Whistle Britches

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.

I was talking recently with my friend Cindy about some expressions that her father used to use.

He came from the Piney Woods of East Texas, and whenever there was a lull in the conversation or he wanted to tweak somebody, he would use these little trademark phrases that probably wouldn’t mean that much to other people, but to his family, it just cracked them up.

One of them was, do you live around here or do you ride a bicycle? What what does that even mean, right? And if if they would say, come on dad, let’s go, let’s get ready, he said, I stay ready so I don’t have to get ready. And they call those expressions memisms because that was his name. His grandson couldn’t pronounce his name. I was thinking that every family has memisms, right? didnt Didn’t you have?

Yeah, my father’s got a thing that he says. He’s 74 now, and he’s got this bunch of these dumb things that he says.

And some of them are dadisms.

Dadisms, yeah.

Yeah, my hair is wavy. One hair stands up and waves to the other.

Anytime somebody mentions hair, it cues him to say that. Isn’t that funny?

And it’s so corny. I’m sure I’m developing dadisms too for my son.

I hesitate to share them here.

I bet you are. Yeah, my dad invariably, anytime our family would gather around and watch the television news, there was always a point in the broadcast where my dad would just look up incredulously and say, people are crazy.

People are crazy. And to this day, I can crack up my brothers if I just say, people are crazy. And maybe it doesn’t mean that much to people outside the family, but these trademark phrases, they’re really fraught with something. Yeah. They’re loaded with this memory for one thing, right? They remind you of the character of the person, particularly if they’ve passed.

And also they’re kind of like an old song that for you brings back a time and a place and a person. And that’s important, right?

That’s a good way to put it.

Well, I bet we’re pressing the memory button for a lot of our listeners.

We’d love to hear your meme-isms and dad-isms.

You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send them to us in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Joey Richards.

Hey, Joey, where are you calling us from?

I’m from Fort Worth, Texas.

Well, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, I was listening a couple of weeks ago, and you guys asked for funny sports sayings and things like that, so I thought I would call in.

I kind of have a unique perspective lately. I got to hire a head football coach for our high school football program. So the high school principal and I conducted a search, and we were looking for our football coach. And all these guys kept coming through our office, and the same phrase kept coming up over and over again.

And so I thought I would call in and talk to you about it because it was a really funny deal.

What’s the phrase? What do they keep saying?

Well, six of the eight face-to-face interviews that we did, these guys over and over would say, it’s not about the X’s and the O’s, it’s about the Jimmy’s and the Joe’s.

Not about the X’s and the O’s. It’s about the Jimmy’s and the Joe’s.

And what do you take that to mean?

Well, I mean, there’s a lot of wisdom in that. I don’t know how familiar you are with football, but football’s kind of a big deal in Texas.

Yeah, I imagine.

A little bit.

I heard something about that.

Right, right. And, you know, so I’ve grown up in Texas, and, you know, lived here all my life. And so fall Friday nights are just kind of an exciting thing, you know, and so, I mean, it just makes, I guess, maybe every Friday night an exciting thing.

But football in particular, coaches can get big egos, and you think that it’s all about you and what you do on the dry erase board on the weekend. You’re going to come up with this great play that is going to lead your team into victory and all of this stuff. And at a certain point, once their ego gets crushed enough, with kids not executing the play as you thought maybe they could, you realize at a certain point you come to the end of yourself and you realize it’s really not about what I’m drawing on the dry erase board. It’s about the kids who are running those plays.

And if I’ve got bigger, stronger, faster kids, then whatever the X’s and O’s I put in front of them, they’re going to be able to manage that. They’re going to be able to handle it.

So it really isn’t about the X’s and O’s. It’s about having the Jimmies and the Joes that can run those plays.

So it’s kind of a fun statement. Like I said, I’ve heard it all my life, but I don’t know. I mean, you have a really smart crowd. I don’t know how much football they watch.

Well, I just want to be clear.

Well, that’s not mutually exclusive.

Yeah, I want to be clear. I want to be clear, though, just for those who don’t follow football, that the X’s and the O’s are the symbols that are used. The O’s are the offensive players, and the X’s are the defensive players. So on the whiteboard, you put these up there to represent the players as they’re going to move from stage to stage for the play, right? Draw your arrows and so forth.

That’s right.

And Jimmy’s and Joe’s, that’s great because those are really common male names. They stand for all of the players, though, right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Are you in your 30s, perhaps?

I am.

Okay. Because when you said you’ve been using that phrase your whole life, I began to wonder. The earliest that I can find that phrase is 1991. It pops up in a story about football in the L.A. Times. It’s probably a little older than that, but that’s a good, that’s 24 years right there.

Sure, sure. And that would have been while I was going through high school, while I was playing high school football. And, you know, as a coach myself, after I graduated from college and, you know, using it, using it, you know, out of my own mouth, you know, to portray, you know, the importance of getting the right kids on the field. Now on into becoming an administrator, joining the dark side, if you will, and going into administration.

Well, when you don’t have the knees for it anymore, you’ve got to do something else, right?

That’s right. That’s right. Exactly.

And so it was just funny to watch coach after coach. I mean, it’s like they had all met together and said, okay, in my part of the interview, I’m going to say the same phrase, you know, that everybody else is going to say. It’s like they had all gotten together and decided that they were going to say the exact same thing.

Well, good sayings and good proverbs do tend to be contagious, that’s for sure.

