Whistle in the Dark (episode #1461)

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.

We received an email from Sarah Ammerman in Central Ohio, who sent us a treasure trove of slang involving a certain activity that she and lots of other people engage in.

And I wanted to see if you could guess what it is.

All right.

Okay. Here are three of the slang terms she sent.

Strainer, drop pool, and boulder garden.

Strainer, drop pool, and boulder garden.

Mm—

Lawn care or xeriscaping or I don’t know what.

That’s pretty good.

Scrap booking.

Just throwing that out there.

I have no idea.

Well, all the kayakers and whitewater rafters are going, oh, oh, I know those.

I know those.

She just sent us this wonderful long list, and I checked all these out.

They’re great.

Like a strainer is a fallen tree or collection of rocks or other debris that does little to obstruct the water but will block your path.

A boulder garden is a rapid formed by a collection of massive boulders that are right there in the riverbed.

And a drop pool is a rapid or a drop that’s followed by a calm pool.

Oh, that sounds nice.

Yeah.

Kayaking, right?

Right, or whitewater rafting.

There’s something called a smiling hole, which has to do with the way a wave crest curves downstream at both ends.

And it actually looks like a smile.

You can look up on Google Image pictures of smiling holes and squirrely water.

I don’t know any of these.

I’ve only been whitewater rafting once.

I was in Ecuador, high in the mountains.

It was, I think my heart nearly leapt out of my chest.

I was so frightened of what was happening.

Because these guys have been up and down this river, you know, hundreds or more times.

And so they get a couple of noobs on their boat and they decide to mess with you.

And they dump you in, like, as soon as they can.

In a place that seems dangerous but isn’t.

Yep.

And I thought for sure.

I was like, this is it.

Bye, cruel world.

I’m done.

That’s over for me.

And, of course, I was fine because here I am.

I’m so glad you mentioned that because one of my favorite bits of slang comes from a specific river, the Gauley River in West Virginia.

They used to have an area there that they called Guides Revenge because, you know, that’s where you could kind of mess with people.

But the insurance company, supposedly for this whitewater rafting company, decided that they couldn’t use that name.

So they renamed it Fluffy Box of Kittens or Fuzzy Box of Kittens or Box of Fuzzy Kittens.

But it was the same place where they would still mess with their guests, right?

Yeah, right. Sort of like the Cape of Good Hope.

But I’ll never forget the terrified look on my friend’s face as we both were like poured into the drink.

It’s scary.

It was.

But they did the thing where they flipped the end of the boat up.

And like you’re basically trying to stay upright standing on an upright boat that’s going to end on end, you know.

And you’re going down.

There’s no way not to go down.

You just hope you don’t hit a rock on the way down.

Yeah, I enjoyed about as much of that as I could stand.

We made it to the end, though.

And Ecuador was beautiful.

So that’s a plus.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Doing well. Who’s this?

My name is Brent Bachman, and I, along with my freshman English class, are calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Oh, hi, Brent. Can we say hi to the class?

Hey, class.

Hi!

How many people do you have in that class? 400?

It sounds like 400, but I think we’re at about 25.

Okay, good number.

Much better.

Well, what are you in the class talking about that needs us?

Okay, so I used a phrase in class the other day.

The phrase was called whistling in the dark.

And I used it.

We were actually reading a scene from To Kill a Mockingbird.

And in that novel, Atticus Finch says something to the effect of, you know, simply because you’re beat 100 years before you begin doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try anyway.

And I said, oh, it sounds like Atticus is whistling in the dark, which I think means hoping for the best when the outcome is not likely going to be in your favor.

But everybody in my class just kind of looked at me.

They’d never heard that phrase.

And then I started thinking that I had never really heard it.

A friend of mine told it to me.

We actually played in a band together.

We recorded a song called Whistling in the Dark.

And that’s how I had learned about it.

But I’ve never met anyone else that knew that phrase, or if I’m even correct, if it means hoping for the best.

I’d say that’s close. It’s not that common. It kind of means putting on a brave face when things are literally dark.

Like imagine you’re walking in a dark hallway. The lights aren’t working.

You’re kind of scared because you don’t know if something’s going to leap out or an animal’s back there or you’re not sure what’s on the other end.

And you just start whistling a jaunty tune to keep your spirits up.

That is literally what it refers to. This idea that you’re in a dark place. Things are kind of hopeless.

You’re not quite sure what the outcome is going to be, and you start whistling to buck yourself up.

Okay, so I didn’t have that quite right, but okay, that makes sense, yeah.

What I think of is whistling past the graveyard.

Oh, that’s another one that’s very similar, right?

Yeah, well, it doesn’t bother me.

But that’s kind of more about taunting death, right?

Well, yeah, I mean, it’s the same thing, you know, stiff upper lip, put on a brave face.

Oh, I’m just walking past, you know, where people are buried.

Yeah, so whistling in the dark is known in English.

It’s not that common.

Dates back to about the 1930s.

I don’t know that everyone should know it or feel ashamed for not knowing it, though.

Did your students guess it?

