Tweet Nothings

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You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. I have to confess that the first time I heard about Twitter, I was really skeptical. I mean, I was thinking, how much can you actually say in 140 characters? But it turns out that sometimes you can say a whole lot.

And lately, I’ve been amused by a Twitter feed. It’s called Very Short Story. It’s written by a guy named Sean Hill from Austin, Texas. And each of his tweets is written in such a way that it evokes this much bigger story that you fill in with your own mind.

For example, how about this one? I watched my brothers grow up from the woods behind our house, hoping that they would not make the same mistake of beating our father at chess.

Oh, locked in the attic for beating Papa, right? There’s a whole backstory we’re not getting, and that’s the idea, right? Something suggested.

Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of dark. Well, how about this one? As a newcomer, I was devastated. The others tried to comfort me. It’s okay. Happens to everyone. At least you had your clothes on when you died.

I mean, okay, so it’s not William Carlos Williams and his red wheelbarrow. And they don’t all work either. But it made me start thinking, who are the poets who are going to adopt this medium? Do you think this is the new haiku?

I don’t know if it’s the new haiku. You couldn’t make that. But I do think that it’s got to prove irresistible to some poets who want to kind of push the bounds of this medium and really try to make art. I don’t know. It’s been kind of my little guilty pleasure lately.

Well, you know, I have a new friend on Twitter. You do? I do. I work with the team at copyediting.com as well. And I was tweeting the other day about compound words. You know, a compound word is a word that’s made out of, you know, like blackboard is a compound. High school, yeah. Right.

So it’s open or closed. High school, it could be if it’s closed, it doesn’t have a space. If it’s open, it has a space. And then I got a tweet back from somebody calling themselves GrammarHulk. GrammarHulk. H-U-L-K, as in the big green guy. I thought that was you.

No, no, no, it was not me. And GrammarHulk, and I’m going to read it in my impression of the Hulk’s voice. GrammarHulk said, Hulk, settle open and closed compound question by smashing all words together. No more spaces.

And no more spaces, of course, has no more spaces. And the Hulk joke is that Hulk smash, so Hulk smashing compounds together is pretty funny. It’s great. And so you go to GrammarHulk’s Twitter feed, and there’s a ton of this stuff. And it turns out that GrammarHulk is a really nice guy who understands a lot about language and is just tweeting in a Hulk voice about the ordinary day-to-day issues that you and I deal with. It’s funny stuff.

If you’d like to find out a little bit more about GrammarHulk, GrammarHulk did an interview with Andy Bechtel, that’s B-E-C-H-T-E-L, on his blog at editorsdesk.wordpress.com. And we’ll link to that on the website as well.

Well, and of course, you can always follow our Twitter feed. That’s WayWord. Twitter.com slash WayWord, right? Right. And we’re on Facebook, too, under WayWord Radio. Or you can drop us a line to the email address, words@waywordradio.org. And we can take your phone calls all the time. That’s what voicemail is for. So call us now or call us later, 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Tony Cardinilli from Indianapolis, Indiana. Hello, Tony. Welcome to the program. Hi. My wife and I, we were listening to the program in the car and we had to thinking of all the different sayings that we didn’t know where they came from, the origins. And one of the ones we came up with was to hold a candle to someone.

What was she saying, that you don’t hold a candle to her first husband? Exactly. Sorry. Oh, and so then how did the conversation go, Tony? Well, then it turned very ugly. So which one ended up walking home? Did you end up walking home? No, no, we worked it out. Okay, good. But that’s a great expression. Do you use that a lot? You don’t hold a candle to so-and-so or anything like that? This restaurant doesn’t hold a candle to the one down the street?

No, and I don’t use it that much. But for some reason, I’d heard it in a song, I think, recently. It came to mind. So do you have any theories about it yourself? I had one. I think it’s way off, though. Oh, good. Let’s hear it. I had heard that the first act at comedy clubs is usually not as seasoned, I suppose, as the headline act. But he sort of sits in the back and keeps track and makes sure everybody gets the time they need. And when their time is up, he sometimes flashes a light or I heard that he holds a candle up. So maybe like, you know, you’re not even as good as the first act.

Oh, interesting. Huh, why did you hear that? Did you just make that up out of whole cloth? It’s kind of the opposite of flicking your bick, right? When you really like the show. And if you really hate it, what do you do? You turn out all the lights and walk out? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, it predates, as Martha knows, it predates the comedy club era by a long way. Wait. Unless they had comedy clubs in the mid-16th century. They had brick walls. They had stools, right? They had glasses of water. Definitely. Oh, gosh. Yeah, this goes all the way back to at least the mid-16th century.

Now, picture this, Tony. You’re, say, a master cobbler, right? You’re really good at making shoes, and you’re working late. And Grant is your apprentice. And so you’re teaching him the ropes. You’re showing him how to make really good shoes. Well, it’s dark and dingy in this shop. And for him to ply his trade, somebody’s got to hold a candle for him. Literally hold a candle.

Yeah. So you can hold it where you want it. Yeah. So, Tony, that’s going to be your apprentice, your subordinate, Grant Barrett, who’s holding the candle there so that you can see what you’re doing and you can show him how to do it. And why weren’t the electric lights working? Well, it was like that when I was helping my father as a boy fix the car or do whatever, right? It’s a dark space, and he’s like, point the light over here. Yeah, right, right.

