Writerly Insults (episode #1378)

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 our occasional guilty pleasures here at A Way with Words is the website called Slushpile Hell.

Oh, yes.

This is where a grumpy literary agent lets off steam about the bad manuscripts and the awful query letters that he receives each week.

And Grant, you know what a slushpile is.

Yeah, a slushpile is when you work in book publishing, you get a lot of unsolicited manuscripts,

Either if you’re a publisher or a literary agent,

And somebody has to go through them because there might be a genius in there.

There usually isn’t a genius, but there might be.

So you have to give everything a try.

Right.

And slush pile hell is this weird mixture of sort of schadenfreude and eye-rolling and snark.

And it’s also evidence that an amazing number of people have

What you might call a wildly overinflated view of their writing ability.

Let me give you just one example.

Here’s a letter that came to this agent.

Have you ever wished that you had represented the author of the Holy Bible and placed it with a publisher?

No.

With the Bible being the best-selling book ever written over the last 2,000 years,

The revenue it would have generated for your agency and employees would have allowed your agency to exist for generations.

While I don’t have a religious manuscript, I do have one I believe is as important as the Bible,

Which has the sales potential of the Bible.

Oh, no.

Yes, exactly. Oh, no.

Well, so the whole premise there on this website is that a lot of these people think that if they’re really positive about their book and they really state their case with a lot of adverbs, they’re going to convince this agent.

They’re just going to be overwhelmed by all the L-Y endings or something, right?

I truly believe this is the best book ever.

And my advice is that it doesn’t work that way, at least in my experience.

And it’s different for other people and it’s different in other industries.

Just be plain spoken.

My name is X.

My topic of my book is Y.

It’s this long.

Here’s a sample chapter.

I think it fits into this genre.

Here’s my contact information.

I’m out of here.

And your writing speaks for itself.

Yeah, your writing speaks for itself.

Because here’s the thing.

You are encountering a busy person who’s got maybe two minutes.

They’re going to read three or four pages.

And if you don’t win them over in the three or four pages of the manuscript, not the cover letter, not the query letter, then you’re not going to do the job.

Yep.

So stay away from the hyperbole.

For sure, right?

Congratulations on your manuscript.

Please don’t send it to me.

I’ll share a few more examples of these later in the show.

And in the meantime, we’d love to hear your questions, comments about language.

The number to call is 877-929-9673.

Or you can send your comments about language and writing to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marguerite from Atlanta, Georgia.

Hi, Marguerite. Welcome to the show.

Hey there, what’s on your mind?

What’s on my mind is an old word that people really don’t use anymore.

But I’m very curious about being from the South.

You know, I grew up and I read Gone to Wind, and now my 13-year-old daughter just recently read it.

And we both noticed that Scarlet, the heroine, would often use the word fiddlesticks when she was frustrated with something or something didn’t turn out her way, which happens quite a bit in the book.

She also uses fiddle-deed-deed.

But in the movie, fiddlesticks doesn’t appear, but fiddle-deed-deed does.

So my question really is about fiddlesticks.

And is it truly in the book?

Am I remembering correctly?

And if so, where does it come from?

So what’s happening when fiddlesticks or fiddle DD come up?

What’s the circumstance?

Oh, you know, Scarlett doesn’t get her way about something.

Or she’s being forced to do something she doesn’t want to do,

Like eat a piece of pie right before she’s trying to put on her corset to go to a dance.

I hate when that happens.

My kind of gal.

That’s not what I say.

So she’s like, well, fiddle-dee-dee, I’ll have pie if I want to.

Something like that.

Exactly.

Exactly.

When she asserts her will, she sometimes uses those phrases.

I remember the line from the movie because Janet Leigh is just so adorable,

And when she says it, there’s a little swish of the head and roll of the eyes or something.

Am I remembering that correctly?

You are.

She’s very animated, and she’s charming and self-absorbed all at the same time.

Right, right.

So this is a really interesting question, Martha, right?

Yeah.

Because this is good history.

Yes, it’s old, old, old.

Old, old, old.

Fiddlesticks.

Hundreds of years.

400?

Roughly?

At least to Shakespeare’s time, right?

Oh, really?

Yeah, Shakespeare’s time.

So there’s this notion here that a fiddle, for some reason, is a bit of a trifle, that it’s something almost irrelevant.

And also, it’s kind of a fun word to say.

So you’ll find fiddlesticks and fiddle-dee-dee more or less appear at about the same time, maybe 50 years apart.

And in terms of language, that’s considered adjacency, you know, right next to each other.

And they just come to be used just to mean nonsense or rubbish or anything empty or pointless or a way of dismissing, as Scarlett did, a way of dismissing a circumstance or something that somebody said or a point of view.

So a fiddle is trifling and the fiddle stick, the bow that you play it with, is even more trifling.

Right, something like that.

And we don’t know why it’s considered trifling, but it appears incredibly early.

And actually one of the earliest uses is just the word fiddle.

Wow, that’s fascinating.

So it dates back all the way back to Shakespeare.

You can find fiddlesticks in Shakespeare.

Yeah, there’s a line in there.

Yeah, Henry IV, The Devil Rides on a Fiddlestick.

Interesting.

That is fascinating.

I never knew Scarlet and Shakespeare were connected.

So now I have that connection, which is great.

