Word Hoard (episode #1593)

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’re still hearing responses to the jogger who was on our show, who wanted a word to say when he’s coming up behind somebody so that he doesn’t startle them.

And I think the most popular suggestion turned out to be just to say, on your left or on your right.

But we also heard from Victoria Wolf in Sacramento, California, who said that conversation brought up another question that’s been bugging her.

Say you’re driving a car and you make a mistake and you know it’s your mistake. You pulled out in front of somebody when you shouldn’t have. How do you signal to them, oops, my bad?

Oh, I know what I do. I mouth the word sorry in exaggerated facial expressions. I get as close to the windshield as I can so they can really see my face. And I don’t know if it works, but it makes me feel better.

Well, yeah, I was going to say I struggled with this myself because I feel like if I stuck my face close to the window and said, sorry, they might think I’m saying something nasty to them. I mean, I know that I’ve done these things where I’ve been waving my arms like, oops, it’s my bad. I’m pointing to myself, but I’m sure it just looks like somebody who’s furious.

And so I’m thinking, how do we say, oops, my mistake? And all I could think of, Grant, was that I looked up the sign in American sign language for sorry, the word sorry. And you form a fist in your hand and you rotate it on your chest using a couple of clockwise motions. I don’t know that that would work. I don’t know that the people are going to see that. But I hope that somebody has a good idea for us because I think this would be one small step for civility in our culture.

Yeah, because we have some of these other hand signals that are clear, like the little how you do in hand flap, whether your hand’s on the steering wheel where you only lift up the fingers. The hand flap. And we’ve got the little you go ahead hand motion, you know, and it’s not clear whose turn it is or there’s a pedestrian waiting to cross. So some of this stuff is very clear.

But you’re right. This is a gap. This is not a lexical gap. This is a gesture gap. I would love to know what people suggest for us.

Well, the toll-free line is open in Canada and the United States, 877-929-9673. Answer this question if you would. Or tell us your language, thoughts, stories, and ideas. You can also tell us in email, words@waywordradio.org. Or let’s have a fun chat on Twitter @wayword.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. My name is Heidi. I live in Vermont, and the question I have is regarding the term call out. That sounds very strange to me because I would use the term call in. I would say I’m going to call in sick. My daughters, who are in their 20s and they work at a cafe, I would overhear them talking and they’d say, oh, so-and-so called out today. And that means that the person was sick and they called into work to say that they were sick and weren’t able to come in. But they say called out. And everybody knows it means that you’re sick and not coming to work. And that just sounds very foreign to me because you’re calling into work.

Huh. Right. So I’m wondering whether that’s a generational thing or if it’s a regional thing. I grew up in the Midwest, although when I was in the workforce, I’m self-employed now, so I never get to call in sick. But when I was in the workforce, I worked in Michigan, and I also worked in Massachusetts, and I have never heard the term call-out used until just in the past few years, hearing it from my daughters.

So wonderful to get the field report. You’ve laid it out so nicely for us with all the details and the descriptions and everything. We have talked about this before, and I bring that up just to say that lots of people called us and wrote us when we talked about this before with their information and their detail about where they were and how old they are. And so we know a little bit based on our callers.

And it turns out that calling out sick is based in the New York City metropolitan region. It’s not only there, but it’s mostly there. And so it doesn’t seem to be about an age difference, really. It’s about geography at this point. And most of the country, by far in a way, a ratio of something like 5 to 1, is likely to say call in. They’ll call in sick. And really, some of it is about perspective. So are you calling into the office?

Or are you calling that you’re going to be out?

So that’s kind of what’s happening here.

So does the out describe you or does the in describe what you’re doing with the call?

See what’s happening there?

Yes, I would agree with the latter there.

Some people are thinking about themselves being out, and so that’s what they’re calling about.

They’re calling about their being out.

Yeah, I’m thinking when I used to work in offices, I would definitely call in sick.

But I guess now that I work at home, it’s sort of like, do I call over sick?

I call down the hall sick.

I call down sick, down to the hall.

Barbara from Maine tells us that nurses and paramedics and firefighters that she knows all say call off sick.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Oh, interesting.

But that’s even rarer than call out sick.

Yeah.

Is that regional too or that’s by vocation?

We don’t have enough information. It’s so rare that we just simply can’t put a tag on that.