Right, so what do we say can’t hold a flashlight to? We don’t say that. We kept the old expression. So it means that you’re good for nothing but holding up a candle. Basically, all you are is a candle stand. Well, if you—

It’s like saying you—

I beg your pardon. Well, no, if you can’t hold a candle, you’re not even as good as this. You’re not even the apprentice. You’re not even the apprentice. That’s exactly right, Tony. What’s lower than an apprentice? A candle holding. Yeah, the person who just watches the candle holding. Right, yeah. Wow.

So to hold a candle means that you’re not good enough even to be my apprentice. Exactly. Oh, that’s wonderful. Exactly. How nice that is. Yeah, I think actually in that scenario, though, you were the apprentice. Oh, yes. If I remember correctly. Yes, of course. Yes. Martha’s true feelings come out.

I did a little Googling while we were talking here. I find three popular songs that have to hold a candle to in the lyrics, one by The Pretenders, one by Morrissey, and one by Dolly Parton. So I don’t know which one you heard, but apparently it’s fairly likely that, I don’t know, you listen to a lot of Morrissey. Yeah, Dolly Parton? It was probably Dolly Parton, yes. Okay, very good.

All right. Well, hey, Tony, thanks for lighting up our life today. Yeah, thank you. All right, bye-bye. All right, bye-bye. Take care. What’s your puzzlement? What’s your problem? Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673. See if we can solve it or see if you’re going to stump us.

Or drop us a line and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Viv Lindquist from San Diego.

All right, Viv, what’s up?

Well, I work at the zoo, and I’m a tour guide there.

On a tour, I try to use the most concise words possible. I like to be very clear.

So I was talking about the elephants, and I talk about their trunks and how their trunks are an extension of the nose and the upper lip and how they use their trunks to feed themselves.

And then I try to say they use their trunks to give themselves a drink.

And I was wondering if there’s a word for giving yourself a drink.

Because when you’re hungry, you feed an animal. But when it’s thirsty, do you water it?

But what if they don’t drink water? Like, what if it’s a human?

So I was wondering, what’s the word for to give yourself a drink?

You want one word instead of the phrase.

Yeah, I was wondering if there is a word for that.

So, like, this is how the elephant hydrates?

Yeah, basically.

Like that kind of thing?

Well, you do water an animal, right? I mean, that’s the agricultural term for it.

Yeah, water. I looked it up.

Like, water is a verb, exists. I was just wondering, because also it would, I would guess, apply to other things that drink, like humans, for instance.

And, like, if someone’s thirsty, do I water humans? But no, like, give them a drink.

I was wondering if there’s a word just to present liquids to something or something like that.

We fix them a drink. We make them a drink. We pour them a drink. Mix them a drink.

Well, depending on our motives, we might ply them with drinks.

So you’re saying is there a difference between what you say about a human and what you say about an animal?

I guess I was just wondering if there is a word to describe the act of absorbing liquids.

Well, for oneself, though, that’s kind of what throws it, because you imbibe a drink, right? Or you drink a drink, you swill or tipple a drink.

Or sip. You sip. Quaff.

Quaff. Of course, yeah.

Yeah, why don’t you talk about the elephant’s quaffing?

I kind of like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, the self-quaffing elephant. It’s a rare breed.

Yeah, I don’t know if that would fly on my tour.

Probably not. You probably have people in your tour of all ages and all nationalities and all languages, right?

Yeah.

But the elephant is a curious creature because the elephant can serve itself water in a way that few animals can.

Yeah.

And I guess I could say they use their trunks to feed themselves and to give themselves a drink, which is what I do say.

But I just stumbled on that one day, and there was a moment of silence. I was trying to think of a good word, and I ended up saying that.

Really, I mean, unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a single word for this. I think it’s going to have to be a phrase.

It’s going to have to be give themselves a drink or take a drink.

Take a drink.

Take a drink.

Yeah, it’s just going to have to be a phrase. I don’t think there’s one word for that.

Procures hydration with its proboscis.

Exactly.

And then it masticates food.

And then it masticates.

Yeah, I don’t think that that would be.

Yes.

And the tram falls silent.

Oh, my goodness. I’m liking this. I’ll try that. I’ll see how that goes over with people.

Yeah. Then we’ll have a little tea party at the end or something.

There you go.

All right. Thanks for calling me.

Thanks for taking my call.

All right. Bye-bye.

Adios.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or if you’d like to talk about a word you’ve encountered in your work, you can always email us. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

A listener in Indianapolis left a message the other day in response to our show about Knock on Wood.

Oh, yeah. She didn’t leave her full name, but she said that her family name is McCarthy, and that in her family, when they say Knock on Wood, they knock on their own heads, which I’ve seen before.

But their double pun is the fact that it’s after Charlie McCarthy, the wooden-headed dummy of Edgar Bergen, right? The ventriloquist dummy.

So I just thought that was charming and funny and thought it was worth sharing.

Thanks for your call. You can call us even when you think we’re not on the air and leave us a voicemail message.

