Sweet Science (episode #1674)

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 here’s a word I have my eye on.

I’ve seen it popping up occasionally, usually in the British press, and that word is binfluencer.

Who is a binfluencer? What are we talking about here?

Well, a binfluencer is the first person on your street to put the trash in the recycling bins. You know, according to which ones are supposed to be collected that week so that everybody knows and sort of follows suit.

So much room for mischief there just to put them all out or the wrong ones out just to make the whole street.

Well, you know, I mean, we have one on our street for sure.

I’m sure you do as well.

And this term has also been applied more generally to someone who encourages recycling and minimizing trash.

I really like it.

I have come around on the word influencer.

I didn’t like it at first, but I’m starting to dig it.

But I really like binfluencer because I know the one on our street.

Well, you know that I also track new language.

And Martha, you also know that I worked for a long time in information technology.

But let me ask you, if knowing these things about me, if you and I worked for, say, Google, and we were talking about a lake house, what would you think we were talking about?

A lake house? I would think that was what you bought with all your earnings. Like a secluded cabin overlooking Lake Tahoe or something. Where you escaped on the weekends.

Yeah. But in fact, in the tech world, a lake house is a facility or a system that holds a data lake. And a data lake is a large body of disorganized, unsorted data.

Oh.

Yeah, and that is a play on data warehouse, which is typically more structured data. And this comes back to about 2010.

And this fellow named James Dixon, who was a data technologist at the time, he described it kind of instead of being more like bottled water, which is packaged and processed, it’s more like a natural body of water.

This data that just flows in kind of raw, unsorted, unorganized, waiting for you to do something with it.

And of course, if you have data lakes that are disorganized to such a degree you can’t do anything with them, they’re called data swamps.

Oh, see, I thought a data lake would evaporate up into the cloud.

But no.

No, it doesn’t.

So you have the lake house, which is the facility that stores the data lake.

Nice.

It sounds more exciting than it is, unfortunately.

So if you get that tech job, Martha, and they start taking you to the lake house, they’re going to take you out to some big place with lots of computers whirring in the darkness.

I’m going to be disappointed then.

You are going to be very disappointed.

Probably going to have a nice paycheck, but disappointed.

Many of you, when you read, you make those word lists and then you look them up later.

We’d love to hear what you’re looking up.

What is that word that caught your eye that you just have to share with us?

Let us know.

What’s the crazy new language that you’re finding?

Send it to us, words@waywordradio.org, or just share your thoughts, ideas, words, or questions, words@waywordradio.org.

Call or text toll-free in the United States or Canada, 877-929-9673, or go to waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Kaylee, and I’m calling from Nashville, Tennessee.

Oh, well, glad to have you here. What’s going on?

My husband and I have a bit of a dispute on the way a word is pronounced.

Not necessarily a dispute, I guess, but I grew up in southern Indiana and my family always called the thing you wear to bed jammies.

So like pajama, they would shorten it to jammies.

So get your bath and let’s get your jammies on.

Now, my husband’s family said pajama and jammies.

And he thinks my family is the only family in the world that says jammies.

So I’m wondering, is that specific to my family or is it regional in Indiana? Where does that come from?

Before I hand this off to Martha, a couple of questions to sort this out a little bit.

First of all, where are his people from? Where is he from?

He is from right outside of Olympia, Washington.

Olympia, Washington.

All right.

And we always ask this when couples have a dispute. What’s on the line here? Dishes for a month, a nice dinner out.

Yeah, you know, I think a pedicure is on the line.

Is this a pedicure that the losing party has to give to the other person or they have to pay for?

Yes, 100%.

Both. Okay. All right. And so your side of this argument is you say jammies and he says jammies.

Yes.

Okay, Martha.

This is a high stakes debate here.

I’m tense. I’m thrilled and tense.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, another question, Kaylee, do you also say pajamas and pajamas?

I do. So I kind of use them interchangeably. Like I work with the elderly and if I say something is, you know, the cat’s pajamas, I say pajamas or pajamas. I use them interchangeably, but I always say jammies instead of jammies.

Oh, interesting. And what about your husband? Does he say pajamas or pajamas or both?

I think he uses them interchangeably too, really, but he always says jammies if it’s shortened.

We have toddlers, so when it’s bedtime, he says, get your jammies on, and I say, get your jammies on.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I’m asking because in our household, there’s that same spousal difference.

We don’t say jammies or jommies, but one of us says pajamas, and one of us says pajamas.

I always say pajamas, and pajamas just sounds weird to me.

