee.

Serrated.

Serrated, yes.

Finally, for being an example of how to keep calm and collected, even in the midst of danger, your peaceful nature has earned you this knighthood.

Arise.

Serene?

Very good, yes.

Serenity.

Serenity.

Both of them.

They’re again brothers again.

Serene and Serenity, the two of them.

Congratulations to them both.

And congratulations to you, Grant and Martha, for working your way through this quiz.

And we would certainly like to talk with you.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673.

You see what I did there?

Or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Michelle. I’m calling from Peoria, Illinois, on the behalf of my best friend, Liz Barton, with a question.

Okay, well, welcome to the show.

Well, I had a question about a slang term that was popular when we were going to college at Bradley University in Illinois in the early 90s.

We had a term, it was squidding or to squid, and it referred to computer use akin to what would now be social media.

It was really before social media was a thing, but it referred to basically email, Usenet, chat boards, things that were nonproductive, kind of just computing for entertainment.

And we were never sure if this was a slang term that was unique to where we were or where it came from or if it had broader usage.

So paint the picture for us. This is Bradley University and that’s there in Peoria?

Yes. Bradley University is a medium-sized private school in Peoria, Illinois.

And we would have been attending from 1992 to 1996.

Squidding, so S-Q-U-I-D, like the sea creature with the tentacles.

Exactly, the cephalopod.

So sea creature with tentacles.

And we always thought that might have something to do with it, but we weren’t sure.

And we also weren’t sure if this was a term of art where we were or if it had any broader use.

You know what?

I think it’s just a Bradley University thing.

I really do.

And don’t let that take away anything from it because I love it because when the Internet was new at all of these places around the country, everybody came up with their own terms until everything settled down, whether it was at a business or a school or even in people’s homes.

All this new language came out and there was all this new language until everyone kind of agreed what was going to be what, what we were going to call these things.

So squidding may have stopped at Bradley University, but fortune could have gone differently and squidding might have become the term that we all use.

It just could have happened.

But from about 1990 to 1996, squid and squidding show up in the student newspaper and the student yearbook and they confirm your memory.

And they refer definitely to spending a lot of time in the computer lab or using email or just being on the computer.

Well, that is fantastic to know.

We have wondered for roughly 30 years.

For 30 years, wow.

But off and on, you know, the thought has come up in the term.

And I kind of wish it had taken off broader than it did because the tentacle aspect of it seems evocative to me.

It sure does.

I’m thinking of how my devices sort of reach out and grab me and keep me scrolling.

The reason I like what you’re saying about Squid is because the web metaphor in 1990, when Squid first appears in print at Bradley University, well, the web itself didn’t exist yet.

So we’re talking Internet pre-web.

We’re talking IRC, Usenet, profiles attached to FTP accounts, that sort of stuff, maybe even Gopher.

And so people might be thinking of a squid with arms as a metaphor for all these systems instead of a web as a metaphor for all these systems.

Additionally, there was a lot of early software that was made.

And I’m just wondering if there was some collection of bright people at Bradley.

Who had made some custom software that they called squid or something similar.

And maybe that’s why the term caught on there.

I haven’t been able to find any evidence of that.

But I wouldn’t be surprised to find if there was a bit of software, the custom software that you could install to put the settings on your personal computer, you know, whatever you needed to connect to the local Internet that was called squid.

I would not be surprised.

There was so much out there.

And often I did take animal names like like a gopher.

Or dogpile.

Or dogpile.

That was later.

Yeah. In the 1996 issue of the Bradley Scout, and that was the student newspaper, someone credited as summer has this big piece where they write, you may be a squid if it says lines like if you’ve ever skipped class, a meal, a date or a night’s sleep to do something online.

Or if you’ve ever taken a class solely to get an email account. And that cracked me up because that was a thing. Like you didn’t automatically get an email account in the early days.

No.

Sometimes you only got it if you took a comp sci class.

That is really funny.

And that also confirms my memory that it was used as a noun and a verb.

Yeah.

Just a general description of what you were up to.

Well, Michelle, I hope this is a good memory for you.

And I’m glad that we were able to help.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

It was our pleasure.

