The Fighting Kewpies, Un-hunh!

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, when I was in school, we had mascot names like the Troy Trojans.

That’s kind of logical for a place called Troy, right?

The Trojans?

I thought you were going to say for a high school.

The Troy Trojans, yeah, that works.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, and what about the Greenville Bears?

The Greenville Bears, okay.

Yeah, that’s pretty good.

Yeah, we had the Atherton Rebels.

Rebels.

There’s a fighting force behind that.

You feel like you could cheer on the Rebels.

But could you cheer on the Kewpies?

The what?

The Kewpies.

The Hickman Kewpie’s.

This was in town in Columbia, Missouri, where I went to the university.

There was a Hickman high school had the Kewpie’s were their mascot, as in Kewpie dolls.

You know, those cute little plastic dolls with the curly lock right in the forehead?

The Kewpie’s.

I don’t think I could cheer on the Kewpie’s.

But I’m looking here at a list.

There’s a variety of lists online of interesting names of high school mascots.

And I guess you kind of get tired of everyone being the rebels or the tigers or the Indians or what have you.

So you get things like the Merri…

These are also from Missouri, my home state, Merrillville Spoofhounds.

I have no idea what the story is behind that.

Spoofhounds.

Oh, my gosh.

What is a spoofhound?

Well, I’m interested in reading all about this.

I’ve been really into naming lately, and I’m looking at names of team sports and trying to figure out what’s the power there.

Sometimes it’s a history element, right?

If you call yourself the Kewpie Dolls, it’s probably because, and this actually is the real story, they’re called the Kewpies because the person who supposedly made the Kewpie is from that town.

So you’re barring a bit of local history and naming your team after that.

Makes sense, right?

You’re naming your student body after it, I guess.

Oh, yeah.

I’d be really intimidated by the fighting Kewpies if I were on the other side.

And I assume that the Merrillville Spoofhounds have something similar going on, although I can’t be sure.

I was not able to get to the bottom of that origin.

Okay, Spoofhound.

That’s not so bad.

What about the Watersmeet Nimrods?

The who?

The Watersmeet?

From Watersmeet, Michigan.

The Nimrods.

No, yeah.

But Nimrod’s kind of old-fashioned. Do people still understand that that means a doofus or fool?

I think so.

Well, tell us about your high school team names, whether they were the Fighting Porcupines or the Apple Knockers.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Or if you have a question about any aspect of language, call us, 1-877-WAYWORD.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, hello. This is Audra Antrum.

And I’m from Bristol, but I’m on site right now at a client in Hartford.

Okay.

And I am dying to know the correct pronunciation of the word, what I say, sorry, when one apologizes.

And people always tease me.

I was born and raised in Connecticut, but they tease me and my sister and say, that’s because your father’s from Brooklyn.

My father’s from Brooklyn, New York, and he has a little of that, you know, sorry and very, and he has the New York accent.

And then other people have teased me because I’m half Italian on my mother’s side, and they’ll say, oh, you’re being emphatic.

That’s the Italian in you saying sorry.

However, my Italian grandmother used to always tease and say, it’s sorry.

What’s this sorry?

Sorry.

It’s sorry.

And then my husband, who is actually a southern black American, his family says really says sorry, sorry and my mother insists that it’s actually sorry.

That’s what my mother says and it comes up.

I know there’s four different variations and it comes up and it’s such a good sentiment when one uses it so I figured let me get the deal on this and figure out who’s right and if there’s any merit to any of these different racial, ethnic, geographical reasons as to why we’re pronouncing it so many different ways.

Oh, my gracious.

I’m picturing this, and then somebody says the word, and then they feel like they have to apologize for it.

Exactly.

Right, right, right.

Exactly.

The vowel was wrong.

Say it all right.

My son, my oldest son, who is in middle school, who says sorry like his mother.

People are like, what’s with the sorry?

So help.

I’ll tell you, you’re not going to resolve this happily unless you all agree that everyone’s right.

That’s the key word.

Oh, we might be able to go there after a glass of wine, but go ahead.

Okay.

Let’s just lay it down a little bit.

Yes, there are regional differences in the pronunciation of this word, S-O-R-R-Y.

For some people, sorry and starry rhyme, S-T-A-R-R-Y.

For others, sorry and lorry rhyme, like the British word for truck, L-O-R-R-Y.

And other people say sorry.

I’m kind of exaggerating the pronunciation here in order that it can be really apparent to everyone.

And other people say suri.

I mean, again, exaggerating it.

And there’s different numbers and stuff.

As far as I know, most people say sari kind of to rhyme with the Indian garment, the S-A-R-I, the Indian Indian garment.

Yeah, yeah.

But in the Great Lakes region, including Illinois and Wisconsin, people tend to say sari.

It’s a little different.

And those are the two dominant pronunciations.

But like I said, there are two others.

And then don’t forget about the Canadians.

There’s a Calgary dialect coach who claims that Canadians say sorry as if it was spelled S-O-E-R-R-Y or something like that.

And that’s what it sounds like to me.

And actually, in my circle of friends in Brooklyn, as a matter of fact, we tend to mimic one of our Canadian friends when she says it because we’ll go, sorry, sorry.