More information needed. Always delighted to get more field reports on call off sick.

And there’s another interesting thing here.

So in organized labor, there’s a kind of strike where workers use their sick time all on the same days to force an issue with their employers.

And it’s called either a sick out or a sick in.

So even in a strike like that, there’s some confusion about in and out.

It’s both a sick out and a sick in.

Oh, wow.

So I kind of want to know what the grammatically correct thing is so that I can win the argument with my daughters.

Both.

The problem here is that you’ve got two different phrasal verbs, call in and call out.

And so you don’t break them up.

So call out behaves as a unit and call in behaves as a unit.

And so they’re both grammatically correct.

And they’re both culturally correct and sociologically correct.

They’re correct in every aspect.

It’s simply a matter of preference.

And so you can force your use on them by fiat.

But perhaps you should marvel at the difference instead and start to take note of what other people say and see if you can figure out more about it.

Like if you discover that there are people around you who do say call-off stick and, oh, wait, are they all firefighters?

Or do they work in a field related to medicine?

You know, something like that.

So just put that disagreement and just marvel at the novelty that your children are different than you.

They’re not a part of you, although they feel like it.

Right?

They are.

And that’s a great perspective to enjoy that we can both be right even though we’re using a different phrase.

Right.

Here’s hoping you all stay healthy anyway and don’t have to do that.

That’s right.

We don’t have to call in or call out.

That’s the best plan.

Thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

It was a lot of fun.

Be well.

Yep.

Thanks.

Bye.

877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org.

Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hello, Grant.

It’s David Lamott calling from Black Mountain, North Carolina.

What’s on your mind?

So I was listening to an episode that y’all did recently where you encountered a Spanish phrase that translates into English as a crocodile in your pocket to describe somebody who’s stingy because their wallet’s in there with the crocodile.

Right.

And I was really wonderfully amused by that.

And it got me to thinking about my favorite word in Spanish, which is tokayo, T-O-C-A-Y-O.

Tokayo means one who shares my name.

So anybody who has the same first name as you is your Tokayo or Tokaya in the feminine form.

And I got to thinking about the fact that that doesn’t translate into English.

It’s such a charming word.

It’s like you use it kind of like you’d use homeboy.

Like even if you met somebody for the first time, if you’re from the same town, then you have this little thing in common.

And so it’s just a little celebration of that.

It’s an expression of soft kinship, and I kind of love the word, but it doesn’t exist in English.

And I got to thinking about words that don’t translate, and that just got me fascinated.

I wondered if y’all had any other thoughts on tokayo or on words that don’t translate.

I do love the word tokayo, and I learned it from a Spanish speaker whose name is, guess what, Marta.

Marta, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

I agree with you.

There is something really lovely about that connection.

And we always, whenever we see each other, you know, we say, hey, tocaya.

And I don’t know.

It sort of separates you out from everybody else and connects you to that one person.

I really enjoy that term.

It reminds me of another Spanish word.

Like tocayo has gone beyond the literal meaning to a figurative meaning.

So, takayo could be used for somebody who doesn’t share your name, but they share your spirit or your outlook on life.

Or you kind of have an emotional kinship with them.

And the Spanish word cuate, C-U-A-T-E.

And it’s used originally for a non-identical twin, a fraternal twin, in places like Mexico, Guatemala, and Venezuela.

Or you might call somebody a cuatito or cuatita.

That’s the more familiar form.

But it’s also used, again, for somebody like Tokayo or Tokaya, somebody who is your twin in spirit, your twin in outlook on life, your twin in interests, or your twin in your goals or your perspective, that sort of thing.

And I think that that’s, for me, Kwaite and Tokayo, that’s what they’re doing that makes them so compelling as words.

It’s not just their literal uses, it’s their figurative uses.

Yeah, and I’m trying to think of an English equivalent, and I can’t really.

No, it takes several words to explain it.

We have a lot of listeners around the world who speak a huge number of languages,

And people who are very creative at coming up with their own words or their own expressions.

So we’d love to hear from everyone.

What’s a word that you already know or an expression you already know that brings across the idea of tokayo,

Someone who not just shares your name, but shares your spirit in kinship.

They’re like you in outlook, identity, and feeling.

We’d love to hear it.

Let us know, 877-929-9673, or tell us on Twitter @wayword.

David, we’ll see what we get.

All right.

