West Word, Ho!

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnettein San Diego.

And I’m Grant Barrett in San Francisco.

San Francisco!

Now, that has a nice ring to it, Grant.

Very nice.

Very nice.

Why don’t you catch everybody up on what you’ve been doing this summer?

I moved 3,000 miles across the country from New York City to San Francisco.

Yes!

Yes!

We’re still not in the same city, I know.

I would love to be sitting next to you, dear.

But you know, there’s some language at the bottom of this.

You know that my other job is editorial director of Wordnik.com, right?

That’s right.

It’s a new online dictionary that I’m involved with.

And all of our team is moving here, some of us from Chicago, some of us from New York.

There’s a couple of guys who are already out here.

So we can all be together in one place.

And it’s fantastic.

It’s wonderful.

And of course, I’ve had my ear to the ground for California-specific language things, or at least things that are different here than they are in New York City.

Of course.

There’s tons of stuff.

Yeah.

What are you hearing?

There are a lot of Pacific Islanders out here.

So there’s Tongans and Filipinos.

And so I’m hearing new languages that I just really never encountered in the stores or on the streets in New York City.

You know, you think of New York City, the whole world is there.

It is.

I don’t hear Tagalog spoken every day like I could hear.

Oh, so you’re lingering at the grocery and cycling up to people at the bank.

And you know, the other thing is the Spanish here tends to be very Mexican, whereas in New York City, it’s very Puerto Rican and Dominican, you know?

Yeah.

And that’s different.

Besides the language being different, it means that the taquerias here are outstanding.

Better Mexican food all the way around, which just has nothing to do with the language.

I’m just saying, yum.

And I had one of these weird experiences where the other thing that I’m noticing here is that the history of Spanish is so deep and so embedded into California.

We’ve talked about this a couple of times in the program, that some of these Spanish place names and some of these family names have had a chance to become thoroughly anglicized, right?

Right.

Right.

And so I went with my father-in-law and some other family members and my wife and my son to a restaurant in Pescadero, it was fantastic.

And it’s owned by a family who spells their name D-U-A-R-T-E-S.

But it is not pronounced Duartes.

It’s pronounced Duarts.

Oh, how interesting.

Because they’ve been here so long that the family’s completely lost that Spanish pronunciation of the name.

It’s now just Duarts and not Duartes.

In any case, I’m having a really great time listening to the language out here, just learning how to say the place names, which aren’t always like you’d think, of course, and we’ve talked about that on the program.

And we’ll talk about it again.

It’s wonderful to be in California.

Well, welcome, Grant.

Thank you.

We’re delighted to have you here.

And if you’d like to talk about language, any aspect of it whatsoever, call us at 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or you can email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Judy from McFarland, Wisconsin.

Hi, Judy.

How you doing?

I’m great.

How are you?

Super-duper.

Doing well.

So we were kind of working on a little project in our town here, and we’re building a dog park, which is actually opening pretty soon.

And we did a Google search to look for dog park names, and we didn’t find much out there.

So we came up with a few names of our own that we kind of thought we’d like to toss it out to your listeners and see if they had any ideas for us.

All right.

So is this like the first dog park in your community?

Yes, in our community.

We have quite a few in the — we live just outside of Madison, so there are quite a few in the Madison area, but the first one in our town.

Well, now, Judy, are you a dog owner, first of all?

Oh, absolutely.

-huh.

And what do you have?

I have a five-year-old Border Collie.

Oh, my gosh.

Those dogs are really smart.

They can do things like open refrigerators and combination locks and stuff, can’t they?

He does a lot of things.

He does a lot of things my kids never did.

He picks up his toys, and he comes when I call him.

He even turns off the lights for me, so he’s very smart.

Oh, sweet.

You’re going to give me a couple of lows.

Yeah.

Can’t be harder to raise than a toddler, right?

No.

What’s his name?

His first name is Semper, and his middle name is Fidelis.

Okay.

Very nice.

Semper Fidelis.

And what about pets?

What do you call him when you’re being sweet to him?

Sempy?

Oh, yeah.

Exactly, yeah.

That’s what we call him.

So you’re building a dog run in McFarland, and I should say, you say dog park, so there’s more than just a run.

Are there kind of amusements there?

I mean, what are we talking about here?

Water course, a sand pit, things to chase?

Actually, Matt, it’s kind of on the edge of town, and it’s surrounded by farmland and conservancy land, so we’ve kind of kept it pretty natural looking.

We have some trails and some wooded areas, and we left some shrubs and stuff in there.

So it’s mostly just a place for dogs to get together and run off leash.

Do the things that dogs do at dog parks.

Do the things that dogs like to do, yeah.

You can call it poo corner.

Oh, no.

Or not.

We’ll put that down on our list.

Okay.

Yeah, at the very bottom, hidden under a fold or something.

Yeah.

Right.

So much for my contribution.

What else do you have there?

You have a list?

You’ve got a list, right?

You’ve got some stuff.

What do you like most?

Well, we came up with several ideas.

We have the McFarland McDog Park.

Okay.

And we have Dogplex.

