You Bet Your Boots (episode #1445)

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And this week I want to start the show with an apology.

Oh.

You remember the call we had from John?

He lived in Tennessee and he wanted to talk about whistle pigs, the term whistle pig, and how that’s another name for groundhog.

Well, in that call I mentioned marmots and I said that they were small and mouse-like.

And we got an email from David Bainbridge in Mira Mesa, California.

And David writes, you have slandered marmots by saying they are small and mouse-like.

Our western marmots are magnificent creatures, lovely golden fur and chunky, up to 12 pounds.

They do whistle. I’ve watched them at work, asleep in the sun, and at play in the Sierra and Colorado rockies Rockies.

One of my favorite memories is of a couple of young marmots enjoying sliding down a snowy slope in spring. They would romp back to the top to go down again.

Another time in Colorado, we found two marmots living in old, quite large boilers from a long-abandoned mine.

They looked like crew members on a steampunk submarine.

That’s awesome. David, you’ll be happy to know we put up a fine specimen of a marmot to illustrate that entire episode.

Indeed, indeed.

So thank you very much for your email.

That was an excellent apology, Martha.

Thank you.

I’m sorry I laughed, but David, you’re cracking me up, dude.

The art of the apology.

Even marmots deserve apologies, or especially marmots.

We’ll take calls from you and any marmot, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Joe Fisher, and I’m calling from Tallahassee, Florida.

Hi, Joe.

Welcome to the show.

Hello, Joe.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I have this word that I’ve been wondering about.

I originally come from a little town called Aberdeen, South Dakota, and we have a primarily Scandinavian background.

And my grandparents would always throw around this word called oofta, and basically, you know, an exasperation kind of like, oh, I’ve got to walk up this hill, oofta, you know, that kind of thing.

And I always ask, what’s the actual definition or history of the word?

And they would always say, well, ufta means ufta.

Well, that’s helpful.

Ufta means oive.

Yeah.

Oive.

Yeah, kind of.

And so what other circumstances would you hear this?

Mostly in times of when you’re being tested.

It’s like, oh, I got to, you know, I got to go out and shovel 15 feet of snow.

Ufta.

Or, oh, today was a long day.

We did, you know, nothing but making lutefisk and lefse.

Ufta.

What’s a lefse?

I know what lutefisk is.

It’s basically a flat pastry kind of.

I’d have to remember exactly how they’re made, but you put butter on it and sugar and you roll it up.

Very quite tasty.

Yeah, sounds ideal.

Basically gets the taste of lutefisk out of your mouth.

Oh, that’s good.

And it seems to come from Norwegian.

U-F-F, and the next word is D-A, duh, oof, duh.

And it means exactly what you’re saying.

It’s an expression of surprise or disgust or pain or something that, I don’t know, how would you describe it, Grant?

A word that?

Yeah, I think the dictionaries say disgruntlement or unhappiness or concern or disagreement.

It’s like just anything on the negative spectrum of emotions.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it’s mostly heard in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and it spawned a whole industry, really.

I mean, if you do a Google image search, there are so many products from that area that have oofta on them.

I think you can get oofta on a casket now.

It’s just everything can have oofta on it.

I always use it to test.

People tell me they’re from the Midwest.

I’ll use it as like a code word.

I’ll be like, oh, yeah, you know what oofta means?

They go, oh, yeah.

There you go.

I go, okay.

If they’re like, no, I go, yeah, you’re not really from the Midwest.

Yeah, classic shibboleth, right?

Yeah.

Just proving that they’re insiders.

Yeah, right.

You might want to get the T-shirt that says, what part of oofta don’t you understand?

That’s a great one.

That’s pretty much what we know about it.

I mean, if you go to Minnesota and Wisconsin, you will definitely be understood if you say oofta.

Yeah, it does trickle in some of the neighboring states.

Yeah.

The Dakotas, Iowa, but mostly in those two states where all the Scandinavians settled.

Oh, awesome.

Yeah.

Joe, thanks for your call.

Really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you so very much.

All right.

Cheers now.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

That’s what I call a chamber of commerce word.

Everyone knows that it’s their word.

It belongs to their community.

And they’re really proud of it.

And yet it’s still used unironically and unselfconsciously as a matter of normal conversation.

Well isn’t it wonderfully expressive?

Just the vowels and the consonants.

It’s like the sounds you make when you have to get up but you don’t want to get up.

That’s how I think about it.

Hit the snooze button one more time.

We know they talk funny out your way.

We know you say things that your grandparents used to say.

Share it with us, 877-929-9673.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Sarah.

I live right near Appleton, Wisconsin.

Okay, cool.

Are there lots of apples there?

I’ve always wondered about Appleton.

Oh, gosh, no.

Oh, too bad.

Really?

Well, there’s a lot of cows and just like anywhere else in Wisconsin.

But yeah, it’s a beautiful place to live.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

So what is up?

What is on your mind?

Well, a while ago I was listening to one of your shows and you’re talking, somebody was asking about weird and unique things that family members say.

