Words With K in Them Are Funny

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

In the first act of Neil Simon’s play The Sunshine Boys, there’s this great scene where Willie, an old-time vaudevillian, talks with his nephew about words that are automatically funny.

Do you know this scene, Martha?

Oh, yeah.

Uncle Willie has told him this a million times, right?

Alright, well, here, read this with me, alright?

You’re gonna read this with me?

I’ve got it right in front of me.

I’ll be Willie, you be Ben.

Ben is Willie’s nephew, right?

Right. 57 years I’m in this business.

You learn a few things.

You know what makes an audience laugh.

Do you know which words are funny and which words are not funny?

You told me a hundred times, Uncle Willie, words with a K in it are funny.

Words with a K in it are funny.

You didn’t know that, did you?

If it doesn’t have a K in it, it’s not funny.

I’ll tell you words that always get a laugh.

Chicken.

Chicken is funny.

Pickle.

Pickle is funny.

Cupcake.

Cupcake is funny.

Tomato is not funny.

Roast beef is not funny.

But cookie is funny.

But cookie is funny.

Uncle Willie, you’ve explained that to me ever since I was a little boy.

Cucumber is funny.

Car keys.

Car keys is funny.

Cleveland.

Cleveland is funny.

Maryland is not funny.

So here in this whole scene, and it’s beautiful in the 1975 movie with, I think it’s Walter Matthau and Woody Allen.

Brilliant.

Just well done.

They kind of mixed the play up a little bit there, but it’s more or less the same.

And they’ve kind of laid out this notion here, Martha, that words have in them inherently something funny.

And I agree pickle is automatically funny.

Pickle’s pretty funny, I have to admit.

Pants.

What about pants?

Pants?

There’s no K in it, but pants is funny.

No, no, no, no.

I don’t think pants is funny.

Panties is funny, but pants isn’t funny.

What’s funny about pants?

Panties are funny.

Panties are hilarious, but pants…

Panties are funny, yeah.

Yeah, but what is so funny about pants?

What about city names?

Kalamazoo.

Automatically funny.

Okay, you got me there.

Okay, good one.

What else have we got?

Walk of Shaw.

Walk of Shaw is funny.

Connected to E?

Eh, not really.

Yeah, it’s over.

But Nashville, Nashville’s not funny.

Okay, what about people’s names?

Bob.

Bob is not funny.

Bob is funny.

What?

Maybe I’m thinking of Bob Newhart.

Bob is funny.

What are you saying?

Bob is funny to me.

Why?

But like Phil, not funny.

But why is Bob funny?

I know, that’s the thing.

When I’m just saying that words and names and places, they automatically have attached to them like this little flag for each of us, and it varies a little bit, that says funny.

Bob is not funny.

Otto is funny.

Otto is kind of funny.

Elmo is funny.

Elmo is funny.

But Bob, I don’t know.

Bob, you don’t…

Okay, well, I think…

But you’re raising a bigger question here.

Why is it that some of these words are funny?

I think it goes back to our childhood.

I know from my own son, and reading the books about children that help me understand what is going on in his little brain, that words, for example, with B’s and P’s, are often incredibly fun to say.

My son had a great time with the word baboon.

He loved saying baboon.

Yeah.

And he would sometimes sit there, and I swear it was like poetry, and say all of the P words he knew.

He’d say, “Papa, puppy, poo-poo, pee-pee.”

It’s nice me being thrown in there with the pee-pee and poo-poo, but what are you going to do?

Because it’s fun to say.

It does interesting things on the mouth, right?

Yeah, it does.

But is there something deeper here, or is it just…

No!

I just wanted to talk about words.

And frankly, if you get a chance to read a Neil Simon play aloud, you should do it.

Okay, yeah.

You just want a chance to say pants, which I don’t think is funny.

Pickle?

Pickle is funny.

Alright, we agree on pickle.

Listen, if you’ve got a word that you think is funny, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673.

Or send your automatically funny words to words@waywordradio.org, or talk about it on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, is this Martha?

Yes, who’s this?

This is Johnny Palmer out of Cleburne, Texas.

Welcome, Johnny.

What’s going on?

Not too much.

I have a 30-year-old question I’ve been trying to answer, and I was hoping you all can help me with it.

Wow, how old are you?

30 years.

Well, I’m 45 now, but…

Okay.

It was in about fifth grade, my teacher, I guess she wanted us to have a project to keep us busy, to keep quiet or something, but she said there was three words in the English language that ended in the letters G-R-Y, and she even gave us two of them, hungry and angry, and didn’t give us the third, so I ran to the library and found the thickest dictionary I could find, and started from the letter A, and I got, I guess, about halfway through the B’s before I figured that wasn’t a great idea.

Oh, bless your heart.

Yeah, well, it was a chore.

But then I kind of gave up, but then a couple of years later, or like when I was a teenager or whatever, somebody said, it was a word, I think it was “hugry,” maybe P-U-G-R-Y, but when I looked that one up, I came up with G-R-E-E as an ending, and I figured there might have been an alternative way of spelling it or something like that, but I wasn’t sure if that was the right answer, and that’s about as close as I’ve ever gotten.

I really hope you all can help me out today.

