Wolf Whistle (episode #1437)

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.

One of the greatest novels in modern American literature was originally titled Catch 18.

Oh, Catch 22.

Yes.

Oh, nice.

Yes, it turns out that there was another novel about World War II published about the same time, Mila 18, and so author Joseph Heller changed Catch 18 to Catch 22.

Smart.

I have a couple more original working titles of books, so let’s see if you can guess the new title that went on to become famous.

Bring it on, lady.

All right. Here’s the first one.

The original title of this 1937 novel was Something That Happened.

The Sun Also Rises? I don’t know. I have no idea.

Good guess.

I’ll give you a hint. John Steinbeck later changed the name after reading a poem by Robert Burns about a farmer who accidentally destroys the home of Little Mouse when plowing his field.

That’s nice. I will love him and hold him and call him George.

Hey, you do a good Lenny.

Yep, from the Robert Burns poem with the line, the best laid schemes of mice and men gang-aftically.

Here’s another one.

This 1949 novel was originally called The Last Man in Europe, and it depicted a world gone awry 35 years into the future.

Dun-dun-dun! 1984.

Exactly. Do the math. 1984.

Well, later in the show, we’re going to be talking about books that we’re recommending to people as holiday gifts, and we’ll talk some more about working titles of books that eventually got discarded.

We’re taking your language calls at 877-929-9673, and we’re reading your emails at words@waywordradio.org, and we’re bumping up your tweets with big fat hearts on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Marta from Birmingham, Michigan.

Hi Marta, how are you doing?

Hi Marta.

Good, how are you guys?

Excellent.

What’s going on?

So I have a question about a word to fit a particular emotion.

My good friend and colleague recently got a new job, and we’re incredibly excited for her.

It’s going to be a great opportunity, but we’re also a little sad that she’s leaving.

And we were trying to find a word to describe that.

We had done some research and found things like bittersweet and rueful, but that doesn’t seem to capture the genuine excitement that we feel for her as she’s going forward.

It kind of conjures an image of someone sort of gazing out a window as it’s raining outside, and it just seems sort of melancholy.

And so what I was wondering, if there’s a word either in English or in another language that captures kind of being simultaneously really, really excited for somebody, but also a little bit sad as well.

Okay. So you’re just a little sad, but really excited.

Yes.

Kind of selfishly sad.

Like 80% excited and 20% sad.

Okay. That’s useful.

Yeah. Interesting about bittersweet.

I had a newspaper editor who would never let us use the word bittersweet in a story.

Why not?

He just felt it was terribly cliched.

A little bit.

That it really didn’t say much.

Bittersweet is probably the most appropriate choice and the one people most likely have heard of.

I’ve seen people online use yay boo as an interjection.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

How do they spell that?

Y-A-Y hyphen B-O-O or no hyphen, but yay boo, which is when you say, yeah, so I got my new car, but I immediately got a new scratch on the side door.

It’s like, yay, boo. So this is a little bit of a yay, boo to me.

I like yay, boo very much. I was reaching to other languages because I can’t think of anything else in English.

There’s a great expression in German that translates as with a laughing and a crying eye, which I kind of like. I like that. That’s great.

Yeah, that’s the kind of thing that you would say if you’re sending a kid off to college. You’re proud.

The other thing that I’m thinking about, Marta, is that there is, I don’t know much of modern Greek at all, but there is a term in modern Greek, harmolipi, which is spelled C-H-A-R-M-O-L-Y-P-E, harmolipi.

Okay. What does it mean?

It means bitter joy, sweet sadness, that kind of thing.

You see that among, say, Greek Orthodox Christians when they’re talking about the ramp up in Holy Week, you know, that there’s a bittersweetness to it because you’re sad because of the crucifixion, but anticipating the resurrection.

But you can also use that at, say, your big fat Greek wedding, you know, where you’re sad that your son or daughter is going off, but happy for them too.

Charmalipi.

Charmalipi.

Charmalipi.

That’s nice.

Yeah.

I don’t know.

Marta, do any of those appeal to you or sound like something that you and your friends could actually use?

I think yay, boo, is a really good one.

I sort of like that because there is the definite sort of the yay kind of captures the really excitement and elated feeling.

And boo is sad, but not too sad.

So I think that fits kind of the 80 percent, 20 percent sort of dichotomy that we had of the emotions right there.

But I sort of like all of them.

Yeah. Yeah. Great.

Yeah, you could probably turn that into any part of speech, too.

Well, congratulations to your friend, and I hope you all can stay in touch.

Great.

Thanks, Marta.

Thank you so much for your help.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

I bet our listeners would have ideas on this, too.

Yeah.

It must be a word, right?

What do you use for happy and sad together that’s not bittersweet?

Is there an adjective or some other way of expressing it in your family or your workplace?

Yeah.

Tell us about it.

Call us at 877-929-9673.

You can email us. That address is words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter at WayWord.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Cole from La Jolla, California.

Hi, Cole. What’s up?

I called in to ask today about a word.

I was working at a political kind of thing a couple months back, and we used this word canvassing to talk about the process of going door-to-door and knocking on everybody’s door and talking to a bunch of people.