Dogplex?

Dogplex?

Yeah.

Like multiplex?

Yeah, that sounds like several stories high.

-huh.

And we have McFarland Unleashed.

Unleashed?

That sounds like an album or something.

Yeah.

Right.

So we’ll put a question down in your discussion forum, and I got a few ideas from that as well.

Okay.

Central Park with an “S”.

Oh, like “S-C”?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

Okay.

McFarland.

McFarland?

McFarland.

Oh, that’s okay.

And the First McFarland Dog Park.

First McFarland?

That sounds like a bank, almost.

Or a Baptist church.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like that.

People that didn’t want the dog park might think we’re going to have a second McFarland dog park.

Oh, that’d be great just to get their goat, wouldn’t it?

Let me ask you, do you think the punny names might grow a little stale fast?

I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s a really good question.

What is it about dogs and cats that bring out the punster in people?

I mean, if you look through the phone book for dog and cat services, there’s some gosh-awful names.

Yes.

I think it’s because we treat our animals with such joy, right?

We have a very close connection, and they are highly amusing.

They do crazy antics, and we think about the fun times with them rather than the 4 AM walk because they need to poop.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I think you have a good point, Grant, that how long is that pun going to be funny?

I mean, I kind of like McFarland.

I do too, but I would kind of stray from it.

Well, let me ask you, did you consider just opening it up without a name and see what kind of naturally occurs?

Yes.

Actually, the park opens pretty soon, so it doesn’t have a name.

We just call it the McFarland Dog Park.

Well, we can certainly throw this out to our listeners and see what they come up with.

I’m sure a lot of people have had experience dealing with this kind of thing.

Absolutely.

Here’s the pitch.

The pitch is, what should McFarland call its first dog park?

Thank you so much for calling, Judy.

We’ll put this out to our listeners and see what we come up with, all right?

Great.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

McFarland Dog Park, a name that you particularly like, or some other idea about how to go about naming the park, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or shoot us an email to words@waywordradio.org, and we’ll talk about them in a future show.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Elliot.

I’m calling from San Diego, California.

Elliot, welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have a question for you guys.

I was actually in the car with my girlfriend a few weeks ago, and she’s originally Colombian, and so she often likes to ask me about questions about English vocabulary, grammar, and all that kind of stuff.

And we heard the term “skid row” mentioned on a radio show, and she turned to me and asked me what it meant, and I realized that I actually had no idea at all, and I was wondering if you could help me figure that out.

This is an easy one, fortunately.

So get your pen, all right?

Skid row, S-K-I-D-R-O-W, means—well, what do you use it to mean?

Somebody’s on skid row, they’re down and out.

They’re penniless and poor and probably without a job, right?

Exactly.

Skid row is kind of like the vague other place where you say people live when they’re down and out, or their fortunes have fallen.

All right.

So it’s a bad area of town kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly.

But it’s usually not a specific area.

Although it started out that way.

Skid row comes from skid road, R-O-A-D.

And a skid road is a—it’s not really a road, more like tracks almost.

Road will do.

It’s a road that you drag logs down.

It’s a part of timber cutting.

You cut down the timber, you cut off the branches, and then you drag them down this road to the sawmill or to the river or wherever they need to go.

And here’s a description I found.

It’s a long stretch of mud, water, timbers, and treacherous wire cables.

And so it looks kind of like railroad tracks, but instead of metal rails across the top, it’s wood.

And there are these horizontal ties where there’s a little bit of a depression cut in them and the logs just kind of like drag right down the middle of all of these other logs on their way to the sawmill or the way to the river.

And as you can imagine, this is not a happy place.

It’s noisy and it’s dirty and it’s not a place you want to live.

But unfortunately, in the old days, whatever vague period that might be, loggers tended to live and play there near these skid roads because that’s where the work was.

That’s where their jobs had them.

So that was probably where their entertainment was as well, right?

Sure, yeah.

There were probably all kinds of brothels and body houses and all kinds of strange stuff along the way and all the things that go with rough working environments and lots of men.

The earliest use we have, of course, of this transformation is from the early 1920s, although by the late 1920s, it’s defined in a collection of slang as the lowest strata of the underworld.

So it moved within the decade of the 1920s from being specifically another way to say skid road to being a way to refer to the class of people that might live there.

Wow.

Okay.

So definitely a place we don’t want to end up.

No, no, you don’t.

And by the way, it probably came out of Seattle first with the logging community.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Well, now I have very in-depth notes.

So I think you may have saved me here.

Thank you guys so much for your help.

Thank you so much, sir.

All right.

Thanks for coming.

Yeah, thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you are trying to translate the world for your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband, wife who is from another country and learning the language, you probably have a story like that as well.

Just call the numbers 1-877-929-9673 or send an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

We had an email recently from Jeff in Philly who wrote to ask if we had ever heard of the Yiddish palindrome about Napoleon.

You know the one that goes, “Able I was, ere I saw Elba?”

Sure, yeah.

It’s one of the most famous ones, right?

Right.

Right.

But here’s the Yiddish version.

