What in Tarnation (episode #1599)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Well, it seems everybody’s talking about the weather, particularly in places that are really hot. And I’ve been tired of saying the same things over and over, but I’ve found a couple of handy new words that I’m going to start using. One of them is from the Scottish National Dictionary, and it’s obsolete, but I think it’s high time to bring it back. That word is glorgy. G-L-O-R-G-Y. Glorgy. Glorgy. Glorg. This sounds like a Scandinavian alcoholic drink that the Vikings had. This is what they feed. This is what they serve you at Valhalla, right? That might help you cool off when the weather is glorgy because glorgy means sultry. And the Scottish National Dictionary says it’s applied to a warm, suffocating day with a darkened sun.

So it was a glorgy simmers afternoon. Probably comes from an old word meaning soft mud. And the other word that I really love is pothery, P-O-T-H-E-R-Y, pothery. It means humid, sultry, or close. It’s an English dialectal term, and I really like it. It’s pothery out there. It’s too pothery to do anything.

You keep using the word sultry, but this isn’t the sexy sultry, is it? No, no, no. This is the sweltering sultry. In fact, I think those two words are etymologically related, sweltering and sultry. Yeah, yeah. It’s about the heat sultry. That’s where their connection lies.

Well, you’re reminding me that when the heat comes on, we look forward to the cooler months. And there’s a rhyming calendar put together by the Irish-English politician and dramatist Richard Sheridan, born in 1751. And it goes like this. It’s January snowy, February flowy, March blowy, April showery, May flowery, June bowery, July moppy, August crappie, September poppy, October breezy, November wheezy, December freezy.

I like July moppy in particular because maybe you live where it rains a lot and you need to mop it up. But also maybe you live where it’s really humid and you’re just tripping. You’re mopping your brow. July moppy. I also like September poppies. Is that when poppies bloom? Or is it when the air gets crisp and the sky looks bright blue? Maybe it’s popping the melons off the vine then. I’m not really sure. Oh, it could be that. We’ll put that on the website so you guys can share that, put that up in the classroom.

We’d love to hear your special words for the weather. 877-929-9673. Toll free in the U.S. and Canada. Email words@waywordradio.org or Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Sydney. I’m calling from Boston. From Boston. Welcome to the show, Sydney. What can we do for you? So I don’t remember what I was reading, but I was reading the word naive. And it like stuck in my craw somehow because of the two little dots on top of the I. And I could not get over, it’s not a letter. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever seen those two little dots on top of an eye before. And so I guess my question is just like, why? The word naive, N-A-I-V-E, and there are two dots over the eye? Yeah, exactly. Where were you reading this, Sydney? I do have a little bit of the habit of reading The New Yorker. And I know that I’ve seen it. Like, they do it a lot. Right. And I don’t know if it’s connected because I see it there often on the O, which is also annoying because, to my knowledge, I don’t think, like, O with the two little dots is an English letter. So, very confused.

So you’re annoyed by those two little dots when you see them occasionally over vowels. I think that’s an understatement to say that I’m annoyed. They’re sometimes called diaresis. That’s D-I-A-E-R-E-S-I-S, diaresis. I was thinking of the ancient Greek word it comes from, which means division. This diacritical mark that you see occasionally goes all the way back to ancient Greek. And the reason that they used it in ancient Greek is that originally Greek was written without spaces between words, if you can imagine that. And so those little dots were helpful at the beginning of the word if you had two or more vowels crashing up against each other. It would just get confusing otherwise.

In English, it’s sometimes called a trema, T-R-E-M-A, which comes from a Greek word meaning perforation, which I really like, you know, just a little perforation on the page. You see it in French occasionally in words like naive and naivete, which is why we see that sometimes in English. You also see it in words like Noel, which was adopted into English and sometimes on Christmas cards, you know, it looks kind of pretty to see that little perforation. And occasionally you’ll see it in English names like Zoe or the name of the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily, Anne. It’s really died out in English, except, as you noted, in The New Yorker, which stubbornly holds on to that diacritical mark for words like cooperate or re-elect, because when they were developing the style of the New Yorker early in the 20th century, they felt that that was an elegant solution to the problem of those vowels bumping up against each other.