And it was always confusing to me because I didn’t know how canvas fit into the equation because it didn’t really have anything to do with canvas as far as I could know about it.

You weren’t wearing canvas shoes or anything like that, right?

No, unfortunately, not that day at least.

Yeah. And boy, that’s hard work. A couple of lifetimes ago, I did some canvassing and I have never been as tired in my life, Cole, as when I got off a shift.

And it’s just exhausting, right?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, canvas is a confusing word, and the etymology is kind of confusing, murky as well.

But our best guess is that it has to do with using canvas to sift something out, like, I don’t know, grain or something like that, sifting through canvas.

Yeah, the Oxford English Dictionary has an etymological note to that regard, but it’s kind of ambivalent as to whether or not that’s truly the origin.

Another theory that’s been proposed is that maybe you’ve seen this in old movies where at the end of the game, they would take the hero of the game and toss them up in the air where all the teammates would hold the edge of a blanket or a piece of canvas and throw the person up.

Sometimes it was done as a prank, but sometimes it was done in celebration.

That’s also called canvassing. And that kind of buffeting about over the centuries since like the 1500s has had a bunch of different kind of transformations where it meant to shake or to shatter or it meant to thrash a person or to buffet a person, to pull to pieces.

And eventually to shake out is in a form of discussion, to like really thrash out a discussion.

So you can slowly see this transformation.

So I’m imagining that once we started to have a political canvas, it was getting to talk to somebody about their beliefs and like really hashing it out.

Where do their beliefs match your candidates’ beliefs?

Scrutinizing, examining.

Yeah, Shakespeare used it that way in Henry VI Part I.

I’ll canvas thee in thy broad cardinal’s hat.

Nice.

It’s a threat.

I’ll canvas thee.

You’re going to toss him up in the air with a blanket?

I had no idea. I thought I might have had to do something with carrying your own canvas bags or something.

Oh, yeah.

But that’s way more interesting.

Yeah, and it’s even, as you know, in politics, there’s a bunch of other kinds of canvas in American English, all related to politics, but generally about encountering somebody else or bringing your own point of view to the table or just finding out what their opinions are.

Yeah, shaking things out in one way or another.

Yeah, figuratively or literally.

Yeah.

Cool?

That’s really cool. Thank you so much for that.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Cole. Bye-bye.

All right.

What’s on your mind in terms of language?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi.

Sue, and I’m from Milton, Wisconsin.

Okay, great.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Well, my question isn’t concerning a word, really.

It’s concerning a tone.

And I’ll just, I’ll show you the tone.

Thank you.

Did that go through all right?

Yeah, you did a wolf whistle, right?

Oh, is that what it’s called?

I had no idea, but I want to know the origin of it and whatever you can tell me about it.

The origin of the wolf whistle.

Wow.

That’s a hard one.

And is that a universal thing?

Is it universal?

Or is it just an American thing?

I know it’s at least in the Anglophone world.

It’s very American.

I’m trying to think what countries I’ve heard it in.

This is a hard one.

It is pretty much outsider expertise, but let me toss you a few facts and see if they’ll give you enough information where you can do some of your own digging, all right?

Okay.

We have accounts in Roman writing of people talking about whistling at women.

Now, I don’t know how reliable they are, and I’m not going to go into who said what, because sometimes the translations aren’t the same.

Some people say it was a hissing at women.

Some people say it was a whistling at women.

But we don’t know if it’s the same whistle.

The earliest use of that whistle that I can find is actually not that early.

It’s from a Tex Avery cartoon in 1943 when there is actually a wolf sitting at a table going, “Whew, whew,” at somebody that he finds very attractive.

So that’s actually about the time that we have the earliest uses in print of the term wolf whistle.

But I’m pretty sure that that two-toned whistle predated the term wolf whistle.

If you go to Wikipedia, you know, I’m ambivalent about Wikipedia.

I have many conflicting opinions about Wikipedia.

This is an entry that I would not pay attention to.

Wikipedia claims that the wolf whistle, that two-tone, comes from the Bosn’s whistle on a boat.

It suggests that it means everyone come to attention or I don’t even know.

Watch out.

Watch out.

Take a look at that.

Take a look at that. But I have heard from sailors that that two-tone whistle does not represent anything like that in the seafaring community at all.

It’s just like that whistle doesn’t have that meaning.

Now, that doesn’t mean it didn’t come from it, but the evidence is really slim that it ever came at all from a whistle.

The guy who blows the whistle to announce the captain is coming aboard or what have you.

But it’s fraught with meaning, right?

Yeah.

I mean, it means something very specific.

Yeah, I mean, it’s…

Right. And I’ve given that as much as I’ve gotten it, so…

Fun thing. All right. Well, thanks, guys. I love your show, and thanks for having me on.

Our pleasure. Thank you for calling. Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Okay, Grant, see if you can guess this book.

Sure.

Early on, the title for this work was The Year 1805.

But by the time this extremely long novel was published in 1869, it had a different three-word title.

Is it a Russian author?

Yes.

War and Peace.

War and Peace.

Exactly.

Nice.

By Tolstoy.

You know what Tolstoy means in Russian?

No.

Fat.