Yeah, yeah.

English is a…

Two peas in a pod.

I think I’ve said this before, maybe too often,

But English is a really slow-moving river.

And we tend to focus our attention on the dragonflies on the surface

Because they’re brightly colored and they flit about.

I mean, if we can call new words dragonflies.

But the river as a whole is just this ponderous, slow-moving thing,

And it’s not surprising to have a 400-year-old term.

It really isn’t.

Grandparent, you have A Way with Words.

I know.

I should do a radio show.

I really appreciate y’all unraveling this mystery.

I can’t wait to tell my daughter where it comes from,

And maybe this will make her read her Shakespeare this year in English.

Excellent.

Yeah, sure.

Yes, Shakespeare is just loaded with cool little phrases.

It might take you a bit of time with the modern ear and eye to suss them out.

But once you get to the bottom of them and start to understand them, they take a hold on you and you find them just coming out in your own speech.

Marguerite, thanks for calling.

Thank you.

Y’all have a nice day.

You too.

Take care now.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.

My reading this week has been finding insults from one writer about another.

Oh!

Yeah, these are always fun.

Some of the writer names I don’t know, but some of them I do.

Okay.

A particularly good one was said about Dorothy Parker.

To those she did not like, she was a stiletto made of sugar.

Ooh.

So it’s kind of a compliment, but kind of not, right?

And by stiletto, they don’t mean a stiletto shoe.

They mean a stiletto knife.

Yeah.

Right to the heart with a bit of candy, I guess.

Right. Velvet hammer.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hey, Martha and Grant. How are you?

My name is Bridget Jockala. I’m calling from Ishbeming, Michigan.

Nice. Nice.

Yes, it’s in the beautiful Upper Peninsula.

So here’s what happened.

I had a Facebook discussion a couple of weeks ago

Concerning what we say when we are in a public restroom

And someone knocks on the door.

Now, I myself say, you know, yes, or I’m in here, or just a minute,

But what happened was someone, when I knocked on the door, had said,

Occupado, which I thought was really bizarre.

And so I put it to a discussion on my Facebook wall,

And it turns out that kind of an alarming number of my friends say Occupado,

And I have no idea where that would have come from.

And they’re not Spanish speakers natively?

Nope, no Spanish speakers, no people of Latin descent.

I have one friend who’s been to Portugal, but that’s about all.

Whoa!

And was there any common thread, like age or where they’re from or anything like that?

Well, it’s all pretty much geographically and ethnically homogeneous, my friends.

So it was kind of surprising.

A friend of mine suggested that it may come from airline travel, like the little latch on the bathroom door says occupied and or occupado.

But that seems a little pervasive to have that many people have said it.

Well, I know what you’re talking about.

I’ve had this discussion before with people, and it’s kind of crazy, isn’t it, how many people say, I say Occupado, and I don’t know why I say it.

I must have picked it up from a TV show or movie, but I think your bilingual idea of not just airplanes, but all these other places in American life,

For far longer than you might think, have had bilingual signs for these basic things like bathrooms and doors and things where Spanish and English might be needed.

Push, pull, right?

Oh, yeah.

I remember that.

Closed, that sort of thing.

It rings a bell for me because when I was very young,

I remember that you used to leave a plastic card on your seat on the airline.

I don’t know why, but if you went to the restroom,

You used one of these plastic cards that said occupado on it as well as occupied.

But one side said occupied and the other side said occupado.

Yeah, or it was on the same thing.

But why? Was it unassigned seating and anybody could go and take your seat if you left it?

I don’t remember. I don’t remember, but you can actually find these cards on eBay.

Oh, really? For sale?

Yes, yes.

A little stroll down memory lane, but this was a long time ago.

Bridget, I’ve never heard of those cards.

Well, isn’t it interesting that we would choose occupado over occupied?

I mean, because that’s, you know, what we would normally say.

But there’s another thing happening here, and I think this may be part of the answer.

We are fascinated with certain foreignisms.

We take certain foreign words, and we just borrow them into English for no good reason.

Like you might say sayonara to somebody when you actually are saying goodbye,

And you really don’t want them to come back, right?

Like sayonara, sucker.

We’ll say things like entree for pretending to be formal instead of saying enter, right?

When I say danke for thank you because it’s faster when I’m in a hurry.

There we go.

We might say excuse-moi, kind of like Steve Martin saying excuse me, right?

And we say adios for no good reason.

We could just say goodbye, but for some reason we say adios.

And there’s a ton of these in English.

And so maybe this is part of that class of words that we just borrowed.

I think it does one interesting thing that all these other examples do.

It takes a kind of bland experience and adds just a dab of color to it.

A little cayenne pepper.

Yeah, a little sprinkle.

Maybe not that severe, but maybe a little crushed black pepper.

Sriracha.

Yeah, a little sriracha.

Maybe it’s a way to add a little fanciness to an awkward situation.

Yeah, I’m on the toilet.

It’s clear that you knocked on the door and my pants are down.

I never say that.

I say it.

Well, no, that’s what I’m saying.

I’m in here.

If you knock on the door and I’m in there, you can guess some things about my circumstances.

And so you kind of add a little, just a little hilarity, just a touch of laughter, right?

Just me, see.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, who answers with silence?

Right?