And usually when you say it that way, you actually don’t mean it.

So the Canadians always sound like that.

I’m from Brooklyn, but you say sorry.

Well, I’m not from Brooklyn.

I lived there for 16 years.

I lived in New York for a long time.

But no, I say sorry.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

And I mean it when I say I’m sorry.

I don’t think there’s a racial component.

I think your husband’s family probably is just they belong to a geographic group that says it that way and not a racial group that says it that way.

So I’m sorry that we can’t give you a definitive answer.

You wanted to be right, didn’t you?

I didn’t.

You know, I wanted to know the right way.

That’s the thing.

There are dialects in this country.

It’s not a monolithic nation of speakers.

And so the cool thing is we can get into those dialect differences and enjoy them and have a family laugh together about how we’re all a little different.

And that’s kind of nice.

Yeah.

Dialect means never having to say your, never mind.

Sorry.

Dialect means never having to say your story.

Anyway.

Audra, you were great fun.

I’m going to invite you to my next party.

I’m telling you.

Let’s invite the whole family.

Thank you so much.

Oh, yeah, that’d be fun.

Have a wonderful day.

Sit back and shoot video, right, of the whole family arguing about the story.

And then we’ll put it on YouTube.

Sorry, I mean sorry, I mean suri.

Love it.

I know.

I love it.

It’s such fun, and I love words, and you guys are fabulous, and I’m just thrilled to have been part of this show today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling.

Thank you for taking some time.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All righty.

Ciao.

Bye.

Ciao.

Grant, what a hoot.

If you’ve got a mild family dispute like this, we don’t want to hear about the divorce that’s underway.

But if you have a mild family dispute about language, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Oh, hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Katie Knickerbocker calling from Bozeman, Montana.

Hello, Katie.

Welcome.

Hi, Katie.

Welcome to the program.

Hi, thanks.

I had a question.

It came up, I guess, a couple months ago.

I asked my husband a question, just something simple like, where’s the dustpan?

And he replied by shrugging his shoulders and saying, mm.

And it just kind of struck me as odd that I knew exactly what he was saying just by the tone of that little phrase.

And I was kind of thinking about other stuff like phrases like nuh-and -huh that we know just kind of by the tone or by the inflection of someone’s voice.

And I was wondering, is there a name for that type of phenomenon, like a shorthand for speaking?

Katie, those are just another kind of interjection.

There are other things that they can be called as well, but interjection is the more common thing.

And probably the one you’re most likely to know from your own education.

Some linguists might call them inserts.

They might call them a type of vocalism.

But the main thing that’s interesting about all of these kind of guttural utterances is that they tend to be used in back-channeling.

I mean, we will use them in normal conversation and normal discourse to answer questions.

But usually you encounter them, say, on the telephone when you’re talking.

And the other person is letting you know that they’re listening and they go, -huh, -huh, mm-oh, mm.

Then those sorts of things, that kind of back-channeling is so necessary that we do have a, they have semantic contact.

These sounds that aren’t quite words, they have meanings.

Yes and no and I don’t know and maybe and really and all these other kind of nuances that are important to speaking.

It’s really just another perfectly normal form of communication.

Yeah. How about feedback markers? I’ve also heard that term used.

That’s right. Feedback markers are exactly what they’re called when they’re used in conversation.

But, Katie, the scenario that you set up for us, you and your husband talking and he just replied with right? Is that what you said?

Yeah.

That’s a little outside of normal back channeling or normal discourse.

It’s just him taking that semantic meaning and going, I don’t know.

But here’s the key to it.

It’s less emphatic.

It’s less forceful.

If he said point blank no, no.

Or if he just said no, you’re more likely to be offended.

And so by using something a little milder, a little softer, he can make sure that you understand that his no isn’t a refusal to help you.

And he’s not dismissing your question as being ignorant or irrelevant.

He’s just simply saying, I don’t know.

No more semantic value to it than that.

Well, I don’t know.

Did he help you?

Were you trying to clean something up and he just said, ?

Well, I just asked where it was he didn’t know and he said that way.

And it was strange because it kind of came off a little flippant.

Like, well, you should know.

I don’t know if that’s just a husband and wife thing.

But I thought it was interesting that those sounds like implied words and everyone would have recognized that.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s got value.

Most dictionaries include all forms of these.

You’ll find 40, 50, 60, depends on the dictionary, interjections of these.

-oh is the one that everyone knows.

We can write it out in letters, but really it’s best said.

What’s really interesting about a lot of these is they have what’s called the glottal stop in them.

That thing that comes after the -oh or an -you know?

A lot of them have that sound that they all share.

There’s a fellow by the name of Steve Parker, and he’s looked into these, and he calls these affirmation grunts.

And he’s analyzed these affirmation grunts in hundreds of languages, and he’s written papers on this.

This stuff is really interesting to me.

I’ll put a link to one of them online.

The paper is amusing.

The title of the paper is amusing as well.

Toward a Universal Form for Yes, or Rhino Glottophilia and the Affirmation Grunt.

Sounds like a crazy band that you do not want to play at your wedding.