And Sydney, I have to recommend at this point a wonderful book by Mary Norris about her years working in the copy department at the New Yorker. She wrote a book called Between You and Me, Confessions of a Comic Queen. And in that book, she acknowledges that the use of the diaresis is the number one complaint from readers. So you have lots of company. But what’s also really interesting about that is that she relates a story from her predecessor in the copy department who agreed with you that the diaresis really isn’t necessary, that it is kind of fussy. And Mary Norris’s predecessor told her that she used to pester the style editor then, who had been there since 1928. And one day in the elevator, he mentions to Mary’s predecessor, you know, I think it’s time to make a change. We need to get rid of this. And I’m going to send out a memo telling people not to use it anymore. And then he died. And Mary says, this was in 1978. No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since.

Oh, that is incredible. And I feel like it like it affirms for me that there’s something a little bit like fancy pants about it, which is both annoying, but I can appreciate. But then I also feel like English like asks so much of us in terms of like through and though and like none of our spelling makes any sense. And so I feel like if we’re only going to use this on a couple of words, like why not drop it and expect people to learn that naive is pronounced that way?

But don’t you see that the diaresis is providing a clue to pronunciation, though? It’s one of the few places that you can be helpful. So you don’t pronounce a word like cooperative, like cooperative. You don’t say Bronte like Bront. I agree with Sydney. I mean, these are things you can just learn and move on. Okay. But yeah, I’d love to hear more about what you think about that, Sydney, now that you’ve heard all that history.

I am fascinated by the connection to ancient Greek. I am a devotee of Saffo. So it’s very fun to hear that there’s that connection. I just remembered what I was reading when I found it. And I don’t know if it’s helpful to tell you now, but it was a really great book. And I definitely recommend it. It was The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. Fantasy, it’s got dragons in it. Highly recommend.

Oh, I’m for it. All for it. I’ll check it out. Thank you for the recommendation, Sydney. And thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. This was really fun. Take care of yourself. Thanks. Yep, you too. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

So the diaresis says pronounce this vowel, and the umlaut says pronounce this vowel differently. Right. An umlaut looks just the same, but it’s not. An umlaut is German. Yeah, an umlaut appears in German and will change the sound of a vowel like sometimes when you’re switching from singular to plural.

Oh, perfect. Give us a call with your language questions, thoughts, and ideas. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, toll free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Sarah, and I am from Yorktown, Virginia.

Welcome. What can we do for you?

So years ago, I moved from Yorktown, Virginia, to Santa Cruz, California. I was 14, so I was pretty young. The most memorable thing about moving out there was the language and how different it was. Hearing all their slang words was like the coolest thing for me. But the word that is stuck with me is barge.

So this word was used like when people would go skate for a long distance or go on a really far bike ride or go from one party to the next. A really far travel. And they would say, man, that was such a barge. Or we just barged across town or something along those lines. I don’t know barge very much comes up in a couple lists of Santa Cruz slang, one list from 2013, and another from 2017. They basically define it like you do to mean a long distance or a large distance. There is in a list of slang from UCLA from 2009 put together by the Department of Linguistics there to barge it. Go means to go quickly. I wonder if that’s related. And then there’s a snowboarding dictionary that has barge which is glossed as going for it with all you’ve got and all of these vaguely feel related to me because they’re all about doing what it takes to just to pass through this this obstacle you know a large distance.

You gotta ride the board to go the distance or ride the bike to go the distance. I don’t know. So you think it’s definitely like more just like slang kind of terminology? Yeah, I think it might come from the board sports, actually. I don’t know enough about it. And frankly, some of the slang is so ephemeral, it just lasts for a little while and disappears. My first instinct with barge would be other barge slang. Barge meaning a large vehicle, like not a boat, but a car. The giant Cadillacs, you know, the big sedans from the 80s, you know, the ones that you inherit from your grandparents that have a little life left in them. And you and your teen friends pile in with your skateboards and your gear and your whatever stuff you need to go to the beach, your coolers and your dogs and whatever, and that’s your barge, you know?

My husband had one. He’s from Santa Cruz, and he had exactly what you were describing. You know what I’m talking about then. Yeah. It’s like driving a building. A building with wheels. Well, thank you guys so much for having me. It was a pleasure, and I look forward to calling again with many more questions that I have. Oh, yeah. Do share. We’d love to hear more about Santa Cruz as a 14-year-old. That must have been an amazing time for you. Beach culture. Oh, we could spend hours on the phone. I have stories for days. Call us again. All right. Be well. Take care. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.

