Toad in the Hole (episode #1642)

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.

Google Translate just added 110 new languages. These are the languages spoken by more than half a billion people. And some of them are major languages like Cantonese, and other ones are the endangered languages like Manx, which is the Celtic language from the Isle of Man. And then there are others in between, like Kalalysut, which is spoken in Greenland and Latgalian in eastern Latvia. And about a quarter of these languages come from Africa.

And Grant, I just think it’s thrilling to see, number one, how many different languages there are in the world. And number two, it’s fascinating to see that this is even possible to do. I mean, 110 more languages than what’s already there. In a world of AI and large language models where they’re getting a lot of pushback for their mistakes, it’s easy to miss sight of stuff like this that is now possible because of so-called AI. And Google has a long explanation on its blog about how and why this happened, but it really would not have been easily possible without these advancements we’ve seen over the last five to ten years.

Yeah, no, not at all. Yeah, they look at these languages and they analyze the grammar and then they can present translations. I’m looking forward to it as somebody who deep dives the unusual dictionaries and Internet archive in old languages like Breton, B-R-E-T-O-N, which is spoken in France. I love this. I love the idea that I can now do a screen grab, convert it to text and translate and get an approximation of what it means. It’s amazing.

Well, we love all these little aspects that technology makes possible with language. We’d love to hear about the language tools that you use in your day-to-day life, in your work, in your schooling. What do you use to help you with the languages of the world? Let us know, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is John Cullen from Omaha, Nebraska.

Welcome, John. What can we do for you?

So I had a question about a saying I’ve heard my whole life and never thought about the meaning, where my wife came to me with a joke. I didn’t know it was a joke. And she said, hey, do you know where the phrase be there or be square comes from? And I was like, yeah, it’s like, you know, jazz America. If you’re not there, you’re not cool. And she said, no, if you’re not there, you’re not around. And I didn’t know it was a joke, and it wasn’t very funny, and we laughed about it. And then we got wondering of where the heck does it come from? We dug around a little bit and found a blog saying it was like 1940s jazz culture. If you’re not there, you’re not cool. And then we found another blog from like 2009 that referenced some like British industrialization law that you’re not allowed to work if you are square-headed. And people started to wear boxes on their heads to work so they didn’t have to work. And it just got deeper and deeper and deeper and couldn’t confirm anything. And I’m really hoping there’s a fun story behind it that’s a little bit more interesting than people just started saying it.

Boy, one can hope. One can dream.

Well, let’s address what you found on the Internet. There may be something about the jazz connection, but it’s to call somebody square, meaning that they’re straight-laced and they go by the rules. It’s far older than that. It dates back to the 1500s. Yeah, but the notion that we have now of it being not just straight-laced, but the opposite of cool, like very uncool, or even uncool to the point of being annoying, that dates to around the 1930s.

Now, I do want to address this blog that you found from 2009. I know this blog, and the etymologies on it are just creative writing. They are not true etymologies.

Yeah, that was what gave me a lot of pause.

Yeah, I actually emailed, his name is Dr. David Sidhu, S-I-D-H-U at Carleton University in Calgary. I emailed him and said, well, what is up with these not true etymologies? He says, oh, that’s just a creative writing exercise. And I’m like, I thought you were trying to poison AI scanners or bots. Or I thought maybe you were trying to do a test to see how long this false etymology showed up until it showed up on Wikipedia. He’s like, no, no, you know, just stretching my brain. And I’m like, okay. I like that.

The whole idea of be there or be square is really interesting because that rhyme is surprisingly modern. I don’t think it’s any earlier than the 1960s.

Huh.

But yeah, the whole idea of being square, meaning that you’re straight-laced, it’s got this whole connotation of this interplay with notions of being straight or being a straight shooter.

No surprises.

Exactly as they should be. Not being around.

Yeah, I did just find a Reddit post. Just now I pulled all this up. Attributing it to Teddy Roosevelt for a poker term.

No.

Oh my God. That didn’t sound right at all.

No. But like a square deal, basically. The internet is filled with false information.

Yeah.

Uninformed guesses. Informed guesses that are wrong. It just… You came to the right source, John.

Well, this is great. I appreciate the help, guys. Thank you.

All right. Take care. Give our best to your wife.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we appreciate John’s skepticism. And if you’re skeptical about a proposed etymology, let us know. 877-929-9673.

Grant, you will remember our call from Ben in Philadelphia who told us that he and his German wife were taking a leisurely stroll and they cut across a field.