I want to wait for the movie.

But in any case, so a lot of studies have been done on this because there is meaning there.

There’s an important contribution to conversation that’s happening when somebody makes that utterance.

Great.

Also, you’ll have to call this segment of the show Away with Grunts.

Martha and grunts, sure.

I’ve never heard that before.

All right, thank you, guys.

All right, bye-bye.

Thanks for calling, Katie.

You’re welcome.

Wow, who knew there was so much to say about grunts?

Really?

Really?

Really.

If you’ve got a question about guttural utterances, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And don’t forget about Twitter.

You can find us there at the username Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Next on A Way with Words, we’ll be holding a mirror up to language.

Yats denot!

That’s stay tuned backwards.

Get it? Mirror backwards?

Anyway, stick around.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And hey, who is this?

It’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hello, baby.

Hi, Grant.

What’s up, buddy?

How are you doing over there?

Hello.

Good, good.

I’m doing great.

It’s a nice day here.

And this is what I’m going to give you.

I’m going to give you a quiz today.

It’s called, there’s an app for that.

I’m going to give you the definition of a word, and this will be a word that becomes a new word if you add app to the beginning of it.

Okay.

Okay?

For example, if I said the opposite of begin, you’d think?

Append.

Append, right.

Append, right.

Append, app, and you get append.

It’s pretty simple.

Okay.

Yeah, sure.

Ready to go?

Mm—

Good.

Here we go.

Here’s the first clue.

The organ you use to hear.

Appear.

Appear.

Good.

Ear.

Appear.

Here’s the next one.

Freedom from difficulty or effort.

Appease.

Appease.

Very good.

Very nice.

Nice.

How about this one?

Told a fib.

Prevaricated.

Applied.

Apply.

Nice work.

Okay.

How about a soothing balm or salve?

Appointment.

Nice.

Appointment.

Thank you, Martha.

Yeah, it’s a nice long one.

Appointment.

Appointment.

Here’s the next.

A common household insect of the order Blattaria.

Approach.

Approach.

Good.

I was approached by a roach last night, but I got the better of him, I think.

Here’s the next.

To wander about to Rome.

I was going to say a pwonder, but…

In this case, the word, once you add the app to it, the sound changes.

To wander about to Rome.

Right.

To Rome is to…

To range?

To mosey?

Think of the Bush White House and a certain person who was an advisor.

Oh, approve.

Right, approve.

Rove and approve.

That’s good.

Nice.

You got the tricky one.

Okay.

Now, those are pretty good, but let’s change it up.

These next words take A-P-P not at the beginning, but somewhere within the word.

Okay?

Okay.

Okay.

For example, if I said, a vehicle used to glide down a snow-covered hill, you might respond?

Well, you would think it would be a sled or a toboggan.

No, sled is correct.

Now, add app somewhere in there to get a new word.

Slapped?

Slapped, yes.

Very good.

Okay, I see.

Oh, tricky.

Yeah, here’s another tricky one.

A female chicken.

Happen.

Happen, very good.

Hen happen, nice.

How about a lightweight chord or part of a violin?

Strapping.

Strapping, good, Grant, yes.

Oh, right.

That was teamwork.

I heard Martha start in on that one.

Very good.

String, strapping.

Good.

Here’s another.

Pioneered.

Had the advantage in a race.

Led.

Led.

Led.

Lapped.

Lapped, right.

To drink up with the tongue like a cat.

Nice work.

All right.

And here’s the last one.

To weep.

Oh, crappy.

Crappy.

Very good.

Cry to crappy.

Yes, and on that crappy note, I am going to take my leave.

You guys did really well on that app puzzle.

Well, that was an easy one, John.

Are we in trouble next week?

Maybe.

Although Martha got all of them right.

I didn’t do anything here but make notes.

Well, I was waiting for the clue, a horse that’s not a winner.

A horse that’s not a winner?

Mm—

Does this have app at the beginning of it?

Appaloosa.

Yeah.

Appaloosa.

That’s great.

We’re turning you guys into puzzle creators, which is really good.

Do I have a future as a quiz guy, do you think?

Yes, you’re in.

You’re in the club.

All right.

Well, thanks, John.

This was super duper.

Thank you, guys.

I’ll see you next time.

And if you want to talk about words and how we use them, grammar, slang, any aspect of language, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Super duper. Who’s this?

This is Tafrica Harewood from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hi, Tafrica. Welcome to the program.

Welcome.

Thank you.

I am calling because I’d like to know the origin of the word colorblind and when it started being used to reference people who are considered to be tolerant of others’ differences, whether it be racial or color differences or what have you.

Oh, interesting question. What got you wondering about that?

Well, my husband and I were reading an article in Newsweek about whether or not babies are racist, which was a very interesting question. And it used the term colorblind. And then we got talking about it and wondered if you guys could give us an answer about that.

How interesting.

I didn’t read the article.

What did it say?

It was just talking about whether or not children are born knowing difference and being able to kind of segregate themselves according to their own differences or if that’s something taught by their parents.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

So in that context, they were using the term colorblind to mean just sort of oblivious to the color of one’s skin.

Exactly.