You know, something tells me we have lots of listeners who have lots of stories about exactly that kind of thing, that big, long road trip that your family took when you were younger and you encountered different foods or different language. We’d love to hear about it. Call us 877-929-9673 or send those stories to words@waywordradio.org. More about what you say and why you say it. Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett. And here he is, buckling under the weight of mounds of trivia-laden index cards. It’s our quiz guide, John Chaneski. Hi, John. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. Yes, you can’t beat the old-school way of doing trivia on index cards. That’s how I like to do it. Flip, flip, flip. Here we go. Oh, here’s one. This is perfect. Let’s do this one.

I love getting hooked on TV shows that expose me to a world of language. Now, I’ve been an actor for a long time, but I’ve never worked in a restaurant. So I’m really enjoying The Bear, which takes place in a Chicago kitchen. It’s chock full of kitchen slang. So I created this quiz. I fired this quiz. Fire means to get a dish cooking. Now, I’ll make up a sentence you might hear in a professional kitchen, and I’ll substitute a synonym or phrase for the kitchen slang. You give me the word or phrase I’m looking for.

For example, if I said, I have two people coming in, better clean up that low card. The answer would be deuce, which is a term for a table that seats two, and low card is a deuce. Okay? Not a two-top? Yeah, or a two-top. You can call it a two-top, sure. Now, some of these you may already know, and some you can probably figure out. So here we go. Order up. Could you possibly get me some help here? I’m really among the invasive plants. In the kutzu? In the weeds. In the weeds, yes. In the weeds means really busy in a kitchen.

Now, we’re out of anchovies, so two times 43, that pesto special. 86. 86. 86. Remove it, yeah. Look, there’s a restaurant critic over there. Be sure to treat a surfboard that table. Wax? Yes. If you wax a table, you give it special treatment, like if the owner’s family is there or something. That’s really good. I finished that steak order for table 12. It’s waiting for you on the football throw. Pass? Pass, yeah. That’s the name for the window, the pass-through window that they put the orders on. The pass.

Oh, hey, Table 12 sent back that steak and fries. It’s a perished dish. Do you want a few fries? It’s burned, right? Something like that. Close. Dead? Yes. Dead, okay. Dead, and a synonym for dish. Dead plate? Yeah, dead plate. A dead plate is unservable dish. Somebody sent it back or something like that. You know, sometimes the kitchen staff will, you know, maybe take a fry or two. Yeah. Look, I don’t care if you’re in a hurry. Your uniform needs to be clean if you’re going out on the level. Floor? Yes, the floor is the dining room itself. And people who work in the kitchen have to be neat if they’re going out on the floor.

Thanks to the movie premiere across the street, we had a ton of lids last night. Covers. Covers, yes. Covers means customers. Very good. I think you guys are ready to get to work, you know, so, you know, strap on an apron and get to it. That’s fantastic. John, I hope you’ll join us for the family meal. You know what that is. That’s when the staff makes food for the people who work there, when the customers aren’t around. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, John. And we hope you’ll join us. Just pull up a chair to talk about language. 877-929-9673 or send your questions and stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words. Thank you. My name is Luciano Moral. I am calling from Augusta, Kentucky, but I am a Cuban man that came from Cuba in 1962. Augusta is my home now, and it is a beautiful town right on the Ohio River. What’s on your mind, Luciano? Well, listening to your program about the different ideas of the way people talk about raining, when it rains and the sun shines. And so happens that in Cuba, when it rains and the sun is shining, they say that the devil’s daughter is getting married. But years ago, I worked at a restaurant that belonged to Trudy Siebel, better known as Trudy Russell at that time. And it was at Forest View Gardens in Cincinnati. I was a cook there, and there were the people that raised me. And she was also my voice teacher because I’m an opera singer. And the lady that worked there with me was called Mildred Battle. And I mentioned to her that the devil’s daughter was getting married because the sun was shining. And Mildred Battle was from Alabama, an African-American woman. And she says, oh, no, no, the devil’s daughter is getting beaten. So I found that very, very amazing that the correlation between the people in Cuba and the people in Alabama had this connection. My question was, do you think that this idea came from the slaves that came from Africa to the New World? Or was it something that Europeans used to say? Wow, you’ve got the whole story there, Luciano. Yeah, give us a Spanish for that.

It would be something like, la hija del diablo se está casando.

Mm-Se está casando.

Yeah, and it means the devil’s daughter is getting married.

But then you had a friend who said, oh, no, no, no, it’s not that.

It’s that the devil is beating his wife.

That’s right.

Mildred Battle.

She was from Alabama.

When I said this, she says, oh, no, no, no.

The devil is beating his daughter.