Could they infer what it meant?

Yeah, after we established that I was the only person in the room that thought I knew what it meant, we could infer kind of the meaning based on the original quote that I took from the text.

Okay, yeah.

And the song that you all performed, it had the same meaning?

Yes, yeah.

Tell us more about the song.

I’m curious.

You can look it up on Spotify.

Oh, yeah? What’s the name of the band?

The Knollwood Boys.

K-N-O-L-L-W-O-O-D.

Boys.

The Knollwood Boys. Whistling in the Dark.

All right, we’ll look for it, all right?

Okay.

Brett, thank you so much for your call.

Really appreciate it.

And say, study hard to the class for us, will you?

Oh, will do.

Thank you for taking my call.

I appreciate it.

Okay, thanks, Brett.

Bye-bye.

Bye, class.

All right, thanks.

Bye.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Whistling in the Dark.

I’m just imagining like a…

Yeah, right.

Kind of like your eyes are shifting from left to right as you try to stretch your peripheral vision to make sure nothing creeps up on you.

I’m not afraid.

No, really.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

You remember our conversation where I was talking about going to Vermont and visiting the town of Charlotte and being surprised that it looked like Charlotte, but it’s pronounced Charlotte?

Well, we got a lot of responses from people who were telling us about the strange city names and town names in their area.

We heard from Frank Maynard, who’s in Northern California, and the city that he lives in is spelled N-O-V-I.

Any thoughts about how you might say that?

I don’t know.

Navi or Novi seem like the logical ones, but what is it?

Novi.

Novi.

Isn’t that weird?

Maybe it’s like Lodi, L-O-D-I.

That could be.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, how are you guys?

Fine, how are you?

Who’s this?

I’m Kevin.

I’m from Rochester, Michigan, and I have a question for you guys about apples.

Apples.

Shoot, let’s hear it.

Apples.

Yep, the fruit.

So you have the Honeycrisp, right?

The Honeycrisp is one of the most loved apples.

It tastes like honey, and it’s super crispy, so the name makes sense.

You have the Red Delicious.

It’s red, and it’s delicious, so the name makes sense.

But there’s an apple called the Northern Spy, and I can’t put together where it got its name from.

How is it that you’re such an expert on apples?

I’m a general manager at a cider mill, so I spend most of my time with apples.

So you have Northern Spy apples there on site?

Yeah, we did for last week.

They’re only available for like five or six days.

Oh, really?

Yeah, and they’re so good.

For eating, baking, cider?

Most people use them to make pies.

I like just eating them, though.

I think when we started getting ours, I probably ate six or seven within a day or two.

Really?

Is there anything mysterious about a Northern Spy?

Is there something that makes you, is it disguised as a pear?

Or is there any physical characteristic that gives any kind of clue to its name?

Nope, it looks like just a normal apple.

It’s a little tarter than sweeter apples, like the Honeycrisp, but that’s about it.

Yeah, I like a tart apple myself.

Tart apples go really well with peanut butter.

Oh, so it kind of fakes you out then?

You think it’s going to be less tart and you bite into it?

It could be that, yeah.

Northern Spy apples.

This sounds so mysterious and wonderful.

It does.

I’m hoping there’s some big drama-filled story how it got its name.

Well, there sort of is.

What?

Okay.

Yeah, there was a book called The Northern Spy that was circulated among abolitionists in the 1830s.

Are you familiar with that book?

I’m not.

Okay. Well, The Northern Spy was this guy who set up a bunch of safe houses for people who were fleeing slavery.

And he went down to the south and he would go to these plantations and present himself as a slave catcher and asked to speak to the slaves so he could get information.

But he would actually be tipping them off.

And telling them where to go?

Yeah, on how to escape.

Okay.

Are we sure that that’s the origin or is it a coincidence?

Yeah, is that how the apple came from?

Well, that’s a good question, because I believe the Northern Spy was originated before that.

So it might be a bit of a mystery about the origin, but it’s pretty cool that it’s associated with that book, The Northern Spy.

I didn’t know.

That’s really cool. That’s an excellent story.

Now, I’m Googling the heck out of this here, and it looks like it has a ton of names.

Is Northern Spy, like, the official name, Kevin? Is this the one that—

That’s the name. I’ve always heard it called.

A lot of people call it Northern Space Pie, which is where I was thinking maybe it got its name from.

Oh, Northern Pie or Northern’s Pie.

Well, like Northern Pie, essentially, because everyone uses it to make pies.

Oh.

Interesting.

Yeah, and I’m seeing here that one of the names is Northern Spice, too.

Yep.

Oh, interesting.

But I love the story that this might have been named after an abolitionist tract.

Yeah, that’s pretty great.

Maybe, or at least that popularized it, I think.

Right, but all the names gives me the idea that perhaps the name wasn’t fixed and placed early on.

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.

And that’s the reason it has this name and other names.

Yeah.

Okay.

Cool, Kevin.

Cool.

Thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

And if anything else cool in language happens in the Apple kingdom that you rule, you have to call us.

I’ll let you guys know.

All right.