You know why I’m laughing? Because of course I remember it. Because the flood of email and phone calls. It was amazing. Yes, yes. Ben was saying that in German they have a term for this, Querfeldein, which means literally to go diagonally into a field or across a field. And boy, the emails and voicemails that came in. Yeah, we had to just dig right through them, didn’t we?

A lot of people suggested the word bushwhacking.

Yep.

But for me, that’s always indicated something wild about the experience, like that nature is overgrown and you have to force your way through. But if it’s a managed field, if it’s mown, where’s the whacking of bushes?

Yeah, I think of having a machete or something. But we had so many people who said, yes, in orienteering, we use the term bushwhacking. So I don’t know. Maybe that’s the one.

Right. But a lot of people had a lot of thoughts on this line of sight, pursual of a destination without road or sidewalk or anything.

Yep. Yep. Some people said jaywalking or, you know, walking catty-cornered. But I think bushwhacking among the calls and emails that we got was the winner. So I guess until we have a better alternative, we go with that one.

We always do welcome your calls and your emails in response to anything you hear on the show. It’s a toll-free number in the United States and Canada. That’s 1-877-929-9673. You can also talk to us by WhatsApp and email and social media. All that information is on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Steve from Vestal, New York.

Well, what’s on your mind?

Well, a friend of mine was trying to come up with a name to call his new girlfriend. And we went through quite a few words. And I remembered one from years ago, POSICU. When I looked it up in Google, no matter how poorly I spelled it, it didn’t come up. And I know I didn’t just imagine it because even my wife remembered it. I was hoping that you could tell me where the word POSICU came from.

POSICU.

So we’re talking about his girlfriend and you’re looking for a way to refer to the relationship?

Yeah, significant other, a girlfriend, you know, a partner. But it was a word that I think was very popular back in the maybe 80s or 90s.

Yeah, Steve, the word that you’re trying to think of is possel cue. Does that ring a bell?

Possel cue.

Well, yeah, I remembered it as possel cue, but possel cue, that may explain why I couldn’t find it.

Yeah, it’s the letters P-O-S-S-L-Q, which if you sound them out with the P-O-S-S as one unit, it’s P-O-S-S-L-Q.

And it comes from actually the U.S. Census Bureau because back in the early 1970s, somebody there came up with this term that supposedly stands for person of opposite sex sharing living quarters or partner of opposite sex sharing living quarters.

So I don’t know if the new girlfriend is sharing living quarters.

Well, she’s not there yet, I don’t think so, but probably soon.

So pre-puzzle cue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, pre-puzzle cue.

Yeah, there you go.

I like that.

In any case, this term that was used loosely in the Census Bureau got around and people thought, oh, well, that’s cute.

You know, we need a word for this.

And then you may remember CBS at the time he was a radio reporter for CBS, Charles Osgood.

Oh, remember Charles? He was great.

Remember Charles? Yeah. And then he was on Sunday morning, I think.

He had a little poem that he recited that did a lot to popularize it.

And it went, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do if you would be my apostle Q.

You live with me and I with you and you will be my apostle Q.

I’ll be your friend and so much more.

That’s what Apostle Q is for.

And everything we will confess, yes, even to the IRS.

But Martha, am I remembering that it was never officially adopted by the IRS?

It was just used by somebody who worked there and then just kind of caught on that way?

That’s right. And part of the problem was that fossil cue failed to account for lots of different types of non-marital cohabitation, like, for example, same-sex couples, of course, or a grandma who’s renting out rooms to four guys.

You know, they were misreading that as four different sets of fossil cues.

So there’s a bit of government gobbling.

Or maybe she’s just a hot grandma.

That could be, too. Who knows?

Don’t bring us into your fantasy life, Steve.

Yeah, keep that to yourself.

Yeah, okay, okay, I’m sorry.

But, yeah, in any case, that term caught on for a while, and people thought it was cute, and it sounded funny.

And somebody sent it to advice columnist Ann Landers, and she published it.

And so people were talking about it for a while, but, you know, it just sort of went by the wayside.

It just disappeared, yep.

Yeah.

But there you go, fossil kid.

You were like a letter off, but Martha saved it.

Well, there’s a mystery solved.

I knew I wasn’t imagining things.

Not at all.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for spending time with us.

We really appreciate it, Steve.

And thank you for the call.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to share some radio time with you.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

That’s toll-free in Canada and the United States.

And if you’re somewhere else in the world, there are a lot of ways to reach us.