Now, listen, Johnny, there’s a couple layers to this, all right?

Okay.

The first one is to understand that the question your teacher asked you was a trick.

Oh, okay.

All right, that’s the first thing.

The second thing to understand is that there are more than a hundred words that end in G-R-Y, but the thing is, none of them are common.

They’re all from other languages or archaic and long since not used, and we’ll link to various lists of these words on the Internet and show you.

So right away, we’re seeing that there is an answer.

There are plenty of words that end in G-R-Y that aren’t angry and hungry.

This is how the question should be phrased.

Think of words ending in G-R-Y.

Angry and hungry are two of them.

There are only three words in the English language.

What is the third word?

The word is something that everyone uses every day.

If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is.

Now, all of that wording, Johnny, and everything that I said there is precise because it’s a trick, all right?

Okay.

And here’s the trick.

The trick is I made it seem like everything in that whole paragraph was connected, but really what I’ve done is given you two completely useless bits of information, the first two lines, think of words ending in G-R-Y, angry and hungry are two of them.

Those two sentences go together, and they have nothing to do with the rest of the questions, nothing.

And so the only key part here that you need to pay attention to is there are only three words in the English language.

What is the third word?

And so in the English, I mean, sorry, the English language is, according to the way this trick is phrased, is treated as a phrase.

So there are only three words in the English language.

And so then the third word is language.

Oh, okay.

I got you.

I got to go hunt her down now.

Yeah, hardy, har, har.

But you know, Johnny, here’s the thing.

This question is asked all the time and people get the question wrong, which means there are thousands if not tens of thousands of people running around this earth going, “I don’t know.

I can never get this out.”

I don’t have to go out and buy a medical dictionary or anything right now.

No, no.

And it’s crazy because it’s like when a child tries to tell a joke, you know, and they kind of get the punchline all messed up and there’s no joke left, you know, because they ruin it.

And so people have kind of remembered the gist that there’s supposedly a third word that ends in G-R-O-Y.

Right, right.

Well, I’ll tell you what, we’ll post the exact wording of how it’s supposed to go online and you can decide whether or not you want to give them that one or the messed up one.

Well, I’m going to keep listening.

I got a bunch of other questions for you also.

All right, well, that’s super.

Thank you so much.

Okay, sounds good.

Take care of yourselves.

All right, thanks a lot, guys.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye, Johnny.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

That said, if you’ve got a word puzzle for us or something that’s been bugging you for 30 years, let us help you out of your misery.

We’ve got a pill right here.

Don’t take care of everything.

This is natural cognitive enhancement here on A Way with Words.

If you’ve got a question or comment about something we’ve discussed on the program, by all means send us an e-mail to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call at 1-877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi, this is Dale Hobson from Potsdam, New York.

I have a question.

There was a post-it note on the cash register of my local food co-op asking for the origin of the phrase “to boot.”

Now, I’m kind of a geekly guy, so I thought I knew the answer to that, as in the geek squad couldn’t get my new computer to boot.

But that wasn’t what they were asking.

What they wanted to know was the origin of “to boot” when it’s used to mean “furthermore” or “in addition to.”

As in, your mother dresses you funny and you are ugly to boot.

Well, I don’t know what I think about that.

Dale, first of all, let me ask you, is this something that’s commonly done at your food co-op?

Can anybody come up and put a post-it with a question about an etymology?

Well, usually it’s about the produce or something like that.

But every now and then, it’s sort of the community Twitter board.

A little low-tech up here, so post-it notes with 140 characters on it.

-huh.

Yeah, so do you think it has anything to do with footwear?

I kind of think not, but I have no idea where it would come from.

Right.

Well, that’s a good guess, Dale, because it has nothing to do with footwear.

It comes from an entirely different family of words.

You’re tricky, Martha.

Yeah, yeah.

This kind of “to boot,” Dale, goes all the way back to the 11th century.

In those days, the word “boot” itself had a positive meaning.

It meant something good or an advantage.

And over time, it sort of acquired the idea of something good thrown into the bargain, you know, like an addition…

Like booty.

Actually, I thought that too, but that’s not the case.

That’s from a whole other family of words.

But a very good guess.

It meant an added advantage, you know, like I’ll give you three chickens and some arugula to boot or something like that.

And then it took on a life of its own, and it came to mean something additional, either good or bad.

Originally, it was positive.

And I’ll tell you a word that it is related to is the word “better.”

It’s from that family of words, meaning something good.

Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense, then.

Yeah.

So it’s one of those…

Because they’re all about something positive or something good.

Right.

Does that make sense, Dale?

It makes sense to me, and it will make sense to all the members of the Potsdam Food Co-op to boot.

Well, now, how are you going to get all that on a Post-It?

I will write really small, I guess.

More than 140 characters, huh?

I think so.

Okay.

Well, I hope that helped.

Well, thank you very much.

All right.

Thanks for calling, Dale.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question about language, we’ll give you an answer and a little bit of humor to boot, maybe.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, or you can email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

A while back, we had a call about the expression “like a duck on a June bug.”

It means to go after something really, really eagerly.

You remember that call, Grant?

Yeah, I do.

It was good.

But both you and I said that we had never seen a duck on a June bug, so we were just sort of reporting what we’d read, right?