Have a great day, you guys.

Bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org and hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

We heard from Gary Nachman, who lives in Omaha, and he actually gave me a word that I’ve needed for some time.

It’s flugling.

Flugling.

Yeah, F-L-O-O-G-L-I-N-G. Flugling.

He started using that when he started using Google Earth. He says I love to visit places around the world and zoom in. I call it flugling, flying with Google.

Oh, that’s nice. You ever do that?

Yeah, my son and I like to do that.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, I hope you like show me the house that we lived in when I was born or show me Paris and I’ll just try to find a cool way to get him there and show him some things that he wasn’t expecting.

Oh, so you flugled?

We flugled.

Yeah, I like the idea.

I like the idea too, which reminds me. Do you know the website where they show you a random place on Google Street View and you have to figure out what country it’s in?

Yes. Oh, I love that. That’s tough. You can sometimes get, you have to look for the street signs. That’s the trick.

Oh, Cyrillic. I, you know.

Yeah. Spanish.

Yeah. Andrew Sullivan used to do that on his blog. Remember that?

So flugeling off to flugel. Flugeling.

Yes. I enjoy that. 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.

And joining us now from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hey, buddy.

The game I have for you today, you know, back in the day we tried to do some anagrams here.

But, you know, let’s face facts.

Anagrams, they’re not that easy.

All the really good ones like Presbyterian for Britney Spears.

Whoa.

Really?

That’s good.

Oh yeah.

I know those are interesting.

But then you have to sit with them for a while.

You know, we don’t have that time here.

So why not do easy anagrams?

Four letters, that’s all we’re going to do.

Four-letter anagrams.

Heck, with some of these, you may not even have to move more than a single letter.

No heavy lifting.

That sounds more R-speed, although I like Presbyterian and Britney Spears.

That’s pretty good, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Now, for example, a word that means cruel and a designation, what two anagrammatic words are those?

You said cruel and a designation?

Cruel and designation, yeah.

Name and mean.

Yes, exactly.

Name and mean.

And what I’ll do, though, is I’ll put the definitions together so there’s at least a small challenge, cruel designation for mean name.

Okay?

Those are our anagrams.

So here we go.

Here’s the first one.

Look after a competition between runners.

Race and care.

Yeah, race care.

Very good.

Nicely done.

Here’s the next.

Unskilled worker, slangy negative.

I was going to say nope and open, but that doesn’t work.

Well, you got one of them.

I did?

Peon and nope.

Yeah, peon nope.

How about catch sight of slangy affirmatives?

Yeps and spy.

Yeps and…

Espy.

Espy.

Yes, very good.

You get this one easy.

A colorless poet.

Colorless poet.

Colorless, boring poet.

Singing poet.

Bard.

Drab.

Drab.

Drab Bard.

Excellent.

I love it.

I love when you guys work as a team.

I know, right?

Nicely done.

Crude and offensive joining of metals.

I was going to say Weld, but…

Oh, Meld.

Meld or Weld?

No, yeah, it’s Weld.

Lude Weld.

Yes, Lude Weld, nice.

That should be the name of something.

It’s probably, it’s going to be the name of my new band, Lude Weld.

Okay, Lude Weld.

Completely fascinated British idiot.

Wrapped in Pratt.

Yes, a wrapped prat.

Completely tired Aleph follower.

A beat beta.

Beat beta, right.

How about a very dry sortie?

A very dry sortie, arid raid.

Yes, arid raid.

That was great.

I told you, every once in a while, just doing the four-letter anagrams is a nice little way to just…

You did great there.

Well, thank you.

It’s all those years of eating alphabet soup as a child.

That’ll do it.

And alphabets.

And alphabets, sure.

So, you know, pop up and mixing them around.

John, thank you for another great quiz.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Grant.

Thank you, Martha.

And if you’d like to talk with us about any aspect of language whatsoever, call us at 877-929-9673 or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gloria June.

I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Welcome.

What can we do for you, Glory June?

Well, this is a little convoluted question, but I’ve been thinking about it for years.

I’ve had a lot of language questions, some of which have been answered on your show.

I am the daughter of two people who met in the Navy in World War II.

And I am a historian and also a performer.

And one of the things I’ve been doing for the last several years is doing a program I call Songs My Mother Sang, A World War II Remembrance.

And in it, I tell their story, their romance in the Navy.

I sing songs of the period, and I read from their letters.

Happily, several hundred of their letters, both on both sides, have survived.

Wow, that’s awesome.

I tell you, it’s very emotional.

And what I do have, and probably one of the most treasured of them, is the very first letter, apparently, that my dad ever wrote my mom.

Oh, man.

And what had happened was my mother was one of 20 waves, the first 20 waves who were assigned to the big naval base at Norfolk, Virginia.

You can imagine 20 women coming in.

All those men, wow.

So none of the waves lacked for dates.

So my mother and another guy and my dad and another girl went out on a date, a double date.

And my future mother and father looked at each other and thought it was good.

So my dad wrote to my mom to straighten things out, sort of apologize for causing her breakup with the other guy, although it wasn’t a serious thing.