It goes, “Unable I was, ere I saw Elba.

No?”

I love that.

Thanks, Jeff.

Well, we welcome your palindromes.

Send them along to words@waywordradio.org or leave them on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Get ready to test your mental mettle with a word puzzle.

It’s next on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And across from me is the handsome, the one and the only, John Chonesky, our quiz guy.

All right.

It’s me.

Hi, guys.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

How are you?

Are you guys familiar with the book The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster?

Vaguely?

Milo is the character in there?

That’s right.

Milo is the character.

It’s an excellent, excellent classic book with a lot of word play in it.

One of the elements of the book is a feud between the kingdom of letters and the kingdom of numbers.

Okay.

Now, I decided we should always keep the two as close as possible.

So I’ve constructed a puzzle about the words of numbers.

What do you think?

Okay.

Let’s try it.

Words of numbers.

Okay.

Almost all of the answers to this are a number or a word that has something to do with numbers.

For example, the clubhouse on a golf course is commonly referred to as what hole?

19th.

That’s right. 19th.

The number, the ordinal number 19th.

Very good.

Okay.

So let’s try a few more of these.

Okay?

All right.

So in the 1970s, this phrase, which has come to symbolize an untold number, was first associated with a prominent astronomer who never actually said the phrase in his popular PBS series billions and billions, billions and billions on cosmos.

He never actually said it.

The closest he actually came to saying it was in chapter one of his book cosmos where he referred to billions upon billions of stars.

Here’s another one.

What mathematical operation sounds like what your car gets on a somewhat slippery road?

Not a skid.

No.

Subtraction.

Subtraction.

Oh, John.

A little bit of wordplay there.

Sorry.

It’s a groaner.

Here’s the next one.

Now, if I’m writing out the numbers starting from zero, what three numbers in a row require six E’s and no other vowels?

If you’re writing the numbers out?

Yeah.

10, 11, 12. 10, 11, 12 is correct.

Nice work, Grant.

Nicely done.

All right.

Good.

This is one for the game players out there.

What is the lowest number whose name forms a valid scrabble entry when reversed?

The lowest number?

Yeah.

Okay.

So that wouldn’t be two.

Is it eno?

Eno doesn’t work.

And two wouldn’t work.

Out.

No.

It’s an alternate spelling of ought.

Oof.

Five is if it knows.

Wow.

Six.

Nine.

Six.

Nine.

Ten?

Oh, six.

It’s six because it’s chi, plural.

That’s right.

Chi.

X-I-X-I-S.

Very good.

Six.

I like it.

Slowly had to work our way through the numbers.

Very good.

It was fun watching you smelling the smoke as your brain was working because something’s working.

I went right past six.

That’s right.

Okay.

Here’s another one.

Century, decade.

These are common.

How long is a lustrum?

Ooh.

That’s the length between when the sun goes down and it’s too dark to read.

Right?

From now on I will use that.

Is it a thousand years?

No, it’s not a thousand years.

A lustrum.

A lustrum.

A lustrum is how long it takes for somebody’s good deeds to be forgotten.

No?

No.

I’ll give you this.

This may or may not work.

It’s Latin for purification.

The Romans would hold a purification ceremony after every census which they held every?

Seven years.

No, it was a little longer than that, wasn’t it?

Yeah, it was a little shorter than that.

Oh, was it?

Yeah.

Six years?

Four.

Even shorter.

Five?

Five is correct.

A lustrum is five years.

I have another made up definition for lustrum.

What’s that?

That’s the period in American history during which a man could wear braille cream in his hair and nobody would laugh.

That’s perfectly good.

This Vaseline, I used to wear it in my hair.

Oh, that’s tough.

I can’t remember.

Grecian formula?

Oh, there’s something about an aqua velva man.

My grandfather used high karate products exclusively.

High karate?

Oh, yeah.

Here’s another one.

What movie might be called The Magnificent Heptad?

Oh, that’s what I was thinking when I was thinking of Seven, The Magnificent Seven.

The Magnificent Seven.

Based on The Seven Samurai, right.

Very good, yeah.

I mean, if you really want to annoy your friends, just keep wondering, “Oh, you mean The Magnificent Heptad?”

And they’ll say, “That guy that we never invite to parties anymore.”

Here’s another one.

I’m sorry, John.

I meant to invite you.

It’s okay.

I know.

It gets lost in the mail.

The symbol known as a hexagram is more commonly referred to as what?

So hex is six, right?

Six.

Right.

So what’s the symbol?

Star of David.

Star of David is right, Grant.

Very good.

It’s a hexagon in the middle of it, and it’s an extelated hexagon.

Oh, nice.

Now, this is hot chat.

Come on.

Between that and lustrum, I’m just, yeah.

If you thought that was hot, I think you’ll like this one.

Okay.

In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare writes, “The death of Antony is not a single doom in the name lay a moiety of the world.”

A moiety means divided by what number?

Well, a moiety in French is a half.

Yeah, two.

So it’s two parts.

Two is correct.

Very good.

That is good.

So one half.

A moiety is one half.

