Transcript of “To Concertina Like an Accordion”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, I’m Maya, and I’m a high school student in Pennsylvania.
I have a question for you about the word concertina.
Concertina.
Yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of the Great British Baking Show at the moment, and one of the judges frequently uses the word concertina as a verb.
He’ll say things like, your cake has concertina down and things like that.
So my question is, what’s the origin of concertina as a verb, and what’s it mean?
Which judge is it?
It’s Paul Hollywood, I think is his name.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, Paul loves that word.
Paul, the big guy with the beard, right, that they always look to.
Yeah.
Yeah, that they’re afraid of, yeah.
He’s nice, but yeah, he’s intimidating.
Yeah, he’s very intimidating.
And Maya, I’m a fellow fan of that show.
But you were talking about the word concertina as a verb.
Do you know the word concertina as a noun?
I feel like it’s some kind of like classical composition.
I don’t know.
Well, it does have to do with music.
A concertina, this will make perfect sense once I tell you, a concertina is like a little bitty accordion without the piano keys.
You know, it’s used in traditional Irish music and English folk music.
Know it’s just you know your hands go back and forth and it and it expands and contracts and expands and contracts.
The concertina was invented in 1829 by a British inventor named Charles Wheatstone.
By the late 19th century, people were using the word concertina as a verb, you know, like you could concertina your hat if you smashed it or you could concertina the front of a car or or in the case of the baking show, you could concertina the layers of your showstopper hanging cake.
It just kind of all smashes up like an accordion or like that little instrument called the concertina.
So let’s talk about the concertina instrument again.
So it’s got this bellows in the middle between these two handholds.
And the handholds have keys or buttons on each end or something like that?
Buttons, yeah.
Yeah, and just kind of squeeze them back and forth to kind of push air across some reeds, right?
Right, yeah, yeah.
Some people call it a squeeze box.
A squeeze box, gotcha.
Yeah, and you might also have heard the expression concertina wire.
That’s that sort of barbed wire that’s in coils that goes around the tops of fences like at prisons and stuff.
But if you take it off, it collapses in the same way that a concertina does.
So that’s the term that he’s using.
I’ve learned several terms from The Baking Show.
Have you learned some others?
Not that I can remember.
I just remember hearing that one over and over again.
Yeah, yeah.
It just really stuck with me.
Yeah, yeah.
Paul gets on a roll, and he keeps saying stodgy or claggy or soggy bottom.
And concertina is another one.
Thank you so much.
Our pleasure.
Sure thing.
We’re glad you called.
Bye.
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