Some by voice, some by text. Find them all on our website at waywordradio.org.

I had a light bulb moment this week when I was reading about the word disappoint, because it turns out that in the 15th century, the first use of disappoint referred to removing a person from appointed office, literally to disappoint them. Or you could disappoint a ruler, for example, which meant that they no longer ruled.

And it was only later that disappoint came to mean, you know, to frustrate or disappoint.

Right. Take somebody out of office to remove them from their appointment to that office.

Very good.

Hit us up on email, words@waywordradio.org.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

I’m Grant Barrett, and bobbing to the surface and now climbing out of his bathysphere, it’s John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

I think I found a puzzle while I was down there, and here it is.

You know, anagrams are a staple of wordplay and puzzles, and they’re a little tough to do in your head, so I try to add a twist to make them a little easier.

The last time we did anagrams, we did really, really, really short ones, and we’re going to stick to that.

But this time, we’re going to add book titles.

I’ve taken some classic books.

I’ve anagrammed one short word in their titles and described the kind of book that might result with such a title.

For example, for a while, Stephen Hawking was not interested in writing about the universe.

Instead, he chronicled man’s attempts to get enough roughage in his diet since prehistoric days.

And the resulting book was A Fiber History of Time.

Oh, Lord.

A fiber?

A fiber history of time.

I stand by a brief, brief, a brief history.

Brief.

Becomes fiber.

I thought you were going to talk about invisible insects on the skin and talk about a brief history of mite.

Mite, that’s not bad.

A follow-up book, why not?

Okay, let’s see how we do with these.

This is actually the book that inspired this puzzle.

Here we go.

Ernest Hemingway imagines a future where mankind has not only abandoned Earth for the red planet, but now has to leave that planet as well.

It’s a farewell.

A farewell to?

Mars.

Farewell to Mars, yes.

All right.

This multi-volume work by J.R.R. Tolkien about a powerful wizard who could force people to do his bidding just by flashing a toothy smile.

The Lord of the Grins.

The Lord of the Grins is right.

Three volumes of that, of smiling.

It’s great.

J.M. Barrie’s other book about another boy who won’t grow up.

This boy not only won’t grow up, he refuses to wake up.

Peter Knapp.

Peter Knapp is correct.

Frank Herbert scribed a titillating tale about a whole planet with such a great climate that none of the inhabitants wear any clothes.

Terrible sunburn on nude.

Nude.

It’s called Arrakis, but we nicknamed it nude.

Talk about the spice will flow.

That’s spicy.

Talk about it.

Yikes.

Hey, Steinbeck is back.

This time it’s a biblical story about Adam and Eve and how they discovered how steeping leaves in hot water make a delicious drink.

Teas of Eden.

Teas of Eden.

Yes, very good.

A well-loved classic about a little girl’s hidden oasis is adapted by Frances Hodgson Burnett into a spine-chilling thriller where some sort of conceived peril exists.

The secret danger.

The secret danger.

Instead of the secret garden.

The secret garden is right.

All right.

Those are my secret books.

The secret books I keep in the back of my bookshelf with my anagram titles on them.

I hope you like them.

You guys are great.

Thank you, John.

We always love talking with you, and we appreciate those push-ups for our brains, and we’d love to talk with you, too.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your thoughts about any aspect of language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hey, you have A Way with Words.

I’m Sheila, and I live in Kentucky.

I went to school in Cincinnati, and then I moved to California and lived there for years.

And then I came back, and all of my friends and family have Southern accents, which I love.

It makes me feel like I’m home.

But I’ve been working on the Western Kentucky University campus, and the students don’t seem to have a Southern accent.

And even though 70% of them are from Kentucky, they don’t have a Southern accent.

And I thought that was really weird.

And I was wondering if the Southern accent was a dying thing or something.

Okay, this is a good question here. Martha, let me ask you, when you go back to Kentucky, do you notice anything similar or when you encounter young Southerners?

Yeah, yeah. I’m from Jefferson County, Louisville. So it’s kind of a mix there. And what I find is that, you know, the older folks, many of the older folks have quite a strong accent. But I think you’re right. I think younger folks often sound more, I was going to say neutral, but that’s not the right word. They don’t sound like what I remember.

Right.

You know, growing up.

And I think both of you are exactly right, but also just a little not quite right.

I hesitate to use the word wrong there.

And so one thing that is happening, we know for sure, is what’s called accent leveling, where the extremes of a regional accent, and there’s more than one southern dialect, so we’ll just note that for a moment, but the extremes of a dialect or an accent are kind of reined in.