That a duck going after a June bug is the very picture of alacrity.

Well, we heard from somebody who has actually seen this in action.

Jeannie from Wisconsin writes, “We used to hang a light bulb on a low post in the yard after dark and sit on benches and watch my pet ducks go crazy for the June bugs who were attracted to the light.

They would practically jump up for them, and if you’ve ever seen a duck try to jump, it’s very funny.”

She writes, “My boyfriend’s two young sons said that the duck and June bug show was better than cartoons on TV.

I liked it, because though I don’t mind most insects, I think June bugs are disgusting, so I was glad to see them eaten up.”

She says a duck on a June bug can be described as synonymous with “wham!”

So there you have it, a report from the wild about what a duck on a June bug actually looks like.

Very, very eager and enthusiastic.

If you’ve got a comment or correction or an addition to something we’ve talked about on the show, by all means let us know.

You can send it in an email to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call at 1-877-929-9673.

Get ready to sweat.

Next on A Way with Words, it’s push-ups for your brain.

Stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and here with us now is that lovable quiz guy, John Chonesky.

Hello, John.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

It’s funny.

Today’s quiz is related to my wife in some way.

Okay.

Really?

My wife is a poet and an author.

Her name is Jennifer Michael Hecht.

And she blogs, as I guess everyone does these days.

I don’t know how to do that stuff.

But she blogs, two blogs.

She has one on the Best American Poetry site.

And she has a personal blog that she calls “Dear Fonzie.”

Because she asked me one day, “What should I call my blog?”

I said, “Well, why don’t you write it as if you’re addressing someone, anyone that you think is great?”

And she said, “Good.

Dear Fonzie.”

Oh, no.

So this puzzle is all about A’s.

It’s all about A’s.

A.

A’s.

A.

The letter A.

Okay.

Because that’s what Fonzie used to say.

That’s what Fonzie used to say.

On the show.

Happy days.

A.

A.

A.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Hence the conceit.

Here are some clues to phrases in which the only vowel is the letter A.

For example, this was a hot item of interior decor through the ’60s and ’70s.

Bean bag.

No, there’s an E in there.

Bean bag chair.

Oh, it’s only A’s.

Only A’s.

I mean really hot.

It got its name from its resemblance to flowing heated rock.

So shag carpeting doesn’t work.

No.

Lava lamp.

Lava lamp is correct.

Originally, they were known as lava lights, but lava lamp is commonly what they’re known as.

That’s very good.

Let’s try a few more, okay?

Two words, four A’s.

King John did not sign this important historical document.

He affixed his royal seal to it in 1215 at Runnymede.

Oh.

The Magna Carta.

Yes, the Magna Carta.

Lots of A’s.

Very good.

Yeah, it was very good.

Okay, here’s the next one.

Two words, two A’s.

My wife and I are currently doing battle with this formidable nemesis in our backyard.

Its scientific name is Digitaria sanguinalis, but you might know it by a more crustacean nickname.

Digitaria sanguinalis.

Okay.

Here’s your clue.

It’s backyard crustacean.

Oh, crabgrass.

Yes, crabgrass.

Oh wow, okay.

Very good.

This is two words, three A’s.

It’s S-shaped and about two and one-third miles long or 3,800 meters.

S-shaped, two and one-third miles long?

Right.

And it’s very, very wet.

Some kind of canal?

Yes.

Oh.

What canal though?

Oh, Panama Canal?

No.

I was going to say, that’s a lot of A’s.

Yeah, it’s a lot longer.

Why wouldn’t anyone invite me to Italy so I can visit this major Venice waterway?

The Grand Canal.

The Grand Canal is correct.

Very good, Martha.

Now we’re going to move on to some three-word phrases.

Three words, three A’s.

It’s a medieval term for a soldier, usually a well-equipped and well-trained member of a knight or a lord’s retinue.

Something at something?

Yeah.

Well, I got the at part, Grant.

At arms.

One-third.

Yes, that’s two-thirds.

This was also the primary title of Duncan, who was a formidable ally of He-Man in the Masters of the Universe cartoon series.

That was after my time.

I was too old for that.

So what do you have?

At arms.

It’s very simple, actually.

Sorry, Jant.

No, no, no.

Master?

No, that doesn’t work.

Man.

Man.

That’s it.

Man at arms.

Man at arms is used interchangeably with knight, though while all knights were men at arms, not all men at arms were knights.

That’s just a little thing for you.

Here’s another one.

Three words, three A’s.

This term refers to a host of activities that involve making things with your hands.

Arts and crafts.

Yes, very good.

Nice.

There’s also a late 19th century design, reform, and social movement.

Very good.

They had popsicle sticks back then?

I’m sure.

Originally they were for the arts and crafts, and then later they thought about putting them in nice popsicles.

Here’s our last three words.

This term means to flail about wildly looking for answers, as you might be doing right now.

Grab at straws?

Grasp at straws.

Very good.

Grab at straws.

Okay, let’s try four words.

This is similar to grasp at straws.

This term means to get whatever you are able to get.

Catches catch can.

Very good.

Catches catch can.

Nice, fast one, Martha.

I love it.

Finally, let’s try a seven word phrase.

Whoa.