Yeah.

Jammies.

Yeah.

But to answer your question, yeah, there are plenty of people who say jammies, but I would say most people say jammies.

Yeah, probably by like a hundred to one.

But your question wasn’t which one is more sad.

Your question was, does anyone else say jammies?

And the answer is yes.

Yes, yes, definitely.

I am right.

Yes.

And it’s probably a little more common in the U.S. South.

We have plenty of written attestations of people who say jammies.

And not only do they say it, but they may spell it with an O.

J-O-M-M-I-E-S, jammies.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So enjoy your pedicure.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

And let us know how he reacts to being wrong as usual.

Yeah, exactly.

Maybe some silk jammies would be a nice gift.

You know, you could have your pedicure with your.

Yeah, you got to get.

That’s a great idea.

It’s not just a pedicure.

Let’s one up it.

You need matching new pajamas to match the nails.

I love that idea.

I’m ordering them right now.

Right?

Or just get the kind with feet in them, and then you don’t have to worry about it.

And maybe new lip color to match the nails.

So we don’t have to do anything to our feet.

Yeah.

That’s right.

Okay.

Well, you take care now, Kaylee.

Give her best to your fellow, all right?

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What’s the dispute over language in your household?

Let us know about it.

877-929-9673.

In English, we may describe somebody who’s clumsy as having butterfingers, which I really like, but I like even better the Italian version, which translates as to have pastry dough hands. You know, pastry dough is fragile. It’s easily crumbled. And I just think that’s a great description of being clumsy.

Oh, it is. But you know what it does remind me of is fat baby fingers that you want to just num-num on. You know what I’m talking about. Chubby little baby hands. Oh, yeah.

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

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Matt calling from Beloit, Wisconsin.

So when I was in high school, my friends and I used to have this phrase that we would say, which was a variation one way or the other of, I feel like a biscuit, or you feel like a biscuit, or something like that. And that phrase was generally meant to be, oh, you feel silly, you feel stupid, you made a mistake. Or of course, as teenage boys, we might be teasing somebody else to call somebody out. Yeah, I bet you feel like a biscuit now. And this is biscuit like the food.

Right? Yeah. And after high school, I moved away from where I grew up on the East Coast. And you know, I left that group of friends. And of course, nobody else was ever saying that. And it just kind of fell out of my vocabulary. And then years later, my wife and I were talking about, oh, things from school or things from when we were kids or whatever.

And I said, did any of your friends ever say you feel like a biscuit? And she just looked at me like I was crazy and said, no, that was just something that you and your stupid teenage boyfriends used to say. Doubting the marriage.

And yeah, exactly, exactly. And of course, you know, I wouldn’t mention it to friends growing up or over the years. And of course, nobody had ever heard of it. And I kind of forgot that conversation until just recently it came up again.

And so I did finally find a reference to it in the high professional journal called Urban Dictionary. Oh, boy. Online. OK. And I’m sure, you know, you guys have written, I’m sure, published lots of articles there. We hear your sarcasm.

And I did find a reference to it there. But, of course, Urban Dictionary is Urban Dictionary. So I was wondering. Urban Dictionary is not reputable for those who wonder. They even defined it as sort of how my friends and I did, feeling silly or stupid or whatever. But I can’t possibly remember where I first heard it.

Yeah. And it seemed really super isolated. And, of course, it makes no sense. Yeah. What year would this have been? Would have been the early 90s for me.

Matt, let me tell you a couple theories. So I don’t have more information for you except these theories are possibly where it came from, which is I think it might be the tail end of an old joke. And in these old joke books, someone says they’re a little peckish or hungry and say, you know, I feel like a biscuit. And somebody says, oh, you must be crackers. Because what they mean is I feel like having or eating a biscuit. But the other person takes it as is they feel like they are a biscuit. They feel like they’re becoming a food item.

And then the joke is that they call them crackers, you know, another kind of food item. And it’s a version of the old joke, which is somebody says, will you call me a cab? Meaning, will you ring up the cab company and tell them to send a car over here? But instead, the person says, poof, you’re a cab.

Yeah, definitely with a dad joke. Yeah, so both of these just kind of reinterpret the verb. I feel like a biscuit could either be I feel like having a biscuit to eat it, or I feel like I am a biscuit. I am becoming this food. So my suggestion is this might be one of those things where somebody intentionally misinterpreted a sentence and it just kind of took off from there.