And since then I’ve been thinking, well, how does these two things happen to come together?

And it has to be something that must have been brought from Africa by the slaves, you know, that came to work in Cuba.

Well, Luciano, what’s really interesting about those two expressions is that they are part of a huge family of expressions from all over the world involving those sun showers is what I call them.

You know, when it’s raining while the sun is still shining.

And all of these expressions, some involving the devil and some involving other things, they all suggest that something very rare and supernatural is happening.

But they’re not all as grim as the one that your friend described, the devil is beating his wife.

In Mexico, actually, sometimes they say, las conejas están pariendo.

Sí.

The rabbits are giving birth.

Yeah, they’re having babies.

Yeah, have you heard that one before?

Nunca, never, never did I listen to that.

Or in Puerto Rico, they say, están cazando una bruja.

They are marrying a witch.

Yes, I never heard that either.

So, Martha, these are all over the world.

We’re not just talking Spanish-speaking or English-speaking cultures, right?

Right.

In Korea, it’s tigers are getting married.

In Bulgaria, it’s bears are getting married.

In some Arabic-speaking countries, rats are getting married.

And if you go to South Africa, you’ll hear people talk about a monkey’s wedding.

And, you know, they look out the window and they say, oh, it’s a monkey’s wedding, meaning the monkeys are getting married because it’s this weird supernatural event that’s happening.

Well, that’s very cool. Thank you so much for sharing that expression.

I certainly enjoy and I love your program.

Oh, thank you so much.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you. Bye bye.

Bye bye.

877-929-9673.

Here’s another handy weather word.

That word is claggy, C-L-A-G-G-Y.

Any idea what claggy is, Grant?

Is this got to be another Scots word?

It’s regional around the U.K.

Oh, regional around claggy.

Claggy.

Oh, so I think this is so cloudy that you stay inside, stick your head out the window, and shout at the weather.

I don’t know.

There are elements of that in the definition.

The weather’s so bad, you just shout at it. I don’t know.

Well, it originally meant thick, low-level cloud, damp and overcast, foggy and misty.

But it has also come to mean unpleasantly close and humid, and that’s what I like.

It’s from an old word having to do with sticky things.

So similar to muggy.

Yeah, yeah.

I hate this sticky, claggy weather.

It’s not conducive for sleeping.

Muggy, by the way, isn’t one of those terms that everyone knows in the English-speaking world.

It’s more common in the U.S.

Is that right?

I didn’t know that.

I guess they’re talking about things being claggy over there.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Melanie, and I’m calling from San Antonio.

Hey, Melanie, welcome.

Thank you.

I am calling about the word janky.

I don’t know when I started using it.

I believe it was when I lived in California.

But my family and I use it for pretty much everything.

It means something that’s, you know, not good, not working well.

But we would even use it to the point where when the dogs were dirty, she would say, please de-jankify the dogs.

And I knew exactly what that meant.

I’m going to borrow that one.

No, it works really well because that’s not a full bath.

They’re just janky.

They’re not dirty.

They’re just janky.

Oh, okay.

All right.

So that’s not like a dog that’s been skunked.

No, not that bad.

That would need a bath, not a de-jankification.

De-jankification.

Janky.

So J-A-N-K-Y.

Yes, that’s how I would spell it.

And you picked it up in California.

Do you remember about when?

I guess it would have to have been 10 years ago because I’ve been in Texas for eight.

But people in Texas seem to know what I’m saying.

And I could be exaggerating that timeline.

It could have been Texas.

But the dogs that were janky were mostly living in California.

So that’s why I think.

Well, it’s been around long enough.

I think that people, it’s got a pretty widespread usage across the country.

So you could have picked it up anywhere.

I don’t know that it’s ever been regional janky.

It first pops up in the late 1980s.

I did an entry for it in one of my books in the mid-2000s, and I was able to take it back to the early 1990s.

And then the Oxford English Dictionary did an entry later, and they were able to take it back even further.

But you’ll find it spelled as jinky.

You’ll find it spelled as J-I-N-J-A-N-K-I-E-J-A-N-K-E-Y.

And the belief is, from people who’ve looked at this word, it’s probably a blend of junky and influenced by things like skanky and stanky.

S-T-A-N-K-Y.

You know, that kind of slangy way of saying stinky.

Oh, yeah.

I’ve definitely said stanky.

So that makes sense.

So stanky plus junky plus skanky.

It’s your janky.

And, Melanie, I think you’re right that people can probably guess what it means just from hearing the word itself and hearing it in use.