Take care, please.

Thank you.

Toll free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Or you can reach us through email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Colin. I’m from Los Angeles.

Hi, Colin. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

I had a question about assonance.

I have a friend who she’s like a great writer and she also has like a following on Twitter, you know,

And she was telling me that she can like predict which tweets of hers will go viral because they usually have assonance.

She was trying to explain to me what it was because I was really struggling with it.

And we were playing a game where we would say word combinations back and forth that had assonance in them.

But I kept just rhyming words.

So, like, I just can’t wrap my head around assonance exactly.

I was wondering if you could help me.

Colin, what was she tweeting about?

What was the topic?

Yeah, absolutely.

I could read one of the tweets that went viral.

Sure.

So the tweet’s from Helen Kingston, and she’s at KingstonWrites.

And she says, men’s midlife crises are intensely boring.

They just get an expensive bike and marry a 30-year-old version of the same wife,

Whereas women do cool stuff like open owl cafes, retrain as beekeepers, and get PhDs in necromancy.

I want to go to an owl cafe.

Yeah, that’s a good tweet.

She has a lot of followers, I guess, though, too.

Yeah, and it went viral, she said, because at the end, the words PhD in necromancy was like,

I mean, she says that the ones that have assonance have a better chance of going viral.

Not that it’s like there’s a formula for it, but she just noticed that that happens.

Right. She’s talking about the internal vowel sounds of a lot of those words.

So assonance, let’s just make sure everyone understands the word that we’re saying here.

It’s A-S-S-O-N-A-N-C-E, assonance.

And it can be like a rhyme, but assonance, like Martha says, is the internal vowels being the same.

Even if the continents surrounding them are different.

So what’s some good assonance, Martha?

Do you have some examples here?

You know, one of my favorite poems that I had to learn in junior high

Was The High Women by Alfred Noyes.

Oh, yeah.

You know, it talks about the road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the high women came riding, riding, riding.

The high women came riding up to the old inn door.

And it’s got some alliteration in there, a lot of words that start with the same letter.

But it’s also got those, the I sound of the high women came riding, riding, riding, up to the old indoor, which rhymes with more.

So it’s almost, Colin, it’s almost like, asmuth is almost like an imperfect rhyme.

So the vowels, the vowels of this can be the same or similar.

They don’t even have to be exactly the same.

But the consonants are different.

I see, yeah.

So it’s like, yes, I get that.

And that poem’s beautiful.

There’s a line from Emily Dickinson

That has some assonance in it.

Dear to the moss, known by the knoll,

Next to the robin in every human soul.

So known by the knoll is assonance,

But knoll and soul is a rhyme,

Because the ol at the end rhymes.

Known and knoll.

They start with the same sound

The same you know

No

But they don’t end with the same sound so that’s assonance

And that’s the difference

It’s funny that she gets so many

Likes I would suspect that she has a writing

Community that is sensitive

To that

Even whether they know it or not

They’re particularly aware of it perhaps they’re sub vocalizing

As they’re reading and they’re

Hearing that assonance as their

Tweets are passing through their eyes and their brains

It’s so interesting

Because it just sounds pleasant to the ear,

Like when I was reading it.

And I think the main one is PhD in necromancy.

It sounds musical.

It has like a musical element to it.

Yes, I was going to say, you mentioned the musical element,

And I was wondering if she reads her tweets aloud

Before she sends them out.

That’s a writer’s trick, isn’t it, Martha,

To be a better writer.

Oh, it is, absolutely.

I mean, I once rewrote a whole book because I started to read it aloud, and I just didn’t like how it sounded because it’s so different just reading the words on the page silently.

It’s so different.

You wouldn’t think it would be that different, but it really is when you vocalize those sounds.

I love that you have those people in your life who are willing to, that you can fool around with language in that way, and they’re willing to entertain this just whole notion of like, let’s just goof around with assonance.

That’s a lovely friend indeed.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate it.

All right.

Take care, Colin.

Thanks, Colin.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

What are your thoughts, comments, and idea about language and words and old sayings and

Some slang you might have heard or a book that you loved or a story that you’re convinced

Is the best one ever?

There are lots of ways to reach us.

