Tall Drink of Water (episode #1663) 

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 I have my hands placed firmly on this table, and I’m going to try to keep them there while I go on talking. But, you know, Grant, I’m already noticing that it’s really hard for me to carry on a conversation without moving my hands.

That sounds like trying to win a horse race with two jockeys. It’s a handicap, Martha. You can’t do it.

Yeah, yeah, it’s really difficult for me. But I’ve been thinking about gestures after reading a wonderful new book on the topic by linguist Lauren Gaughan. And we’ll talk about it more later in the show. But for now, let me just mention one study in this book.

Researchers asked participants to learn the rules of a game and then explain those rules to other people that they were going to play the game with. So they had to explain the rules to someone they were told would be their future teammate. And they had to explain the rules to someone who was going to be a future competitor.

And each time, the people giving the instructions used pretty much the same words and made about the same number of gestures. But when they were explaining rules to their opponent, their gestures were smaller.

Oh, that’s so interesting. So the elocutionary force was diminished because they didn’t want to fully inform the future competitors. And they felt like they were giving information away. Isn’t that amazing?

Or they were holding information back by holding their hands back.

Yeah, somehow. Yeah. Somehow. It’s a fascinating topic.

Oh, so fascinating. I’m going to a board game night this weekend and I’m going to be watching other people and myself. I just never thought about this until I read this wonderful book, Gesture, by linguist Lauren Gaughan. We’ll talk more about Lauren Gaughan’s book later in the show, but we’ll also talk with you.

You can call or text toll-free 877-929-9673 or find lots of ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hello, who is this?

My name is Jill Baker, and I’m calling from a small town north of Kansas City called Maryville, Missouri.

Well, welcome to the show, Jill. What’s on your mind?

Thank you. Well, my son, Ryan, who’s here with me today, he’s 11, and he is an NPR baby, and we love to listen to your show.

Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. What does that mean, NPR baby? Was he conceived during Fresh Air or This American Life? Or in the driveway?

Yeah, was it a driveway moment of a certain kind?

A lot of driveway moments. Yes, absolutely. Not that kind, but yes, we do. So we were driving down the road and having a conversation listening to the show about a phrase that I frequently heard growing up in East Central Nebraska, which is I have a hankering to do something. But in my early 20s, my husband and I relocated to Northwest Arkansas to live and nobody said I have a hankering. Everybody said, I’m fixing to do this.

And now we live in Northwest Missouri, and nobody says either of those things. So we want to know why I grew up saying hankering and why, and I still do, which does get some looks occasionally, and why my friends in Northwest Arkansas all say that they’re fixing to do something.

Before we jump in here, Jill, can I ask you, do you feel like to hanker and hankering to and fixing to are good synonyms for each other?

Well, I don’t know, because part of me thinks that hankering is more like I want to do this and fixing is more like I’m going to do this. But in my experience with people in my family and my friend group, they use them synonymously. So that’s where I really get confused.

Yeah, that is confusing because generally fixin’ to means being about to or preparing to. And it is used pretty much throughout the South. And in terms of hankerin’, I’m a little puzzled that you heard it some places and not others. I mean, it doesn’t have a distinctly regional component. It’s used pretty much all over here and there. I mean, I guess I’m not surprised that some people haven’t heard of it.

Would you call it old-fashioned, Martha, or maybe even almost archaic?

I think of it as sort of old-fashioned and also sort of casual. Do you think of it that way?

I definitely think it’s casual. I think growing up, we spent a lot of time, obviously, in East Central Nebraska on the farm. And probably where I picked it up the most was from the elder statesman farmer that lived on the farm that we spent the most of my time on. And he said it all the time. And so I don’t know if it’s maybe something that was dialectical earlier and just sort of became a part of the way we spoke in East Central Nebraska. I’m not sure.

Well, that’s so interesting. And did he pronounce it like hankering without the final G?

Yes. Always drop the G. Never hankering.

Never anything. My dad says it and my mom really says it.

Yeah, I just feel like I have a hankering. It doesn’t quite fit.

You know, it does seem like it’s really informal.

Right, you’ve got to drop the G, absolutely.

Yeah, no one’s going to the White House saying, I have a hankering to be part of this state dinner, right?

Right.

They’re not doing that.

I don’t think so.

But the thing that interests me the most, I think, is that you, because of your varied experience of moving around, you’ve encountered these different dialect regions.

And I think what you’re seeing here is this really important fact that I think we should stress, probably every episode, Martha, is that language isn’t, how should I put this?

It isn’t a thorough mixture.

It’s more speckled and swirled, if that makes sense.