I think that would have a, you know, sort of an ill effect.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Break down the door.

Oh, sorry.

I didn’t know you were in there, sir.

I just growl.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, well, a lynx is in there.

You know, the only other thing I can think of is that there was an episode of The Family Guy where the guy says Agapato.

It predates that by at least 20 years.

Well, sure, but I’m wondering if your friends in your Facebook universe are fans of The Family Guy.

Because I can find examples of this in books from the 90s and 80s.

Yeah.

80s and 90s.

Yeah.

So I know it’s at least that old, and I wouldn’t be surprised now that we’ve talked about it on the air that we get calls from people going,

Oh, I remember using this in the 50s.

Well, I hope you do because I’m so eager to have a solution to this question,

And I appreciate you guys giving me an answer.

Some of life’s mysteries are best unanswered, Bridget.

But thank you for the preliminary fieldwork on your Facebook page.

Sounds like you did the right thing.

You had a language question.

You put it out to your people, and you tried to come up with some theories.

Awesome.

I’d love it if you would share some of that with us,

And we can post it to our own Facebook page.

Oh, I’d be happy to.

Okay, groovy.

Bridget, we’re going to find out what the community knows about Occupado, okay?

And believe us, we will.

So what do you say when you’re in the bathroom and somebody knocks on the door?

Do you just say occupied, occupado, go away, almost finished, come in?

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Thanks, Bridget.

Thanks, Bridget.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Coming up, a quiz and more of your stories about language as A Way with Words continues.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

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

Hiya, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hey, buddy.

What’s up?

I’m doing great.

You know, I split my time between you guys and Ask Me Another on NPR.

We have a great time.

I’m a puzzle guru on there occasionally.

We’re having a really great time.

I hope you guys can come see our show sometime.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

Bring it out to the West Coast.

The West Coast wants to see it.

Come on.

Terrific.

Yeah, we hope to get out there.

Now, today’s quiz, well, frankly, I’m not a big fan of beauty pageants, unless it’s the Miss Word Pageant.

It’s the only pageant I’d attend, since the competitors are just words.

Now, our lovely contestants are a beautiful gathering of Miss Words from around the language.

For example, our first contestant likes to go where life takes it, which is why it loves accidentally calling the wrong number.

It meets so many new friends.

Please welcome Miss Dial.

Miss Dial, here she is.

Now, they are actually a pretty motley crew, so let’s meet the other contestants.

Ready to go?

Yes.

Good.

It’s a wonder that our next contestant has made it this far in the competition,

Considering how much it just hates people.

It hates you, it hates me.

Nevertheless, let’s give a warm welcome to…

Misanthropy!

Misanthropy or misanthrope.

Very good.

Our next contestant is a shoo-in for the talent portion of the pageant.

It’s a fantastic magician.

While you’re watching its left hand, its right hand is loading the rabbit in the hat.

Spoiler alert.

Let’s say hi to…

Misdirection.

Misdirection.

Here she is.

Here it is.

These are all its, by the way.

Yeah, I know what I was going to say.

All right.

I feel a little sorry for our next contestant.

How can it possibly win when it came out wearing two different shoes in the evening gown portion?

Maybe there’s still a chance for…

Mismatched.

Mismatched.

Frankly, our next contestant can do better than a pageant.

Unfortunately, it took some bad advice from its manager and its agent.

Poor thing.

Let’s say hello to…

Misguided.

Misguided, yes.

Very good.

Now, our next contestant is doing pretty well,

Considering that it claimed in the interview portion that FDR stated,

We have nothing to fear except beer itself.

What a boner!

But we’re still rooting for…

Misquote or misquoted.

Misquote.

It’s quotable.

It’s quotable.

Very good.

After wasting many years skipping school, hanging out, and hustling pool, our next contestant has cleaned up its act too late.

Its youth is gone, and now here is…

Misspent.

Misspent, yes.

Our next contestant is just throwing anything and everything at the pageant judges in an attempt to win.

Some of this, some of that, and the rest of the stuff that everybody left behind.

Will this strategy work for the plucky…

Miscellaneous.

Miscellaneous, yes.

That’s my favorite so far.

There you go.

Our next contestant is pretty young,

Which might explain why its talent is pulling childish pranks.

Water bucket in the doorway, thumbtacks in the judge’s chairs,

It’s all in a day’s work for…

Lure.

Mischief.

Mischief.

Ooh, nice.

Very good.

And here we go.

In a thrilling finale,

The winner of our Miss Word pageant has surprised everyone.

It won because the vote tally was completely messed up.

Nevertheless, let’s welcome our new Miss Word.

Miscalculate?

What does the word tally mean?

Counted?

Miscount.

Miscount.

Oh, okay.

Miscount is our new Miss Word.

Congratulations, everybody.

It was wonderful.

Wonderful contestants for Miss Word Paget.

John, thanks so much for another great quiz.

Thank you, guys.

Call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673,

Or send emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mallory. I’m calling from Minneapolis.

Hi, Mallory. Welcome.

Well, I have a question about something my dad says.

My father is a very articulate man.

He constantly corrects me on my grammar,

Specifically between words like lay and lie and scenarios kind of like that.

But there’s one thing that he says that I probably relish a bit too much in making fun of him for.

But he often says the word all.