And people sound a little more generic, but they level across their region, or they level across their geographic area.

They don’t necessarily level at a national stage, right?

They’re not all going to sound like they’re from California real soon or Nebraska.

And so the part where you’re not quite right, but this is not really an issue, is that they’re getting new Southern dialect features.

So the old one is disappearing and the new one is coming on, and it’s still Southern.

And it’s still different from the Midwest and the Northeast and the West.

So when you say that you’re not hearing what you used to hear, the accent that you grew up with, that probably is true.

But you’re also hearing a new accent that your young people are growing up with.

Your old markers for what a Southern voice sounds like are changing.

Your old indicators.

So it’s kind of like when you went from, say, a speedometer that had an actual needle to a speedometer that was just a digital readout.

They’re both telling you something, but in a different way.

That’s an interesting way to put it.

There’s a lot at play here.

One of the things that’s happening is that many major Southern cities have had enormous growth over the last 30 to 40 years.

We’re talking mid-double digits, just incredible numbers of people.

And those people aren’t necessarily just coming from other parts of the South.

Or if they are, they might be bringing other dialect features with them.

So when you get a lot of new people in an area, things happen.

So places like Atlanta and Charlotte and Nashville and Dallas, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, they’re all seeing a kind of leveling.

But they’re still very Southern, at least from a linguistic point of view.

That’s interesting.

And they’re not only coming from all over the U.S., they’re coming from all over the world.

That’s right.

A place like Atlanta or Houston has huge, wonderful immigrant populations that bring their own language things.

And they have their role in language change.

Yeah, Louisville, too, for sure.

So, yeah, Sheila, I think you notice something that’s actually happening.

But what I would say is keep your eyes open for the new thing that’s very Southern that nobody else is doing.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I hope that helps.

This is such a big topic, Sheila, and I’ve only really touched upon the barest surface of it.

But just trust that the Southern dialects are still there.

They’re just becoming new Southern dialects.

That’s really interesting.

All right.

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

We really appreciate it.

I really, really enjoy your show.

I’m honored.

Thank you.

Oh, thanks.

Call us again if you have anything else to report about the details.

Yeah, the field work that you do with those young WKU students.

Yeah, I hide all my friends at Western.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

What have you noticed about the accent in your part of the world?

Let us know, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s a word I never knew I needed, ruelle.

Do you know this term, Grant, in English, ruelle?

What is that, a small street in French?

Very good. Yes, in French-speaking countries, a rouelle is a small alley or a lane, but it was adopted into English to mean the space between a bed and a wall.

Oh, so the small alley between the bed and the wall.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, it turns out that in 17th and 18th century France, the rouelle was a place where a fashionable French lady would receive her visitors as they stood around her large curtained bed.

And then it came to denote social or literary gatherings held in the bedrooms of French aristocratic ladies who lounged.

Well, it’s an archaic word now in English, but I think we need to revive it.

You know, the cat always sidles up in the rouelle before she pounces on me in the morning.

I’m thinking about the rouelle in crowded homes where people just have stuff stacked.

Between the bed and the wall of books.

Everywhere.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

My name is Alex from Bishop, California.

Hey, Alex.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help you?

So I was wondering about Godzilla and King Kong with the movie that came out, pitting them against each other.

I was kind of wondering where some of the roots or parts of what those words that are kind of in in larger parlance, you know, Godzilla, the Zilla being added to stuff.

And then also the the Kong, you know, with Donkey Kong or King Kong or other kind of Kongs being added around.

I’m wondering where that may have come from and and what kind of examples you guys can think of in in modern language.

Let’s talk about King Kong for a second.

There has been some work done on this.

I mean, when the first movie came out in 1933, it was a huge hit.

But it wasn’t the first movie about a giant gorilla attacking people and taking the fair maiden away.

So there was some precedence to that.

And some of the suggestions that have been talked about in the many years since that movie first came out was that the Kong part is connected to Congo, which was sometimes used for parts of Africa and creatures in Africa before that.

So there’s like a Congo eel.

And also there were other movies before 1933 that used forms of that, like Kong Gorilla was the name of a film before that.

And there was a Kong this and Kong that.

So we’ve got this idea of Kong and Congo, sometimes spelled with a C, sometimes spelled with a K, that really just was associated with Africa and the place where gorillas come from.