And then to tell her that, you know, hey, how about me?

So in so doing, the paragraph this is in starts,

Maybe they, the eyes, did tell something,

But it was much different than you spoke of.

Gosh, hon, I am not the one to tell you what you should do.

If I spoke the way I felt, it would seem as though I were trying to better my own ends.

It would also look like I was running a Sandy or cheating on Bill, the other guy.

Running a Sandy.

Now, from the context, it sounds as if that means going behind the other guy’s back or something like that.

And I’ve done all sorts of research.

I mean, besides just the Googling, I’ve looked through all kinds of places, and I never found it.

And then one day, just in passing, I was somewhere, and there was an old British movie on, a World War II movie.

And just in passing, I heard the phrase, running a Sandy.

I said, aha!

But I don’t even know what the movie was.

It starred George Sanders, I can tell you that.

So running a Sandy meaning to do an end run around somebody or go behind their back?

I guess so.

Yeah.

That sounds about right.

That sounds really about right with what we can find out about this term from other sources.

Because it has been written down and it is in a few dictionaries.

Really?

And there is something to say about it.

Yeah.

I haven’t seen the right dictionary.

It probably comes from poker, like a lot of other American slang.

Oh, that fits.

It connects to the term to sandbag, which is in poker where you kind of like hold off raising your bet in the hope of making a larger bet later so that you can actually take a larger pot when you know that you have a strong hand.

And so if you sandbag in poker, it’s considered kind of a crummy move by some people.

Devious.

Devious, yeah.

So you could sandbag.

And certainly the first use that we find of this word in print from 1897

As a sandy, meaning to run a sandy, it calls it a bluff and calls it a poker term.

And so it’s a really strong connection.

I’m not surprised that it would be in the vocabulary of a soldier.

Not at all.

Sailor, if you please.

A sailor, there we go.

Navy.

Navy, yeah, I’m not surprised at all.

Oh, that’s fantastic.

So it’s got at least 100 years history, late 1800s.

It is an American term.

It’s not Canadian.

It’s not British.

And I’m surprised that it popped up in a British film starring George Sanders.

But there’s no telling how much American vocabulary made it across the pond during the war.

Of course, especially during the war.

And it may have been, in fact, you wonder maybe it was an American character saying it and that was just showing he was American by using an American phrase.

Exactly. It could have been.

Glory June, I’m glad we were able to help you.

I’m excited.

We love to hear that.

I’m excited to talk to you guys, too.

Well, thank you very much for your call, Glory June.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

This was great.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The two places I found that term are Green’s Dictionary of Slang

And the Dictionary of American Regional English.

One of the things that this show specializes in is that kind of fringe language,

The border language that’s kind of outside the mainstream.

And it’s interesting, though, we often find the strongest connections in history

Between generations, between groups of people in the fringes

And not in the core of our language.

And I think this is one of those really great examples.

It’s a terrific example.

I’ve never heard the phrase.

Yeah, it’s not new to me.

I’m not a big poker player.

In the heyday in the 2000s when everyone was playing poker,

I played a little bit.

But there’s so much amazing vocabulary that’s kind of snuck in

That comes from cards, right?

Are you playing with a full deck, for example?

East in the hole, that sort of thing.

Pass the buck.

Pass the buck, yeah.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

We heard from Susan Carl, who lives in Texas Hill Country,

And she wanted to comment on our conversation about counterintuitive names of towns and cities.

She said, I taught at an Indian reservation in New Mexico,

And the author named Thoreau is a town name there, but it’s pronounced Tharu.

Tharu.

Tharu.

So you go Thru Tharu.

But you’d think it would be pronounced Tharu.

But it’s spelled like the American author.

Right, but it’s not named for the author.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

Hi, this is Archie from McKinney, Texas.

Welcome to the show, Archie.

How are you doing?

I’m doing great.

And you?

Excellent.

Thank you.

What’s on your mind today, Archie?

So a few years ago, right, I was sitting with my colleagues at work, right, and it was during the soccer world cup, right?

And, you know, I work for a company that’s a multinational company, so there’s a lot of people from different countries.

So some of my colleagues are from Sweden, right?

So they went and they bought these T-shirts to support their team, right?

And they bought these T-shirts from a shop called the Wooden Spoon in Plano, Texas.

They bought it from a shop called the Wooden Spoon, did you say?

Yes.

-huh.

Yes.

So, you know, I told them, you know, how can you buy your shirts from a store called the Wooden Spoon because you’re going to jinx your team, right?

And the fact, why, right?

And I said, that’s because the Wooden Spoon is something that’s given to somebody who comes last in a contest or somebody who loses a contest, right?

And everybody looked at me really funny, right?

And I said, no, I mean, this is a typical English word, right?

Wooden spoon means you give it, you know, somebody who comes last in a contest.

And one of my colleagues has an English wife, right, from England.

And he said, I’m going to call her, right?

He called his wife, and the wife said she has never heard of anything like this.

So you can imagine my embarrassment, right?

And, you know, I insisted that this was something that I know, right?

