Mary in Alexandria, Virginia, wonders when words like senior and senior citizen came to mean “elderly.” Senior comes from Latin senex, “old,” the source also of Senate and senile. In the 1930s, a politician helped popularize the expression senior citizen as a more appealing term than elderly. Less successful euphemisms proposed for describing older people include vintage and perennial. Having reached the age of 82, Mary prefers to call herself middle old. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “What are Good Terms for Old People?”
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. You’ve probably had this experience. You’re waiting for a bus, and you keep waiting, and you keep waiting.
And other buses go past that aren’t going to the destination that you want, and you keep waiting.
And then three buses show up, and they’re all going to the same place you were planning to go.
Yes. Thank you, New York City MTA, which always seemed to be the problem there.
Well, did you know that there’s a term for this?
It’s bunching or something, isn’t it?
That’s it.
I should have known that you would know the transportation jargon.
Yes, it’s called bus bunching or banana bus.
Banana bus?
What?
Why is it called banana bus?
Because it’s a bunch.
Oh, because it’s a bunch.
Yeah, and other terms for this are clumping or convoying or piggybacking or platooning.
But it refers to a group of two or more vehicles, like buses or trains that are running along the same route. And they’re supposed to be evenly spaced, but then one of them gets delayed and it messes up everything. And it’s just, I’ve been spending a little time, of course, looking at how transportation analysts try to figure out how to make that not happen.
Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. So do you have the second and the third buses pass the first?
Because the first one picks up more passengers, so it’s going to be slower loading and unloading, right?
Or if it’s slowed down by picking up, say, someone in a wheelchair or just doesn’t make it through a light in time too many times.
Yeah, that’s a good question.
Yeah, and then more people show up and hop on that bus, and that means that for the next bus, there are fewer people, so it’s going even faster.
Right.
It can just sail by some stops because there’s nobody waiting and nobody wants to get off.
So shout out to all of you who are working to prevent bus bunching.
And shout out to our Lingua Bunch.
We’re a show about language, and we like to talk about anything related to language, whether it’s grammar, new words, slang, old words, stuff that the family says, stuff that the kids brought home, or a word that we need that English just doesn’t seem to have.
And if you’re a second language speaker of English, we’d like to talk to you too.
What’s the big mystery of English that you really had to get your mind around?
Let us know, 877-929-9673, or explain it and tell us your thoughts and email words@waywordradio.org.