And maybe we’ll relate your comments on the air, too. 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Next on A Way with Words, it’s yoga for your brain, another puzzle that will whimper up your mind.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And joining us from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hello, John.

John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. How are you guys?

Doing well.

Welcome. Glad to hear from you. What’s happening there?

Terrific. Well, you know, my kids are both starting school in a couple of weeks. For the first time, they’re both going to be in school.

So I’m not going to be a stay-at-home dad anymore.

Oh, where are you going to go?

I’ll still be a dad, and I’ll still stay home probably playing the Wii game. But technically, I’ll try to find some work, I guess.

Have you been working for us?

I have been working for you guys. I’ve been working triple time for you guys.

I have a three-for-one puzzle today.

Okay, bonus. See what you think of that. It’s called This, That, and the Other.

All right?

Okay.

In the first little mini quiz, I’ll clue phrases or titles that begin with the word this. For example, a rock mockumentary.

This is Spinal Tap. Directed by Rob Reiner, starring Christopher Gess and Michael McKean and Harry Scherer.

That’s right. This is Spinal Tap. Very good. Funny movie. Very good. One of my favorites.

The second quiz is things that begin with the word that. And the final one is titles that begin with the other.

Okay. Oriata.

All right?

Okay.

So let’s begin with this.

All right.

A popular American standard, a song by Woody Guthrie about the U.S. of A.

This land is your land.

This land is your land. I sing this with my son.

I’m sure.

Your son Guthrie?

Yes. As a matter of fact.

Oh. There’s a surprise. That’s not why he’s named that, is he?

No, no.

No.

Okay, here’s the next one. This is a classic phrase, another classic phrase, uttered by TV news anchors upon being handed a late-breaking bulletin.

This just in.

This just in.

And here’s the last this. This is a strange phrase sometimes found printed in the back of a book or instruction manual.

Oh, I love this. This page in… intentionally left blank.

What the heck is that about? When you think about it, it contradicts itself.

So this page intentionally left blank.

Okay.

Oh, gosh. All right, let’s move on to That.

Okay?

Okay.

All right, the first That is a 60s sitcom starring Marlo Thomas.

That girl.

Right, That Girl. An alternate title could have been Her. But they went with That Girl. That’s a good choice.

Here’s another one. The motion picture directing debut of Tom Hanks. It’s a 1996 film.

That Thing You Do.

That Thing You Do. Very good, Grant. You know, he caught a lot of gut for that movie, but it wasn’t bad.

It was not bad. That’s the rise to stardom of a Beatle-esque band called The Wonders.

That Thing You Do.

All right. Here’s the next one. James Cromwell, as Farmer Hoggett, utters this curt command to his porcine sheepdog in the 1995 film Babe.

Oh, I never watched that because I was afraid I would cry.

Oh, I’ve seen it once, but a long time ago.

That.

That’ll do.

That’s it.

Is that it?

That’ll do, pig.

Oh.

That’ll do.

Yeah.

Technically, it starts with that’ll, as opposed to that.

Well, we’ll take it.

Yeah. Let me give you one more of that. A popular 1940s song written by Arlen and Mercer. It was sung by Sammy Davis Jr. during a guest appearance on the TV show I Dream of Jeannie.

Oh, wow. It starts with that.

Right.

That smoke gets it.

No.

That old magic?

That old black magic?

That’s it. That old black magic.

Excellent. Great, great song.

Now, believe it or not, here are a few things that begin with the other.

Now, this is a harder category, right?

There are fewer of these, I bet?

It could be.

Well, there are fewer, but it may not be all that hard.

Okay?

Okay.

Here’s the first.

Scarlett Johansson played Mary, the title character, in this 2008 film about two sisters who compete for the affection of King Henry VIII.

The other?

The other Boleyn.

One?

The other Boleyn girl.

Oh, the other Boleyn girl.

The other Boleyn girl, yeah.

I’ll give you that one.

Very good.

Based on the historical fiction novel by Philippa Gregory.

Here’s the next one.

Andrew Ridgely is sometimes jokingly referred to by this moniker.

Well, he was with…

The other Rolling Stone, the other Beatle, the other…

Wham!

He was in Wham!

Oh, the other George Michael?

Close!

How does that work?

The other guy.

The other guy?

Is that it?

That’s it.

It’s just the other guy?

The other guy from Wham.

The other guy from Wham.

The other guy from Wham, yes.

Here’s the last one.

A scandalous phrase used to refer to a married man’s mistress.

She’s a homewrecker.

The other woman.

The other woman.

The other woman.

Very good.

You guys did really well on this, that, and the other.

Thank you, John.

Thank you, John.

Thank you very much.

Well, if you have a question about this, that, and the other, or wordplay or language or grammar or slang, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John Melton.

Hi, John, welcome to the program.

Hey, what’s going on?

Well, talking to you, what’s going on with you? Where are you?

Beautiful day. I’m in Mysterious Waters, Florida.

Mysterious Waters? For real?

That’s the name of it?

Actually, it’s the name of our subdivision.

We’re just south of Wakulla Springs along the Wakulla River, which is just south of Tallahassee, about 26 miles from the state capital.

