Your Imaginary Boyfriend (episode #1581)

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.

Not that long ago, we were talking about indefinite hyperbolic numerals.

You remember that conversation, Grant?

Right.

40, 11, zillions, jillions, and all those other approximate numbers.

Right.

Those indefinite approximate numbers.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was visiting family in the mountains of North Carolina, and I heard another one that I really love and am going to adopt, which is Humpty 12.

Humpty 12.

About a dozen, but maybe not a dozen.

A little more, a little less.

A whole, yeah, yeah.

You know, I went on vacation and I came back and there were Humpty 12 pieces of junk mail.

Sounds like a cousin of umpteen.

Yes, I think it probably is.

But it just, I don’t know, it’s just something delicious to roll around on your tongue.

And you know what? I was also looking around a little bit more and you may be familiar with this one.

You can also use the term telephone number or telephone numbers.

Apparently since the 1940s, if you were talking telephone numbers, you were talking about a really big number.

So people would talk about that in terms of a large sum of money.

You know, that house costs telephone numbers.

Or it could be applied to your time in prison.

You know, he’s doing telephone numbers.

I can imagine a time in the history of the world where most people didn’t encounter a big number until they got a telephone number or saw one.

Yeah.

Well, I got to say, we have umpty 12 things to talk about on this show.

And if you’d like to join us, here’s our telephone number, 877-929-9673.

You can also email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And you can talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hey, Martha, how are you? My name’s Bobby, and I’m from Mount Sterling, Kentucky.

Oh, excellent. Welcome to the show.

Here’s my thing. I was born in Toledo, Ohio, and moved away from there when I was like 11.

But while I was there, my brother, who is 10 years older than me, would often come in and say, hey, guys, what’s the lowdown? And I would be like, what does that mean, the lowdown?

You know, being a kid, I was like, I didn’t understand.

So later in life, I really never heard it in Kentucky, but often would go back and visit family in Ohio.

And again, people would say, what’s the lowdown?

And I never really understood what it mean.

I just always assumed it meant what’s happening.

Okay. Yeah, that sounds about right.

What’s the lowdown?

So just tell me about the situation.

Well, I can’t really give you a situation.

It was just like he would come in from being out and just, you know, the family be all around and he’d come in and say, hey, guys, what’s the lowdown?

Yeah, usually when people see that, they mean, give me the skinny or the scoop or the details or tell me what I don’t know.

Well, I never really understood the lowdown part.

I kind of was like, is she talking about the bottom line?

The bottom line is that lowdown on the bill.

That’s a good guess.

That’s a good guess.

Well, thanks.

Well, no, it comes from the idea of low, meaning shameful or naughty or bad.

You know, when something is low, it’s near the ground, it’s dirty.

And so…

Well, that would be my brother.

Excuse me? What? That would be your brother?

I said, that would definitely be my brother.

He’s so bad.

Well, originally, and when this first appears in the early 1900s with the idea of information, it was the idea that the information might be secret or that the secret is shameful or naughty or that sharing the secret or the information is shameful or naughty.

Kind of makes sense.

But I’m curious, Grant, is it more geographical?

Because I’ve really never heard it from people in Kentucky and I didn’t know if there was something more.

No, it’s fairly widespread in the United States.

Oh.

It comes from an older word, an adjective lowdown, just as in like, you lowdown dirty dog, something you might hear.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

From around the 1860s, which itself meant disreputable or unworthy or shameless or trashy or contemptible.

That’s pretty cool.

Yeah, and it’s got a modern slang derivative, too.

This is the adverb, the down low.

So if somebody says something on the down low, they do it secretly.

So they’ve switched the, it’s not low down, it’s down low.

Or on the DL, right?

Yeah, on the DL.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it’s all related.

So this has got all these little tributaries from this one main idea of low meaning contemptible or naughty or shameful.

Well, I really appreciate you clearing that up for me.

Thank you so much.

You got the low down, Bobby.

That’s the skinny.

Finally got the lowdown.

You did.

Take care now.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We’ll give you the lowdown, the scoop, the skinny, the scuttlebutt on whatever your language question is.

1-877-929-9673.

We heard a little story from Mike in Kentucky who says, my five-year-old granddaughter walked out to me and said, look, Grandpa, I put my shoes on and tied them all by myself.

She was very proud.

I looked at her shoes and said, well, honey, you did a great job, but I’m afraid you have them on the wrong feet.

