X, Y, and Zed

Your donations make A Way with Words possible.

Donate online at waywordradio.org/donate.

Thank you.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

Learn more at nu.edu.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

When you were a child, Martha, you probably had a favorite book, right?

When I was young, oh my gosh, there were so many of them.

I had an aunt who gave me children’s books every year, usually autographed by the author.

So wonderful books when I was really young.

Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey and Lentil and the Madeline series and the Snowy Day.

I mean, I could go on and on about that.

When I got a little older, it’s a classic.

It’s not that original, but Charlotte’s Web, for me, was a book that had everything.

You know, it had cute talking pigs and nerdy science appeal and a little spider trying to save a pig by writing words in a web.

Come on.

I mean, what could be better?

You could probably identify with, right?

That and the fact that, I mean, it was a good story.

And I think what I really loved about it is that it was a book that respected my intelligence at that age.

You know, I mean, at that age, you’re thinking about big questions like life and death and friendship and loyalty.

And, I mean, how can you resist a book that starts out, where’s Papa going with that axe?

It’s terrible.

Oh, no.

But you hit on something there, too.

I think all of the books that I loved when I was a boy, from 5 to 10 to 15, even a little older than that, they all had to do with shooting just a little higher.

Reading something was just a little bit outside my range.

Yes.

I was 11 when I tackled the Lord of the Rings series.

And God knows that I don’t think I understood most of it until a few years later when I had a little more life under my belt.

But The Hobbit, speaking of Tolstain, was a book that I was given as a gift when I was 10.

My grandmother gave it to me.

My cousins had suggested that it would be a good book for me.

And they were absolutely right because I had already had the reading habit, but it introduced me to this idea that writing could be well done as well as well plotted.

Does that make sense?

Sure.

Because so much of the writing for children that I see, the young adult stuff, isn’t well written.

It might have a fantastic plot.

Good things happen and interesting situations occur.

But the writing itself is rather humdrum, and they don’t seem to have thrown some $10 words in there just to kind of tweak the children, which is something I think you should do.

Tolkien had no problem doing that.

He knew that his audience was going to tend to be a little younger, but he had no problem with that.

I was reminded of, thinking about this, that there was an article in the New York Times that ran a little bit ago called Pick Books You Like.

And apparently there’s a trend in schools now to allow children of varying ages to pick their own books for their reading classes.

I guess it’s language arts or whatever they’re calling it now.

This kind of leads to my point, Martha.

You and I are not alone in this.

Children get the reading habit early, and the way they get the reading habit is to choose their own books, to choose stuff.

It can be the worst rubbish, but the most important thing is that they read a lot.

There is no special type of book that has been designated by some scientist as the perfect learning experience that goes straight into the brain and suddenly makes the child smarter.

No.

What happens is that they read at all.

They must read.

They must read anything as early as possible, as often as possible.

And then, once they have their reading habit, you introduce those great books one at a time.

Well, if you’d like to talk about books you’ve loved or any other aspect of language, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nancy calling from Juneau, Alaska.

Well, welcome, Nancy. What’s up?

Well, I had a funny moment.

I have a yarn shop here in Juneau, and the other day I had a customer that was really interested in my unique supply of buttons.

And I said, well, if you’re looking for unique buttons, you should check out these ones.

And she said, where are you from?

And kind of caught me off guard a little bit.

And then I realized she was referring to the phrase these ones, and she thought it was incorrect.

And so I want to know what you guys think about that.

Are you from Juneau?

Yeah.

Well, Nancy, tell us about those buttons.

These ones?

Yeah, those ones.

Well, they’re porcelain buttons that are made by a lady here in Juneau, and they’re really cool because she takes shells and makes molds out of them and then makes the buttons out of those molds.

Glazes them and they’re one of a kind.

Well, how cool is that? They sound wonderful.

Yeah.

So you were showing this customer these wonderful, unique buttons and she got all bent out of shape because you told her to look at these ones?

Well, did she get bent or did she just get a little questioning?

She just was commenting on my use of the language.

What do you think, Martha?

Nancy, I think that’s outrageous.

I really do.

Don’t you agree?

Well, I don’t know if indignance is called for here.

It’s just I think that it’s an interesting little language phenomenon that perhaps deserves to be remarked upon.

That’s all.

Well, okay.

But you say she did buy the buttons?

Yeah.

Okay.

Good.

All right.

So you’re quite a saleswoman then.

She likes her language.

You have A Way with Words.

Okay, so you had a happy ending there.

I did, but I don’t say these ones anymore.

I stop and say these and have an abrupt stop because I don’t want to be incorrect.

Okay, let me run a couple phrases by you, Nancy, and see if these sound okay, all right?

All right.

She was 92 when she passed away.

She is missed by her loved ones.

Does one sound weird there?

No.

Okay, what about this one?

I like those automobiles over there.

And then the dealer says, which ones are you talking about?

Which ones?

I like these automobiles.

Which ones?

It sounds okay.

Yeah, so ones can actually be a plural in those two sentences, and it sounds all right, doesn’t it?