Very good.

Moiety, moiety.

John, this was good fun.

As always, I love how these are portable, that we can take these games away and do them somewhere else.

Yeah, and I hope you will.

Take them.

Go.

Get them out of my house.

Take her away, please.

Anyway, thanks for coming, John.

It’s good fun.

Thanks, Grant.

Thanks, Martha.

Take care.

Thanks, John.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

How are you?

How are you?

I’m good.

I’m good.

For people before they ascend the route, if they want to do it perfectly, they say, “I would rather not have any beta.

I want to on-site this route,” which means you do it without any information, all on your own using just your guts and your glory.

So “beta” is kind of a synonym for information, right?

Yes.

And that’s B-E-T-A.

Correct.

And it’s used as a mass noun, so you don’t say, “Don’t give me a beta,” you say, “Give me some beta.”

You can say, “Any beta, some beta.”

You wouldn’t say, “The beta.”

So you’re speculating that it might have something to do with beta software, which is software that’s kind of unfinished but ready to be used and tested.

Right.

When they gather information about it and then make the product better somehow.

I don’t think that it is.

I don’t think that it’s connected.

And here’s why.

I did an entry for this a few years ago on my Double Tongue Dictionary website.

And in digging into this, I turned up an article by Neil Cannon that was in Climbing Magazine in 1985.

And it’s kind of a jokey article, I believe, where he uses Betamax to refer to the information that people get about a trail or a specific ascent.

And what it turns out is that this article was very influential to refer to people who would do things like videotape the route, like stand on the ground and zoom in with a beta camera to videotape all the different places where you might put your foot or your hand or your bolt or whatever you’re doing.

Those stairs.

Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, there definitely has been over the years some derogatory kind of subtext to the use of the term beta.

But it comes directly from the word Betamax, which is a video format that’s not used by anyone anymore except for professional video editors.

It’s not something you’ll find in the house anymore, but you will find beta is very common still in professional video.

That’s the story.

It’s a pretty solid, let’s say 90% solid etymology for that word.

Wow.

How interesting.

Now I know.

I’m going to pull that out of the crag and let people know.

Pull it out of the crag.

Nice.

Nice.

Wait a minute.

Fill me in.

What does that mean, pull it out of the crag?

The crag just means any place where there are rocks that you would climb.

It’s just referred to as the crag.

So when you pull something out of the crag, you’re just talking about it when you’re there.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Let’s go back to beta a second though.

People use beta, there’s not really a pejorative sense or derogatory sense about it right now, right?

It depends on your style of climbing.

Some people think any beta that people use is just terrible and sullies the whole idea of rock climbing.

Right.

Most people though love beta and don’t mind if they receive a little bit of information.

But those hardcore people, even if they read the route description in a climbing guide, they’ll consider that beta and that’s illegal.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for your call, Corinne.

I hope we’ve been some help with the answer to beta.

Oh, it’s been great.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

How do you say happy climbing or how do climbers take their leave of each other?

Generally, they just say goodbye.

Goodbye then.

Well, that works too.

Take care of yourself, Corinne.

Bye.

Bye.

Check your ropes.

Thank you.

Well, if you’ve got a question about some inside language for the hobby that you follow, give us a call if you want to tell us about it or ask about it, 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

My name is Brett from Arcadia, Indiana.

Hiya, Brett.

Welcome.

Hello, Brett.

Thank you.

Well, my question is, my great-grandfather, he passed away in 2002, but I was thinking the other day during one of your shows about something he used to say.

Instead of saying goodbye or see you later, he would always say, “Don’t leave your end gate up.”

No one really ever knew what that meant and obviously I can’t ask him now and so when I heard you guys talking about that the other day, just things our grandparents would say that we didn’t understand, I thought I’d give you guys a call.

Don’t leave your end gate up?

Yes, correct.

End gate.

Like E-N-D-G-A-T-E.

Yes.

Brett, do you have any idea what he might have meant?

Well, there are a few theories that I’ve kind of come up with.

The first is, like on a pickup truck, you have the gate on the back and if you’re driving, that can kind of catch wind and keep you from going as quickly as you possibly can and so it’s kind of a drag to have that up.

That was one thought I maybe had.

Another one that’s kind of in a different direction, kind of like, people used to wear one-piece kind of pajamas that had a gate on the back that if you had to use the restroom you had to open it up and use the restroom and you wanted to make sure that you did not leave that up when you used the restroom at night.

But I’m not sure…

Or the outhouse.

Well, the other way, you don’t want to leave it down when you leave the restroom, right?

You want your end gate in the right place at the right time.

And so I had no idea what that meant but I thought you guys might be able to figure it out.

Boy, those are both good theories.

I have no idea.

Tell us a little bit more about your great-grandfather.

What did he do?

Well, he was a farmer and so there could be reference to gates, like he was a cattle farmer.

And he was, I want to say, 36 or 40, he bought his own farm just north of Huntington, Indiana.

And my grandparents, they kind of lived on that farm and raised my grandfather, and my mom even grew up on that cattle farm.