I appreciate your hospitality.

Nice to talk with you all.

I’m a squatties.

I’m a squatties.

Adios.

Ciao.

Adios.

That number again is 877-929-9673.

Here’s one of my favorite words from Old English, fneozung.

Bless you.

Well, exactly.

That’s what it means.

It means sneeze in Old English.

I had no idea.

How do you spell that?

And why don’t we use it anymore?

F-N-E-O-Z-U-N-G.

Fneozung.

Fneozung.

Wow.

Sneeze.

Why don’t we say that anymore?

877-929-9673.

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, well, I guess he’s been rescuing cats from trees.

He’s certainly tall enough.

It’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

I’m always happy to help getting a cat out of a tree, so please give me a call.

Now, this week, the quiz is one of our staples, the takeoff.

It’s a variation on a National Puzzlers League puzzle type, but it’s very simple.

You take a word, you take its first letter off, and a new word is left behind.

I’ll read a sentence that contains clues to both the original word and the resultant word.

You tell me both of them.

Now, this week we’re taking off the letter I from the beginning of the word

Or the letter J from the beginning of all these words

Because there’s just about enough I’s and J words to make up a quiz.

Okay?

Plus, I and J, they’re very similar.

Well, here’s the example.

If I say, my factory makes statues of the saints,

And we employ men only recently out of prison,

The two words that are clued are?

Icon and con.

Right, icons and cons, right, or icon, right.

Okay, here’s the others.

The catcher avoided the sliding runner with a nimble leap,

But he landed on the official anyway.

The catcher avoided the runner with a sliding leap, but he landed on the official anyway.

As opposed to a jump.

Yeah.

Landing on the ump.

Exactly.

Jump and ump.

Taken off the J from jump, you get ump.

When the judge announced the winner of the tilt, the guards took it as a sign to topple the king.

Joust and oust.

Yes, joust.

To tilt on horses is a joust, and toppling the king is to oust them.

It would be absolutely perfect if you could get me a really good rate on that rental car.

Oh, ideal and deal.

Yes, very nice.

Good work.

Well done.

My mother suddenly packed us into the car for a quick trip to visit her sister.

Her sister.

So it’s your aunt and it’s a jaunt.

Yes, a jaunt to visit our aunt or aunt.

Yeah.

A jaunt.

Here’s the last one.

I took a tour of the detention center, and now I don’t feel so good.

Jail and ale.

Jail and ale.

Yes.

Very good.

Oh, thank you so much, John.

Appreciate it.

Talk to you later, dude.

Talk to you next week.

Bye.

So if you want to talk to us, all you have to do is give us a call, 877-929-9673,

Or send your thoughts about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Connie Charles. I’m from Santee, California.

Just outside San Diego. Well, great. What’s on your mind today, Connie?

Well, I was curious about a word that I have seen used more than once recently, because I’ve been reading about the South, and I have been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s books, Cast and the Warmth of Other Suns.

But she talks about shotgun houses as if it needs to be stated.

In other words, this is something typical, apparently.

What did you take that to mean when she talks about a shotgun house?

Well, when you think about a shotgun, you think about the shot spraying out in many directions.

But then I looked it up in the dictionary and I saw that it had to do with houses that had one room going, I guess, with a doorway into another.

In other words, without a hallway that rooms would go off of.

So that’s what I’m picturing.

Yeah, that’s right.

The house is basically one room wide and usually built perpendicular to the street.

And there are two or more rooms all in a row, no hallway, each room leading into the next.

It’s usually one story tall and maybe has a gable or a porch in the front.

And that’s a shotgun house.

But why shotgun?

One theory that I saw in a newspaper article published, oh, heck, a long time ago, 1908,

Was that these were houses that people with not a lot of money lived in.

They were housing for the poor.

People who worked in the fields or people who had a hard time making rent.

And so the landlord would come around with a shotgun to collect the rent.

Oh.

And there’s one story in the Charlotte Observer from 1908 where he says,

One landlord frankly said that it is his custom to use a shotgun in the collection of rents

And that he admits that he expects to kill some of them.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that’s one theory.

Another theory that was come up with by John Vlatch, V-L-A-C-H,

And he did some great work to connect the shotgun house to Haitian and the West African traditions.

