Two Shades of Grey

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Grant, I came across a word the other day in my reading that I’d never seen before.

Okay.

And you know how I am about that.

I got so excited I wanted to share it with you, but I thought I would share it in the form of a little quiz.

Okay.

Okay.

It turns out this word first appeared in the 19th century, and the word is squiffy, S-Q-U-I-F-F-Y.

Grant is squiffy, a noun meaning a kitchen implement made from corn husks.

B, an adjective describing someone who’s drunk,

Or C, a proper name for a small breed of dog popular in Newfoundland,

As in he’s a purebred Squiffy.

It’s drunk.

How did you know that?

Because I’ve heard it before.

Oh, you have?

Yeah, Squiffy. He’s a bit Squiffy.

It’s British.

Yeah, yeah, 19th century.

Well, let me ask you one, then.

Okay.

If I say that you have a golden gut, what am I saying about you?

That I have excellent taste in food.

I can eat anything.

A golden gut.

No, I’m talking about…

I have good intuition.

Yes.

I’m talking about your business acumen, your business intuition.

And this term golden gut came to surface because I was looking at the rise of data in the business world.

And more decisions now are being made by people who appreciate data and they care about the data and they ignore their gut.

They ignore their golden gut, even if they’ve been successful in the past.

So you have this paradigm shift where this old method of the boss is always right because his gut and his experience say so.

And the new crowd comes and said, look, but it’s not supported by the data.

There’s a great story that they tell about Google.

A guy who left Google said that when he was there, they tested 41 shades of blue by showing this particular element on a page to millions of visitors and figuring out which one got clicked on the most.

And then that’s the one that they used.

Oh, my gosh.

And then it’s completely the opposite of going with your golden gut.

I wonder if they could have. That’s so interesting. Golden gut.

What new words have you encountered? 877-929-9673 or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Julia. I’m calling from Indiana, central Indiana.

I’m looking for the origin of an expression that I grew up with, and I’ve traveled a lot and have only heard it in my particular area, and it’s Nibby.

N-I-B-B-Y, I assume that’s how you would spell it.

And it means basically to get into something you’re not supposed to be in.

Either you’re snooping in somebody’s stuff or you are getting into someone else’s business where you don’t belong.

As in, we would use it, you’re being too nibby or you’re nibbing into something you’re not supposed to be in.

Interesting.

Interesting. And you are from central Indiana?

I am.

And are your parents from there as well?

They are.

And on my mother’s side, the origin would have been western Ohio, central Indiana, and they are of German descent, if that matters.

Interesting.

That fits pretty well with what we know about Nibby, which is really concentrated in Pennsylvania.

I don’t know if you have any Pennsylvania connections as well.

Yes. A few generations back, they would have come from Pennsylvania down into western Ohio and into Indiana.

Okay. Well, that sounds about right, because what we know about Nibbea is that it’s generally concentrated in western Pennsylvania.

It shows up very well on dialect maps that way.

And the idea apparently goes back to an old word for nose.

Nib or neb in Scotland and Ireland and northern England, which sent a lot of people over there to that part of the country, use nib or neb as a word for nose.

And so if you’re sticking your nose in something all the time, then you’re nibby.

So you are literally, if you’re nibby, you’re nebby, you’re nosy.

It makes sense to me. That’s fabulous.

And the more common spelling these days is nebby, and it’s still widely used in the United Kingdom, although it’s a dialect word and not mainstream English.

Mm—

Mm—

So you might talk about sticking your neb into something or sticking your nib into something, and if you do, you’re nibby.

And you’re sticking your nose into something.

Exactly.

Perfectly understandable.

Well, thank you very much.

That clears it up for me.

It was just a question I really never had an answer to.

Well, our pleasure.

Thanks for calling, Julia.

-huh.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Boy, those Scots just keep turning out the words, don’t they?

They do.

So it’s related to the nib of a pen, which is the point of a pen.

Yeah.

So call HisNibsAndMe if you have a question about language, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Catherine from Plano, Texas.

Hi, Catherine.

Welcome.

Hi, Catherine.

How are you doing?

Hi, I’m pretty good.

What’s going on?

Well, a friend of mine a few weeks ago posted something on Facebook about a commercial that he thought was really fun.

And I agreed, and I posted that I thought the actor who played the woman had really awesome chops.

And then later, it kept coming back.

And I kept saying, why do we say chops?

It used to be from music or jazz or something, but I’m using it now to talk about someone with acting skills.

And I thought, who could tell me about this?

And I thought of you.

Yes, we can.

What was she doing in the commercial that was so great?

Well, she just had very good expressions and delivery.

And the other thing I was thinking about was she was also a little bit younger.

So it wasn’t like she was vastly experienced in terms of time.

She was a younger person, but she seemed to have a really good grasp of what she was there to do.

And she did it so well that we all thought it was effective.

And Catherine, are you a musician yourself?

Well, I used to be in the high school band.

What’d you play?

I played the clarinet.

They always need clarinets, right?

Did you get steered into the clarinet section?

I was a flute player myself.

Oh, yay, flute.