Joey, I want to thank you for sharing so much of your program there and what you’ve got going on in West Texas. It’s all super interesting. And it’s cool that this phrase is kind of an insight, too, in the mind of the football director and the players themselves. It’s kind of perfect in that way. It really kind of touches on so many key issues, as you’ve well explained. So thank you for that.

Indeed.

Yeah, no problem. I appreciate you guys. Y’all are on a great show, and I love listening to it.

Thanks so much.

All right, take care now.

Thanks a lot, Joey.

Okay.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We love sports language. Give us a call. Tell us all about it, 877-929-9673, or send in an email to words@waywordradio.org. And find us on Twitter. Our handle is W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello there.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Robin Blight.

Hi, Robin. Where are you calling from?

Pierce, Virginia.

Oh, welcome to the show. I’ve got a serious, serious problem that y’all need to help me out on with this.

Okay. Let me tell you what is on the line with this. If I lose, I have to watch chick flicks for like a weekend.

Oh, man.

-huh.

And she wants to go to one of these Chick-fil-A movies.

Because if I win, we get to watch, like, Transformer 3D and so on and so forth.

Outstanding.

I’m not a Chick-fil-A kind of guy.

I’m in touch with my femininity, but I’m not a Chick-fil-A kind of guy.

Okay, yeah.

So what do you think of Love Actually?

That’s probably what I’m going to end up having to watch, something like that.

Oh, bless your heart.

This sounds serious.

It is serious.

Yeah.

And it gives Transformers 3D, you know.

Okay, here’s what’s happening.

Gosh, eight, ten years ago, my wife and I were sitting on the sofa, and I’m like, Amy, will you scratch my back?

She said, you don’t scratch your back, you itch your back.

I was like, no, you scratch my back.

She says, no, you itch it, you have a scratch in your hand.

So I started, like, looking and to really get down to the bottom of it.

I looked it up, whether it be a verb transitive, blah, blah, blah.

Barely no English myself, so I needed a professional opinion on it.

All right, let’s break this down.

Let me just recap this.

Oh, boy.

You believe that you can scratch an itch, and she believes that you can’t scratch an itch.

She has a problem with that verb.

Right.

Oh, interesting.

Wow.

This is kind of the opposite of what I would have expected, really.

Why?

Well, usually the complainer is the one who thinks that itch your back is wrong.

Oh, that’s true.

That’s true, yeah.

And that’s the thing that’s interesting about this dude.

It’s like usually itch to itch someone’s back is considered very nonstandard and highly informal.

And not the kind of language that, you know, people will call you on it sometimes.

So it’s interesting that she should be a proponent of the particular construction that lots of other people have a problem with.

Lots of people.

And lots of books, actually, style guides and reference manuals and things like that.

Now, she’s not completely wrong because it’s perfectly grammatical.

It’s just marked as being informal.

Everyone kind of recognizes that’s not usually the way that we do that.

And you scratch an itch.

That’s more properly put.

So you’re saying that if I’m walking down Metro and I see somebody, I say, would you scratch my back because I’ve got an itch going?

But if my wife, I could say, well, you itch my back because my wife and I are informal.

But meeting a stranger to do your back is pretty formal, right?

How often do you ask strangers to relieve your itch?

Yeah, that’s a really good question.

I look like one of those cows in the field rubbing against one of those fence posts trying to itch my back sometimes.

I’m trying to scratch my back sometimes.

I know that.

She’s influenced you, I can tell.

The oily burlap sack on the barbed wire, I know that very much.

Exactly.

I’m not quite that big, but I’m a big boy, so, you know, are they both right?

They’re both correct. Let’s put it this way. First, they’re both grammatical English.

But we have something else to consider, and this is the word that linguists use, the pragmatics of it.

And the pragmatics of it is that scratch and itch is far more accepted than to itch a scratch.

Okay.

So that’s the problem with this. Technically, you’re both correct.

So what I’m going to do is suggest that you find a movie compromise.

Did you see the movie with Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise, which was kind of like Groundhog Day with robots?

No, I didn’t.

I recommend that one.

Just look it up.

Emily Tom Cruise.

It’s kind of, it’s really action-y, but they fall in love.

So maybe you’ll both be happy.

Okay.

I’m looking at IMBD.

Fall in love.

Yeah.

So they wear, like, they fight wars against alien creatures, but they fall in love.

That’s not bad.

Maybe there should come.

Because I think you both have a case, but you actually have a little more of a case.

Yeah, I’d say two Transformers movies and one Jerry Maguire.

Bing, baby, that’s what I’m talking about.

Okay, alright.

That’s really good then.

Alright, man.

Thank you so much for my questions.

Our pleasure, let us know how it turns out, alright?

Thanks a lot, you guys, be good.

Take care now, bye-bye.

We’ve got a lot of room for you.

877-929-9673.

Email us at words@waywordradio.org.

Don’t hold back, let us know the whole story.

Here’s another expression I learned from my Texas friends.

I don’t know how widespread it is, but suppose you ask me a question, Grant, and I don’t remember the answer.

What I could say to you is, I’ve slept since then.

Oh, really?

Yes.

I’ve slept since then.

Yes.

Which means you’ve forgotten it?

Time has passed and you’ve forgotten it?

Yeah, I think so.

Or it’s been more than a day, so I shouldn’t be expected to remember it.

Oh, right.