He suggested it might be a form of a word from a language family from West Africa,

Particularly the Dogon, D-O-G-O-N, of Mali,

Where a word that kind of sounds like it means a large shelter or a house of talk,

Usually reserved for men to go to discuss life, business, or to take a nap, that sort of thing.

Well, but we don’t really have an idea, I guess, of what the word shotgun could have been based on verbally or etymologically.

We do. Yeah, the word is, it looks like togu-na, T-O-G-U-N-A-N, togu-na.

The problem with that is we don’t really have the written record.

Because obviously when slaves were brought to the New World,

They didn’t have writing and they didn’t bring it with them, they didn’t write it down.

Also, there’s a huge gap between the arrival of slaves, the loss of their language,

And then the appearance of the phrase shotgun house in print.

A giant gap, so it’s really hard to explain how that word would have persisted and shown up in English.

John Vlatch certainly was an excellent researcher. He did extraordinary work to connect us to Haiti.

He talks about in his work how the style of the shotgun house was probably brought to the United States by the French Creole who were escaping the Haitian revolution.

This is more than 200 years ago. Many of these houses were built in Louisiana, the Mississippi River Valley,

And the Caribbean. So this is where you typically will find these houses in places of Black settlement in the United States.

So shotgun houses are strongly associated with African-American culture in the United States.

And they’re a large part of the identity, especially in Louisiana, of Black Louisianans and Black language in Louisiana.

That really explains why Wilkerson would use the word more than once.

That’s interesting.

I want to recommend a book to you,

Which will tell you more than I could possibly tell you now.

It’s by J. Dearborn Edwards, and this is a long name,

But Nicolas Kerouk Paquette du Belay de Verton.

I don’t know if he pronounces it in the French way,

But it’s called A Crayolexicon, Architecture, Landscape, People.

How wonderful. Okay, I will check that out.

Meanwhile, Connie, you’ve got me wanting to go back and reread The Warmth of Other Suns

Because it’s like a novel, right?

It’s just this sweeping, majestic history of the Great Migration out of the Jim Crow South.

Yes, yeah, and knowing her process in interviewing more than 1,000 people

And then concluding, you know, determining the three lives that she,

Or families that she determined because of their destination.

So, yes, it’s great.

Well, thank you for sharing what you’re reading

And for bringing us a really interesting question about shotgun houses.

Yeah, we appreciate it. Take care now.

Thank you very much. All the best to you.

Thanks, Connie. Bye-bye.

We’ll link to that book, A Craio Lexicon, on our website.

And if you’ve got questions or comments or ideas on the way we live and the language about it,

Call us 877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org.

A few weeks ago, we talked about a Mexican slang term for taking a nap.

Voy a echarme un coyotito, which means I’m going to take a nap.

But literally, it’s like you’re taking a little coyote because of the way that coyotes curl up a nap in the middle of the day.

I was talking with a Venezuelan friend about this, and she said where she grew up, what they said was voy a echar un zorrito,

Which means I’m going to have a little fox, zorrito, you know, like Zorro.

Right. We all know zorro, but many people might not know that that means fox.

Right. Yeah.

And it was also explained to me that un zorrito is when you lie down with your eyes closed,

But you’re not sleeping. You’re just sort of resting your mind and body.

So I don’t know if a coyotito is deeper than a zorrito.

Maybe people can let us know about that.

I started a sorrito the other day, and it went into a full nap.

That does tend to happen, Martha.

That doesn’t end up to all of us.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Who am I talking with?

Betsy Flynn.

Where are you, Betsy?

I am in beautiful Murray, Kentucky.

We are having a beautiful spring here.

Oh, that sounds good.

Well, did you call to share something fun with us?

I did.

I was playing cards with my friends the other day, and one of them was complaining about her cards very good-naturedly.

And I said, just quit your mully-grubbing and play.

And they all said, what did you say?

And so since then, I’ve asked about 10 people, have you ever heard the term mully-grubbing?

And none of them had ever heard it.

So I thought, I know who to ask about this because I love your show.

I listen to it every time it comes.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, you came to the right place.

Quit your molly grubbing.

Quit your molly grubbing.

And then I had asked my sister if she had heard that word.

And she said the next day she heard it on television.

She said that’s the first time I’ve ever heard it in my life.

I thought evidently it didn’t come from my family then.

So I don’t know where I had heard it.

Quit your molly grubbing, meaning quit your complaining, right?