Well, there’s a history here, and you will probably have a eureka moment when I tell you this.

In the 1500s and 1600s, chops was a slang term for your face or a part of your face, your lips, your mouth.

So you might say, close your chops, your tongue is hanging out, or something like that.

And then this use of chops as a slang word for the face or the lips or the mouth kind of faded,

But it stuck around in black American English.

So by the time the jazz era came around, as you noted, you could talk about chops if you were a musician,

Particularly if you played a wind instrument or a brass instrument.

And in that business, having good chops meant that your embouchure was good.

The way that you held the instrument to your mouth,

Particularly if you had strength.

I mean, if you could really blow, as they put it at the time, right?

You had good embouchure, and then you had chops.

And then, to have good chops kind of showed up in the rest of the band,

The piano player and the stand-up bass and the guitarist or whoever,

And it spread from there.

And then it left music and showed up in sports and other arenas

Where it meant as it does today,

Which if you have good chops or if you just have playing,

You don’t even have to qualify it.

If you have chops, you’re very good.

Well, thanks for the props, for the chops.

Yeah, and so like in the jazz era, there was a quote that I really loved.

If you ain’t got the chops for the dots, ain’t nothing happening.

And that meant if you were really good at playing a trumpet, then you were great.

But if you weren’t, then nothing, the band was going to go nowhere.

Yeah, you probably remember when if you didn’t practice a whole lot, then your embouchure just went all the heck.

Right, because you’ve got to practice those muscles, right?

They go slack fast, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So now we use it just to demonstrate someone’s level of skill.

Yeah, Grant just demonstrated his linguistic chops, wouldn’t you say?

And it doesn’t have to do with musical chops.

It’s in all varieties of skilled areas now.

In general, it means you are above average or you are unexpectedly good.

Which sounds like the use that you made when you were talking about this actress in the television commercial.

She was good beyond her age, right?

Yes, yes, exactly. You’ve hit it. Well, that was awesome. Thank you for clearing that up.

Thanks for calling, Catherine. Good luck.

I appreciate it. Thanks. Bye-bye.

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

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Greg Smith. How are you doing?

Hi, Greg. I’m doing well.

Welcome to the show. Where are you calling from?

Springfield, Vermont.

Okay, cool.

Springfield, Vermont.

Well, I’m wondering about the expression, so don’t I.

I’ve heard it since I’ve lived in Vermont, which is about 30 years,

And it’s when someone is replying to something, they actually agree with it.

So it’s almost like saying, so do I.

But they say, so don’t I instead.

And I’ve got to tell you that after talking to someone from Montana,

It sounds like it’s used out there, too, in maybe some rural areas.

Really?

Yeah.

So you’ve been there 30 years, but you’re not 30 years old, so you’re probably from somewhere else.

I certainly am.

That’s correct.

Where are you from?

I’m actually from southwestern Connecticut.

And in Connecticut, I’m gathering that they don’t say this.

They don’t.

This is like Fairfield County or something.

That’s correct.

Okay.

And so what’s confusing to you, Greg, is that the don’t sounds like a negative,

And it sounds like I’m saying I don’t like ice cream.

Exactly.

Right.

It’s almost counterintuitive.

It’s a really interesting, lovely thing here.

There’s a great book by a linguist named Larry Horn, very wonky.

You should buy it if you’re very wonky.

I’ll wait for the movie.

He says that So Don’t I is so known as a regional language feature in parts of New England and throughout New England that it’s risen to the level of an overt stereotype.

And what he means by this is the locals are so conscious of the fact that they do this that it’s one of the first things that they talk about when they try to describe what it’s like to be a local or what it’s like to be where they’re from.

So it’s very well known within that particular region and barely known outside the region because it just sounds wrong to outsiders, doesn’t it?

It certainly does.

Now, that’s why I’m wondering why that person heard it in Montana, unless there was a transplant from New England.

That happens.

There are pockets.

There’s a couple things happening here.

There are little pockets of this being reported around the country, but it’s far more common in New England.

As you might guess, because this is a New England feature, it does have roots in English spoken in the United Kingdom and goes back centuries.

I won’t get into the rich details of it, but it’s mostly known among linguists.

It’s this strange dialect feature where it looks like a negative to outsiders, but it’s 100% perceived as a positive to insiders.

Wow.

And what’s almost always happening here is that when I say, so don’t I, I think that you somehow suggested a negative or that my response, you somehow suggested that my response will be no.

And so by saying, so don’t I, I’m actually negating your negativity to create a positive.

What?

And that is a really bad explanation of something that’s very complicated.

But that’s, you won’t go wrong if you just accept that.

Okay.

In other words, all the linguists, I’m sorry, but everyone else, that’s the best that I can do.

We’re going to link to Larry Horn’s book.

We’re going to link to some articles about this.

We’re going to get to the bottom of So Don’t I so that outsiders, people who aren’t from New England,

Can get kind of a taste of what’s happening there because it’s a remarkable thing.

It’s got history.

It’s got local pride in it.

It’s got linguistics and semantics and everything.

It’s all in there.

It’s wonderful in this very short phrase.