Sweet.

What kind of powers do they have?

Do they have life-giving rejuvenation?

Oh, of course.

Every time I jump in, it’s wonderful.

Well, what’s on your mind in Florida?

Well, I was just thinking.

I’m sort of new to the social networking thing, and I just recently got me a Facebook account.

And I was just sort of wondering if it’s socially acceptable to purposely misspell words on these social networking sites, mainly to make the words sort of look like on the page like they sound when they come out of my mouth.

You know, I’ve got about 31 friends on Facebook, and most of them know about probably 500 to 800 friends.

So when they see me on Facebook, they know exactly, okay, that’s John.

We know how he spells.

He spells like he talks.

And, you know, as time goes by, I’m not really worried about my resume.

I’m 44 years old.

I don’t need a resume.

I need a job.

So it’s just an interesting question I had when I was listening to your show.

Well, now you’ve got to give us some examples, John, of how you write things differently on Facebook.

All right.

Well, for instance, when I say my, when I’m referring to myself, it’s M-A-H as referred to my, E-M-Y.

And that’s what it sounds like.

It sounds like that’s what you’re saying, my.

Yeah, exactly.

That’s just the way I talk.

I’ve always spoke or spoken that way, and I tend to spell that way on these social networking sites the way I talk.

And it comes from a long time ago, back when email was more the social networking thing, and it was a little bit slower.

But I used to email an old buddy of mine who lived close to me, and I’d email him and talk to him, and he would say,

Man, you sound just, I can hear your voice when I read your email.

I sort of got it from that.

So when I do this, I, okay, here’s a sentence.

I took my dog down to the river this morning for a swim.

It was nice and cool, I tell you, it was I.

If you think aight, meaning all right.

Oh, aight.

Aight, you know.

And did you spell it D-A-W-G?

D-A-W-G, yeah.

I guess that’s sort of a Georgia thing.

And Riva.

And Riva, living right close to it.

John, I’ve got to say, you’re not alone in this.

Lots of people do this.

And I love that you said exactly the thing that is true, which is that when you write like this, people hear your voice because you are doing a good job of representing your pronunciation in written form.

If you stuck to standard spellings, maybe there’d be less content there.

They’d feel less of the emotion, feel less of a personal connection.

It wouldn’t even be as literary.

There’s something literary about writing in a kind of modified spelling.

People aren’t judging you for it, are they?

No, absolutely not.

I haven’t seen any judgmental thing at all.

And it reminds me, I remember Louis Grisard.

I read a book of his several years ago, and I think he said something to the extent that

And people up north think we talk funny, but God talks like we do.

Let there be light.

It’s funny.

I find this behavior across all segments of society.

Online, I find it among young people, teenagers.

I find it among black folks and white folks.

I find it in foreigners and locals.

I find it in even the most sophisticated writing because it is a way that we can drop out of the formal registers of English and be a little more homey and comfortable and friendly.

There’s something about abbreviating or dropping a G, for example.

Just dropping a G off the end of a word can do amazing things for letting people know that you’re just plain folks.

I mean, sometimes it’s calculated in the case of some politicians, and sometimes it’s natural and it can do really great things.

It improves communication, right?

Oh, absolutely.

I think when I’m calculating, I start adding the Gs.

Oh, I see.

You improve your…

I mean, you go back to standard spelling when you want to impress people.

Is that it?

I guess so.

But as for the people that I communicate with on a daily basis, they get the old dog, and that’s what they get.

With that kind of attitude toward language, you’re well on your way to getting a lot of Facebook friends.

John, thank you so much for calling today.

You bet.

Thanks, man.

All right.

We’ll see you online.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Tell us how you misspell words on purpose and what it means to you.

Send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or give us a ringy-ding-dillo on the telephone, 1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gina from Allen, Texas.

Well, hi, Gina. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have eight-year-old twin daughters, and one of them, her name is Elena, started using kind of a word for a sound in her sentences, and it just struck me by surprise, and I couldn’t contain my laughter, and she just was using it all the time.

Ooh, do tell.

She will say, my friend was walking home after school last week, and dun-dun-dun, the door was locked when she got home.

And she’ll say, the other day I was riding my bike and dun-dun-dun, I fell and nearly broke my arm.

And I think she’s heard it as a sound in conversation on TV or in the movies.

And so she’s imitating that dramatic pause that she’s heard in the cartoon.

Right.

How interesting.

But without the music in there, which is interesting to me.

So instead of going dun-dun-dun, she’s just going dun-dun-dun.

Right.

Huh.

Well, the more I talk about it, the less she does it.

Oh.

I’ve tried not to bring it to her attention anymore, and it’s coming back.

She started saying it again.

I could see how that’d be charming.

Yeah, so do you think it’s cute and you just stand around waiting for her to say it?

I do, and I tell my friends about it in front of her, which is also a big mistake.

Oh, that’s a big no-no.

Dun-dun-dun.

Well, at least she’s still talking. Wait until she’s 13.

Right.

I’ve never heard of this. Have you agree?

No, but I’m immediately fascinated by it and charmed.

It sounds really cute.

And did she tell you where she picked it up?

Was she relating to you how she learned it?