So it wouldn’t be in your short-term memory anymore.

Right.

Right, but I was hiking with some friends from Texas, and they kept using that expression, and I Googled it, and man, it’s all over the place.

That’s pretty cool.

I like it.

I wonder if they’re pulling your chain, though.

Maybe nobody says it except those people.

No, no.

It’s all over Google.

Oh, is it okay?

Yeah, I Googled it.

I slept since then.

Yes, it Googles very well.

So if you don’t remember something, just say, oh, I’ve slept since then.

We know they have interesting talk out your way.

Let us know about it, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

It’s brain food for language lovers.

Share your stories as A Way with Words continues.

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 hey, look who it is.

It’s John Chaneski, our quiz guy on the line.

I recognize those electronic impulses.

Hey, it’s me, Grant and Martha.

I recognize yours as well.

John and his electronic impulses.

What’s up, bud?

How you doing?

Well, I’m doing fantastic.

Everybody’s doing great.

The family’s doing good.

I take the kids to the movies all the time.

Speaking of movies.

-oh.

Here we go.

There’s a segue.

Everyone remembers that scene at the end of the movie when Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark suddenly announces to the press, I am Iron Man.

Yes.

Everybody goes crazy, right?

Remember that?

Well, today we’ve got some words that are going to reveal their secret identities.

Oh.

For example, if I say, you know me as a word meaning a very large motion picture format, but remove my I am and I’m a lumberjack’s tool.

Who am I?

Axe.

I’m axe.

I’m axe.

Right.

Now, I want you to deliver the pronouncement with the proper gravitas that announcing your secret identity deserves.

Oh.

I’m axe.

Axe.

Got it.

Yes.

Very good.

Now, these are akin to cryptic clues.

So, you know, this counts towards your cryptic class credits.

Oh, good.

By the way.

Just so you know.

I keep my punch card out.

Good.

Here you go.

Now, you know me as a word meaning pierce with a sharp instrument, but remove my I am and I’m rather colorless.

Who am I?

A pierce with a sharp instrument.

You am…

Pale.

Pale.

There we go.

I’m pale.

I’m pale is correct.

Pass the sunscreen.

I’m pale.

You certainly are.

You know me is a word meaning charge an office holder with misconduct, but remove my I am and I’m a delicious fruit from a deciduous tree.

Who am I?

I’m peach.

I’m peach.

Yes.

Very good, Martha.

You know me is a word meaning grand and awe-inspiring in appearance, but remove my I am and I’m sitting for a photo or painting.

Who am I?

I’m posing.

I’m posing is right.

I’m posing, nice.

Or imposing, very good.

You know me as a word that means having a feeling of admiration and respect, but remove my I am and I’m free from wrinkles thanks to an iron.

Who am I?

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pressed.

That’s very good.

Well, you should choice time management.

We’d probably help you a little bit.

Just saying.

Up into the sky I go to save the day.

Yay.

You know me is a word that means better than before, but remove my I am and I’m QED.

Who am I?

I’m proved.

I’m proved.

Murthy, you’re really good at this.

You just have that soupy.

I’m good.

I’m proved.

I’m good.

I’m proved is improved.

Yes.

Improved.

You know me is a word that refers to a specific verb tense, but remove my I am and I’m free from faults or defects.

Who am I?

I’m perfect.

I’m perfect.

Well, excuse me.

Always thought you guys felt that way.

I’m perfect.

Imperfect.

Very good.

You know me as a word that means a sudden urge, but remove my I am, and I’m a rhythmical throbbing.

Who am I?

I’m Pulse.

I’m Pulse is right.

Now that’s a cool superhero name.

Pulse?

Pulse.

That’s a good one.

I almost guarantee you that there is a superhero named Pulse.

Probably.

That’s how good it is, right?

Very good.

You guys did great, you superheroes.

You are puzzle superheroes.

That’s it.

Is that all the presents?

It’s all of them.

No more.

Sorry.

Well, that was fun.

Thanks, John.

We’ll talk to you next week, all right?

Okay, guys.

Bye-bye.

See you at the movies.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

And we’d love to talk with you about language, so call us, 877-929-9673, or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Vanita from Dallas.

Hello, Vanita.

I had a question for you guys because I grew up in India and I’ve always been taught that the little thing on the table with salt and pepper is called a salt and pepper cellar.

And then I came here and everyone calls it a salt and pepper shaker.

And I wasn’t sure what the difference is. Is there a difference in origins or if it’s talking about slightly different devices? Not sure.

Wait, you can have a pepper cellar?

Yeah, that’s what she said.

I thought so.

Oh, interesting, interesting.

Right?

Interesting.

And by that, you just mean the little bottles with the tops that have the holes in them?

Or like a pepper grinder?

Yes.

I mean, whatever you kept at the table to put salt and pepper on your food at a mealtime.

I mean, I grew up calling them cellars.

Both of them, the salt and the pepper.

That’s interesting.

Yes.

I’ve never heard of a pepper cellar.

Well, now we have.

Now we have.

We’re learning something new every day.

And how are you spelling cellar?

That’s the other question.

C-E-L-L-A-R?

The traditional use is salt cellar, C-E-L-L-A-R, like that, specifically referring to the thing that holds the salt.

Right, yeah.

It goes back to a Middle English word, cellar, that’s related to the Latin word for salt.

It came to us through French.