Kind of, I guess, I guess wondering along the lines of, are they normal things to say or did just that one person make it up?

Right.

And my uncle had always some unusual things that he would say.

So I was wondering along those lines if it’s something that he just said himself or if it was a thing.

Oh, what is it?

Well, one of the things he would just kind of blurt out at random intervals, he would say, the worm has turned.

He would say that a lot.

I have no context to give that to you, Ann, because sometimes it would just be a random interjection.

Really?

But the worm has turned.

What did he say?

I’m imagining him saying, I’m laughing at my, because in my head he’s saying this in a dramatic moment where drama is not required.

He’s just like, the worm has turned.

Yeah, sometimes that would be exactly right.

But he was never off of his soapbox.

He’s that kind of fellow.

Okay.

But it’s a strange non sequitur.

It really is.

That’s a strange thing just to throw into conversation.

Yeah.

Did you talk with him about it at all?

No, no.

So when he started, you just kind of sat and listened.

I see.

Yeah.

And it never occurred to me to ask about it until, as I said, this other show, people were talking about funny things that relatives said.

And I thought, yeah, he said some weird stuff.

And I never knew what he was talking about.

That is pretty funny.

I’ve never heard of it being just thrown out at random intervals.

Well, I could have.

Like I said, he could have been ranting for a good time about a variety of things.

And I just.

Yeah, tuned him out.

And then when you tuned it back in, he was saying, the worm has turned.

The worm has turned.

We know a little bit about that, though, don’t we?

We do.

Yeah, the turn in this sense has to do with striking back if you’re attacked or harassed over a long period of time.

It goes back to a proverbial saying, even a worm will turn, meaning even the lowliest creature, if you bother it long enough, if you pester it long enough, it’s going to turn and fight back.

Turn on you.

It’s a turn on somebody.

Right, right.

Right, to turn on you, to turn against you.

And you’ll be pleased to know that your uncle’s expression goes all the way back to Shakespeare.

No, well, that’s fantastic.

Shakespeare where?

How about that?

In Henry VI, Part 3, there’s a little passage where one of the characters is talking about how the smallest worm will turn being trodden on and doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.

So something small will get its revenge and something gentle as a dove will also fight back.

Wow.

You know, that cast my uncle in a whole new light.

It does.

He’s been quoting Shakespeare all this time and I didn’t realize it.

Pretty much, yeah.

You know, I might have to share that with him.

I think he might be surprised himself.

Well, cool.

I’ll let you guys know as soon as I catch up with him.

All right.

Thanks, Sarah.

I think you can find him on his soapbox.

Thank you guys so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

We all have the talker in our lives.

We all do.

There’s somebody everywhere.

The guy, and it’s the repetition that bothers me.

It’s the entertaining the first time.

And the second time you’re like, oh, I think I’ve heard this before.

And the third time you’re like, oh, my God, is this car locked?

I need to get out of here.

Is this car locked?

877-929-9673.

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

I love this way that English speakers have of elaborating on phrases to make them even more powerful.

I was looking in a dictionary of words from the Old West the other day, and there was the phrase raise hell, but then there were elaborations of it.

And my favorite was raise hell and stick a chunk under it.

Isn’t that nice?

Right.

Just like raise hell and prop it up a little bit.

So like putting a wagon up and put a chunk under it so you can work underneath, right?

There you go. Yeah.

Yeah.

Or raise merry hell and put a shingle on it.

Like raising a house, right?

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Garrett calling from San Diego.

Hey, Garrett.

Hi, Garrett. What’s up?

I had a question about something that my great-grandma used to say.

If you asked her a question, she would say, you bet your boots or you bet your britches.

So this was her way of just affirming something for you?

Like you were having a conversation and she really firmly believed something, she might say, you bet your boots.

Just like that.

Okay.

And you were curious about origins or anything else on that?

Yeah.

I don’t know if anyone else said that or she just made that up.

No, no, it’s super common.

That’s definitely something a lot of people have used.

It connects to this larger trend in American English where gambling culture is interwoven.

For example, you might say, oh, I’m so tired, you know, after a long day of gardening.

And another person might say in response, I bet, meaning, yeah, you are.

Or are you ready to go?

You betcha.

You bet.

I am ready to go is what that means.

Or you can say somebody is holding all the cards, right?

If they’re holding all the cards, that means that the situation is really ideal for them and they’re likely to get what they want.

Or you might say somebody’s not playing with a full deck, which means that they are not acting like a normal person would.

But this particular phrase is about putting everything on the line.

You bet your boots.

You bet your britches.

Imagine a card table where you’re out of money.

You’re out of chips.

You pawned the gold watch already.

There’s nothing left.

Your pink slip for the car is already on the table.

But maybe you’re wearing a fine pair of boots.

Maybe you’re wearing some heavily tooled leather boots that are worth a couple hundred dollars.

You might literally bet your boots.

Or if I’m playing poker, I do not want to lose my britches.

I mean, you know, I don’t want to put the…

Because we have that as a figurative, right?

He lost his pants, right?

It means that he—

Right, or he lost his shirt.