Well, I finally started asking her about it, where she had heard it.

And she says, I don’t know, I guess SpongeBob or something.

So I don’t know if it was specifically that cartoon.

But I’m thinking the dramatic music that plays in the background.

How interesting.

And does she have a twin, did you say?

She does.

And does the twin do it?

No.

And I’ve never heard any of her little neighborhood friends or school friends do it either.

Well, I hereby resolve to watch more SpongeBob to find out.

Only way.

I’ve seen a couple episodes of it.

He’s got some terrible habits.

And the script writers must have a huge amount of fun writing that show.

Because it’s one of the goofiest things I have ever seen in my whole life.

It’s incredibly wacky.

There’s a lot there to laugh about.

That’s hilarious.

Hey, do you know the dramatic prairie dog?

No.

Half the audience is going, yes!

And the other half is going, what?

Google the dramatic prairie dog.

This is a famous, very short YouTube clip that has something like a bazillion views,

And that’s an actual count.

And it’s a prairie dog looking out the corner of his eyes,

And this cheesy, dramatic, dun-dun-dun music is playing.

And he looks like some great truth has just been revealed,

Like the killer has walked into the room and been caught or something.

It’s really funny.

So dramatic prairie dog.

And maybe she’s doing a version of that.

I don’t really know.

Maybe so.

Because it’s one of the biggest YouTube hits of all time.

That’s funny.

Jeez.

And Gina, if it’s any comfort to you, we can give you a word for what your daughter is doing.

Yes, that would be great.

Nice.

Okay. I mean, it’s not that special, but the word in the TV industry is that’s a sting.

How does it differ from a stinger? A sting is at the end?

Yeah, a sting is at the very end of, say, an episode or something.

Right, like right before you go to commercial, that little whirl of music that they do on the news, right before they go, that’s the stinger?

Yeah, yeah, sting and stinger.

Very cool.

You know, if you want to do some more Googling about TV stings and that kind of thing.

Yeah, teach us some more.

Maybe there’s a sting support group out there for moms like you, you know.

I will Google that and the dramatic prairie dog as soon as I hang up.

Gina, thank you for calling us today and sharing stories of your family.

Love it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Best of luck with the twins.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Very cool.

Children are wacky and funny, and I just love the crazy stuff they come up with.

I am really curious to know if there are other kids who do this or supply their own sound effects that way, just sort of unselfconsciously.

I don’t know. It’s possible.

We’d love to hear about it. Call us 1-877-929-9673.

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

Earlier in the show, Grant, I mentioned the Twitter feed very short story.

How about another one?

Oh, please.

Fewer than 140 characters.

4 a.m.

You are asleep again.

I am awake.

I am making a tape of you snoring.

I will use this in court when I plead insanity.

I could have tweeted that myself.

Is there a language-related Twitter feed that you’re crazy about?

Call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name’s Eric Lyak. I’m calling from Plano, Texas.

Hello, Eric. Welcome.

Hi, Eric.

How are y’all doing?

Super.

We’re doing well.

And yourself?

You know, it’s Friday.

I have a question, and this is one of those things, those family things.

My father has always used the word skosh growing up, and he’s pretty much the only person I’ve ever heard use it.

And specifically, it’s for a request for a little bit.

So, for instance, you say, Bob, do you want a little more tea?

You’d say, yeah, just a skosh.

And so my question is, where does this word come from?

And my father spent some time in Okinawa.

And there’s a Japanese term, sakoshi.

That is similar.

I wonder if there’s a relationship between his time in Japan

And the use of this word.

Was he in the military?

Yes, he was in the Marine Corps.

And this was in the post-World War II period, the 1950s?

This would be in the early 60s.

Okay.

Yeah, it does come to English from Japanese,

And I wouldn’t be surprised if your father picked it up in Japan.

The word in Roman characters,

If you’d spelled it with our alphabet instead of theirs,

It’d be S-U-K-O-S-H-I,

And it means small or short or little or something along those lines.

But usually the U is not pronounced.

It’s kind of a voiceless sound, so it’s Scotchy,

Like something like that.

And then the Americans just abbreviate it even further to Scotch.

It really doesn’t come into English until, like we were saying,

Until the post-World War II period, the 1950s or so.

Interestingly, the word also exists in a kind of pigeon spoken in Korea,

And so many American soldiers picked it up during their service in South Korea

And not in their service in Japan.

Oh, okay.

Well, I have an uncle who served in the Korean War,

So maybe an older uncle, so maybe that’s where he got it from.

Oh, it’s possible.

So he uses it too, huh?

But the word is so widespread in North American English now

That most people don’t even realize that it has that sort of history.

They just assume maybe it’s a Spanish word or that it came from a Native American language.

But no, it’s Japanese.

So this is a widely used word.

I just thought it was a peculiarity of my father.

Well, it’s a widely used word.

I wouldn’t call it standard English yet.

I would say that it’s still a little slangy,

But I think you’ll hear this, for example, on the morning television shows.

It’s the kind of language that would be perfectly natural in the mouth of somebody speaking casually

Or talking about food or furniture or clothing or something.

Okay, so like Martha Stewart would use it.

Yeah, sure.