Well, that’s a great thing.

If anything else comes your way that you think we should hear about, you’ve got to call us, all right?

I shall.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Take care.

Thanks, Greg.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We know that you have stories about language.

We know there’s something you want to tell us.

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Coming up, the weekly quiz and more of your language questions.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. And joining us now is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hiya, John.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

Hey, kid. What’s up?

It’s great to be back.

What do you have for us?

You guys both know the classic G-R-Y puzzle, the Gree puzzle?

Sure.

Oh, yeah.

There are three words in the English language that end in G-R-Y.

Right.

Hungry and angry are two of them. What is the third, right?

It’s Gree to me.

Right. The answer, of course, being…

Igree.

Well, there’s a Greek. Now, wait on that a second.

The answer being that there is no common third word in English ending in G-R-Y.

Now, you remember, thank you for remembering that Igri is the word that I’ve coined in an attempt to defuse the G-R-Y puzzle.

And do you remember what Igri stands for, what it means?

Is this when you’re kind of in a bad mood because you’re hungry?

No.

You’re irritated.

No, no, no.

It stands for, it means vicarious social embarrassment.

Like when you’re watching Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm and you just kind of feel Igri.

That’s my word.

The definition I gave was for hangry.

Hangry?

That’s when you’re hungry and angry together.

This feeds right into what I’m talking about here.

Because I know a few people, dozens actually, who actually use igry on a regular basis.

But I’ve decided that in order to completely bury the gree puzzle, the G-R-Y puzzle, a more radical approach is needed.

And we’re going to coin more words ending in G-R-Y.

Okay.

Sure.

And I like hangry.

And since hungry and angry are both derived from words that end in G-E-R,

I’m going to adapt other G-E-R words to the G-R-Y team.

For example, Denise hasn’t posted anything to Tumblr in quite a while,

So she’s feeling quite…

Tumblegree?

No, what do people who post things on the internet, they are?

Bloggers?

Right.

Oh, she’s a bloggery.

She’s feeling bloggery.

She’s feeling bloggery, I see.

She hasn’t done it in a while, so she’s feeling kind of, I know that’s an actual thing.

People feel like they haven’t posted in a while, so they’re feeling a little bloggery.

Okay, right.

Okay, so let’s see if we can do some more of these.

Okay.

Let’s see.

After a long day at work, I like to go out with my friends and hit the karaoke bar because I’m feeling what?

Singry.

Singry, right.

I know people who just, they just feel very singry at the end of the week.

Right, right, right.

Now, that Winnie the Pooh video made the kids bounce all around the house.

I can’t put them to bed when they’re feeling…

Tiggery.

Tiggery.

Nice.

You know when you’re visiting a friend and it gets late,

But the company is so good you just don’t want to leave?

I love that feeling, that feeling of being…

Lingery.

Lingery.

Lingery.

Very good.

Lingery.

Not all of these are going to be useful all the time.

Yes.

Not all of these are going to come trippingly off the tongue,

But we’ll get as many as we can, okay?

Now, I love Indiana Jones movies.

I love that suspenseful feeling when I’m not sure what’s going to happen next.

I call it…

Cliffhangry?

Cliffhangry, yes.

Ooh, good.

How about this?

The texture of that dress is so inviting, I really want to touch it.

It makes me feel so…

Fingery.

Fingery, yes.

How about…

I just couldn’t bring myself to drive to work this morning, so I called in sick.

I was feeling…

Malingry.

Malingry.

Nice work.

We don’t ever do that here.

Nope.

No.

Come in when we’re sick.

That’s right.

That’s why the microphones look like that.

Visiting day at the facility where Grandma lives is not easy for me.

All she and her friends do is talk about things that were before my time.

It leaves me feeling very…

Youngry.

Youngry.

Youngry, yeah.

Finally, Mark and I often engage in little put-down sessions.

I actually enjoy it a lot, especially when the quips are coming fast and furious and I’m feeling really…

Zingry.

Zingry, yeah.

Zingry.

Oh, man.

And on the Z ending, I will end it with a Z.

So those are my words.

Guys out there, everyone, use as many of those as you possibly can so this degree puzzle will be dead and buried, please.

Thanks a bunch, John.

Thanks, John.

Thank you, guys.

We’ve got a question about words and language.

Well, we’re feeling diggory, 877-929-9673, or words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gina calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Gina.

Welcome to the program.

Oh, thanks.

Well, I have a question about floors on a building, why they’re called stories.

Stories, like fifth story, fourth story, first story.

Yeah, exactly.

Grant and I have talked about this because it’s a little bit problematic.

Some dictionaries will tell you that there may have been an architectural term, historia, from the Latin word historia, meaning a story, and that it may refer to decorations around buildings in the Middle Ages.

Like, you know, like if you see a cathedral and it has all those stained glass windows, that a series of stained glass windows, it tells a story.

Literally, panel to panel, just like a big comic book, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or that maybe there are sculptures going around a building like that and that there are different stories at different levels.

So you’d have this transference, this idea of this level of the building, which literally is telling a tale, that name then transferred to refer just to the level of the building and no longer to the story itself.