Lost his shirt, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So I would think that if you’re saying you bet your britches, then it better be a sure bet.

Right, 100% sure.

You don’t want to walk out of there without your britches.

So you don’t want to walk out without your boots.

You don’t want to walk out without your britches.

Definitely.

So it’s like a really strong way to affirm what you believe to be true.

Cool.

All right.

Well, thanks for your call, Garrett.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you, guys.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673.

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Share your stories as A Way with Words continues.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And in the doorway is our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

What’s up?

Hey, John, come in.

Thank you.

I’ll come right on in.

Here I am.

I have a seat, and I’ll sit, and I’ll talk to you guys for a while.

It’s very nice out, so I’m thinking about a road trip, and I’m thinking it’s time to hit the road and play the license plate game again.

Okay.

Oh, yay.

Which one is this?

This is the one where I give you three letters from a license plate of a car going by, and you have to give me a word that contains those letters.

Now, usually we play that the letters don’t have to be together, but today to mix things up, we’re going to play that the letters do have to be together, but they must be in the middle of the word, okay?

They can’t be at the beginning or the end of the word.

For example, if I said O-G-E is on a license plate going by, you could say together.

That contains the letters O-G-E in order.

Okay.

Together.

Here comes a car now.

The letters are B-B-O.

Abbott.

Ooh.

Abbott.

Right out of the gate, the shortest one I could find.

Abbott.

Very good.

My favorite word is a B-B-O, and it is shibboleth.

Ooh, there we go.

I just like that word.

Good one.

Let’s go on to the next one.

Number two.

Here comes a car, and it says zen, Z-E-N.

Not easy.

And not zenith, because it’s at the beginning.

Is there an anti-zenith?

Oh, good.

Let’s say you’ve got a cold and your throat is sore.

Lozenge.

No-dose.

Yes, lozenge.

Very good.

If you’re out there and you’re saying benzene, that’s a good one.

Oh, okay.

Or citizenry.

Oh, yeah, sure.

How about STC?

STC.

Waistcoat.

Yes, waistcoat is on my list.

That’s very good.

Waistcoat.

Oh, nice.

I think I have a word that is one letter shorter than that.

Since we’re on a road trip, we might as well send home a postcard.

Oh, there we go.

Oh, postcard.

Okay, let’s try a couple more.

T-W-O, two.

Oh, T-W-O.

T-W-O.

I’m trying that division thing you mentioned.

I know.

Yeah, it helps.

In this case, I think it helps to divide between the first letter and the second.

Network.

Yeah, I was going to say.

Yes, network.

That’s the shortest one I could find.

Very good.

Cutworm.

Cutworm is good.

Cutworm or cutwork.

Very good.

Here’s the last one.

A-C-A.

Facade.

Facade is wonderful.

Yes.

Nicely done.

Jacaranda.

What’s a jacaranda?

It’s a tree with purple flowers.

Very nice.

Common here in San Diego.

Oh, yeah.

Not in New York so much.

Not so much.

But I have something slightly shorter than facade.

I have a fracas.

Oh.

But I also have cacao.

Cacao.

Cacao.

All right.

Anyway, those are our trio of letters in the license plate game.

You guys did really, really well.

Are we there yet?

Where are we now?

Yeah, it’s a tough game.

No, where are we?

John, thank you so much.

Thanks, buddy.

Thank you, Martha.

Thank you, Grant.

Bye.

This is the show where we goof around when it comes to language, so give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send us your stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Anita. I’m calling from Lindenhurst, Illinois.

Hi, Anita.

Hi, Anita. What’s up?

Well, I love my unabridged dictionary, and I would have a very hard time parting with it, but I have some questions about it.

We like you already.

What dictionary do you have?

I have the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, the second edition, unabridged, 1987, and it has a dedication to the memory of Jeff Stein.

Okay, 1987. Okay, so what are your questions?

Well, the first thing that that tells you is that was pre-Internet. Yeah. So, you know, our language has picked up a lot of words since then.

And it occurred to me, my unabridged has its own little book stand and a reverent place here in my office at home, and I love it. But it’s really huge.

And so I wondered, when we pick up new words, as we have with the Internet especially, in order to keep it from being bulky, do they drop off words?

Oh, yeah. That’s a yes and no answer. I’ll just give you that.

So the unabridged is a special case compared to all other dictionaries. So we’re talking only about these massive dictionaries that try to be as inclusive as possible. All right? So just to make sure our constraints are clear here.

I talked to some of the editors and lexicographers at Merriam-Webster about this, Peter Sokolowski, Corey Stamper, Emily Brewster. And what they said is in between the first and the second editions of the Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged, some words were removed.

But between the second and third, and they’re working on the third now, they’re not going to remove anything because the third edition is going to be all online. Right now, it doesn’t look like they’re actually going to make it paper.

And so the words that are taken out for unabridged, though, tend to be proper nouns that are no longer significant, or they tend to be errors or things that are so utterly archaic that they’re like in one source ever.

Like maybe it was like one word used one time in one really rare manuscript from like, you know, 1412 or something. And there’s just no reason to include it there.