Really?

The Tolstoy family.

Yeah, it was the fat.

The fat family.

Yeah, the fats.

Because it sounds kind of regal to me.

Yeah, fat.

We’d love to hear your book recommendations.

Send them to us at words@waywordradio.org.

Or tell us on the phone, 877-929-9673.

Stick around as we talk more about language 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 here he is, John Chaneski, our quiz guy.

Hi, John.

Hey, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

How are you guys?

How are you doing?

Doing well.

What’s up?

I’m doing great, thanks.

As you guys know, except for when it comes to puzzles, I am as dumb as a box of bricks.

No.

I don’t have the brains God gave lettuce.

In fact…

No.

No, that’s true.

The other day I was listening to a TED Talk about ecology, and I thought, wow, that’s cool.

They have an entire area of study that focuses on haunted houses and scaring people.

Ecology.

I’m so, so dumb.

Now, how dumb are you?

Let’s hear the definitions of other ologies I’ve come across.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

Now, remember, I love radio, so I hear most of these rather than read them.

Okay.

All right.

It’s the study of narrow ways or tracks made by continuous walking.

Rhetology?

Pathology.

Pathology.

Yes.

Pathology.

Got it.

Some of these are actual ologies.

Some of them are just words that end in ology, frankly.

Let’s see.

The next one.

It’s the study of tightropes.

Not tightrope walkers, just tightropes and other things that are stretched to the limit.

Tautology.

Tautology.

Oh, tautology.

Nice.

Tautology.

Very good.

This is the study of small programs that run on your smartphone.

Apology.

Apology, yes, you could.

How about this?

It’s the study of driver’s licenses, passports, fingerprints, anything that proves who you are.

Ideology.

Yes, ideology.

Oh, boy.

It’s the study of comparatively thick cuts of beef.

Stacology?

Rostology?

Ropology?

Phileology?

Phileology?

Philology?

No, no.

It’s actually the study of the weather.

I know this word.

Meteorology.

Meteorology.

Meteorology.

Sorry, I apologize for a few sleeper.

Yeah, we want an apology from you.

Apology for that one, yes.

It’s the study of the patella, the anterior cruciate ligament, and all the related bones, muscles, and other structures.

Neology.

Neology is right.

Very good.

It’s the study of people who go to shake your hand and then pull away and smooth down their hair.

Psychology.

Psychology.

Those jerks.

They need to be studied.

Finally, it’s the study of leave-taking.

See ya.

Biology.

Biology.

Biology.

See you later, ology.

Goodbye, ology quiz.

Bye.

Thanks, John.

That’s pretty great.

Thank you, guys.

Goodbye.

Talk to you next week.

I’m going back to school.

All right.

Cheers.

Biology.

This is a show about words and language and a lot of things that are only a little bit related.

Give us a call if you want to talk about them.

877-929-9673.

Email is words@waywordradio.org.

And you can talk to us on Twitter at the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, guys.

This is Steve Tinsley from Dallas.

Hi, Steve.

How you doing?

Hi, Steve.

Doing good, guys.

What’s up?

What’s on your mind?

I’ve noticed my teenage kids using a very familiar word in a way that’s really strange to me.

So a few weeks ago, I overheard my 17-year-old daughter talking to some friends.

And they used the word basic to refer to some other kids.

And it seemed like they were saying kind of vapid or something like that, but it seemed like they were talking about sort of the cool kids.

And my kids are nerds because, you know, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Own it.

Yeah.

Nerd pride.

But it was like a mildly disparaging term, but not like really mean.

Okay.

So it seems like this ought to have some sort of origin, but my kids have no idea where it came from.

So I was curious.

Do you guys know where this is from?

Basic.

I can tell you a few things about it.

Like a lot of slang, its true exact origins are lost to time, but I can give you a bit of a time frame, talk about its arc to popularity and its eventual fall.

Basic came around in 2005, 2006 when it started to show up in hip-hop.

And you can actually find it on some Urban Dictionary posts about that time.

You can find it in a few blogs at the time.

It was kind of pre-Twitter, actually.

But it didn’t really catch on until it started to be used by bigger artists in their lyrics, the kind of stuff you’d hear on the radio, whether it was getting a lot of play.

And by 2013, the term broadened just a little bit.

It kind of now meant, vapid is a really good word for it, but it’s kind of like you did all the standard things that anyone would do in order to be caught up with fashion.

And it started to be really kind of gendered and referred to women mostly, and not so much men.

Yeah, that seems right.

And there was another term that came out of it, which a lot of people are probably shouting at the radio.

I can’t, I don’t think I really want to say it, but it’s basic B, if you can fill in the rest of the letters after B.

Okay, a little alliteration there.

Yeah, the derogatory term for a woman that’s really widespread and also used for a female dog.

I think I got you.

Right?

Okay, so vapid in that she’s conforming to what everybody else is doing, not a mind of her own, that kind of thing?

Yeah, so it’s sort of like the women wearing the Uggs and the Han Solo vest and carrying the pumpkin spice latte.

You know what I’m saying?

And with the same sunglasses and the same earrings and their lip liner done the same way.

The Hello Kitty.

All the same, right?