Wooden spoon is like a politically correct way to say somebody lost a contest.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There’s a long tradition that started at Cambridge University in, I think, the early 19th century of giving somebody who finishes last in a particular class a wooden spoon as sort of a joke, as sort of a booby prize, if you will.

Right?

Wow.

So this is something that actually exists.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

There’s a long tradition of that, and it’s been associated with sports.

And there’s also a really uplifting story that has to do with something called the Wooden Spoon Society.

Have you heard of that?

No.

Well, this is a cool story.

Back in 1983, there was a big rugby championship where the English lost to the Irish very badly.

And so all the fans went to a pub afterward and the Irish were celebrating their victory

And the English were drowning their sorrows, of course, in pints of beer.

And what happened at this celebration slash morning was that the Irish fans presented to the English fans.

A wooden spoon wrapped in an Irish scarf on a silver platter as a joke.

You know, you’re the losers.

Here’s a wooden spoon for you.

And the English accepted it good-naturedly, but they said, let’s have a golf tournament in order to settle this once and for all, to settle who gets the wooden spoon.

And so they ended up having a golf tournament, and they raised enough money at this golf tournament because they turned it into a charitable competition.

They raised enough money at this golf tournament to buy a bus for a local school that served kids with special needs.

And they continued this tradition every year of having a golf tournament where somebody got the wooden spoon.

The loser got the wooden spoon.

And since 1983, they’ve raised millions of dollars.

And that’s the Wooden Spoon Society.

Yeah, yeah.

You can find them online.

Isn’t that cool?

So out of Cambridge University in the early 1800s, we get this tradition of a wooden spoon going to the last place honors person in a particular exam.

Yeah.

Right?

To this, which is great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sort of a prize for the loser.

So, Archie, even though your friends hadn’t heard of it and the English wife hadn’t heard of it, it is a thing.

You’re right.

Wooden spoon as a thing that goes to the last place finisher is a real thing in parts of the English-speaking world.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

This is going to be very exciting at the office today, I can tell you that.

Oh, well, that’s good.

But you were right to make a joke out of buying something at the Wooden Spoon to cheer on a team.

Well, Archie, we’re really glad to help you.

Archie, thank you so much for your call.

If they protest, you have them give us a call.

We’ll straighten them out, all right?

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

I’m going to be rubbing it in their faces today.

Give them the Wooden Spoon for losing the argument.

That’s right, they get the Wooden Spoon.

Thanks for your call, dude.

All right. Thank you, guys.

Bye.

Bye-bye, Archie.

Okay. All right. Bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Susan Byrne calling from Tallahassee, Florida.

Hi, Susan. How are you doing?

Hey, Susan.

I’m well.

Welcome to the show.

Well, my question is that when I was growing up, I grew up in Minnesota,

And when somebody in my family would be eating or drinking something,

And if they swallowed incorrectly and they started coughing and couldn’t breathe,

My family members would say, oh, that must have gone down your Sunday throat.

I’m just wondering what the origin of that is.

Is that something just unique to my family or Minnesota, or does that have some sort of background?

Sunday throat, like the day of the week?

Correct.

Okay.

And throat, like the part of your body beneath your head and above your shoulders?

Yes, that’s right.

Okay.

Yeah, that’s an awful feeling.

Yeah, and the idea is that it’s just a joking reference to something going down the wrong pipe, right?

Correct.

And when I have said it recently, people look at me like I’m nuts and say,

What do you mean?

I’ve never heard that before.

So I don’t know if that’s just because I no longer live in the Midwest,

Or it’s a very odd thing to say.

Well, I guess it’s a little bit odd, but it’s been around for quite a while.

I mean, it goes back to at least the late 19th century.

Oh, wow.

I think it’s just the idea that Sunday is special, that it’s different from all the other days.

So it’s like the throat is different from the one that you’re supposed to have food going down.

Your Sunday throat being your windpipe.

I’m looking at a reference from a citation from 1894 where somebody says,

When a dry cracker crumb lodges in one’s Sunday throat, swallowing, coughing, shedding tears, and changes in breathing and circulation inevitably result.

I might tack on it’s a little like the Sunday go-to-meat-and-clothes.

Sure. Yeah, they’re special.

It’s your Sunday throat. It’s something you hardly use.

And so it’s kind of out of practice of swallowing, perhaps.

And maybe that’s why you’re having trouble with foods being lodged in there.

Because it’s special.

And I’ve seen this, by the way, as Sunday pipe as well.

Yeah.

Same meaning.

Sunday throat.

Yeah, I’m a Sunday pipe.

I’m a Sunday pipe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But the good thing is you and your family are not alone.

A lot of people have used this.

Yeah.

It’s never been that common, though.

But it does exist.

You’ll find it in literature.

Well, that’s great.

I love hearing this explanation.

Well, we’re glad to help.

Thank you for calling.

Thanks, Susan.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Sunday throat.

Sunday throat.

Do you know what a Sunday milkshake is?

It’s an alcoholic drink without alcohol?

That’s pretty good.