Go to waywordradio.org/contact.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Luke Whiting from Waco, Texas.

Hey, Luke.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

I had a really interesting conversation a couple weeks ago with one of my coworkers.

So he was telling the story about how growing up, if his mom made, you know, a bowl of chili or something, and his dad would say, man, you really stumped your toe on this.

And growing up, he always thought that meant like it was a good thing.

But then just recently, so like, you know, years, years later, he asked his mom about it.

And she’s like, no, that meant that he didn’t like it, that he messed up.

You know, you did something bad.

And so my first question is, have you ever heard that phrase?

Like someone saying, man, you really stumped your toe on this one for something that you

Messed up on.

And my follow-up question is, I was always raised saying you stub your toe.

But he, you stump the same way whenever you like hit your toe on something.

And he would say, man, I stumped my toe.

And I had never heard it being that way either.

So, one, I’ve never heard that phrase being used to talk about something else.

And I’ve never even heard of anyone stumping a toe.

Okay.

So, two layers here.

Now, who is stumping their toe?

Who is saying this?

My coworker.

Your coworker.

Gotcha.

Yep.

And where is your coworker from?

A little town called San Saba, Texas in the Hill Country.

Hill Country, Texas.

All right.

That makes a lot of sense.

All right.

Let’s take the stump your toe versus stub your toe first.

Okay.

It turns out that Stomp Your Toe has a couple hundred years of history in the United States.

As a matter of fact, the great lexicographer Noah Webster recorded in his dictionaries in the 1820s as an American variant, although he looked upon it as a vulgar variant, I think, in his words.

But it’s been around for a very long time.

And in the American South and in the American South Midlands, that is those states in the middle of the country which touch the northern part of the U.S. South, you’re more likely to hear it.

You stump your toe if you are walking in the house at night and you bang your toe on a piece of furniture rather than stub your toe.

So it’s been around for a very long time and it’s not going to seem strange at all to some folks.

Stub your toe is far more common though.

But both are acceptable.

Now, as far as being related to how you cook food, it turns out that you’re plugging into something that Martha and I talked about on the show not that long ago, which is to put your foot into it.

And this means to cook something particularly well.

So you might say, this fish supper is amazing.

She really put her foot into it.

You ever heard that?

Yes, that I have heard.

So you’re saying that sometimes people will say you stumped your toe or stubbed your toe to mean that they cooked something not so well.

Exactly. Yeah.

They had somehow, you know, too spicy or too salty.

Yes.

They somehow messed it up.

Yes, that’s exactly right.

And the metaphor there is because you’ll say you’re holding the spice container or the salt container.

And let’s say you kind of trip a little bit in the kitchen and you dash a little bit too much of something into the bowl or into the pot.

You add it a little bit more by accident.

So your food ends up a little too spicy or a little too salty or just not right.

Now, occasionally, somebody will say you stumped your toe when cooking to mean it turned out unexpectedly well.

You did something of a little more, you added a little more of something on accident, but you’re not sure what, and it turned out unexpectedly well.

Someone on to something good there, yeah.

Yeah, you’re on to something good, but you don’t know what you did right.

But in any case, it was accidental.

So banging your toe, in other words, if you’re talking about cooking, could be good or it could be bad, right?

Yeah.

But either way, it’s still about it’s an accidental thing that happened.

Your coworker is completely fine with their usage.

Now, it may not be a common usage, but it’s acceptable.

And would he speak that way, say, in a formal situation?

Maybe not, but he should definitely be himself among his friends and his family.

Okay. I will let him know. He’ll be glad to hear that he was right.

Sure.

Well, thanks for sharing your story, Luke.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, send us your food questions, your language questions, your stories about words you use every day.

We’d love to hear about it.

877-929-9673.

Or put them in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is about language seen through family, history, and culture.

Stay tuned for more.

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. Kelly Barnhill is the author of four novels, including The Girl Who Drank the Moon, which won the Newbery Medal for children’s literature.

On Twitter, she posted a long thread recently describing how she’s been helping neighborhood kids with their college admissions essays.

And she describes them as coming in absolutely deer in the headlights, you know, panicked because they just don’t understand this kind of writing or what it’s supposed to do.