Traveling in packs, all basic.

This does seem right.

Yeah, that does conform to the way they’re using it.

Yeah, so once it started to be gendered, it started to really be more vicious and started to be less just kind of descriptive and more pejorative.

But, you know, it kind of burnt out.

2013, 2014 was the heyday for basic and basic B.

And now the term is well on the downswing.

I mean, it’s still being used, but it’s far past its trend peak.

That’s interesting. They use it so natively that it’s like they don’t even have any idea that it wasn’t used before.

How old are they?

They are 13 and 17.

13 and 17. Okay. That’s fine. They’ll probably continue to use it the rest of their lives.

Those are the ages when slang kind of sticks. They’ll be 50 using basic.

Yep. It seems a lot like yuppie used to seem, or preppy almost.

Preppy is close.

You know, preppy for me growing up as a child of the 80s was popped collars and polo shirts and feathered hair and certain kinds of peg jeans.

Yeah, but that’s still sort of mindless conformity.

Well, Steve, something tells me that your daughters are not basic.

They are not.

They’re complex.

They don’t wear the Han Solo vest.

They wear the whole Han Solo outfit.

Really?

Oh, really?

With the blaster as well?

Oh, yes.

Okay, they are nerds.

Oh, yes.

You have no idea.

Nice.

We have our Star Wars costumes made for the premiere.

You have your take.

Oh, nice.

Outstanding.

Well, may the force be with you all.

Okay.

Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Steve.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Talk to us on Facebook.

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Grant, here’s another book title question for you.

This novel of manners was published in 1813.

The author originally titled her book First Impressions.

She later changed it to something following the same alliterative pattern of the title of a book she published two years earlier.

Sense and Sensibility?

That was the earlier book.

No, it was earlier.

So the next one is, I’m blanking on it.

Help me out here.

Here’s another hint.

She supposedly borrowed the title from a novel by an author that she admired, Francis Burney, and the passage that inspired her goes, remember, if to pride and prejudice you owe your miseries so wonderfully is good and evil balanced that to pride and prejudice you will also owe their termination.

Pride and prejudice.

Indeed.

Jane Austen.

Yes, indeed.

We’re taking language questions at 877-929-9673, or send us your book questions to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

Good morning. Who is this?

This is Rosella Oxner in Ashland, Wisconsin.

Hello, Rosella. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What’s up?

Well, I actually just moved back here from Monroe, and while I was in Monroe, the senior citizen menu listed a Cobb salad.

And I seem to remember back in my home ec days that Cobb was a variety of lettuce.

Whether that’s accurate or not, I don’t know.

So I was expecting plain lettuce.

But what I got tasted like a chef’s salad.

And everybody seemed to think that terms were interchangeable, possibly.

Since I started telling people I was going to call you guys, a friend mentioned that she thought it was for a chef at the Brown Derby whose name was Cobb.

Or possibly he cobbled together a salad.

Cobbled together. Very good.

But in any case, it sounds like you got a salad with a whole lot more calories than you were expecting.

Is that right?

Well, that wasn’t the issue because I love it.

Oh, okay.

There was a lot of variety of taste.

I am blind, so I couldn’t see that.

Okay.

Well, you’re right that there is a variety of lettuce called Cobb.

Okay.

That name is not that common.

I think it’s more often called Bibb lettuce.

Oh, all right.

Yeah, a lot of times with plants and foods, I’ve written books about both of these, a lot of times the names overlap and different people call the same food by different names or use the same name for different foods.

But there is a variety of Cobb lettuce.

But you’re right.

Your friend is more on track with what most people understand to be Cobb salad, which may have been invented by a guy named Bob Cobb in the 1930s at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood.

One way that some people remember all the ingredients in a Cobb salad, although they’re often interchangeable, they often vary, but one way to remember it, there’s an acronym for EAT COB, E-A-T-C-O-B-B, which stands for egg, avocado, tomato, chicken, onion, bacon, and blue cheese.

Are we getting hungry, Grant?

Yes, I am.

And that sounds like we have a restaurant here that has both Cobb and Chef salad.

And that sounds like what I’ve heard they have in the Cobb salad.

Interesting.

How is the chef salad different then?

It doesn’t have the avocado.

Okay.

And I’m not sure about what else.

It’s more rolled up ham and turkey meat and cut small.

That’s kind of ingredients, yeah.

And croutons in the chef salad and not in the Cobb salad, right?

Probably, yeah.

But we’re at the point where however many years on, 80, 90 years on, and the Cobb salad is used generically for any really hearty salad with a ton of things in it.

It’s served in a giant bowl.

Yeah, yeah, whatever you have on hand.

Yeah, so does that help?

That helps a lot.

All right.

Well, we appreciate your calling, Rosella.

Thank you so much, Rosella.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bon appétit.

You’re listening to Way With Words.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Colin, and I’m from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hi, Colin.

What’s up?

Hey, I’ve got a fairly personal question for you today.

Oh, we don’t talk about that on the air.

Oh, well, it’s personal to everyone out there whose name is Colin, because it’s about my name.

Oh, about your name Colin. Okay.

Mm—

Do tell.