You’re probably not going to hear it on the floor of the Senate.

Will the gentleman from Wyoming please move over our skosh?

Nobody’s going to say that.

Okay.

Not yet.

Not yet.

Super duper.

Thank you so much, Eric.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Eric.

Well, did one of your parents say something that left you puzzled?

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You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, I’m still chewing over the series of articles published in the LA Times about reading.

Did you see those?

Oh, I sure did.

Now, where did you read them?

I read them online on my LCD screen on my computer.

And it’s kind of what I’m thinking about here.

One of the articles talked at length about e-readers, things like the iPad or the Amazon Kindle

Or even your cell phone being used to read text, not just books, but newspaper or anything

That traditionally might come on paper, right?

If there was one thing that was clear from these articles in the LA Times, it wasn’t that we’re reading less.

We’re not.

We’re reading more.

Absolutely.

We may be reading a little less fiction or a little less of the books that the publishers want us to read books that they purport to be sophisticated and intelligent.

We have our own opinions, right?

We are reading more than we used to per person.

Absolutely.

But that’s not going to stop, right?

So we actually need more ways to read our text in more convenient ways.

And I don’t think that a several hundred dollar device is the end of that chain of logic.

Oh, I think you’re right.

The thing that really struck me reading this story in the LA Times about the future of reading was I just feel like we’re, I mean, compared to video games, I think we’re at the Pong stage.

Yes, that’s exactly it.

Like the iPad does this page curl thing in the corner when you buy a book.

It does this video or this screen representation of what might actually happen with a real book

Where the page turns over a little bit and there’s the shadow and the curve and it looks like a bent corner.

And, you know, that’s websites.

In 1994, we’re doing this thing where they made it look like your office.

And if you clicked on the desk, you saw your files.

And if you clicked on the picture frame, you saw your photos.

And we’re long past thinking that that kind of metaphor is necessary.

And yet the e-book readers seem somehow to be primitive in a way and not even reaching far enough, right?

But maybe I’m just impatient.

I expect them to stay ahead of my intentions.

Yeah, I mean, I can see projecting this stuff on the inside of your eyeglasses at some point.

Imagine this.

You open up your wallet and you’ve got your credit cards in there and business cards and bits of scrap paper and receipts and stuff.

But one of those is something that’s about as big as a credit card and about as thick.

And this is your e-book reader.

It’s flexible.

It’s almost disposable.

It’s like the cheap digital cameras that you can dial by at the drugstore.

They’re like $9.

It’s something like that.

It’s not this incredibly expensive device.

We want to get to the point where e-readers, whether you’re reading newspapers or books, are so inexpensive that you don’t have to talk to your spouse about the purchase.

Oh, my gosh.

And we’re not there yet.

Oh, my gosh.

But we are in the middle of a revolution.

And what we’re looking at is Pong and Space Invaders right now.

I mean, the other thing that this article mentioned that necessarily comes to mind is how this is going to change not the medium, but the way we read and the way our brains work.

You know, there was a former chairman of the NEA who was quoted in that article as saying, reading well is like playing the piano or the violin.

You know, it’s a high-level cognitive ability, and it requires practice and skill.

And, you know, I do have concerns about that, but I also agree with the person in the article who said, look, the trains left the station.

And there’s no evidence that the new kinds of reading that we’re doing are worse than the old kinds.

That’s the clincher here for me.

Well, do you think that people will be sitting there reading War and Peace on their cell phones?

I mean, I’m astonished at how much I read on my cell phone now.

Out of the last hundred books that I’ve read, probably more than 80% were read on my phone.

Really?

Absolutely.

Like fiction?

Fiction, nonfiction, technical manuals.

And it’s so much easier than looking for the book, right?

I mean, this is a thing that you have in your pocket all the time.

I should say, to close this all out, there was a lovely article, a funny article posted on McSweeney’s, you know, the literary blog that’s been around forever.

Right.

It joked that a group of engineers had tested all the e-readers and found that the newspaper was the best one on the market.

And by the newspaper, they meant the real newspaper.

And it was great.

Ease of use.

Ease of use and all the good things about it.

What does the future of reading mean to you?

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

Or send your thoughts at length an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Super, how are you doing? Who is this?

This is Sandy Hughes in Fort Worth.

Well, welcome to the program, Sandy.

Thank you, thanks for having me.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I had emailed a question about, is anybody in Oklahoma?

My grandparents, my uncle and aunt, lived up there.

We used to call the dragonflies snake doctors.

And I didn’t know if it was an Oklahoma thing or a family thing or a South America thing.

I didn’t know what it was.

But I do know that my grandmother, she passed away when I was five or six.

I found out that she was welch and very superstitious,

So I didn’t know if that had anything to do with snake doctors or where it came from.

Very interesting.

Snake Doctors is a name for dragonflies.

So it really is a real name?

Oh, you betcha, Sandy.

Now let me ask you something.

I wonder, how do you feel about dragonflies?

Do they look cute or scary?

Oh, they’re beautiful.

And they’re peaceful.

And they make me think of my childhood.

I love them.

I love them.

Very peaceful.

Peaceful.

That’s interesting.

They remind you of trips to the country and that kind of thing?

Yes.