And just within the last, I would say, 10, 15 years or so, they ended up selling the farm.

But he was pretty much a farmer his entire life and a real simple guy.

You know, I have an idea for you.

I was looking for what you said.

I was looking for the fact that he might have been a farmer, because there’s a type of wagon or truck these days, but a wagon where the gate in the back doesn’t fold down like the tailgate on a pickup, but it pulls up.

And these are usually grain trucks for corn and stuff, and sometimes for cattle as well.

And what this allows you to do is to back the truck up to say to some kind of bin or some kind of like chute or something else to let the grain out or the cattle out.

And what you do is you just pull the rope or pull the pulley, and the gate flies up, and then the cattle goes.

So there’s nothing to swing to the side, and there’s no chance of the grain or the cattle getting away.

And so the thing is, if you’re hauling animals or you’re hauling grain, you do not want to leave that gate up.

So the advice of “don’t leave your end gate up” would be pretty good advice for a farmer who could see his livelihood spread out on the road, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

So that’s my theory there.

If you Google that, go to images.google.com, and Google “end gate” is one word.

You’re going to see some pictures of some wagons and some trucks that have gates exactly like that, and you may see something that looks familiar to you.

Yeah, I mean, I know exactly what you’re talking about, because we used to use those types of wagons.

There we go.

Yeah, and those are called end gates.

And a wide variety of gates are called end gates, and sometimes it’s just the gate on the end, but there’s some specific technical uses as well.

Well, he sounds like he was a great guy.

He really was.

I was really fortunate to get to know him.

I usually don’t get to know your great-grandparents that long, but he was a great guy, and I was glad to talk with him.

Yeah.

All right, well, I hope I helped you some, Brett.

You did.

You solved a family mystery, and I appreciate that.

Well, best of luck to you, Brett.

Thanks for calling today.

Okay, bye-bye.

I appreciate it.

Bye.

If you’ve got something that Grandma and Grandpa used to say that you’re not quite sure what it means or where it comes from, by all means, give us a call at 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Wendy Hawkins in Aloha, Oregon.

Well, what’s up?

Well, I was just typing an email to somebody, and I started to say something about, “Are you just shining me on?”

And I suddenly hesitated and thought, “I don’t know why that means what it means.”

And I know that the word “shine” can sometimes be problematic, rightfully so, whether it earned the reputation or whether it’s actually used in a way that wasn’t originally offensive, but maybe it is today.

I’d like to know where it comes from, how it means what it means, and whether I should use it.

What was the context of the email?

Oh, just somebody proposing something that seemed a little bit bogus to me or something that I might also say, “Are you just blowing smoke up my skirt,” which, again, is one that I might hesitate.

Yeah, I think I’d hesitate about that one a little more.

And so you’re worried that this might be offensive how?

Well I know, being married to a North Carolina man, that the word “shine” was, in the past at least, used sometimes in offensive ways racially, and if it has any mass of any of that, I wouldn’t want to use it.

Right.

Unfortunately, it’s still currently used that way.

“Shine” is an offensive term for a black person, yes indeed.

That’s to be avoided, but fortunately for you, it’s different from “to shine someone on.”

It’s a different word, a different context, and in fact, “to shine someone on” or “to shine someone up” or just “to shine someone” actually is recorded most often in the language of black Americans, so it’s not something that they’ve used racially to apply to themselves at all.

So you’re safe with that.

Oh really?

Yeah.

And it’s good that the meaning that you were using it to kind of bluff or delude or fool or to trick is, that’s pretty much the most common meaning today, but there are a number of meanings to “shine someone on” because, you know, like a lot of slang, it’s variable and it’s not incredibly fixed in the language.

You can use it to mean “to ignore.”

To ignore someone is to shine them on, yeah.

Huh.

How did it get to mean these things?

This is origin unknown.

Oh, I hate when you tell me that.

Well, Wendy, let me tell you.

I know what you mean.

Here’s the strongest lead that I have, and I think it’s very solid, and I think it’s something we can probably believe in and say that no more work is required, okay?

But still, I’m not going to claim this as definitive.

There’s an expression to shine up to someone that’s much older, from the mid-1800s, whereas to shine someone on is from like the 1960s or so.

And to shine up to someone is to ingratiate yourself to them, particularly if you’re doing it in an insincere way.

And because it’s older and because it has a vague resemblance to the modern “to shine someone on,” I think that there’s probably connection there, and they probably both go back to the action of smiling.

That sounds a little bit like apple-polishing or kissing up or— Yeah, yeah, being deceptive in both cases.

If you smile, you can be said to shine.

You have a smile, and you put on this false, happy face while you’re blowing smoke, as you put it, right?

Right, so it’s the idea of falseness in both cases.

Yeah, and I think the key here is your face is literally shining with the smile while you’re telling the lie or you’re bluffing somebody.

It’s particularly used when you’re acting as if everything is great, even when it’s not.

Yeah.

Well, in any case, you’re on solid ground, and so use it in good health.

All right.

Thank you so much for your call, Wendy.

Yeah, I hope you got your money’s worth.