It has lumps in it.

It has lumps in it.

Perfect.

It’s a Rice Krispie treat with sprinkles.

Yeah.

I was thinking of like, I was thinking of when you make muffins, the recipes often say don’t overmix.

You might have some dry clumps and that’s okay.

And then you throw the blueberries in there.

This is kind of what our language map in the United States is like.

We have lumps.

We have dry patches.

We have wet patches.

We have blueberries.

And in the end, it all makes one language.

But it’s got its component pieces.

And if you only encounter the little bits of it, it’s just going to seem, you know, it’s just going to seem unusual.

And that’s what you’ve done.

You’ve taken samples from here and there and seen that hankering doesn’t have to be used by everyone to still be valid and good and useful.

Yes, for sure.

For sure.

It does get some looks when I say it here.

We’re just so thrilled that you and Ryan had a hankering to talk about this question.

We did have a hankering to talk about it for sure.

And we’re definitely fixing to enjoy continuing to listen to the show.

We’re just enormous fans, and we’re very grateful for the fun that we have and learning a little bit about language.

Well, thanks for being a part of it today.

And you two take care now, all right?

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Jill.

Bye, Ryan.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Heidi.

Calling from Reno, Nevada.

From Reno, Nevada.

Well, Heidi, we’re glad to have you here.

What’s on your mind?

Well, a long time ago, back in 1988, 1989, I learned a bar game,

And it had to do with, can you remember to say 10 things in a row?

And it starts off easy, but then it gets a little harder.

Oh, you’ve got to share this.

Okay, are you ready?

Yeah, yeah, fire away.

Yeah, bring it.

It goes, one fat hen, a couple of ducks, three brown bear, four running hare,

Five fickle female, six simple simon, seven simy sailors sucking swan,

Eight egotistical egotists eating eggs, nine nymphating nymphs nibbling on a gnat’s nucleus,

And ten Turkish tykes swiftly sailing down the Suwannee River while singing Old Lang Syme.

Wow.

Oh, my gosh.

And this is a bar game?

Yeah.

This is an example of what’s known in folklore as a cumulative tale or a formula tale.

And you can find examples well back into the 19th century, that is the 1800s, as parlor games or kind of just oral amusements.

Where you’re challenged, as you said, to recall an expanding series of phrases.

And so there are lots of these more common cumulative tales that probably more people know are the 12 Days of Christmas or the Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, because they just keep building, right? Each verse you add a little bit more, and you’ve got to remember what came before.

And in the bar context, did you have to drink when you got it wrong? We drink anyway. Gotcha. It didn’t matter. But typically, as a bar game, there’s a penalty for making a mistake. And then there are lots of versions of this, as you might expect. That’s often the case with folklore.

There are some versions that are so cleverly worded that if you mess them up, you’re going to be swearing. You’re going to say naughty language. And so we can’t share those versions on the show.

Yeah, Heidi, is this bringing back memories? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This was sometimes put forward as early as the 1920s as an announcer’s test. And comedian Jerry Lewis used to do a version of this as part of his comedy routines where you just cycle through it. And when you see somebody do it well, it’s kind of astonishing because it’s pretty great. And you see why they’re a professional actor.

Yeah, there’s some modern versions that are very modern. And you can tell by the time you get to the T’s. For example, one of them has this line. And you’ll hear all these modern words in it. 10 two-tone, 10-ton transcontinental tanker trucks with tandem trailers traveling from Tyler, Texas to Tallahassee, Tennessee, trucking 12 tanks of Texaco TrueTest with Tecro line on 22 tires with durable treads.

Oh, my God. But Tecro line and tires and Texaco TrueTest, these are all modern concepts. So it definitely undergoes kind of a rehabilitation or reupholstering every time it gets borrowed into a new generation. I love it.

Well, Heidi, thank you so much for calling. This was a lot of fun. Well, thank you. I love listening to you guys every single week. I just find it so much fun. I love it. Thank you. Yay! Another one, another one. We got another one. Heidi, take care of yourself. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

I’ve been reading up on printers terminology back in the days of movable type. You know, our term uppercase comes from the fact that printers kept letters in two different cases and they used the small letters most of the time. And so those were kept in a case that was lower and more easily accessible. And the uppercase letters were the capital ones that were used every once in a while.

But another term that I didn’t know, Grant, was hellbox. Do you know this term? I have heard of hellbox, yeah. Have you? Where did you come across it? I was just reading about printer slang in general.

Okay. The hellbox was the receptacle where printers could throw type that was damaged or just discarded. And then young apprentices in the shop had to sort out that type to find out if there was any that was reusable. And then just empty the rest of this heavy hell box. And I just love this term hell box. I think I’m going to start applying it to our junk drawer.