Seven words, ten A’s.

This is a very well-known palindrome.

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

You got it, my friend.

Very, very good.

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

And that’s it.

Ten A’s, seven words.

That’s super different.

Great quiz.

Thanks very much, guys.

Oh, man, you get an A-plus, Jon.

Wonderful, thank you.

Well, if you have a question about language, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jamie from Nashville.

Well, hi, Jamie.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks.

But I am originally from Louisville, Kentucky.

So, hi, Martha.

Yay, Louisville.

Well, my question is, I grew up calling a shopping cart a bass cart.

And I mean, it makes sense.

It’s a basket.

It’s a shopping cart.

But I’ve only met one other person that called it a bass cart, and she was from New Albany, which is just right across the river.

And I wondered if I’m alone in bass carting.

Aha.

I hear them called buggies and, you know, all kinds of different things.

This is one of those everyday objects that linguists love to ask about when they’re going around and collecting dialect.

I grew up calling it a shopping cart, and that’s what the vast majority of people in this country call it.

But if you look at these dialect maps, it’s really cool because some people call it a grocery cart.

In the south, that’s where the buggy name is really concentrated.

In fact, I can remember going into a Piggly Wiggly in North Carolina, going into the Piggly Wiggly and being shocked by the buggies.

You know, I’ve never heard that expression.

And on the coasts, people call them supermarket trolleys.

And in the northeast, especially, you hear shopping carriage or shopping wagon.

So it’s kind of odd, isn’t it?

It is.

Yeah.

But bass cart, I can tell you I’m not exactly sure where that is common because I haven’t even seen it on the dialect maps.

But, Jamie, I can assure you that it is in Merriam-Webster’s unabridged dictionary.

So you didn’t just make it up.

Good.

Good.

And I was listening to a previous show, and I say “tumps” as well.

I just wanted to let you know.

Oh, very good.

“Tumps over.”

I’m from Louisville, and I “tump” things over as well.

Well, Jamie, I hope you don’t “tump” over your buggy.

Me too.

Or your bass cart.

That could be messy.

Or my bass cart.

I’m going to “tump” my bass cart over.

What did you call them growing up, Grant, in Missouri?

Shopping cart only.

There’s nothing else.

I didn’t even know until I became an adult that there wasn’t anything else in the world that you might call them except for a shopping cart.

Very boring.

-huh.

Well, maybe we can find out who else calls it a bass cart and draw some conclusions.

B-A-S-C-A-R-T, right?

That’s right, yeah.

A mix of basket plus cart.

And I find some uses from 1949 and early 1950s, even in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a few other places.

And not much else to be said about it except to me, and this is strictly a guess, it has the air of a brand name.

And I wonder if there was a grocery store provider who made these carts and that’s the name that they smacked on them and they sold them to stores around the country.

And that’s how the name spread because those kinds of blends at that period were not that common where you take two words and mash them together.

Could well be.

I do have family from Michigan from that area, so maybe I picked it up from them too.

Interesting.

Well, we’ll ask our listeners.

All right.

I look forward to hearing what they say.

Okay.

Well, thanks for calling, Jamie.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’ve got a question about language, you’ve got trouble with pronunciation or you’ve got a grammar dispute or you want to know what something means or used to mean, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Tony Brandenburg from Encinitas.

Hi, Tony.

Welcome to the show.

Hello, Tony.

Thank you.

I was listening to the show the other day and I was thinking about a word that I heard when I was probably six years old.

And the word is “shivery.”

I don’t know how to spell it, whether it’s an “sh” or a “ch,” but our family was originally from Indiana.

And it was just after the World War II, my dad came home from the World War II with a wife and two children, my sister and I, four and five years old.

And it was a very rural community.

My dad woke us up one night about eight o’clock and said, “Don’t be alarmed.

There’s going to be gunfire and a lot of noise and there’s going to be a lot of people in the house.

We’re going to have a party.”

This was probably late spring and lo and behold, next thing we knew, there were trucks driving up and women coming in with food and we heard people shooting off guns and men doing what men do in the spring.

And it was a giant party.

And I said, “Daddy, what is this?”

He said, “This is shivery.”

And I thought, “I had never heard the word before or I’ve never heard it afterwards.”

I didn’t know what it meant, a party, a homecoming, I had no idea.

And was this right after your family got back or had your parents just gotten married?

My father had just been discharged from the Navy and it was within a month or so after we got back.

It was sort of a homecoming, housewarming, I didn’t know what it was.

Wow.

I’m so excited to hear about a real live shivery.

I only saw one in the movie “Oklahoma.”

I don’t recall seeing it in “Oklahoma” but what is it?

It’s a party.

Here’s a definition.

I’m going to read one to you.

“It is a compliment extended to every married couple made up of beating tin pans, blowing horns, ringing cowbells, playing horse fiddles, caterwauling and in fine, the use of every disagreeable sound possible to make the night hideous.”

Does it sound- Well, that’s what it was.

It sounds about right, huh?

It was really that.

And I’ve never heard the word since.

I have seen “Oklahoma” but I don’t remember that word or that concept used in “Oklahoma.”

It’s an old-fashioned tradition.

It’s not around much anymore.

