Take-Off S Word Game

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 coming in from the outside, now that the pterodactyls are gone, it’s our quiz guy, John Chanesky.

Hi, John.

You know, I have to worry about pterodactyls more than you guys do, because I’m so tall. Because those things, they fly pretty low.

I’m just, everything’s okay in here? We’re good now? Yep. We’re great. They’re completely clear.

Now, pterodactyls are gone, but I didn’t say anything about the velociraptors.

Well, the velociraptors, I’ll try to outrun them if I can. They’re smaller than people think they are, by the way. They’re only about the size of turkeys.

Anyway, trivia. So let’s do the quiz. And we’re going to do takeoffs again. We’ve done takeoffs before. That’s where we take off the first letter of a word to get another word.

And this time we’re going to make two words by taking the S from the start of a word, the letter S from the start of a word. Only S now.

For example, if I said, the opportunity rover on Mars is telling lies about me, the answers would be slander and lander.

Oh, wow. Oh, nice. Got a good one. Yeah, slander and lander.

Now, for some reason, I don’t know exactly why. These are all relatively long. They’re all about six or seven letters long, all right? Okay.

Let me see. Yeah, all about two syllables, too. Maybe one or two, one syllable. Here we go.

They’ve already started dinner, but there’s enough chairs for two more. Seat and eat.

Good, yes. I was going for seating and eating. Oh, seating and eating. But seat and eat are perfectly fine. Very good. Seat and eat.

Now, my family is taking the catamaran out, but I’m home because I don’t feel good. Okay, that’s easy, right? Good. Sailing and ailing.

Sailing and ailing, yes. I love when you think it’s easy. Other people are like, well. I’m sitting here going, doy.

Let me tell you a few tales about my conservative friends over in London. Oh, a story about the Tories. Yes, stories about the Tories.

I don’t have room to escape these ropes. I need them to be looser. I don’t. I lack the slack to escape these ropes.

Oh, nice. You lack the slack. When the stepsisters left, poor Cinderella cleaned up the ashes and cried. Oh. Mm—swept and wept.

Swept and wept, yes. Nicely done, Martha. The ballgame is tied, but now it’s time to get up and stretch. Seventh inning stretch.

Yes, the stretch occurs in inning seven. Seven. Even. Even. Yes, that’s it. Seven and even.

Hey, Captain, let’s enjoy some nice salted herring. Hey, Skipper. Yeah? Let’s have some kippa. Hey, yeah, Skipper, let’s have a kippa.

Well done. So you guys were fantastic. You did really, really well on those S takeoffs. But congratulations. Good work. Bye, John.

As we’ve just demonstrated, we do some goofing around on the show, but we also have serious conversations about all kinds of things that have to do with language, and we would love to talk with you.

You can give us a call at 877-929-9673, and you can find lots of ways to reach us no matter where you are in the world. Just go to waywordradio.org/contact.