But for the most part, they try to keep as much as they can.

Now, smaller dictionaries, now that we’re not talking about unabridged, they take stuff out all the time, but they never tell you that.

Really, they do. Sometimes they’ll take thousands of words out between additions. And for the really small dictionary, sometimes they’re completely new.

It’s not even a revision. It’s just new content they brought over from another dictionary and stripped down to meet the needs, the size constraints, and the topical restraints.

Now, you’re in a particular position here, Anita, with the dictionary that you have, that Random House has long since, decades ago, stopped working on any dictionaries.

They do not update that dictionary anymore. They do not even have a lexicography program. That whole program was canceled in the 90s.

And so you will never get an update to that dictionary.

Wow, I have a precious addition here.

Well, you do. You’re missing a lot. You are missing a ton of technical, scientific, Internet-related terms.

And I’m not talking about OMG and LOL. I’m talking about scientific advances in DNA and chemistry and space exploration.

I mean, you’re missing probably, I’d say, 10,000 to 50,000 entries easily.

So what would you say, if I may ask, is there a year that has already been printed that would be the most updated with all of that information in it?

I always recommend two dictionaries, that everyone have two dictionaries, because they each have their own strengths.

First, I would get the latest American Heritage Dictionary. It is an unabridged dictionary. It’s well done. It has excellent etymologies.

And then I would probably also get an online subscription to the Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged. I mean, if you’re looking for utter completeness, I would do those two things.

They’re very complementary to each other. They feed on each other very well. And you can compare their entries side by side and see that they’re both well done, and yet they may have a little different nuance that allows you to, at the intersection between entries, maybe understand what you’re looking up even more.

So you’re the best of both worlds there.

Yeah, yeah. And the American Heritage Dictionary has much better photos and pictures.

Yeah, they do. American Heritage does color photos.

Oh, nice. And Merriam-Webster’s traditionally has done woodcuts or black-and-white line drawings.

Yeah. Well, I have one more question, if I may, and that is that if at some point, because I’m getting older now, and I would hate to see my kids come along after I pass and then just toss my treasured, unabridged out somewhere, is there a place that these dictionaries that are no longer being printed, they could be received and welcomed as a donation?

I mean, is there a place like that?

There is. The dictionary that you have is not particularly rare, or they’re not going to accept it probably. You might take it to a bookstore and see if they would buy it, but it’s only going to go for a few dollars.

But there are places like in Terre Haute, Indiana, there’s something called the Cordell Collection, which is a really great family collection of a wide variety of some incredibly rare and valuable dictionaries.

But some are in there just because they represent a life’s work for a lexicographer or because they’re the best of their kind and that sort of thing.

So there are places that do record and keep dictionaries for all time. They save them so that centuries or even millennia from now, we will not have lost their contents.

Yes, especially as we’re going online. I just love to think that they are being preserved.

Yeah. Anita, I want to thank you so much. You have such the best questions, and they speak to the dictionary editor in my heart.

Oh, thank you so much.

Yeah, our pleasure. Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We do have dictionary recommendations on the website. If you’re looking to buy a dictionary and you want to see more fully my opinions on which dictionaries are good to go, just go to waywordradio.org and look under References.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carrie Thompson.

Hi, Carrie. Where are you calling from?

Actually, I’m from San Diego, but I’m actually in D.C. today.

Welcome to the show. How can we help?

My grandmother, who is very, very superstitious, when we were growing up, she did this thing that has stuck with me.

And I do it mentally in my mind whenever it happens. But basically, whenever we walked and either one of us was on either side of a pole or something kind of divided us and we were on either side, she would say bread and butter.

I have no idea why she said that. And it’s the funniest thing because now she’s gone. But mentally, whenever this happens, I mentally say it in my head as well.

So I was just curious if this is something that she made up or where did it come from?

And is it tied to being superstitious?

Do you feel like if you don’t say it that something bad will happen?

Yeah, I mean, that kind of is the feeling that she conveyed when she said that.

Okay.

Yeah. And so now you say it mentally when you’re walking with somebody else, you don’t say it out loud?

No, with my kids I do, but with people, you know, like with business and stuff like that, I don’t say it out loud.

Interesting.

Yeah, and interesting that you mentioned superstition because it may have its roots in superstition.

The notion that these two people should be inseparable. And it’s sort of an incantation for keeping people together like bread and butter.

You can’t really separate bread and butter once the butter is spread on there.

You can find an episode of The Twilight Zone in which this occurs online.

Oh, funny.

And it’s really cool. It’s with a very, very young and handsome William Shatner. It’s a 1960 version of The Twilight Zone.

I think it’s called Nick of Time. And it’s all about superstitions.

And there’s a moment very early in that episode where he’s walking arm in arm with his wife. And then they’re about to go around a lamppost.

And he pulls her close to him and says bread and butter. And they go around on the same side.

Oh, interesting.

But the whole episode is about superstitions. So I think you’d enjoy that.

Oh, definitely got to check it out.

In some of the old folklore collections that I’ve found, they talk about it as a way of preventing quarrels.