Absolutely.

It’s a pleasure talking to you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if there’s something you’ve got on the tip of your tongue or the tip of your pen and you’re not sure that you should use it or say it, where are the people to ask?

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673, that’s 1-877-Wayword, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Straight ahead, more questions, more answers, more of your thoughts about language.

What’s next on A Way with Words?

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

I’ve been intrigued to read the names of some of the homeless encampments in the United States.

They seem to be grim places where people who lack jobs and money gather because they have nowhere else to go.

But I’m struck how often those places have hopeful names, positive names.

For example, in St.

Petersburg in Florida, there’s a place called Pinellas Hope.

It’s named after Pinellas Bay, I believe.

And there’s Hope City in Providence, Rhode Island.

These are both places where people have gathered together in public parks or public land of some sort, sometimes in church parking lots, in order to build a small community of homeless people with tents or whatever kind of shelter they can build for themselves.

There’s more, Safe Haven in Champaign, Illinois, and River Haven in near Ventura, California.

Even a place called Umoja Village in Miami.

Umoja means unity in Swahili.

And so I think they’ve intentionally given these place names so that it’s not Dirtville.

It’s not something really ugly.

Yeah, or Hooverville, which was so snarly, blaming it on the president.

Well, there is one shantytown name that I found that is kind of modeled after Hooverville, and that is Nicholsville.

It’s the name of the Seattle homeless encampment.

It’s named for Mayor Greg Nichols of Seattle.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

And I don’t know if I’d be flattered if I was him.

I don’t think it’s meant in a flattering way.

But the most common name generally is Tent City, sometimes even capitalized by the local newspapers.

You know, it is not a tent city, it’s like the tent city, it’s a formal name.

There are just a couple that have some humor in them.

There are two others that have existed in Providence, Rhode Island.

One of them is Camp Runamuck, and the other one is Camp Runamuck II.

Oh, no.

Oh, yeah.

And I guess I should mention that this kind of naming of these temporary towns is perfectly ordinary.

The military does this when they create a tent city in Afghanistan or Iraq, anytime there are immigrant populations due to disasters, or even during the hajj, the massive numbers of people going to Mecca, a lot of times they’ll give their temporary communities a name.

And one here worth mentioning is in Calais, France, there is an encampment of illegal immigrants, and it’s called the Jungle, because it is an incredibly rough place, where all of these people are trying to climb aboard trucks surreptitiously so that they can go, say, through the tunnel and make it into the UK or to go somewhere else where there might be work.

Well, Grant, I never would have thought about this kind of thing, but it’s fascinating.

It reminds me of those old photographs from the WPA, you know, that were so grim, but also kind of beautiful.

If you know of the name of your local tent city or shanty town, we’d be interested in finding out about it.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Jill.

I’m in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Hi, Jill.

How are you doing?

Good.

I have a question.

I grew up in Pittsburgh, and when we were growing up, we always used to say things like the car needs washed and the kids need picked up, and then after my siblings and I went away to college, we learned that this is not the correct thing to be saying, and it should be the car needs to be washed and the kids need to be picked up, and we’re all wondering why this is the correct way to say it.

So Jill, you have a question that needs answered.

I do indeed.

It’s something that’s been bugging us for a long time.

Where did you go to college?

In Pennsylvania, and we all went to college in Pennsylvania.

Okay.

Okay.

What part of Pennsylvania?

Central Pennsylvania.

Oh, okay.

All right.

So you got there, and people weren’t saying it that way.

Right, and we were corrected.

You were corrected just casually.

It wasn’t something that happened in the classroom?

No, not in the classroom, just casually.

Well, Jill, there are three things to say about this construction.

Number one is that it’s a normal part of Scott’s grammar.

In Scotland, you’ll hear this kind of construction, and what’s really cool is that if you look at the maps of where this is heard in this country, it pretty much mirrors the Scott’s Irish migration patterns in the 17th and 18th century in the area where you live and going on west through Ohio and Indiana and parts of Illinois and also down the Appalachians and into the Ozarks, so it very closely mirrors that Scott’s Irish migration pattern, and it’s kind of an echo of the way that those folks talked.

And another thing that’s really cool about this construction, so what I’m saying is that I wouldn’t say it’s wrong.

Would you, Grant?

I wouldn’t know.

I would not say it’s wrong.

Absolutely not.

Yeah, and the other thing that’s really interesting about this particular construction is that it’s what we call sociolinguistically transparent, that is, it’s not really associated with a particular class or a particular gender.

You’ll hear it in rural areas, and you’ll hear it in urban areas as well.

And the other thing that’s really striking about this is that usually, folks who use it are totally unaware that they’re using it, like you.

Right, yeah.

I didn’t know, and you know, when I went to, I was hanging out with some friends this weekend, and I posed this question to them, and when I said, “The car needs wash,” they all kind of cringed that they thought this was a terrible thing to say.

Oh, really?

Yeah, to me, it sounds perfectly normal.

Right, it sounds perfectly normal.

And when I said earlier, “This is a question that needs answered,” you said, “Yep, -huh.”