So the example would be, you know, he says something to the effect of all you have to do is fix this or all I have to do.

And it’s just this one thing he does over anything else that’s grammatically, you know, questionable to me.

But I don’t know if it maybe has a history from where he’s from or it’s kind of common to the region he grew up in.

And I just am kind of curious about why he might say this one word this way.

So, Mallory, you correct him every time he says alls?

Oh, yeah, I usually do.

I go, what do I have to do, Dad?

What do I have to do?

And then how does he react?

Usually he just kind of smirks at me and kind of just smiles and laughs and then goes, yeah, okay.

All you have to do.

So you’re saying he should just say all instead of alls.

Yeah.

And does he say why he says it?

You know, he doesn’t necessarily know for sure.

He thinks that maybe it’s something, he grew up in northern Indiana, in South Bend,

And he thinks maybe it’s something to do with like the community he grew up in up there,

And a couple people he knows from there say it as well.

And that’s kind of what he thinks, maybe, but he doesn’t know for sure.

It’s not geographically centered.

There’s no one place in the world where it said more, maybe a little more in Scotland, but it’s widespread throughout the English speaking world.

Here’s the news, Mallory.

You’re probably wrong.

Okay.

And it’s because it’s not alls.

There’s just an accidental S.

It’s not all turned plural.

It’s all A-L-L apostrophe S.

And it’s probably a contraction for all that or all as, right?

You might say, alls I know is, you need to get out of there, which is a contraction for all as I know is.

Now, I know that sounds odd to say all as, but it is an archaic construction.

And what we have is the alls contraction kind of turned idiomatic.

So we’ve kind of passed on and no longer say what it was contracted from, but we still say the contraction.

So it’s like a fossil.

Oh, okay.

Like shouldn’t is kind of in that same category.

Most of us wouldn’t say, should I not?

Yeah.

The other thing is some people have suggested it’s a contraction of all that instead of all as.

And this is because there’s a variant form, ALST, A-L-S-T, which is also very common.

It’s kind of marked as rural or kind of marked as archaic or old-fashioned.

But that ALST is more or less, I say more or less because it’s complicated, a contraction of all that.

All that I know is you need to get out of there.

ALST I know is you need to get out of there.

I’m sure he’ll be glad to know that I’m wrong.

You don’t have to tell him.

Yeah, don’t tell him.

But it does kind of underscore the pitfalls of correcting people.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

No, and that’s why I was curious because, you know, I was just correcting him.

And I’m like, well, maybe he’s right.

I don’t know.

So that’s why I wanted to ask the question.

Yeah, and it’s interesting.

It’s good to hear of a family, though, that takes care about their speech

And that you guys treat it with humor and gentleness

And not kind of this all-out warfare that some folks do.

Yeah, it seems like you have a good thing going.

That’s the right attitude.

Mallory, thank you so much for giving us a call.

Thank you very much.

All right, take care now.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Thank you.

I’m glad to square that away for her.

I really was interested in the fact that they do have that relationship.

I was going to say.

I guess I kept trying to say that, and I’m not sure I got it out,

But I just wanted to say Mallory and her father have the right attitude

When it comes to gently kind of, you know, winking and nudging and saying,

Oh, really, Dad, that’s how you’re going to say that?

That’s how I learned a lot of grammar was my mother correcting me.

But gently, with love.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org and find us on Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher, and more.

Grant, here’s another letter to an agent that appears on the website SlushpileHell.

It goes, I am looking for a literary agent.

I have attached the book.

The writing is final and I do not want it changed.

Let me know if you want to take it on.

It’s a very good book.

Very well written.

Please advise.

The utter confidence approach doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work in query letters or resumes that people are not persuaded.

You have to give them the evidence that it’s a good book.

And telling people that your work cannot be edited, I mean, that’s guaranteed file 13.

That’s right.

It does not play well with others.

Yeah.

I mean, there are great writers out there who will never be published because they don’t work well with editors.

Sure.

They’re unwilling to accept advice or collaboration.

Yeah, which is a shame, right?

Because a good editor is worth his or her weight in gold.

But is it a shame?

Aren’t there enough books published every year?

More competition out there.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Stephen Ton calling from Irving, Texas.

Hi, Stephen.

How are you doing?

Hi, Stephen.

Well, I was reading a novel recently and came across the phrase dead on,

And it just got me to thinking is how did we start using sort of death

To describe something that means precisely, I guess,

Is what I kind of think overall the meaning is.

There’s like dead on, dead center, dead right, dead wrong, you know,

Those kinds of phrases.

But it sounds a little morbid, doesn’t it?

But I’m not sure where it came from.

Well, it does, but your hunch is correct.

It has to do with the notion of death being utter or absolute or absolutely certain.

So you get things like dead tired, dead bold, dead certain.

Dead simple.

Yeah, so it’s really sort of finality is what you’re talking about there.

Yeah, it’s not directly related to death, though.

It doesn’t necessarily have to do with shuffling off this mortal coil or anything like that,

But it’s the finality of it.

When I’ve lost someone to death, I always think about Get Smart.

Do you remember the beginning of Get Smart?

That old TV show where the guy walks?

Yeah, I remember the show, but what part?

Yeah, I’m thinking about the guy walking down the hall with all the doors closing.

Yes, exactly, and those doors just slam, and it’s just, it’s very dead.

