The Uncanny Valley

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

You know that uneasy feeling you get when you see a character in a video game?

And that figure is so close to having human features but not quite that it just gives you the willies?

Oh, yes. Mm—

Maybe you’re trying to do your banking online and one of those creepy virtual assistants pops up to help.

And they look almost human but they kind of make your skin crawl?

Yeah, yeah.

I didn’t know until this week that there’s a term for this queasy feeling.

Do you know it, Grant? You probably do.

They do, as a matter of fact.

It is.

Uncanny Valley.

Yes.

I love this term.

I just came across it this week.

It was coined by Mashahiro Mori, who is a Japanese researcher who studies the reactions of humans to realistic robots.

He suggests we imagine this creepy sensation in terms of a mathematical graph.

On one axis, you have increasingly realistic human-like images, and on the other, you plot their likability.

So, for example, on the left side of the graph, you start out with, say, R2-D2.

It doesn’t look very human.

Right.

And it doesn’t need to be human.

Yeah.

So you’re not creeped out.

Yeah.

You’re not creeped out.

And the line goes up and up and up.

You get to WALL-E and E.T.

And they look a little more human.

And C2-PO.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they’re a little more human but still more likable.

And then the graph keeps going up and up.

But then you get to the point where the image is almost human but not quite.

And the graph goes way down.

Their likability just plummets.

And that precipitous drop is something he refers to as the uncanny valley.

That is, it’s strange in an unsettling way.

In other words, the closer you get to looking human, the more humans expect you to look human.

Yeah.

And so when you’re near that but not perfect, then people give you a thumbs down because you’re creeping them out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you see the Polar Express?

Yes, a great example of how poorly that can be done.

Uncanny Valley.

I love that.

All the poets out there are probably going to start writing poems about uncanny valley.

I just love it.

Do you have new language that you found, or do you want to talk about grammar, slang, pronunciation, usage?

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Vicki from Eureka, California.

Hello, Vicki, welcome.

Hiya, Vicki, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you so much.

What’s cooking in Eureka?

Well, up here in the land of the tall trees and the six rivers and the bay and the coastline,

As it happens, I have a rental home here that I had rented to members of the family who are moving on.

And so here in this market, I’m preparing myself to sell a home.

And of course, with everything going on now, I’ve been talking to a lot of people about it

And heard myself use a couple of phrases that came right out of my mouth,

And I couldn’t really identify with having heard them before or really knowing the origin of them.

Oh, good. Let’s hear them.

Okay. Well, one of them was, in talking to friends, I said,

I hope I’m not going to have to take a bath on selling this house.

Oh, nice.

And the other one was, I hope I’m not going to have to take, or take, yes, I guess, get a haircut.

Very good. I love those.

Very personal.

Yeah.

I asked my realtor, who’s also very interested in language and words, what he thought, and he talked about a bloodbath.

Ooh.

And you were…

Ooh.

That sounds worse.

So both of those seemed a little violent to me because in taking a haircut rather than getting a haircut, it seems like it’s something being done to you.

And when he talked about a bloodbath, I thought, well, maybe I have the wrong realtor here.

Yeah, what kind of scissors is he using?

Where does that come from?

He needs a clipper guard.

And so, in other words, you’re talking about losing your shirt, maybe.

Oh, another one.

Yeah, there’s another one.

And maybe if you get ripped off, you’re being taken to the cleaners.

True.

And when you take that bath, you don’t want to be underwater either, right?

Yeah, right, right.

That’s true.

And you definitely don’t want to be upside down on the house.

That’s right.

That’s right.

He did mention that.

There are a lot of phrases about water having to do with it.

And I love that all of these are variants on euphemizing a financial loss because it’s a personal thing.

It’s almost like talking about romance or love when you talk about money.

Yeah, it is.

Even with your family or somebody who is in the deal with you, you might find a way to disguise your emotions when it comes to your investments not working out.

That’s interesting.

It’s like death, like kicking the bucket or something.

Yeah, exactly.

Here we go again.

Let’s address your terms because they both have really interesting but easily explained points of view.

For example, if you take a bath, you’re literally being cleaned out.

So to be cleaned out is to have an empty wallet or an empty bank vault.

There’s nothing in there.

It’s washed clean of all money.

So you have taken a bath.

That’s the actual real origin of that.

Taking a haircut is a little more difficult.

But if I go, what do you do?

Right.

Two bits.

Two bits is 25 cents.

Right?

So all you’ve got left is 25 cents.

And the whole phrase is shave and a haircut, two bits.

So you are getting a 25 cent haircut.

That’s what you’re doing.

That’s all you’ve got left.

You’ve got enough left for a 25 cent haircut.

But you’re clean.

Yeah, that’s why you’re taking a haircut.

I mean, and it’s not just a little off the top either.

I mean, the whole mullet is going.

Oh, my goodness.

The ponytail is being cut off, right?

Oh, no.

We’re using the one-eighth inch razor on this guy.

Oh, goodness.

And then losing your shirt is pretty obvious.