Right, yeah, I didn’t even notice it.

-huh, exactly.

Exactly, this is a perfect example.

Well, so the thing that I would say to you is that it’s not the dominant way of saying that kind of thing, but I would say it’s perfectly legitimate, although some people will kind of cringe.

-huh.

So you don’t think I could slip it into academic writing that I probably wouldn’t get by the editors?

That’s a really good question.

I would say that it’s not formal English.

It’s not bad English, but it’s not formal English, and if you were trying to get an argument across, you might try to avoid it so people weren’t distracted by your dialect usage.

Right, so Jill, just think of yourself as bilingual, you know?

Right.

You can kind of go back and forth, you can code switch.

Right, I can be Pittsburghese, I could speak Pittsburghese, and then I could speak standard English.

Yeah, in other words, you know more than those people who are cringing, so I say go ahead and use it, but maybe not in the academic papers.

Okay, great, my sisters will be very glad to hear this.

All right, thanks for calling, Jill.

All right, thank you very much.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

There’s a lot of work to be done in this country to fix the idea that dialect pronunciations and dialect usages are something to be stomped out.

I agree with you, Grant, and in this one in particular, the first time I heard it, I admit I did a double take because I did not grow up talking that way, but now I find it kind of endearing, you know?

It’s kind of just like a little thing that I recognize when people say, and I often ask them if they’re from the Pittsburgh area or around there.

Cool.

Well, if you’ve got a question about dialect pronunciations or something that somebody told you that you shouldn’t say, you should give us a call at 1-877-929-9673, and we’ll tell you whether or not they’re right.

Hello, you have A Way with Words!

Hi, this is Evan from Dallas, Texas.

Well, welcome to the program, Evan.

What’s on your mind today?

Well, I had a question about the word “decimate,” because I had always thought that it had a connotation with one-tenth, like, to destroy one-tenth, but I keep hearing it meaning to destroy completely or to obliterate.

I was wondering if you could help me with that.

I think we can help you with this.

This is a fairly common question, isn’t it, Martha?

Yes, it is, and you’re right, you see that Latin root for the word “ten,” don’t you?

In “decimate,” in “decimal,” in the name “December” as well, which was the tenth month of the Roman calendar.

And I suppose, Evan, that you’re thinking back to the grizzly etymology of this word, right?

Right.

And which was what?

Well, it was back to the Romans, I believe, and it was to eliminate one in ten men of an army.

Right, right.

If soldiers mutinied, the policy was that the generals would just line up the soldiers and they’d draw lots and they’d just kill one in ten.

Every tenth guy.

It was a really horrible, horrible practice.

And so that’s where we get the word “decimate.”

There was a related Latin word like that.

However, that word has changed over the centuries.

We’re not doing that anymore.

No, by the mid-17th century, we see the word “decimate” used to mean imposing a 10 percent tax.

And certainly by the 18th or early 19th century, it was a more generalized term.

It didn’t have that literal meaning, and that’s what we often see with etymologies, that words will travel from their original, grizzly, creepy meaning to something that’s more general.

And although for people like you and me, Evan, it’s really fascinating to know the roots of that icky word, you know, words have a life of their own.

And now people use it to mean to destroy a large portion of something, and I don’t think that we should be sticklers about that at all.

You did mention something about “utterly wipe out” or “utterly destroy” that you’re bothered when you hear the word “decimate” used that way.

Yeah.

Like, I remember seeing a news broadcast several years ago about a building being torn down, and I remember distinctly the reporter saying that the building was decimated when it was just completely leveled.

Yeah.

OK.

And I think your discomfort with that is absolutely legitimate.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Right.

I would, yeah.

Absolutely.

That’s a misuse of the word “decimate,” because it doesn’t mean to completely destroy.

Another way that people tend to misuse it, and probably the only way that I have a problem with it, is when they use this very powerful word to describe something that is not very significant.

They’ll say, “I was decimated by Thanksgiving dinner last night.

You know, I was so full.”

Like, no, you weren’t really decimated by it.

Maybe you were made drowsy or something, but it didn’t kill you.

Right.

Right.

I think the idea of utterly destroying something or wiping something out is not appropriate when you’re using “decimate.”

No.

But if you were to say something like, “The events of last year decimated his 401(k),” I would think that that would be legitimate.

Yeah.

I would agree.

To destroy the better part of, or to cause a great loss.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think the bottom line here is that a lot of times we may know the etymology of a word, but language happens.

Language changes.

You can’t take all words back to their etymological roots and say somehow that that is the one true meaning of a word, right, Evan?

I mean, otherwise we wouldn’t be speaking this form of English, we’d be speaking something else.

The language would be dramatically different if that were the case.

The etymology doesn’t win when it comes to defining words.

But it’s still cool to know, right, Evan?

Yeah, exactly.

All right.

Well, thanks for an interesting call.

Well, thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, Evan.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, if you’ve got a question about language, words, word origin, spelling, pronunciation, something somebody said that you didn’t understand, by all means give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

The other day I discovered a Facebook group called People for a Library-themed Ben & Jerry’s Flavor.