And that’s Colin with one L, which is also very important, as I think most Collins would attest to.

For my entire life, I’ve grown up hearing my name pronounced colon, like with an O.

But I have never in my life ever met someone whose name is Colin.

And the only Colin I know of is Colin Powell, which personally is not someone I want to really be that associated with.

But I’ve met tons of Collins in my life, and if there’s one thing Collins like to do, they like to, I don’t know, they enjoy meeting other Collins, and they always have to ask, are you a Colin with one L or a Colin with two Ls?

I’m a Colin with one, and I’ve always wondered why it is they call me Colin sometimes.

And it finally kind of came to the point where I was like, I need to know the answer to this, when I graduated from college a few months ago, and the person reading the names of each graduate pronounced my first name wrong and then went on to pronounce the other three Colins graduating in my class all colon also.

Oh, no. It’s your college graduation.

I’m a college graduation.

So you’ve got a little problem here, Colin.

Can I ask how old you are if you just graduated college in your 20s?

I’m 23.

23.

All right.

So your problem, the way I see it, is that your entire life, the number one COLIN in the country has been a public figure.

Colin Powell has been a public figure since the 1980s when he became the national security advisor.

And then he moved into higher positions and became even more of a national figure as we had various wars.

And he was interviewed on a zillion TV shows and spoke before Congress and so forth.

And he spells his name the same way.

He spells his name the same way.

So that’s one part of the problem, maybe even the larger part.

The other part of the problem is we kind of learn intuitively that when a word has a double L, it’s probably not going to be a long vowel before the double L, like a double consonant.

So if you have consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, that first vowel is probably going to be long.

And I think this is part of what’s happening with your name.

People, you know, are just saying, okay, logically, most words of this consonant, vowel, consonant, construction, that vowel would be long.

And so they’re doing a long vowel.

So that’s another part of it, a smaller part.

Another part of it is there are obviously all the jokes about C-O-L-O-N, both the part of your body and the punctuation mark.

And those two colons are far more common than your name, too.

And so you’re outnumbered nine ways to Sunday.

Got it.

And you’re basically fighting an uphill battle.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s too bad.

Punctuation, body parts, and famous figures.

Yeah, you’re just not going to win this one.

And here’s something that you should know.

In 1991, William Sapphire, he knew a lot of politicians, and he wrote about this very question.

He got a letter from somebody who has your name who had the same kind of anger at the mispronunciation.

And so he actually talked to people whose names are C-O-L-I-N who pronounced them colon and said, what up with that?

Only in his William Sapphire way.

And he has this really fantastic quote in this newspaper column that he made out of those interviews where Colin Powell is talking to Colin Kelly and saying, oh, you’ve been mispronouncing your name your whole life, too, just like me.

And so Colin Powell was very aware or is very aware that his first name is not pronounced by him the way most Collins pronounce their name.

Right. Like in Ireland. Right. It’s Irish. Right.

So he’s aware of the damage he’s doing to you and all the other Collins.

Maybe Colin Firth can help out.

There we go.

You know, or Colin Creep.

Colin Firth should just become more famous and swing the tide the other way for you.

He should be appointed national security advisor.

Maybe that would help.

Colin, what’s your middle name?

It’s Ingram, which was actually also mispronounced.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it was pronounced Ingram.

I don’t know why they would mispronounce that, but yeah, I-N-G-R-A-M.

At the same college graduation ceremony, they mispronounced your first and middle name?

Oh, yes. Yep.

Oh, gosh.

Are you sure you graduated? Maybe it doesn’t count.

Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, no one named Colin Ingram graduated, so.

Whoa. Did they get your last name right, at least?

No, they didn’t even get that one right.

No, no, come on. Are you serious?

No, I’m not even joking, and that is a much more common one for people to mispronounce.

It’s U-L-I-N, which is spelled U-L-I-N, and it’s often mispronounced U-L-I-N or U-L-I-N.

Oh, no.

Man.

You’re just not winning the name game.

Not winning the name game.

Oh, my gosh.

He’s going to call us next week having changed his name to John Allen Smith and just solve it all.

You had a hat trick there or a mortarboard trick.

My gosh.

Well, you sound like you have a great sense of humor about it.

Oh, yeah. I’m just so used to it.

And I think I have a feeling a lot of Collins are.

I bet we’ll hear from a lot of Collins.

Don’t you bet, Grant?

Yeah, definitely. And we invite it.

And a lot of Ulan’s and a lot of Ingram’s.

This is the new Todd Scott.

We’ll get a lot of Collins made for a long time.

Yes.

Thank you for taking this space to vent your angst at this.

All right?

Absolutely.

All right. Take care now. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

I would be interested to hear from Collins in their 50s and 60s, who maybe didn’t, or 70s, who maybe weren’t called colon.

Yeah, who weren’t called colon until colon cow came along, maybe?

Yeah, that’s my theory.

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Something I learned on the internet, in some legal circles, a peppercorn is a small payment.

So let’s say that you’re going to buy my car, right?

But I don’t want to charge you a lot of money, but I need to charge you something just for the sake of the deal.

I charge you a dollar.

That’s a peppercorn.

That’s a peppercorn.