And we have one with an S on the end making it a plural.

And that’s kind of what we’re leading up to here is these ones actually is okay.

Because what it does is it over-specifies the these.

You can say these.

It’s totally fine to say these.

But if you say, for example, in reference to cars, I think these are all lemons, you might mean all of the cars of that type, even the ones that aren’t present.

But if you say, I think these ones are all lemons, you might mean just the very cars that are in front of you.

And maybe when you and she were talking, you have a store full of stuff, yarn and needles and buttons and all kinds of things that can be made into sweaters and scarves and socks and wonderful things to keep you warm at night, right?

So you were specifying the very buttons in front of you.

You were being very specific.

These ones.

And it’s a valid use of English.

It does sound a little weird, but we have many other places in English where we use the word ones in that way.

Yeah, I feel like it’s an adopted pet peeve that people just think they’re supposed to be upset about it, and so they responded to some adopted pet peeve ad or went to the Pet Peeve Rescue League or something.

You know, they just don’t.

I mean, what’s there to get exercised about?

Another thing, a lot of people, have you heard of felting?

They’ll knit something with wool and then wash it and it felts.

Oh, right.

People make bags like that and then just, like, accessorize it with one of these ones.

One of these ones.

Yeah, yeah.

That sounds totally normal.

And, by the way, you do have Alaskan vowels.

Really?

What do they sound like?

They sound homey and friendly and like we could have a really long conversation.

Well, all right.

You know what I’m saying, Nancy?

Some voices make you feel comfortable, and you’ve got a comfortable, good voice.

Well, thank you.

If I have another problem, I’ll call you and we can talk again.

Okay.

Please do.

And if I’m in Juneau, I’m going to come by your yarn store and find out about those buttons.

You better.

Sounds good.

Take care.

Take care.

Thanks a lot.

All right.

Bye-bye.

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.

And don’t forget that you can send us quick messages on Twitter to the user account Wayword.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Allison Parker from Syracuse, New York.

And I have a question about bread and butter pickles.

I know you guys like food questions, and I’ve been researching this for quite a while, asked my mom and people from church and friends, and nobody knows why they’re called bread and butter pickles.

I even emailed a pickle company, and they didn’t get back to me.

Oh, really?

Which one?

Setchler Pickles.

I didn’t even know them.

And they’re from, I think it’s Indiana, and they make kind of interesting kinds of pickles.

So I thought, you know, maybe they would know.

For some reason, I’m excited about the idea that I can send email to a pickle company.

Yeah.

Because, you know, we do like food questions here.

And I think that if I send them enough email, they might send me pickles.

Or maybe they have a phone number.

1-800-HAZ-MAY-PICKLES.

I can talk to the man who makes the pickles.

That’s a super idea.

All right.

So you want to know about bread and butter pickles?

Bread and butter pickles.

I just, that phrase, just, are you salivating?

I love bread and butter pickles.

They’re my favorite.

And the only thing I’ve ever been able to come up with was that bread and butter many years ago was a snack.

And if we had fresh bread and fresh butter now, we probably would still be a snack.

Maybe they ate bread and butter pickles with bread and butter as part of their snack.

You mean we haven’t always had Pringles?

I think the bread and butter actually is a pretty straightforward expression.

And kind of we can forget the pickle for a minute, right, Martha?

Okay, let’s forget the pickle.

Because bread and butter is often used in English and has for several hundred years to mean a type of everyday food.

You might hear it more often today when he talks about, yeah, you know, doing newspaper articles is his bread and butter, meaning that’s how he makes his primary income.

And so we find back as far as Jonathan Swift in the 1730s using bread and butter to mean just the everyday kind of item, an everyday this and that, you know?

And so a bread and butter pickle might just be an everyday kind of pickle, nothing special about it.

The kind you throw in a burger or you throw in a salad or what, or you just eat it directly out of the jar with a long pork.

Except that they are special.

Are they?

Well, they’re special now, but maybe they weren’t back then.

Maybe they weren’t.

I feel like they’re ordinary, though.

Well, you know what?

I’m looking at a newspaper database here.

The earliest reference that I see to it is a newspaper ad in 1924.

There’s a bread and butter pickle jar for 25 cents.

So they’ve been around for a while.

But I kind of like your idea of them being just a plain old snack.

Maybe it is the everyday thing.

But they just seem special to me somehow.

The sweet and the sour like that.

Still no definitive answer.

Well, you know.

I’m so sorry.

We’re world-class wishy-washy artists here.

But at least I got an answer.

Wafflers and foot floppers.

You got an answer.

That’s right.

You got an answer.

Well, I wish we could be more help, Allison, but I sure have had fun talking about bread and butter pickles.

There’s something about that that just does something to the inside of my mouth.

And it makes me hungry.

Me too.

Waiter, over here.

All right.

Well, thanks for calling.

Let us know if you hear something.

All right.

Thank you so very much for taking my call.

Sure thing.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Food questions, we love them.

If you’ve got some, send them along.

words@waywordradio.org or ring us up on the telephone, 1-877-929-9673.