Right.

Okay.

Quit your belly aching.

There you go.

That would be closer than complaining.

Betsy, you will be very pleased to hear that mully grubbing is a perfectly legitimate word.

Okay.

The original version of the word mully grub is really, really old.

It didn’t even originate in this country.

Mully grub goes back to the 1500s in the UK where mully grub meant a state of depression or a bad mood.

Or you might talk about, I have the mully grubs.

And that means that you have a stomach ache or you have an intestinal upset.

We don’t know the origin of the word mully grub.

It might come from an old word megrim, M-E-G-R-I-M.

That means migraine or it might be related to that.

We’re just not sure, but if you look in the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English,

You will see mully grub used as a verb, you know, meaning to either complain for no good reason

Or to be slightly unwell or slightly upset or to have the blues.

And if somebody is mully grubby, then they’re just kind of sulky,

Which sounds like the person you were playing cards with.

Only for a moment.

Okay.

That makes sense because my parents and grandparents were from East Tennessee, so I’m sure that’s where it came from.

Mm—

Yeah, it’s pretty much in the South and particularly in Appalachia.

So you’re right on the money there.

It’s a perfectly legitimate word.

Yeah, and as a verb, molly grubbing goes back about 130 years or more.

Thank you, guys, and keep up the good work.

All right, take care.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, whether it’s the slang of the sport that you love or it’s a linguistic heirloom that you learn from your parents and grandparents, share it with us.

Tell us what you know and teach us a thing or two, 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sean Garrett from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Hi, Sean. Welcome.

Hi, how are you?

What’s on your mind?

I’m an editor and I read a lot of short fiction.

And I would occasionally run into two words that I know almost certainly are slang terms.

One fairly commonly, the other not so commonly.

And they’re both words for large amounts of money.

The one is simoleons and the other is spondulics.

Simoleons I’ve heard fairly commonly.

Spondulics I’ve only run into in, say, European.

Like, I was reading a collection of stories by Bertolt Brecht at one point,

And they used spondulics.

It sounds like a Dutch word or something,

But I was just wondering if you know those words

And if you would know what the origins of them are.

They’re both Americanisms.

Spondulics, yeah, isn’t Dutch, but it possibly has a Greek origin

Because there was a type of shell used as money.

And also the spondylo root refers to the spine or vertebrae.

And there’s one citation found by Douglas Wilson,

Who’s a language researcher in a book.

And it has spondylox defined as coin piled for counting.

So if you can imagine a stack of coins looking like a stack of vertebrae,

So that’s possibly the origin. It goes back to about 1847.

Yeah, and simoleons are a little harder to pin down.

There’s so many stories about this, Martha, aren’t there?

There’s so many stories about what simoleon might come from.

It always makes me think of semolina.

You know, that’s the only word it sounds close to.

Oh, you’re on it. Sean, that’s bingo. That’s my favorite theory.

The hard, rough wheat grinding is kind of used for pasta and soups

Because there is a long history of English for using food words to mean money.

Cabbage and cheddar and chickafeed and peanuts and coriander seeds, which was an obsolete word for coriander.

And semolina looks kind of like coriander seeds.

I could totally see semolina being used in a modified form to mean money, particularly because there’s something like 16 different spellings of the word.

None of them exactly like semolina, unfortunately.

Another one is possibly related to a British sixpence coin known as a Simon that jumped to the United States.

And another one is maybe related to the word Simony, which is about the buying or selling of church pardons or appointments.

Maybe mixed with the word Napoleon.

Who knows?

One really interesting side note that I just have to bring up is the first several uses of the term that we know of simolean imprint, the first three or four, are all from the same magazine.

It’s the American satirical publication, Puck, which was widely reprinted across the United States.

And they are all written in mock biblical prose.

Just kind of like this fake kind of almost, you know, King James kind of writer.

Yeah.

Highfalutin.

And so I think, and they all sound like the same writer.

So I think one person coined this word, published it in Puck.

It was reprinted everywhere else.

And that is the source of the word.

I think maybe they were trying to make up a currency name that sounded biblical.

And yet was funny since Puck was a humor.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s slightly humorous because simolean sounds vaguely.

Yeah, there’s something automatically kind of like not, you don’t take it seriously, right?

Well, I got to tell you, Sean, that was a delight to talk to you about these terms.