Yeah, so that’s why we were curious about the pepper cellar because the spelling changed to conform to the spelling of the basement room, you know, the cellar.

Yeah.

And it has in its etymology salt as the root.

So salt cellar has always actually kind of been a little redundant anyway, which is really nice.

It’s a nice little linguistic thing there.

But to call it a pepper cellar means we’ve got some new transference where we’ve lost that notion of salt on the word cellar, and we can now use it for any spice at the table maybe.

That’s cool.

Interesting.

That’s very cool.

I just was taught to call it a salt and pepper cellar.

I don’t think we ever thought through the origins of the word there.

Yeah.

Yeah, so we’ve got it back as far as the 1400s.

It’s a sailor, seller, siller, something like that.

Lots of a variety of spellings.

And they all just refer to the thing that you keep the salt on on the table.

Yeah.

And the word salt itself was sometimes used for that container back in the day.

I mean, those words have sort of been very slippery.

There we go.

That’s very interesting.

That’s why you do it.

And, you know, India sometimes does hang on to older forms of English that the rest of the English speaking world has let go.

So maybe this is why it’s more common there than it is here.

But I think many Americans, particularly ones who read a lot, probably know it.

Well, that’s interesting.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, and thanks for sharing that with us.

I’d be interested to hear if anybody else calls it a pepper cellar.

Right, right.

I want to know that.

Is that a new thing that we’ve caught on to hear?

Vanita, you might have turned us on to something cool.

Well, I’m glad.

All right.

Take care.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send them to us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org, and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Voltaire. I’m from San Diego, California.

Oh, great.

Okay, welcome to the show. What can we help you with?

Thanks so much. Well, you know, I’ve been interested for a long while in slang, and specifically words like bay, fleek, that this, you know, past year were really popular, but maybe the most greatest example might be a word like bling-bling, which has been added to the American lexicon.

You know, how that happens, like how words like that catch on throughout the country.

Does it start with, you know, hip-hop artists or does it start in another way?

I’m just really interested and curious as to how that, you know, ends up being the case.

You’ve come to the right place.

Yeah, those are all three really, really great examples of one particular kind of slang catching on because they all have African-American origins.

Bae, that’s just for the audience that doesn’t know, bae is B-A-E.

It’s a condensed version of the word babe or baby, it means you’re sweetie or you’re shorty.

Fleek is usually given as on fleek.

It was popularized in 2014 by a young woman named Peaches Monroe.

Monroe spelled with two E’s on the end.

Who’s a young African American woman who did this like six second video, like a vine where she’s like really proud of her appearance.

She just said something about being on fleek and she like does this particular move with her finger across her eyebrows to show that everything was perfectly in place.

So if you’re on fleek, you’re perfectly appointed.

You’re well dressed.

You’ve got style and class.

And then bling bling, everybody knows at this point this is money or ostentatious wealth maybe.

Jewelry.

Jewelry, yeah.

So what’s really interesting about all of these is that they kind of show what’s really happening in pop culture over the last, say, 20 or 30 years.

Where as African Americans started to dominate some of the art forms, particularly music, they developed a following among kids of all ages and all races and all backgrounds.

And the language that they use in their music and in their interviews, you know, on television, what have you, started to be adopted by their fans, the people who adore them and go to their shows and buy their albums.

And then we get this new age where somebody like Peaches Monroe, who was basically a nobody before this happened.

Because I’ve never heard of Peaches Monroe.

Yeah, there we go.

But her video has been watched tens of millions of times at this point.

Millions.

Wow.

Yeah.

And, of course, parodies were done and it’s now showed up in songs.

I see it pop up in tweets.

Here we have a really great example where On Fleek was popularized because this particular kind of connectedness we have, these, I call them networks of influence.

You get jokes, fashion, and new language from the same people in your life.

They tend to be people you respect and people that you spend a lot of time with or you pay a lot of attention to.

And in some cases, they’re performers.

In some cases, they’re just YouTube stars.

Like Peaches Moreau.

Yeah, Bling Bling is a really great one.

I think this came up from a New Orleans group in 1999.

BG and the Cash Money Millionaires had an album that just kind of broke out just big.

It was a nice hit.

It was a good club song, a lot of great remixes of that.

And everybody kind of got it when you talked about your bling.

Originally, I guess it meant the ostentatious gold jewelry that hip-hop performers would sometimes wear.

But eventually, it could just be the big fat diamond engagement ring that you got or the really swank car that you got or like the shiny suit that you wore to your wedding or your prom or whatever.

And it started to be like where you dressed up something special and you’re showing off your style, you know.

And then when it started to appear in like airline advertisements.

On tops of taxi cabs in New York City, we knew the bling was done.

And now it’s usually just given his bling.

But another one, how did that get big?

Well, this New Orleans group that had a lot of respect made a big hit song that had a lot of remixes.

And through the pure force of pop culture, it spread to the entire country, basically the English-speaking world.

You’ll find bling in Australia and the UK also.

Yeah, bling is such an amazing example because you actually can look that one up and it’s in like the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Yeah, so I know I just dumped a lot of stuff on you.

Yeah, you got an earful there, Volter.

What do you think?

No, I think that’s great.

I mean, very helpful.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

And say hi to your bae for me.

Okay, will do.

Bye-bye.

Well, we’d love to talk to you about language.

We’ve got a whole lot of stuff to share with you, but we know you’ve got stuff to share with us.