It’s a euphemism for beer sold on the Sabbath in the South where you can’t get it legally.

Oh, you can’t get it legally.

It’s not like the 1% or whatever beer?

No, no.

It’s like in Prohibition or something.

I see out the back door, right?

Brown bag sold out the back.

Yeah.

877-99-9673.

Another bit of rafting slang, park and play.

Is this like park and bark?

What upper singers do?

Right, where they stand there and just park themselves and start singing.

Park and play.

I don’t know what that is.

A park and play in rafting is an area where you can get on the river, access a couple of fun river features,

And then take out without traveling very far downstream.

Oh, so you don’t have to worry about the whole pickup thing.

Right.

Right. Who’s going to get stuck driving the car and everyone else has the fun on the river?

Exactly. And if you have a wet exit, that means you fell in. Get out that way.

Hey, that’s me.

877-929-9673.

Everything you hear on this episode of this show happened because someone like you donated to A Way with Words.

You can do it too. Make a tax-deductible donation now at waywordradio.org slash donate. Thanks.

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.

Grant?

Yes?

You have a look?

I have a look.

I’m just going to apologize in advance, okay?

Okay.

Knock, knock.

Do I need to put my pun pants on for this?

Yes, yes.

Put on your pun pants because here they come.

Okay.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Otis.

Otis who?

Otis, too, too solid flesh.

I wish it would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.

What is that from?

Shakespeare.

Oh, okay.

In fact, I have a whole bunch of Shakespeare knock-knock jokes for you.

Who made these and why?

Some guy named Dwayne.

And what prison are they in?

I don’t know where Dwayne lives, but Dwayne has a blog called Shakespeare Geek online,

And he’s got a lot of Shakespeare knock-knock jokes.

Is this the guy, like the Dwayne, like the Dwayne, the bathtub I’m drowning Dwayne?

That guy?

The same Dwayne?

You know who the ringleader is, right?

That’s the first one in the bathtub.

Okay.

So here’s…

You thought that was bad.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Et.

Et who?

Et who pruté then fall, Caesar.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Mike.

Mike who?

Mike kingdom for a horse.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Wherefore means…

Wherefore means who?

No, wherefore means why.

How many times do we have to go over this?

Knock, knock.

What?

I mean, who is it?

I mean, who’s there?

Interrupting chorus.

I know this one.

Oh, for a muse of fire.

God help us.

Save me.

Call 877-929-9673.

Send your help to words@waywordradio.org.

I’m dying over here.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Teresa calling from San Antonio.

Well, hello, Teresa.

What can we do for you?

My question has to do with my father.

My father was a member of the Great Generation.

He was born in 1913, and when he was 18 years old, he joined the Army National Guard, and

Then he also served in World War II.

And something happened years ago when he was about 93 years old.

We were driving around town running errands, and I told him that our last stop was right

Around the corner, and then out of the blue, he started singing a song.

And I had never heard it before.

And I asked him, I said, what is that song?

And he said, well, that’s the song we used to sing when I was marching in the Army.

When we would march on base.

And so I had him sing it for me a couple of times. It was kind of cute, and I have a very nice memory of that. But I was just curious to know if anyone had maybe collected those songs, because I know that they sing when they march. And I was especially interested in the songs of the great generation because, you know, we have fewer and fewer of those soldiers around. And I just thought it’d be sad to lose that. So I didn’t know if somebody had maybe put a collection of those together.

Oh, great question, Teresa. Do you remember the song then? Actually, yes. Oh, will you sing it? I’m singing it for my family. Yeah, we’d love to hear it if you don’t mind singing it. Oh, no, that’d be fine. I’ll apologize in advance in case it offends anybody. But this is how it went. So he sang, around the corner and under a tree, a sergeant major proposed to me. Who would marry you? I would like to know, for every time I look at your face, it makes me want to go around the corner and under a tree. And it just keeps going.

That’s nice. Oh, my. That’s one of the cleanest of those songs I’ve ever heard. Yeah, there are quite a few of them that are pretty, pretty obscene. Yeah. You know, I don’t know of a collected work of these. I know a little bit of folklore work has been done. I’ve seen a few papers about this. There’s the odd recording here and there, some articles and stuff. But I don’t know of, like, any comprehensive, like, effort to collect all of them before they’re all gone. I do know that there’s plenty of them out there. But, man, that’s a really, these are cadence calls is what they’re known as. They’re Jody calls sometimes because Jody is the guy who’s at home sleeping with your girl when you’re out fighting wars, driving a Cadillac.

I’ve heard these a lot. They’re still sung, by the way, just so you know. They’re still sung in the military, usually the cleaner versions. I’ve heard them in Balboa Park here in San Diego, the sailors running time all the way up from the water up through the park and back around again. It’s really quite uplifting. It kind of makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. You kind of want to join in.

Yeah, I remember hearing a bunch of them when I was working as a newspaper reporter and following a soldier through basic training at Fort Knox. And boy, I mean, they tried to clean it up when the lady reporter was there, but I heard some pretty filthy stuff. I mean, it’s very creative. Don’t get me wrong. It’s very creative. But wow. But Grant, it surprises me that nobody’s gone and collected all those.

Well, that’s the best that I know. I mean, I’m not in the folklore business. If one of our listeners is, surely they will set us correct on that. But now is the time, probably. One thing you might be interested in, Teresa, is that these actually aren’t that old. The current kind of way that we think of these cadence calls, these songs for marching, really kind of came about during World War II. And we believe we know the guy who started it. Do you know this story?

Generally understood in the folklore business that his name was Willie Duckworth. Apparently in 1944, they were marching and somebody caught wind of this particular group that was singing the song. And Willie Duckworth was African-American. And so it’s a direct connection to the work songs used in the South that come from the slave tradition, which is really interesting. These songs that you would all sing together so that you had the timing right when you were working in the field. You had the timing right when you were working in the meals. You had the timing right when you were doing whatever. Machine gangs.

Yeah, if you didn’t have the timing right, it could mean an injury because somebody’s hammer was going to come down where your hand just was. Also, it makes the spirits lift and it makes the time pass. So it’s really, really interesting stuff. I get that. It’s just a very special memory for me. And he’s passed away now, but I think about all the great men and the great generation that we revere. And I would hate for some of that to be lost. It’s kind of a lost art, I guess. So maybe somebody will think about that. But I’ll always remember that moment when he sang that particular song out of the blue. And it’s a very special memory for me.

One of the things I would encourage you to do, there is a recording out there, a very early recording. I believe it’s called V Records. I might have that wrong, where they have a very early version of these cadence calls. It’s a clean version. And you can find it on YouTube and a couple other places. It sounds like it was done in a studio and not recorded in the field, but really, really interesting. Obviously, if somebody records this, it needs to be a book and it needs to be a video or at least an audio recording, right?

Absolutely. I hope grant proposals are being written as we speak. I hope so. That would be nice. Yes. Thank you so much, Teresa, for sharing this memory. Oh, I loved it. Thank you so much for hearing me out. Sure thing. Thank you. Thanks. Bye-bye.

All righty. Bye-bye. Actually, it’s called V-Disc. I’m looking for it from 1944. And it actually comes with some narration where they’re actually talking about the cadence calls and how they discover them. This is one of the ways that we know probably this is where this really got started in the American military. Very cool.

Yeah, VDISC, just the letter V-D-I-S-C. Okay. And look for the name Willie Duckworth and you’ll find it there. Willie Duckworth. That’s so cool. Well, bring us your linguistic heirlooms and share them with everybody else. 877-929-9673 is the number to call. Or send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Well, look at this. Glory June emailed us. You know, we spoke to her earlier about to run a Sandy. Oh, yeah. Meaning to sandbag somebody or to, like, interfere or trick them. Right. Confuse their plans. Bluff, yeah. And she says she thinks she figured out the film. The film was Action in Arabia from 1944. And in the scene, it turns out they were playing poker. So it all kind of comes together. Apparently, she’s now having a final time Googling this.

Oh, that’s great. And she gives high praise to librarians. She says there needs to be a curator for the internet. We agree, Glory June. That’s what we try to do, in part. Bring us your language questions, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Good morning. My name is Dan Anderson. I’m calling from Ravenna, Nebraska. Ooh, Ravenna, Nebraska. That is a lovely name. It is. That sounds like something from a fantasy novel. Well, I’ve been to Ravenna, Italy, but not Nebraska. Yes, it’s an Italian name, and all the streets in the city are pretty much Italian as well.

Oh, my goodness. That’s super cool. What’s on your mind? What’s your language question? Well, when I was growing up, my mother would always use this phrase, who was she from home? And she would use that phrase when she was talking usually to her other women friends about some acquaintance that they all knew. And that phrase was at a high level kind of asking what the woman’s maiden name was. But it was always a lot more complicated than that. You could never just give an answer and say that she was McLaughlin or a Christ or some other family name. It always involved a whole history of the woman’s family and her siblings and where she was from and all those things. And so I was wondering just how common that was. I didn’t know if my mom had just made it up or if it was something that was commonplace.

Well, Dan, I have a question for you. Did she have any Polish heritage at all? The town where she grew up was Polish, German, Bohemian. And where was it? It was Loop City. It was about 30 miles from Ravenna, right in the middle of Nebraska. Yeah, the reason I ask is because that same construction is a standard feature of Polish.

And you’ll hear that construction translated into English as, who is she from home, in communities that have a heavy Polish influence.

You see that a lot in Wisconsin.

And Michigan.

And Michigan.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In Polish, it’s like, zzodomu.

They would frequently refer to Loop City as the Polish capital of America.

There we go.

Yeah, the Polish is like, which is related to domestic and words like that in English.

I’m interested that it meant a lot more than just her name, though.

Yeah, you knew that when that question came out, you could pull out a pad of paper and you were going to get her entire history.

You were going to find out how everyone in the room knew her and where she went to school and what her family did, where their farm was located.

Wow.

Everything.

Everything.

And everybody was just quiet when the answers came because you knew that it was going to be a history lesson.

Oh, that is lovely.

Dan, thank you for sharing that with us.

Yes, you’re welcome.

Thank you, Dan, for your call.

Really appreciate it.

All right. Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

We should point out that from home is what we call a calc in linguistics.

C-A-L-Q-U-E.

Yes, C-A-L-Q-U-E.

It’s when you take a phrase from, a word or a phrase from another language and translate it literally into your own.

Like, for example, our term blue blood comes from Spanish sangre azul.

Interesting.

Blue blood.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

I ran into my friend Jeff Sanchez the other day at the grocery store,

And he’s a nurse, and I always ask him if he’s got any medical slang for me.

And he told me the latest one he’s thinking about these days is celestial discharge.

Celestial discharge. Is that somebody who dies?

It is indeed.

Yeah, it’s a thing, too.

That’s kind of nice.

It’s kind of beautiful, right?

I mean, for all the euphemisms we have for dying, that’s probably one of the nicer ones.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, yes, how are you?

My name is Timothy Wong, and hi, yes.

Well, great to have you, Timothy.

What’s up?

Thank you.

Yeah, I’m calling because I was with a friend a couple nights ago, and it’s going to sound a little weird, but I have a player piano.

And I was talking about how when I originally bought the player piano, it wasn’t working.

And I wanted to get it working, but I didn’t want to have it redone professionally.

So I was just going to Mickey Mouse the job and get it to work.

And he looked at me and made a really weird face about the word Mickey Mouse.

And he started making fun of me.

And I explained that my grampy was an electrician.

And he used to say that term all the time when he would just get something to work unofficially.

And he said I was using the term wrong.

He said you were using it wrong.

How would he have used to Mickey Mouse something?

He was saying that it didn’t exist at all.

And I was trying to explain to him that it was a term for unofficially fixing something, I guess.

I don’t know if that’s correct.

So Mickey Mouse is a verb?

I Mickey Moused it?

I guess.

I don’t know.

Have I been doing it wrong my whole life?

Kind of jerry-rigging, right?

I guess I Mickey Mouse the job, or the job is a Mickey Mouse job.

Your friend is wrong.

I guess that’s the best word to use.

In a word.

Mickey Mouse is an adjective and a verb to mean something less than good. It has been around for a long time. And I know that’s a really broad definition, but in the slang world, it has gone a bunch of different ways since Mickey Mouse first appeared in 1928.

By the 1930s, late 1930s, we find it popping up in jazz to mean really kind of crummy music like you might find in a cartoon because jazz musicians kind of look down on the music that was used in the cartoons.

And you also see it pop up by the 1940s to just refer to a timid person or a foolish person, somebody who is like not worthy of your respect.

And all of this comes back to either the way the cartoons were made or the type of activities that Mickey Mouse himself got up to.

And this is really relevant to your condition.

If you watch those old comic shorts, what you’ll find is Mickey Mouse does like the impossible.

He does these things with cartoon physics and these things with cartoon situations that could not happen in real life.

He cobbles stuff together.

It’s very kludgy.

It’s a Rube Goldbergian, so to speak.

It’s just kind of ridiculous what he tries to do.

It’s not until much later, when Mickey Mouse kind of was an established figure in the comic world,

That he became more of like an ordinary character who wasn’t so foolish and nonsensical.

And much later, Mickey Mouse becomes this almost revered figure of common sense,

And loses almost all of his foolishness.

But in the beginning, he was not all there, so to speak.

Okay.

Yeah, so you’re right.

And the great thing is, like, you can tell your friend we have a solid 80 or 90 years of history of the verb being used very similar to the way that you used it.

That’s a long time.

Yeah.

And I love that you used it in a musical context.

And also it pops up really strongly in jazz to refer to like a, you know, a Mickey Mouse.

Yeah, totally.

Mickey Mouse music was just kind of like not good, done by people who weren’t very professional or not very skilled or for the lowest amount of money in the least amount of time, that sort of thing.

Yeah, I think of classes that have Mickey Mouse coursework.

You know, people complaining that, oh, it’s just a Mickey Mouse course.

You know, I’m just having to do this stuff basically to complete the course,

But there’s no creativity involved.

It’s just like…

Yeah, so the verb and the adjective both have kind of spread out on this big tree of slang

Where Mickey Mouse has taken a wide variety of derogatory meanings,

And yours is just one of them.

Oh, wow. Okay, that’s fascinating.

Yeah, right? Well, there you go, Timothy.

Take that to your friend and say, nanny, nanny, boo, boo.

I’m going to. I’m really excited that I was in the right and I wasn’t wrong.

That’s embarrassing.

All right. Take care, dude.

All right. You as well. Have a good day. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

You know, I never thought about it, but in whitewater rafting,

They’re the terms river left and river right.

Why?

Because it’s the right and left-hand sides as you face downstream.

It’s sort of like stage left and stage right.

Rive gauche, rive droit?

Yeah.

Never thought about that before.

Maybe not.

Right?

Yeah.

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This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten,

Director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chaneski and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye. you