It’s very certain.

It’s very absolute.

No going back.

Yeah, yeah, you know, you can’t say, one more thing I wanted to ask.

That answers my question.

It just kind of hit me as a curiosity as I was reading,

And I started thinking about it, and I was like,

Okay.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks, Stephen.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, one that we didn’t talk about is dead reckoning.

What about it?

Well, some people say that it comes from deduced reckoning.

They’re wrong.

They’re wrong.

Utterly, completely wrong.

Yes.

They’re dead wrong.

Why?

And it’s funny because you have all these nautical books

That claim that it comes from deduced reckoning,

And they’re absolutely, provably, utterly wrong.

It’s because dead reckoning appears long before…

Deduced reckoning.

Right, exactly.

So we have an origin problem.

You can’t have a phrase come from another phrase

If the child phrase existed before the parent phrase.

It just can’t happen.

That’s right. Chicken and egg.

Chicken and egg.

And also, dead ringer, by the way, has nothing to do with people buried with bells

In case they were buried alive.

True.

Yes.

Same idea, right?

I know we’re going to get calls and emails about this.

I know you’re going to send us Wikipedia articles.

Don’t bother.

What words on your mind?

Call us, 877-929-9673.

On our Facebook page, Beth Snyder asked what people say when you have somebody who’s in the way,

Like you’re trying to watch TV and somebody’s in the way.

She said when she was growing up, her mom would say,

Your daddy weren’t no glassmaker.

Oh, right, right.

You’re not transparent.

And her friends’ parents would say, you make a better door than a window.

Did your family have anything else like that?

No, it was just down in front.

Down in front, yeah.

Or chop down that tree or something.

Move.

Oh, chop down that tree?

Well, some comment about tall timber usually.

I never heard that one.

What did your family say? 877-929-9673.

You can also send it in email to words@waywordradio.org or join the discussion on Facebook.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello there. My name is Sandra, voter, just like you vote on Election Day.

Well, Sandra, welcome to the show.

Hiya, Sandra.

Hi there. Good. I got both of you. How are you?

You do.

We’re great. Thank you for asking.

What can we help you with?

Well, I’m calling from Columbus, Georgia, the deep south.

Oh, yeah.

And both my parents grew up in the big city of Dothan, Alabama,

Which is southwest Alabama, and in the country.

And my mother and her family had this expression,

Which has always made me wonder where it came from.

It was, don’t be messing and gomming with that.

And that usually meant food.

And I got the impression that the messing was bad, but the gomming was worse.

It was just really bad.

So I just don’t know where that came from.

And I have asked other Southerners from around their age group or their children.

And no one else has heard that expression.

Messing and gomming usually has to do with sort of messing around, just dawdling or puttering or getting yourself into trouble.

And the gomming is really interesting.

It comes from an old word that has to do with something that’s sticky, something that you smear.

Grease or butter.

Yeah, yeah.

Or mud.

In fact, it might be the grease that comes out of an axle, just that kind of mix of grime and dirt that comes out of an axle at the end of a wheel.

And so if you’re gomming or you’re gommie, you might say the baby’s all gommed up.

She’s got cornbread and molasses all over her face or something like that.

We might say, most people today might say something is gummed up, which is related to that, right?

Yeah, that probably came from that.

I hadn’t thought of it, but it must, as you say, have something to do with getting your food dirty in conjunction.

There we go.

In general, it’s used to mean to mess around or to make something messy.

Both of these together.

And you do find

Messin and gauman together

Like a pear.

They’re just like

Peanut butter and jelly

And salt and pepper.

You know,

They just kind of go together.

I’m glad to know

That my family’s not weird

That they’re all.

No,

And it’s in fine

Southern tradition.

It is far more common

In the South.

I mean,

It’s used elsewhere

In the country,

But not to the same degree

That it is used

In the American South.

Right.

Okay.

And not necessarily

With food.

I mean,

You might talk about

Your teenager’s room

Being all gaumed up.

Right.

Well,

That’s true too.

But usually it’s spelled G-A-U-M.

We should say that, gom.

G-A-U-M.

Oh, okay.

Well, I’m glad to know that.

It’s old enough that you’ll find it in a few standard dictionaries,

Although it does tend to be more of a dialect word.

One of the uses I found, which I thought was particularly appropriate,

That’s a little different, is when you have somebody over, like a tradesman,

To repair the sink or to fix a hole in the wall

Or to even just do major construction on the house,

And you might, when you realize they don’t know what they’re doing

And all they’re doing is just like farting around.

You’ll say, he’s messing in gum and he’s wasting my money, right?

So he’s just kind of like measuring but never cutting, so to speak.

Oh, okay.

Well, I make use the phrase more often than since I know that it is a legitimate phrase

And that other people have heard of it because I didn’t want people looking at me

And thinking, where did you come up with that?

Oh, it’s good to say things that people don’t understand all the time.

Not the truth.

Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate that because I am a senior citizen, and I have wondered about that my entire life,

And I thought I do want to know before I go to the heavenly beyond, hopefully.

Well, we’re glad we could help, Sandra.

Thanks, Sandra.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

Good talking to you.

Glad to have you along.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I should say never be afraid of those things that you learn from your parents and your grandparents.

Oh, gosh, no.