So, yeah, we’ve got the idea here that Marion Cooper, who was the primary producer of the film, came up with Kong just because it was kind of floating in the ether and was connected to gorillas in Africa.

Somebody says that they remember him saying he liked words with K because they were strong, but I don’t know if that’s actually accurate.

Oh, yeah. And plus you have, you know, the alliteration with King and Kong.

Yeah, of course, the alliteration is part of it, too.

And Godzilla, I think, is a little more interesting.

There’s a word for kujira in Japanese, which means whale, and then gorira, which means gorilla in Japanese.

And if you combine those together, you get gojira, which was anglicized into Godzilla.

So G-O-G-I-R-A is a combination of Japanese words for gorilla and whale.

And then it became Godzilla in English.

And that would be the 1950s.

And what is it called when you add like the Zilla to the, like a bride Zilla or a, is there a name for that?

Yeah, it’s a combining form.

And some people call it a crayon morpheme, meaning that the zilla, it still contains some of the notion of monster or large monster from the original word.

But etymologically, it’s not in there.

Zilla doesn’t contain anything like that.

But because of the word that it comes from, zilla now has this notion of, you know, savage beast or large monster or something that’s hard to deal with.

So that’s how you get a bridezilla.

I see.

Or a groomzilla because they exist.

Right. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely.

Yeah. And it’s called the crayon morpheme because the crayon from cranberry is also used to form words.

And crayon doesn’t contain anything etymologically having to do with cranberries.

We just think of it as being related to cranberries because that’s the word that it’s in.

Oh, that’s interesting.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much.

And it’s interesting that these two movie larger-than-life characters have both had their imprint on language.

Yeah, though, we should do a whole segment on that, Martha, movies and language, because they’re so dominant in our culture.

Even now when we tend to watch them at home, they do leave a mark.

They do.

That’s a really good idea.

Thank you so much, Alex, for your question.

We really appreciate it.

Yeah, I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Take care.

Thanks, Alex.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Hannah.

I’m calling from Menominee, Michigan.

So my dad has used this phrase for as long as I can remember, and I’ve never heard anyone else use it.

When he would go for a drive, that’s what we would do up here in the rural Northwoods when there was nothing else to do, go for a drive and look at stuff.

He’d say, do you want to go for a scud?

And he’s always said it.

I’m 31 years old, and that’s just something I’ve always heard.

And never heard anyone else say it. So I wanted to explore that. All right. Yeah, this is the plays for that. Let me ask Hannah, have you asked him about it? What did he say?

Yeah, I’ve asked him about it. And he said it started as an inside joke between himself and his friends when he was just out of high school. He had a 1976 Mercury Montego MX. And I guess the roundabout way that this came to be was there’s an MX missile that the U.S. had and then a Scud missile that Russia had. Or maybe I’m mixing that up. And he thought, well, it sounds better to say let’s go for a Scud than let’s go for an MX. And so they just started saying that.

Interesting.

Well, there’s another notion here, and I wonder if his attempt to explain the story isn’t after the fact. And if he doesn’t somehow remember that scud is a word, both a noun and a verb, related to something that is fast. So the verb to scud means to move swiftly. So people often talk in literature about clouds scudding across the sky. Sure. It’s a little archaic in other uses, but it does exist. And in the UK, particularly in Scotland, but also in Ireland and England, you will still hear scud, meaning to speed or to hit. And also to skim, which is indirectly related. And it’s got an Old English root, possibly. It goes back to Shudan, S-C-U-D-A-N, with that hard S-K that it got later, possibly coming from similar words in Old Norse and other Germanic languages. But, yeah, it’s a real word.

Yeah, and I’ve heard of people saying, let’s go for a scud or let’s go scudding, you know, down on the Carolina coast, they say that.

Interesting. I love that.

It wasn’t just your dad.

Yeah, he would say it and I’d say, what the heck are you talking about?

So do you still use it?

I guess that’s the big question. Do you still use it?

I have used it with partners and, you know, just friends growing up saying that’s what, you know, it’s calming to go for a drive. Let’s go for a scud. And they look at me like the way I would look at my dad, you know, just like a mess. Like what, is this some kind of sandwich? A scud? Yeah, what is about to happen to me? And no, I said, we’re just going for a drive.

Well, you might gather up those words in your family lexicon and, you know, present them to the family as a gift sometime. It’s a priceless thing.

Yeah, that’s a great idea. And I think everyone would, it would help the newcomers. That’s for sure.

There’s an idea.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for calling.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the information.