That’s all you’ve got left is your clothes, and then you don’t have your clothes left either

Because you sold your clothes to pay your debts, and then being taken to the cleaners,

It’s the same story as being cleaned out.

Well, I enjoy your program very much.

Thank you so much.

I hope that the home sale works out for you.

You gave a very nice advertisement for a beautiful part of the country,

And maybe you’ll get a caller from somewhere else who will look you up.

Come on up.

I have a lovely home for sale, and maybe I could take a bath in champagne or something like that.

Even better.

That’s great.

Vicki, thanks for calling.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Vicki.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Instead of a haircut, she could get a really nice perm, right?

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I came across an interesting term the other day, lazy man’s load.

What are you saying about me?

I’m not saying a thing about you.

This is a great expression that I found in a 19th century dictionary, and it applies to today,

Because a lazy man’s load is when you are transporting things from one place to another,

And you just fill your arms up so much that you won’t have to make a second trip.

You know, you’re unloading the groceries from the car, and you think,

Oh, I can just carry one more bag in my hands.

And then the eggs go everywhere and the milk.

Still manage the key and the lock, right?

Yeah, your foot in the door and the elbow and all that.

Lazy man’s load.

I love it.

As a parent, you have to do it that way.

Otherwise, you make a million trips.

Like you’ve got the kid in one arm.

And what are you going to do?

Go back out to the car seven times?

Because you can’t leave the kid.

Right.

It’s the fox, the corn, the hen, and the boat.

And the farmer, you know?

You can’t leave the kid in the house.

You can’t leave the kid strapped in the car, right?

What are you?

And the cat’s going to try to get out.

And the cat, yeah.

Don’t forget the cat.

You’ve got the kid in one arm, you’re carrying 15 bags of groceries in the crook of your other elbow, and you’ve still got the key in your mouth.

Never mind.

Not really, but it feels like it.

It’s the lazy parents’ load, I guess.

What have you found?

What language curiosities have come your way?

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Or send any of your questions about language, slang, grammar, dictionaries, punctuation, usage, you name it, to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Dave Tyler.

From Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I trust you’re doing well today. We are doing very well. I trust you’re doing well as well.

Oh, you bet I am.

Well, that’s great. Dave, what would you like to talk with us about?

Well, you know, I’ve been hearing, and I can’t really get away from all of the campaign things that are going on, and I just wonder every time I hear a candidate who comes up and decides they’re done, they tell us that they’re suspending their run for office. You know, when when I’m done with work and I don’t want to work anymore, then I tell my boss I quit.

So how do these candidates get by with telling us they’re suspending their campaign? They’re not suspending. They’re done.

Aren’t they? Or is there another way to use the word suspend that I don’t know?

That’s a good question.

Your idea is that maybe they’re just wimps and they just want to admit that they’re quitters.

Yes.

Yeah, or maybe they’re career politicians and we haven’t seen the last of them, you know?

That’s never the case.

Well, what they’re really hoping is that a meteor will strike down all the other candidates and they can reactivate their campaign, right?

I’m still here.

Yeah.

Oh, that’s really interesting.

Well, I think of suspending military operations. You know, the word campaign itself goes back to the idea of a military campaign.

And does it have to do with that?

There’s something similar to that.

When an election campaign is suspended, it’s a particular bit of language that they use to meet federal elections commission’s requirements.

If they stop their campaign, they can no longer get federal matching funds if they’re running for president.

They can no longer handle debts a certain way.

They can no longer fundraise for the most part.

And a lot of times they have bills that they still need to pay.

A lot of fundraising takes place after the campaign is suspended in order to pay off existing payroll and debts to printers and media outlets where there are commercials.

Supposedly, Hillary Clinton is still paying.

Her campaign is still paying off the debts from her 2008 run for office.

Wow.

So her campaign is technically suspended in order to get all these benefits that come from not actually being a campaign that’s been terminated.

So it’s an actual term of art.

Well, actually, it’s not a term of art.

They choose suspended because the word suspended or suspend or suspension is not in the FEC rules for this.

So they choose to say suspended because there are no legal ramifications for suspension.

It’s simply a notice to the press and public that their campaign is going to lie low.

Oh, wow.

See what I’m saying?

If they said that our campaign is terminated, then there might be legal ramifications.

This is what I understand.

Dave, I was thinking it was sort of disingenuous.

Honestly, that’s kind of the way I took it.

Yeah.

Well, a lot of it’s doing things like, you know, how are they going to get rid of all those Kane 2012 shirts, you know?

They’ve got to find some way.

There’s a guy in the office who’s calling people up, you want one of these? It’s only $9.99.

Again, to kind of rehash, there’s a reason that they would say suspended, and it’s not about being a wuss.

I did not realize that.

Well, that’s awesome.

Thanks for answering that.

Sure, no problem.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks for listening, too.

You betcha.

Take care.

Love the show.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye, Dave.

I should say here that if you really want to see the inside and all the wishy-washy stuff that has to do with political language, William Sapphire’s Political Dictionary is still the best source of that.

If a word has caught your ear, call us about it, 877-929-9673, or send it an email, words@waywordradio.org.