Yeah, the hell box. And then what they would do is melt it down and recast it and make new type out of it. Right. So I guess it sort of went to hell. Yeah, maybe that’s it. It was literally going to the fires. Yeah, yeah, it could be.

Or call toll-free 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 there’s a handsome fellow at the door. He’s wearing a boat neck top and boat shoes and a straw boater. It’s John Chyniski, our quiz guy.

Hi, guys. Just off the boat, am I? That’s just fine. Let’s get to this quiz, which I call three of a kind, four of a kind, and has nothing to do with cards. One of my favorite game shows is Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee. It’s an Aussie show with a ton of wordplay and comedy and, of course, spelling.

This quiz is inspired by a round on that show, and you should be at least a little good at spelling for it. Now, I’m going to give you a letter and a clue to a word that contains at least three of that letter. Now, of course, what beats three of a kind but four of a kind? So I might ask you for a word with four uses of that letter.

Okay. Got it? Wow. Yeah. For example, if the letter is B, and the clue is it doesn’t stop until it pops, the three-of-a-kind answer is bubble. And there’s a four-of-a-kind answer, but it’s really tough. The nuns describe Maria as this, and how do you solve a problem like Maria? Do you know what word that is? It has four Bs in it. Fliberty gibbet. There you go. They call it a fliberty gibbet. Yes. And thanks for the earworm. Appreciate it. There you go. My pleasure. It’s for free.

All right. Here we go. Let’s begin with G. And your clue is a flock of honkers. A flock of honkers. Honkers. This is the three of a kind. Three of a kind. So three uses of the letter G. In a single word. Yeah. How about a gaggle? A gaggle. Yes, Martha. Well done.

Now, for a four of a kind, first I go this way, then I go that way, then I go this way again. Zigzagging? What’s that? I was going to say zigzagging, but that’s just—oh, wait, that is four, isn’t it? No, zigzagging is perfectly fine, yeah. Matter of fact, when you use G as a clue, sometimes the I-N-G words are going to be your friend, yeah. I was right there with you, Martha. I was hugger-mugger next to you. Hugger-mugger. Very good.

Let’s move on to C now. Let’s see. C. It can describe an orbit or your unusual Uncle John. An orbit or your unusual Uncle John. It’s got to have three Cs in it. Right. Is there an eccentric orbit? Oh, yes. You can have an eccentric orbit. Yes. Very good. And my eccentric Quizmaster John. Yeah, that makes sense. There you go. I just shoved myself in there. What the heck.

How about for a four of a kind? If you cross it, you’re bound to get cold. This is a two-word phrase. Arctic circle. Yes, Arctic circle. Well done. All right. I call this one O-U, kid. It’s U. The letter’s U. Three of a kind. Something that gets under your skin. What describes something that gets under your skin? Like literally or figuratively? No, literally. Does it start with an S? It does. Subcutaneous? Yes, subcutaneous.

Four of a kind. It’s on the money. The money that we hardly use anymore. Oh. It’s a phrase. Oh. The money that we hardly use anymore. What are we talking about? Florence? Like the Latin phrase? Yes. E pluribus unum? E pluribus unum. Four U’s in there. Very good. Nice, tumultuous E pluribus unum.

Finally, let’s end with R. We’ll do these two together. The three of a kind and the four of a kind. The three of a kind, it’s you and me because we live on the Earth. The four of a kind, it’s the alien because he doesn’t. Extraterrestrial and terrestrial. Yes, that’s it. Terrestrial and extraterrestrial. Very good. Phone home and tell them you got that one. John, give our best to the family, and we’ll talk to you next time. You too. Talk to you then.

And this is the place to talk about language. Call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello. My name is Jan, and I’m in East Central Ohio in Columbiana County, south of Youngstown. That’s kind of a pointer. What’s on your mind, Jan?

So I came across something in an email a friend sent me the other day, and she signed off with three heart emojis in the order of red, white, and blue. And then she followed that with a little emoji of the United States flag. And it got me thinking, I love language. I love the origin of words. I love the nuances of words. I’m a fanatical speller. And it got me thinking, where did the order of red, white, and blue originate to then distinguish our flag?

Why wasn’t it white, blue, red or something else?

Did something happen historically that came to be the general, you know, moniker for our flag is the good old red, white, and blue?

So what say ye?

What wisdom have you?

Yeah, we’ve got some wisdom for you, Jan, here.

There was a song involved in establishing the color order with the red, white, and blue, but it was much older than that.