You don’t often get a chance to flex my slang muscles, so I appreciate the call.

Excellent.

And yeah, maybe I’ll call back with a few more if I go check my notes.

Oh, please.

That’d be great.

All right.

Be well.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We’re always interested in the words and phrases that catch your eye when you’re doing your reading,

Fiction from the 1920s or online.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

This show is about language seen through family, history, and culture.

Stay tuned.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Old English is the vernacular that was spoken in England from about the year 550 to 1150.

And it’s very different from the English that’s spoken today.

It really sounds a lot more like a mashup of Scandinavian languages and German.

But even if you don’t understand Old English, it can be mesmerizing to listen to.

And one word from that version of English is hord, H-O-R-D.

It means treasure, and it also carries the sense of something valuable that’s hidden and locked away.

Horde is also a part of the compound Old English noun word hoard, and that’s the treasure of words that you have stored up inside yourself.

In fact, there’s an Old English poem about a man named Widsith who’s wandered far and wide, and it begins like this,

Widsith matholada, word hoard on layak, which means Widsith spoke, unlocked his word hoard,

And then the rest of the poem is him unloading about his travels.

And you can hear the rhythm and alliteration that’s so typical of Old English poetry in those first lines,

Wid Sith Matholada, Word Hoard on Laoc.

And if you want to splash around a bit in Old English, there’s a new book that will help you do that.

It’s called The Word Hoard, Daily Life in Old English.

It’s by Hannah Vaidine, who did her doctoral work on this topic.

And it’s a very accessible, almost conversational book about life in early medieval England.

And it’s divided into chapters on such topics as eating and drinking, medicine, animals, religion.

And what I find really valuable about this book is that at the end of each chapter,

She compiles a word hoard of all those old English words that she’s mentioned with their pronunciations and their definitions.

And that gives you the chance to roll these words around in your mouth and give you a really delicious taste of the language and the culture of that time.

I really think you’d enjoy it.

Oh, absolutely.

It’s right down my alley, Martha.

Yeah, right up your alley.

And what’s so perfect about this is that you feel that you know it.

It’s like meeting the sibling of your best friend.

And they look alike and they sound alike and they share some of the same traits.

But they’re not your friend.

But boy, it just feels like you could get to know them really well.

It’s just so close to what we know is English today.

And yet not quite English today.

I don’t know if it’s a sibling or if it’s a grandparent.

Right.

It’s an ancestor.

But I really would recommend just going online, and we can link to some sites that have great renditions of Old English poetry.

Some of it is just heart-rending, talking about sorrow and loss, but in this very beautiful, beautiful meter and rhythm and alliteration.

So word horde itself is a type of word known as a kenning, and I believe the book talks about those as well.

Yes. For example, there’s a term in Old English that literally means sky candle, but it’s a word for sun.

And the sea is described as the whale road.

And a sailor on the sea is sometimes described as the equivalent of a sea guest, a guest on the water out there.

Sea guest, whale road. How delightful.

So two nouns put together to make this compound word that, oh, it’s just gorgeous.

Right, right. A kenning, as you said. K-E-N-N-I-N-G.

That book again, Martha?

It’s called The Word Hoard, Daily Life in Old English by Hannah Vaidin.

And I should add that she also tweets a word of the day at Old English Word Hoard. O-E Word Hoard.

Well, break open your word hoard and share it with us, 877-929-9673.

Or put your word hoard into your keyboard, words@waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kelly calling from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hi, Kelly.

Hi, how are you?

Doing well.

Great.

I am calling because I am originally from Houston, Texas,

And there is a word that my dad uses all the time that my sister and I are always confused on why and where this comes from.

And it’s the word gradu.

He always mentions like, pick up that piece of gradu on the floor.

And it’s like just like a piece of paper, like a little crumb or like a leaf.

Or when we were kids, he’d be like, clean up your rooms.

You guys have gradu everywhere.

Or if the porch is dirty, you need to sweep.

There’s gradu all over the porch.

So I’m just wondering, one, is this a real word?

And two, how do you spell it?

And what’s its deal?

Does anyone else say this besides my dad?

What’s its deal?

Well, it’s deal, Kelly.

We should change the name of the show.

What’s the deal about words?

What’s the deal with this word?

I know.

So we’ve talked about this on the show, what, two or three times.