There’s a little bit of carrying on in this way in Louisiana still but for the most part, people only know it from the books and the movies now.

But it used to be so incredibly common that you find it come up again and again in literature throughout the 1800s and the early 1900s.

Well, this was 1946 when it happened and again, it was a very rural community.

It was just a big…

It lasted.

The funny thing was it lasted till morning and I remember saying to Dad, “Where’s everybody going?”

He said, “They have to go home and do the milking.”

So I wasn’t sure as a kid if milking had something to do with it or whatever.

Grant, my understanding of it is it’s usually a kind of hazing of a newly married couple, right?

Yes, it usually is and perhaps the fact that your father came back with a wife meant that it kind of was grandfathered in under that definition.

Well, great word.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Thank you very much for taking my call and thank you very much for clarifying that for me now.

I wish my parents were still alive.

I could share it with them.

Share it with the generations to come and that’s good enough, right?

Thank you.

Thank you, Tony.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Tony.

Well, have you ever been a part of a chivalry or heard about one?

Give us a call.

The number is 1-877-9299673 or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hello.

This is Neil White from Upstate New York.

Hi, Neil.

Welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you.

I have a question about the use of a pair, like with a pair of scissors, a pair of pliers.

My wife says it’s already plural so she calls, you know, when she asks for a pair of scissors, she says, “And we’ve got scissors,” or “a scissors” and it’s always been a little bone in contention with us, you know, and why is it a pair of pants?

If you have one leg of a pant, one leg, are you just wearing a pant?

So, Neil, she says, “Pass me a scissors?”

Well, she’ll say, “Pass me these scissors.”

These scissors.

Okay.

So, let’s just talk about scissors because this is the — I think this is the core of your question.

It’s going to help with the other ones.

For me, it’s not a scissors.

It’s more than one.

It’s a pair of scissors because each one of the blades, even though they’re connected in the middle to, you know, forming a single device, there are still two blades and each one of them is a scissor and they travel together because without the pair of them, you don’t have scissors and there’s no cutting involved and you can never make a snowflake, so — Exactly.

That’s always been my argument with my wife.

She says, “Well, they’re already plural so it’s not a pair.

It’s one thing makes a pair of scissors,” but that’s always been my argument.

So, does she put on a pants in the morning?

A pants?

Yeah, exactly.

You know, it’s fine with a pair of pants and — but, you know, and she does put on a bra.

Why isn’t that a pair?

There’s another question.

I’m sorry?

Are you riding a motorcycle?

Oh, no, I’m outside on my cell phone.

Okay.

All right.

But just to clarify here, the truth is that you’re both right.

Historically speaking, scissors can be either singular or plural.

I know it’s weird, but that’s the English language for you.

English is kind of a, you know, a beautiful creature with a warts everywhere.

It’s just not quite perfect.

And so you can say things like, “These scissors are very sharp,” or, “This scissors is very sharp.”

Or — that just feels weird.

“This scissors” — You can say it.

I know.

It’s weird to me.

“This scissors” — no, if you’re going to say that, I’m going to take it apart and give you one of the blades and say, “This scissor is very sharp.”

No, “This scissor” is plural.

No.

That’s always been the — we don’t argue about it.

That’s always been that we’re both right.

Well, there we go.

That’s the nice thing about this.

If you really want something pointless to argue about, this is the topic.

Don’t argue about money or the kids or what movie to see.

This is the topic because you’ll never resolve it.

Well, thank you so much for your call.

Okay.

I appreciate it.

All right, Neil.

Take care, Neil.

Bye-bye.

There’s a questioning threatening to divide you and your spouse. Maybe we can help. Give us a call. Call us at 1-877-929-9673 or send an e-mail. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Karen calling from San Diego, California.

Hi, Karen.

Hi, Karen.

Hi.

Well, I had a question about the pronunciation of the month of February or February. The second month of the year. Huh. I’ve heard it pronounced both ways and I don’t know why it started bothering me, but it did.

Which one started bothering you?

We don’t — that most people do not pronounce the R.

Right. And I’ve looked it up in the dictionary and I think that even in Great Britain they don’t pronounce the R sometimes. And I was just wondering why that is and if it’s correct, if everybody is saying it wrong or if both pronunciations are acceptable.

You know, that’s not an uncommon problem when it comes to R sounds that are in different syllables of a word. I mean, if you think about words like caterpillar. How many people say caterpillar or governor? I mean, we say caterpillar and governor. But for some reason, sticklers have zeroed in on February. You know, it’s just kind of shibboleth. It kind of sticks in the craw of sticklers.

Yeah, it’s a great way actually to identify sticklers who are operating strictly from poor logic and not from a position of intellectual superiority.

You see why I love this guy.

So I’ve become a stickler, have I?

Martha is right on track here, Karen, she’s right on track. The thing is the lips have a hard time getting that R out after the B. It’s hard to do and make that R distinct. Even people who believe they are pronouncing the R and the sticklers, even the ones who believe that they are pronouncing it correctly and pronouncing that R usually aren’t. They’re making a W sound just like the rest of us.

And you know what? The February pronunciation is now more common.

Yeah, it does seem that way.

Doesn’t it?

Well, and it’s listed in every dictionary that I can check here.

