You’ve noticed work seems to expand to fill the time given to complete it. But did you know there’s a term for that? Also this week, the New England exclamation “So don’t I!,” grey vs. gray, building storeys, being squiffy, having chops, getting involved in pull-hauls, nebby Pennsylvanians, and a modern Greek idiom about hiccups and burning ears.
If you’re feeling squiffy, it means you’re drunk, especially in 19th century British slang. If someone has a golden gut, on the other hand, it means they have good business acumen.
What does it mean to have chops? In the 1500s, chops was a slang term for the face or lips, but it carried into African-American jazz culture to mean that a brass or wind player had good embouchure. The idea is reflected in the old jazz musician’s saying, “If you ain’t got the chops for the dots, ain’t nothing’ happening.” Having chops eventually also came to mean having talent in other disciplines.
Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has an improvement on the hoary puzzle about words ending in -gry. For example, if someone has posted to Tumblr in a while, they might be feeling a bit bloggry. If you’re in the mood to do some karaoke, you might be described as singry.
Why are floors of buildings called stories (or storeys)? One theory suggests that an Latin architectural term historia once referred to the stained-glass windows or the ornate statues around the edifice. But the etymology is unclear.
If someone’s been talking about you in English, then metaphorically speaking, your ears are burning. If they were talking about you in Modern Greek, it’s said that you must have been hiccupping.
The term pull-haul, meaning “a verbal conflict,” is heard in New England, particularly Maine. A 1914 citation in the Dictionary of American Regional English alludes to all the pull-hauling among churches when a new congregant moves to town.
Why do we adjust our working pace to the timelines we’re given? The late Cyril Northcote Parkinson explained the phenomenon in his 1955 Economist piece, calling it Parkinson’s Law.
Squiffy, that British slang term for drunk, has also come to mean “askew.” At a Roman orgy, for example, you might have found people wearing squiffy laurel crowns.
What do you call tourists in your hometown? In New England, they have leaf-peepers. In Wisconsin, it’s berry-pickers or shackers, as in “people who rent cottages.” Coastal areas have pukers, a reference to people who charter boats but then can’t handle the waves. And in Big Sky, Montana, tourists are known as gapers.
Is there a term for words that sound like their first letter? Queue, jay, oh, and the like have been deemed by one listener homoepistulaverbumphones. Well, maybe.
What’s the plural of pair? Is it correct to say “two pairs of socks” or “two pair of socks”? The most common usage is “pairs,” but it might depend on whether you think of the things as a unit, like socks.
Is there a visual difference between grey and gray? The grey spelling is more common in the UK; gray is more common in the U.S. Many feel that grey has a delicate, silvery tint, while gray is more opaque, perhaps with warmer tones of red or brown. Martha and Grant disagree about this one.
The word anyways, spelled with an s, has come into vogue among writers looking to transition from stilted language into something more reader-friendly.
Just heard the rebroadcast today and a quick google of “so don’t I” and New England gave this link to Yale University’s Grammatical Diversity Project: http://microsyntax.sites.yale.edu/so-dont-i
It lists some other references alongside the L. Horn work.
– I just love A Way With Words!
– Yeah, so don’t I, it’s wicked cool.
An anadrome is a word that forms a whole new word when you spell it backwards. For example, the word “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts.” Some people’s first names are anadromes. There’s the girl named Noel...
A flashlight emits a steady beam of light. So what’s the flash part of that word about? Also, if you’re a nervous Nellie, you’re skittish and indecisive—both characteristics of an American politician who earned that nickname in the...
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If you’re feeling squiffy, it means you’re drunk, especially in 19th century British slang. If someone has a golden gut, on the other hand, it means they have good business acumen.
Just heard the rebroadcast today and a quick google of “so don’t I” and New England gave this link to Yale University’s Grammatical Diversity Project: http://microsyntax.sites.yale.edu/so-dont-i
It lists some other references alongside the L. Horn work.
– I just love A Way With Words!
– Yeah, so don’t I, it’s wicked cool.
🙂