There was a song called Columbia, Gem of the Ocean.

It was this 1840s ballad that kind of often served as an informal national anthem.

And it includes the phrase red, white, and blue 12 times in its verses referring to a flag.

Now, we use it as an A flag as there’s some dispute as to whether that song was originally British or American.

But most reputable sources believe it was originally American and it refers to the U.S. flag.

And this is kind of the fixing of red, white, and blue as the color order.

But there’s a couple other things that I want to toss in here, Jan, before we go about why this phrase kind of sticks.

One thing is we say those colors in what’s called a trochaic pattern.

That’s T-R-O-C-H-A-I-C.

So we stress these certain syllables.

It alternates hard and soft consonants with long and short vowel shifts.

And so it’s got this internal rhythm to it.

And the other thing is, here’s a very nerdy word for you to take away.

There’s a term called hendiatris, H-E-N-D-I-A-T-R-I-S.

And it comes from ancient Greek, these words meaning one idea through three words.

So hendiatris has got this kind of internal strength to it, another kind of internal strength that also makes it memorable.

Because we’re expressing this idea of the country and the flag and country pride and nationalism and all this stuff through these colors.

They’re standing in for all these other concepts.

And I studied Greek, but I don’t think I came across that word.

Yeah, it’s a rare one.

There’s one last thing I want to send you away with, Jan.

In France, where the national flag is made of the same colors, they order the colors differently.

Bleu, blanc, rouge.

Is that right?

Blue, white, red.

And that’s because that’s the order they appear on their flag, reading left to right.

Bleu, blanc, rouge.

Jan, thank you so much for spending some time with us.

Thank you so much.

I really, really love your show.

I truly do.

You take care now.

All right.

Thanks so much.

Bye.

Okay.

Thanks, Jan.

Bye.

If you have a question about language, we would love to serve up some answers.

877-929-9673.

We asked you for favorite passages from books, and we heard from Sarah Fuhrer, who wrote to us about the book Cider with Rosie, which is a 1959 memoir of post-World War II boyhood.

It’s by Laurie Lee, and she says it’s part of the literature class curriculum in England.

And the first page opens with Lee’s description of his earliest memory at the age of three and the confusion and bewilderment from the day his family moved house to a small village.

And Sarah writes, he’s plopped down like so much cargo from the mover’s cart into very tall grass, seemingly alone outside a cottage.

And the passage goes this way.

For the first time in my life, I was out of the sight of humans.

For the first time in my life, I was alone in a world whose behavior I could neither predict nor fathom.

A world of birds that squealed, of plants that stank, of insects that sprang about without warning.

I was lost, and I did not expect to be found again.

I put back my head and howled, and the sun hit me smartly on the face like a bully.

And Sarah writes, that last line gets me every time.

If you’ve ever been a parent or cared for young children, you can just imagine this scenario.

Absolutely, because a moment children believe that anything is possible and the fact that you might plop them down and never return seems utterly, utterly possible to them.

Right?

It could happen.

Right?

But also that encounter with nature.

If you’ve come from an urban environment into the countryside, it can be bewildering.

Share your favorite book passages with us.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Guy from Appleton, Wisconsin.

Hi, Guy.

Welcome to the show.

What’s on your mind?

It started 20 years ago.

I grew up always thinking that the word anyways was correct.

And I blissfully went around in life using the phrase anyways with abandon.

20 years ago, I met a girl who vehemently disagreed with me and would go all the time out of her way to correct when I would use the phrase anyways.

She would say, no, it’s anyway.

And it carried over into many of our friend relationships.

And it became a point of not, I wouldn’t say contention, but certainly it would create a lot of friction and playful.

But it did lead to a food fight.

And it may have caused some amount of strife in lives that were otherwise untainted by this war of word.

Well, I can tell you, Guy, that the short answer is that anyways is a more informal use of this term.

In formal situations, style guides will tell you to use anyway rather than anyways.

But anyways is a part of plenty of dialects and is perfectly normal for a lot of people to use.

In the sense of it functions as a discourse marker, right?

You say anyways, like moving on or in any case or, you know, you all got married anyway.

But to put some more context to this, anyways in a variety of forms goes back to Middle English, Guy.

Yes, it’s very.

We’re talking the 1200s.

That’s what I had heard as well.

I had heard that as well, that in essence it was any number of ways.

And I at least held on to that as my reasoning for why I was right.

And we have models of other words that are similar to anyways, like always.

Mm—

That makes anyways make a lot of sense.

You know?

Yeah, always and sideways.

And so that’s a different sense of anyways, though.

That means in any way or in any manner.