Yeah. I do have a nostalgic love for the term February because of the Latin word februa, which I love to bring up. It’s a word for a goatskin thong, not a thing that you wear, but a strip of goatskin that was used in an ancient fertility ritual in ancient Rome in the second month of the year. These two young men clad in goatskin loincloths, are you liking this part?

Yeah.

These two young men clad in goatskin loincloths would run around the city, thwacking women with these little goatskin thongs that were called februa, and these were supposed to make the women fertile.

But I’m not going to thwack anybody with a goatskin thong if they say February.

Well, thank you so much.

You’re welcome, Deb. Thank you for calling us.

All right.

So they’ll have to get fertile some other way.

That’s right.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Take some light.

Coming up, more questions, more answers, right here on A Way with Words.

Support for A Way with Words comes from Random House, publisher of Origins of the Specious, Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, by Patricia T. O’Connor and Stuart Kellerman.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett.

One of the dreadful things about being a parent is having to put up with inane children’s books. I wish I could say that authors and publishers — I’m not serious, Martha.

I thought you were going to say diapers, sleepless nights, but inane children’s books?

That’s all for the care and love of my child. You know, diapers, that’s just part of what goes with making sure that he’s healthy and whole, right?

Okay.

But the thing is, authors and publishers, I think that they mean well, but if they really meant well, then some of these books should never have made it to the shelves, seriously. They should have never made it out of their brainstorming meeting. They’re terrible. They’re really terrible.

But there’s good news. The good news goes by the names of Kate Banks and George Hallensleben.

Let me spell that last name for you, H-A-L-L-E-N-S-L-E-B-E-E, a nice German name.

Kate Banks and George Hallensleben.

This is a duo.

She writes and he illustrates that makes great books.

And so I want to recommend these great books so you can skip some of the inane stuff that I’ve had to read to my son.

We have two of their books in my house.

One of them is called Baboon, and as you know, my son is fixated on baboons.

And the other one is called The Night Worker.

We checked that one out of the library.

Whereas other books are kind of heavy-handed with their teaching or they fall back on the tropes.

There are tropes in children’s literature.

Did you know that?

I am not familiar with many tropes.

Like firefighters rescuing kittens out of trees.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, right.

It seems like every other book I have for my son has a firefighter rescuing a kitten out of a tree.

Well, these books don’t do that.

Even my son picks up the sensitivity of these books.

They’re beautiful.

Oh, really?

The firefighters rescue the cats and then they adopt them?

There are no firefighters in these books.

Okay.

They don’t adopt the cats after…

In one of them, in Baboon, a mother baboon teaches her baby that the world is a place full of variety, that it is both fast and slow, safe and dangerous, bright and dark and so forth.

In the other one called The Night Worker, a little boy named Alex finally gets to make a trip to his father’s overnight job at a building site where his father is a construction worker and he gets to see the big machines and maybe operate them a little bit and just see what his father’s job is about.

And so these two plots mean that sound altogether that interesting to you, but and the writing is prose and it’s not rhyme, but it all is so just perfect.

It lends itself to a measured cadence in which things are said kind of as hints rather than the usual children’s book, upside the head, learn this word kind of imperative that you get.

Do you know what I’m talking about?

That way, they just seem to think that kids are dense, but they really are subtle creatures who are, they’re susceptible to even the slightest influences and I think that Kate Banks, when she’s written this stuff, has given George Hallensleben room to illustrate it so that my son spends time looking at these, I think they’re watercolors, might be tempera paintings, but they’re not very precise, they’re not cartoony, they’re a little figurative and non-literal, these pictures without being too strange and he enjoys looking at these pictures and hearing these words and hearing me talk about these books.

The illustrations are thick and dark and moody and they’re great.

I would almost call them the opposite of sing-songy.

If the pictures were words, then they would be whatever sing-songy is it, anyway.

So they’re sort of like not so much primary colors, but more subtle and it sounds like he’s probably going to be responding to your delight in those books as well.

Certainly.

There’s something to be said for a father not going to his son, saying to his son as I’ve said a million times, “Son, put the book back.

I don’t want to read that again.”

These books I don’t have that problem with.

They are, again, Baboon and Night Worker and they’re written by Kate Banks and illustrated by George Hallensleben.

George is actually spelled without the E on the end.

And you can find a whole bunch of other books by them as well.

Just good stuff that I highly recommend.

That’s all.

Well, that’s a really strong recommendation.

We’ll put links to those on our website and in the meantime, if you have a question for us about books and words and language and grammar, slang, any of those things, give us a call.

That’s 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D or you can send an email to our email box.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

My name is Jessie Tut and I’m calling from Terrell, Texas.

Well, hello, Jessie.

Welcome to this program.

Thank you.

It’s fun to be on.

What can we do for you?

Well, there’s an expression that my family used that I have actually never heard outside of my family.

And it’s richer than Ben Gump.

Richer than Ben Gump.

Right.

Or more money than Ben Gump.

-huh.

Now, how are you spelling the person with all the money?

Well, you know, your guess is as good as mine, I guess.

I would say G-U-M-P for Paul, but I don’t know.

I’ve never seen it written.