Right.

Because if you don’t say it, you’re going to fight.

And they did a survey of people in the—this is in 1907, this publication.

And it was fairly common and is a very well-known superstition.

It was like the main thing that you said to avoid fighting.

But a lot of times people think it’s only if you’re holding hands to start with.

If you’re simply walking with them, you don’t have to say it.

But if you’re holding hands, then you do.

Oh, wow.

And that kind of makes sense because she was born in the 20s, so kind of close to that early 1900s.

So it is a superstition.

What other superstitions did she have?

Oh, my goodness.

She would throw salt over her shoulder at certain times.

She also had a thing with the number 13, but not as a bad luck, but as a good luck.

And she was somebody who enjoyed going to Vegas.

And whenever she was in Vegas, she would count 13 machines over.

And she’d sit at that one.

That sounds really cool.

Carrie, thanks for sharing the stories about your grandmother.

And thanks for sharing bread and butter with us.

Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Take care.

Sure thing. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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

You know, John Webster’s play, The Duchess of Malfi, written in 1623, is pretty dark.

But I do like this one couplet.

Glories like glowworms afar off shine bright, but looked too near have neither heat nor light.

I think I understand that.

It’s a kind of a don’t look a gift horse in the mouth kind of.

The beauties of the world are best seen in the large rather than not in the microexamination.

I think they’re best seen far away.

You know, there’s that Stephen Crane poem about a man saw a ball of gold in the sky.

And he climbs up there, and it’s brass or something like that.

Right, but from far away, it’s a beautiful object.

Yeah, sometimes grass is greener on the other side.

Maybe that’s why.

That’s your glowworms or specks of light until you get up close, and you’re like, oh, grubs.

Exactly.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Megan, and I’m from Monticello, Florida.

I had a question about a local phrase.

A local phrase in Monticello, Florida.

I think it might be a misuse.

It kind of drives me up the wall when I hear it.

And I wanted to know whether that was a valid emotion to feel.

Oh, well, let’s hear it. Let’s find out.

It’s on tomorrow, and instead of saying,

Hey, I’ll meet you on Wednesday, I hear people saying, oh, we can do that on tomorrow.

And it definitely gets under my skin when I hear it.

And so that’s what I was calling about.

And there in Florida, you haven’t heard it elsewhere, maybe other parts of the South?

I haven’t ever heard it anywhere else.

Okay. If you ever go to Georgia, you may encounter it there, the Carolinas, and the Virginia.

Because it is known throughout the American South.

But the interesting thing is it has roots in dialects in the United Kingdom.

And so we’re pretty sure that some of those Scots-Irish folks that came over brought it with them to the New World.

My assumption was that it came from on the morrow, but I didn’t know if the use of it on tomorrow was considered grammatically correct.

I think that’s a really good idea that you’ve come up with, on the morrow, which is an old archaism, an old-fashioned way of saying tomorrow.

But it’s also patterned after on Tuesday or on Christmas or things like that.

So there are other ways to refer to time that you do use the preposition on.

And maybe there’s some borrowing there as well on the same pattern.

But you would just rather hear tomorrow.

I’m going to see you tomorrow.

I would just rather hear tomorrow.

And I’m from Illinois, so we have a different way of speaking altogether.

So this one was new to me.

I grew up in Tallahassee.

I’ve lived in Monticello for about seven years, and until I moved here, I’d never heard it.

Yeah, it’s a dialect feature.

I wouldn’t call it wrong so much as an unusual dialect feature, but it’s well chronicled.

It’s recorded in dictionaries.

It’s recorded by people who study dialect.

We know some things about it.

We’ve got 100-plus years of history, which kind of puts it well out of the common mistake category.

Yeah, so maybe you could just reframe it and think about Grant and me.

Every time you hear it.

Yeah, do a little field work.

Just figure out how old they are, where they’re from.

Do they always just say on tomorrow?

Or do they sometimes say on yesterday?

Because that’s another one.

I’ve heard on yesterday also.

And that one makes me, like, that one, like, angers me.

It seems more wrong.

It just seems so wrong to me.

Channel that anger into science.

Do field work, you know?

Channel it into information gathering.

Use that anger.

But it’s a real dialect feature, and kudos to you for being observant enough to catch it and understand what you were hearing.

I don’t just catch it.

It produces strong emotions.

Thank you very much for listening to that.

Sure, Megan.

My pleasure.

I’ll keep an ear out for it, for sure.

Excellent.

Take care.

That’s what we want to hear.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

You know, it’s hard, that first instinct.

At the risk of saying something that we say a lot on this show, that first instinct is to say they’re wrong.

And your goal and my goal often is to get people to move one step, at least one step beyond that first initial response.

Exactly.

Because that is not a valuable response.

It’s not very productive.

No.

To say they’re wrong.

We’ve got to say, oh, why do they speak differently than me?

Right.

What are they doing?

Who are they?

What kind of learn about them and where they’re from?

Yeah.

And those are productive questions.

Exactly.

It’s like hearing a new interpretation of an old song.

I love it.

Yeah.