Like, she didn’t help us anyways.

That’s a really, really old use of anyways that way.

But it’s not clear to me, Guy, from your examples, which anyway words, that we’re always talking about one anyway.

It sounds like we might be talking about several anyway or anyways.

Which, you know, makes sense that there’s context of how it was being used.

I just, I can’t wrap my brain around not adding the S, and then I say it anyways, anyways.

Yeah, yeah.

And it’s fine.

And you can get, English allows it.

It’s a natural part of English.

You didn’t invent it.

Millions of people use it.

It’s okay.

But if you’re talking to like, you know, a king or a president or a judge or somebody with some authority, try using anyway instead without the yes.

And it’ll be just a tad more formal.

Okay.

And just to toss a couple grenades in the door before we lock it and shut you out.

What about somewheres and nowheres and everywheres?

Oh, yeah.

Come on.

You can’t.

Now, there I go the other way.

You have to say somewhere, not somewheres.

Come on, guy.

Open up that mind.

I feel like you’re challenging me to grow.

A little bit.

A little bit.

Anyway, thanks for calling, guy, and sharing your story and your memories, and we really appreciate it.

So take care of yourself.

Oh, thank you so much for having me on.

Bye.

Bye.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Mackenzie.

I am calling from Evansville, Indiana.

Well, welcome to the show, Mackenzie.

What can we do for you?

So I have always had this question that I’ve gotten into silly arguments with friends before, and it is the word pecan or pecan, however it’s pronounced.

That has always been our kind of little goofy argument is I’ve heard some people, they’re like, oh, it’s, you know, pecan, but maybe when they’re referring to a pie, they say pecan or, you know, vice versa, things like that.

I always thought maybe because I live right on the border with Kentucky and I have some friends that have, you know, more of a southern type of accent, maybe that influenced it.

Being right there in Evansville, you’re absolutely right.

You’re on the border of a couple different dialect regions in the United States.

And it’s one of the things we love about getting calls from Indiana is that two or three, depending where you are in the state, dialect regions intersect and overlap.

So you get these kinds of conversations among coworkers and family members and friends.

So this is like right down our alley, Martha.

Oh, it sure is.

And the other thing that’s happening here is I think you’ve laid it out really well, Mackenzie, that is it pecan or pecan?

And why?

Why should they be different?

And you also brought in something I think is really important.

There is a forced insistence by some speakers that the pronunciation of the word P-E-C-A-N is different when it’s the nut versus when it’s the pie.

So I’m going to tear through this really fast and see if we can address all these issues because there’s a lot to go here.

But the main thing to understand is this word was borrowed into English multiple times.

And that’s part of the problem.

So it comes from numerous Native American languages.

And in those languages, it generally meant hard-shelled nut, the word that gave us pecan or pecan.

And there’s a variety of different spellings depending on who is doing the chronicling, you know, whether they spoke French or Spanish or English.

And those three languages lead us to the other part of this issue.

So not only was the word a little different in all of these Native American languages, it was borrowed multiple times into the various majority languages on this continent over the last 300 years.

So you get the French borrowing it from one or more Native American groups.

And you get the Spanish borrowing it from one or more Native American groups.

And you get the Spanish borrowing it from the French.

And the English borrowing it from the French in Louisiana through this kind of filter, this francophone filter on this word.

And so generally what we can say is that the southern pronunciation of the word pecan, it’s not always that, but generally that’s the preferred pronunciation in the South.

Would you agree with that one?

I would definitely agree with that.

I think I tend to hear that more often.

You know, occasionally I hear the pecan, and some people have quite a thick accent.

But yeah, I would definitely agree with pecan.

Yeah, but so generally pecan is more common in the South because it is filtered through all of these historical lenses of these different Native American languages, French and Spanish, through Louisiana, which is this wonderful Creole mixture of cultures, and then spread to the rest of the South through there.

But you will hear in other parts of the country, pecan and pecan, a little different.

It’s where we put the stress and what those vowels sound like.

So generally, this is why we have these approximate regional pronunciations of this word.

And the reason I say approximate, because like I said earlier, some people have decided arbitrarily, mind you, that it’s different when it’s the pie versus when it’s the nut.

And there’s no etymological or linguistic basis for that at all.

It’s just completely arbitrary.

Mackenzie, do you say pecan for both of those, the nut and the pie?

I can kind of use them interchangeably.

Like I typically would refer to like pecan if it was the nut and may say like pecan pie.

You know, I just kind of whatever I’m feeling at the moment, honestly.

Yeah.

You know, and the thing is pecan pie, pecan pie, where you stress the first syllable of pecan, has a nice rhythm to it.