In an earlier episode, we were talking about that jarring, dissonant feeling when you see a radio host for the first time after listening to that person for months or even years.

And a lot of people wrote in trying to come up with a word for this experience.

You know, Grant, you and I talked about the term host buster, meaning, you know, busting a person’s image of a radio host.

But a couple that I liked that came in through our email box, number one was inconsonance.

Ooh.

And the other was C change, S-E-E change.

You see them in your image of that person changes.

I like those.

I do, too.

I like them a lot.

I don’t know if they’ll stick, but I like them.

If you have a question about language or a comment about a show, call us 1-877-929-9673 or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And joining us now is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

John, what is up?

I have a great quiz for you guys.

Here comes a quiz.

Are you ready?

Oh, really?

Yeah, I think so.

I’ve been spending some time in the lost and found department here at A Way with Words, and I came across a bunch of items, and I hope you can help me return them to their rightful owners.

What do you think?

Sure.

Yeah, definitely.

Sure, and if my dangling participles in there, would you let me know?

I’ll keep an eye out for it.

Okay.

Some of these things belong to a specific person.

For example, I found this strange cube.

Can you guess whose it is?

It’s Rubik’s.

Right, it’s Rubik’s Cube.

All right.

Gotcha.

Now, here are a few more items that belong to specific people.

Keep in mind that some of these are actual items and some are metaphorical.

Okay, here’s the first one.

I found this piece of fruit.

It’s an apple.

To whom does it belong?

It’s Adam’s.

Adam’s apple, right.

Here’s the next one.

I found this huge.

Man, it’s huge.

It’s an ark.

To whom does it belong?

It must be Noah.

Noah’s ark.

That’s Noah’s Ark, yes.

The ship built according to God’s command in the Bible.

That’s what the tag says.

Now, I feel like, John, that you’re making these too easy for us.

Got some hard ones on there?

Well, I think they’re, yeah, let’s move on to one I think is a little tougher.

Ouch.

Oh, be careful.

I found this razor.

To whom does it belong?

What’s that?

Occam’s.

Occam, right?

This is Occam’s razor.

Can you explain Occam’s razor to me very quickly, anybody?

It’s basically the simplest answer is always most likely to be the correct one.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, great.

Good job.

Now, this one’s a bit unwieldy, too.

It’s a ladder.

To whom does it belong?

I believe that’s Jacob’s, isn’t it?

It’s Jacob’s ladder, right.

Jacob’s ladder can be either a ladder to heaven in the Bible or a rope ladder with rigid rungs or a kind of plant with blue flowers.

That’s right.

But to me, it’s this giant metaphorical ladder.

Okay, here’s another one that’s kind of painful.

I found some fire.

To whom does it belong?

St. Elmo’s.

St. Elmo’s.

Yes, it’s St. Elmo’s fire.

That’s a static discharge around the mast of a ship that’s due to the friction of the mast against the surrounding air, I believe, right?

Very good, Captain Grant.

Good work.

Now, some of these items don’t belong to a specific person but can be claimed by anyone with a particular occupation.

For example, here is a pie.

To whom does it belong?

A pie?

A pie.

I was going to say Pythagoras, but no.

Apostrophe S pie in a specific occupation.

Shepherd.

Yes.

Shepherd’s pie.

Okay, there we go.

Okay, a shepherd’s pie.

Here are some more occupational lost and found.

This is some sort of, I just can’t find the words.

It’s a block.

To whom does it belong?

A writer.

It’s a writer’s block.

A writer’s block.

This is a piece of paper with one, two, three.

Well, it’s a list.

To whom does it belong?

A list?

A list.

Does it belong to Angie?

Or Craig?

Craig, no.

Not this one.

And this is a list of students in high school or college who have achieved high academic rank.

Honor.

Well.

The dean.

That’s right.

There we go.

It belongs to the dean or a dean.

Very good.

Hey, this is, yuck.

It’s a foot.

To whom does it belong?

It’s just a foot?

It’s just a foot.

Just a big old foot.

Like a rabbit’s foot?

No, it doesn’t belong to a rabbit.

It’s another occupation, right?

Right.

Oh.

Another occupation?

I don’t know.

Is this something like tennis elbow?

Is it one of those afflictions?

You’re close, yeah.

The tag says a contagious fungal skin infection.

Oh, athlete’s foot.

Oh, athlete’s foot.

It’s an athlete.

It belongs to an athlete.

I don’t know anything about that.

All my fungi are cleared up.

That’s good.

God bless you.

I’m glad.

Mine too.

I wish the athlete would come pick this foot up, okay?

And here’s the last one.

Here’s just some dinner.

To whom does it belong?

Just some dinner?

Dog.

Dog’s dinner.

Yes.

Dog’s dinner.

Oh.

Very similar to dog’s breakfast, right?

I was going to say dog’s breakfast.

I knew.

Meaning a mix of things.

A mess of things, right, to make a mess.

Okay, now, actually, I’ve only got two things left, and I hope we can finally clean up this place.