Take care of yourself.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, where we will talk about anything. 877-929-9673.

If you’re in Australia and you chuck a sickie, that sounds a lot worse than it really is. Any idea what that is, Grant?

Are you calling sick to work?

Yes!

Yes!

Oh.

I thought it sounded much worse than that.

Chukka Siki. It just sounds like Technicolor Yawn or something like that.

Yeah, chundering or something. Like praying to the porcelain gods.

Yes.

Chundering.

Yeah.

It means, yeah, to Chukka Siki means to call in sick to work, especially when you’re not.

Oh, I see.

Chukka Siki. Just like chuck it onto the calendar and go to the beach instead.

Mm—

Sleep late.

We love hearing your terms and expressions and your slang from all around the world, from any language or dialect of English, 877-929-9673.

This show is about language seen through the lens of family, history, and culture. Stick around 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.

As the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limon has been involved in some very cool projects. For one thing, her poem, In Praise of Mystery, is engraved on the Europa Clipper spacecraft. That’s going to launch later this year and will go 1.8 billion miles to explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa, which is so cool just to imagine your poetry floating around out there in space.

That’s incredible.

Isn’t that something? And then also, along with the National Park Service and the Poetry Society of America, she’s launched an effort to install public art in seven national parks. Now, each of these installations features a sleek metal surface atop a picnic table, and on that surface is a beautifully rendered poem that somehow connects to the environment. So, for example, at Cape Cod National Seashore, there will be a poem by Mary Oliver, and at Everglades National Park, there’s one by June Jordan. In the Great Smoky Mountains, there’s one by Lucille Clifton. And there’s several others. And this effort to bring poetry to the parks goes by the wonderful name You Are Here. And Limon got that idea when she was about to set out on a hike herself. And she looked at the trail map there. And she saw those words with a little red arrow. And it was, she writes, a reminder that I was living right now, breathing in the woods, that there was life around me, that the natural world was right here and I was a part of it. I was nature too. And in addition to all this, she’s edited a new anthology called You Are Here, Poetry in the Natural World. And Grant, as you know, it’s an amazing roster of poets. Victoria Chang, Joy Harjo, Ilya Kaminsky, Jose Olivares, Patricia Smith, Ellen Bass, and even the table of contents reads like a poem. You belong to the world. When the fact of your gaze means nothing, then you are truly alongside. And you must be present, among many others. And it’s this thrilling, accessible volume of poetry. It’s one that invites you to think about engaging with the landscape yourself. You know, whether you put pen to paper, or you visit a national park, or you just plant some flowers outside your door.

As Limon writes, nature is not a place to visit. Nature is who we are. And it’s just a lovely, lovely book.

It really is.

That book you are here, we’ll link to on our website. And I have to say, as someone who doesn’t read poetry much as a pastime, I was moved. There were quite a few poems in it where I said, wait a second, that’s a brand new idea. That had never occurred to me. And it was delivered in the form of poetry, which somehow has a lot more force sometimes than prose.

We’d love to hear the poetry that you love. What have you been reading? Let us know. 877-929-9673. words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Andre calling from Campbellsville, Kentucky.

Hi, Andre. Welcome to the program.

So the reason I called, a few years ago I was visiting my dad, and he was watching a Western, and mom was in the other room, and he said he was going to have to turn it, turn the channel, because if it was airy bit rough, mom didn’t like it. And for a minute I couldn’t understand him. I said, what did you say? And he said it again, and I was like, oh, yeah, I hadn’t heard anybody say that for several years. And what he said was, airy bit rough, meaning if it was violent at all. You know, she didn’t want to watch it. And it just reminded me that he and his family, his dad, they used to say airy bit a lot. And I got to Googling it, and I found a little bit on it, but not really much. So I didn’t know if it was just like a version of Annie or if there was another word it came from.

Oh, that’s a really good question. And do you have any thoughts, Andre, about how you would spell it?

I tried A-R-Y. And I tried A-R-R-Y. Like nary, you know, just nary without an N.

Yep.

It wanted to change it to art or any, like when I tried to look it up. Usually you see it, when you see it spelled at all, it’s A-R-Y or A-I-R-Y. There are a couple of other variables. But, yeah, it means any or a single, and it’s a shortened way of saying the phrase ever a. You know, if you take out the V, it’s like era, and that changes into aery. So, like, for example, I didn’t say ever a word.

I didn’t say aery a word.

I didn’t say a single word.