Put it on the phone, 877-929-9673.

Send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And try us on Twitter at the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Grant, I came across an article that I think will amuse you.

It ran in the Detroit Free Press, but for a minute there I thought it was in The Onion.

-oh.

The headline is, you’re going to love this, Oak Park Man Invents Word for Nieces and Nephews.

Oh, I saw that.

I did see that.

They were so excited for him.

They were so excited.

I’m kind of excited for him, too.

You are?

A little bit.

I mean, yeah.

Oh.

What was his word, though?

I don’t remember his word.

His word is sofralia.

Oh, yeah.

That’s why I don’t remember it.

Yeah, it’s S-O-F-R-A-L-I-A.

Sofralia.

And this is Attorney Rabbi Schnur Stephen Poulter who came up with this.

I was just so surprised that a newspaper would pick up on this effort to create a word and then popularize it.

He says that he’s trying to get the dictionaries to pick it up, but he hasn’t gotten much momentum.

And what I also loved was that the newspaper went to a professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan who said that sophralia doesn’t make sense.

It’s an invented word based on Latin words, but it’s not a Latin formation.

It’s a made-up word, and it’s okay to make up words if he wants to, fine, but no one would get much help from the Latin for this.

And she also adds that maybe he would like to use the German word for this, which is Geschwisterkind.

I like that.

I didn’t know that word, Geschwisterkind.

I think they’re both not going to make it in English, really.

You think?

Yeah, the most popular coinage that I know has been coined multiple times for nieces and nephews together is neiflings.

That’s what I use.

I love it.

Yeah, neiflings.

But the argument kind of is if we needed the word, we’d already have it.

Right.

And as families get smaller in America, we have less and less need for it.

Need for neiflings?

Need for neiflings.

I still like neiflings.

Yeah, a good one, right?

Except when they grow up.

Why?

Well, I think of neiflings as these little things, you know, running around, but I don’t know about adult neiflings.

Maybe they’re just neifs.

My neefs, my neefles.

I like it.

Well, Rabbi, good luck.

Good luck.

I hope Sofralia catches on.

We’re doing our best.

More of us need to find windmills to tilt that.

It keeps life interesting.

877-929-9673.

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And let us know what you think on Twitter at the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, way with words.

Hi, how you doing?

Who’s this?

This is April Smith.

April, where are you calling from?

I am in the DeGrasse area in Russell, New York.

What’s on your mind, April?

Well, years ago, I was probably in my 20s.

I was acquainted with a gentleman who was in his 70s.

This was, oh, back in the 1970s.

And I would greet him and ask him, Pete, how you doing?

And he’d say, oh, sick of bed on two chairs with a twinkle in his eye.

And being a young kid as I was, I would just say, oh, really glad to hear that, Pete.

And I never really understood what he was saying to me.

And assuming that was a good thing, I still don’t know what that means.

Wow.

So what does that mean?

Sick of bed on two chairs or in two chairs?

Sick of bed on two chairs.

Really?

And he suggested that it was something really positive.

Well, he always said it with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.

Now, Pete Peterson was born in the back country of Joplin, Missouri.

Oh, one of my folk.

Now, that’s interesting because I’ve always heard it as more of a sort of they’re malingering.

They’re not really that sick.

Oh, I see.

Well, maybe that explains the twinkle.

Yeah.

Because he’s been reporting to be sick, but actually just having some time off.

Right.

Have you ever heard the longer form, April?

Sick in bed on two chairs with my feet out the window and the blinds pulled down?

No.

There’s a couple different possible origin stories for this.

One is that you’ve pulled a couple of chairs together kind of facing each other so there’s no gap between them.

And you put it in the kitchen or where all the family’s hanging out so the sick person can hang with the family.

And actually so that the family can keep an eye on them.

So you’re literally sick of bed in two chairs with a lot of blankets and people bringing you treats and tea and so forth.

One version of that says that you do that in the kitchen.

You bring those two chairs together to keep you out of the bedroom that you share with your siblings so your sibling doesn’t catch what you have.

And then there’s another version which says sick in bed on two chairs means you’re sick, but you’re working anyway.

So you’re still sitting at the dinner table, still eating your meals, but you’re also sitting on the porcelain chair as well because things aren’t going well.

If you know what I mean.

So you were actually sick in bed on two chairs, which means you’re not actually in bed, but you are on two chairs, so to speak.

Huh.

Okay.

So maybe that’s the twinkle in his eye.

He didn’t want to give you the full details, but it meant something that he, you know, he was hoping you’d understand what he was talking about.

He was always just pulling my legs.

That’s the sense that I’ve always had of it, is that you’re kind of pulling somebody’s legs.

So we’re just talking about a bed for a second.

When we’re talking about being a bed, it’s an old-fashioned way of saying in bed, right?

A-B-E-D.

And that’s sick of bed.

Yeah, sick of bed.

Yeah, so he was pulling my chain.

I think he was.

I think he was being ironic.

Yeah, yeah, maybe not really sick.

Maybe he was taking that version of it.

Not really sick and just kind of trying to pass himself off as somebody who needed sympathy and love.

It’s a great phrase, though.

All right, April, I hope we helped a little bit here.

Shed some light on it.

Bye, April.

Okay.

Take care now.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

This is a show about words and language and how we use them.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Find us on Facebook.

We have a big Facebook page and a big active Facebook group.

And you can talk to us on Twitter.