Okay.

The last two things are a tomb, T-O-M-B, and a vineyard.

And do either of you have any idea to whom these belong?

Martha’s Tomb and Grant’s Vineyard.

That’s right.

John, thank you.

It got cleverer and cleverer as we went along.

Thank you.

I’m starting to feel like a horse’s ass,

So I’m going to get on Shank’s mare and get out of here.

Right.

Put your key in your chevro legs and shuffle off.

Oh, nice.

I like that.

Great.

I like that.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you, John.

Thank you.

And if you want to talk to us about words and how we use them,

Grammar, slang, any aspect of language,

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is David Taylor. How are you?

Hi, David. Where are you calling from?

I am calling from Denton, Texas.

Well, welcome to the program.

What’s up?

Well, I go to stores like a lot of people,

And they have these checkout lines that say,

15 items or less.

And I used to wonder, you know, well, don’t they know any better?

Don’t they know it should be 15 items fewer?

So I would ask, you know, I’d ask the clerk, well, did you know that’s grammatically incorrect?

And they’d look at me like I was smoking my breakfast.

And the other day…

Were you?

No, no.

No, I don’t smoke anything, let alone wacky tobacco.

I was at this meeting the other day at the company where I work.

We sell off some of the extra products occasionally to donate for charity.

So I’m sitting in a line, and sure enough, right there at the company is this sign that says 10 items are left.

And I looked at this lady, and I said, you know, that’s wrong.

And she looked at me like I’d come from another planet instead of having an English degree.

So what is it?

Am I right?

Am I wrong?

And why are they so stupid?

Wow.

Not to put too fine a point on it there.

Well, yeah.

So, yeah.

So your objection is what exactly, David?

Well, it’s grammatically incorrect.

It should say 10 items or fewer because you can count the individual items.

And it’s not like something like give me less soup or there’s less air in the pillow or whatever.

It’s not one of those big quantity things that you should use less for.

Individual items that you should be using fewer.

So why do they do it?

Well, now, David, can you tell me why this bothers you in 25 words or less?

What’s wrong?

Don’t need another reason.

It’s blatantly incorrect.

They’re teaching our children to speak like idiots.

Well, let’s unpack this a little bit, David.

I mean, you’re right that traditionally the rule that many of us have been taught

Is that if you can use many with a word,

Like many tofu burgers that you have there in the checkout lane,

Then that’s going to be fewer, right?

And if you use much with a word, then that would be less, right?

Sure.

So fewer than less.

If only life were that simple.

There’s a point here, an intersection between all these rules

Where we find the difficulty,

And that is that less is also normally used with numbers.

And so if you were saying 15 items or less, you might see how somebody might actually say,

Oh, that seems okay, because I would say there are less than 15 items in my cart.

Sure, the sum total of all of the items in my cart.

But then you’re talking about the sum is less than.

Well, but you’re talking about items.

So you could say there’s less than 10,000 items here.

There’s less than 100.

And so this is where we get the area of confusion here, because we are actually counting the items.

And so when you do count, you can actually use less.

Less is okay.

All the standard style guides agree on that.

Oh, really?

So if I’m using a number, then either one is correct?

It depends on the construction of the phrase.

It also depends on the level of discourse, but maybe that’s too much detail.

I would say you’ve got a couple things happening here.

One, if you think this is wrong, great.

It’s fine for you to believe that it’s wrong and to insist on it in your own environment

Where you can control the writing of other people or your own writing or your family or kids, that kind of thing.

In a public place, you kind of got to give yourself over to whatever they’ve chosen as their method of communication.

And whether it’s for space reasons or style reasons or because they actually believe it’s correct.

They may actually have decided to use that language instead of the other language because they think this is the better choice.

At some point, just for the sake of your blood pressure, you’ve got to roll with it, right?

Well, sure. And I do for the most part.

Or shop elsewhere.

And I thought, you know, here’s somebody who will at least empathize with me.

Oh, I do.

I definitely do.

The part that I empathize most with is the attention to the language being used around you.

Yes.

You have an awareness.

And now whether or not I agree with your assessment or not is another whole matter.

But the thing is, I think the first point is to be aware of what you are saying and what you’re hearing and reading.

Well, I hope this venting period has been useful to you.

Very therapeutic.

Very therapeutic.

I’m going to wipe the spittle off my microphone.

Yes, I will have fewer problems today.

Excellent.

Take care of yourself then.

All right, y’all.

Take care too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If there’s something about grammar that’s put a bee in your bonnet and a burr under your saddle,

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha.

Hello, Grant.

This is Kelly from Addison, Texas.

Welcome.

Well, hi, Kelly.

How are you doing?

I’m doing well.

How are you?

Super duper. What’s happening in Addison?

Well, I am calling today about the word spatula.

I am having some confusion about what exactly falls into the category of a spatula

Because there seems to be many, many different kitchen tools,

All with divergent appearances that all seem to be called a spatula.

Oh, now, Kelly, you have to tell us why you’re thinking about this.