I saw a tweet the other day that demonstrates the importance of a comma.

Take, for example, the phrase, a low six-figure salary.

A low comma six-figure salary or a low six-figure salary.

Very good.

What a difference a comma makes, right?

877-929-9673. words@waywordradio.org.

Got a language itch? Scratch it here. Stay tuned.

Support for A Way with Words comes from the University of San Diego, whose mission since 1949 has been to prepare students for the world as well as to change it.

More about the college and the five schools of this independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

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

And I’m Grant Barrett, and on the line is John Chaneski from New York City.

Hello, John.

Hi, John.

Hello, Grant. Hello, Martha.

You guys know I do magic, right?

Yeah.

I do magic, yeah.

One of these days, I’ll try to figure out a magic trick I can do on the air.

But for now, presto, here are some clues to phrases that contain the word magic.

What do you think?

I think I want to hear them.

For example, here’s the first clue.

It contains, yes, very doubtful, and ask again later.

Magic eight ball.

Magic eight ball.

It is certain.

You got that right.

Let’s see how many more you can get.

Another word for this would be anodyne.

Penicillin is a good example.

Magic bullet?

Yes, magic bullet.

Something a drug used to cure a specific ailment.

Very good.

Now, we’re all of the same generation, but younger people might not know what two words were the key ones to look for on a motel sign in the 1970s.

Oh.

Magic fingers?

Magic fingers, right.

Get your corners out.

I didn’t even have to give you the second part of the clue.

Just for those of you who have no idea what magic fingers are, the words indicate that there was a little box near the top of your bed, and you drop in a quarter, and you would feel the bed begin to vibrate your cares away.

In the movie-making business, this term is used to indicate the perfect time of day for shooting romantic or magical scenes.

Yeah, the magic hour.

The magic hour, right.

It’s usually the late afternoon when the sun imparts everything with like a golden-orange color.

Now, this was an early machine used to project pictures using a transparent slide.

Magic lantern.

Magic lantern.

Yes, magic lantern.

Very good.

Now, a trademark brand owned by 3M, it’s sold in distinctive plaid packaging.

Magic tape or something.

Yes, magic tape.

It appears frosty on the roll, but surprise, it’s invisible on paper.

It’s magic.

A literary genre or style commonly associated with…

Magic realism.

Magic.

Paleoism. Very good.

It is the principal weapon wielded by Diana, the princess of Themyscira.

She’s also known as Wonder Woman.

Magic lasso.

Yes, the magic lasso.

Do you know the power of the magic lasso?

What does it do?

It makes you tell the truth.

That’s right.

It’s also known as the lasso of truth.

Very good.

Perhaps you’re familiar with random dot auto stereograms.

There are pictures with a horizontally repeating pattern, which differs slightly with each repetition.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Allowing you to see 3D images.

Is it Magic Eyes?

Yes, Magic Eye.

Books of them were sold under the moniker Magic Eye.

Now, this song, originally written in 1965 and recorded in 68, is usually performed as a duet.

Magic Bus?

Yes, in which the rider asks the driver if he can purchase the title vehicle.

Say it again for us, Grant?

Magic Bus.

Magic Bus, right.

I’ll tell you one more bit of trivia about Magic Bus.

As most of the bass line consists of one note played ad nauseum, John Entwistle hated playing it.

Why?

Why would he not want to play the same note over and over and over and over and over again?

It sounds like an easy gig, right?

He didn’t have a looping pedal, huh?

I guess not. No, not back then.

Well, I hope you didn’t hate playing that.

I hope you liked playing that because that is my magic quiz.

I feel sawed in half.

Terrific.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you, John.

Thanks, John. Much appreciated.

If you’ve got a question about language, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Sarah Heppala, and I’m calling from Dallas, and I have an issue with the word woe.

Okay, okay, shoot, let’s hear it.

Okay, well, I work for an online magazine, and when breaking news happens, we often send it out to each other in the form of like a website link and a short commentary.

And the commentary that is often chosen is the word, whoa.

And what struck me about this is that my colleagues, many of whom are high-level editors, were spelling it in a way that I would deem incorrect.

And the way they were spelling it is W-H-O-A-H.

Alternately, there would also be the spelling W-O-A-H, which I just think is flat out wrong.

And what was surprising to me was after I noticed this in the email exchanges, I would see it on the Internet and in other emails from friends, and it really started to bother me.

I mean, doesn’t anyone know how to spell the word woe?

And then, as I thought about it more, I wondered, well, isn’t it strange that I’m so upset about this word that really, you know, what is the word woe?

It’s just kind of like a noise that we make, right?

I got a little deep with it.

And I wasn’t even sure if it really made sense that I was sort of getting so distraught about the misspelling of the word.

And so the only thing I could think to do was to bring this issue to you guys and hear what you might have to say.

Okay. Wow, this is great.

So you saw this, you first noticed this frequently happening in emails sent from colleagues, and they were casual emails, right?

This isn’t stuff that you were sending out to tens of thousands of readers or anything like that.

That’s exactly right.

But this is a group of people that really prize proper, you know, spelling and punctuation, and so it was striking to me.