The handle is W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Grant, do you know what a random scoot is?

I hesitate to answer that.

Is it naughty?

No.

Oh, let it be naughty.

No, no, no.

Actually, it sounds like it might be.

Rantum scoot.

Yes.

I don’t know.

Latin name for a type of weasel.

That’s very good.

That’s exactly what it is.

Oh, is it?

Call us with your…

No.

It’s two words, rantum, R-A-N-T-U-M, and S-C-O-O-T.

This term was sent to us by Meg Glidden, who tells us, and I checked it out, it’s true, that on Nantucket, a random scoot is a walk with no particular destination in mind.

It’s often taken on a beautiful summer afternoon across the moors.

So, random is a form of random, maybe?

Yes.

And scoot should be kind of logical for a walk.

Yeah, scoot around.

Oh, nice.

Random scoot.

But she says that’s what they use there on Nantucket.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And look for us on Twitter at WayWord.

More stories about what we say and why we say it.

Stay tuned.

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.

I’ve always had a particular fascination with writer’s spaces. That is where physically people figure out they can do their best writing.

And I’ve been thinking about that in particular because of a book I’m reading about Chaucer. It’s called Chaucer’s Tale, and it’s by Paul Strom, who was the Tolkien professor of English language and literature at Oxford University.

He writes about the years in London that Chaucer spent living at Aldgate, which is the main eastern gate to the walled city of London. And he’s figured out from architectural plans and a lot of extrapolating pretty much what Chaucer’s writing quarters looked like.

And it’s pretty amazing because he’s living in this place that’s only about 16 by 14 feet. The walls are five feet thick, and the only natural light would come from two or three or four arrow slits that go through the wall.

He also talks about the fact that it’s over this really busy London thoroughfare. It’s within hundreds of feet of three different churches, so you’ve got the church bells bong, bong, bonging all the time.

And it’s right over what is called Hound’s Ditch, which is an extension of a sewer. And you can imagine why it was called Hound’s Ditch. A lot of people took dead dogs there. And so they had rotting garbage and sewage.

And I’m just trying to think, my gosh, can you imagine trying to write in a space like that? I mean, compared to that, I feel like the princess and the pea. I wonder if it suited him because the rent was cheap.

Or maybe… Oh, he got to live there for free because he was a government bureaucrat at the time. Maybe he needed the chaos to inspire him.

I remember living in New York City and feeling that until later, much later, the chaos of the city just kind of kept topping off my batteries, so to speak. Filling me with electrical charge that I could generate into creative ideas.

Well, I understand that. But I just found that fascinating because I never thought about where he might have actually had to sit and write some of his early stuff. It’s really fascinating.

And then that made me wonder, Grant, do you, when you’re doing your serious writing, do you put in earbuds? Do you?

Oh, yeah. I block out as much noise as I can. I buy those heavy-duty construction earplugs, the one that goes in the ear canal.

Oh, you use earplugs? Yeah, the phone ones that expand block almost all of the noise. I can’t listen to music. I get distracted by it. It takes me away from the task.

And I like to be surrounded by heavy things like bookshelves and furniture. Like, I don’t mind small spaces at all, but the writing doesn’t happen in a coffee shop. Nothing good happens in a coffee shop for me. The noise is too much. The banging of the utensils on the counter, people chatting. I just can’t do that.

That’s interesting. I forced myself, of course, in newsrooms to write with a lot of chaos going around me. But now I usually put in the earbuds and I put in sort of zone out music. It can’t have lyrics. It cannot have lyrics because somehow that messes me up.

So some kind of droning or something? You know, just sort of groove salad kind of. Oh, yeah, groove salad. Sure, I know that. Yeah. Yeah, just kind of spacey.

There is a great collection of photographs on the Internet that shows the writing spaces of well-known modern authors. And it’s interesting how often they need a window to see a beautiful vista or the garden, perhaps, or the creek or the mountains.

But they’re always surrounded by books, which kind of seems like a necessary part, right? You want something to turn to for inspiration or just to feel the company of great authors by having them at your elbow.

Yeah, Kindle just doesn’t do it. No, it doesn’t, right? No, I like seeing the names pop out at me from the spines.

Well, there’s a question that we want to ask you. How do you write? When you sit down for your serious tasks, maybe it’s bill paying. Maybe it’s taxes once a year. Maybe it’s the novel that you’re working on.

Where do you sit and what do you need to make it happen? Do you sit like Chaucer near a sewer in a church or several churches? Let us know, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Or let us know on Twitter at the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Oh, hi. This is Marshall from Point, Texas calling you. Okay, very cool. Well, what are you calling us about?

Oh, very simple. I have roots from East Texas from my grandparents and parents, although I wasn’t born here. And, you know, years ago in elementary school or so, I would do the one or two week visit to my grandparents in East Texas. And the name of that town was Center.

And Center was the typical courthouse in the center of the square with all the live oaks and all the old men sitting on the benches whittling. And as a little boy, I would sit there and whittle with all the old men. All they did with their long pieces of cedar is make a bunch of sticks.

Right. They didn’t carve anything whatsoever. But it was the expressions I would hear from the people, and one of them I always had a question about, and it was whistlebritches. And how it was used is my grandfather or one of the other old guys would point to someone across the street and they’ll say, oh, there’s old whistlebritches.