And we’re going to say it again.

You’re like, oh, in my family, we said that old rhyme this way, and you say it that way.

The world is full of wonder.

The world is full of wonder.

Share your wonder with us, 877-929-9673.

Email all your wonder to us to words@waywordradio.org.

And share your wonder on Facebook.

We’ve got a really active Facebook group there.

On our Facebook group, Patty writes, what phrases do you use when telling someone the equivalent of suck it up?

Or that’s the way the ball bounces or win some, lose some.

She says in her family, we said tough toenails.

Tough toenails.

Yeah, what do you all say in yours?

I can’t actually say it on the air.

There’s two of them.

I can’t say either one of them on the air.

Neither one.

You know, it’s so funny because I was looking at this discussion and there are so many ways to tell people to buck up.

Right, yeah.

To cheer up.

Suck it up buttercup, rub some dirt on it.

Toughy beans.

Somebody said their granddaddy says them’s the sticks.

Tough noogies, tough darts.

Also like this one, you knew it was a snake when you picked it up.

Right?

That’s good, yeah.

Call us, no snakes here, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

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.

Grant, we got an interesting email the other day from Dubai.

It’s from Erica Solomon, who is originally from Evanston, Illinois.

But in Dubai, she works as a writer for a research institute.

It’s a scientific research institute, and she has to make their research intelligible to a lay audience.

And she wants writing advice.

She says, I really would like your advice on how to improve my vocabulary as a writer.

I was not formally trained in journalism and never an avid reader.

And everybody says that to improve vocabulary, you should read.

Read, read, read, and read some more.

And while I agree that this would help a whole lot, I just don’t have time.

I work full time.

I have two kids.

So I really can’t read more than 10 minutes a day.

And I usually spend this 10 minutes reading science articles because that’s the type of writing that she does.

I feel it’s really difficult for me to really learn a word to the point that I can use it in my own writing.

While I understand a lot of vocabulary when I read it, it just doesn’t come to me when I write.

So the real challenge is being able to retain the vocabulary I read so that my brain can shoot it back at me while I’m writing.

So she wants to know how can she improve her writing vocabulary.

That’s a really great question.

I know.

I know.

I have a lot of thoughts about that.

I mean, for one thing, I would say, Erica, that it’s a noble goal.

Good for you.

Yeah, right.

The other thing I would say is that it’s not easy.

I’ve always appreciated foreign language teachers who tell me that learning a foreign language is not easy.

You need reminders of that, right?

And I think the same thing is true for when you’re learning new vocabulary in English.

And so a couple of my suggestions would be just start small with small habits.

Like anytime you see a word you don’t recognize, you’ve got to look it up.

If you’re only spending 10 minutes reading a day, you can spend part of that time.

Yeah, looking it up.

I mean, there’s really no excuse now that you have cell phones and stuff.

You can always have a dictionary at your fingertips.

So always look up a word if you don’t understand it in reading.

Check the etymology because sometimes that can help you remember what the word means.

And the other thing that I would suggest is like trying to lose weight or like trying to save money, build it into your routine.

I mean, you can subscribe to a Word Today email.

Andu Garg’s Word Today email at wordsmith.org has been around for 22 years.

Right.

And it’s really worth it.

It tricks you into—

It’s totally worth it, yeah.

And it’s real words.

Sometimes they’re goofy stuff, but most of the time they’re useful.

And I would recommend a Word Today calendar on your desk.

I mean, why not?

If you’ve only got 10 minutes a day—

You’ve got to put it in all the little corners of the rest of your day.

Exactly, exactly.

All those little crevices.

I would add two things to that, Martha.

And one of them is to listen to more radio, particularly public radio.

You can get a ton of public radio streams online.

Yeah, and look up the words.

The other one is to, and also I would add podcast into that.

And I don’t mean casually.

I mean every morning I’m going to listen to a podcast in the shower.

Or when I am doing dishes, I’m going to have my headphones on and listen to a podcast.

You know, try to multitask.

Radio will do that.

And you can absorb vocabulary just as easily that way as you can by reading.

And then the second part of that is also listening.

Books on tape.

They’re amazing.

Books on tape you can find quality literature that entertains you and gives you new vocabulary.

Can you go to sleep with it? Is it something you can do when you drive? Is it something you can get?

The kids involved with as well? You would be surprised how much a book on tape can entrance.

The whole family and everyone is entertained and learning together. It’s really true, and if you’ve

Got that phone in your hand while you’re listening, you can always look up the words, stop it and look

Up the words, right? So there’s tons of strategies here. We know that a lot of other people have gone

Through this in their lives, said, I need to work on my vocabulary, what can I do? If you have a

Strategy that we haven’t mentioned, let us know, 877-929-9673, or tell us an email to words at

Waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Yes, hello. Hi, who’s this? My name is John Noor,

Calling from Holtby, Vermont. How can we help you? I used to live in northern Maine,

Where I was an art teacher. Among all the things that I heard as far as pronunciations

And word usage.