If somebody bought a new car or went shopping or something like that, the expression was, “Well, you must have more money than Ben Gump,” or, “They must be richer than Ben Gump.”

And where did you hear this growing up?

I grew up in Western Canada, and we mostly lived in Alberta, but I think we were mostly around my mother’s family, but I remember it was a well-used expression.

Jessie, there’s a great story behind this expression.

Oh, great.

Yes, yes, yes.

Now, the expression is actually richer than BIM Gump.

BIM.

B-I-M.

B-I-M.

Okay.

Yeah.

And the reason behind this expression is that it comes from an old newspaper comic strip that began running in newspapers in this country around, I think it was 1917, and it ran for more than 40 years, and it was a comic strip called The Gumps, and it was about the Gump family.

Now, “gump” is an old slang term for a foolish person, and so you— Oh, is it really?

Yes, yes.

How do you spell that?

G-U-M-P, just like Forrest.

I was right.

Oh, fun.

Yeah.

I was right about that.

And a family of gumps, Andy Gump, who was known as the inventor of the flower pot, so you know that it’s a goofy family.

That was Andy’s claim to fame.

There was his wife and a wisecracking maid and their kid and their cat, but they also had a very rich uncle named Uncle BIM, B-I-M, and Uncle BIM was this gullible millionaire who was always getting taken and falling for these really stupid schemes.

But the really interesting thing about this comic strip is that it was wildly popular during the Great Depression.

Everybody was reading this comic strip, and part of the appeal was that they were doing things in this comic strip that people hadn’t seen in cartoons before.

It was a very realistic comic strip, even though they were goofy people, because, for example, Andy Gump invested a whole bunch of money in the stock market and lost it.

There were characters who got sick.

One of them actually died, and that was the first time that a character in a newspaper comic strip had died, and people were just distraught all over the country.

It was kind of like the sitcom of the Great Depression and afterward.

It became super popular.

There were all these marketing tie-ins.

Go ahead, Grant.

There was a radio show too.

Yes, it became a radio show, and there were actually little toys and collectibles associated with the Gump family.

With your family growing up, I’m sure your parents and the rest of your extended family were well aware of BIM Gump, the rich billionaire.

I get that.

Probably true.

Yeah.

Is it possible online or in any other format to actually see the cartoons?

You betcha.

You can find the most links on our website because the characters are kind of funny to look at.

None of them have chins.

It’s really weird.

When they’re talking, they just look like they have this big hole in their neck.

I’m glad to have the chance to talk about this.

It’s a really interesting story.

It sounds like it.

I’m looking forward to reading some of them.

Okay, great.

Well, thank you so much for answering the question.

Sure thing.

Okay.

You have a great day.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye now.

My parents used to say that you don’t really know where it came from.

We’d like to help you with it.

Give us a call.

1-877-929-9673.

Try us on Twitter at the username Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

This is Sindel Rivoluri in Chicago, Illinois.

Sindel?

It is.

Great name.

Well, welcome, Sindel.

What’s up?

I was doing a crossword a few weeks ago.

You’re one of us.

True.

So, I was doing this crossword, which was actually from last October, so I’ve gotten a little behind, and there was a clue that was cluing the letters A-U-S-T.

Actually, I can’t even remember whether it was referring to Austria or Australia, and it got me wondering why those names are so similar, because I remember being confused about this when I was a kid, and when I was teaching, at least one of my students was wondering about that too.

And it’s weird, because I thought the name Austria came from German, from the word for East, and the word for Australia came from Latin, which refers to South.

That seems like not the same thing, but too much of a coincidence to be chance.

Yeah, it’s weird.

What’s Austria doing over there and Australia doing way down there, and they have different roots?

Mm—

Yeah.

But it is a coincidence, Sendl.

No.

Yeah, it’s a coincidence.

Well, that’s very disappointing.

Well, here, listen to this.

There’s a linguist by the name of Mark Rosenfelder, and he’s actually done a statistical analysis to look for the chance that these exact kinds of coincidences can happen in between different languages.

And it’s a little different than within the same language, and I don’t know enough to really assess his math, but his conclusion is interesting.

He says that the chance of coincidence is high enough that we should not be surprised that two languages can have virtually the same words, say the same spelling or similar pronunciation, two words that mean the same thing.

Because the thing is, there’s so many languages, and each of them have so many words, and the history of the world is so vast, and the things that humans are all interested in are also similar.

And the sounds that we make with our mouths are also similar.

Languages, they all take one small subset of all the possible sounds of the human mouth, but then the sounds that they do take are configured in a variety of kind of predictable ways.

So he says that the coincidence is a yawner almost, and that we should just expect this kind of thing to happen.

Do you know of any other coincidences that are similar?

Well, fortunately, there is a whole collection of this sort of thing.

There are numerous web pages that the one I’ll refer you to, boy, I really hate referring people to Wikipedia because it’s so unreliable, but for what it’s worth, go to Wikipedia and look up the word false cognate.

You probably know that phrase, right?

No, that’s the first time I’ve heard it.

A false cognate, that’s C-O-G-N-A-T-E, false cognate.

This is a pair of words that appear to be the same, but they aren’t.

Either they’ve become separated somewhere etymologically so that they used to mean the same thing, but they no longer do, or they were never the same, or never meant the same thing, they just look alike.