Is that right?

Okay.

Well, I can tell you that the earliest uses of colorblind had to do specifically with that physical inability to see certain colors. The colorblindness that we think of as afflicting about what? About 8 or 9 percent of the population, I think? Mostly men, right?

Yeah, mostly men. You know, when they can’t see certain colors. And that first came to light in 1794.

The phenomenon did. There was a scientist named John Dalton in England who realized that he and his brother saw things differently. And he ended up writing this paper that at the time really caught people up short because people hadn’t really thought about that before. And so for a few decades, it was called Daltonism, that physical condition. And then people started using the term colorblind instead.

But the original sense of colorblind was, as I said, that physical inability to see certain colors. It’s such an interesting phenomenon that pretty soon it took on metaphorical connotations, you know, being colorblind as to politics or something like that. People started using it metaphorically. Or colorblind to gender as well.

Yeah, yeah. Isn’t that weird? Colorblind to gender. And also in reference to race as well.

Okay.

Wow. You can find it in reference to race as early as 1865, maybe even a little earlier than that. There was an Anglican bishop who was a black man who was the first Anglican bishop to be something other than white. And Samuel Crowther, I believe, was his name. And so the term came up in some writings related to his appointment.

Okay.

And by 1890, colorblind, to mean insensitive to the color of one’s skin, was so entrenched that people wrote about it in terms of that it was the main use of it outside of medical cases. It’s almost always about race these days when we talk about colorblindness, right, Martha? We almost never say it in reference to gender or disability.

Exactly.

But for a while there, it was fairly general. Glad we asked. I’m glad you had an answer. I really appreciate it.

We are, too. And now I want to go look up that Newsweek article, too.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. It was really interesting.

Well, thanks a lot for calling, Taffrica.

Thank you.

Have a great one.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, Grant, it’s really fun to look at scientific writings around that period when people started getting a clue. Because why wouldn’t you assume that everybody saw colors the same way that you do? But there are all these accounts of people figuring out that this captain ran his ship aground because he couldn’t tell the difference between the red lights and the green lights on the buoys.

Very interesting.

Yes, and I remember reading that there was, this is the period when people started to understand more clearly that some traits were inherited through the family line that weren’t obvious, like the color of the eyes or the color of the hair, right? People started to understand that there were other things about the body that were passed from the parents to the children.

Fascinating stuff.

Well, if you were reading an article and a word jumped out at you and you’re curious about it, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Derek. I’m calling from Provo, Utah.

Hello, Derek. Welcome.

Hi, Derek. Welcome to the program.

Thank you. I’m so excited to be on the show, by the way. I love it. I’ve been listening since like 2005, and I just love it.

We’re delighted to have you. What’s up?

Thank you. Well, I have a question, and I have a theory. And I guess my question is actually if my theory is correct. But my theory is about the word really. I feel like I notice a particular way that people use this word, including myself. It has to do with the tone of voice that they use when they say this word. And it’s like when they say really.

And so I have a few examples. But my theory is that this comes from Tina Fey. So would you like the examples?

Sure.

Oh, yeah, sure. Well, like when something doesn’t work, like maybe your calculator doesn’t work or your phone doesn’t work, you’ll just look at the phone and you’ll just say, really? Really, phone? You’re not going to work for me? Or another one is like when a professor, maybe there’s a Thanksgiving break or a 3-day weekend or something, and the professor gives a lot of homework for that particular weekend. You just look at the professor and say, really? Really? We have this homework?

And so I think that when they say it in that tone of voice, it’s like a way of calling out the ridiculousness of something or a person’s behavior.

That’s a great way to put it.

Well, my theory is that this comes from Tina Fey because on SNL, on Saturday Night Live, she had this, and they still do it, this segment where something ridiculous will happen in the news and then Tina Fey would say, really? And I just think that maybe this comes from that.

Yes, yes, yes. I noticed this earlier this year, and I was like, what is the deal with this new catchphrase? I mean, people have been saying really in this way for, you know, really to mean doubt or skepticism or to indicate that you’re not really sure that that’s what they meant for a long time. That’s not new. But it’s this particular, yeah, it’s exactly that. That particular way.

You nailed it, Derek. You got it exactly right. That particular way of saying it. And also the compulsion on the part of the speaker to say it that way. They can’t help themselves. It has all the hallmarks of a catchphrase.

And I think you’re right. I’ve seen the segments on Saturday Night Live. They call it Really with Seth and Amy. I don’t think Amy Poehler is on the show anymore. It was Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. And they do this. They just basically pick some public figure who’s done something absolutely ignorant, something just ridiculous, and they make fun of them. And they just keep saying it in a lot of different ways.

Really, Blagojevich? Really? That’s your best effort? Elliot Spitzer, really? Yeah, the whole thing is just them coming up with all these different ways to mock these public figures. And it’s just layered. I mean, it’s just riddled with the word really.

Really? Really? That’s all you got for me? It turns out that this Saturday Night Live segment, which I wasn’t quite aware that Tina Fey did it, but it’s so hard.

Yeah, I don’t remember her doing it.