Do they do the same thing in the stuff that’s being published?

Now, on the site, we have a copy editor, and we probably go by the AP guidelines, which say W-H-O-A.

Right.

However, I noticed it on blogs and other kind of Internet speak.

It seemed to be something that I saw cropping up again and again.

W-H-O-A-H, the second H.

You know, Sarah, it’s funny that you mention this because I had this experience yesterday.

I got an email from an online flower delivery company.

The message header was, whoa, save up to 43% now.

And they spelled it W-O-A-H.

Oh, interesting.

From like somebody from a formal email or quasi-formal, right?

Yeah, it’s from a big company.

And I have to say, I’m with you.

I found it really irritating.

And I just thought I’m never going to buy flowers from these people again.

Again, it’s like the word woe, I mean, what’s the proper spelling of or oh?

And you’ve really come close to the question there because this is an interjection or exclamation usually.

And so it’s largely transmitted orally.

And words that are transmitted orally tend to be highly variable in their spellings.

And we do find that in the historical record, that’s the case with this word.

It actually originally comes from, I don’t know if you went all the way back, but ho, H-O, is something you might shout to a horse or an ox, right?

Something that’s pulling your wagons.

Ho!

Yeah.

And it became spelled W-H-O, not like who, but ho, you know, with a little bit of the guttural, something happening with the aspiration in there.

And you find W-O-A and W-O-A-H and W-H-O-A and all the spellings.

And then we arrive to the present day.

And one of the things that’s happened, the spelling with the H at the end is a little more common in the UK than in the U.S.

But there’s no barrier on the Internet that stops the Brits and the Americans from participating in the same public forum.

Huh.

Right?

That’s interesting because, whoa.

Yeah, whoa.

And we also have, really, an explosion of informal speech in the last 15 or 20 years because of the Internet, where informal speech is a lot more common and more visible than it used to be.

There is a strict, regular, formal spelling.

AP spelling is the one that everyone wants.

Your spelling.

Your spelling.

W-H-O-A.

That is the one that should be used.

But in an informal communication, what are they saying with that H?

Are they maybe stretching the word out a little bit?

You know, that’s what I was going to say.

Sarah, do you have a sense of it being like, whoa.

When I read it with an H on the end, that’s what I think.

Yeah.

Do you?

I don’t.

I would think if you were going to do that, you would add more A’s.

Whoa.

Whoa. Or more O’s or something. But, you know, it certainly gives it a little more space on the page.

So I guess what we’re doing here is a little language therapy to say, you’re right. It’s happening.

It’s cool that you’re working on being okay with it, but you really should stick to that formal spelling in your writing for publication.

I mean, if something’s going to an editor or being put up on the Internet, you know, going to paper, definitely do use WHOA.

HOA, and your colleagues better be doing the same thing.

Excellent. We certainly will. And this has been fascinating.

Hey, Sarah, thanks a lot for calling.

Thank you, guys.

All right. Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you want to talk about language, call us, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elliot from Boulder, Colorado.

Hi, Elliot. Welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks so much.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Oh, well, you know, my grandpa comes from the outskirts of a really small town in East Texas.

And though he’s past tense, he always had these totally crazy sayings when I was growing up.

And I was interested to see if anybody else had ever called in or anybody know of any other sort of backcountry sayings that he had.

Let’s hear some of them.

Oh, man.

But he got me one time.

I mean, it was amazing.

Half the time I couldn’t understand what any of them meant.

But one of my favorites that he used to say was when I would ask how he was doing, I’d say, hey, Papa, how are you doing?

He said, well, you know, I’m as happy as if you were throwing pork at me.

Happy as if you were throwing pork at me.

Yeah, exactly.

I don’t know that that would make me happy personally, but hey.

But that meant he was really happy?

Yeah, I guess so.

I mean, yeah, shoot, yeah, I’m real happy.

Okay.

When gas prices began to rise, I remember hearing him say that gas prices were getting higher than a cat’s back.

Higher than a cat’s back.

I have heard that one.

Very nice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And where in Texas was he from?

Well, there’s a town in East Texas, probably an hour and a half east of Dallas, called Wolf City.

Wolf City?

Wolf City, yeah, Wolf with an E at the end.

Oh, okay.

But he was born outside of there, I think, really in the country, an old-school birth, you know.

But he really managed to make me scratch my head and smile at the same time.

I still don’t understand what half of those mean, but they are definitely colorful.

Sounds like he was a colorful, interesting man.

Oh, so much, yeah, very much so.

And I’m hoping that one day I’ll write them all down and make a compilation, but there’s so many to remember.

Yeah, please do.

I bet your family would love to have that as a keepsake.

Oh, yeah.

We’ve talked about doing it.

Do it today.

Do it today, Elliot.

You know what? I’ve got an hour.

I’m going to get started.

Okay.

You do that, and we’ll be grinning like a basket full of possum heads.

Wonderful.

Thanks for calling, Elliot.

Much appreciated.

Absolutely.

Bye-bye.

Well, thank you guys so much.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

I’ve been working on collecting words related to travel, and I’m particularly interested in words related to security after 9-11.