And so I was always wondering, well, what do they mean by whistlebritches? And so here recently I looked it up, and it talked about how whistlebritches comes from the sound of corduroy pants.

Well, I’ll tell you, if you see these old men from East Texas back in the 1960s, it was wool and khaki and wingtips and fedoras, and none of those men had any whistling britches on them. So I guess the question is, is it really corduroy pants, since corduroy doesn’t exist in East Texas?

Well, it probably started as corduroy, right? You got that zh, zh, zh, zh noise. Well, that’s what I looked up. It had corduroy, and I was like, I don’t know, how would they ever have come up with whistle britches to name people pointing to them across the street?

They also called them hoop-its every once in a while. Hoop-its? Yeah, hoof-its. I don’t know why. Here comes hoof-its. But whistle britches is the most colorful term.

So it probably did come from the corduroy. It dates back to the late 1800s, but it easily left that and started to be used in a derogatory kind of joking way about somebody who has that ostentatious sound about them.

It’s kind of hard to annoy that zzzz of corduroy pants rubbing together. It’s kind of like when a woman wears these particular kind of shoes with the very wooden, clompy heels, and she’s drawing eyes wherever she goes because everyone’s like, who’s making the clumpity-clump noise? Walking down the holiday airport.

But how would that travel to East Texas where there is no corduroy? Oh, well, how do they speak English there? It travels with the language. Baggage along with everything else.

Well, you know, they don’t speak English in East Texas. They speak Texan. That is true. You have a point there, Marshall.

Well, then. There’s another theory, too, which has to do with flatulence, and I’ll let you figure that one out on your own. Okay, okay. Because you can call somebody an old fart, right? And so maybe it’s just another way of referring to them. It’s not too, you’re not putting them down hard. It’s just a gentle put down.

They do have beans there, right? So there’s a possibility there, too. Take your pick. Maybe the flatulence theory works better for you than the corduroy theory. But the corduroy one is pretty solid.

We’ve got some evidence in the historical record and a variety of fiction contexts where people talk about whistle breaches and talk specifically about corduroy. Or whistle breeches is the older form. Right, right.

Well, maybe one day I’ll figure out hoof-its too, but I don’t know where that one came from.

Hoo-fits, yeah.

Somebody clomping their way through, right?

Yeah, it could be like, who’s it?

Who’s it, yeah.

Well, just like when I lived in Indianapolis, there was an expression, you know how we always use the we must sing from the same hymnal? There was the expression that they used called, now we’ve got to be talking from the same bucket.

Oh, talking from the same bucket.

See, I’ve lived in six states and worked in six states, and talking from the same bucket never figured that one out.

That’s a new one.

Grant’s making a note.

I don’t know that one.

Hey, Marshall, this has been fun. Thank you so much for calling.

Thanks, bud.

No problem. I appreciate it.

Okay, take care.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Do you use the word britches?

I do, actually. I got it from my grandmother. There was a period when I was very young, around two or so, where my brother and I were in the care of my grandmother, who was a classic Southeast Missouri kind of farm culture. And she just, with no irony, just said, pull up your britches.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can hear Aunt Mazo from Western North Carolina. Martha Ann, get your britches on.

And so it’s happened where I have been in a public place. Actually, it was at a store where I was helping my son try on some pants. And I said, well, pull the britches up. And some lady nearby said to me, she’s like, really? I’m like, what? She’s like, britches. As if I were somehow making a joke. Some kind of affectation. I’m like, no, britches. Britches are real. This is what my grandmother Barrett said. Britches are real. Britches. Pull up your britches. We’re here to tell you. And we’re here to answer your questions about language. So call us, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org, and find us on Twitter at WayWord.

Hello, you have A Way with Words?

Hello, this is Mary Bronigal from Pallahassee, Florida.

Hi, Mary. Welcome to the program.

Hey, Mary. Welcome.

Hi. What’s going on?

I was wondering about the expression, mealy-mouthed. My dad used to use it, and I didn’t know what it meant, but I got the impression that it was not a good thing. Like, it was bad. It was not a compliment. And I was just trying to find, I was writing some memoirs, and I was just wondering if you knew anything more about that word.

Yeah, sure. What kind of context would he use it in?

Oh, he’d say, well, that person is a mealy-mouthed bastard.

Oh, okay. All right. Pretty graphic, yeah.

So what do you picture when he said mealy-mouthed?

Well, I think of bugs coming out, like mealworms coming out of your mouth.

Oh, wow. Boy, that’s quite an image there.

I was thinking maybe you were picturing a meal like breakfast or dinner, but it’s not that kind of meal. I mean, you’re sort of on the right track in that it has to do with the kind of meal that’s finely ground grain, you know, cornmeal or flour. And the image here is of somebody whose mouth is really full of that kind of meal and trying to talk around it. And it basically means to be vague or equivocal or roundabout or kind of beating around the bush or like your father was suggesting that they’re not trustworthy. And the idea is that you have a mouthful of meal and you’re trying to talk around it. And it’s a really, really old expression. It wasn’t just your dad. In fact, there’s a German expression that was used by Martin Luther centuries ago. That’s the same thing.

What was it in German?

What is it, Grant?

It’s Meil im…

Meil im Maul behalten.

Yeah. Something like that.

Oh. Yeah, but it’s literally holding meal in your mouth.

Well, that’s not quite as dramatic as I thought.

No, it’d be different if there were writhing mealworms in there, that’s for sure.

