An acclaimed poet’s tender poem about holding a newborn for the first time reflects a complex swirl of emotions. And: A caller finds that in her workplace, the expression out of pocket can mean very different things: either “being unavailable” or “acting out of line.” Which is correct? Plus, if you plan on a long evening at a pub, better make sure you’re zebra striping! All that, and poosley, noodle, Black Beauty, verschluck, a letter-splitting brain teaser, eating off the mantel, 50 cents vs. 50 cent, quotation marks, fat lighter, and lots more.
This episode first aired January 26, 2026.
The Class Was So Hard! How Hard Was It?
In the 1970s, talk-show host Johnny Carson had a recurring bit where he’d declare, “It was so cold…” to which the audience would respond, “How cold was it?” Carson always offered a goofy response, such as “It was so cold the ice cubes were wearing ear muffs.” But back to the present day: What if you were talking about a language class that was really challenging. How hard was it? Maybe “So hard that even the silent letters complained?” Can you come up with a better one?
Out of One’s Depth with “Out of Pocket”
Lindsay in San Diego, California, says some of her younger coworkers use the phrase out of pocket to mean “unavailable,” but she’s also heard it used to mean “acting out of line.” The meaning of this phrase usually involves one of three things. Originally it connoted the idea of “paying one’s own expenses,” that is, paying them out of one’s own pocket. But out of pocket can also mean “unavailable,” a sense arising among journalists in the 1970s and directly related to the first meaning — you might be both away from the office and paying your own way. Around the same time, another meaning, “acting unruly” or “being disrespectful,” circulated among African-Americans and spread widely through hip-hop. Among equestrians, the phrase in pocket is used to describe horses that are attentive to their trainers.
Verschlucken and Schlucken
Jackie in Wausau, Wisconsin, says her family used an odd word whenever someone took a sip and choked. She’s not seen it in print, but suspects it’d be spelled something like furschluk. The family’s word is likely adapted from German verschlucken, from schlucken “to swallow,” with the prefix ver- functioning as an intensifier suggesting someone didn’t swallow correctly. In parts of the U.S. with strong German heritage, you may even hear the English phrase “I swallowed myself,” from German sich verschlucken, to mean that the person took a drink and it went down the wrong pipe.
Eating Off the Mantle
Martha recently found a 1938 letter that her grandfather sent to the local police chief in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It concerns a suspected thief who her grandfather thought might be persuaded to confess because, he wrote,, the young man surely had a distaste for eating off the mantle. It’s an old phrase referring to corporal punishment: Someone who gets a stern spanking would have to eat standing up, such as at a fireplace mantle, because it hurt too much to sit down.
Letter Mitosis Word Game
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been in his laboratory experimenting with what he calls letter mitosis, creating new words by splitting a pair of vowels. For example, if he splits off an O from coop, he gets an entirely new word, cop. In this puzzle, all of the clues contain a double letter E. For example, what two words are implied by the statement To fix the pigsty, I used the ball-shaped side of my hammer’s head? Remember, one of them will have an EE in it and the other will look just like it, minus one E.
Hurry and Scurry and Flurry and Worry
Andrea in West Palm Beach, Florida, recalls a little ditty that her father would recite to get her out of bed in the morning: When in the morning you throw moments away, you can’t make them up in the course of the day. Or you can hurry and scurry and flurry and worry, but you’ve lost them forever and ever a day. It’s a form of a little poem that appears in Anna Sewell’s 1877 novel Black Beauty (Bookshop|Amazon), which features Jerry Barker, driver of a horse-drawn cab. Barker loathed when other drivers would dawdle and then try to make up time by cruelly driving their horse hard. So he would sing little songs to himself that encouraged him not to waste time. One of them went: If you in the morning throw minutes away, you can’t pick them up in the course of the day. You may hurry and scurry and flurry and worry. You’ve lost them forever, forever and aye.
Zebra Striping
If you alternate alcoholic beverages with glasses of water over the course of an evening, you’re said to be zebra striping. This bit of slang was inspired by how the animal’s alternating black-and-white markings are like the contrast between the dramatically different effects of the two types of drinks.
Feeling Poosly
To feel poosly, or poosley, meaning to “feel poorly,” shows up in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York and is linked to Dutch settlement in the area. The word appears in a list of Dutchisms in the fourth edition of H. L. Mencken’s The American Language (Bookshop|Amazon). This passage is later referenced in Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops (via open access in in English and Dutch) by Dutch linguist Nicoline van der Sijs. It’s possible poosly derives from Dutch poezelig, meaning “chubby” or “plump,” due to semantic drift.
To Noodle with Your Noddle
To noodle meaning “to think on” is so-named because it from noddle, an old word for “head,” and not because a brain looks like a clump of pasta noodles.
Receiving Blankets, Stretched Beneath Stars
George Ella Lyon is a former Poet Laureate of Kentucky. Her poem “Receiving” is a touching meditation on holding a squirming newborn and the complex emotions it evokes. Martha reads the poem from Lyon’s collection Back to the Light (Bookshop|Amazon). Used with permission from University Press of Kentucky.
Zero Plurals and 50 Cent
A Pennsylvanian who relocated to North Carolina notes that many people in that part of the United States tend to leave the S off of the word cent when talking about money. This well-established feature of Appalachian and Southern varieties often called a zero plural, and reflects an older English structure known as the partitive genitive, a feature influenced by Irish and Scottish Gaelic in the area. The numeral already signals more than one, so the extra S isn’t needed.
How Preposterous Was It?
In the great tradition of Johnny Carson’s “How cold was it?” shtick: Just how preposterous was that folk etymology?
“Just Fine” Uses of Quotation Marks
Beyond marking direct speech, quotation marks serve a variety of functions. They can signal skepticism, provisional terminology, nonstandard usage, or emphasis when italics aren’t available. There’s no reason to mock hand-lettered signs for their quotation marks, as the reader understands what is meant, and making marks beside words to add meaning is a practice that goes back as far as ancient Greece and beyond.
Fat Wood and Fat Lighter
A Navy veteran recalls hearing the Southern expression fat lighter from his wife’s family in Troy, Alabama. It denotes an old, resin-rich pine wood that becomes highly flammable as it ages. Fat lighter is prized as kindling and often called fat wood, lightwood, fat pine, or fat lighter’d. The lighter doesn’t mean “to ignite,” but rather “to give light,” reflecting the bright flame it produces.
This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.
Photo by flowcomm used under a Creative Commons license.
Books Mentioned in the Episode
| Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (Bookshop|Amazon) |
| The American Language by H. L. Mencken (Bookshop|Amazon) |
| Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops by Nicoline van der Sijs (via open access in English and Dutch) |
| Back to the Light by George Ella Lyon (Bookshop|Amazon) |
Music Used in the Episode
| Title | Artist | Album | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hydra | Grover Washington Jr | Feels So Good | KUDU |
| Pamukkale | Whitefield Brothers | Earthology | Now-Again Records |
| Apache | Incredible Bongo Band | Bongo Rock | MGM Records |
| Sem Yelesh | Whitefield Brothers | Earthology | Now-Again Records |
| Get Down With the Get Down | Melvin Sparks | Melvin Sparks ’75 | Westbound Records |
| The Other Side | Sure Fire Soul Ensemble | Step Down | Colemine Records |