No, and explore them.

Call us about them, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

I did want to share one quotation from 1932 that I found in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

I order a node better, but my head was all gommed up with sparking.

I order a node better, but my head was all gommed up with sparking.

Sparking mean what?

With thinking?

A brainstorm?

Well, courting somebody.

Oh, sparking.

Yeah, you get all gommed up.

You know what I’m saying?

Been there, done that.

When you have a crush, you dump things straight, basically.

Exactly. You get all gommed up.

With sparking.

With sparking.

Call us about the phrases from your family, 877-929-9673.

I’ve never heard of Oliver Goldsmith, but he had a really great quote about Samuel Johnson,

The great dictionary maker.

Yeah.

There is no arguing with Johnson

For when his pistol misses fire,

He knocks you down with the butt end of it.

Meaning that even if he can’t convince you

With his argument,

He’ll just slug you in his head.

He’ll bludgeon you anyway.

A very forceful personality by all accounts.

Yes, Dr. Johnson.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Your questions, our answers about language and how we use it.

Stick around.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Sometimes I just can’t help myself.

I’ll be in the middle of a conversation and somebody will say a word

And I’ll have to stop it down and just say,

Oh my gosh, do you know the etymology of that word?

It’s so fascinating.

I’m like, yes, Martha, go ahead.

I know.

I’ve stopped down many a dinner party.

And people are like, how nice for you.

We’ll be out on the veranda.

Right.

This happened again the other day, Grant, and I thought I would share with you the etymology and see if you can guess what the word is.

Oh, okay. Bring it on. Let’s see how this goes.

Okay. Well, this etymology involves a German who studied theology and law and then later medicine.

He completed his doctoral thesis in Vienna in 1766.

And he had this theory that just as the moon exerts a pull on ocean tides, the planets exert this kind of gravitational force on our bodies.

And they affect our health that way.

And he said that this was a kind of animal magnetism.

And he applied this animal magnetism in his practice in Vienna

By doing things like having patients swallow a preparation containing iron

And then holding magnets on different parts of their body

To try to disrupt those gravitational tides.

And the basic idea was that somehow he could remove blockages

That were causing problems and create this kind of artificial tide

To make the problems leave.

And later he stopped using magnets and he started using his hands to channel these invisible magnetic fields.

He was something of a showman.

And supposedly for a while there, he was curing things like convulsions and paralysis.

And he would hold these special salons with dim lights and music.

And actually Mozart was one of his fans.

And then later he moved to Paris and Marie Antoinette became very taken with him.

And his idea of animal magnetism spread for a while.

And do you have any idea who this was?

It’s Mesmer.

It’s Mesmer, Franz Mesmer, giving us the word mesmerize, meaning to attract strongly or hold spellbound.

Oh, interesting. Sounds like the David Blaine of his era.

Or something like that.

Kind of like Deepak Chopper plus David Blaine? I’m not sure.

Yeah, something like that.

But he was working kind of like a Western version of chi.

Sort of, yeah, with magnets and stuff.

But, yeah, I stopped down the conversation the other day just because it’s such a great story, right?

And they were all mesmerized by your explanation.

That’s right, and then we lost the thread.

Or maybe I was told I was mesmerized.

I can’t remember.

Something like that.

So at the root of most English words is an interesting history.

You just have to dig it up.

That’s right.

Words have secrets locked inside of them.

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Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Tim Daisies from Nashville, Tennessee.

Hi, Tim.

Welcome to the show.

Hi.

Hi.

What can we help you with?

Well, I got a question for you.

It came up when I was looking at the Constitution, as it turns out.

It’s the difference between insurer and insurer.

And I’ve always been very confident that insurer, that is I-N-S-U-R-E, is to protect against loss or to provide some kind of compensation in the case of loss.

And insurer is to make sure that something happens.

So in the Constitution preamble, the word that I think should be is ensure,

But it’s actually ensure when you look at the picture.

So I-N and E-N, and you have a problem with the Constitution, sir?

Well, I don’t have a problem with the Constitution.

But in my understanding, the word that is in the Constitution really is to,

Well, at least nowadays, it is used to provide compensation for some kind of loss.

Right.

That is Ensure.

But so in my modern day thinking, it should be the word Ensure, E-N-S-U-R-E.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s kind of a shock to see that, isn’t it?

I would agree.

Which version of the Constitution were you looking at?

We’re talking about the preamble here.

Were you looking at like a reproduction of the handwritten original,

Or you’re looking at just like a modern text HTML version?

I was actually looking at a picture of the original.

Okay.

The handwritten one or the typeset one?

Yes, the handwritten one.

Okay.

It’s beautiful handwriting, isn’t it?

Yeah, we don’t write like that anymore, do we?

Yeah.

So you were taken aback when you saw the version that was there.

I was, but then again, you know, back then it seems like the spelling

Is a little bit more fluid than it is today.

You know, after Noah and his Webster’s Dictionary got put in place.

You’re right.

Yeah, if you go to the very end of the Constitution there, they spell independence with an A.

Independent.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Go to, I think it’s the last line.

Yeah, and it’s not just that.

Independence.

After the Constitution had been approved and they typeset it for distribution throughout the colonies, they used long S’s as well.

They spelled defense with a British C.