I mean, it sort of suggests what it is, doesn’t it?

It does, almost like an onomatopoeia, but yeah.

So it’s like, and the combination of the words makes more sense because I’m like, definitely not a jank, like a mechanical jank or anything.

So that makes perfect sense.

But there are some nuances to it too because a janky machine isn’t necessarily a dirty machine.

A janky machine is one that doesn’t work well, right?

Yeah, but I say janky when things don’t work well too sometimes.

So if a janky chair could be clean but broken.

Right.

Exactly.

But also, but you could have a janky, something that’s brand new and janky might just mean it’s like a knockoff or a cheap version of the real thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Or if you go into a restaurant and it’s like not all it’s cracked up to be, you know, like they charge you extra for salsa.

You know, like this janky restaurant charges me $3 for salsa.

What?

That’s illegal.

It’s the best word.

Now that I’m realizing, I guess I use it too much, and that’s why I was so curious about it.

But everything you’re saying, I think I’ve used it in that context.

Keep doing it. Keep rolling.

Yeah, it’s great.

You have my permission. I’ll send you a certificate.

Yeah, and thank you for de-jenkification.

Your de-jenkification is good for me.

Anytime. Maybe that’ll be added one day.

All right. Melanie, take care of yourself.

You too. Y’all have a great one. Thanks so much.

All right. Thanks, Melanie.

Bye.

Give us a call to talk about language, 877-929-9673, or send your story to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nick Valenziano in Palm Springs.

Hi, Nick. Welcome to the show.

A couple of weeks ago, you were talking with someone who was asking about different expressions and where they come from.

And it was about, I think, sort of when somebody was finished with the subject, you know, how to move on from it.

And you asked for other suggestions or other terms like that.

And the one that came to my mind was one that’s puzzled me for a long time.

When you’re really tired of a subject or somebody’s just beating a dead horse or they’re trying to get you to give another chance to a restaurant or a relationship even.

And then when you’ve just had it, you say, been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.

Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt?

Bought the T-shirt, yeah.

And the first part of it makes perfect sense to me, but the bought the T-shirt just seems, oh, like an odd little add-on.

Yeah, what’s on that T-shirt?

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Well, and, you know, if the implication is that, okay, we’ve been to this show before, we’ve been to this rodeo before, well, why didn’t you buy the refrigerator magnet or the souvenir ashtray?

Why the T-shirt?

Been there, done that was circulating in Australia by the late 1970s.

You know, been there, done that.

And alongside that, or a little bit after, there was this growing trend in this country, for sure, of offering a t-shirt as a souvenir for being present for an event or participating in an event.

I have some old 5K and 10K t-shirts that I got from running in a road race. And, you know, or going to a concert or visiting a place.

And in the early 1990s, there were advertising campaigns for Diet Mountain Dew and Pepsi Max. It involved daring feats of these young guys who were base jumping off the rim of the Grand Canyon.

And these young guys are like, did it, done it, been there, tried that. So the idea was, so what?

And then, as I said, there was also this trend of T-shirts memorializing this and that. By 1982, you see people getting T-shirts that say, my parents went to New York and all I got was this stupid T-shirt.

Oh, yeah. You can find that actually in the 70s even. Oh, is that right? Yeah.

Okay. Okay. I remember seeing newspaper articles where people were mentioning this kind of locution, like it was cool and new and clever. But anyway, so there are lots of different variations of that. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, been there, done that, got the T-shirt or worn the T-shirt, got the T-shirt, going home, have the T-shirt, won the trophy.

So they’re kind of those two similar threads going on at the same time. But your elaboration of it has been there, done that, bought the T-shirt?

Is that what it is? Bought the T-shirt, got the T-shirt, something, one of those variations. But that does shed some light on it.

And I keep coming up with all kinds of questions for you guys. You do a great job. And I always enjoy it.

Thank you so much, Nick, for the compliments. And thank you for the call. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, call us again sometime. Stay cool there in Palm Springs. I definitely will. Thanks.

All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Australia, you’ve got something else to be proud of. What’s funny, in the United States, the first time I really saw it pop up when I was digging into this was Lauren Tweese, who played Julie the cruise director on the TV show The Love Boat.

Yeah. She used the expression, been there, done that, when she was talking about having been married before in a newspaper article. And she calls it an Australian expression.

So it’s perfect. And then not long after, there’s an athlete who also says, I got this from Australia. How interesting.