And that’s part of the reason why it works so well and why it’s very common to have pecan be the pronunciation when you’re talking about the pie.

It’s not 100%.

And I know people are going to complain about this.

But I encourage you, Mackenzie, and everyone else, start taking notes.

See if you can find a way to write down who’s saying what and where they’re from or what dialect region you think they’re from.

Because I think you will find some surprising consistencies, but also surprising inconsistencies.

That is so interesting.

I had never realized how many cultures and different, honestly, how it’s changed throughout hundreds of years.

So I really appreciate all your input on that.

And I think I finally have a way to officially solve my arguments with my friends.

I appreciate it.

Sure, Mackenzie.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

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 we were talking earlier in the show about the book Gesture by linguist Lauren Gaughan.

That’s G-A-W-N-E.

She’s a senior lecturer in linguistics at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

And this book is sort of like a survey course of gesture studies.

And it tries to answer such questions as, why is it harder to talk if we don’t gesture?

Why do we still gesture if we’re talking on the phone and the other person can’t see us?

And does moving our hands somehow help us find the right word when we’re trying to express ourselves?

The study of gestures is actually relatively new.

It took a big step forward in the 1940s when there was high-quality affordable video, which offered a huge improvement over efforts to analyze gestures based on still photos.

And in one of those early studies, a researcher filmed conversations with Italian and Eastern European immigrants to the United States.

And studying those films, he could see differences in the ways that the two communities gestured.

But you’ll love this, Grant.

What he also found was in the next generation of these immigrant families, those differences in gesturing were less noticeable or gone altogether, suggesting that gesture is learned at least some extent from the culture around us.

That is so fascinating and definitely conforms to what I know.

So with language itself, the spoken word by the second or third generation does tend to homogenize to the dominant local culture.

There’s all kinds of great stuff in this book.

One of the other things I really enjoyed was that Lauren Gaughan notes that as soon as someone realizes that their gestures are being observed, they get self-conscious.

And so that led to some pretty funny studies that tried to get around that problem.

Because in one of them, subjects were asked to rest their arms on a surface that supposedly contained electrodes.

And these electrodes were attached to these long cables that stretched into the next room.

Well, it turns out the electrodes were fake, but the subjects refrained from gesturing while telling stories.

And in another study like this, participants had their legs, arms, and feet and heads strapped to these supposedly fancy chairs because they were told that the chairs were being tested for their ergonomic qualities.

But instead they were trying to diminish the number and kind of gestures.

Exactly, exactly.

And Grant, once you start thinking about this stuff, it’s really hard to stop.

I’m looking at myself and other people now and thinking a whole lot more about the gestures we use.

It is a fascinating book.

I have yet to finish it, but the book Gesture, G-E-S-T-U-R-E, by Lauren Gaun, G-A-W-N-E, is worth checking out.

You can find a link on our website.

And I must say, the most striking thing about the book is this isn’t one of your throwaway body language for business people types of books.

This is the real deal.

And I also wanted to mention that Lauren is co-host with Gretchen McCulloch of a fascinating and lovely and just wonderful linguistics podcast called Lingthusiasm.

And we’ll link to that as well.

Call or text toll free 877-929-9673.

No matter where you are in the world, you can also reach us through our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rosemary Wallace and I’m calling from Marion, Massachusetts.

Hi, Rosemary. Welcome to the program. What’s on your mind?

Recently, I visited the EJI Legacy and Sculpture Garden in Montgomery, Alabama.

It’s part of the Equal Justice Initiative, and it is overlooking the Alabama River.

And while I was there, I was thinking about the term being sold down the river.

And I wanted to know kind of the origins and its interconnectedness to really the South and the Alabama River.

So sold down the river. Martha, I know that you’ve been there.

Yes, I’ve been to Montgomery and visited. I assume that you went to the Legacy Museum there?

Yes. And across from the Legacy Museum, there’s the sculpture garden that they’ve just put in.

Right, right. They put that in last year. I haven’t been to that. I’ve been to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice up the hill. Did you go to that as well?

Yes, absolutely. And I was able to find my family’s name on it as well.

Oh, you’re kidding. Oh, wow.

That’s a big moment. So Martha, just for everyone who’s not aware of what we’re talking about, this place is about civil rights.

Yes, yes. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is a memorial to some 4,400 Black people who were lynched in this country between 1877 and 1950. And I think you’ll agree that it’s one of the most important works of public art anywhere in the world, Rosemarie. I mean, it’s profoundly moving. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to go there and see a family member’s name.