Well, either one of my high school buddies was in Urban Dictionary making an article, or there’s at least some other group of people out there. Oh, Matt, we’ll put the word out and see what turns up, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

All right. Take care of yourself. Thanks for ringing us up again. Thank you guys so much. Take care. Take care, Matt. Bye-bye.

Well, if you know the old saying that Matt used, do you feel like a biscuit? I feel like a biscuit, referring to feeling silly or stupid. 877-929-9673. Toll free, text or call, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Our word budget comes from a French word, bougette, which literally means leather bag. And from the 16th to the 19th century, there was an expression in English to open one’s budget, which meant to speak one’s mind. I thought that was so cool.

That is cool. And there’s another interesting thing here. Our word purse comes from the word bourse, B-O-U-R-S-E, which is the word the French still use for their stock market. Love it.

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. And just like a newsboy and hawking those daily rags, it’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John. Extra, extra. Read all about it, you guys. Well, the quiz is all the way in the back of the newspapers. Let’s take a look at it. Oh, look at this. This is very good. I think you guys will enjoy this. Oh, by John Chaneski. How about that? Yes, by me. Look at that. Sweet.

You know, I very much enjoy the work of humorist and cartoonist Nathan W. Pyle. I don’t know if you guys know this guy. Yeah, he does the alien cartoons where everything’s defamiliar. Oh, those. Yeah. I love them. Easily his most popular creation. Yeah. It’s a webcomic. It’s called Strange Planet. And in it, he sort of looks at our life and society through the almond-shaped eyes of bulbous-headed blue aliens.

Now, these aliens live in a world very much like ours, but their alien-y speech gives everyday experience a sort of exotic flavor. For example, if a being is dressing for a non-recreational event, they may need to don their seriousness cloth, which, of course, is alien-y for a tie. I was thinking of the Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, your dress clothes.

Yeah, yeah. I see that’s a little different sort of formality there. But theirs is a little more kind of technical. Okay, gotcha. I’ll give you some alienese. If you could please translate to human English, that’d be more than acceptable and cause great pleasure. Okay? Peace in the universe.

Here we go. Now, you might have to tell your young one, you will diminish your sustenance needs. What does that mean? You will eat. No. No, okay. This is in response to their wish for a snack. Oh, I see. You’ll spoil your appetite. Dinner’s in 10 minutes. That’s right. You will diminish your sustenance needs. You’ll ruin your appetite.

Now, such sustenance might take the form of crisscross flop discs. What are they? Peanut butter cookies? Pancakes? What? Close. Not pancakes? Crisscross flop discs? Oh, waffles. Waffles or crisscross flop discs, yes. If they’re floppy, you’re not making them right. That’s true. They should be a little crispy. They should be square.

Friends are paying a visit. You would most likely need to use a roll suck. What’s a roll suck? Oh, a hoover, a vacuum. A vacuum cleaner, yes. Now, personal physical improvement recreation. No discomfort, no expansion. Means what to earth beings? No pain, no gain. That’s right. No pain, no gain.

If a being notes that this is where the planet was when you emerged, what are they referring to? This is where the planet was when… Oh, happy birthday. Happy birthday. Oh, my goodness. This is where the planet was when you emerged. It’s your birthday. At an event like that one, you might be encouraged to elevate your cylinders. What are you being asked to do? Raise your glasses.

Raise your glasses, indeed. Make a toast. Anyway, that is your brief foray into alienese. Oh, John, your list of difficult questions, your quiz is always appreciated. That’s right. To my pretending to be ignorant in order to stupefy you, hopefully, has been successful.

If you’d like to vocalize with us about vocalization, you can manipulate your pocket computer. Call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email, words@waywordradio.org, and you can find lots of other ways to reach us on our website, waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Victor Fiorillo from Philadelphia. Hey, Victor. Welcome to the program. What’s on your mind today? Thank you so much. Well, I love film noir movies. I think I’ve seen every single one, perhaps. And one of the things I love about film noir movies is just the language that is used. The dialogue is just so, so important. And when you watch these movies from the 1940s, you know, you hear you hear turns of phrase that you just don’t hear so much today.

A few years ago, I watched The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart for probably the 30th time. And since the time before, I had started watching everything with closed captioning, which was a product of the show Peaky Blinders, because my wife and I had no idea what people were saying half the time. Not because of hearing issues, just because the accent is so hard to understand.

And I just started doing that with every movie. And it was kind of amazing to see, you know, watch The Godfather again with closed captioning.

And you just see these things you never detected before that people are saying. So I definitely recommend it to movie lovers to give it a try.