And so she makes them tea and she has them put their laptops away.

And then she says, we talk a little bit about life or worries or the world.

We talk about memories.

I have them tell me stories.

And then I hand them an old notebook and I start lobbing writing prompts at them.

I tell them that they don’t have to worry about any of this.

No one will see it.

They just have to keep their pencil going for five minutes and then stop when the timer goes off.

And then she tells them, write about a memory, pretending that it’s happening right this very second.

Write about a choice they had to make as though it’s happening right now.

Write about food or work or the bus or the snow.

I tell them to tell me a story about a time they broke the rules or tried something new or built something with their friends.

And she describes how, for them, it’s a really strange form of writing, that most of them have never done anything like that, you know, writing in their own voice and writing about their own unique experiences with themselves at the center of this story.

And then she says, invariably, there’s a moment. They’ll have pages and pages of material, memories, moments, thoughts, arguments, explanations, seeing their point of view as something that belongs entirely to them.

And then they see it, an arc, a beginning, a middle, and end.

Oh, they say.

And Grant, I thought that was such a cool approach to writing one of those college application essays, you know, not thinking about what they want to hear, but really kind of doing a deep dive into yourself.

I agree with that.

And I’ve taken a different tactic with my son over the years when he’s had to write some personal thing for for classwork where I interview him as if I’m the reporter you and I both have reporter skills and he’s my subject.

And I kind of make it formal and he’s never been treated like that before where somebody’s actually interested in him and quizzes him not as a father or even as a friend but as a stranger, somebody with a distant business relationship or a distant kind of remove that he’s never encountered before.

And I bet these kids not only have never had to look deep inside themselves, but have never had somebody of her professional skill work with them and use her professional tools on them.

They’ve never encountered somebody so equipped and so qualified to extract from them the gems that are inside.

Yeah, I really like your idea of interviewing the kid because I find so often, I mean, when I’ve interviewed adults, a lot of times they’re so close to their own story, they can’t even see it.

You know, it’s completely out of focus because it’s right there in front of their face.

And by leading them through some questions like that, they start to listen to themselves and realize, oh, I do have something to say.

I am an expert on me and the way that I view the world.

It’s a thread on Twitter that’s really worth reading, and some of the comments were really great, too.

Somebody said, what a potentially life-changing gift you’re giving these kids, sort of like that rocket NASA launched into the asteroid, a little nudge that can alter a lifetime trajectory.

Oh, that’s so perfect.

What an image.

That’s exactly right.

Right.

So this thread, again, we’ll link to it on our website.

It’s by, what is her name and what’s that book?

Her name is Kelly Barnhill, and I want to recommend her website as well, kellybarnhill.com, because she’s very opinionated about writing and teaching and education, and it’s a very stimulating read.

She’s the author of the Newbery-winning The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

Oh, that’s a lovely title as well.

Like I said, we’ll link to that from our website.

We love the stimulating conversation that you share with us.

Call us toll-free from the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Or tell us your thoughts in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Katie Turek, and I’m calling in from Greenville, South Carolina.

Hey, Katie, welcome to the show.

I have been searching online and everywhere I can think of to find the meaning of a saying that I learned in a little one-room country schoolhouse in rural Montana when I was about eight years old.

It’s a ver.

Something you would say to someone that it’s like, ooh, you saw something maybe that they didn’t want people to see.

It was kind of a teasing comment.

A ver.

And it occurred to me it might have something to do with Italians because there were some Italian immigrants who worked in coal mines in the small town nearby.

Since it’s very similar to Spanish, I know a little Spanish.

A is T-O, meaning to something.

And Z-E-R in Spanish means see.

So like there might be to see, like I see you or I saw you.

So I thought maybe it was a colloquialism in Italian.

Maybe that means shame or shamey shame.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

Katie, I have been collecting data on this for a number of years.

And so your data is very useful and interesting to me.

Wow.

And to Martha as well.

You’re like the piece of the puzzle that slid under the couch that I’ve been looking for.

You know, you’ve got this whole thing on the table and there’s a hole in the middle.

Yeah.