She did? She’s so 100% awesome. I want to give her credit for it anyway, even if I can’t prove it. I like Tina Fey, so I’ll give her credit. I think that’s where it came from.

I hear a lot of people doing this. I hear it in casual conversation. Colleagues say it. I’ve heard people say it on the radio. I’ve heard people say it in podcasts. I’ve seen it in scripted, acted television shows and, of course, on Saturday Night Live. And it’s the compulsion of it, which I think underlies my whole argument that it’s a catchphrase.

Really as a word isn’t new. Saying really to express skepticism isn’t new. But that particular tone of voice and the compulsion on the part of the speaker to come out with it, that’s what makes it a catchphrase.

Yeah.

I think it’s really handy. It’s a great way to make fun of…

Really? Really? That’s what you want to say to me?

Yes, really, I do.

It’s a great way to make fun of public figures who should know better.

You know, really, Kanye? Really?

You can hear parents say this to their children, which is just ridiculous because the kids don’t get it.

They just take it at face value.

Well, do you think it has staying power, Derek?

Good question, Derek. What do you think?

I think so.

The reason I like it is because, I mean, what you just said is brilliant about it being a catchphrase.

Because it’s not like what you said.

It’s not a new word, but it’s a new way of saying an old word, which I think that will have staying power.

We’ll see what happens.

We’ll see.

We’ll have to touch base on this again, Derek, in a couple of years, all right?

Really.

Okay, great.

Well, thank you so much for taking my call.

It was really fun to talk to you.

It really was.

It was fantastic.

Thank you, sir.

Good luck with your studies.

All right, bye-bye.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

I love that Derek’s saying it to his phone.

Really phone?

Yeah.

Well, see, you kind of get the idea about, I keep using this word compulsion.

Yeah, yeah.

You get the idea of like it seems to fit in all these normal life situations where you want to protest by casting some doubt on the other party.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you’ve got a catchphrase that you would like us to get to the bottom of, give us a call.

Sometimes we can help.

1-877-929-967.

This is going to get old fast.

1-877-929-9673 or email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Dave Hartman calling from New Haven, Connecticut.

Hi, Dave. How are you doing?

I’m well. How are you?

Doing very well. What’s up?

A very interesting situation, I think, unique to me.

My father is a retired professor of English and comparative literature from Yale University, and his only son has decided that police work is going to be his vocation.

Cool.

I joined the police academy about 15 years ago, and the only thing that was of interest to my father, it seemed, was reading some of my police reports.

And I was very willing to show him these reports.

And he read one, and he looked at one word over and over again, recurring in the report, and the word was complainant.

And he looked at me, and he said, what is this word that I keep seeing?

And I said, well, this is the person making the complaint.

You know, I’m looking at him like he was daft.

And he said, well, that’s not a word.

I said, well, of course it’s a word.

They taught us this in the police academy for the last eight months.

He said, well, there already is a word for someone who makes a complaint.

I said, well, yeah, complainant.

He said, no, complainer.

And we both kind of agreed that someone making a complaint as a crime victim, call them a complainer, would probably not be appropriate.

It had a negative ring to it.

Yeah, it sounds like a catcher or something.

Wondering what your take on that would be.

Well, I’m glad to hear that you two came to the right decision on that.

I would hate to try to undermine a respected retired Yale professor, particularly one who specializes in English and literature.

Right.

But here’s the thing.

Complainant is legal jargon, and it belongs to that body of work, including law enforcement.

And so within that domain of expertise, it is the right word for that particular thing to mean the person who complains.

I feel vindicated now.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Except in Scotland, complainer is not the right word.

In Scotland, in their courts and in their law, they use the word complainer.

Right.

So complainer is absolutely 100% the correct word to use.

It sounds a little bit like overblown language, but you just nailed it.

You itemized the exact reason why we don’t want to use complainer.

Because it sounds like you’re making a personal judgment rather than a legal judgment.

Yeah, well, yeah.

And it’s one of those French legal terms that comes from the French present participle, like defendant, like tenant.

The complainant is the one complaining.

It’s from a present participle.

It’s just a statement of fact.

Yeah.

And what’s interesting is that complainant and complainer have long histories in English, and they forked, so to speak.

That is, they split off from their common etymological ancestor a long time ago.

So they’ve had plenty of time to take on nuance and meaning so that they’re very different from each other.

Right.

One of the things my dad did say was that the word complainer also seems to denote somebody who does this over and over and over again.

Yes. Very good. Very good.

Habitual complainer.

I find that nuance to be there as well in my own understanding.

-huh.

All right. Well, I hope we helped, Dave.

You certainly have.

Okay. Super duper. Thanks for calling.

All right. No complaints.

Thank you very much.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a linguistic complaint or a linguistic question, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send those complaints to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, a little word puzzle for you.

Okay.

I’m weightless, but you can see me.

Put me in a bucket and I’ll make it lighter.

What am I?

Air.

Put air in a bucket and it’ll be lighter?

I don’t know.

A hole.

Oh, oh.

Okay, got it.

A hole.

That’s nice.

I’m weightless, but you can see me put me in a bucket and I’ll make it lighter.

Your riddles, jokes, and pranks to words@waywordradio.org.