And when I watched The Maltese Falcon, there’s this scene where the cops pay a visit to Humphrey Bogart, who’s a private detective and former cop.

And he’s under suspicion for a murder. And he explains to the he kind of apologizes to the cops for getting upset with them.

And he explains why. And he says that, you know, he was upset.

And then he says, you birds crack and foxy, you birds crack and foxy.

So, first of all, he’s calling them birds, which is just kind of funny because we don’t really use that term in that way anymore.

But Kraken Foxy, when I read it on the closed captioning, I was wondering if it was misspelled or something else.

I started looking around, couldn’t find anything, did some archival newspaper searching on newspapers.com, thinking, well, this might be a term that was used back in the 40s.

Found nothing at all except for a band from New Jersey that called itself Kraken Foxy in the 80s.

So I turn to you because I have no idea where the phrase comes from.

So did you search for Kraken with the G or Kraken without the G?

I think I searched with an apostrophe because it sounded like he was saying Kraken Foxy.

So the search tip for you is to always search for what they call in linguistics the inflected forms.

So search for Kraken, search for Kraken, search for Kraken, and Kraken with the G, and you would find more.

If you search for Kraking with the G, you will find the 1930 version of the Maltese Falcon that was serialized in the newspapers.

Wow. I didn’t know about that.

Yeah, that’s how it started out.

It was serialized in pulp magazines and newspapers.

Actually, far back as 1929.

And then it was kind of edited up and then published as a book and then turned into a movie.

And then, as a matter of fact, it is now in the public domain.

Amazing.

I hope that we’ll see some new inspired works from it where we’ll get some new amazing versions of it.

It is particularly so well written that it is very good as an audio book or a detective drama with great voice actors because it’s so dialogue rich in the original.

In any case, yeah, you have to break down into two parts.

The crack is the same crack as in to crack a joke or to crack wise, meaning to make a snotty remark and variations of that verb to crack, meaning some form of to say, go back hundreds of years.

And then foxy.

So English has a ton of meanings of foxy.

But the one we want is the one that means to be cunning or clever, especially meaning to be cunning or clever in a devious or underhanded way.

And that’s about 200 years old.

So that’s to crack foxy.

And it looks like to me that Dashiell Hammett coined it.

It looks like Dashiell Hammett was the coiner of those two words together, crack and foxy, meaning to say something cleverly devious.

Amazing.

I was trying to use context to figure out exactly what it meant, and you kind of understand sort of, but I just had no idea what the actual meaning was or where it came from.

I do think I’m going to start incorporating it into my vocabulary just so people look at me funny and wonder what I just said.

That’s a life goal.

If you want a good slang resource for this, if you love noir movies, the best slang resource for you is Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

Just Google that.

It’s free online.

It’s by Jonathan Green, who is a respected slang lexicographer.

It’s very good.

It’s not Urban Dictionary.

It’s way better than Urban Dictionary, even though it doesn’t touch on the modern stuff quite as deeply.

Well, Victor, thanks so much for calling and sharing that with us.

Thank you for the explanation.

Love it.

And love the show.

All right.

Thank you.

Take care.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Well, here’s looking at you, kids.

Call us 877-929-9673.

If you take your finger and you run it down your breastbone,

At the end there’s that little pit.

In the 15th century, that was called your heart spoon.

Oh, that’s nice.

Yeah, that place was also what was referred to as the pit of the stomach

Or the epigastric fossa, if you want to get fancy about it.

Not as romantic.

No, not nearly.

You know, your heart spoon.

I love that.

But fossa is used in archaeology to refer to a dig, right?

Or a hole.

A ditch, yeah.

Yeah.

From Latin for ditch, yeah.

Well, you can find all of our past episodes on our website at waywordradio.org, where you can find contact forms to reach us and all of our social media handles.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Hi, I’m doing well.

How are you doing?

Who are you and where are you calling from?

I’m doing great.

My name is Rob, and with me is my wife, Andrea.

We’re calling from Wilmington, Delaware.

Hey, Rob and Andrea.

We’re glad to have you.

What’s on your minds today?

A word that comes, we think, maybe from southern West Virginia.

We both spent a lot of time there.

My wife’s family introduced me to this word.

It’s quainus.

I have no idea how to spell it.

But it’s used in the same sense as kibosh or smackdown, as in there’s some bad behavior going on and we’re going to put the quainness on it to shut it down.

-huh. And any idea how you might spell that word?

Phonetically, I think. I’m not sure. It was always a spoken word.