However, there’s a big however.

In the Oxford English Dictionary, it says, we don’t buy it.

The OED people, and they’re some of the best lexicographers that we know,

They’re like, we don’t buy it because we’ve got some evidence that this probably comes from a French term

That more or less refers to actual the word history.

So you’ve got this confusion of these words with similar spellings and possibly related meanings,

And there’s all kinds of collisions there in the past, and we’re not quite sure how to tease that out.

Yeah, and as far as I know, the ancient Romans didn’t use the word historia like that to mean a story in a building.

And, you know, if you look at European languages, they have nothing to do with story in their terms for different floors in a building.

So it’s a mess.

It’s a mess.

-oh.

Well, it’s very interesting because I still call them stories, and you don’t hear it quite as often anymore as you used to.

What do you hear instead?

Floor?

Floors.

Floors.

Sixth floor.

And I say, what story are you on?

Yeah, yeah.

Sounds a little old-fashioned.

Well, at the very least, we learned a new word today.

We learned his story refers to these panels of scenes around the certain levels of old buildings, right?

Exactly.

Cool.

Well, thank you.

Sure.

Take care.

It was a pleasure talking to you.

Bye-bye, Gina.

Thanks, Gina.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

That’s a difficult story, isn’t it, to unravel?

Difficult story to unravel.

We should point out, yes, there are two different spellings of this.

The British spell story with an E, E-Y at the end, and the Americans don’t.

And let’s not even get started on different levels in different buildings in different countries.

Yeah, the planta baja in Spanish is different.

The first floor is different from the…

Never mind.

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Grant, were you hiccuping a lot yesterday?

No.

I weren’t.

Because I was talking about you.

Oh, is that something that people say?

They say it in Greece, in modern Greece.

Instead of saying your ears were burning, they say you were hiccuping.

And I love the modern Greek word for it.

It’s loxicus.

Loxicus.

It sounds like a hiccup, doesn’t it?

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Stacey from Dallas, Texas.

Hiya, Stacey. What’s up? How can we help?

First of all, I love your program.

Thank you.

And I have called before, but this time I’m calling about a particular phrase that my father used to use,

And I have not heard it anywhere else.

But what happened is that I grew up in a family with a number of children.

There were five of us, and so on Sundays, my dad would take all the kids in the station wagon out to the country,

And he would drive as fast as he could down these country roads, saying that he was, quote, blowing the soot out.

So this would be about when?

Between 1950 and 60.

Was he a Navy man, perchance?

Not at all.

Not any kind of military experience at all?

Yeah, there was military, Army.

Army? Was he, okay.

Do you know if he worked on a ship?

No.

Okay.

Was he a fireman, perhaps?

No.

Okay.

I’ve got some leading questions here because I’m just looking for data.

He was an engineer.

What kind of engineering?

Petroleum.

Perfect.

Petroleum.

That exactly explains it.

Let me tell you about this.

In particular kinds of engineering where you were burning carbon fuels,

You will get a soot buildup and you will spend a great deal of your time

Trying to figure out how to get that soot buildup out.

Now, first of all, what is soot and how would it build up?

Well, it happens in the flue.

If you have a gas stove, if you have a gas furnace, it’s this black residue that’s left inside because of the chemical reaction that happens when the fuel burns, right?

And so it accretes, and you’ve got to get it out of there or else you’ll have a flue fire.

In a bigger machine where you have a smokestack or a chimney, you have exactly the same problem, and it’s harder to get it out.

Now, when you’re at sea, there are a lot of remedies, and you can actually find this back as far as, like, quite a ways back, 1800s even, to blow the soot out.

They had a variety of techniques, but one of them on these bigger boats was to take a blank charge, like you might put in a cannon, and put it in there and fire it.

And it would blow up through the stack and just blow the soot out of it.

They were literally blowing the soot out.

Wow, that’s really vivid.

And there’s these funny stories.

I don’t even know if they’re true.

There’s these funny stories where in a kitchen galley, you also have a flue to release the fumes from the stove out.

They would fire a pistol up there to blow the soot out.

Really?

Whoa.

And so you’re literally blowing the soot out.

And now, of course, this term was widely used in the Navy and a number of kinds of engineering and all these different domains and arenas.

But I found a few uses of this term being used by people who were racing motorcycles or who were driving trucks for recreation.

And when they use it, they are talking about going fast, but they’re also talking about going fast to relieve the stress of life.

To kind of like, you’re blowing the suit out, meaning like pedal to the metal, driving full force, just to kind of, you know how, when you drive fast, your cares fall away from you.

That’s what they’re talking about.

Well, that’s what I was wondering.

Yeah.

You know, people just wanted to blow the suit out of his head or out of the car.

So I would not be surprised if he got it from his career as an engineer in patrolling, because it fits exactly.

Because he did work on oil rigs and things like that.

So, Stacey, I want to know what that effect was on you.

What effect that had on you when he blew the suit out?

Well, I mean, back then, you know, we didn’t have seatbelts.

I was going to say.

So you’re like bouncing around, find your head in the glove compartment.