They had a strange capitalization in the handwritten version where nouns like welfare that we wouldn’t capitalize today were all capitalized.

So what you’ve noticed then is the change of orthography and style and presentation that has come to pass in the last 200 plus years.

And it wasn’t really standardized back then, is that correct?

Not nearly as much.

Among the educated classes, standardization was beginning to happen.

Certainly they were reading each other.

It was a very relatively small group of thinking and writing people.

And when you got that kind of thinking group all kind of reading each other and writing to each other, then they do develop a kind of consensus about spelling and presentation.

And particularly back then, yeah, insure and insure meant pretty much the same thing.

They could be used interchangeably.

Now they’ve sort of diverged.

And you can’t go wrong using I-N for, as you said, paying in advance to make sure that something happens.

Or make sure that when something bad happens, you get paid for it, right?

I see.

Yeah.

And was there not the concept of insurance in general?

There was.

It tended to be represented as large pools of merchants, though, like Lloyd’s of London and that sort of thing,

Where you have a giant pool of money to compensate somebody who does intercontinental shipping should they lose a ship at sea.

It wasn’t the kind of thing where you insure your iPod, you know?

I see. Right.

So it was big-scale merchant insurance and not like homeowners insurance and that sort of thing.

I see.

Very interesting.

Cool, Tim.

Thank you so much for your call.

Sure.

All right.

Thanks for listening, sir.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Another query letter from the website SlushPileHell.

My dog has written a book on how to be a success.

He already has 38 Twitter followers, which is proof that this concept is going to work.

I haven’t seen anything else like it in the bookstores.

It will be a huge hit.

38 Twitter followers. Amazing.

Of the dog.

In all seriousness, though, when I was doing reviews of manuscripts, people would talk about their Twitter followers.

And they would always be this terribly low number.

And really, if you’re not talking the tens of thousands at least, you don’t really have an audience.

Well, 38 is a start.

You don’t have a big enough, no.

For a dog.

Are there other dogs, though?

Oh, that’s true.

I bet there’s some cats pretending to be dogs.

That’s right.

877-929-9673.

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Find us on Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, iTunes, you name it.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Julianne.

Hi, Julianne. Where are you calling from?

Luddington, Michigan.

Luddington, Michigan. Well, welcome to the show. How can we help you?

Well, the other day, my daughter and I were driving around, and somehow we got talking about ice cream,

And I mentioned something about a purple cow, which to me is obviously a vanilla ice cream with a purple soda,

A grape, neon, or whatever.

And, of course, she had never heard of that, and she sort of gave me a funny look.

So I was just sort of curious about what the origin of that is and where that came from.

And I used to live in a different part of Michigan, and so I’ve always lived in Michigan,

But I’m curious if it’s just a Michigan word.

Is it a northern Michigan word?

Where did that come from?

Purple cow for grape soda and ice cream?

Yep.

Okay.

How’s it taste?

A grape soda and ice cream.

So it’s just a grape soda float, right?

A grape soda float then.

Yeah, basically.

And also I’ve heard of a brown cow,

Which I always thought was the same as a root beer float,

But I know also I think I’ve heard that it could be Coke with ice cream.

But then I looked at it, I Googled it,

And it said chocolate ice cream with root beer,

And I just, that didn’t sound appealing at all.

No, it doesn’t, doesn’t.

I heard of a brown cow as just a regular Coke with ice cream.

And there’s also an orange cow, and there’s a red cow, which I think is cranberry juice or cherry soda.

Oh, really?

Yeah, there’s a lot of different ones of them.

Yeah, probably big red, too.

This all goes back to at least the 1950s, probably older.

There used to be a chain of drive-ins called the purple cow.

I’m not sure what part of the country they were in.

I want to say in the Midwest.

And it was an ice cream.

It was a drive-in, but they specialized in ice cream.

And I wonder if this wasn’t one of their signature dishes.

That sort of got genericized.

Did you have anything like that, the purple cow drive-in?

No.

The reason I remember it is my parents actually owned a restaurant.

They bought it when I was 10, and we had soft serve ice cream.

And I just vaguely remember once in a while a customer saying,

Can I have a purple cow or a brown cow?

But no, I have no recollection of a –

I’ve always lived in a rural area of Michigan,

And so it wouldn’t be likely that there’d be that store around.

So I can’t remember ever seeing a restaurant called The Purple Cow or anything like that.

Yeah, I don’t think it was ever that widespread,

But it pops up here and there in old restaurant journals

And various kinds of discussions of the business and making sales.

And it’s about the time when fast food started to become a thing.

You know, there were a lot of new chains that popped up,

And they all had their kind of, I don’t know,

The thing that was supposed to be their specialty.

Everybody had like this, their gimmick.

And so there was all this discussion on maximizing efficiency

And making sure that customers are served with a smile.

And in these journals, one of the places mentioned,

To no great effect, was a purple cow driving.

And I suppose it’s a reference to that little ditty by Charlotte Burgess.

Oh, of course.

How can we go on without mentioning the famous ditty?

Which he, at one point, was so tired of it that he wrote a responding rhyme.

Do you want to say it?

Well, how about if we hear it from Julianne?

Do you know it, Julianne?

No, I don’t.

You don’t?

No, you didn’t learn this as a little kid.

I never saw a purple cow.