My family has lived in Appalachia for multiple generations going back to the 1700s, and I don’t know if it’s something specific to that area.

Or if it was just some colorful word that someone picked up along the line,

Which is why we’re talking to you guys.

I guess what I would say about this is it’s a remnant of ornate,

Genteel speech, and it probably is a form of quietus,

Which is a Latin word, and a form of a slightly longer phrase,

Quietus est, meaning he is quiet.

And historically, it was a formal declaration to certify that someone had fully settled their debts and that they no longer had an obligation.

That meaning expanded to represent the ultimate discharge from life’s burdens.

And it was used that way in Shakespeare and in Hamlet.

And so, yeah, this notion of a final blow, this final settlement involved into the modern sense of shutting down an activity.

Shutting down a person, which is why I think your comparison to kibosh or a smackdown is exactly right.

That’s great. I’m a bankruptcy lawyer by profession, so I really kind of like the origin of this word.

Do you use any form of creatus? In about 35 years, I never have, but I’m going to try.

And so yeah, it’s spelled Q-U-I-E-T-U-S. It’s related to acquiesce and a whole bunch of other words, but the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English defines quietus, which is typically how it’s pronounced in English, although there are other pronunciations, as a hush or state of calm as in the early morning or after a rain, something that brings calm or death to someone or something,

Or that causes action to cease, as in phrases put a quietus on or to put the quietus on.

So you will often find it used in fiction where people will talk about there was a quietus in their room after his declaration of love for her or something like that.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

This is very, very enlightening.

Our pleasure.

Yeah.

Thanks for calling.

So your version of a quietus, I haven’t seen it anywhere else.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get emails and calls with other people who have either that version or other variations on quietus or quietus.

Yeah, that makes sense to me, too.

Yeah.

Rob and Andrea, thank you so much for your call.

Thank you.

Bye.

Take care now.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Call and leave us a message anytime, 877-929-9673, or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lydia calling from Portland, Maine.

Portland, Maine.

Hello, Lydia.

Welcome to the program.

What’s up?

I live in the Northeast and, you know, possums are a regular occurrence.

I was outside and I saw a possum in my backyard and I was so excited that I texted my brother.

And when I was texting him, I wrote it out.

I just saw an possum, like A-N because of that O at the beginning of the word.

But when I looked at it, it didn’t look right.

And when I said it out loud, it didn’t sound right.

So I tried it the other way.

I just thought a possum.

And it sounded right when I was saying it out loud, but it didn’t look right in the text.

And so I guess I’m just wondering, how does that the and versus a rule apply to that word possum that has that silent O at the beginning of it?

Oh, nice dilemma.

Yeah. So what did you decide on? I decided on, I think in the text I wrote an opossum,

An possum, because it looks better. But I think when I was talking about it later,

I was talking to my husband about it, I was saying, referring to it as a possum. So I think

If I were to try again, I would write a possum instead of the an, but I don’t really know.

So when you’re talking about this animal, you refer to this animal as a possum, correct?

Yeah.

Just naturally, you describe it as a possum.

You don’t say opossum.

Yeah, I don’t say opossum. I don’t pronounce the O.

Right.

Okay. And when you write out the word or when you’re saying the word, are you picturing the word with the O at the beginning?

I guess not when I’m saying it out loud. When I’m saying it out loud, I’m not picturing the O, no.

Yeah, yeah. It’s a really strange situation with this word.

Most Americans use the shorter form of this animal name, P-O-S-S-U-M, possum, when speaking about it.

But in scientific or technical context, though, people tend to use opossum.

And it’s really kind of a mess.

I mean, the term itself comes from an Algonquian word that sounds sort of like opossum and

Means the white animal or the white dog or something like that.

But the term opossum underwent aphasis, which is A-P-H-E-S-I-S.

It’s a linguistic term that refers to the unstressed vowel or syllable at the beginning

Of the word being dropped.

And so most Americans just say possum.

But we’re in this really weird situation that you’ve highlighted, which is that mainstream American dictionaries like Merriam-Webster and American Heritage both say that the word opossum, starting with an O, can be pronounced either opossum or just possum as if that O is silent.

And then that leads to the situation that you had where you’re thinking, well, do I use the article A or N in front of this word that starts with O that I pronounce possum?

And so I just want to toss out the idea that O possum can be pronounced two ways.

Just forget that some people regard that O is silent, you know?

Yeah, I know there’s an animal in Australia, a possum, without the O in front of it.

Correct.

So it creates confusion in that way, too.

Right, right. It’s a different animal.