Peppercorn payment.

Very small amount.

Not market value.

That word makes my day.

Thank you, Grant.

My pleasure.

Glad to help.

We should do a radio show together.

Make our day.

Call us.

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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 this is the show where we make some recommendations about some books you might want to give as gifts.

The one that I’m reading right now that I’m really enjoying is called Library and Unquiet History by Matthew Battles.

It was published a few years ago, but it was just reissued with a new afterword.

I would describe it as sort of a portrait of libraries throughout history, a biography of the library.

It’s this beautifully evocative description of libraries from as far back as Alexandria in Egypt, the Jewish library in the Vilna ghetto during World War II, to the great British Museum Library today.

It’s just sort of a gorgeous evocation of what libraries themselves are like, as I said, a kind of a portrait.

And he talks in very poetic language about the physicality of libraries in a way that I really like.

He has worked at the Harvard Widener Library.

And listen to this description of what a library is like there during a semester.

He says, the people who shelve the books in the Widener talk about the library’s breathing.

At the start of the term, the stacks exhale books in great swirling clouds.

At the end of term, the library inhales and the books fly back.

Oh, nice.

You know what I’m talking about, right?

One more passage I have to share with you that I know you’ll appreciate because it’s just really sensuous.

He’s talking about being in a library and the contradictions that you face, just the feeling of being in a library.

He says, as the reader gropes the stacks, lifting books and testing their heft, appraising the fall of letter forms on the title page, scrutinizing marks left by other readers, the more elusive knowledge itself becomes.

All that remains unknown seems to beckon from among the covers, between the lines.

In the library, the reader is wakened from the dream of communion with a single book, startled into a recognition of the word’s materiality by the sheer number of bound volumes, by the sound of pages turning, covers rubbing, by the rank smell of books gathered together in vast numbers.

Of course, the experience of the physicality of the book is strongest in the large libraries, where the accumulated weight of written words seems to exert a gravity all its own.

You know that feeling, Grant, when you’re in a library and you hear people reading all around you and turning those pages and you just think, there is no way I’ll ever read all of these books.

No, impossible.

I could stand here and not absorb it, right?

Yes.

Stand here and feel it, but I couldn’t stand here and have it all.

Yeah, and it’s such a mix of feelings.

You’ve got access to so much, but you’re human and finite, and you’ll never be able to embrace all of that.

What’s the book again?

The book again is called Library in Unquiet History by Matthew Battles.

Sounds fantastic.

I have two book series to recommend, and they’re connected in a way.

In my house, we have started reading with my son the C.S. Lewis books, The Narnia Chronicles.

Okay, he’s nine now?

He’s eight and a half.

He’ll be nine next year.

Okay.

And what we’ve done is started chronologically with the story.

So we didn’t read them in the order they were published.

We read them in the order of the events inside the book.

So we started with The Magician’s Nephew.

And this is about a young boy named Diggory and his friend Polly.

And they make it to another world.

And they have adventures.

They meet Aslan the lion.

And a whole bunch of things happen.

And we’re going to move on to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,

Which is the one that most people know.

And we’ll read the rest of the books in the series, too.

Now, these are all published in the 1950s.

They have a little bit of the tinge of the era, but I think that they hold up remarkably well.

And then the series that I want to connect them to, because I think I see a strong inspiration there, is the adult series The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

And these books, too, have people leaving the real world and going to the magical world through magical means.

And they also involve a little bit of kind of a dark version of Hogwarts, where they go to a school called Break bills.

And stuff is a little more pedestrian, a little more tedious, a little more ordinary, but yet still magical.

And these are obviously really adult books.

They have adult language and adult themes, adult situations.

But the parallels there and even the allegories there between the two series are so strong that I think that any adult that enjoyed the Narnia books.

As a child would really enjoy the Magician books by Lev Grossman as an adult. Anyway,

So that’s Lev Grossman’s series, The Magicians. There’s, I think, three or four books now.

And also C.S. Lewis’ The Narnia Chronicles.

Well, what book has grabbed you lately?

We’d love to hear about it.

You can email us at words@waywordradio.org

Or give us a call.

That number is 877-929-9673.

If you can’t wait to talk with us,

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And you can always hit us up on Twitter at Wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is John Zirania,

And I am calling from Big South Fork National Rec Area

In north-central Tennessee.

Oh, yes. Big South Fork. Welcome.

I have a question about the evolution of language in humans and the evolution of language in animals.

A long time ago, I’m a pilot.

A long time ago when I was building my career, I was flying a little freight plane out in Burlington, Vermont.

And I was staying on a farm.

And on this farm, they had ducks and geese.

And when I’d come home, I’d observe that when the ducks were near these geese, the ducks would honk like the geese.

And when the ducks were more than, say, 30, 40, 50 feet away from these geese, they would quack like ducks.

And initially I thought I was losing my mind.

So I had my fiancé at the time come on over and visit with me, and she noticed the same thing.

So my question is, are there bilingual ducks?

And how did language evolve?

Is there a continuum in language from animals to humans?

Wow, that’s a big question.

Let’s break this down.

And I kind of want to take the language evolution out of it because that’s not what is really happening here.