Yeah.

And some of the language is really kind of dispiriting, of course.

There’s things like puffers.

Those are the machines they used for a while that you would stand there with your arms up and a puff of air would blow on you.

And then machines would quickly read the air to find out if you had drugs or weapons or bombs on you.

Yeah, do you hear about those?

Puffers, no.

But the word that I liked a little better than that, and it’s related, was vapor wake.

Apparently, we all leave a vapor wake wherever we go.

So it’s your natural odor.

It’s the chemicals you’ve applied, perfume or deodorant.

But it’s also if you made coffee that morning or if you’re carrying explosives or recently handled guns or fireworks.

In your vapor wake, there might be traces of this.

And machines and some of the dogs that can sniff this stuff out might get onto you.

In your vapor wake.

Your vapor wake.

I’m picturing very small beings water skiing.

Yeah, but if you could visualize the air around you, you would see that it does very much behave like a wake.

Yeah.

Like a wake behind a speedboat.

Another thing to worry about.

Call us with your stories about language, 877-929-9673, or send them along in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. This is Hannah calling from Sarnia, Ontario.

Hi, Hannah. Welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me.

Well, my question is concerning gendered nouns.

When I was in university, I took a German course,

And by far the hardest part for me was memorizing the genders of the nouns.

So there’s feminine, masculine, and they have neuter, too, right?

Mm—

Anyway, so just as an English speaker, that was such a foreign concept to me

That a chair would have a gender or a door or anything like that.

And I recently found out, I just learned, that English has Germanic origins.

So it got me to wondering if English is Germanic in origin,

Then where did all those genders go?

Because we obviously don’t have genders for our nouns.

Yeah, you’re right. And we used to.

Thank goodness we don’t anymore.

It’s made it a lot easier.

Yeah, but back in the time of Beowulf Old English, we did have three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter.

And they didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I mean, if you look at French, you know, lune for moon is feminine and the word for sun is masculine.

It was exactly the opposite in Old English.

It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

And it wasn’t until Middle English, which is about the 12th century to 1500 or so, roughly,

There was a whole lot of change that happened in the language. And one of the things that happened

Was that those nouns with gender also had inflectional endings. Do you know what that

Means, inflectional endings in an inflected language? The inflected here comes from a Latin

Word that means to bend. And in languages like Latin and Greek and Sanskrit, the different,

And Old English, the different endings of a noun told you how it functioned in a sentence.

And during Middle English, we became more reliant on word order

Rather than those bent endings on the ends of nouns.

And so as those disappeared, you paid less attention to gender as well.

And there were a lot of other different factors going on during that period,

But it was a very powerful period of change in the English language.

That’s interesting.

It demonstrates one of the things that’s, well, there are two things happen in any language at any given time.

One, it is becoming more complex, and two, it’s simplifying.

And when it simplifies, it tends to lose the features that are confusing.

And genders can be confusing because they are semantically arbitrary.

The male and the female have nothing whatsoever to do with human genders as we know them.

Yeah, that’s why they’re so confusing.

To an English speaker where all of our nouns are neutered,

It’s definitely confusing when you’re learning French or a gendered language like that.

La lune, it’s arbitrary that it’s feminine. It doesn’t mean that there’s something mother-like

About the moon at all. Yeah, and I remember reading about an African language where large

Things were masculine and small things were feminine. So women’s breasts were masculine

And men’s breasts were feminine. I mean, there’s just really not a whole lot of rhyme or reason

There. So you had a tough time learning the German because of that or memorizing them? Or did you

Have tricks that you used? I basically just use the flash card trick and put them everywhere. So

Like I would label everything in my house and try to memorize them that way and learn the gender

With the word. But I mean, I also know some French and it’s still a struggle for me in French,

Even though I’ve been studying French for five plus years now and I still get confused.

The wholesale memorization is the solution for an English speaker who’s trying to learn a gendered

Language. Yeah. Well, bonne chance. Merci beaucoup. Thanks, Anna. Au revoir. Bye-bye.

What a great question, though. And this is a question that comes up to anyone who is learning

A second, third, or fourth language, right? Yeah. Yeah. Thank goodness. It never quite goes away,

Even when you begin to understand it. You still keep looking at gender and trying to explain it

To yourself. But it is semantically arbitrary. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with

Male and female. We’ll link to some more information about genders online. And if

You’ve got a question about language, call us 877-929-9673 or send email to words@waywordradio.org.

Here’s another travel-related word. So you know those court-sized bags that we’re forced to use

To take our toiletries through the security line at the airport.

Yeah, the clear ones.

Well, it turns out there’s a name for those bags.

I don’t know how widespread it is.

I did find tens of thousands of uses online.

So they’re called kippy bags.

Kippy?

Yeah, and they’re named supposedly after the former head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley.

Oh, really?

Yeah, who was in charge at the time these bags were made mandatory.

Oh, look at Kip.

So you have your kippy bag, K-I-P-P-Y.

That’s the quart-sized, you know, self-sealing plastic bag that you put your deodorant and your lotions and perfumes and shampoos and stuff in.