And your autocorrect didn’t do anything one way or the other in your phone?

Gosh, you know, I didn’t really pay that close attention to the autocorrect.

I’ve kind of put a lot of parameters on my autocorrect.

Yeah, I turned mine off.

With my fling and everything.

So maybe I’ve kind of trained it to not even pick up on something like that.

But if I write that word again, I’ll take a look.

So I think unless you’re dealing with possums in official capacity

As a scientist or a park ranger or something, just call them possums.

Thank you so much. This was a lot of fun.

All right. Take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Use your cute little grabby possum hands to call or text toll-free in Canada or the United States, 877-929-9673.

And I’m making the little grabby hand motions.

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.

Linda from Salisbury, North Carolina says,

I never stopped to wonder about this until my nephew became a boxer.

Why is boxing called the sweet science?

I don’t see too much that you can say that’s sweet about it.

She’s right, Grant.

What’s so sweet about a bruising, bloody sport like boxing?

Oh, it’s such a great question.

The short answer is that sports writers began calling boxing the sweet science in the early 19th century.

It started in Britain, growing out of a stretch when boosters wanted to elevate the sport above bare-knuckle brawling.

They liked to present boxing as this disciplined craft with principles that could be studied and mastered.

So was there anybody in particular associated with it?

Yeah, there was this sports writer, Pierce Egan.

He was a London journalist.

He wrote a column that was later collected into these influential volumes called Boxiana.

And these books put this phrase into wide circulation.

And in these volumes, he treated boxing as something governed by observation.

So it was all about timing and footwork and distance and tactical judgment.

And notice it’s completely lacking.

It’s just kind of this free-for-all spirit that you might see in a barroom fight.

It’s an art rather than this feeling of brute force.

And so in these volumes, he wrote,

Sweet science of bruising. How often has man, twice as strong as his fellow, presumed just to

Lark it? Oh yeah, I see it cited in the Oxford English Dictionary that way. Yep, and by larking

It, he was referring to the presumption that boxes just went out flailing like some kind of

Barroom brawl. Okay, but Grant, I’m still hung up on the word science. It doesn’t seem very

Science-like, you know, hypothesis and trial and error. Right, like they’re out there in white lab

Coats or something. They’re out there with beakers and measuring their liquids. Now, by science,

What he refers to is this methodical, strategic way of thinking, you know, treating it technically.

He also wrote on, at a different time, without science and tactics, the pugilist knob soon

Becomes a mere dummy in the hands of his opponent. No, no, like knob as in head. Yes. Beating up on

Somebody’s head isn’t very sweet either.

No, and sweet also he meant a little differently.

Sweet is used in an older sense, kind of skillful, precise, adroit.

It was an ironic juxtaposition.

He knew what he was doing and was using the word sweet.

They’re very aware, boxing writers, including Egan, that their sport is violent and bloody.

Okay, so Egan was so influential that it caught on?

Well, he was the start of it.

You know, these volumes got a lot of circulation.

A lot of people read them over the years.

And throughout the 19th century, the phrase caught on in Britain and then the United States.

But it really, really kind of caught on with the writer A.J. Liebling, who wrote a bunch of essays for The New Yorker, kind of these highfalutin looks at boxing.

And they were collected in a book called The Sweet Science in 1956.

And it gave fresh life to the term.

And through this book, he kept the term alive and helped cement the sweet science as a reference to boxing in American literary and sports consciousnesses.

You know, he made the term kind of exist in these two parallel worlds of thinking.

And the way that he wrote about it, sweet science carries a tone of respect for fighters who rely on precision and ring intelligence and technical economy, as they call it.

And it contrasted with portrayals of boxing as pure slugging.

But it also had this slight wink since the sport has always mixed elegance with roughness.

Okay. So in other words, instead of just pantsing it, you’re using your noodle to bash each other about.

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. 100%. Pantsing it. Going by the seat of your pants.

Well, you can use your phone to call us anytime, day or night, 877-929-9673.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Melissa. I’m from Greensboro, North Carolina.

Hey, Melissa, we’re glad to have you. What’s on your mind today?

I actually have raised five children, three millennials and two Gen Z. And I’ve gotten in so many arguments with my Gen Zs because they’re changing the definition of words. And there’s no winning the argument. I finally had to just succumb because the first time my youngest daughter said, that’s not my aesthetic. I was like, you mean it’s not aesthetically pleasing to you? What do you mean? What are you saying?

And we got this huge debate.