Yeah, it will never be the same. And I think just having the opportunity in silence to really look over and see the rushing waters of the Alabama River just really, it tells you about the history and the interconnectedness of words and their journey, you know.

Right.

And so that’s why I called.

Oh, wow. Well, I’m so grateful to you for sharing your story about going there.

And the question about being sold down the river, I know that the Alabama River there, it’s pretty close to the Gulf.

Usually the phrase being sold down the river or go down the river or be sent down the river referred historically to the Mississippi River.

You know, we talk about the phrase sold down the river sort of these days being simply a betrayal.

But as you suggested, it has an extremely grim past because people who were enslaved in the Upper South or the Midlands of this country, places like Kentucky and Missouri,

They were threatened with being sold down the river literally to the Deep South where conditions were so harsh.

Backbreaking work in the cotton fields or sugarcane fields, the extreme humidity, the unspeakable

Suffering. And this was used as a threat to keep enslaved people in line. There’s, in fact,

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, there’s a line that I’ll never forget that goes,

The threat that terrifies more than whipping or torture of any kind is the threat of being sent

Down the river. And besides the physical threat, there’s also the psychological one, because being

Sent down the river or sold down the river often meant the threat of family separations as well.

And to me, it’s kind of shocking that this phrase has undergone a process of what we call

Amelioration, because it has a very, very grim and shameful past. Yeah. And, you know, thank you

Thank you for sharing that because standing and being around the monuments, some of which have children and talk about these deplorable conditions.

I don’t know that I would ever use that phrase or think about the phrase the same way ever again.

Exactly.

So it’s it’s that journey, you know.

So thank you.

Exactly.

Rosemary, we thank you for sharing your story with us and bringing this question to us so that we could talk about this troublesome part of American history and this difficulty of choosing the right language.

Well, thank you for diving in.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Take care now, Rosemary.

Yeah.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call or text toll-free 877-929-9673, email words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us through our website at waywordradio.org.

Here’s a wonderful quote from the great Kurt Vonnegut.

In a commencement speech, he told students,

Don’t give up on books. They feel so good.

Their friendly heft, the sweet reluctance of their pages when you turn them with your sensitive fingertips.

And Grant, I just love that description of the sweet reluctance of their pages.

I know exactly what he’s talking about.

Right. It’s if there’s something magnetic holding the pages together, particularly if you were the first to have read it.

And even better, if you have to cut the pages in an old style book.

It’s all tactile, isn’t it?

Very, very sensuous.

877-929-9673.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hello there.

This is Ron Cooper.

I’m calling from Gloverville, South Carolina.

I’m curious about a phrase that I heard growing up that I never could quite figure out.

I knew what was meant by it, but I never could figure out how it came to be.

And it’s a way of expressing that something has endured for a long time.

So you might say, my family has lived here since Hatchet was Hammer.

Now, that just always struck me as weird.

Since Hatchet was Hammer, like the two tools, H-A-T-C-H-E-T and H-A-M-M-E-R.

Exactly.

Okay.

Now, there’s a similar one in which somebody would say, since Goat was Calf.

And I’m not sure that one’s any clearer.

Wow.

I can help you with those.

The first one I have data for.

The second one I have no data for.

I don’t know of since goat was calf or goat was a calf or any form of that.

I don’t have any evidence for it anywhere.

So perhaps it’s just a family version.

But since hatchet was hammer or since hatchet was a hammer, that one we do a little bit more about.

In the modern era, it’s still used.

It’s never been all that common.

At about the same level of frequency as these other colorful ways that we talk about something being old,

Like since Hector was a pup or since Bethuselah was a boy or since Christ was a corporal.

We have a whole bunch of these, and this kind of fits into that whole set.

Since dirt was young, since dirt was rock.

But this one, since hatchet was hammer, currently is often used in the Caribbean, believe it or not.

I have plenty of examples from reference books and just in the wild,

The people using it in Belize and in Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas.

Interesting.

And the version that you often find in the Caribbean is a little different.

It’s since King Hatchet was a hammer.

Like King Hatchet was some great royalty.

And I guess it’s just a play on words there.

But the earliest I can find it is actually from New Zealand, since King Hatchet was a hammer in the 1880s, pops up in a New Zealand newspaper.

So it’s got a little bit of history, but again, never really been that common.

Interesting. I’m not sure if there’s a connection with the Caribbean or something in New Zealand with low country South Carolina, where I grew up.

I don’t know, maybe some people who lived there moved there from those regions and used it and it spread around a little.

So I do find one example from a 1925 Alabama newspaper where they call it a black expression, but of course that’s just one source.

So I don’t want to say that it is from those other places.