Oh, I’m going to use that next time I fly.

Yeah, next time I fly.

877-929-9673 is the number to call or send your emails winging their way to words@waywordradio.org.

Coming up, letters from our inbox and more of your questions about language.

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 Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

I’ve been working on modern onomatopoeia.

Modern onomatopoeia.

So these are words where we say something that sounds like the thing that it is.

We say splash because it sounds a little like a splash.

We say kerplunk.

If you drop something heavy in the water, it kind of sounds like kerplunk, right?

So what are modern ones?

Well, modern ones, I’ve defined it as automatopoeia since 1950, and they represent our age, our era.

For example, beep.

A computer’s beep.

That’s a modern automatopoeia.

Nice.

In dance music, unce, spelled U-N-T-Z or O-O-N-C-E, is an otomatopoeia because it represents the sounds of the beat.

Unce, unce, unce, unce.

Right?

And so that’s how it’s spelled.

You’re getting happy feet.

And with a dubstep, which is a new kind of electronic music, actually not that new, maybe five, ten years old, there’s wub.

Because some of the sounds in when they drop the bass and they do some crazy stuff and they kind of ruin the beat.

And it goes wub, wub, wub.

And so it’s WUB.

And these are modern automatopea.

So I put the call out on Twitter just casually to see what other people could come up with.

And a great one was the sound of lasers.

Lasers tend to say pew, pew when we fire lasers, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kind of like the blasters in Star Wars.

Yeah, nice.

A hundred years ago, I don’t know what sound weapons made, but it was probably bang, bang or pow, pow, right?

It wasn’t pew, pew.

Yeah.

Another one of these modern automatopea is the word yoink.

This came from a listener who responded to my tweet.

Yoink.

This is when you take something away from somebody.

And I’ve been tracking this as a slang word for about 10 years now.

Yoink.

Kind of like Shaggy might say on Scooby-Doo.

I don’t know that it comes from there, but a lot of people will reference that character voiced by Casey Kasem on Scooby-Doo.

Yoink.

Yoink.

That’s when you yank something away.

Modern automotopy, a lot of them have to do with phones, for example, or modern electronics, right?

What does a phone do?

It goes bring, bring.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if you write these down, B-R-R-I-N-G, something like that.

It’s interesting stuff.

I love it.

What are your modern automatopias?

Send them along, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

This is Drashko speaking.

Hi, Drashko.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Valley Center, California.

We’re glad to have you on the show.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Thank you very much.

Well, I have a whole list of things, but I’m going to start with a thing that is on top of my list.

Okay.

On one of the local TV stations here, there is a gentleman that gives advice on consumer affairs and stuff like that.

So he usually talks about the price of gasoline.

And he will say, for example, he’s trying to advise viewers when to buy gasoline.

So he will go and say, you should buy gasoline on Wednesday because prices are going to be cheap.

And then avoid buying gasoline on weekends because the prices are going to be expensive.

And I feel that’s totally wrong.

I think the prices can be high or low.

Gasoline can be cheap or expensive, or item can be cheap or expensive.

So I just need you to clarify that for me and tell me that I’m right.

Oh, Drashko, it sounds like you’re listening very carefully.

Tell us what your native language is.

What? You don’t think that I’m native?

I know they talk funny in North County, but I didn’t think it was quite like that.

I’m native of North County, yes.

I grew up in Yugoslavia.

Okay.

Okay, very good.

So you grew up speaking Serbo?

Speaking Serbo-Croatian, it used to be called then, and now it’s Serbian.

-huh.

And I learned English in school a little bit, but you know how it’s cool.

But I actually think that’s about the pricing and all that I heard from my teacher in school.

Oh, really?

That the price can be either high or low or right or whatever, but the item can be cheap or expensive or, you know, but you can’t say the price can be cheap.

How interesting. So to you, that makes you feel like you can go into the 7-Eleven and buy a whole bunch of prices and they wouldn’t be very expensive.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

I just, I never thought of it that way. I have to confess.

Yeah, I haven’t either.

I’m hesitating to make a judgment call on it, Joshko,

Because on one hand, it’s colloquial English.

On the other hand, there’s no harm in making that distinction if you want to.

You’ll see across the data that what people are doing in English

Is they are consistently describing prices as being cheap and expensive,

And this is at all registers of language,

Low and high, formal and informal, educated and uneducated.

Yeah, I do understand what you’re saying technically, though,

But I don’t think it would stop me from going to the place that has the cheapest prices for gas.

Yeah.

And again, if you want to make that distinction, by all means do so.

Nobody will judge you for it.

They probably won’t even notice, frankly.

But if it makes you feel more comfortable, rock on.

Go for it.

Oh, you’re totally disappointed in me.

I want you to tell me that I’m right and that it’s all wrong.

You opened with that.

You wanted to be confirmed.

I’m confirming that you are a discerning, thinking individual

Who considers aspects of language that most of us take for granted.

That I will give you.

Okay, thank you.

I lost the bet, but that’s all right.

Well, I’ll call you next time for my other part of my list.