So it’s good for him, not so good for you.

You know, and we miss a lot of those Burma shave signs.

Unless you were a speed reader.

So he’d say, we’re going to blow the suit out, and we’d all just hold on.

That’s great.

Hold or newt.

Well, thanks a lot.

It’s our pleasure, Stacey.

Thanks for calling.

Okay.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There’s one follow-up to make to this.

There’s a related slang term that you’ll find in a variety of slang dictionaries that has to do with the Navy or different merchant marines and that sort of thing.

And it’s to shoot Charlie Noble.

To shoot Charlie Noble.

And supposedly what this has to do with was a particular captain, a British captain, who liked to have the flue in his galley, which was copper polished to a perfect shine.

And so if you’re shooting Charlie Noble, you are shooting the soot out from inside of that flue.

Oh, wow.

And so there was a prank that they used to play to the newbies on the boat, and they would say, oh, they’re going to shoot Charlie Noble down in the galley.

And so you’d say, you’ve got to stop them.

And so you’d send the newbie down to stop Charlie Noble from being shot.

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Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

I found a great term the other day that was new to me.

And Grant, the term is pull haul.

Pull haul.

Not like the place where you spent your misspent youth, but P-U-L-L hyphen H-A-U-L.

Pull haul.

And this is common in New England, or at least in Maine.

But to pull haul is to argue or contend.

A pull haul is an old term that means a struggle.

Oh, I see.

So two people pulling and hauling back and forth.

Yeah, yeah.

Sort of a push me, pull you.

A pull haul is a verbal conflict.

There was a citation in the Dictionary of American Regional English from 1914 in Maine that goes,

Whenever a new person comes to town, there is a lot of pull hauling among the churches.

Pull hauling.

Can’t you just picture that?

All these churches, somebody new moves to a little town and the churches are pull hauling,

Trying to get that person to come to their church.

Every new church member is precious.

I love that.

I love that.

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Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dale calling from St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

Hello, Dale. Welcome.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, you helped me out with a word before, and I’m hoping that you can help me out again.

Okay, yeah.

There’s a word for the use of time that is allotted to you.

For instance, if somebody gives me a week to do something, I’ll use that week.

The word’s not procrastination.

There’s a different word that I’ve heard, and I’ve lost the word.

And if somebody gives me a day to do the same project, I’ll use that day.

Or if they give me two hours, I will use that two hours.

And it’s a strange phenomenon.

If we have a certain amount of time to do something, we’ll use it.

You betcha.

And there’s a word in there.

Depending on your profession, it’s given different ways.

Work expands or contracts to fill the space and time available.

Money expands and contracts to fit the job available.

Stuff expands and contracts to fill the space available.

Lots of different variations on this.

Those are all what you mean, right?

Yeah, right.

There was an article in The Economist in 1955 written by a guy named Cyril Northcote Parkinson.

C-Y-R-I-L-P-A-R-K-I-N-S-O-N.

Cyril Northcote Parkinson.

And he described it this way.

It’s got two different parts to it.

One, any official seeks to multiply his subordinates.

And two, these subordinates make unnecessary work for each other.

And so he basically articulated this.

And you can see in the pages of magazines of the period after this article was published in The Economist,

All of these people talking about this in every discipline, everyone going,

Aha, he’s finally identified the thing that I see happening.

You could see this in the British military at the time,

That even when the military underwent a reduction in force,

The amount of administrative personnel went up regardless.

And you found this again and again in industry after industry.

And a lot of people credit this kind of awareness within business of this idea

As the source to the modern business efficiency kind of drive.

All of these movements came out of recognizing when you were growing for no reason whatsoever,

When your growth or your cost weren’t related to your business and your sales.

So the term that arose from that article is Parkinson’s Law.

That’s right. We call it Parkinson’s Law.

And there’s a not bad entry in Wikipedia that does a fair job of summarizing Parkinson’s Law.

Oh, Parkinson’s Law.

Yeah, Parkinson’s Law.

Parkinson’s law says that work and things expand and contract to fill the space or time available.

Yeah.

Neat.

I can use that then.

All right.

Great.

Thanks for calling, Dale.

We really appreciate it.

Take care.

Okay.

You too.

Bye-bye.

This reminds me of one of those old axioms from software programming, and I think it comes from engineering,

Which is 90% of your work takes 90% of your time, and the other 10% takes another 90%.

I think that’s true in a lot of fields.

We’d love to hear from you.

What are you arguing about at your workplace that has to do with language?

Tell us about it.

We’ll settle it or figure it out or at least make a model of it.

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

We were talking earlier about the term squiffy and how that means inebriated.

And you already knew the term, even though it was new to me.

I’m a little squiffy now.

How are you?

No, thanks. I was going to do a show here.

I had mentioned that, especially in the 19th century, it meant inebriated.

But more recently, it’s also come to mean askew.

And my favorite use of this that I’ve found is in the definition of an orgy.

This writer describes it as a Roman profusion of grapes, wine, buttocks, breasts, marble chaise longue, and squiffy laurel crowns.

There’s just something about that image of squiffy laurel crowns.