I mean, of all the kitchen tools to choose from, why do you have spatulas on your mind?

When I was growing up, I was taught that a spatula looks like a knife, but with a flat, flexible blade with no edges that you would use to ice a cake or level a measuring cup.

And that there was another tool called a turner, which has like a flat metal or flexible attachment that you would use for pancakes and eggs.

And then there’s a scraper, which has a rubber attachment that you would use, you know, to clean a bowl.

But I’m finding as an adult, particularly when I’m sharing a kitchen with my mother-in-law and my sister-in-laws, that all those things are called a spatula.

So we’re in the kitchen.

Hand me the spatula.

No, the other spatula.

No, the other one.

And, you know, we talked about it, and I just decided it was time to call you and, you know, find out how all these different tools are called in general use spatula.

Yeah, because if you’re cooking, and there’s a whole timing issue there, right?

You can’t afford to waste those precious seconds by getting the wrong instrument, right?

Absolutely.

Like it’s whipping up egg whites or something.

And it just seems like even when you go to a cooking store, all these different tools are called a spatula.

And it’s very confusing when you’re working in a kitchen to coordinate things.

I’m just, the mental picture you’re conjuring is great.

I mean, it sounds like a comedy routine or something.

Right, a bunch of women in a kitchen bickering about what to call a utensil,

Each of them brandishing their own preferred spatula.

It sounds kind of Seinfeld, right?

Exactly.

You know, all those things are legitimately called a spatula, and there doesn’t seem to be any differentiation.

That’s exactly right. They are.

It’s the same for the flat, wide utensil that you use to, say, turn over pancakes or hamburgers or eggs,

Or, as you mentioned, the rubber flexible utensil that you might use to stir, batter, or put icing on a cake.

Those are legitimately all called spatulas.

There’s no other name for them except the ones that people use, like your mother,

When they come up with more specific terms because they need more specific terms on the job.

I should say that they all often have other names, but they all are a type of spatula too.

I think that this is a perfect example of where slang and jargon can work for you.

I think that you guys need your own words for these things in the kitchen.

Maybe one can be the Nina, the other can be the Pinta, and the other can be the Santa Maria.

I mean, this is a perfect example where you guys can decide the names and just, you know, hand me the Santa Maria.

Clearly, we need to come up with our own nomenclature so that we do not have any more kitchen confusion.

And clearly, spatula is not wrong.

Well, let us know what you come up with, Kelly, all right?

I will. Thank you so much.

All right. Take care.

Very informative.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If your family’s in a tussle over a word, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kevin McGuffin from Cheshire, Connecticut.

Well, hello, Kevin. Welcome.

Hi, Kevin.

Hi, how are you?

Doing fine. What’s going on there in Connecticut?

I have a question for you.

It’s about a word that particularly my parents’ generation used.

And I’m originally from Philadelphia.

I moved to Connecticut about 10 years ago.

I haven’t heard anybody up here use this term, but it’s mahaf,

And it’s used to describe somebody who’s a big shot or a chief or something like that.

My mother always used to use it in a sentence, particularly when she was admonishing me and my brothers and sisters about,

Who do you think you are, the big Mahath, or something of that effect.

It was typically meant as a way to put people in their place, I think.

The term itself is only, from what I can understand, nobody up here in Connecticut uses it.

It typically is something that I’ve only heard from people in Philadelphia.

It’s not where I originally am from.

Kevin, have you seen it spelled?

Yeah, I’ve seen it.

M-A-H-O-F-F.

And my parents are of Irish descent and typically have lived in Irish neighborhoods in Philadelphia.

And I always thought that maybe it was some reference to some political boss or some big shot ward leader or something like that from those areas.

But I’m not really sure.

That sounds like a reasonable guess.

You’ve got a good chunk of the story as we know it there.

It turns out that I’ve done some looking into this term about five years ago.

And a couple things.

As far as the big boss, it was the title given to a big boss, but he was a Russian Jew and not an Irishman.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, his name was Harry Stromberg, or usually known as Nick Rosen.

And he came to light to the public’s attention in 1951 because there were some hearings in Congress about crime and corruption.

And Senator Kefauver of Tennessee, is that how you say his last name? K-E-F-A-U-V-E-R?

I think so. Estes Kefauver?

Yeah, that’s right. He was leading some hearings on this.

And so there was a whole presentation about some shirts that had possibly been given to a police superintendent in Philadelphia.

And this man, Nick Rosen, was mentioned as somebody who was known as a big Mahaff.

Unfortunately, this is 1951, mind you.

Unfortunately, none of the stories from 1951 is any kind of mention made that this term is unusual.

So even though these stories appeared in the Chicago newspapers, nobody in Chicago said, what’s the deal with this term Mahaff?

Interesting. So it wasn’t in quotation marks or anything like that.

It was actually in quotation marks, but they made no effort whatsoever to explain Mahath.

So I’ve looked into this over the last four or five years,

And every time I meet somebody who might be able to help me, I ask them about it.

I don’t think there’s a word in Russian that can match this.