And then she was calling sweaters sweatshirts. And I’m like, I mean, sweatshirt, sweaters. Okay. And I said, you can’t. You have to pull a string to unravel a sweater. So that can’t be a sweater. It’s a sweatshirt. And she was calling hoodies pullovers. And I’m like, no, that’s a hoodie. And it just became, I was like speaking Japanese to her.

I actually recorded my daughter saying something to my next youngest son saying, ain’t a way, ain’t a way, ain’t a way. And I’m like, what is that word? And they just are using the little abbreviations. It’s ain’t no way really fast. And I’m just lost completely in their conversation.

So aesthetic. I’ve heard younger people now say that’s so aesthetic. A shorthand for that’s so aesthetically pleasing to me. I’ve noticed this as well. That’s fine, I guess. Oh, yeah. They make entire Pinterest boards like this is my aesthetic. Oh, that’s not my aesthetic. And I’m like, oh, my gosh. So I’ve succumbed to that. So I can communicate. I will use it. It feels weird, but it’s okay. Champions adjust.

All right. So here’s the thing, Melissa. Let me suggest an approach to you. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes works. It’s like dealing with pets or toddlers. Even in the teen years and well into the 20s with children, when it comes to language, any engagement, even negative engagement, is still engagement. It’s kind of like dealing with spammers or scammers online. Even if you reply to them and say, stop sending me this, you’re still replying to them. And so when you complain, you’re still engaging. My advice is indifference.

Very, very good advice. Just regard. Just roll your eyes. Gen X, come on. You’re very good at rolling your eyes, you know? Exactly. All kinds of gestures. Just like a little sigh, a hoffy voice. That’s all you need. Come on, Mom. You got it. That’s true.

Well, and I do have hope for my youngest. She’s actually a freshman in college now. This is her first year. And she’s majoring in communication. Yeah. So I’m like, I have hope. Don’t teach it out of her, you think. I don’t know. I’m just, you know, I have hope. I have hope.

Well, and these changes are interesting, you know, just seeing language change right under our feet. I mean, think of it as interesting field work. Yeah, on a serious note, just spring from what Martha just said, that’s the real interesting point here. If you can take your frustration and set it aside for a moment, is here you are observing language change in the real, in real time, in front of you, with real life, actual subjects, research subjects that you raised yourself, you know, and you know them intimately and you, and you’ve got data. It’s kind of interesting, you know, and you can record it. I don’t know if you journal or anything like that, but maybe consider noting this down. And in 10 or 20 years, when they have kids of their own, their kids will eat this stuff up. Their own kids will love your memories of their parents at this time and the way that they spoke.

Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s a great idea. And I do journal. Just think about the cold, cold revenge you can get later with your grandkids by sharing these stories. It’s going to be sweet. It’s going to be sweet with all of my children. But enjoy the language change as you witness it. Think about the way and see if you can relate to what you did to language when you were that age. I’m sure there’s stuff.

Oh, well, yeah, I did. And being in the South, my children have actually picked up some of the language. Like I’ve heard them say hodgepodge, which is crazy to me, or cattywampus. Cattywampus is a big one. And I’m like, keep it going. Keep it going. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You’re seeing the tributaries of language that’s spread. It’s centrals. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Yeah. Well, that’s great. Yeah. Melissa, rock and roll your bad self. Take care now.

All right. Thank you, guys. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. Bye-bye. Have a great day. Take care, Melissa. Bye-bye.

Well, fellow kids, you can call us at 877-929-9673 to get in on the fun. There’s an Italian expression that isn’t used much anymore, but it’s giacca civetta, which literally means owl jacket. And supposedly this is the jacket that you leave on your chair so that it looks like you’re still at work, but you’re actually out doing something else.

Oh, a decoy jacket. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I see. So this is the equivalent of setting your monitor not to go to sleep. Right? And a document open, an innocuous document open, and some few papers and a folder open, and your chair kind of canted to the side rather than pushed in. I get it.

Yes, that’s exactly it. No idea why it’s called an owl jacket. And I actually ran this idea past a couple of Italian friends who live in Italy, and they said, eh, why bother? Not one of those Northern European cultures where they would care. Right, right. Who needs an owl jacket? Just go. Run your errand. Have your long lunch. That’s right.