You can just see it, right?

There’s a little askew, right?

Yeah.

I guess they’re askew while the people are squiffy or something.

I don’t know.

I just love that.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673.

Coming up, what do you call tourists in your hometown?

Stay tuned.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

If you’ve ever been a tourist, you can rest assured knowing that you’ve helped stimulate the local economy there.

But, you know, for locals, tourism is a mixed bag, right?

Because they need our business, but as with houseguests who linger too long, they’re often happy to see us go.

And we talked about this in a recent episode when Dave called us from Michigan to talk about a term that they used there for tourists.

And you remember that term, Grant?

Fudgies.

Fudgies, because they buy a lot of fudge.

Yes, yes, and take it home as a souvenir.

And we asked you for other examples of locals’ terms for tourists.

And boy, howdy did y’all respond.

We heard from a lot of people in New England talking about leaf peepers.

And that’s a rather benign expression, I think.

I think so, yeah.

People who go up to see the beautiful fall colors.

And we heard from a lot of people in Wisconsin.

Mark wrote from northwest Wisconsin to say sometimes they call tourists berry pickers.

Troy wrote from northeast Wisconsin to say that they call tourists shackers.

Shackers.

Yeah, because they rent shacks, you know, little cabins on the lake.

And then there was Chad and Tanya and Kelly and lots of other Wisconsin listeners who told us they refer to tourists specifically from Illinois as FIBS or FIPS.

And I’m afraid that’s an acronym that’s unmentionable on the air.

Illinois is in there, but you have to guess the rest.

And then we got a lot of other great examples.

Marcus from Olympia, Washington, sent us the term pukers,

Which actually is in a lot of coastal towns.

And you can kind of guess what it might be, right?

Somebody who charters a boat and goes out and they’re not used to the waves.

Sure, they’re up and down, back and forth.

And they come back and they’re, well, puking.

Puking.

So pukers, yeah.

Yeah, that Googles very well.

And then we got a great call from Sarah in Big Sky, Montana.

She said that the term they use is gapers.

Gapers.

Yeah.

I mean, imagine Big Sky, Montana.

What she said was they love to drive around in really weird spots and stand and gape at the wildlife.

Or they go up to the ski resort and they stop in the middle of a ski run and stop and gape at something.

So we call them gapers.

I would totally be a gaper in Big Sky, Montana.

Yeah, absolutely.

It’s beautiful, right?

Yeah.

You leave your ordinary world or the place that you’re used to and go up there.

It seems strange and beautiful and unusual.

We learn so much from our listeners, don’t we, Grant?

We do indeed.

If you have more to tell us about what they call tourists where you are, send in an email to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Ben Causey.

I’m talking to you from Godly, Texas.

All right, well, welcome, Ben.

What can we do for you?

Well, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’m calling from Godly Elementary School in case we have some students listening later.

I’ve got to give you just a quick background and then my question.

One evening I was, this was last year as a matter of fact, I was watching Netflix and I was just looking for a good movie to watch.

And I saw the word Q, you know, spelled Q-U-E-U-E.

And I always had trouble spelling that.

So I was trying to think of a mnemonic, you know, to remember how to spell it.

And I noticed that Q sounds just like its first letter.

And I thought, that’s a really long word.

Those are a lot of letters strung together, and it still sounds like its very first letter.

And so I started going through the alphabet, and I just made a list of words like that.

And it’s a fairly short list.

And, you know, that led me to think, well, is this a word category?

And, you know, I looked on the Internet and I couldn’t find anything about it.

And so I just made up my own word for those type of words.

And the word I made up was homoepistula verbum phone.

Homoepistula verbum phone.

Homoepistula verbum phone.

And I have modified that a little bit.

But let me get to my question.

My question would be, do you know of a word already that exists for that category of words?

So this is words like Q and P, P-E-A and J.

T, T-E-E or T-E-A.

Yeah.

Exactly.

What else did you have?

Oh, not very many more.

I mean, you guys almost hit all of them right there.

It’s a pretty short list.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You would have to include maybe some name words like J, J-A-Y.

Yeah, or the J like a bird.

Right.

Yeah.

And so I had, you know, after thinking about it over the past few days, I sort of modified it, and I was thinking about using the Latin primus in there instead of verbum.

And I kind of wanted your opinion on this, you know, like maybe I should change it to homoprimus epistulophone, which would mean same first letter sound.

It seems a little more accurate to me, but it’s also sort of lengthy and a little too busy maybe.

I don’t know. What’s your opinion?

Well, it’s a nice word. It’s certainly a mouthful. I like the mouthfeel there.

There’s a lot of crumb on that car.

I do have a suggestion. The epistula that you’re talking about there, you’re talking about the Latin root that’s the source of the word for letter, right?

Yes.

But that’s the kind of letter that you write, like the epistles in the Bible?

And that occurred to me a couple of nights ago.

I thought, surely this is not letter as in a letter you would write to someone, so you’re telling me that that’s true.

Right.

So you might say homoprimoliterabum.

The root you would want would be L-I-T-E-R-A or something like that.

I’m writing that down.