There may be a family name that could match this,

But some of my contacts who are Russian experts who know the language thoroughly,

Not only just to speak it and to write it, but also etymologically,

Claim that it’s not a common name, that it wouldn’t be spelled that way nor pronounced that way in English.

The Irish or the Gallic connection are iffy at best.

There’s no real connection there at all that we can find.

So we don’t really know.

All we know is that it was used to apply to this Russian Jewish man.

Now, is this a term that you hear outside of Philadelphia?

Very rarely, very, very rarely.

And actually, interestingly, I don’t know if you know who Mark Bowden is.

He wrote Black Hawk Down, which was going to turn into a movie.

He wrote about this word in 1996, and I’m having a hard time tracking down a copy of that.

But as I understand it, in that article, he’s specifically talking about the fact that he wanted to use the term Big Mahaff in a news story, but his editors nixed it.

They said, nobody knows that word.

Nobody knows what that is outside of Philadelphia.

You can’t use that.

And so even today, when you do find it, occasionally you’ll find it outside of Philadelphia.

But it’s almost always by writers who are from Philadelphia or spend a great deal of time working at the Enquirer.

That’s right.

That’s a bound was an inquirer.

That’s right.

He’s still a columnist there, I think.

Yeah.

Anyway, I hope that helps some, Kevin.

Okay.

Hey, thanks.

Yeah, no problem.

Thanks for calling.

Yeah, thanks for asking about that, Kevin.

I never heard of it.

That’s great.

Guys, take care.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Is there something that your parents said that still has you befuddled?

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

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

Stay tuned.

We’ll take more of your calls when A Way with Words continues.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

A while ago we had a call about the word shivery. Remember that one, Grant?

Yeah, I do. As a matter of fact, that involves a ceremony for newlyweds, right?

That’s a lot of loud noise and disturbance.

Yeah, I’d say it’s less a ceremony and more a good-natured hazing ritual.

Okay, there we go.

It happened shortly after couples got married, particularly in the rural areas where ideally on their wedding night,

Townsfolk would suddenly show up at their home and make a huge racket outside demanding to be let in,

And then all manner of rowdy partying would ensue.

Well, we received a ton of emails about shiveries.

Barbara writes from Dallas.

She was married in 1953 in rural Nebraska and was given a shivery about a week later.

She says,

The people gathered and waited until they thought we had gone to bed, and then suddenly came banging on all the doors.

They brought food and plenty of beer and partied until the wee hours when all went home.

When we went to go to bed, we found the bed full of cornflakes.

We went to turn the mattress to get rid of them and found someone had crawled under the bed and removed all the slats.

So if we had just gotten into the bed, it would have collapsed under us.

She says they also did a variety of other pranks, which I won’t go into.

Oh, darn, why not?

They must be naughty.

Yeah, write us back and tell us about those.

Virginia wrote us from Burlington, Vermont, that her former husband’s family has given chivalries for generations.

But more recently, these have evolved into elaborate practical jokes.

She writes, when my younger son was married, his brother and cousins pulled two major tricks.

One was to plant a video cam in the couple’s bedroom in an attempt to capture them in the act.

This was foiled, though, by the son who was getting married.

He happens to be a filmmaker and media expert and expected something like this.

So he had planted a motion-activated video cam in the bedroom before anyone arrived.

The perpetrators were caught in the act.

The second attempt had a bit more success.

My older son and the cousins planted all over town signs announcing a huge moving sale beginning at 6 a.m. the morning after the wedding.

Giving the couples a dress.

There were quite a few people who were disappointed when they rang the bell at 6 a.m. and found a sleepy and very grumpy couple who had partied late at their wedding.

Weddings are always fun, aren’t they?

Well, shivery sounds like a blast.

I can’t wait to go to one.

Well, if you want to hear more tales about shivery, daring do, you can go to waywordradio.org and look for our online-only podcast about shiveries.

You can also download that and podcasts of this regular hour-long version of A Way with Words on iTunes.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gillian from Fort Worth, Texas.

Hi, Gillian. How are you doing? Welcome to the program.

Oh, thank you. It’s great to talk to you. How are you?

Super-dooper.

Gillian, what are you calling us about?

Well, today I’m calling you because I’m puzzled about something.

I’m from British Guyana, formerly called British Guyana.

It’s now called Guyana.

Okay, right.

And when I was there as a kid, when I say the alphabet, we say X, Y, Z, as in Z, E, D.

And I came to the United States, and you say Z as in Z-E-E.

And I just always wanted to know why it’s that way.

Great question.

As an adult now who’s lived in the United States for quite a while, what do you say?

I say Z because I was T so much I learned not to say Zed.

Ha. Yeah, that makes sense.

Well, Gillian, it’s a good question, and there’s a pretty straightforward answer, which is that that final letter in the alphabet, the name of it goes all the way back to ancient Greek and ancient Rome.

If you’re walking around campus, you may see fraternities that have the letter Zeta in it.

Right.

Right.

And that came into the Romance languages like Theta in Spain and a ZED sounding word in French.