One thing that I heard quite often, not just from students,

But also from their parents occasionally, was a grammatical departure

Where certain words were used to represent a positive aspect,

Such as the word isn’t actually meant is, and doesn’t actually meant does.

Can you give us a conversation that might have that?

So if I was going to go to a party with Michael and, say, Brian, then I might say, me and Michael are going to a party, and so isn’t Brian.

Oh, interesting.

So is Brian going to the party?

Brian is going to the party.

Okay.

But I would say isn’t instead of is.

Interesting.

And it works for doesn’t and won’t.

Won’t means will.

And was that confusing for you when you moved there?

It was, especially when I tried to correct my students.

They would look at me like I had four arms or three eyes.

Okay, yeah, that would be a problem if you’re in a teaching position.

The classic way that this sounds is it sounds like a negative that’s being treated as a positive, right?

Absolutely.

Because that not, that contraction of not, it almost always exists with an auxiliary verb and not as a contraction.

And that’s an important part of this.

So just to tell you, the best source for information on this

Is the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project,

Which has a really great entry on this academic stuff

With real research collected over decades

And a map and a variety of things.

And one of the things that they talk about

At the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project,

If you look it up, look for so don’t I,

Because that’s a common form of it.

They talk about implicature, and what this means is

The don’t in so don’t I is kind of responding

To a presumption that the second speaker or the person being talked about isn’t the thing that’s

Being talked about. And here’s an example that they give at the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project.

I play basketball. Yeah, so don’t I. And so the kind of implication there is that the first speaker

Is assuming that the second person doesn’t. And the second person is kind of negating that

Through an affirmation, which is really interesting. Does that make sense? So they’re

They’re talking directly to the implication that they don’t play basketball.

At the same time, they’re saying they do play basketball.

It’s really nice.

Once it’s explained and you start to look at all the different examples, like, okay, now I get that.

Now that’s making sense to me.

But it’s still alive and well.

We have records back well into the 60s, maybe even into the 50s, that show that this particular speech pattern has existed for a long time.

And it’s just never really left New England except when people from New England take it to their families.

But there’s no other large community of people that use this particular construction.

Well, John, thank you so much for your call.

Thank you very much. Nice talking with you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if anybody’s looked at you like you had four arms or three eyes because of something you said when you moved to a different part of the country, we’d love to hear about it.

You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Essa, and I’m calling from Jackson, Mississippi.

Essa from Jackson.

Hi, Essa, welcome to the show. What’s up?

Hey, I was calling because I moved back to the States last August

After living in northern Japan for two years,

And I found that there’s this Japanese phrase,

That you usually say at the end of work, after you’re working on a project with other people,

If someone else tells you that they’ve been working on something, I guess it has a variety

Of applications. But for me, I found myself stopping from saying it, of course, here where

People don’t know what it means. Usually when someone else was leaving or if someone, like I said, was telling me about projects they were working on to kind of express, I don’t know, I guess we use it to thank people for working hard.

The literal translation is sort of like saying, I know you must be exhausted, but contextually it kind of meant, thank you for your hard work.

And Esa, what’s the phrase again?

Can you say it slowly for us?

O tsukare samadhe.

O tsukare samadhe.

Something like that?

Yeah.

Yeah, it sounds pretty good.

And so it sounds like a type of ritual thanking more than,

You say it to someone else that basically says you must be tired from all the hard work that you did, right?

Right. I guess that’s like the literal translation.

But usually it was meant to like thank people for their effort.

So now it just basically feels like a thank you without any other connotations about tiredness or anything like that.

Yeah, and it’s strange because I was trying to think if there was possibly something that we say in English that could replace it.

We do have similar kinds of formal or ritual things that we say at the end of work across the full spectrum of informal to formal.

But none of them are quite the same as this.

Most of the ritual exchanges that we know in English are about greeting and leave-taking.

And those are all really comfortable, but they’re really good to look at when you think about.

When I say you’re welcome to someone, do I actually mean that they’re welcome so much anymore?

No, not really.

These days I mostly just mean, oh, that’s the thing I’m supposed to say when you say thank you.

And it feels like that’s what’s happening here with this particular expression.

Right.

That’s a really good point.

Yeah, I’m interested that this is ritualized.

So every day when you left work, somebody would say this to you or you would say it to somebody?

I mean, it’s a regular thing.

Thank you for your hard work.

Oh, yes.

I mean, people would say it when I left the office.

Students would say it instead of a greeting.

So I guess there’s sort of a presupposition that I’m working hard.

This is interesting.

You know, I Googled around, and there’s an article about this on a site called Japanese Intercultural Consulting by a woman named Rochelle Kopp, K-O-P-P.

And she talks very much about this phrase, and she talks about how hard it is to translate it into English.

Because if you said to an American, boy, you look tired from all your hard work, they might take that as an insult.

Right.

Yeah, so you can’t take it literally.

And isn’t there also a ritualized leave-taking where you say, excuse me for leaving first, if you’re the first person to leave the office?

There is. That was the one I would use more often.

Oh, really?

Slack American, leaving early.

What is that one?

Yeah. That one is Osaki ni Satorishimasu.