Yeah, and in the case of your mom, she won’t watch a movie if it’s ever a bit violent.

If it’s aery a bit violent.

And you mentioned nary.

It’s the same idea there.

That’s shortened for never a.

You know, this pond used to be full of fish, but now there’s nary a one.

So it’s just a shortening.

And you do hear this dialect feature in parts of England and in Ireland, and it made its way over here.

And I think it’s completely charming.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That just screams a time and a place to me.

That’s about it.

Yeah.

That’s very familiar.

How comfortable and homey.

Yeah, I’ve started just copying down things as I remember them.

You know, they used to say a right smart.

Like if there was a lot, there was a right smart.

Or when I would leave my grandparents, my granddaddy would say, you be smart.

Instead of be good or something, you know, or be careful, he’d say be smart.

You know, just little things like that I was starting to keep track of as I remember them.

That’s good.

Because I don’t hear people say them anymore.

Great habit.

Right, right.

That’s a healthy, productive mental habit.

Like, that’s information that you’ll love to have in several decades.

Right.

Thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate, Andre, you sharing with us.

Sure.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Bye.

There’s an area thing that we won’t talk about.

You can call us toll free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

And there are a bunch of other ways to reach us by social media and text and email.

Find them all on our website and all of our past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Grant, you remember years ago we got a call from a kid who wanted to know a word for a combination of nervousness and excitement, you know, like before the first day of school.

And I think he came up with nervous-sided, which I actually liked a whole lot.

Yeah, I remember.

The other day I came across a word that might be related.

It’s eustress.

That’s E-U-S-T-R-E-S-S, eustress.

And the OED defines it as positive mental or emotional response to a stressor, typically manifesting an increased motivation, excitement, or happiness.

I wonder if that could be related.

That’s interesting.

Yeah, that’s actually a really useful word, eustress.

So it’s a positive reaction to negative stress?

Yeah, yeah.

I think maybe like motivation or something like that.

You know, stress that…

So in the face of adversity, you shine.

Yes, yes.

You make use of your stress.

Ha!

But of course, it’s E-U meaning good.

Right.

Not connected.

When you’re reading, you might take notes of the cool words that you find and didn’t know.

Well, share that cool word list with us.

877-929-9673.

Or words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary Draven from Hayden, Idaho.

We’re glad to have you with us. What’s up?

Well, I have this real inner just toil about people who replace the word route with route, saying they’re going to take a route to a destination.

And I just believe it should be route.

Like you have a paper route.

You have a root of a tree or a hair root.

And I don’t.

And so if you guys tell me that, yes, it’s okay to use the word root in place of route, then I will not be so verbally disgruntled.

So this is the way that you’ve always said it.

Are you from Idaho?

I am.

-huh.

Born and raised.

And it’s always been like you have, like I said, paper route.

You take a route for a destination, but a route is something that’s planted or, like, rooted.

You’re stationary, if you will.

Yeah, it’s not as straightforward as that, though, Mary.

And I can get why it sounds odd to you, because we’ve got two different pronunciations that throughout the English-speaking world are not—neither one of them wins out completely.

So you’re a little unusual that in the Western United States, people are more likely to say root, but not always.

And in the Southern and Midwestern U.S., people are more likely to say route.

Both of these pronunciations are very common in the United States and Canada and the U.K. and Australia.

But in the U.S., route originally gained some ground in the 20th century, but route is becoming more accepted, possibly because of technology.

The U.K. is also showing the influence of the American influence of route.

So the U.K., where route used to be very dominant, is getting a little more, a few more people saying route.

It’s a little complicated, isn’t it, to explain.

But in general, there is some change happening here, but both are incredibly common and have been as long as we’ve tracked language.

Okay.

Then my family can, I can bow down and not try to correct every news broadcast I hear.

Yeah.

One of the things that’s influencing it is that usually in technology, the piece of equipment known as a R-O-U-T-E-R is called a router.

And that is influencing people who might have otherwise said root.

I was thinking also in military context, isn’t it more often rout than root?

Right. There are cultures of language in the military, rout, definitely.

But you don’t say paper root.

Well, somebody might. One strange thing about this is that people often have both pronunciations in their lexicon and use both, sometimes in the same conversation.

Okay, so I just need to tone down.

Because it just hits my craw. It’s like, no, you mean rout.

Yeah, I think that’s the route to success here.

Okay.

Route to your relaxation and satisfaction.

I’m still going to say route when I go to a destination.

Sure, yeah, and that’s totally fine.