And while you’re doing that, give us a call, 877-929-9673. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello, my name is Paul Dutton. I’m calling from Tucson, Arizona. Hi, Paul. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

When I was a kid, my mom used the term ragamuffin. Like if you were trying to go out of the house, maybe to school or wherever, and you had clothes on that were ripped or dirty or if you look particularly disheveled, she’d say, you can’t go out of the house looking like a ragamuffin. So now that I’m an adult and a couple not long ago, one of my daughters was about to go to school and she had a shirt on with a big stain on it. And of course, I said, can’t go out of the house looking like a ragamuffin. And my wife asked me, what exactly a ragamuffin is? And my only answer was, I really don’t know. But apparently, you’re not supposed to go out of the house looking like one.

Isn’t it so weird when your parents’ words come out of your own mouth? I know. You become your parents, right? Any guesses what a ragamuffin is or originally was? You know, when I hear the word ragamuffin, I think of like a character in a Charles Dickens novel, you know, some street kid. I don’t know, something along those lines, ripped clothes, dirty clothes, like a street urchin. I like it. I like it.

Or sometimes people use the term ragamuffin to refer to a troublemaker or a hooligan. But certainly your usage describing your daughter’s attire is right on. And the term ragamuffin itself is a real, it’s actually a mess itself. It’s kind of a ragamuffin of a word, isn’t it, Grant? It really is. It’s a lot of mystery about it in any case.

Yeah, the origin of this term is quite a mess. In fact, I sympathize with the 18th century lexicographer Samuel Johnson, who defined ragamuffin as a paltry, mean fellow. And then he says, from rag, and I know not what else. But what we can tell you, Paul, is that in the 14th century, a long time ago, ragamuffin was a name for the devil. And so was the term ragman. And the story that I like about this word, and it’s by no means conclusive, but the one that I like about it is that ragamuffin comes from a combination of this and an expression in a northern English dialect, Ald Muffy, which was another name for the devil. So it might be that ragamuffin originally was just some form of, you know, a redundant like devil devil, you know, two words that mean devil put together. And then, of course, the term rag itself might have made people associate the term ragamuffin with being ragged or having raggedy clothes. But it’s a real mess, that word.

But definitely connected to this idea of that there are all these names for the devil because you didn’t name the devil, because if you did, he would appear.

This was a common belief.

Right. He would speak of the devil and that would be trouble.

Yeah, if you speak of the devil, then he appears.

And so this is why there are all these nicknames and secondary names and indirect references to the devil in history throughout European culture.

Wow, that’s really interesting.

I don’t know if my mom knew all these.

Probably not.

Somewhere she picked up the term.

And I assume it worked when she told you that.

You went and changed your clothes.

Absolutely.

Mom spoke, you behaved, right?

Right.

And my daughter changed her clothes too, so it still works.

Well, it may be a mess, but it’s a powerful term.

Yeah.

It’s fun to use the befuddling words for your kids anyway, because while they’re standing there looking puzzled, they are wandering back to their room to obey.

And before they know it, they’ve done the thing while they’ve been thinking about these weird words you’re using.

Right. Well, someday I’ll have to explain all of this to them.

Yeah, to your grandkids.

Good luck.

That’s the goal.

Okay.

Paul, take care of yourself. Call us again sometime.

Okay. Bye.

Be well.

Bye, Paul.

And Grant, it’s interesting, too, that in Jamaican English, the term ragamuffin has been reclaimed, hasn’t it?

It’s a style of music.

It’s quite enjoyable.

Yeah.

Ragamuffin in Jamaica now refers to sort of a streetwise young person, you know, not necessarily shabbily dressed, but cool.

And if you are streetwise, you know that the Magic Way to Reach Us is our toll-free number.

Call or text 877-929-9673 or go to our website for all of our past episodes and minicasts at waywordradio.org.

Grant, I think my new favorite verb is shamik.

Shamik.

To shamik.

It’s spelled S-H-A-M-M-I-C-K, or sometimes it’s spelled with a U instead of an A.

To shamik.

No idea here, Martha.

What is this?

No idea whatsoever.

To shamrock is to amble about slowly or lounge around.

It’s heard most often in Appalachia, and the writer Horace Kephart defined it this way.

To shamrock, also shamrock, is to shuffle about idly nosing into things as a bear does when there is nothing serious in view.

So a little like shamble or gamble.

Yeah, it may come from an old English word that means to shamble.

Yeah, I sham-ick about on a cold day.

I sham-ick about the house.

No deadlines in view.

Right.

Only serious thing in my life at this point.

Sham-ick your way to the telephone or your email and let us know what you’re thinking.

words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words senior producer is Stefanie Levine.

Tim Felten is our engineer and editor.

And John Chaneski is our quiz master.

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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.

Thank you.