It is just the natural ability to learn that animals have, just like humans have.

It’s a little more primitive than ours, but they do do it.

There have been scientific studies where they have trained birds of one species to use the alarm signals of another bird species to run for their lives, to hide or flee when they believe there’s danger.

And it was a pretty decent study where they had like a fake predator flying overhead numerous times.

And then species A made their alarm call and species B heard it.

And then in the future, they kind of recreated this experiment and discovered those birds would indeed hide most of them.

And we also have seen information where monkeys can learn to recognize bird signals as warnings.

You know, there’s a predator nearby.

So there’s really consistent scientific data that show that animals can learn from other animals.

But they’re not picking it up as language.

They’re picking it up the same way that you might say, I have noticed that when there is lightning in the sky, rain soon follows.

It’s that sort of knowledge where you’re seeing a series of events and learning through practice that something is about to happen.

So they’re not saying, oh, now I can speak vervet monkey.

It’s nothing like that at all.

I’ve seen studies about that involving killer whales and dolphins in captivity as well.

Yeah.

But just give them the credit for learning the signals of another species, and that’s kind of cool and on its own, right, John?

So they’re not exactly—

Oh, yeah, that’s amazing.

For a duck especially.

Yeah, so we’re not talking bilingual ducks.

No, not really. Now, there’s nothing to say that certain species of birds that have mimicry as part of their life, like the mockingbirds, for example, can learn the calls of other birds.

But there’s not a lot of evidence that they’re using that for any other reason than just to attract the mate of their own species, not necessarily the mates of another species.

That’s interesting. So when the ducks were honking like geese, they were still trying to attract other ducks, even though they were using goose calls.

I don’t know about that particular circumstance, but they were hanging out with geese, so they were behaving like geese.

I mean, you can sometimes see cats that are raised with puppy litters behave a little like a puppy because that’s normal to them.

So some things that we learn as animals, some humans or animals, are hardwired, and some things are learned from our environment.

So I’m not surprised that ducks and geese should start to interact.

They’re incredibly similar species with similar needs and similar wants.

Yeah, you know, I have an example that goes beyond that, too.

Again involving ducks, but then with goats.

I raise goats, chickens, and I’ve got some ducks on my property.

And actually, I have a goat that can call to a duck.

And when a goat makes a specific bleep, and I’m not going to try to imitate the bleep,

The duck comes running.

Nice.

That’s also pretty fascinating.

What?

Yeah, it’s a nice explanation.

But again, it’s not language, though, right?

It’s Pavlovian almost.

Yeah, it’s trained behavior more than it is, like,

The natural ability to acquire the language of another species.

Yeah, you know, I’m not going to knock it.

That’s how I communicate half the time.

That’s outstanding, my friend.

All right, so I hope we’ve helped a little bit in answering your questions.

That was extremely helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it, John.

Take care now.

All right.

I appreciate your time.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Grant, here’s another quiz question about a book title.

The original title of this book, which was published in 1954, was Strangers from Within.

And I will tell you that the author and publisher then went through 18 different titles before settling on a four-word title.

The title is a reference to Beelzebub, which is a name for the devil.

I don’t know.

It’s going to need more on that one.

I have no idea.

Okay.

Beelzebub is from Hebrew that probably means Lord of Flies.

Oh.

Lord of the Flies.

Isn’t that something?

It was originally called Strangers from Within.

And I love that this title and Catch-22 and some of the others are so ensconced in English

That they become idiomatic all on their own, even sometimes disconnected from the novel.

Well said, yeah.

Especially with Catch-22.

That’s just a thing that many people don’t even realize was a book.

Exactly.

Yeah, Strangers from Within.

It just doesn’t have the same ring as Lord of the Flies.

No, but maybe it would have.

Maybe it would have had it been.

Had that been the title.

Who knows?

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Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

This is Diane.

I’m calling you from Midland, Texas, where football is the state religion.

Well, welcome, Diane.

Welcome.

How are you doing?

Hi, it’s good to talk to you both.

Hey, before I ask you my question, I wanted to say hi to my friend David.

He told me about your show, and he listens to it faithfully.

So I know he’ll listen to this.

Hi, David.

Hi, David.

I have actually two questions for you.

It’s about a linguistic phenomenon that I ran across some years ago when I was studying linguistics.

And it’s a fascinating phenomenon, I think.

What it is, is words that begin with the letter combination S-N tend to be negative words.

And a list of examples would be snide, snarl, snark, sneer, snot and snake if you don’t like runny noses or reptiles.

And my personal favorite is snallygaster.

That’s a mythical monster that lives in Maryland, and I’m not making that up either.

And so my two questions for you are, first of all, I know there’s a name for this phenomenon because I knew it once, and I can’t remember what it is, and so I wanted to know if you know the name for the phenomenon.

And then the second one’s kind of an opinion question.

I’d like to know what you think causes that.

Why are SN words negative?

I have my own theory, but I’d like to know what you think.

Well, what’s your theory?

My theory is that when you say these words, it kind of contorts your face into a sneer.

If you stay snide and you kind of exaggerate it, it makes your lip curl in kind of a snarky way.