And so it appears that originally that name for that last letter found its way into English through medieval French, where it sounded more like Zed.

But it took a long time for the name for that letter to settle in in the English language.

Isn’t that right, Grant?

That’s right, yeah.

There are many dialectical variants of Zed or Zee or Izzard or Izzard or Zard and Zad and all these different ones.

And so when all these people came to the United States from the British Isles, they brought more than one pronunciation with them.

Right.

But good old Noah Webster, back in 1828, published a dictionary that a lot of people try to adhere to.

And he said unequivocally that this letter is pronounced Z.

So the same guy who took out the U in color and the U in favor and that kind of thing decided.

Well, that’s the way we do it in Guyana.

Right.

With the U.

Right.

I figured.

Right.

So he wanted to differentiate between British English and American English.

Oh, cool.

And so he’s the one who decided it would be Z, and thereafter people began using Z.

But interestingly, if you say zeta, it is not the last letter in the Greek alphabet.

The last letter in the Greek alphabet is omega.

Omega, you’re right, busted.

Well, because I belong to a sorority that’s zeta phi beta.

Okay.

So that’s why I know that.

Okay, you’re exactly right.

Right. The Romans tacked it on to the end of their alphabet.

They borrowed that Greek zeta.

But you’re right.

It’s much closer to the beginning of the Greek alphabet, right?

Right.

Okay. Well, that’s interesting.

Well, thank you for…

I’m glad to hear that answer, and thank you very much.

Thank you, Gillian.

And take good care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Good luck with your studies.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Your questions about language, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, anything are welcome to words@waywordradio.org, or give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is JB.

I’m calling from Cedar Hill, Texas.

Hi, JB.

Hi, JB.

How are you doing?

All right, all right.

How are you doing?

Okay, welcome to the program.

What’s on your mind, JB?

You know, I don’t speak the Queen’s English, but there are certain words that kind of hurt my ear.

Hurt my ear, and the word is snuck.

I hear it on TV, mainly from sports announcer because I listen to a lot of sports stations.

If you use the word long enough, does it become okay?

Because I know the word is not a proper word, but I hear it so often, so I’m thinking maybe it’s okay to use it now.

So you’re talking about the past tense of sneak.

What is the past tense of sneak?

Right.

Right.

That is correct.

You asked a couple of good questions.

Let me start by saying that you’re talking about standard English.

Is it sneak or snuck?

And you’re right. The standard past tense of sneak is sneaked.

And what’s going on here is that there are a couple of different kinds of verbs in English.

There are regular verbs, which are also known as weak verbs.

And they’re called weak verbs because they need that ED tacked onto them to make them past tense.

Okay.

You know, like talk and talked.

Yeah, right, right.

That’s a weak verb.

Okay, and then there are also irregular verbs, and we also call those strong verbs.

Because they undergo their own internal change.

They can do it on their own without having the help of the ED.

For example, the word speak.

The past tense of speak, JB, is?

Spoke.

Right.

The past tense there is spoke.

And so, as you say, so far in standard English, sneak is a weak verb.

So it needs that little help of the ED there to make it a past tense.

That’s standard English.

That’s the rule.

But here’s the deal about sneak is that sneak has been a weak verb, but it’s secretly been buffing up.

I don’t know if it’s been working out with a personal trainer or if it’s taking steroids or what.

But more and more, we hear people saying snuck.

It’s changing internally.

And you’ve raised a great question about when does it reach critical mass?

When are enough people using snuck that snuck sneaks up on us and ends up in the language?

And Grant, you’re a dictionary editor, and so you’re the guy who makes those kinds of decisions, right?

For a dictionary, yes, for an individual dictionary, for the language as a whole, that’s kind of up to the speakers of the language.

There’s another thing at play here with snuck, which is a lot of people don’t actually like the sounds in the word, and it’s not so much that they think it’s ungrammatical.

They just don’t like the sn and the k.

They don’t like that.

You feel like you need a Kleenex or something.

So there’s a second thing that I think it deserves mentioning.

Snuck has been around long enough since the 1800s that it is, in some circles, not even remarked upon when it’s spoken.

People use it and then don’t even realize that it’s a nonstandard choice.

And so we are well on the way to have snuck be a permanent part of the lexicon.

Oh boy, you said it.

Yeah.

Because I just opened the floodgates for many other words.

Well, SNUC is in every dictionary that I’ve checked.

It’s so common that every dictionary feels obligated to include it.

Now, they often remark that it’s nonstandard or it’s informal, but it is in there.

Once the dictionary editors have noticed something, then you can be pretty sure that it’s going to stick around for a while.

Thank you, guys.

Hey, well, it’s been good talking with you.

Thank you.

Okay, bye-bye.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you have a question about a usage that has befuddled you, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Or sneak on over to our discussion forum. That’s at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Arela Wright from Indianapolis, Indiana, and I was wondering what the word widget means.

Widget.

Widget? What it means?

Well, and how it came to be used in law school.

Are you in law school?

Yes, I am.

Aha.