I have so many other things to ask you about.

It’s a pleasure to talk to you, Drashko.

Yeah, we hope you do, Drashko.

Okay, I will. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay, bye-bye.

The people who are learning English as a second language,

They definitely come to it with a different pattern in mind, don’t they?

They do, and it’s so enlightening, really,

Because you start to really think about, well, why do I say it that way?

Or why do I use that particular idiom?

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, you probably know this slang term, but it was new to me.

Presenteeism.

Can’t stand it.

I know.

When people are practically vomiting and they come to work anyway.

I’m so indispensable that I had to be here and infect the rest of you.

You have to strike a balance.

Times are tough economically, but, you know, if you don’t have to be there…

Stay home.

Yeah, no presenteeism.

Thanks.

877-929-9673, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Terry, and I’m calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hello, Terry.

Welcome to the program.

Hi, Terry.

Hi.

Thank you, guys.

What’s up?

Thank you for keeping me company in the long move from North Carolina to Wisconsin.

Oh, that was a long drive.

Glad to help.

Did you listen to podcasts back to back?

Pretty much.

Bless your heart.

Well, how can we continue to help you?

Well, I’m inquiring about the word reckon.

I’m originally from Buffalo, so we didn’t use it up there very much.

And then I moved to Japan and I had a British roommate.

And the first time I heard the word used normally was from her.

And I thought, oh, that’s funny.

That sounds like a Southern thing.

And then I came across something that said the Southern dialect is closer to Old British English than any other dialect we use.

And so then I moved to North Carolina and I heard the word reckon again.

And I used it and somebody said, are you trying to sound Southern already?

No, it’s not the southern reckon, it’s the British reckon.

So I was wondering if the way the southerners use it is like an old vestige of the Queen’s English that stayed behind here in the States, or if they just appeared separately naturally.

There is a myth that is very romantic that there are pockets of the South that preserve the Queen’s English.

But, of course, if that were the case, then we would have a reality show there and they would probably put a theme park there, you know, with little signs that say, thou must be this tall to ride the rides.

So it’s just a vestige in the way that other words are a vestige of the English that was spoken in England.

And reckon is pretty well distributed across the South, even into Texas.

Yeah, it’s marked in American English as being rural or southern,

Which is why when Americans hear people from the UK or Australia use reckon,

They’re a little confused because in our minds it goes to a certain type of person,

Whereas there it’s generally widespread and the kind of thing you might hear somebody talking about,

I reckon the fourth quarter of British Telecom is to pass the earnings of last quarter, you know.

They’ll just use reckon in a normal way without it being any kind of register of a particular region or a particular class of person.

Yeah, I think of reckon here as being more colloquial and rural, as you said.

And it’s a stock part of the southern dialect when it’s taught in speech classes for actors.

Right, or on the Beverly Hillbillies or something.

So now you said you were from Buffalo originally.

I bet there’s not a lot of reckoning happening up there, at least not using that word.

I had never heard it used up there.

Another interesting thing is when my British friends would mimic an American accent,

It was always Southern. It always came out Southern.

That’s interesting.

Maybe it’s in their collective conscious.

Part of the reason that on the surface Southern American English sounds like British English

Is there’s often a lack of roticity.

That is that the R’s tend to disappear more often in Southern American English than they do in other dialects of American English.

But there’s no evidence to support that Southern English is closer to British English than any other dialect of American English.

The truth is they were all forked, they were all sundered at about the same time from each other,

And they’ve all begun to change in different ways.

There are dialects in Maine that preserve some language features of dialects in the UK that don’t exist anywhere else in the country.

So it just depends where you are and what you’re measuring by how you might say that they’re similar.

Yeah, if you’re talking about North Carolina, the hills in North Carolina weren’t settled until 1790 or so, and that’s quite a bit after the Queen’s English.

Yeah, and in truth, when we’re talking about British, we need to get a little more specific.

Much of the South shows the influence of Scots and Irish English and not the mainstream or prestige dialects of English, even of the 1700s or 1800s.

Well, that is nice to finally put that rumor to rest.

But it doesn’t mean that we can’t have delight in the varieties that are presented to us.

You sound like quite a traveler, and I bet you hear a lot of cool things in the speech of other people.

I do. It’s been interesting.

Well, cool. Thanks for calling, Terry. Really glad to help you out.

Thank you. Take care.

All right. Bye-bye.

Take care. Bye-bye.

You know, it’s interesting, Grant, that you think of I reckon as sort of rural or southern, but you think of terms like reckoning, and it’s a higher register.

Reckoning or to be reckoned with.

Yeah.

Those are more formal, aren’t they?

I love that.

That’s a great example of the way that different parts of speech for related words can fall into different categories of language.

Well, if you’re like Terry and you travel from place to place and you accumulate language novelties, share them with us and the rest of our listeners, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We were talking earlier about the term uncanny valley, referring to that queasy feeling you get when you see a robot or an online avatar that looks almost human but not quite.

Right.

And it just is really creepy.

I’m thinking that maybe that also explains cool-rophobia.

What?

You know the word cool-rophobia?