No spam, please.

Or give us a call at 1-877-929-9673.

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Park Manor Suites in the center of it all.

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, one of the ways in which you can beat people on online word games is to cheat.

You’re telling me?

Yeah, I just want to say that, you know, if you want to be really good at playing Scrabble online or any kind of word search or even doing crossword puzzles.

Now, why would I want to cheat?

Well, okay, let’s not say cheat.

How about help yourself along with some digital tools?

And I’ve got a couple of them for you.

And sometimes if you’re just playing against yourself, it’s okay.

Okay, performance-enhancing digital tools.

Right, right.

Let me have it.

So the P-E-D-T that we’re using today, one of them is called wordnavigator.com.

And what this site allows you to do is to do what’s called wild carding.

So let’s say that I have a crossword puzzle and I’ve got two blank squares in the middle of it.

And I can’t quite make out what the word is.

I can go into Word Navigator, put question marks where those two blanks are, and put all the other letters that I do know.

And it will come up with all the words that match putting any character where the question mark is.

Does that make sense?

-huh, sure.

It comes with every possible word in English.

They have an immense dictionary, I guess, and it’s great.

It’s brilliant.

And so you can fill in that square and kind of move along if you’re stuck.

This is particularly useful for crossword puzzles, but it can also be used for Scrabble because you can go to the A Word a Day anagram server, for example, put all of your tiles for Scrabble into their anagram server, and it will come up with all the possible words that you can make.

Yo!

Yeah, yeah, that’s kind of cool.

And there are other sites that do anagrams that will also tell you the ones with the highest Scrabble score, although they’re not perfect.

But, of course, if you’re playing competitively online, you know, yeah, maybe you don’t want to cheat because it kind of takes the fun out of it.

In any case, these are the tools that you can use to help you along when you’re doing puzzles and quizzes and crosswords online.

We’ll link to these on the website, wordnavigator.com, the A Word a Day anagram server, and a couple of others just to help you along for your puzzle solving.

And in the meantime, if you’re puzzling over a word,

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673,

Or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lori, and I’m calling from Lodi, Wisconsin.

Well, hi, Lori. How are you doing today?

I’m well, thanks. How are you?

Super-duper. Welcome to the program.

Doing well. Finding frogs here.

And what can we do you for?

Well, I am a veterinarian, and I was having a conversation with another veterinary friend of mine.

It was probably like a year ago now, and nausea came up.

And I said something about being nauseous.

And she said, hey, you know, funny thing, I have found out she grew up in Wisconsin where I did,

And she was in Florida at the time.

And she said, I found out that nauseous means contagious.

So what you’re saying is you have nausea that’s contagious.

What you mean is that you’re nauseated.

And I’d never heard the distinction, and now since we had the conversation,

I see nauseous everywhere.

Oh, my.

Yes.

You see nauseous used in what sense?

In the sense that I am nauseated.

Like, are you feeling nauseous?

I’ve seen it on TV programs like House.

I see it in novels.

I almost never see nauseated.

So I didn’t know if it was a Midwest thing, but then when I saw it on TV, I thought, probably not.

And I just wonder if she’s right.

Yeah, you’re right, Lori.

It’s all over.

And this is an example of being able to feel language shifting right underneath our feet.

And I don’t know, maybe that’s nausea-inducing.

But yeah, the fact is that traditionally, the traditional rule, the rule that sticklers love, is that nauseous, and you pronounce it nauseous, not nauseous, as you did.

Nauseous means nausea-inducing, and nauseated means feeling nausea, right?

Right.

The problem here is that fewer and fewer people know this rule.

In fact, more people now say nauseous for feeling nauseated than the other way around, than the traditional rule.

So the meaning of nauseous is clearly in the process of change.

And, you know, I feel that some grammatical rules are really, really helpful, and I’m very attached to them.

But trying to enforce this rule is sort of the equivalent of being in your neighborhood coffee shop and drinking your coffee with your pinky finger extended, you know?

It’s a little precious.

And when I’m talking to clients, I try and be appropriate, and I try and say nauseated, and I feel like I’m being pretentious.

Right, right.

You do this little dance around it, right?

And they probably say, I think little Fifi’s feeling nauseous.

And she probably is.

I mean, if somebody tells me they’re feeling nauseous, I’m definitely going to step out of the way.

You know, I mean, the meaning is clear enough, don’t you think?

Right. Yes. Yeah.

And I just, I haven’t really seen anyone use nauseated since I’ve become aware of it.

Yeah, that’s not surprising.

In British data, nauseous, meaning affected with nausea, occurs about 65% of the time.

And in American data, 85% of the time.

Yeah, yeah.

So it’s definitely changing.

Very few people are saying nauseated that way.

So I’m not being overly naughty if I go back to using nauseous.

No.

Ooh, ooh.

Are we going to get in trouble with the grammar police?

They’ve got no guns.

It doesn’t matter.

They’ve just got little hats.

Well, I’m sure some of them do.

Little hat, little badge.

I think you’re perfectly fine going with the mainstream on this.

Yeah.

Nauseous.

Nauseous.

Yeah, it’s totally fine.

You’re ahead of the curve.

Nauseous to mean feeling nauseated.

Yeah.

Go ahead, Lori, and use it, all right?

Okay.

Okay.

I just wanted to check with you guys.

Well, if your friends have a problem with it, you just send them to us, okay?

I will.

All right.

That’s right.

Well, be on your way and vomit freely.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you have a question about language, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Liz from Richardson, Texas.

Hello, Liz from Richardson.

Yes.

What’s up, Liz?

Well, I was calling about the suffix ish.

Now, I’ve seen it in normal words like English or famish or peckish,

But I’ve noticed that many people, including myself,

Are now using it for things like greenish, like that’s a greenish car,

Or meet me at three-ish, which doesn’t seem to be standard English to me.

And so I was just wondering how this came about into our everyday language

And what ish actually means.

Aha, very interesting.

So you feel like this is a new phenomenon,

That the application of the suffix ish to times and colors is something recent?

Well, I became aware of it recently, whether it’s been around before then.

I don’t know.

That was a setup.

I was setting you up so I could give you the big reveal.

And the big reveal is that adding it to colors is one of the oldest uses of that suffix in English.

And adding it to times is somewhat more recent.

You can find records of it as far back as 100 or more years ago.

And probably that has more to do with keeping accurate time wasn’t quite so common then as it is now.

So ish was always the case rather than the exception to the case, you know?

Well, I have a perfectly good time piece, and I always say ish because I’m usually late.

Right. There’s Martha time, and then there’s everyone else’s time. I understand.

The interesting thing about ish is that it does more than one job.

You can use it attached to a noun to mean like that thing.

So I can say that the building was not a house, but it was kind of house-ish, meaning it was kind of like a house, right?

But the thing is some things don’t work like that.

If I called you bookish, that doesn’t mean you’re like a book, right?

No, it means I like books.

Yeah, it means you like books.

And so they behave different ways.

There’s a lot of work been done on the suffix because it’s so productive, as they say, in the creation of new words.

The ish suffix is so prevalent.

You can attach it to an incredible number of words, mostly nouns, but sometimes phrases, and come up with a lot of new words.

And sometimes those new words are temporary, where we just use it for a moment, like house-ish.

And sometimes they become established.

Like, if I say that you’re peckish, well, peckish kind of stands alone.

We don’t really use peck very much anymore to mean to eat, right?

Okay, I kind of thought that peck was like a basket size.

Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

No, it means pecking at your food, right?

Right, yeah, but it comes from pecking at your food.

Yeah.

So we use it in common things, like to say that you’re Irish, you know, because that’s a nationality, and that’s perfectly ordinary, right?

It means that you’re of the Irish or like the Irish or you are Irish.

We also use it for long sentences.

I could say, and we were arguing and we was talking,

And then she gave me this look that was kind of all like,

Don’t give me any of that stuff-ish.

You know, I can attach ish to a phrase.

So ish is incredibly interesting in terms of its productivity.

It’s got a fundamental role in suggesting that something is kind of like something else

Or maybe even a lot like something else.

Cool?

So the language is a lot bigger than we even think, right?

Oh, it’s massive.

Dictionaries, no dictionary, including the Oxford English Dictionary,

No dictionary comes close to including every word that can exist in English.

Liz, thank you so much for giving us a ring.

Well, thank you.

Okay, thanks for calling.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Maybe you don’t want to call about a word.

You want to call about a part of a word.

That’s okay.

Call us about your prefixes, your suffixes, your infixes, any of your affixes,

1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or pop us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tom calling from Burlington, Vermont.

What can we do for you?

Well, I’ve run across this phrase.

I’ve only heard two people in the world that I know utter this phrase.

I’ve never heard it from anybody else, and I don’t really know what it means.

Well, I know what it means in context when my mom says it,

But I want to know if it’s just something in our family.

Or if it’s something a little more common than that.

The phrase is journey proud.

And should I use it in a sentence or quote my mother?

Yeah, please do.

I seldom quote my mother, but I often have her voice in my head every day.

She’ll say something like, gee, I didn’t sleep very well last night before the trip because I was journey proud.

Journey proud.

And what does she mean by that?

She means that she’s restless, nervous, tense, excited about a trip.

And it’s usually the night before a trip.

And her mother used to say it.

And her mother said it, too.

Yeah.

Okay.

This is great.

This is one of these ding, ding, ding, ding moments when somebody brings an expression to the show that I’ve read about but I’ve never heard anybody use.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’ve read about this.

And it’s so great. I mean, isn’t it fantastic to have a term for that feeling?

I think we’ve all felt that feeling, right?

Yeah, sure. Yeah. That keeps you up at night, right?

Yeah, yeah.

The one night that you need a lot of sleep before you get on the plane, right?

Exactly. Exactly.

And I don’t know about you guys, but when I’m packing my car that morning before I go on a trip or I’m headed to the airport,

I don’t know. For me, life just feels different.

The air seems clearer and the colors seem sharper, at least on a trip that I want to go on.

The possibilities.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you just feel awake in a way that you don’t ordinarily feel awake, and you feel too excited to eat.