And, Ben, you say that you’re at an elementary school.

Is this going to be in the next spelling bee, or what will you be doing with this word?

Oh, no, but I have had a lot of fun talking about it and showing it to them.

I’m actually a math science teacher.

Mm—

But, yeah, we’ve just had a lot of fun.

We looked on, you know, your website, and I told them, hey, I might be on the radio, you know.

So they’ve really gotten a kick out of it.

That is a $10 word if I’ve ever heard one.

Yeah.

Right.

That might be a $20 word.

Yeah, that’s got a lot of potential.

And as far as I know, Ben, it’s as good as anything else because I don’t know of another word for those kinds of words.

I don’t either.

Well, cool.

Oh, it’s been a real treat talking with you guys, and I really appreciate the advice.

Well, we’ll put that word out in the webosphere on the Internet, and we’ll see if it catches on, all right?

Yeah, thanks a lot.

Sure.

Thanks, Ben.

Thanks, Ben.

Bye-bye.

Good to talk with you.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Now that’s a guy who loves language.

And if you’re listening to the show, you must love language too.

Call us about it, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carol, and I’m from Denton, Texas.

Hi, Carol. Welcome to the program.

What can we help you with?

Well, I had a question.

I was talking to my husband the other day, and what I wanted to find out was what’s the plural of the word pair.

I was telling, he was looking for a certain pair of socks, and I told him later that day, you have six pairs of those socks.

And he said, no, it’s six pair.

I think it’s six pair.

And then he said, it is six pair.

And I always thought it was six pairs.

And I tried to look it up, and I got all kinds of answers.

And I thought I’d call and ask.

So is it pairs of socks or pair of socks?

Six pair of socks.

Well, let’s handle these socks, Martha.

What would you say?

I would say six pairs.

Six pairs, plural, yeah.

I can’t even think what I would say because now that we’ve talked about it, I’m self-conscious.

I’d have to catch myself saying it to know.

And then what about scissors?

That’s another thing.

I say that all the time.

I told my kids, there’s two pairs of scissors in the drawer.

I don’t know.

Get me the scissors.

And you mean one unit, one thing, right?

One pair of scissors.

Well, Carol, you are in the majority by far.

Most people say six pairs of socks.

Although, I mean, as you said, it’s a very, very fine distinction.

Plenty of people say pair.

And traditionally, it’s pairs, but, you know.

But there’s a concept that they never teach you in grammar class in grade school and probably not in college unless you study linguistics.

And this is the idea of notional agreement.

It depends on whether or not you think of the things as a unit or not.

Right.

If you think of two socks as a unit, then you might say, you might say I have two pair of socks.

Okay.

I did think about that, but I didn’t, like you said, you never learn that in grammar class, you know, all the way through high school, at least.

Well, so I guess the question is, who wears the pairs of pants in your household?

Notice she’s not answering.

Well, it goes back and forth, I think.

Well, that’s great. That’s great.

Well, if this is your biggest conflict, Carolyn, I think you’re in great shape.

But by far, pairs is the more common.

Right.

Okay.

Either one is correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wouldn’t put your husband in the doghouse just for saying pairs.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, great.

That’s good news.

I’ll continue to say pairs.

Thanks, Carol.

All right.

Thanks, Carol.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call with your marital linguistic disputes.

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

We got an email from Mark Jensen in Arcata, California, who wanted to know, Grant, the difference between gray and gray.

That is G-R-E-Y and G-R-A-Y.

When do you use which?

That’s a great question.

It’s a great question.

We’ve handled this before, and there’s much furious discussion about this online because some people believe that there’s a difference between these two words.

I’m raising my hand.

You do?

I feel that difference.

What’s the difference?

Yes, yes, yes.

The difference is that GREY feels more British to me and GRAY feels more American to me, and the way to remember that is capital E for England and E in the gray and capital A for America, A in the gray.

Yes, but that has nothing to do with the meaning of the words.

I feel there is a difference in the meaning.

But what is it? What is the difference in the meaning?

I think that gray, G-R-E-Y, is a more silvery gray, and G-R-A-Y is more opaque, more of a combination of white and black.

Interesting.

And other people feel that way.

They do, but they disagree with you exactly what kind of grays or colors might be met.

You think?

Yeah, a lot of the people who come up with a difference for these, they’re independent. There’s no, like, mass agreement that one should mean one thing and one should mean another.

Well, it’s a gray area.

I knew you were going to say that.

There is, in the Oxford English Dictionary, one of my favorite editorial notes of all time, where they talk about the history of the spelling of gray, and they talk about…

I’m sorry, I’m laughing at the OED’s greatest hits.

Your favorite editorial notes.

Bring it on.

You know, Nerd Club of the Air, join me here every week.

I got my t-shirt on.

Yeah, she does.

She actually literally does.

It says Nerd Club of the Air.

Yes, I love this.

That’s through the handshake.

But one of my favorite notes in the Oxford English Dictionary is about this.

Okay, bring it on.

It’s like all these notes about how the A-Y spelling of gray used to be more common, and most English dictionary editors and lexicographers preferred it for years.