Have you seen this, Grant?

What are they after?

I don’t understand.

They want Ben & Jerry’s in the library?

No, no, no, no.

Their premise is that libraries are awesome, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is tasty, and therefore there should be a library-themed Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

Okay.

And so they’re all throwing out suggestions and trying to put peer pressure on Ben & Jerry to come up with a library-themed ice cream.

For example, how about gooey decimal system?

That’s dark fudge alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream, or how about this one, rocky reed?

Oh, reed.

What’s a reed?

Like Rocky Road, vanilla with chocolate-covered nuts, chocolate chunks, and raisins.

Oh, okay.

And I was thinking maybe we could start our own Facebook group of grammar-themed ice cream?

And I bet you have some suggestions.

Well, all I can think of so far is banana split infinitive, but maybe our listeners have suggestions.

If you have a library-themed ice cream name or a grammar-themed ice cream name, you can give us a call at 1-877-9299673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Libby, and I’m calling from North Freedom, Wisconsin.

Hi, how you doing, Libby?

Welcome to the show.

Thanks.

My mom and I have been arguing about the word “bagel,” and she thinks that the only way to say it is “bagel,” and I believe that it can also be pronounced “bagel.”

And my family laughs at me whenever I say that, and no one else I’ve asked has ever heard “bagel.”

Did I just make that up, or is it actually pronounced that way?

Let me ask you, where do you think you picked it up from?

I don’t really know where.

I just asked my family, like, “I want a bagel,” one day, and they laughed at me.

And do your friends say it that way?

I don’t think so.

Is somebody else there that we can talk to in your family so we can hear how they say it?

Yeah, my mom’s here.

Hi, my name’s Janet.

Hi, Janet.

Hi, Janet.

Welcome to the program.

Thanks.

So the word is B-A-G-E-L.

How do you say it?

Right.

It’s the lox and bagel.

Lox and bagel.

Yeah.

You know, we put the—I guess I pronounce it like “by the bay,” and she’s pronouncing it like “bag lady” kind of thing.

Yeah.

Bag lady.

You know, like B-A-G, like a bag, you would hold a grocery sack or something like that, and I’m pronouncing it B-A-Y-G-E-L kind of thing.

And we don’t know where she got it, but we just kind of chuckle and look at her like, “What are you talking about when she says that?”

So do you give her one when she asks for one?

Oh, sure.

Sure.

Okay.

Okay.

So I think I hear something happening here, Martha.

I hear it.

I think I hear a vowel shift taking place.

And Libby, it’s entirely possible that if you were to quiz—how old are you, Libby?

I’m 14.

If you were to quiz most of your friends who are within a year or two of your age, I bet you’d find a number who pronounce it the same way you do.

Okay.

There’s something happening in that part of the country called a vowel shift, and it’s not quite going this way, but it’s where a word like “bag”—and actually, Janet, I heard it in your voice—counts out a little more like “beg.”

And so there are some other things happening there with vowels as well, particularly where long A sounds can do other things.

They become—well, the linguists and the phoneticians would say it’s being lowered and backed.

It’s being performed.

That vowel is being performed in a different part of the mouth.

And so you will find numerous places online where people are disputing the pronunciation of this word because there is a part of the country that does not say “bagel.”

Okay.

They say “bagel,” and it’s not “bagel,” like you would have exaggerated “a,” but it’s “bagel.”

Well, Grant, are you saying that this is a trend, that more and more young people are going to be saying it this way?

I think there’s some limited evidence that seems to show that these vowel changes are happening more in the language of young people whose language is more fluid in general, and it’s kind of more fixed in the older set.

That’s really interesting.

So Libby, you’re on the cutting edge.

Wow.

Congratulations.

That’s not to say that having grown up obviously in a family myself that you’re fair game for being made fun of.

You realize that.

Yeah.

No matter if we’re validating your pronunciation or not, it’s fair game for a little bit of teasing.

Just as long as you get your bagel at the end, though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Libby, do you feel better now?

Yeah.

I would if I were you.

Mm—

You don’t sound convinced.

All right.

Well, thank you.

You’re welcome.

I’m glad to help out here.

The 14-year-olds of the world will one day inherit it, so…

Okay.

I’ll put up with it then.

Thank you, Janet.

Thank you, Libby.

I don’t think you have a choice, Janet.

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Well, if you’re having a family dispute about a word, give us a call.

The number’s 1-877-9299673.

That’s 1-877-Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D, or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

That’s our show for this week.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message anytime at 1-877-9299673.

Or email your questions to words@waywordradio.org.

And if you just can’t wait, chat about it online with fellow word lovers.

Go to waywordradio.org/discussion.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also engineered our theme music.

Kurt Konen produced it.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Hurdell and Jennifer Powell.

And thanks to engineer Howard Gelman and KQED radio in San Francisco.

From Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And from San Francisco, I’m Grant Barrett.

Ciao luego.

Arrivederci.

Before we go, I want to tell you that A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed.

That means we depend on you to help pay for the cost of producing the show.

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And thanks.

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