Because, you know, there is this older catchphrase in Britain from the late 19th and early 20th century, been and gone and done it. And that usually refers to marriage. Been and gone and done it.

So I don’t know if there’s a connection or not. Oh, interesting. So we might have another fork in the road. More work to be done, as always.

24 hours a day, seven days a week, toll free in the U.S. And Canada, 877-929-9673. I’ve talked about terms for hot weather, but here’s one that I really like that involves cold weather that just makes me feel better saying it.

It’s silver thaw. Silver thaw, particularly in Oregon and Washington state, refers to freezing rain that coats everything with ice. Isn’t that beautiful?

Silver thaw. Oh, that really is. I’ve seen those ice storms in Missouri where literally everything looks like a tree that’s been perfectly decorated with tensile.

Yes, yes. And that’s what we called them back east, an ice storm. But I thought it was interesting that in the Pacific Northwest it’s called silver thaw.

Silver thaw. Gorgeous. 877-929-9673. You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette.

If you need more evidence that language is constantly changing, look no further than American Sign Language, or ASL. Decades ago, people used to use those old-fashioned candlestick phones, and so the sign for telephone at that time was one fist at your mouth and another one at your ear, imitating what the phone looked like.

And over time, deaf people adopted the sign that many hearing people use too, that familiar pinky and thumb up to the side of your head, the one that looks like, call me. But now that term is evolving again.

And increasingly, people who use ASL will sign the word phone just by curving the fingers of one hand and holding it up to their ear, like they’re holding an invisible cell phone.

And another thing that’s really interesting about how sign language is evolving is the fact that because there’s so much communication over video these days, a lot of times the signs that are used by younger people are shrinking to accommodate that smaller space on the screen, on the phone, or on the computer.

For example, instead of the old sign for dog, which is tapping your thigh as if to call a dog over to you, it’s just a flick of the fingers. It’s just signing the letters D and G, which doesn’t take up that much space.

It’s really fascinating to see how that is changing and developing. You mentioned the telephone sign switching from a two-handed sign to a one-handed sign.

And that is, by the way, one of the very common ways that dialects of sign languages differ. A lot of times there’ll be a two-handed sign and a one-handed version of it that can vary from place to place within the sign language community.

And sometimes it’s done for expediency where a two-handed sign is difficult if you’re carrying something or if you are in a workplace and a one-handed sign is more necessary. So a one-handed sign develops because of that.

And then you talked about the signing space of an online video conference or online video presentation. Signing space also is something that commonly differentiates dialects.

So, for example, African American sign language or black sign language tends to have a larger signing space, whereas non-black sign language tends to have a smaller signing space.

And so you will see this as well being one of the places that even outside of language change, we can see these dialects forming just by looking at the signing space, how wide the horizontal and vertical space is.

And even where they put signs to temporarily hold them out of the conversation, though, literally take a subject and kind of temporarily move it outside of their signing space to go back and get it later, kind of like a referent.

Oh, I didn’t know that. That’s fascinating. Yeah. So it’s all very interesting. Yeah, it is interesting.

If you ever get a chance to see a linguist speak on sign language, do it because they understand that the community is very interested and they’re interested in bringing in people to acknowledge that this is a real language with rules.

It’s systematic, and people use it in everyday lives. If you’d like to see some great talks and read some great papers written on sign language, look for the name Seal Lucas, C-E-I-L-L-U-C-A-S.

She is an American linguist talking and writing and studying and explaining sign language to the community and teaching about sign language, and so she’s got some good stuff.

If you’d like to talk to us about language or share your ideas or thoughts, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, how are you? My name is Nathan. I’m calling from Dallas.

Well, I had a specific question about the word I. It’s one of the only two single-letter words in English I can think of, the other being just A. But we capitalize it.

And as far as I can tell, grammatically, it’s the first-person singular pronoun. And I know in Spanish and in Russian, they don’t capitalize that pronoun. So I’m wondering why English does.

So the pronoun I, just the letter I, not the E-Y-E, not the part of your body. Right, right.

Well, first of all, you’re right, Nathan, that the capitalized first-person pronoun apparently appears only in English. As you noted, romance languages like French, for example, they leave all the personal pronouns lowercase.

And then there are other languages that don’t even use capitalized letters, like Hebrew and Arabic. So English pretty much stands alone.

And the reason, as far as we can tell, is simply that that eye is so thin, so skinny, that it’s easy to confuse it. It’s a matter of visual clarity, why we capitalize the I.

