Bill calls from Bulverde, Texas, to discuss the word for a technique his Indiana-born family used to get the sluggish last bit of ketchup out of a bottle. They’d add a bit of water, and say they were wabashing it. What possible connection would the word wabash have with a technique for getting ketchup out of a bottle? It may refer to an old slang sense of wabash meaning to cheat. This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...