And what started all this, one day we were at work and I’m on the second floor and this huge dragonfly, the big ones kind of scare me.

It hit my window.

And I said, look, that snake doctor hit the window.

And the girls looked at me like, what are you talking about?

Well, the family always called them snake doctors.

I don’t know why, but that’s what we called them.

But, oh, they just make me feel good when I see them.

Oh, that sounds really nice.

Oh, man, that is so interesting, Sandy.

I’ve been so eager for somebody to call and talk about dragonflies because they have such interesting folklore attached to them.

And what fascinates me is that a lot of people think they’re really creepy.

Really?

Oh, no, no.

Yeah.

And so in European folklore, well, like in Britain, they’re often called the devil’s darning needle.

And in Norway, they go by a name that means eye poker.

This insect that pokes you in the eye because their bodies are so distinctive.

You know, they’re long and needle-like.

And in fact, in European tradition, there are all these stories about how if children are bad, the dragonflies will come and sew up their mouths so that they can’t.

That’s really creepy.

How creepy is that?

So that they can’t say any more bad words.

So that needle-like image is very interesting and gave rise to a lot of different kinds of names.

And the one that you mentioned, Snake Doctor, is associated with that as well.

Because there’s an old tale that dragonflies used to follow snakes around.

And if a snake got injured, the dragonfly would get in there and sew it up.

Oh, how interesting is that?

That is cool.

Now, where did that folklore come from?

Any idea?

That’s a great question.

Well, there are a couple ideas that I read about.

Snakes and dragonflies tend to inhabit the same kind of wet areas, and so they’re often seen together.

Snakes also love to eat dragonflies if they can get a hold of them.

So snakes are in pursuit of dragonflies, which puts them even closer proximity more often.

And also, the shape of a dragonfly is it’s got that kind of hook at the end like a darning needle,

So maybe that has something to do with it.

You know when they curl their tail under?

Oh, wow.

Or a knitting needle, I should say.

We were never allowed to kill them.

My grandparents and my uncles don’t kill them.

They’re good.

Okay, so we always grew up thinking, oh, these are good and they’re pretty.

I never thought anything.

Oh, that’s sad.

Some people think they’re scary and creepy.

Yeah.

No, they get rid of a lot of the other bug pests.

Oh, that’s cool.

Yeah.

But there’s a lot of names from even the United States, right, Martha?

A lot, yeah.

Yeah, Mosquito Hawk, Horse Doctor, the Devil’s Horse.

It’s often associated with the devil.

Yeah, Spindle, Snake Feeder, Snake Waiter.

I see a bunch more.

I see a whole slew of them in the United Kingdom as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, the fleeing ask, the tangy-yether, and the bull stang.

That’s a wonderful name, right?

All four little dragonflies.

That is super.

That is neat.

Isn’t that crazy?

And, Sandy, I’m with you.

I think they’re beautiful.

I love the iridescent different colors and how those little wings just support that long body.

So snake dogs.

Yeah, so you’re not alone.

You can tell your coworkers that you are part of a larger movement to recognize the wisdom of this animal.

Oh, that’s great.

And I only want another good part.

I don’t want another bad part, so that’s cool.

That is neat.

All right.

A lot of information.

Yeah.

Well, enjoy.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, and thank you for having me on the show.

Well, it was our pleasure.

Okay.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got a question about something that you said that made other people raise their eyebrow

And wonder what your problem was, give us a question about your problem, 1-877-929-9673,

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

When we took the call about what to call a woman’s male lover, you know, the guy on the side, the male equivalent of a mistress.

Oh, I remember that.

We got a lot of responses, a zillion, most of them recommending Paramoy, which I can’t believe we didn’t mention, but it’s a great name for it.

A little old-fashioned, but Paramore is a great name for a male lover on the side.

But we also had a few people who responded with the word Sancho or Sancho, S-A-N-C-H-O.

And I was really kind of surprised by that.

There were some people in Texas and California.

And, you know, maybe it’s more common in the Southwest or in states that border Mexico.

I don’t really know.

A couple of people suggested that it does come from Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s sidekick.

Possible.

I do know that Sancho is used in prison slang to refer to the man who sleeps with your wife when you’re in the clink, right?

Oh, sort of like—

And what does that remind you of?

Oh, I know where you’re going.

Yeah, it reminds you of Jody, who is the man who, when you were in the service, serving abroad, who is at home driving your car and sleeping in your car.

No.

Anyway, I look an email and I see that Daniel in Southern California wrote to us last year in response to a call about Jodi.

And he said that when he served as a firefighter, that they used Sancho as well.

Oh, really?

To refer to this mythological figure who was at home, like, stepping into your shoes when you were away in the brush fighting the wildfires.

Right, eating off your plates.

And one other thing, two people mentioned that the sublime song Santeria does include a mention of this Sancho figure.

Very good.

Sancho as the male lover on the side.

Well, we did not know that.

Did not know that.

Call us with the other things that we did not know, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dave.

How are you?

Hello, Dave.

Hi, Dave.

Doing well.

Hi.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

Where are you calling us from?

I’m calling from Connecticut, and I have a question about the word pre-plan.

Pre-plan.