But that theory doesn’t hold true with other words like words that start with GL do the same thing.

They all seem to be about light, green, glistening, and so you can’t blame that on the way your face is shaped.

I’m going to answer that second question first because I don’t know the answer to the first one.

Maybe Martha does.

But the way that it happens, the theory that I have learned is something to do with three words, contagion, confluence, and connotation.

And basically, that S-N is kind of behaving like a prefix where we have associated it in our mind with a certain meaning.

It has a certain connotation.

And therefore, when we make new words with that S-N, or I say we meaning centuries or even millennia of English speakers doing this, then they will tend to also have a negative connotation.

Just like any other part of a word that we form with any kind of affix or any kind of root, meanings are held within those particular sets of letters and transferred to the new constructions.

So it’s a fairly ordinary kind of English word formation.

In other words, we’re forming words, new words that begin with S-N will be negative just because we associate S-N with a negative connotation?

Put simply, yes.

Just think, if I take any word and I add an E to the end of it, an E sound to the end of it, then it becomes diminutive and we tend to think of that as a nickname or a cutesy name or a pet name for that thing, right?

Are you going to sit there in your little cherry and read your book?

Suddenly, I mean, I know I said that in a baby voice, but are you going to sit in your cherry and read your book?

Cherry suddenly sounds like it has something to do with childhood or infancy or smallness or cuteness.

Diane, I’m wondering if the word that you’re trying to think of is phonesthesia.

Does that sound right?

Yes.

That’s the word.

I think it is.

There you go.

It’s spelled P-H-O-N-E-S-T-H-E-S-I-A.

From Greek words that literally mean feeling and sound or feeling in voice.

Steven Pinker writes some interesting stuff about this in his book called The Stuff of Thought.

I think you would really like looking this up because he talks about how words for the nose itself, like snout and words for nose-like instruments like snorkel, and then all the words that are associated with the nose, the action of the nose, sneeze, sniff, sniffle, snivel, snore, snort, snot, snuff.

All those words are negative.

And even words like looking down your nose at somebody, being snobby or snooty.

They all have that sort of, you do form your face the way that you’re describing.

But it could be coincidental, right?

Because as you mentioned with the GL words, what is it about GL that makes us think of light?

I can’t think of.

Yeah, I don’t know unless it’s just the older words that use that.

And maybe they were built on that, glade, glimmer, gleam.

Possibly.

But that’s why I was going with the theory that it’s just behaving more like a particle of a word.

The essence is behaving more like a particle that has some semantic content.

And so that when it is used in word formation over the last several thousand years, it has tended to be negative.

Or in the case, as you mentioned, it tends to be associated with the nose, just because there are already words that have that connotation.

Therefore, new words will also have that connotation.

Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say.

Yes.

Right.

What was the book by Pinker?

It’s called The Stuff of Thought.

The Stuff of Thought.

Yeah.

Okay.

You write so beautifully about language, all aspects of language, so I would highly recommend that.

Outstanding.

Okay.

Thank you so much for your call.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Howdy, David.

Thanks.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

We were talking earlier about books we’re recommending to people, and it occurs to me that the book that I gave most recently as a gift is called Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish.

Have you seen this book, Grant?

No.

It’s great.

It’s by Joseph K. Keenan, who was born in the United States but has lived in Latin America for the last 30 years.

And it’s a fantastic book.

It’s in English.

It’s very, very accessible.

And it helps you, even if you have a tiny bit of Spanish, to kind of bump your Spanish up in a way that’s very enjoyable.

I learned from this book, for example, the term enjentarse.

It means to just be peopled out.

The word gente means people in Spanish.

Say you’ve worked all day with a whole bunch of people and then you go to a party and there are a whole bunch of people there.

And you say, ay, me enjente.

I’m just, I’m peopled.

I’m peopled.

I’m done.

I’ve got to go home and curl up in a ball and be by myself for a while.

Yes, I’m in people.

Got to go.

Me en gente.

I love that.

And I also learned from this book something that surprised the heck out of me, which is in Mexico, you don’t ever want to use that rhythmic pattern that’s so familiar to us in this country of shave and a haircut, two bits.

Oh, why not?

In Mexico, parts of Mexico and in parts of Latin America, that rhythmic pattern is the rhythmic pattern of a naughty phrase that I’m not going to say in English or Spanish.

Yeah, wow, I didn’t know that.

Yeah, so you don’t want to knock on somebody’s door with that pattern or honk at somebody with that.

So you learn all kinds of fun things like that.

So you don’t have to know that much Spanish to appreciate this book.

And it was published 20 years ago, just came out with a new 20th anniversary edition of Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish by Joseph J. Keenan.

Cool, thanks.

If there’s a book that has helped you learn more about yourself, the world, or our language, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Do you want more A Way with Words?

Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org, or find the shows in any podcast app or on iTunes.

The toll-free line is always open, so leave a message for us at 877-929-9673.

We love to get your emails at words@waywordradio.org, or you can hit us up on Twitter @wayword, and look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen to each other and the way we think about language.

And you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine and director and editor Tim Felten in San Diego.

In New York, we thank production wizard James Ramsey, quiz guy 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 Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Bye-bye.

So long.