And she looked down and said, no, Grandpa, those are my feet.

Yeah, so a nice little bit of ambiguity there, linguistically speaking.

Oh, what’s the funny thing you heard?

Let us know on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jennifer from Tallahassee.

Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Jennifer.

Well, I tutor elementary age children, and we love words, and we like to talk about the sounds and meanings of words.

And the other day I was getting into one of my book bags, and I said something about my book bag being chock-a-block fool, and he said, what does chock-a-block mean?

So I said, I have no idea.

Actually, I have a connotation.

I think that it means like happily full, but I don’t know.

So I thought I’d call you all and ask.

Yeah, so it was crammed full.

I mean, that’s the idea of chock-a-block, right?

Right.

It was very full of things.

And I said it was chock-a-block full, yes.

It’s a delicious term to say, too, isn’t it?

Chock-a-block.

Isn’t it so fun?

Actually, that’s what we did.

We paused and said it together a couple of times afterwards because it is so fun to say.

Chockablock.

Jennifer, it’s even more fun than that because there’s some really interesting history behind the term chockablock.

You may know the term chalk, which is an old word, C-H-O-C-K.

Chock, which is an old word for a wedge that’s used to keep something in place.

And on old sailing ships, you would put wooden chocks under a barrel to keep it from moving, you know, when the ship is at sea.

Or you might chalk an anchor when it’s not in use.

And we’re not sure of the origin of chalk, although it may be related to the earlier term, chalk full.

So hold on to that part of it, chalk.

The block, in this case, comes from the block and tackle system of pulleys on an old ship.

It’s what helps you do things like raise and lower a heavy sail.

And with a block and tackle system, in its simplest form, it involves threading a rope through blocks of wood that contain a pulley.

And in that block and tackle system, one block containing a pulley stays still.

And you pull on the rope and the other pulley, which is also in a block, moves up and down as you pull on that rope.

So when you’re pulling on that rope on a ship and that moving block containing the pulley gets all the way up to the stationary one, then those blocks are now jammed up against each other.

It’s like no matter how hard you pull, you can’t pull anymore.

You pull the rope as far as it’ll go and those blocks are said to be chock-a-block.

It’s as if something like a chock is preventing them from moving.

How cool is that?

That is so interesting.

So really it’s like a sailor term.

It’s like it’s a ship.

How interesting.

I would have never guessed.

So about how old is it?

Do you know?

Do you know when it was first?

Well, it’s been around for hundreds of years,

But it was by the early 19th century that we landlubbers started using it to describe something that’s really close together, chock-a-block.

Sometimes sailors call that situation two-block or block-and-block, but the one that stuck is your beloved word. That is so much fun.

So maybe next time when I’m with my students, I should say it like a pirate, right? Say something like, argh, me. You should talk a black wolf.

Yes. You sound like my kind of teacher, Jennifer. Oh, we do. I believe we have such a good time. We learn a lot, but we really do make learning. We have a really good time.

You sound like a fun teacher. I want to go back to school. Come on. Come on, Grant. We can talk about words.

Jennifer, thank you so much for calling us and brightening our day. We really appreciate it. Thank you. It was really a lot of fun. I appreciate you all, and I just adore the show. Thank you so much.

All right. Take care now. Be well. Thank you. Bye, y’all. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

If you want to see what Chocobot looks like, as Martha described it, there’s a picture in Graham Blackburn’s Illustrated Dictionary of Nautical Terms. You can find that at archive.org or openlibrary.org. That’s Graham Blackburn’s Illustrated Dictionary of Nautical Terms.

So much history inside a single word. We love talking about that. Call us about the word that’s been rattling around in your brain or delighting you to say. 877-929-9673 or send it to us in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

The town of Manacor on the island of Mallorca off the coast of Spain is famous for being the home of Rafael Nadal, the big tennis star. But there’s another thing that’s really remarkable about that town, and that is the town flag.

You can look it up on the Internet. It’s yellow with four horizontal red stripes, and in the center, there is an image of a human hand holding a red heart. And we’re not talking like a Valentine’s heart. We’re talking about a human heart, a red human heart, which forms, as it turns out, a visual pun.

It’s like a rebus of the town’s name, because the Catalan word ma means hand, like Spanish mano, and cor means a heart, like corazón in Spanish. So it’s monochore. It’s a pun on a flag.