So we had a call about this a number of years ago.

And it was related to this, but it was a different version.

And she was from Albuquerque.

And the way she described it, it was a thing that you would say when someone at school was reprimanded by the teacher or are called into the office.

And what the rest of the class would say was, umbers.

And it’s the kind of thing that in the rest of the country, some of the rest of the country, people would say, oh, or

And we got so much email and so many voicemails in response to that.

Dozens and dozens of people had versions of this.

And some of them were spelled like umber, like the color.

But others were spelled U-H-V-E-R, sometimes with a B, sometimes with a V,

Sometimes with an A or a U at the beginning.

And a number of different people thought it might be related to umbrage,

And I don’t think it is.

But most of the people who reported this came from the same part of the country.

They had connections to Montana, just like you, but also the Dakotas, North and South Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, all from the same region of the country.

That’s interesting, right?

To a linguist.

Yes.

To a sociolinguist, that’s very interesting.

Well, and especially because those places were populated, at least by Caucasians, you know, we all came from someplace else.

As a linguist, I know that before that, there were Spanish speakers.

One of the oldest dialects is Spanish-spoken in North America is still spoken in Colorado and New Mexico.

And it’s this long Spanish-speaking tradition.

And there’s a long tradition of not only these Spanish speakers moving around as families, but as workers, whether it was with cattle or moving for agricultural reasons or what have you, doing work in the mountains or work in the fields and so forth.

And I think it isn’t Italian.

I think you’re right that it’s Spanish and it’s Aver because there’s a Spanish exclamation Aver that has lots of variations and lots of uses.

But many of them have something to do with something like, let’s see, or you’re going to find out, or we’ll find out, or I’ll find out.

And I think that’s what we’re looking at here, is it’s a version of the kids all saying, you’re going to find out.

Basically a way of saying you’re going to see what you’re going to get, what kind of trouble you’re going to get into.

Yeah.

Martha, what do you think about this?

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

I mean, Aver, to, you know, just see what’s happening.

You know, let me see that.

I see you.

I saw you.

Yeah, Aver is so colloquial that even,

I have only two books that specialize in interjections in Spanish,

And both of them do just kind of a poor job of covering Aver,

But I can find many, many uses of it in dialogues and fiction

And in movie scripts where it seemed,

They approach what we’re talking about here.

Somebody says, that’s not going to happen.

And somebody says, a ver, it will too.

Meaning, you’ll see, it will.

Yeah.

We have examples of English speakers taking words from other languages

And modifying them in such a way that they no longer sound or feel

Like they come from another language.

From Spanish, for example, from Mexican Spanish,

People took the word chones, which is slang for underpants,

And change it to choners or chonies.

It’s not widely used, but some people will know.

Or the French word voila.

Some people have no idea that that’s French,

And they spell it W-A-L-A.

They don’t know that it’s French,

And they just think it’s an weird English word, voila.

And that’s what happens when a word becomes fully anglicized

And fully naturalized in its new home.

Well, let me add one more thing.

One more thing.

That little town with the coal mine is called Roundup, Montana, where cattle were driven in.

So we’re looking at Spanish herders, too.

There we go.

Gold star to you today.

I’m going to send you a trophy, in fact.

That’s amazing what you’ve done.

So I’m really pleased to take your call.

Oh, thank you so very much.

Mystery solved.

Okay.

Well, I don’t know about that, but how about this?

It’s another book on the shelf towards the end of this mystery.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Be well. Take care of yourself.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Take care, Katie. Bye-bye.

Well, we want to be your suit.

And tell us something we don’t know.

Give us a call on the telephone.

877-929-9673 is toll-free in the United States and Canada.

Or spill your knowledge in email words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, another word that’s been added to the brand new official Scrabble dictionary is a word that I didn’t know.

It’s vaquita.

This is a type of dolphin.

How did you know this?

Yeah, vaquita, V-A-Q-U-I-T-A.

And I thought, what is that? Is that like little cow?

And that is the origin of the term.

It means little cow in Spanish, but it’s applied to a small, highly endangered porpoise.

This is the one that lives in the Sea of Cortez, and I think there are 11 of them left.

Is it?