But give those people who say route, R-O-U-T-E, a break.

Okay, okay.

I love, love your show.

When my mom and I take a trip, she gets in the car and says, okay, put on our words.

And so we listen to your podcast.

It’s always fine.

Tell your mom we said thanks and hello.

Thank you so, so much.

Very much enjoyed.

Bye.

Bye.

Well, we’re rooting for a call from you.

877-929-9673 or send us an email.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name’s Kelsey.

I’m calling from Washington, D.C., and I have a question about eggs.

Eggs.

Eggs.

Yeah. So, you know, the way that you can prepare eggs where you like take a piece of bread and you cut a hole in the middle and you crack the egg into it.

I have talked randomly about eggs over the past few years with a lot of my friends and none of them call those eggs the same thing that my family calls them.

What do you call them? What’s the family name for them?

Yeah, it’s wishing well eggs.

Wishing well eggs.

And what do your friends call them?

Yeah, so I’ve heard a bunch of different things.

I’ve heard egg in a basket, egg in a hole.

I’ve heard toad in a hole.

One person said pocket eggs.

And then somebody called them Kaya, K-A-Y-A, which I’ve never heard before myself.

I haven’t heard that one either.

Yeah, the last one’s new for me.

I haven’t heard that before.

And this is when you take a piece of bread and you cut the hole out and you put the egg in there and then what, you fry it up?

Yeah, yeah.

You flip it on both sides.

And what do you do with the hole that you cut out?

You put it aside, and when your eggs are done, you dip it in the runny yolk.

Right, right.

Yeah, some people call that egg in a hat, as a matter of fact.

But yeah, this is one of those simple, simple, simple dishes.

Anybody can make it.

And so it’s not the kind of thing that you have to spell out with an official name in a cookbook.

And so as we’ve been talking about, there are lots and lots of names for this.

Egg in a basket, egg in a nest, in a cage, in a window.

I think you mentioned egg in a pocket.

Yeah, some people do call it toad in a hole, but our British friends would beg to differ with that name.

But there are a lot of names that have to do with what it looks like.

I grew up with it being called pirate’s eye, and other people call it camel’s eye or bull’s eye.

Yeah, because of the way it looks.

And some people call it bird’s nest or Popeye or one-eyed Pete or one-eyed Jack or cowboy eggs and knothole eggs.

I really like that, you know, like a knothole in a plank of pine.

But you mentioned wishing well eggs.

And I think that that probably has to do with that whole list of names that have to do with the egg being inside of something.

Because I have heard of egg in a well.

And I’m thinking that that’s probably the same idea.

You know, you toss your pennies in a wishing well and make a wish, and you put that egg in the well of the toast.

So that’s the—I have seen very rarely wishing well eggs, but I suspect that that’s the connection.

What do you think, Grant?

One more, gas house eggs, which I learned from a book, not in my life.

But, yeah, I think this is, we’ll probably get a dozen more when the calls and emails start coming in.

Raikaboo eggs, baby in a buggy, donut egg, belly button egg.

Belly button egg, I like that one.

But very rarely wishing well eggs, but I bet it has to do with the egg being down in that container that is the bread.

What do you think, Kelsey?

Yeah, I mean, that sounds right.

I just, it seems like not the kind of thing that my mom would make up whole cloth.

So I was like, I was like, I wonder if anybody else in the universe says this.

Yeah, well, we will hear from listeners who use that term if they do.

But I have seen it occasionally.

Very rarely, though.

Well, Kelsey, thank you so much for talking with us and sharing your thoughts and memories.

It was such a pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Kelsey.

Well, whether you call it a hocus-pocus egg or a cartwheel or something else, we’d love to hear from you.

No matter what your question about language is, 877-929-9673.

Here’s a bit of slang from the early 20th century.

Grant, do you know what an oatsmobile is?

Older adult transportation system.

We had the Oats system in Missouri when I was growing up.

A shuttle van system for older adults who could no longer drive themselves places,

So to take them to the doctor or the pharmacy or the grocery store.

The Oats mobile.

Seriously, you’re not pulling my leg.

No, not at all.

But what is the Oats mobile that you’re talking about?

It’s a horse.

Oh, of course.

Yeah, the Oldsmobile car was introduced in 1897,

And a little bit later, people started calling their horses Oatsmobiles or hay-burning Oatsmobiles.

But I’m fascinated to know about this other thing in Missouri.

Just a coincidence, I think.

Oatsmobile.

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Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.