It wasn’t always the case. In Old English, the word for I was spelled I-C and pronounced itch or each. And then eventually the C fell off.

You still see it in German, of course, ich.

But by the 13th century, people started capitalizing that I when they were using the first person pronoun.

And then that got codified later with the printing press, of course.

So it’s really a matter of just not confusing that with, you know, a smear on the page or something.

The other thing that happened with the letter I, the little I, you know, the small I, we added a little dot on the top called a tittle, that little dot on the top of the I.

Yeah, so it’s really a matter of just being able to see it and distinguish it from other letters or other things on the page.

There was even a period in there where, in some words, the lowercase i was replaced with a lowercase y, just to make it clear what was meant and how it was to be pronounced.

Of course, a lot of this was before spelling was regularized.

You wouldn’t cause anyone anger because you misspelled the word.

They’re like, okay, that makes a lot of sense.

I now know what you meant.

It’s just so easy for the lowercase i just to get lost.

It looks like an upstroke or a downstroke of so many other letters if you’re writing, you know, with a pen or calligraphy.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, well, that makes a lot of sense, I suppose.

Well, Nathan, you raise a really good question.

It is really weird that English is pretty much the only language that capitalizes its first-person pronoun.

And it’s nothing to do with ego, by the way.

Some people like to say, oh, it’s just because Anglophones are very egotistical, not in the least.

I mean, we might be, but the I isn’t the evidence of that.

Okay, good to know.

Take care. Thanks for calling, Nathan.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Well, we would like you to call us at 877-929-9673 with your questions, thoughts, and ideas about language.

Or you can email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Another weather word that’s used in the UK and that’s only been around since the 1990s is the word mafting.

M-A-F-T-I-N-G.

Mafting.

Mafting hot weather is oppressively hot weather.

That sounds like a minced oath.

It sounds like somebody who…

Or an acronym.

Well, they’re on television, yeah.

Just oppressively hot.

It can also be used as a verb, like I was mafting in the bright sunshine because I was wearing too many shirts or whatever.

So it’s so hot that you’re evaporating.

Maybe that’s it.

You’re wafting downward.

Your molecules are dissipating into the atmosphere.

Mafting.

Mafting hot.

That’s good.

Oh, here’s a tweet that I really liked.

I don’t think my house could maft more if it was given a mafting award from the School of Mafting.

Now that’s a hot house.

It’s a hot house.

Oh, yeah.

Share your weather tweets with us @wayword.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Lanessa from presently San Antonio, soon to be somewhere else.

How are you?

Okay.

Do you know where?

We’re transitioning.

We are moving from San Antone to L.A.

It’s a big trip.

Yeah, that’s a big trip.

Okay, so my mom, my grandmother, and grandfather were originally from Tennessee.

He was in the Army.

He would come back from work.

He would work on a refrigeration truck or mechanics and whatnot.

And he would, one time I heard my grandma say at that side door that led into her pristine kitchen, she said, Henry, what in the tarmation?

You don’t have any gumption.

Don’t come walking into my kitchen like that.

Leave your brogans at the door.

I was a little kid, you know.

That’s a lot of stuff.

Yeah, that’ll blow your hair back.

Right?

As a kid, I was like, brogans.

That’s just, I’m like, and I looked at his shoes, and they were just boots, you know, some sort of boots.

I didn’t even think they were military boots or anything like that.

But they were definitely the shop boots, and they weren’t allowed in the kitchen.

Right, right, her pristine kitchen.

Oh, and I’m not kidding.

She kept that house so nice all the time.

Yeah, very house proud.

I can imagine.

And this was where?

This was in Tennessee, Nashville.

There’s three words in there that catch the ear, right?

It’s tarnation, gumption, and brokens.

Let’s kind of break those down in reverse order.

So brokens, as you know, it’s a kind of work shoe or boot.

Interestingly, this is a word of Scots-Irish origin.

And it comes from a word that is in both Irish and Scots-Gaelic.

And it means a small brogue.

And a brogue is a leather outdoor shoe.

And it has perforated ornamentations.

These days, a brogue is a nice man’s shoe.

But it could also be a rough work shoe back in the day.

And interestingly enough, this is probably where we get the term brogue referring to an accent.

So some people might talk an Irish brogue or a Scots brogue, which makes a lot of sense because you think about those accents kind of being bedecked with ornamentation, right?

But sturdy, just like the shoe.

Oh, that’s cool.

Yeah.

Wow.

You guys really find things.

