A San Antonio, Texas, caller wonders: What’s a good word for a shortcut that ends up taking much longer than the recommended route? You might call the opposite of a shortcut a longcut, or perhaps even a longpaste. But there’s also the joking faux-Latinate term circumbendibus, first used in 17th-century England to mean “a roundabout process.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Take the Longcut”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name’s Jennifer, and I just had a question about if there’s a word for, or I think there should be a word for, when you try to do something quickly, you take a shortcut instead of doing it the right way, and it ends up taking longer than it would have if you’d just done it correctly the first time.
You sound like my mother. That was my life.
What do you call it?
Yeah, and Jennifer, where are you from, by the way?
Yeah.
Oh, I’m sorry. I’m from San Antonio, Texas.
Okay.
Okay, great.
And in San Antonio, Texas, what do they call it? Do they have a word for it?
You think they would. We got all kinds of words here like mosey, stuff like that.
But I was thinking something like waylaid, but then like speedlaid, but then that has a totally different connotation.
So I didn’t want to go that route.
You know, I’ve always called those long cuts.
Yeah, that’s the one I’ve heard too.
As opposed to shortcuts.
But Jennifer, this happens to you a lot.
Does it happen to you in the grocery line too?
Like you always choose the longest line or the slowest moving line?
It does happen to me a lot, and it actually, the reason I thought of this is because I was trying to drive somewhere, and I made that mistake, and I ended up having to completely turn around and go back the opposite direction and get back on the road I was originally on, and it ended up taking a lot longer.
Sometimes it works, so I don’t know.
Maybe the times it works kind of compensate for the times it doesn’t.
-huh.
Yeah.
But what if they all worked?
What if every time you took a shortcut actually was a real shortcut?
That would be maximum.
That would be amazing.
Yeah, I’d be like the most efficient person on the planet.
We would all bow down to you.
That’s right.
And not only that, I mean, there are a lot of benefits sometimes, right?
You get to listen to a lot more great public radio, for example.
Right?
Yes.
I was listening to your show when that happened, and I thought it was a word for this, and now I know that there is.
Now, that happens to a lot of people.
They get all caught up in the nouns and adjectives, and they go—
Long cut’s the one I know for sure.
Probably our listeners will call an email with other words for when you take a shortcut that turns out to be the longer way.
Yeah, another version I’ve heard is long-paced.
Long-paced.
Like the direct opposite of short-cut is long-paced.
Oh, that’s clever.
But I’ll give you one more word, Jennifer, that goes all the way back to the 17th century.
There is the word circumbendibus.
Circumbendibus.
Oh, wow.
Circumbendibus.
So that’s around the bend?
Well, yeah, it’s sort of a joking Latinized word.
Oh, fake Latin?
Yeah, yeah, fake Latin.
It’s sort of a glorified way of talking about, you know, going the long way around.
Taking a circumvendibus.
So you could say that?
I’m going to try to say that, like circumvendibus?
Yeah, that should kill some time while you’re lost.
Yeah.
Jennifer, thank you so much for your call.
Well, thanks, guys.
You have a great day.
All right, cheers.
Bye.
Okay, thanks.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
What do you call a shortcut that ends up going all the way around Robin Hood’s barn?
Call us 877-929-9673 or send it to us an email.
That address is words@waywordradio.org.