I think more likely what happened is it used to be more widespread, but it fell out of use in most places.

And now it’s just you, Ron, and the Caribbean.

Well, I feel quite privileged.

Well, it’s good company to be keeping.

They know how to live right down there.

Yeah.

We often find this, don’t we, Martha, that stuff just falls out of use and it leaves these weird little pockets of language that later seem so curious and they’re fun to explore.

Yeah. And I’m so interested that the king part fell out. I wonder if King Hatchet was originally some kind of pun or an actual personage.

I haven’t been able to get to the bottom of it, but I will say that in the Caribbean versions, it’s almost always King Hatchet.

It’s not just Hatchet.

So the black author, Merle Collins, who’s from the Caribbean island of Grenada, although she was born in Aruba,

She uses the version of it many times in her stories.

And it’s when King Hatchet was only a little hammer or in the particular Grenada phrase, a little jukutu hammer,

Which is a Grenada word that means kind of rustic or hillbilly or uncultured.

Thank you. That really gives me a little bit of insight there. I appreciate that.

Well, I know you’ve been wondering about this since Moby Dick was a minnow.

Thanks, Ron. We appreciate your time.

Thank you so much, Grant. Thank you too, Martha.

Thanks, Ron. Take care. Bye-bye.

The number to contact us is 877-929-9673.

You can call or text that number toll-free in the U.S. or Canada.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Michael. I’m calling in from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Hey, Michael. We’re glad to talk with you. What’s up?

Excited to be here. I had a question that came up not too long ago. It actually, it occurred after a dinner party that I was at with some of my partner’s friends.

And I was meeting them for the first time. She knew most of them, but I didn’t. And so we were kind of debriefing on the ride back.

We were kind of commenting about how we thought it went.

And I said something like, I had a lot of fun.

It was really nice to meet everybody.

I hope they enjoyed my company.

And I think we had also been commenting on the glass and plateware.

And so she responded and said, well, of course they did.

You’re a tall glass of water.

And so I thought that was a joke.

I thought it was like a total throwaway compliment.

Like, I didn’t think it meant anything.

So we’re just kind of riffing off the conversation.

And so I responded, you’re a tall glass of water.

And she said, no, that’s a, it’s actually a compliment.

So when I asked her what it meant, she’s like, I don’t know.

It’s, I think it means you’re tall and handsome.

And so we thought that would be appropriate to call in and just confirm and get some background.

So I just want to confirm that you are tall and handsome, Michael.

So get that out of the way.

So she was right.

Yeah.

I hope so.

Oh, you didn’t want that kind of confirming.

I see.

You wanted another kind of confirming.

Yes.

But that’s a nice compliment to get, right?

Yeah.

Well, you tell me.

Yeah, what does it mean?

Well, it is a compliment now, but it hasn’t always been.

Now we could say somebody is a tall drink of water, a big drink of water, a long, cool drink of water.

And it often implies that they’re tall and slim and good looking.

And it’s usually for men, but not always.

Sometimes it only means that someone is tall and there’s no notion of good looking in there at all or attractive in it at all.

But in older uses, particularly, you’ll find just drink of water without any kind of modifiers sometimes being used pejoratively to kind of imply that somebody is just bland or they have no energy or they’re just kind of this nothing burger of a person.

It didn’t used to always be a compliment.

I think most times today it’s a compliment.

Well, I hope in this case it was a compliment.

Yeah, you’ll find it’s at least 120 years old.

It’s got a good long history to it.

And generally it’s said by someone who thinks that someone else is attractive.

But Michael, there we go.

So it was a compliment.

You should take it as a compliment.

It’s definitely a phrase that you want to hear more about yourself.

Well, thanks for explaining.

I’ll have to start using that one more.

Yeah. But, you know, there’s a particular, you know, sometimes it’s a cool, dark glass of water, you know, it’s just there are all these different ways to phrase it to let people know.

Like you’re like it’s like a it’s like the biggest flirt term that I know, frankly, if there’s any kind of tension between two people.

That’s a good one. All right. Take care of yourself. Thanks for calling.

Yeah. Thank you, guys. Bye. OK, stay hydrated.

So what are the picturesque expressions that you use to describe the people you love in your life?

Let us know. 877-929-9673 or email it to us, 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.

Go to waywordradio.org for all of our past episodes, podcast links, and ways to reach us.

If you have a language thought or question, the toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada.

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A Wayword Words is an independent nonprofit production of Wayword, Inc.

It’s supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Although we’re not a part of NPR, we thank NPR stations throughout the United States that carry the show.

And special thanks to our nonprofits volunteer board.

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.