I thought it was alluding to a military shoe, but I seriously don’t remember which shoe it was.

Well, who knows?

I love to go even deeper than just a military shoe or whatnot.

Brogan is especially more common in the American South, in the U.S. South.

And really in the beginning, it was a coarse, heavy leather work shoe kind of tied with leather straps, often homemade.

And the shoes were made the same size so that you could put either shoe on either foot.

There was no left and no right.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

That would be handy.

Yeah.

Made on the same last, as they put it.

The last is the thing that you fashion the shoe on.

Now, gumption is also a Scots word, interestingly enough.

So we might have a connection here.

And it’s related to the word gormless.

Have you ever heard anyone called gormless to mean witless or stupid or dull?

No.

Because gorm or gorm means to understand.

And this is a 300-plus-year-old word.

So gumption means gomption, having a lot of gom or a lot of gorm.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so that’s also a Scottish word.

Also Scottish, wow.

Yeah, right?

And then tarnation is, we call them minstoth.

It’s a form of two words.

Damnation turned into darnation.

It’s probably where we get darn.

You know, it’s an install for damn.

But tarnal is a little different.

It comes from the word eternal.

So people would use tarnal and eternal for infinis.

Like there’s a line in Othello by Shakespeare about an eternal villain.

It doesn’t mean that he lasts forever.

It means that he’s very much a villain.

And so eternal plus darnation became tarnation.

So in tarnation.

So I was worried that I had pronounced it wrong.

Like I thought maybe it was a short for entire nation or something like this.

And, you know, tar.

No, but you will hear people then because they don’t understand the root of it.

They will say, what in the nation?

And that is a further extension of this expression.

Wow, that is really neat.

Thank you for clarifying all of that.

Well, Anissa, thank you so much for sharing those memories, and good luck with your new house and keeping it as spotless as hers.

Thank you so much, you guys.

Great.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Give us a call to talk about the words passed down in your family.

We’d love to hear about it.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

This is Julie in San Antone, Texas.

Well, hello, Julie.

Welcome to the show.

When I was a little girl in England, you know how little girls get fits of giggles where they just can’t stop?

My grandmother would say, you girls would laugh to see a pudding crawl.

Well, you know, in England, pudding is not custard.

It’s like heavy cake, like, say, plum pudding or something like that.

And I just couldn’t imagine a pudding crawling across the floor.

Were ants carrying it?

Was it possessed?

What was going on?

I thought there was a strange way of putting things.

So it was laugh to see a pudding crawl, meaning that you would laugh at anything?

Yes, yes.

Well, versions of this are about 400 years old.

Would you believe that?

Really?

Wow.

Yeah.

The original verb was to creep rather than to crawl.

Laugh to see the pudding creep.

And originally, the other verb was vex.

And the expression more specifically was it would vex a dog to see a pudding creep.

And what this meant was that a dog would be frustrated to see food cooking instead of being able to eat it.

This is my interpretation.

It’s really kind of a tangled history.

Because as you noted, a pudding isn’t, as Americans know it, as people in the United States, we think of like a custard pudding, something you eat with a spoon.

But this is even older than like the pudding as you described it.

This is pudding which is more like a sausage made of innards and other animal bits or some other kind of prepared meat item or a savory pie or some kind of seasoned stuffing.

A pudding was not necessarily a dessert at all or anything, any kind of treat.

Could just be a standard food item about 400 years ago. So and then the creeping verb is explained.

Because if it is a sausage or if it is cooking it’s getting smaller and the dog would be perfectly happy to eat it raw with no cooking at all but the human has to cook it and the dog is sitting in there vexed. The thing is shrinking. The sausage casing is tightening and the dog just wants to wolf it down oh my goodness generally that so it’s weird yeah so it goes from vex a dog to see a pudding creep to laugh to see a pudding creep to laugh to see a pudding crawl and then there’s another offshoot of that which is it means it’s what would shock me would make a pudding crawl and it means it takes a lot a lot to shock me so it’s just a little just a little different still.

So it’s a strange, weird history.

I’ve never heard it anywhere but in England.

Yeah, it’s very much a Briticism.

Yeah, it’s not something you hear in the United States.

You might come across it in Australia, but it is very British.

That is an amazing explanation of that particular phrase.

I mean, I just always wondered, even as a grown-up, I thought, that is really weird.

You’re right, it is.

Oh, well, thank you so much for explaining that.

I have learned a whole lot today.

All right. Take care now. Be well.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

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Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

Thank you.