I never hoped to see one, but I can tell you anyhow I’d rather see than be one.

No, I’ve never heard that.

Yeah, it was a poem by Gillette Burgess, who was responsible for coining the word blurb,

Among many other words that never caught on.

What year was that?

About 1910, 1915, something like that for the poem?

Yeah, he was around, yeah.

Around that time, that was like his heyday, right?

Yeah.

And it was a famous, famous poem that at the time just got quoted by everyone everywhere,

School kids and magazine writers and journalists and columnists,

And presumably on the radio when the radio took off.

And he grew utterly sick of it.

But I never saw a purple cow as one of the famous first lines of American dogger roll.

Actually, it looks like it goes back to at least 1895.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, how about that?

So Gillette Burgess.

Right.

But you’re right.

He got so sick of people repeating it that he came up with another little ditty, which was, yes, I wrote The Purple Cow.

I’m sorry now I wrote it, but I can tell you anyhow, I’ll kill you if you quote it.

So I hope he’s not still around because I just did.

But there is kind of a big gap in between the real kind of intense period of everyone quoting The Purple Cow and The Purple Cow ice cream dish or ice cream float showing up in cookbooks and being mentioned in places like TV Guide and The Boys Life magazine and other periodically.

Yeah, it makes it a little more special, doesn’t it?

Yeah, yeah.

Purple cow.

But the purple cow, I think that’s something to try.

Grape soda, ice cream, see how it tastes.

Yeah, it is good.

Okay, good.

Yeah, you like it?

Fizzy, very fizzy, I bet.

It probably ends up more lavender by the end of the drink, right?

Oh, nice, the lavender cow.

Yeah, it turns out a nice lavender color, yep.

Well, there you go, Julianne.

Thanks for calling.

All right, thank you.

Take care now.

All right, cheers.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Ice cream floats.

In my day, an ice cream float was either Coke and ice cream or root beer and ice cream.

Pretty much was nothing else.

And they were so special.

I mean, they seemed like an extravagance to me.

Didn’t they, though?

Oh, yeah.

Because you got two treats.

Because soda was a treat and ice cream was a treat.

But together in one, it felt like you were pulling one over on your parents.

Can we really afford this?

877-929-9673.

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We’re on Twitter.

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Pretty much any place you’d find audio, we’re there.

Grant, I was so excited this week to learn about a prominent hill in southeast Wales.

It’s called the Blorange, B-L-O-R-E-N-G-E.

I was so excited.

You know why.

Because it’s a word that rhymes with orange.

Yes.

Yes.

The Blorange.

We expect the limericks to come pouring in, 877-929-9673,

Or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Michael from Weatherford, Texas.

Hi, Michael, how are you doing?

I am doing well today.

How’s Texas?

Well, I have a question.

We moved here to Texas about 13 years ago.

A word that I’ve heard being used more frequently here,

Cattywampus.

I’m not sure of the actual spelling,

If it’s C-A-D-D or C-A-T-T,

But I’ve heard it used to describe something askew, out of whack, discombobulated.

But the word cattywampus, I’ve always wanted to know where it’s come from

And how it came into origin.

So where you moved from, they didn’t say this word?

Well, I heard it a few times, and that was from California.

I heard it usually from the older uncles when we were out working at their places,

But it was infrequently used there.

But I’ve heard it more often here in Texas.

And there are lots of different versions of this word, catawampus or cattywampus.

I think I counted 15 once, 15 different spellings of it, yeah, with Ks and Cs and Ds and all different kinds of vowels in there.

And it seems like it goes back to an English word, a dialectal word cater, which means diagonal, and may come from French catch, meaning four.

Yeah, meaning four, because you have four corners and you have diagonal from one corner.

Yeah, which would make it related to kitty corner, right?

Or catty corner.

Yeah, because cattywampus and kitty corner are part of a larger family.

And I think we’ve done variants on words meaning askew probably a half dozen times on the show.

And I bet the whole list of words in American and British English that mean askew, it’s probably nearing on 60 or 70.

It’s a lot of words.

There’s a lot of askewity in life, you know?

A lot of things are askew.

But I’m kind of surprised that you didn’t hear it more often in California because it’s not particularly southern, is it, Martha?

It’s pretty much all over except, I think, for New England.

Oh, yeah.

There are a lot of words like it, catabias, catafogus, catawislin, and they all have to do with being askew or diagonal.

It’s interesting.

It takes both of those meanings.

Michael, thank you so much for calling.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Michael had a very good voice, by the way.

He did.

He should be in radio.

Yeah, he should be.

Maybe he is.

Farm life, country life, the Western life.

I don’t get much of that day-to-day here in California.

I know it exists, but it’s out in the valleys, right?

Yes.

We’d like to hear more, wouldn’t we?

Yeah, we would.

As a matter of fact, I still feel a little city-fied.

Bring some country to us.

Bring us your country words, your Western words.

Like prairie strawberries.

What’s that?

Beans.

Beans.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

This was said by J.B. Priestley about George Bernard Shaw.

I remember coming across him at the Grand Canyon and finding him peevish,

Refusing to admire it or even look at it properly.

He was jealous of it.

877-929-9673.

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Things have come to a pretty pass.

That’s all for today’s broadcast,

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The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Adios.

Ciao.

I like potato. You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

Thank you.