Pre-plan.

Pre-plan.

Pre-plan.

I’m a firefighter.

Oh, very good.

And when we sit in operational meetings, the chief will bring up, you know, we have a pre-plan for this incident.

So I asked one day, I said, Chief, how do you pre-plan something?

And he looked at me with a rather quizzical look.

So I said, I’ve got to find out about this word.

And so what should he have said instead of pre-plan?

Well, I don’t know if you could put the prefix pre with plan.

Because isn’t by nature anything you do planning?

So you’re saying it’s redundant.

I would believe so.

Yeah.

Pre-plan has come up before in one of the many ways in which I’ve, you know, worked with language over the years.

And so in the digging I’ve done on this, I think I found a pattern for the use of pre-plan, which kind of makes the redundancy okay.

Kind of.

I know that’s a completely waffly, vague, kind of flip-floppy phrase I put in there, but there are some caveats and so forth.

But I think it kind of makes it okay.

And this is that when you are planning, you can plan at any time.

You can plan on the spot for something you’re going to do in just a moment or that you’re actually currently doing, or you can plan well in advance.

There’s this whole chronological range of times when you can plan.

But it looks like, according to the usage that I can see and that I’ve encountered in day-to-day life, that when people pre-plan, it’s almost always well in advance of when they’re actually going to use that plan.

And now, I don’t know if this is something that people have done because they realize that pre-planning is a little redundant.

And so they’ve sought to make sure there’s some difference between pre-plan and plan.

And people do that with language.

When there are two words that seem to serve the same function, people will often, in their heads, make one word mean a slightly different thing than the other thing.

So the question that I most often hear this is people asking about pre-boarding in the airport.

And people, they’re like, well, that’s redundant because you’re either boarding or you’re not.

You’re not pre-boarding. You can’t, like, really pre-board.

But if you look at the way they use it in the airport, it’s almost always you’re doing things in preparation for the actual moment of boarding.

There is actually some kind of pre-action happening there.

Like you are folding up the baby stroller or you are tagging the extra bags or you are rolling the person in the wheelchair up to the gate so that you can take that extra time, that extra moment to gather them up and bring them to their seat, that sort of thing.

And then folding.

I just feel like there is a little, there’s a differentiation here that’s happening, a subtlety.

I will, however, say that I, at the base of it, avoid both words.

I mean, it’s the kind of thing.

Pre-boarding?

Yeah, pre-board or pre-plan.

I avoid saying both of them.

Yeah.

Well, I kind of ask Chief, I say, isn’t it by nature what we’re doing, we’re planning for this?

Yeah.

And what he’s saying.

And, you know, I’ve been in other meetings with my captains and stuff and, you know, all right, sir, well, we’re going to plan for this.

And, you know, well, we have a pre-plan already drawn up.

I’m like, well, how do you draw up a pre-plan, sir?

It’s a plan to make a plan.

I can throw you the prefix and the word plan going together.

You know, I end up post-planning a lot.

Like, I should have done that.

Well, then how does one post-plan?

If you pre-plan, can’t you post-plan something?

Well, yeah.

Post-planning is 2020.

Yeah, right.

Monday morning quarterbacking.

Monday morning post-planning.

Yeah.

But, Grant, Dave can’t avoid this because his boss is telling him.

Yeah.

Well, here’s the thing, Dave.

The course of action that I take on this is I avoid it in my own speech, and I forgive it in the speech of others.

Okay.

It’s kind of harmless.

All right.

And he’s your boss.

Yes.

Right.

And so when you take his job one day, then you’ll have to put an edict out, put a big plaque on the wall.

No more pre-planning.

We’re only planning.

I don’t want his job.

I’ve seen his stress.

I don’t want his job.

Well, I hope we’ve helped some, Dave.

Take care of yourself.

You’ve clarified the mud.

All right.

Thank you, sir.

All right.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, tell us what your boss does to annoy you when he or she speaks English or writes English or abominates it.

1-877-929-9673 or send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And if you’re listening on podcast, that phone number works all the time.

Hey, Grant, I have a slang term for you.

You probably already know it, but do you know the term hit and giggle?

I don’t think so. What is it?

It sounds kind of naughty, doesn’t it?

A little bit, yeah.

But I learned this recently when I was filling in for the announcer at the Mercury Insurance Open Tennis Tournament here a few weeks ago.

And I heard people in the trailer, the tournament officials, saying, well, we’re going to do the hit and giggle.

And I thought, what? That sounds just vaguely naughty. Hello.

But it turns out that that’s sort of the time during a tennis tournament where they do an exhibition match that’s just for laughs.

Oh, I see. They’re not really right.

Right. Or the pro-am where professional tennis players will play along with amateurs who have paid money to do this.

And I never heard that expression, but apparently it’s a term of art in tennis and also golf.

And I guess maybe everyone knows this term but you and me because we don’t get out much.

That’s a great one. I’ve just made a note.

I figured you would.

Hit and giggle.

So what slang have you heard lately?

Call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

Our romance is growing flat.

That’s our show for this week.

Don’t forget, you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

Call us 877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also chooses our music.

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

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword Inc., a nonprofit organization.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Sayonara.

Ciao.

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