I don’t.

It’s the term for a morbid fear of clowns.

Oh, it reminded me of Cool Britannia.

No, cool-rophobia.

How do you spell that?

C-O-U-L-R-O-phobia.

Cool-ro-phobia.

And what does that first part mean?

Cool-ro means, actually it means the one who walks on stilts, because I don’t think the ancient Greeks had a term for clowns, but I believe a psychotherapist coined this term in the 70s, cool-ro-phobia.

And there are whole cool-ro-phobia support groups online.

Fear of clowns.

Yeah, morbid fear of clowns.

But I think that’s sort of the same idea of the uncanny valley.

And that somebody pretended to be something they’re not.

Yeah, exactly.

And not actually being funny.

Exactly.

877-929-9673, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lauren.

Hi, Lauren.

Hello, Lauren.

Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Denton.

Denton, Texas, right?

Mm—

Well, welcome to the program.

What would you like to talk with us about?

I came across a funny sentence the other day that I thought I’d like to share with y’all.

And my friend posted this on Facebook.

It reads, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo.

Yeah, they do, don’t they?

And, Lauren, what exactly does that mean?

Well, I did a little research, and the only explanation I could find was the buffalo from buffalo, or buffaloed by buffalo from buffalo, buffalo, other buffalo from buffalo.

Yeah, perfect. That’s great.

That makes sense. My gosh, how many buffaloes is that?

One, two, three, four?

Eight. Eight total.

Eight buffaloes.

So you just got this on a Facebook page.

Mm— Just happened to find it.

I thought maybe at first when you brought it up that you got it from a linguistics class because this is the kind of thing that comes up in the first semester or second semester of linguistics because it’s a really great example of some of the craziness that happens in English.

As you identified, there’s a verb in there that’s buffalo, and there’s a noun.

There’s two nouns in there that are buffalo, right?

And the nouns sometimes can behave like adjectives, and there’s just all this.

I mean, there are longer versions of this. They’re like 40 or 50 buffaloes long.

What?

Yeah.

A whole herd of buffalo in one sentence?

Yeah, because they take advantage of all the parts of speech plus a couple extra things like reduplication.

Like I might say to you, Lauren, I might say to you, for example, I might say, did you actually see a buffalo buffalo or was it just a shaggy cow?

And by that I mean a real buffalo.

I say the word twice to emphasize that I mean a real buffalo, a buffalo buffalo, right?

Oh, my gosh.

So there’s all these other ways that we can use buffalo, and you can just slowly start expanding your sentence out until it’s this incomprehensible mess.

Now, did you understand it when you first read it?

Not when I first read it. It took a couple of tries.

Yeah, it helps because the B is capitalized when they’re talking about Buffalo, New York, right?

Right.

And so you can start to get, you’re like, okay, so that’s a little different because it’s a proper noun, and you can start to break it down into its component pieces, right?

Right.

You know, the other thing that this shows, it shows two other things.

One, English is loaded with words that are polysamous.

That’s a magic word that means have more than one meaning.

And the other thing that it shows is that a sentence can be perfectly grammatical and still be ridiculous.

Because that is a perfectly grammatical English sentence, but it’s like no sentence that no ordinary person would use outside of this particular stunt or joke, right?

Absolutely.

There are a lot of places to link to online.

We’ll link to a couple of the more reputable ones where they explain this in full and have some of the longer versions.

Because it’s really fun, and it’s actually an easy entry point into some of the basics of language.

It’s a joke. It’s fun. It’s kind of goofy, right?

Yeah, definitely.

Brilliant.

Thanks for calling, Lauren. Really appreciate it.

No problem. Thank you.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, Martha, there’s a term for this kind of expression when it occurs in language.

Buffalonism?

Buffaloni, yeah.

Buffaloni, I like that.

A new nonsense language.

No, it’s antenaclassis.

That’s one of the ways to say it.

A-N-T-A-N-A-C-L-A-S-I-S.

This is where you have one sentence with the same word or the same sounding words.

Yeah.

Like there’s a famous Latin one you probably know.

Malo, malo, malo, malo.

Which means I would rather be in an apple tree than be a bad boy in trouble.

And it plays off of all of the meanings of the Latin word malo, M-A-L-O.

Yeah.

And there’s another one in English.

You remember the one that goes, James, while John had, had, had, had, had, had, had, had, had, had?

It has a better effect on the teacher.

Yeah.

It has to do with using had.

That’s a long time ago.

Hadical.

Crazy stuff.

Call us with your language stories.

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

Things have come to a pretty path.

That’s all for today’s show, but the party’s not over.

Leave us a message anytime at 877-929-9673.

Let us be your linguistic detectives and share your family’s stories about language.

Try us anywhere in the world on Skype using the Skype name Wayword Radio or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

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If you aren’t able to have that driveway moment with fellow word nerds, you can have your way with us by podcast anytime at all.

Our production staff includes Stefanie Levine, Tim Felten, James Ramsey, and Josette Herdell.

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning, better human communication, and the value of a thing well said or well written.

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.

So long.

You like potato and I like potato.

You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato.

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

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