My example that I typically use is the word R-E-D, which means “red” in English, and it means “network” in Spanish.

And of course, the most famous Spanish-English false cognate is “embarras” and “embarrasada,” right?

Embarrasada, right?

Embarrasada, which means to get pregnant.

To get pregnant.

And of course, French and English have a huge number of Ds, and they’re not quite the same as the coincidence that you’re talking about, because a lot of them are related historically etymologically, but somewhere along the way they’ve become so different from each other in their separate languages that they can no longer be considered synonyms.

Yeah, they’re called false cognates or false friends or foes-a-me.

Yeah.

Hey, Sindel, thanks for a great question.

Thank you.

All right, take care.

Thank you, sir.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’re lost in a linguistic thicket, we can help you get your bearings.

You can always drop by our discussion forum.

You’ll find that at waywordradio.org/discussion.

We received an email recently from Paul in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

He writes, “What’s with pandemic?

We used to have epidemics, now we only have pandemics.

From what I see in the dictionary, they mean pretty much the same thing, except that a pandemic might be more so.

Regardless, epidemic seems to vanish from use, certainly as far as CDC and the media are concerned.”

Now, Grant, I have to admit that I haven’t heard pandemic very much until recently but it’s certainly been around for a long time.

I think the two words have a pretty clear difference.

Pandemic is when a lot of people get sick across a very large area and epidemic is when a lot of people get sick in a relatively small area.

It’s a difference in size mostly, right?

Yeah, yeah.

A pandemic is an epidemic that gets out of hand in terms of not only numbers but location, as far as I can tell.

I haven’t noticed pandemic replacing epidemic.

I have to say I haven’t heard it much before the recent scare.

Swine flu thing.

Yeah.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there was some linguistic inflation happening here and people were using pandemic just to emphasize their point but I haven’t noticed it either.

I do think it’s something to be alert for.

Pandemic is worse than an epidemic though so I think it does apply to the swine flu situation.

Right.

Well, if you have a question about a word in the news, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Noah Taylor calling from Seneca, South Carolina.

Hi, Noah.

How are you doing?

Great.

Welcome to the show.

I was going to call about the expression “coined.”

I heard you talk about it on the program.

Okay.

Can you please tell me where that came from or what it means by chance?

Now, when you say “coined,” what do you mean exactly?

Like when you coin a phrase perhaps?

-huh.

Coin a phrase or coin a word.

Well, Noah, do you have any guesses about why we use the word “coin”?

Probably because like if you pay money then you’re just giving then, well, you own that object then so it could possibly have something to do with that so you can name it whatever you want maybe.

Oh, that’s interesting.

That’s an interesting theory.

Does the word “coin” as in “coin a phrase” have anything to do with those little metal disks that we use for money?

Well, here’s the connection.

Back in the 14th century we had the verb “to coin” but it specifically meant making those little disks that are stamped with things that are money, you know, making coins.

But over time that idea expanded to some more general ideas like a couple hundred years later you might talk about coining a story or coining a word and it’s sort of the same idea of, you know how they make coins by stamping metal with something even harder and that puts the design in it?

Yes.

It’s sort of the same idea.

You’re sort of putting the stamp on that raw material of an idea and making something that’s distinctive.

So it went from sort of a specific sense of making those little coins.

It later became applied to something more abstract like making words.

Oh.

There’s a suggestion there of putting your imprint on something which I think dovetails with what Noah was saying, right?

There’s some force involved in making a coin.

Isn’t there some kind of…

Do you see some kind of connotation there, Martha, that coining it?

It’s just not like a facile act, right?

Something we put some effort into.

Yeah.

It’s something very specific and something very forceful.

And Noah, I think you’re raising some interesting ideas about the connections between words and money, you know?

I mean words are kind of like coins in a way, aren’t they?

We carry them around and we exchange them.

They’re a kind of linguistic currency that lets us give and take meaning from other people.

So does that make sense, Noah?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, we appreciate your calling.

Thank you, sir.

Okay.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, if you have a question about the origin of a word, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

In an earlier episode, we talked about euphemisms for going to the bathroom, like spend a penny or go see a man about a horse.

And that prompted several of you to call in with some of your favorite euphemisms for excusing yourself to go to the bathroom.

And I thought I’d share some of them because, of course, you can never have too many euphemisms for going to the bathroom.

Wouldn’t you agree, Grant?

Yeah.

Hurry up, though.

I need to go now.

Okay.

So Sharon called to say that the expression he uses is, “I’m going to make a confession.”

The booth.

And Sharon called to say that recently she was in China and her guide would always say, “And over here is the happy room.”

It’s like having a laughing place.

Everybody should have a happy room.

Anyway, we’d be happy to hear from you if you give us a call at 1-877-929-9673 or send an e-mail to words@waywordradio.org.

That’s our show for this week.

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Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

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Tim also engineered our theme music.

Kurt Konan produced it.

We’ve had production help this week from Michael Bagdasian and Josette Hurdell.

From the Argo Network in New York City, I’m Grant Barrett.

And from Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

Goodbye.

Au revoir.

♪ Neither, either, either, neither, neither, let’s call a whole thing off ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING]