Turn on a Dime (episode #1675)

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 know when you’re at a restaurant and the server brings everyone’s meal out of the kitchen, but it’s not clear who ordered what and the server has to say, well, who has the ravioli?

Yeah.

Well, there’s an informal term for that in the restaurant business. Servers call that auctioning.

Oh, how about that?

-huh.

Yeah.

Yeah, because it is like they’re auctioning the food, you know.

Right, right.

As a patron, I get a second chance to take food I didn’t order.

No, I would never do that.

That one’s mine.

And if your meal is delayed because that person who took your order forgot about it, that’s called a pocket ticket.

And one more little bit of restaurant lingo that I learned recently is if your food gets sent back because it’s cold, somebody might be told that that’s a job for Chef Mike.

Oh, microwave.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Which is also called, if you’re heating something up in the microwave, you’re cooking it a la ding.

Yeah. Often, if it has to go back in a pan, it’ll just say, refire, right? Or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah.

That’s cool, Martha. I love all this lingo. Where is this coming from?

Well, I got all that and more from the new book, Schatz Significa, a miscellany of secret languages.

Now, Schott’s is spelled S-C-H-O-T-T because it’s by a guy named Ben Schott.

And I will be talking about more of the things in that book later in the show.

Oh, I know his work very well.

I’m so interested in this, Martha.

Nothing like digging deep into the lingo cultures of the world.

And if you’d like to dig deep into the lingo of your household or your workplace or something you’ve been reading, we’d like to talk to you.

You can call or text toll-free in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Candice, and I’m calling from Memphis.

Though I live in Memphis right now, I’m actually from New York City originally.

And on my mother’s side of the family, I’m third-generation New Yorker.

And when I was little, my mother had three children.

And when I was little, she would say things like, you kids are eating me out of house and home.

Whenever, like, just, you know, I guess we were eating too much.

And she would say it all the time.

And I’ve just been so curious as I think about now I’m an adult and I have to go to the grocery store very often.

It made me think about that.

And I was wondering if you knew where that was from.

You know, it reminds me of my own childhood.

There were five kids in my family and my brother and I, my twin brother and I, we were just like all teenage boys.

We would eat everything.

And my mom still tells the story about us eating the unsweetened baker’s chocolate.

You know, once you’ve eaten the good stuff, you go for the not good stuff.

Unsweetened baker’s chocolate is not a delight, let me tell you.

But yeah, eating me out of house and home, very familiar.

Yeah, anything that’s not nailed down if you have teenagers, especially teenage boys, right?

Right, and I had two brothers, so she would always talk about, these boys are eating me out of house and home.

Well, this has been going on for a very, very long time.

The expression house and home itself is an example of alliterative emphasis.

You know, those two H’s, because if she had just said, you’re eating me out of house, or if she said, you’re eating me out of home, it just doesn’t carry the same weight, right, as eating me out of house and home.

It’s very, very emphatic. And the expression house and home goes way back to at least the early, early 13th century.

And for a while, people were talking about being scared out of house and home or chased out of house and home.

It was used in a lot of different contexts, but then it settled on eating, eating me out of house and home.

And probably in part because Shakespeare used this expression in Henry IV, Part 2, when somebody is complaining about Falstaff, the big guy, and saying, he hath eaten me out of house and home.

He hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his.

Oh, wow.

And, of course, it’s not just a problem among English speakers because there are expressions like this all over the world.

I mean, some of my favorites are in Italian, it’s they’re eating like a wolf.

Or in Brazil, it’s they’re eating like a locust.

And in Spanish, you might say somebody is eating like a new file, you know, like a metal file that’s just like filing away something that’s very, very solid.

But, you know, I think my favorite is the expression in German that translates as they’re eating the hair off my head.

I like the Arabic one. They ate the camel and all it carried.

Oh, that’s good, too.

You know, in Dutch and Bulgarian, they eat the ears off your head.

Oh, my gosh.

Wow.

So, yeah, Candice, it’s a long tradition of people eating all the food in the house.

Okay.

That’s amazing.

Oh, well, she died a few years ago, so it’s so nice to think about her in this way and that this was something that’s been said for thousands of years.

Yeah, a long, a long time, a very long time.

As a matter of fact, before it was house and home, they more often said house and harbor.

Like Martha was saying, it was about protecting the home front rather than protecting the pantry.

And these doublets, it’s a classic English doublet, as they’re called.

Like aid and abet is a doublet.

House and home is a doublet.

Yeah, so Candice, you’re not alone.

And I love that you have this linguistic heirloom that you’re carrying on from your mother.

That’s just really lovely.

Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, thank you so much.

All right. Take care, Candice.

Thank you. You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You can find all of our past episodes and dozens of ways to talk to us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hi, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hello. Hi, my name is Yasha Torrico, and I’m calling from Charleston, South Carolina.

Yasha?

Yes, Yasha, like Sasha with a Y.

So, yeah, I grew up, actually, my family moved to the U.S. as refugees back in the 80s from Ukraine and from communist Russia.

And so we grew up speaking, we actually spoke Russian, and later I learned Ukrainian.

But growing up, my father would often say this thing, this phrase to us.

It usually happened when one of us would fall down or something and get hurt.

And he’d kind of comfort us a little bit and say, the phrase he would say is, which translates to, like, it’ll heal in time for the wedding.

Or like, yeah, in time for the wedding, this will heal.

Which I just thought was a basic sort of Slavic phrase.

Maybe Russian family said it, or I wasn’t quite sure that there was much history there.

And then in the last maybe decade or so of my life, I’ve been visiting and moved to Charleston, South Carolina.

And I’ve met a family who’s been here for quite a long time.

Their ancestors have been in Charleston for some generations.

And this gentleman, this American guy, said to his son one time, I was with them over a bonfire.

His son fell over and same sort of thing.

He said to him the same exact phrase, but in English.

And I thought, well, that’s fascinating.

I thought this was only like a Slavic phrase, maybe just an expression perhaps from a town or just a nice thing to say.

I didn’t know it had any other sort of application around the world.

So I was curious about that history.

So you’ve done a little bit of field work. I love this.

So just to recap, when a kid gets injured and gets an owie or a boo-boo, the parent who doesn’t take it, doesn’t think it’s serious, says something along the lines of, don’t worry, it’ll heal in time for the wedding.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And so give it to us again in Russian or Ukrainian.

So, yeah, I grew up speaking Russian. So in Russian, it’s just like the Shibyots, which the direct translation is like, in time for the wedding, it’ll heal, essentially.

Yeah, so it’s a European-wide proverb.

So I have found this in the following languages: English, Ukrainian, Russian, Czech, French, Spanish, Polish, Greek, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Portuguese.

And I have no doubt that it’s also in other European languages.

At some point, I just stopped looking.

And we indirectly referred to this.

How long ago was that, Martha?

Maybe 10 years ago referred to this saying.

And we got a really nice email from Marina, who she also called to talk about it, that she knows the expression.

She’s Russian by heritage.

And that it can also be used to encourage young people to keep their stamina positive and to focus on a future objective and not worry about a current problem.

So not just for when you get a boo-boo, but when you have any kind of minor bump in the road.

Yeah, interesting.

There are other variants.

I’ve seen the Hungarians sometimes say, by the time you become a soldier, it will be gone.

So if there’s some inconvenience or a little boo-boo.

And in Turkish, they say the more general, you’ll forget about it by the time you grow up.

Yeah, well, it’s fascinating.

I just didn’t know.

You know, I’ve never thought about some of these expressions.

I know there are many colloquialisms in sort of English and obviously in Slavic languages.

My mom uses a lot, but I didn’t think it was a colloquialism or even like that kind of a thought.

I just thought it was a general nice sort of, you know, it’ll be all right.

Yasha, what you’ve come across is something that people often forget, that European culture is incredibly, even though it’s also diverse, it has huge cores and foundations in it that are shared across all the peoples in Europe.

From Moscow to Madrid, you know, from Sardinia to Scotland.

There’s a lot that’s shared there.

Yeah, and little kids fall down and skin their knees all over the world, you know, and you want to take their mind off of it.

It’s such a jarring thing, right?

It kind of takes your mind off the little bloody knee.

Thank you so much for bringing this to us, Yasha.

We really appreciate it.

Absolutely. Thank you.

All right. Take care now.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

What’s the saying you always heard growing up that you just can’t quite figure out?

You can talk to us about it at 877-929-9673.

Jane Albertuson is a poet who lives in Norfolk, Virginia, but she’s originally from Puerto Rico.

And she wrote to us to say that in the capital of Puerto Rico, San Juan, there’s a famous statue of Christopher Columbus with his finger toward the horizon.

And in Puerto Rico, if you want to indicate that something’s never going to happen, you can say, cuando Cristobal Colon baje el dedo, which translates to when Christopher Columbus lowers his finger.

I just love that.

You know, you’re going to get that promotion when Chris Columbus lowers his finger.

I love it.

And I love the idea that the statue is just known throughout the island.

You know, everybody kind of has this reference point.

Yeah.

We’d love to hear the cool things they say out your way, whether it’s in English or another language.

You can email us words@waywordradio.org or go to our website at waywordradio.org and find a contact form and all of our social media.

A word game and more of your calls about language.

Stick around.

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 here he is with a quiz of his.

It’s John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

Oh, very nice.

Thank you.

You guys are so poetic.

I love it.

Now, you know, I rarely ask for correct spelling in these quizzes.

And so why should we start now?

I’ve researched several of the most commonly misspelled words.

I’ll give you a clue to the word, and then you must spell it incorrectly.

But now, remember, I’ll need you to spell it as it is most commonly misspelled.

All right?

So we have to draw upon our misspellings.

Yeah, yeah.

Common misspellings.

That’s right.

For example, this is a confection made from sugar, water, and gelatin whipped into a solid but soft consistency.

It’s so good, you might want some more.

You’d have to spell out M-A-R-S-H.

M-E-L-L-O-W.

Because the E is incorrect.

It should be an A.

Marshmallow.

Marshmallow.

It’s spelled marshmallow with an A.

Yes, very good.

There are no wrong answers because they’re all wrong answers.

Okay, here we go.

This verb means to formally charge someone with a serious crime.

Oh, so indict, I-N-D-I-T-E?

Yes, I-N-D-I-T-E, indict.

Martha, could you give us the correct—

It’s really supposed to be I-N-D-I-C-T.

That seems oddly silent.

That’s correct.

Correct.

This noun is a non-commissioned officer in the armed forces.

Oh, lieutenant.

Not lieutenant.

It could be colonel or it could be sergeant.

I think you should go with the second one, yeah.

Sergeant.

Is it?

Wait.

People probably spell it with an A, right?

S-A-R-G-E-N-T.

Yeah, probably.

S-A-R-G-E-N-T.

S-A-R-G-E-N-T.

Sergeant.

Incorrect.

And it’s not helpful, the fact that we shorten it as Sarge, but it’s S-E-R-G-E-A-N-T.

That’s correct.

I never thought about that.

This noun refers to someone like Shakespeare, Chekhov, O’Neill, or Moliere who create characters and dramas.

Mm—

Yeah.

Playwright.

Yeah.

I got two different misspellings for this one.

Give me both.

Okay.

One of them would be P-L-A-Y-W-R-I-T-E.

Correct.

Or incorrect.

You think about the writing rather than the crafting.

Right?

Correct.

You think about them as putting words to paper rather than somebody who shapes words.

So it should be W-R-I-G-H-T.

Right.

And the other misspelling is P-L-A-Y-R-I-G-H-T.

Just playwright.

Oh, yeah.

Of course.

Yeah.

This noun refers to a souvenir, an object kept as a reminder of a person or an event.

Oh, yeah.

Yep.

Memento.

And I bet people say M-O-M-E-N-T-O.

Correct.

Memento.

It is M-E-M-E-N-T-O.

That’s right.

Yeah, like memory.

When you say memento like you do, it makes it pretty clear how to spell it.

If you just say memento really quick, people are like, maybe there’s an O in there somewhere.

Guys, great job or bad job.

In any case, you got exactly what I wanted you to get and you did fantastic.

Well done.

Thanks, John.

I really appreciate it.

J-O-N.

Hey.

G-R-A-N-T.

T-H-A-N-K-S.

That was fun.

Thanks, John.

Thanks.

See you next time.

A bientot, John.

We’ll talk to you next time and give our best to the family.

If you’ve got a word or question, thought, idea, story, or what have you about language, the toll-free number in the United States and Canada is 877-929-9673.

You can email words@waywordradio.org.

Or go to our website to find a contact form and all of our social media handles at waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Amy calling from Charlotte.

Hey, Amy from Charlotte, North Carolina?

That is correct, yes.

We’re glad to speak with you. What’s on your mind?

So Thanksgiving Day, before we ate, I was at my brother’s house helping my teenage nephew make one of the desserts, and he asked me to get some sugar from the pantry.

So I came back with the bag and he said, no, the can of sugar.

So then I went to the countertop where my sister-in-law has this cute little vintage container that says sugar on it.

And he said, no, the can.

And at this point, everybody sort of stopped what they were doing and looked at me.

This is my sister-in-law or my niece and my nephew, because they could not believe that I didn’t know what a can of sugar was.

So someone went to the pantry, retrieved it.

And when they showed me, I said, that’s not a can.

It’s a canister.

So a big argument ensued in which my teenage niece and nephew were just flabbergasted that their smart aunt didn’t know what a can of sugar was.

And I explained to them that’s because it’s not a can. A can is all metal. That’s mostly cardboard.

And so while I do think that my sister-in-law finally conceded, her kids, who are very smart, just could not believe that I didn’t know and insisted that, no, it’s a can of sugar.

Oh, interesting.

Oh, my.

Yeah.

I don’t think they’re the majority here, but I do see their point based on the shape.

So just want a little bit of validation because, you know, teenagers know a lot and they are pretty smart, but they don’t know everything.

They love to gang up on their favorite adults sometimes.

For validation, we can confirm that you are their cool, smart aunt.

Thank you.

That’s the main thing I needed.

Well, now tell us about this sugar container.

Yeah, yeah.

I want to understand a little bit more what shape it is.

Are we talking a cardboard cylinder?

It is.

Yeah, I think it might be like Dixie Crystals.

And it’s got a plastic top that you usually slide to one side to pour.

And then it is cardboard.

Like throughout, top and bottom, no metal anywhere.

Well, I do think there’s metal on the bottom, perhaps.

I know we have one in our break room at work that’s, I wouldn’t say it’s plastic on top and bottom.

There’s might. There may be some metal in the bottom.

I think of like an oatmeal container.

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

I would never think of a can of oatmeal.

Yeah, like Quaker oats or Morton salt, something like that.

Exactly.

But with metal. Okay.

Interesting.

So there are a bunch of different ways to dive into this.

One, I can definitely see this confusion happening because there’s something called prototype theory,

Which is in cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics.

And prototype theory talks about how we think of things and, of course, how we name them.

And in your prototype, you consider the material of the container to be relevant.

And so you think of a can as being metal.

And in the niece and nephew’s prototype, they think of it as the prototype of its shape,

The cylindrical shape with the flat ends and not what it’s made of.

So we’re talking about material versus shape,

But also you have material versus purpose.

But generally here, so that’s kind of your sticking point.

You’re looking at the same object with different criteria.

Yeah, so I can’t say they’re wrong?

You could, I mean, I don’t know, Martha?

I think it’s not.

Nobody wins in that situation, really.

It’s okay if we’re both right.

Yeah, I was going to say, or if you’re both wrong, you know, maybe you can say they’re wrong and they can say you’re wrong.

Well, I like to misquote J.R.R. Tolkien and say never come to a linguist and ask them a question because they will tell you both no and yes.

I like it.

Well, we’re interested in semantics and etymology.

And so sometimes we’ve got Google, you know, we can look and see what it says.

And this might say the majority of cans are metal.

But it’s not necessarily wrong to call it a can of sugar.

Yeah, no, it isn’t.

And I don’t think we can really put this to a vote because you’ve got the idiolect of the household here, what they call it amongst themselves, your niece and nephew and their parents.

And you’re an outsider.

You’re coming in.

I don’t think you live with them, right?

You’re coming in as a visitor.

And so you’re being exposed to their little lingo that they’ve made as a family.

And so in that context of that household, they’re correct and you are not.

But in the larger universe, you both can be correct.

Okay.

I can live with that.

Yeah.

But I love how proud you are, though, of your niece and nephew.

You know that they’re smart.

And the fact that they’re willing to engage with you proves that.

They’re confident and smart.

Oh, yeah.

Going to make a go of the world.

We have fun banters that sometimes become a little heated, but all with good intentions and mostly, again, for fun.

Well, that sounds great.

And how did the dish turn out that you were working on with the sugar?

Oh, it was delicious.

It was something along the lines of a blueberry crumble,

And I think we needed to add a little more sugar to the blueberry filling.

It was so good.

From the canister.

That sounds outstanding.

It was created with a can slash canister of sugar by a really cool 15-year-old.

Well, Amy, thank you so much for your call.

We appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks to you, too.

I appreciate it.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

We heard from Deb Briggs in Lombard, Illinois, who wrote,

As I spent time with my grandma in Chicago, one time she used a great phrase while recounting a story.

In it, she was irritated with someone to whom she said,

Hey, buddy, walk east till your hat floats.

Oh, that’s right up there with why don’t you play in traffic?

Yeah, right. Or go jump in a lake. Walk east till your hat floats.

Oh, yeah, that’s a firm denial of whatever it is you just did or said.

Exactly.

You can find all of our past episodes on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Mary Bussey. I’m calling from Alexandria, Virginia.

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

Well, a word from my childhood.

I was a child during World War II.

I grew up in Covington, Kentucky, which you probably know is across the river from Cincinnati.

Very German area.

When I was a child, if there were options like red, yellow, or green popsicle or candy,

We’d say, I Finney the Red One.

It was the equivalent of we would say I won first dibs on it.

And I have no idea why I started thinking of that word recently.

I have no idea how it would be spelled or even if it is a word.

Maybe it’s something kids made up.

I left that area in the early 60s.

I’ve not heard that word since.

So, again, that’s Finney.

How would you spell Finney?

I Finney that.

Well, if I were going to guess, and it would be F like Frank, I, N like Nancy, Y like yellow.

But that’s just phonetics.

I would have no idea.

I’ve tried PH.

I’ve tried double N.

Even PF, because a lot of things in Cincinnati, German names start with PF.

Sure.

Sure, yeah.

Yeah, it’s definitely a word, Mary.

And usually you see it spelled F-I-N-N-I-E.

We’re not totally sure about this, but the most likely explanation is that it goes back to the game of marbles,

Where fen, F-E-N, ultimately traces to the idea of fending, defending something or forbidding something.

So you would use fen like as a transitive verb.

And the basic idea is I forbid.

So you’re setting up a rule within a game.

And it’s one of many terms from the past and present, actually, that people use to claim things.

In New England, you might hear, I hosie that.

You know, I hosie the front seat of the car.

You know, that’s what I say.

Oh, really?

Yeah, there are all kinds of words like this.

Wacky and finwacky and muggins.

Or you might say, I have beans on that.

B-E-A-N-S.

Beans or I have ducks on that.

Yeah.

And I kibby and I posse.

And in the UK, they say I bags or I bagsy.

Yep.

I bags that or I bagsy that.

Yeah, kids have been claiming things like that for a long time.

And sometimes they carry that on into adulthood.

So adults still, first off, is it still in use?

I have not lived in that area since early 60s.

I have not heard it in all these many years and other places I’ve lived.

Is it still in use?

Well, it’s not particular to the Cincinnati area at all.

It’s not? Okay.

I mean, you can find fen in that sense all the way back to the English dialect dictionary of 1895.

Okay.

Yeah, so I don’t know if it’s widely used or ever was all that widely used,

But it’s sprinkled throughout the United States.

I would not be surprised if we hear from other listeners who still use it.

Oh, really?

I don’t know if the young folks do.

Well, this is interesting.

Well, Mary, thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

I love the show.

Oh, yeah.

And I’m a great fan of spreading the word.

Anybody who uses, that I think is, I can tell from their conversations, they like words.

I tell them about your podcast.

Oh, that’s nice.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you, Mary.

Appreciate that.

Take care now.

And I appreciate the show.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Well, Hosey or Finney, a spot on our show.

Toll-free, text or call 877-929-9673.

Or go to our website.

We’ve got a contact form there.

All of our social media handles.

And every episode going way back.

That’s at waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Trevor Woods.

I’m calling from Greenville, South Carolina.

Greenville.

Well, we’re glad to have you.

What’s up, Trevor?

So I had a phrase I was wondering about.

This is something I’ve heard from my grandfather, typically used in regards to talking about drivers making stupid mistakes or, you know, someone he’s not too happy with.

And it’s the term clabberhead.

And I’d always wondered where that came from.

And it’s not a word I’ve heard anywhere else.

So I was just calling, trying to figure out what the roots of that were, where it came from.

Clabberhead.

And how did he use it? What was happening when he said it?

You know, a driver, you know, turns into somewhere, someone makes a stupid mistake or does something reckless, and it’s just, you know, calling that individual a clabberhead.

So it’s impolite, but not the worst sort of impolite.

Exactly. It’s like an oaf or a fool.

Yeah, exactly. Oaf. Oh, good word. O-A-F. So you know what clabber is, I guess.

Yes. Isn’t it the part that kind of settles on top of milk?

Yeah, yeah. It’s the sour part. It thickens or it curdles.

And you can use this in recipes or you can discard it.

But generally it’s the fatty part that starts to turn and be useful.

And it comes to English from Irish and before that Gaelic.

And a Gaelic word meaning mud, actually. M-U-D.

Oh.

Yeah. But it’s part of a, I don’t know if you are old enough to remember,

But there used to be another person on public radio talking about language.

That was John Ciardi, C-I-A-R-D-I.

And in one of his books, Good Words to You, he was a poet, but he also loved to explore language.

And in this book, he has a whole list of these related words, a class of words.

So you have clatterhead, but you also have chowderhead, churnhead, puddinhead, meathead, mushhead.

And the idea with all of these is that your brain is like the first part of those compounds,

That it’s just a mush.

It’s like a muddy, messy mush,

And basically you’re not a clear thinker.

That makes sense.

Yeah, and the clabberhead version

Goes back to at least the 1860s.

The Dictionary of American Regional English

Has an updated entry on the website

At dare.wisc.edu at Wisconsin.

And so it’s got a good history to it.

But it’s always,

It’s the kind of thing that you could get away with saying on the floor of Congress.

I was going to say, it seems pretty mild to me, Cleverhead.

Oh, yeah, definitely mild.

I’ve heard worse.

Oh, yeah.

Especially in traffic.

I’ve been called worse.

Yeah, so it’s just sour milk.

That’s very neat.

Yeah.

Thank you for that information.

Now I know I can get away with saying it more places, I reckon.

Yeah, I was going to say, have you picked it up?

I have.

I have.

Only in the past couple of years, though, because, you know, being a little more grown up and in public places, I work with the public.

I work for the National Park Service.

Sometimes, you know, you get a little frustrated working with the public.

And that’s something I’ll be able to say to my coworkers in a jesting way.

And, you know, it kind of describes some of the folks you may encounter.

Well, Trevor, thanks for your call.

We appreciate it.

Yeah, and thanks for your work, too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, don’t be a pudding head.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

It’s toll-free in the United States and Canada, and you can call or text.

Again, 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.

Cab drivers in London are required to have an encyclopedic knowledge of that city,

And they also have a lot of slang that’s particular to their profession.

For example, a musher is somebody who owns their own cab.

A starving musher is somebody who’s still paying for their cab.

And musher’s lotion is another term that they use.

Any idea what that is, Grant?

I think it’s tips.

Well, it may result in tips.

Musher’s lotion is rain.

Oh, okay. Gotcha.

Of course, if it’s raining, then they’re going to pick up a lot of business and a lot of tips, right?

So besides the knowledge, as they call it, the ins and outs of all the old streets in London that you have to fully master before you become a cabbie, they have to master all this slang.

A lot of slang.

And I learned those slang terms and a lot more from a new book called Schatz Significa, a Miscellany of Secret Languages.

It’s by Ben Schott, who’s written similar books before, and his name is spelled S-C-H-O-T-T.

And miscellany is a great word for this book because this is 300 pages of expressions from 53 subcultures, including things like professional Santas and stunt performers, graffiti artists and sommeliers and fashion designers, gondoliers in Venice, coffee baristas and dozens more professionals and hobbyists who are in various pursuits.

There’s slang that he’s collected from dog walkers and typographers and the people who run fashion shows.

And he also has illustrated pages of gestures, for example, the hand signals that are used by TV floor managers during live broadcasts.

And I have to say that there’s also some dark stuff in this book, too, like the gallows humor that medical professionals use to relieve stress among themselves.

And some of the grim vocabulary online from some of the darker corners of the Internet.

And so if I were going to describe this book to somebody, I might say that it’s pretty overwhelming.

I mean, you are going to want to pick up and put down this book.

You’re not going to want to read it all the way through in one sitting.

But it really is this fascinating reminder that every profession and every hobby,

As you know so well, Grant, has a vocabulary that’s all its own.

Outstanding work. I love the book. Fantastic stuff. It’s a delight.

And we’ll link to that book on our website.

We’d also love to hear what you’re reading.

Tell us about it. Text or phone 877-929-9673.

Or go to our website and have a conversation, waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

My name is Maureen Sanchez, and I’m calling from Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Yeah, I’m a polyglot. My kids are polyglots. I have a kid who’s fluent in Mandarin and he also speaks Spanish in addition to English.

I speak Spanish and Italian and some French and some Portuguese and some Greek and some Mandarin.

And my husband’s fond of telling me that I can tell him off in 12 languages.

So I find the evolution of language fascinating.

Why do words have that silly, stupid O-U-G-H?

And why is it sometimes F?

And why do certain words rhyme and other words don’t rhyme?

Like house and mouse and lice and louse, but not heist and house or house and heist, for example.

This is a big question.

As you well know, right, if you have a house, you likely have at some point, if you have children, have lice and mice because that’s just kind of how they go.

Is that why they rhyme, house, mouth, flouse?

Who knows?

All right.

This is a big topic here, Maureen.

I think we can handle this for you, though.

Let me put a shape on this.

English is chaotic.

All right.

So that’s our overarching theme here.

And you know that.

Unlike some other languages, English is more of a fossil record of its history.

And in a written form, it’s not a simple guide to sound.

So what happens here is English absorbed massive vocabulary from invasions.

So some from Scandinavia and from the French and the Normans.

That’s all on top of this Germanic layer that it started out with.

So Germanic layer, several invasions, especially the Norman conquest in 1066, which added all this French in there.

And then you get the printing press.

And the reason the printing press is important is it kind of froze spelling.

And this is in the 1400s, right before English underwent what is known as the Great Vowel Shift.

And this is a huge phonological change where long vowels changed.

Technically speaking, they’re raised higher in the mouth.

Yet the spellings remained the same, even though the pronunciations changed.

So a word that we pronounce as bite now, B-I-T-E, used to sound more like beat, B-E-T, B-E-T-E.

And meat, M-E-E-T, used to sound more like mayot.

Well, and it’s still spelled like that if you’re talking about a cow, which is M-E-A-T, meat.

Yes, that’s a different word, though, etymologically different.

And so when you encounter these oddities in English, it’s almost always because it’s from a different path than what you’re used to.

So like you’re encountering, say, a word that goes back to Scandinavian language or a Germanic language or French language.

And so there’s not a consistency here because there can’t be.

We would have to change English spelling.

And of course, thousands of people and some very important people have tried to change English spelling.

But if you did it, you would fracture it and it would shatter like a crystal vase into multiple languages and never be held together again.

Because you would have to use a different spelling for each dialect.

That’s cool. But why can’t we do something intelligent like the Spanish language that tells us where the accent should be on the syllable, right?

If it’s not on the second to last vowel, then there’s an accent mark.

So we know how to say the word.

There’s no secrecy.

Well, part of it’s complicated by the fact that we don’t have a regulatory body for English.

So languages like Hebrew and French and Russian, in Spanish, they do have an official organization that helps guide the language and keep it more consistent.

Usually they’re very conservative, lowercase c organizations that are more about retaining history than they are about making change.

So that’s an important thing happening.

Our dictionaries kind of fill that role for us of an official body.

But as I said, the other difficulty is just even just compare North American Englishes versus British Englishes.

If we were to spell them like they sound, they would no longer look alike.

They would be as similar, say, as the Scandinavian languages are to each other or some of the Slavic languages are.

So they would no longer in written form appear the same.

So they would look like different languages.

That’s how different they would be.

Yeah.

Yeah, and of course people have tried to reform English spelling for years.

There’s a great new book about that by Gabe Henry called Enough is Enough.

And that second enough is spelled E-N-U-F.

And you might really enjoy that book.

Oh, yeah, it’s fantastic.

And it really gets into some of these folks who are very spirited in their attempts to change English spelling.

And ultimately, most of the efforts fail or if they succeed only in tiny ways.

But I just want to thank you so much for your call, Maureen, and I appreciate your thoughts on this.

I’m so envious of a polyglot family.

I’ve always been interested in learning languages, but I don’t have any special knack for it.

I will encourage anyone who’s listening, get your kids into language as early as you can.

Agreed. Absolutely agreed.

You sound like a kindred spirit, Maureen.

Take care of yourself, Maureen.

Thanks for calling. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

All right. Bye-bye.

All right. Take care.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Brittany from Indianapolis.

How you doing?

Hi, Brittany.

Welcome to the show.

So I had a question.

I work in government, of all things, and sometimes we compare, you know, when things feel really bad.

We like to compare how far we’ve come, right?

So the phrase during a comparison of like something that pales in comparison.

And I was wondering like where we get that pale from.

Kind of made me think of a coloring, you know, relationship or a visual visualization of something that pales, you know.

So what are you comparing like this elected official to a former one or this decade to a previous one?

Like development, architecture, urban design and development, how things sometimes seem like they’ve come a long way.

Oh, okay.

From past approaches.

The problems have been solved and it’s better than it used to be.

Yeah.

Well, I think your instinct about color and intensity of color is exactly this metaphor here, that it pales.

It gets lighter and lighter, kind of fades away.

Is it because the better one is outshining the worst one?

So the worst one seems to be pale by comparison?

It could be.

I’m just wondering if there’s like a stack of metaphors here all contributing to this idea of paling in comparison.

Yeah, I suppose it could be.

I don’t think it’s anything fancier than that.

Wow. Is there any history about when we first see this phrase being used?

I hadn’t considered that light aspect of like shining out the other one.

Really fascinating.

Yeah, that’s a good question.

I know that in the mid-19th century, you would often see to pale into insignificance, you know, to diminish in importance.

Yeah, and just to be clear that there are two main pales in English,

And this is not the one that we use in the expression beyond the pale,

Which is either a fence or a fence of stakes, S-T-A-K-E.

So this is a different pale, etymologically unconnected to the pale that has to do with intensity or color.

But we do see that as far back as the 1300s in Chaucer,

We see people talking about things being pale.

And this means that they’re not bright.

They’re faint.

And so that’s a kind of different gradation on the concept of pale.

Interesting.

And I do wonder if it has any connection or influence and impact on how we describe complexion.

You know, no one is commonly referred to in a positive way as pale.

It’s usually we hear like fair, fair complected.

And I didn’t know if it had any influence there either.

That’s a good question.

Martha, do you get a sense that pale and the related word pallid are more about a negative lack of color and intensity?

Yeah, I actually do.

You know, if you’re becoming pale in the face, it’s usually because of shock and fear, you know, all the blood rushing elsewhere.

So in this case, you’re talking about an old building site is embarrassed and all the blood is rushed out of its face as it is outshone by a better building site.

Is that what we’re talking about here?

Or like technological advances and processes.

I was just wondering if I’d stretched that metaphor too far.

Metaphor, I like that.

Metaphorical.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

And thanks for the work you continue to do.

My daughter and I love your show.

Thank you.

That’s nice.

Call us again sometime, will you?

Yeah, have her call us.

Thank you.

I will.

I will do that.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

Take care, Brittany.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

My name is Sam Marshall, and I live in Kerrville, Texas.

Hey, Sam.

We’re glad to have you.

What’s on your mind today?

Well, I listened to the radio a lot in my work, and I kept hearing turn on a dime over and over and over again.

And just recently, and I remember hearing that as a kid and started thinking, where did that come from?

Turn on a dime in what context?

Well, usually they’re talking about something changing quickly. Like somebody’s attitude turns on a dime or their traffic turns on a dime. Something changes quickly.

Grant, it seems like it’s been a long time since I’ve even seen a dime.

Yeah. So much is paid for by card, but the expressions will hang on, right? I wouldn’t be surprised if we go cash free in 100 years and we’re still talking about turning on a dime, meaning to either literally turn in a short space like a car or a horse or to figuratively do it. Like you said, Sam, this idea that you changed goals or tactics just suddenly.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

So I was just curious where that came from.

Yeah, well, it’s this idea.

It did start before automobiles were a thing.

And it was often about horses or horse racing or wagons.

And it’s the idea that the dime is a very small coin.

And so it’s a tiny space.

And instead of needing a large turning radius where it takes you, you know, the entire street to turn around,

This idea was if you could turn on a dime, it meant that you had really great control of a very manipulable vehicle, you know, very nimble.

And it’s just a real, it’s an asset in horse racing.

It’s an asset in automobiles.

And so it’s a real good thing to have to be able to turn on a small space.

But, you know, the earliest use I find is from 1870s, turn on a five cent piece.

And in Australia and the UK, they say different things.

Australia may say turn on a cabbage leaf. And in the UK, they say turn on a sixpence,

Which I don’t think is a coin anymore in the UK. I see. Okay. Well, I happen to be a hospice nurse.

And we, you know, people, they come on service or family, not everybody’s on the same page at first.

It takes a while. And then, boom, we, you know, they turn on a dime. They just, all of a sudden, they get it or they understand or they accept.

So that phrase had been coming up lately a lot.

Sam, have you heard the extended version of it, which is, boy, they can turn on a dime and give you back change. Or turn on a dime and get nine cents back.

I love it.

That’s very clever.

Well, we’re not going to have pennies soon, so there you go.

It’s extended outside the English-speaking world. They also use coins in Norway and Finland, Russia, and Quebec. And I don’t know who got it from whom, but the idea is out there in all these other languages. But, you know, in German, they pivot on a plate instead of turn on a dime. And in Dutch, they turn on a beer coaster.

And in Italian, probably my favorite of all two in Italian. One in Italian, one in Hungarian.

In Italy, they turn on a handkerchief. And in Hungary, they turn on a pocket square.

And that just sounds classy to me.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, thank you.

That’s what I wanted to know.

Where did that come from?

Yeah, sure.

So it’s turning around on a really small space really fast.

Yeah.

Mm—

Well, thanks, Sam.

Really appreciate it.

Well, thank you very much.

You all have a great day.

I appreciate your show.

Thanks a lot.

You too.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, a penny for your thoughts.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send your thoughts about language to 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.

1-877-929-9673.

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 nonprofit’s 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.

Thank you.