And we’ve talked about this on our live shows when we go on the road.

And we always get a really great response on this.

And we have so many voicemails and emails about this word because lots of people are like you.

They don’t really hear it lots of places.

So when they hear it on a national radio show or they hear it in our podcast, they’re like, what?

I thought only my family used it.

And they’re really shocked.

And they call us and write us and tell us stories.

Dave from Wisconsin said his mother uses it like your father.

His mother uses it to mean clutter or stuff.

But he’s from Iowa.

But, you know, a lot of our listeners are from the South.

A lot of them are from Louisiana or Texas.

A lot of them have some connection to French or Cajun culture.

Lynn in Maine wrote that she learned it in the 1980s from an Anglophone Canadian, and they used it.

She uses it to mean anything from a smudge to a pile or a lump of ick.

So lots of different spellings.

The spellings could be G-R-A-D-O-O.

Ginger, who grew up in Eunice, Louisiana, said her mama used the word, and they spell it G-R-A-D-E-A-U, like a French spelling.

And they use it to refer to the crusty, greasy stuff in your skillet after you’ve fried a piece of meat.

But she writes that they would use it to make their gravy.

And she said it was weird for her to learn what most folks consider to be gunk or grime they use as a necessity to create delicious gravy.

Well, see, I can’t imagine eating a gravy.

Yeah, a gravy made of gradu just sounds terrible to me.

This is the way it’s used.

So as to where it comes from,

Martha and I have always believed that there’s something Frenchy about this,

As do many of our correspondents.

One is that it’s from one of the French words that means mud,

Gado, G-A-D-O-U-E.

And at one time that word meant manure,

Although that’s an outdated meaning now.

But it’s missing that crucial R.

And one of the reasons that word might have some currency, though,

Is that there was a song written by Serge Gainsbourg,

Recorded by Jane Birkin and Petula Clark and some other people,

That I think was a hit around 1966.

And Vincent, who is French and lives in San Diego, told us about it

And said that when he was a kid, he and his friends,

When they would come inside from the house with mud on their shoes,

Would sing the song.

And it goes something like,

Garu, garu, garu, garu, garu, at the chorus.

Something like that.

And it’s mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, mud.

Something like that.

Amazing.

You can look it up.

Amazing.

But again, it’s missing that crucial R, but you might see how that got inserted in there.

And then several listeners have suggested a French-Canadian phrase,

Which means really fatty, G-R-I-S space D-U-R.

Oh, got it.

Yeah, but it’s used figuratively to mean lucky or happy or fulfilled.

Il est gradue.

He’s very happy.

But the problem is that’s kind of the opposite of gradue.

It’s a positive, not a negative.

And I don’t see how that gets us to gradue unless it started its life among the Acadians who became the Cajuns.

And before the modern French-Canadian phrase took its meaning.

You know, it’s possible.

So we don’t know, Kelly.

We don’t know.

Hell, I’ll just throw theories at you all day long.

But your dad is not alone.

That’s the bottom line there.

Very interesting theories here.

We’re still to crack the code of what the deal is with this work.

But I really appreciate these things.

This is really interesting.

Thank you for putting up with this gradu of a conversation.

We really appreciate it.

Well, I appreciate you guys.

Thank you so much.

Oh, we appreciate you.

I can’t wait to tell my dad.

Thank you for calling.

Take care, Kelly.

Sure.

Thanks, Kelly.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us 877-929-9673.

Some of the music you’re hearing on today’s show is the work of Surefire Soul Ensemble.

That’s a nine-piece Afro-funk and soul jazz band,

And the guy who plays the organ and electric piano for them is Tim Felten.

As it happens, Tim is also the editor and engineer for this very program.

We want to give a big shout out to Surefire Soul Ensemble because their latest album debuted in the top 15 of Billboard’s contemporary jazz chart.

It’s called Step Down.

We will post more information about it on our website.

And by the way, you can always find all of the songs mentioned by name and artist on our website.

Go to waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Janine Hillegas, and I reside in Charleston, South Carolina.

Charleston, South Carolina. Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you, Janine?

I was born in southwestern Pennsylvania, nothing but little coal mining villages,

Very ethnic, Eastern European, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Czechoslovakian.

And the folks there, I heard it from my parents as well as my grandparents and childhood friends.