Esa, thank you so much for telling us about this. Take care now.

You too. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye. 877-929-9673.

Ron Evett from outside Boston sent us a wonderful quotation about libraries. This one is from Barbara Tuchman. She talks in one of her books about how she became a historian and the fact that it wasn’t so much one particular teacher or one particular book she read, but just the whole experience of walking into Widener Library for the first time on the Harvard campus.

And she writes, the experience was marvelous, a word I use in its exact sense, meaning full of marvels. The happiest days of my intellectual life, until I began writing history again some fifteen years later, were spent in the stacks at Widener. My daughter Lucy, class of sixty-one, once said to me that she could not enter the labyrinth of Widener’s stacks without feeling that she ought to carry a compass, a sandwich, and a whistle. I, too, was never altogether sure I could find the way out. But I was blissful as a cow put to graze in a field of fresh clover and would not have cared if I had been locked in for the night.

Nice. I knew you could relate to that.

I’ve had that feeling, yeah. I mean, I’ve been to big libraries and small, but they all have that feeling somewhere in them, right?

Right. I just know, and that next stack is a book that I need, right?

Yeah. And I love the idea of walking in with a compass, a sandwich, and a whistle.

Big libraries, man.

Bookstores have the same effect on me.

Oh, definitely.

Not quite the same, but close.

Yeah, but that first experience, I love that that was her formative experience.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mike Jolly, and I’m calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi, Mike.

How are you doing?

Hey, Mike.

I’m doing great.

How are you guys doing?

Super duper.

Super.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

My mom always used this term when she was mad at me. And she would say, Michael, I’m going to pinch you ball-headed. And she never pulled my hair, but she would reach out and pinch my cheek really hard. And my grandmother said the same thing. And I’ve never heard anybody else ever say this word. And my mom and my grandmother are both from Oklahoma, if that helps at all. And recently my mom passed away, so I started wondering about this saying and if it has any roots, and if so, where are those roots from?

Well, sorry to hear about your mom.

Well, thank you.

So she would say, I’m going to pinch you bald-headed, but she would pinch your bald cheek.

Yeah.

Is that right?

That’s pretty close, yeah.

And did she say anything else about it? Did anything follow that?

No, I didn’t ask. I just pretty much wanted to get out of there.

Oh, I see.

Okay, so would she say that when she was joking or when she was genuinely upset with something he did?

Genuinely upset with something I did.

Well, we see bald-headed a lot in phrases that have to do with going at something just completely, like acting impetuously without regard to consequences, going for somebody bald-headed, meaning just totally, completely.

And I often see snatch you bald-headed or jerk you bald-headed or grab you bald-headed. Pinch is really rare, actually.

But I could see how snatch could turn into pinch.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

Mark Twain used it that way, as a matter of fact.

Snatching bald-headed.

And do you get the idea, Martha, that maybe it has something to do with the era when people wore wigs or at least people of importance wore wigs?

I’ve wondered about that, going at somebody bald-headed, meaning their wig might come off. But I don’t know. I think also the notion of bald-headed being completely devoid of hair, something that’s totally and completely occurred.

Well, yeah, and that bald-headed, that slangy version of bald-headed that you were talking about, going after something completely without regard for your safety or anything else, also kind of converts into a bald-headedness that to be bald-headed is to do something without any preparation.

And so I’m going to snatch you bald-headed could mean you’re not going to know when I’m coming for you.

Okay. No, she made it pretty clear that she was upset with me when I was a child. And so, you know, she would take care of matters right then and right there. So I don’t know that that one’s true, but I can see her, you know, doing it all out. You know, the first definition that you gave.

Right.

You know, we do have it in the historical record as far back as the 1860s, probably earlier. And it kind of comes up in jocular newspaper columns or Mark Twain style writing, you know, the rust, the pretend rustic who is providing the kind of Will Rogers type of commentary on the politics situation of the day.

That rambunctious.

Yeah, that sort of colorful language that goes kind of hand in hand with a lot of other kind of goofy talk.

And you had said earlier that Mark Twain used this phrase, but it was the snatch you ball headed phrase.

Yeah, that’s by far the most common variant of it by far. Like probably 100 to 1.

But I do like pinch. I might have to borrow that one.

Pinch your bald head.

When Martha and I have done this call in the past, I think for weeks afterward, we just go around muttering to ourselves, I’m going to snatch your bald head. And you’re just waiting for the right opportunity to come along so you can actually use it.

It’s too good, right?

It’s too late in Grant’s case.

Oh, yeah.

I’m not completely caught.

No, you’re not.

No.

All right.

Mike, thank you so much for calling.

Thank you guys a lot. I appreciate the history, and I’ll keep listening to your show.

Thanks, Mike.

Appreciate it.

Thanks, Mike.

Take care.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Call us at 877-929-9673 or send it to us in email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Want more A Way with Words?

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

Our toll-free line is always open, so leave us a message at 877-929-9673 and we’ll take a listen.

We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org.

Or hit us up on Twitter @wayword and look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten, director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chaneski and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.