Yeah, thanks for that image, Mary. That’s kind of more horrifying.

Okay, well, thank you all. That’s very informative. Thank you very much.

Sure thing.

It’s our pleasure.

Take care, Mary.

All righty, bye-bye.

All righty, bye-bye.

You know, Martin Luther was full of terrible insults. In fact, you can go to a website called ergofabulous.org, and it has something called the Lutheran Insulter.

Oh, no.

And you can sort of randomly get yourself insulted by Martin Luther. I have some examples from his writing.

All right.

I haven’t been insulted yet today. Grant, your sin smells to high heaven.

To high heaven, yeah.

I like this one. You know less than does a log on the ground. You are a bungling magpie croaking loudly. And I like this one, too, from Martin Luther. My soul, like Ezekiel’s, is nauseated at eating your bread covered in human dung.

Oh, gross.

I’m sure it’s better in the original German, but that’s a bunch of insults by Martin Luther that you can find at ergofabulous.org. The log one reminds me of one of my favorite insults, which is you are as dumb as a stump.

Yeah, I’ve heard that many times.

About other people.

About other people.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673. Send them an email to words@waywordradio.org and find us on Twitter at Wayword.

Brent, do you know the phrase out of station?

No, it sounds kind of jargony. Is this from a trader profession?

That’s a good question. It’s from Indian English.

Indian out of place.

No. No, it means going on holiday or going on vacation.

Oh, out of station.

Yeah, yeah. My friend Soma is from India and she lives here now and she caught herself when she was doing one of those auto response things writing, I’m going to be out of station.

Oh, nice.

Isn’t that nice?

Nice. Out of the office. That’s cool. Yeah.

I love those ones that are transparent once you hear about them, once you learn about them.

Right.

That’s cool.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Carrie from South Central Kentucky.

All right, well, welcome to the show. How can we help you?

Yeah, we are interested just because when we moved here, there are all sorts of interesting sayings and phrases that we’ve come across. The one that we’ve had the most fun with is the phrase, if you play with fire, you’ll pee the bed. And, you know, when we first heard this, I just couldn’t believe it. I was like, are you kidding? Isn’t getting burned bad enough? And the response has consistently been, well, yeah, everybody knows you’ll get burned, but nobody wants to pee the bed. So we just thought that was really funny.

A couple months ago, we had a young man from Brazil in our home, and we got talking about different sayings that they say around here. And we told him about this saying, and he said, oh, we say that all the time in Brazil. So we really couldn’t believe that. The only place we’d heard that phrase was here, and then they also say it there. So we were wondering how that phrase originated and how in the world would it be in those two random places.

That’s pretty cool. So how does this come up in conversation?

I think we were lighting a candle and just kind of playing with the match. I think it was at a church. It was with a church group that I was actually having the discussion with, but I don’t remember how it came up at all. Although now my kids will laugh because somebody is messing around with a candle or whatever. One of the other kids will say, well, now you’re going to pee the bed, but watch out.

That’s interesting. It’s transformed a little bit because when it started, it started as kind of an adult manufactured superstition. It was a way to get children to not play with matches and not play with fire because they weren’t really afraid of the fire. They didn’t really seem to care about burning down the house. But heaven forbid that their friends should find out that they wet the bed. And so it was told in earnest.

Right, which is exactly what they all say. It’s called nobody wants to wet the bed.

Well, it’s not that you don’t want to do it. You don’t want to be found out.

Well, both.

Yeah, it’s both.

I would say both.

But the thing is, so it was said in earnest to children as a way to kind of like make them stop playing with matches because the adults can’t be there all the time to stop that from happening.

So like one of those fanciful parental warnings, like if you cross your eyes like that, somebody could hit you on the back. They’ll stay that way. Don’t swallow the watermelon seeds or whatever.

Right. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, right.

And so it starts out as a superstition. It appears in a lot of collection of folklore, some really good stuff throughout the United States and North Carolina. It pops up in Utah, pops up in a few other places. And then you can find versions of it in Japan and Norway as well. I think it even shows up in Pennsylvania Dutch in that kind of form of German spoken among the particular religious communities in Pennsylvania. It’s really interesting.

But in all cases, it starts as an adult superstition that they make for the kids in order to teach them not to play with matches or fire. And then it kind of transforms where…

So it’s not necessarily a migration of people that it was brought with. It just kind of happened. It could have been. It could have been. But the other thing that happened to it, as you’ve so well described, is it’s turned into something magical where somehow magically, if you play with fire, then you pee the bed. But that’s not actually really how it started out.

Yeah. So it sounds like it just arose from a sort of universal need for parents to find a way to scare kids out of it. Scare you out of playing with fire.

All right. Well, that’s interesting. Thank you so much for taking the time to research it. Thank you so much for giving us a call. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Carrie. Take care. Bye-bye. Have a good day. Bye-bye. All right. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org. That’s all for today’s broadcast. But don’t wait till next week to chat with us. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, iTunes or SoundCloud. Check out our website waywordradio.org, where you’ll find a dictionary, a newsletter, mobile apps and a discussion forum. And you can listen to hundreds of past episodes for free.

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Our senior producer is Stefanie Levine. The show is directed by Colin Tedeschi and edited this week by Tim Felten. We have production help from James Ramsey. A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning and better human communication.

Coming to you from the Track Recording Center at Studio West in San Diego, California. Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett. See ya. So long. Thank you.