If you encountered someone when we’d be driving about the countryside that had a lot of junk,

Like mattresses thrown down over the hillside or washing machines, refrigerators,

And just disheveled their surroundings, my family would say, oh, they’re nothing but feather merchants.

And this is, I believe, unique to that area because any time I’ve asked others, they are totally unfamiliar with it.

And I guess it just means someone trashy or lazy is what I concluded as a child.

Well, Janine, I’m wondering, do any of those family members who use the term feather merchant in a derogatory way,

Do any of them have any military in their background?

No, definitely not.

Interesting.

Yeah, it surprises me.

Yeah, it surprises me too, because, of course, there really were feather merchants in the past, you know, in the 1800s.

Those were business people who literally sold feathers for use in clothes making and pillows and things like that.

But in the mid-20th century in this country, the term feather merchant took on another kind of meaning, specifically among members of the U.S. Military.

It referred to somebody who was kind of a lightweight, like a feather, somebody who is a weakling or somebody who shirks responsibility or maybe has an undeservedly cushy job.

And the term was used specifically to refer to civilians.

People in the military would refer to civilians as feather merchants.

You know, they were lightweights.

They didn’t put their lives on the line.

They didn’t have to obey the chain of command.

And so you can see how a dismissive term like that,

That’s why I was asking if there were any military connection

Because it was kind of a dismissive term referring to civilians.

Isn’t that interesting? Because I have been sitting here going through my head in terms of, you know, military experience.

And my one uncle was in the Army in the early 60s.

However, I really never heard it from him. That was on my paternal side.

But I, you know, just recently was asking my 88-year-old dad, you know, and he said that the coal mines,

At one time, there was like a migration from Kentucky to that specific area.

I know there was, you know, Route 23 people seeking employment in the north.

But this was specific to the coal mines, I believe because it was like union wages or whatever.

And he said there was an influx of folks and they kind of kept their environment junky and were not neat and tidy.

Somewhat slackers.

So I thought maybe it had to do with like they threw their mattress and

Migrated, hence the feathers, a feather bed.

But no one could ever explain it.

What do you think about the shirker or lazy part of the explanation Martha gave?

Well, I think that was pretty apropos in terms of, you know, how they would

Look at the environment and say they’re nothing but a feather merchant.

Because, again, they were kind of lazy or unmotivated.

So that aspect of it definitely makes sense.

So I appreciate it. I thank you.

You’re welcome.

And we should point out it’s not at all localized like that.

It’s well beyond Pennsylvania.

Yeah, it’s widespread across the United States.

As a matter of fact, there are occasional uses of it before the mid-20th century,

Maybe going back 2,000 years old.

But it’s always hard to tell in the past whether or not they meant it literally or figuratively.

There are some uses that look like they meant it to mean somebody who was not on the up and up.

Thank you for your call, Janine. We appreciate it. Take care.

You too. Bye. I really enjoy your show. I’ve learned a lot.

Thank you very much.

Fantastic. Call again sometime. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

No matter where you’re from, you’ve got expressions that feel local and they feel special to you and the people that you love.

Call us and share them with the world, 877-929-9673, or email us words@waywordradio.org.

I recently took a very cool class in falconry at Sky Falconry in the mountains just outside of San Diego.

And I was reminded of all the great vocabulary that’s associated with falconry.

Like, for example, Haggard originally described an adult female hawk that was caught in the wild and not raised in captivity.

And then later that was applied to humans who were kind of wild looking.

And also pride of place, which originally meant the airy height from which a falcon swoops.

And Shakespeare uses it that way in Macbeth, talking about a falcon towering in her pride of place.

And then there was a word that I learned from the instructors that was new to me, and that was feeking.

Do you know this word, Grant? Feeking?

I don’t know what feeking is. Is this maybe picking at the animal underneath their claws?

Well, feeking is what happens after that.

To feek is to wipe the bill on something in order to clean it or to hone it, you know, to make it really sharp or to just wipe that food off your face if you’re a falcon.

Do you have any idea of the origin of that word or is it just so old that we don’t know?

That’s a good suspicion because we’re not completely sure. It may come from an old German word that means to clean, but we’re not totally sure.

So that’s feeking, F-E-A-K, to wipe the food off your face or your beak.

Yeah.

So if you have a runny nose, you can feek it with a tissue.

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Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

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

Bye.

Thank you.