Of course you would know how many vaquitas are left in the Sea of Cortez.

Well, I do have a son who has for a long time been interested in not only geography, but in animals.

And so you tend to pick up the interests of the people around you.

Okay.

Well, vaquita is now something that he can play in Scrabble.

What are your interests?

Where do they intersect language?

And how much do you want to tell me and Martha?

You know you do.

Just badly want to tell us. 877-929-9673.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hey, Martha.

This is Steve. Where are you calling from, Steve?

Wilmington, North Carolina. I was born and raised

And lived for four and a half decades in New York City. Not the island of Manhattan nor the

Island of Staten, but I lived in neighborhoods in the other three boroughs. Living in the

Neighborhoods that I did, I very early on heard about the luck of the Irish. People always talked

About it when I was a kid and kept hearing luck of the Irish, luck of the Irish. And I eventually,

Well, fairly young, I read up on the history of Ireland and it sounded like the luck of the Irish

Wasn’t very good for centuries.

So I was wondering how the luck of the Irish originated,

Where that phrase came from.

I’d rather ask two people who sound like they know what they’re doing

Instead of opinionating.

Oh, great. Our scam is working.

Steve, let me ask you, when you hear people say luck of the Irish

Or in the past when they’ve said it,

Are they expressing it as a positive statement?

Always. Always.

I never picked up any irony.

It just seemed like when I was a lot younger that the grown-ups repeated it,

But then it just stayed.

And all the symbolism and the imagery and the pot of gold.

Yeah, like the shamrocks and the whole thing.

That whole thing, yes. Exactly.

Yeah, the American version of Irishness is a strange, weird thing.

But if we go back to the Irish version of Irishness and talk about Irish luck or the luck of the Irish,

It originally felt a very bad luck, just as you found,

And about the Irish seeming to get the sharp end of the stick so often throughout history.

Not just the potato famine, but the treatment from the British and the history just did not treat the Irish well.

But the Irish have a dark sense of humor, an ironic sense of humor.

And you’ll find it expressed in jokes and asides and stories.

For example, there’s a bit of irony in the line that’s talking about a fellow who died one day.

And then his numbers came up in the lottery the next.

And isn’t that the luck of the Irish?

It’s that kind of ironic luck that often talked about, where you got lucky, but it was too late.

Or you got lucky, but it was too soon.

Or you got lucky, but it turned out to be luck at all.

Or you thought you were lucky, but it wasn’t luck.

Like your father gave you a house, but it burned down, right?

And then the irony got lost.

You know, over the many, many years, the irony got lost,

And all that was left was the positive notion of the Irish luck.

And so it went from bad to ironic to positive.

Did that happen in Ireland or did that happen in the U.S.?

Both.

Yeah, the Irish in Ireland, the Irish in the U.S., what an overlap there is there.

It’s this interwoven history, a back and forth that is hard to untangle even at this distance.

Well, you’re reminding me of some of the Irish Americans that I met during my years in New York City.

Now that I hear the way you laid that out, that was terrific.

Well, Steve, I think we lucked out with your question.

I really appreciate it because I’ve always thought of the luck of the Irish as something very positive.

Yeah, just the way people use it.

I’m with you on that.

Well, I appreciate your call, Steve.

Thank you very much.

Thank you both.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Steve.

That ironic sense of good luck actually being bad and bad luck being good, of course, isn’t solely the province of the Irish.

There’s a sense in Yiddish of trefen or mazel, which is luck so good it’s unkosher.

But, of course, the Russians have a little different take on it.

The version of Irish luck is to be born wearing a shirt, which is you’re born so lucky that you’re wearing clothes.

Not so lucky for the person giving birth.

No, well, it comes from the idea of babies born with a call, C-A-U-L.

Right.

But this is a play on that.

877-929-9673.

Our conversation about terms for watered-down coffee prompted a voicemail from Carol Bottoms.

She’s in Wilmington, North Carolina, and she said,

My mother-in-law for years used the term punished water for coffee.

She liked her coffee strong, almost boiling, so she would call it punished water.

I love that.

That’s a great one.

Punish that water and pour it into my cup.

877-929-9673.

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Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.