And then over time, the E-Y spelling has become more British, and the A-Y spelling is more American.

Right.

No dispute there.

But what’s really interesting, they have this wonderful line.

Many correspondents said that they used the two forms with a difference of meaning or application.

The distinction most generally recognized being that G-R-E-Y denotes a more delicate or lighter tits than G-R-A-Y.

Others consider the difference to be that G-R-A-Y is a warmer color.

Yes!

Or that it has a mixture of red or brown.

Yes!

Yes, but it’s completely invented. There’s no difference.

No, no, there is. I feel it. I feel it.

And they conclude in this note with this even more wonderful line.

Only lexicographers write like this.

It is undesirable to treat its graphic forms as differing in signification.

In other words, there’s no difference.

There is a difference.

There is a difference.

I challenge you to go out and buy some Earl Grey tea with an A.

Mark from Arcata, who sent us this letter, thank you very much.

We don’t often get to have this kind of fun.

And expose Martha as being incorrect in a really obvious way.

All right, all you gray fans out there who see at least two shades of gray, maybe not 50, but two shades of gray.

Let us know about it.

What do you think?

Is there a difference between G-R-E-Y and G-R-A-Y?

Back me up, folks.

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Charlotte from Duluth, Minnesota.

Hi, Charlotte.

Welcome.

Hey, Charlotte.

What’s going on?

Well, I was listening to your show a week or two ago, and you were doing pet peeves.

And I have a pet peeve, which is the word anyways.

This word has driven me up the wall always.

But I’ve been seeing it more lately, I think, and hearing it a lot.

And I saw it actually just a few weeks ago in a pretty legitimate online publication.

So I was wondering if this is really not a word or if I’m just like one of those fifths who can’t accept the evolution of language.

Is that you? Are you describing yourself?

What’s the use that you’re talking about? There’s a particular use of anyways, right?

Well, I mean, people use it where I would use just anyway.

So anyways, I was at the store yesterday and it just like grates on my ear, but maybe it’s just me. I don’t know.

You use it to change the subject, right?

Yes, yeah.

Or just to kind of wrap up what you were just talking about, right?

And kind of move on from that subject.

Be that as it may.

Yeah.

Right, right.

Very interesting.

So anyways, you read it in a publication.

Do you remember what one?

I think it was Slate.

Am I right, Martha?

This isn’t a positive or an appositional word.

It’s kind of like setting off what came before in opposition of what comes after.

And traditionally, we would say anyway.

What I meant to say was you’re welcome to come by the house on Saturday at 7 instead of 6.

Right? So we just use it to kind of clarify, wrap up what we said before, say something new that restates the previous thought, right?

And so there are people that say anyways.

In some of the dictionaries, they indicate that it’s more or less focused in Southern American English and maybe a little north of that.

But it’s so widely known now that it’s often used, and this is where I’m getting at why, this is why I wanted to know the publication that you saw.

It’s often used now as an intentional device by writers to change the register.

So they’re writing about a really serious subject, say they’re talking about politics in the Middle East, and then they’ll throw in, anyways, we need to get to the bottom of this and solve this problem.

What they mean to say is, I’m going to drop out of my serious tone here and be a little milder with you, so just so you know that I’m cool, right?

It’s the way of letting you know that I’m not all full of myself.

And we do that when we speak as well.

Saying anyways is a way of expressing, it’s a little bit about friendship and our alliance with the other person, but it’s more or less about saying, look, I’m a casual regular fellow or gal, right?

So you’re saying that there’s a whole lot of meaning packed into that letter S.

Absolutely.

Anyway versus anyways, it’s a very different reception, isn’t it?

Yes, it is.

Yeah.

I don’t think it’s part of my vocabulary really.

Anyways.

If I use it, it is intentional.

I mean, I probably am using it in a way that, like, I’ve just said something that sounds very serious, and I realize I sound like a prat.

That’s why he says anyways 500 times a show.

And then I’ll say, anyways.

When don’t you sound like a prat?

I can hear you asking.

But your point was that it annoys you.

And I hope what we’ve done here, Charlotte, is just give you a little bit of background so that when you hear it in the future, instead of being annoyed, you’re going to go, oh, wait.

I see what they just did.

They changed the register of this conversation to a little more casual with that one word.

Right.

And I’m probably going to share that information with them and drive them crazy.

That’s the spirit.

That does help.

Thanks.

There you go.

All right.

Thanks for calling, Charlotte.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Here’s a term from Patricia Sohn.

And she tells us about Michigan, where she learned from a friend that they called tourists.

They are trunk slammers.

Trunk slammers.

That’s perfect.

They arrive for the weekend.

They’re slamming around.

They’re making all these new noises.

Slamming the trunk.

Slamming the door.

Constantly in and out of the car.

And then just two days later, they turn around.

And they’re packing the car up and slamming the doors and slamming the trunk and slamming the house.

And they’re gone.

And then it’s quiet.

I love that.

Trunk slammer.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty past.

That’s all for today’s radio show,

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

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett. Take care. Bye now.

I like tomato, potato, potato, tomato.

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