So tell us how it’s used there.

Actually, professors use it when they make hypothetical situations in class.

And actually, we just had one yesterday where there was a widget and a gadget.

Both were manufacturers, and they had a contract.

So that’s what you guys talk about, is widgets and gadgets?

Yes, and how to protect them.

And how to protect them.

Save our widgets.

It is a weird word, isn’t it?

Yeah, so this is a hypothetical product, right?

You don’t really specify what the gadget or what the widget does.

You don’t really talk about it.

It’s so that you just have a placeholder when you’re talking about the business of contracts and supply and vendors and that sort of thing, right?

Yeah.

When you talk about the law.

Yeah, so that you can tell them apart quickly which manufacturer they may be preferencing.

Exactly right.

And so this widget use then is a kind of carryover from the more traditional widget use where widget is any old kind of hypothetical thing.

Or you use it for something that you don’t know the name of it.

But it tends to be used for an item, online or off, because there is now an online version of a widget, which will perform a vague undefined task or has a vague undefined purpose.

So are you saying that widget is legalese for whatchamacallit?

It’s kind of, yeah.

It kind of is for thingamajig or thingamabob.

Yeah, it’s kind of a version of that.

That’s very interesting.

Okay, well, that’s enough.

I like that.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Martha Jim from Baraboo, Wisconsin, writes with a question I think we’ve encountered before, but it probably deserves a second airing.

He says, should my office manager answer the work telephone pronouncing the word F-I-N-A-N-C-I-A-L with a long or short-sounding I?

What do you think?

Financial or financial?

Yeah, financial or financial.

Jim, the answer is both.

Both are acceptable.

You pick one and stick with it, and you’re just fine.

Well, that was easy.

Yeah, pretty easy.

I wish all the questions were that easy.

If you’ve got a question about language, pop us an email.

The address is words at waybirdradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kurt from Howell, Texas.

Hi, Kurt, how you doing?

I’m doing just fine.

Well, it’s been a couple of years, at least a couple of years, and I heard it on NPR of the Car Talk Boys, Tom and Ray.

And I was intrigued by it because one of my wife and my favorite, our favorite vacations are to go cruising.

And it pertained to early cruising.

And the word that I am trying to find out the origin to is Posh, P-O-S-H.

Okay.

So you’re talking about, when you say cruising, you mean going on cruise ships to the Caribbean or someplace.

Correct.

Okay.

Well, the story they said was in the early days when the Europeans were going on holiday, one of the modes of transportation across any body of water was going to be on cargo ships.

And I guess they provided passage for passengers as well.

People that were of some affluence, they would pay the person given the tickets an extra amount of money so they could stay out of the sun on the initial part of the voyage, and on the return trip, they would have paid more to, again, be out of the sun, the heated part of the ship, on the way home.

And the person writing out the ticket would just put, well, it was first put down as port out starboard home.

And eventually just cut short to POSH, P-O-S-H.

And the reason, you know, I was sticking with that story, it sounds like a good story.

But it seemed like a couple weeks after this particular program aired on Car Talk, there was some question about it, about that actually being the origin.

And I never did get the full details, and that’s why I’m calling you guys.

-huh.

Kurt, so the needle on your baloney meter is quivering up at high, right?

It was a cute story.

But, you know, I thought to myself, what if you started the voyage from the north or whatever?

I don’t know.

But anyway.

Kurt, I think you may have a career in etymology ahead of you.

Very, very good.

Yes, it sounds too good to be true, and you know why that is?

Oh, it is.

It is too good to be true.

Okay.

You’re right, Kurt.

Most of those etymologies involving acronyms are when you see a word like posh and people tell a story that the letters actually stand for something.

Same with golf.

People say it means gentlemen only, ladies forbidden.

Well, that’s not true.

Ship high in transit.

Don’t buy any of those, okay?

Posh does not come from port out starboard home.

Say that again, Grant.

Say that plainly.

Say it again.

Posh does not come from port out starboard home.

It does not.

There’s no question.

It’s inarguable.

You’re right.

And one of the reasons we know this is that the story about the supposed origin of posh shows up decades after we first see the term.

It may come from a London street slang term for money, but the truth is we don’t know.

But, Kurt, you have done your fellow public radio listeners a service by calling us to express your suspicions.

You’re absolutely right.

Well, thank you so much.

Okay, Kurt.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you have a question, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

Our romance is growing flat.

For you like this and the other…

That’s our show for this week.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University.

Change your future today.

Find out how at nu.edu.

If you didn’t get on the air today, you can leave us a message anytime.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or drop by A Way with Words online.

You can chat with fellow word lovers by going to waywordradio.org/discussion.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

We’ve had production help this week from Josette Herdell and Jennifer Powell.

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

And from San Francisco, I’m Grant Barrett.

Thanks to Howard Gelman for engineering our show from the studios of KQED Radio.

Hasta la vista.

Bye-bye.

Tomato, 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.

And oh,

If we ever

Part, then that might

Break my heart.

So if you like

Pajamas, I like

Pajamas.