And then, of course, you get to the airport, and there are all these Cinnabons and stuff.

Right, right, right.

The smell of that. But yeah, I’m so excited that you brought this word to the show, Tom, because yes, you hear it mostly in the South, but you’re in Vermont, right? Is that where your mom was from?

My mom was born in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut, and my grandfather was also born in Massachusetts and lived most of her adult life in Connecticut.

Okay.

Okay, well, you do find it in pockets of New England.

And I think the key here to this expression, journey proud, is that proud, we usually think of it in terms of pride, but it can also be used as an adjective in certain dialects to mean pleased or delighted.

And one of my favorite citations for that is one from 1895 in the Tennessee mountains.

Somebody said, she’ll be proud to have her tooth stop aching.

So it’s pleased or glad or excited.

And I just love this expression, journey proud.

I only came across it a few years ago, but is there any other expression like that in English?

I haven’t heard it.

Journey proud, J-O-U-R-N-E-Y P-R-O-U-D, two words, right?

Yeah.

Huh.

Well, you’ve just given a gift, a verbal gift to a lot of people who needed a term for that.

Well, that’s wonderful.

I’m glad I could give a gift that was so inexpensive.

Thank you so much, John.

Thanks for calling.

Okay, thanks, Tom.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

All right.

If your grandma used a word and you don’t understand what it meant,

Why don’t you talk about it with us?

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673,

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes.

My name is Stan Stackhouse.

I’m calling from Indianapolis.

I’m interested in the term blue dog Democrat.

I gather that it means conservative, but beyond that, I’d never heard the term before,

And I’m wondering just how it came about and what you could tell me about it.

Well, you’ve got the right guy here.

So do you know the term yellow dog Democrat?

No, I’m sorry, I don’t.

All right, well, blue dog Democrat is kind of the inheritor of the tradition.

Blue dog Democrat came about in the mid-’90s during the Newt Gingrich era when he was more in power and more to the fore in politics.

And these were people who realized that they weren’t completely in line with the Democratic Party views, but nor were they in line with Republican Party views.

These are all Democrats, mind you.

And so after the Republicans became a majority, they kind of formed a coalition, which they called the Blue Dog Coalition.

Now, the idea was, according to William Sapphire’s political dictionary, and I’m kind of summarizing here, the idea was that they were choked blue by their party in the years leading up to the 1994 election.

So these were people who had felt a little constrained because they were more conservative than the middle reaches of the Democratic Party.

I see.

But there’s another layer to that.

You ever heard of the artist George Roderigue?

R-O-D-R-I-G-U-E.

The name’s familiar, but…

I’m betting you’ve seen his work,

Even if you don’t realize you’ve seen it.

Okay.

And he’s done this painting,

Now it’s a really famous painting,

Of this blue dog.

It’s got literally blue fur.

The ears are perked up as if it’s just heard,

You know, a deer in the woods,

Or its master called its name or something,

And yellow eyes, and the head’s cocked a little bit,

And it’s looking at you, and it’s kind of a little creepy, right, Martha?

Yeah, it is.

It is.

He’s a Cajun artist.

He’s of Cajun descent and lives in Louisiana.

And he did this whole series, I mean, one painting after another of his dear departed dog.

And he also painted some things that were mythical topics that had to do with Cajun lore.

And one of them was the Lugaroo or the Rugaroo,

Which was this sort of werewolf kind of character.

And this dog looks kind of haunting but also really cute.

So there was a time, Stan, when you’d see this blue dog in postcards and posters.

I mean, every little gift shop had notebooks,

And the things with this dog was everywhere.

It was kind of a standalone icon of a sort of, I don’t know,

Just art that people liked, I guess.

In any case, so the Blue Dog Coalition said that that’s where they got the idea for the blue dog.

And when they think about the blue dog, that’s the blue dog they think of.

But, of course, they were also thinking of yellow dog Democrats.

And these are kind of the opposite of blue dog Democrats in that they are completely loyal to the party.

The joke is that they’re so loyal that if the Democratic Party nominated a yellow dog to run for office, they would vote for that dog.

So they’re kind of playing off that older term.

And that term is, what, I don’t know, 100 years old, more or less?

I just never heard the term blue dog, so I’m happy to know what it’s about.

Well, we’re happy to help.

I’ll put some links online, some more information about the Blue Dog Democrats and about blue dogs and Giorgio Riege.

Yeah, his little dog was named Tiffany, and it was a boy dog.

Okay.

Thanks so much for calling, Stan.

Yes, thank you so much for your answers.

Okay, bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question about a political term, call us 1-877-929-9673

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

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Things have come to a pretty pass.

Our romance is growing flat.

That’s our show for this week.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message anytime.

The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or drop by A Way with Words online.

You can chat with fellow word lovers by going to waywordradio.org/discussion.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell, Jennifer Powell, and Danutz Jetz.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And from San Francisco, I’m Grant Barrett.

Thanks to Howard Gelman for engineering our show from the studios of KQED Radio.

Ganal Oz. That’s so long spelled backwards.

And Soida. That’s adios. Bye-bye.

♪ I like potapos, you like tomatoes ♪