Oh, that’s a great flag. You know, I’ve never seen that. I follow the Vexillology subreddit. Of course you do. I’ve never seen.

Yeah, it’s a lovely group filled with amazing people who always post real flags and plus ones they’ve made up. And they’re always really fantastic. Yes, Vexillologists. I’ll have to post that one. Take a look.

It almost looks like a cartoon, but you won’t forget it once you see it. But yes, vexillology. So that’s manicure. That’s fantastic. Well, what’s your interest? What’s your sideline? And how does it plug into language? Because you know they all do.

Let us know words@waywordradio.org. This show is about language seen through family, history, and culture. Stay tuned for more of A Way with Words.

Woo! You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Martha Barnette. And ambling across the horizon with the sun in his eyes is our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

Hi, John. Hi. Is that Grant? Is that Martha? I can’t see. With the sun in my eyes, I can’t quite tell. You know, guys, I’m feeling a little peckish today, but I’m also trying to stay healthy. So I thought we’d do a little quiz about fruit and language, of course, fruit and words.

Many fruits are just fun to say as words. Papaya, elderberry, and of course, loquat. But let’s see what happens when fruits slip over into parts of language that are not about food. Okay?

For example, one fruit is such a staple that one uses it to describe a person that is cherished, as in the blank of one’s eye. You know what that is, right? Sure, the apple of one thigh. Apple, apple. It’s such a fruit staple.

These next two are related in some way. This small fruit can be an adjective meaning new or in like new condition, like a car, say. Cherry. Cherry, baby. Yeah, it’s a cherry car. Similarly, this stone fruit can be a noun meaning a particularly fine or delightful thing. Peach.

Peach, as anyone in Georgia could tell you. Yeah, it’s a peach. Now, though it makes some people squirm, I sometimes eat this particular fruit just like an orange. I love them. So I wonder why it’s also a word for something bad or undesirable, like a car that breaks down too often.

Wait, you eat lemons like they’re oranges? I eat lemons like they’re going out of style. You really do? Sure do, yeah. Wow. They’re just tasty.

Now, this verb is unrelated etymologically to the oblong droop with a single hard stone or seed. But if you’re doing this with someone who likes North African and Asian food crops, maybe bring a box of dried ones along on the movies to the movies. A date.

A date, yes. It’s a date. It means lots of different things, but it’s also a fruit. Now, when I was a kid, I thought it was the height of cleverness that this fruit gave its name to a jar filled with scraps of paper, each one containing an errand or job that typically the man of the house was asked to attend to.

Right. The honeydew. The honeydew. It’s a honeydew jar. Honeydew this, honeydew that. Yeah. You know how they say intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit and wisdom is knowing not to put one in a fruit salad? Well, conversely, this leaf stalk isn’t technically a fruit, but it’s treated like one, so we can include it here.

Its name is a slang term for a heated dispute or row. A rhubarb. A rhubarb, yes. It could also be the murmurs of the crowd while watching such a thing. I was, of course, a theater major, so we learned to say, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.

Now, you’ve done quite well on this fruit salad quiz. You’ve really used your noggin, or you could say a particular fruit that means head, or one that might fall on your head. In the tropics. A coconut? A coconut, yes. You’ve used your coconuts well today, my friends.

Oh, that old chestnut. I’m going to save that one for the nut quiz. That’s coming up. Well, John, that was a grape quiz. Oh, nice. If you’d like to be put out of your misery and not hear any more of these fruit puns, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

And John, we’ll be back with more quiz next week. Take care.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, my name’s Lola. I’m calling from Columbus, Wisconsin. Hi, Lola. Welcome to the show. Hey, Lola. What’s up?

Well, I’m hoping you can help us name a room in our house. So we just purchased this house in Columbus, and it was built in 1921. And it doesn’t really have a kitchen, or at least it didn’t when we bought it. It has rooms that are kitchen-like and have things in it that are in kitchens, but they’re not in the same rooms.

So the room that we’re calling a kitchen, when you walk into it from the back door, it has a stove, refrigerator, and then seven doorways that lead to other rooms. Behind one of those doors is a small room that has the original built-in cabinets and bins and a small counter and the kitchen sink. And that’s the room that no one knows what to call because it doesn’t really feel like a kitchen.

It’s not really part of the other room, but it’s where we’re putting all of our dishes and food. And it’s a beautiful little space and everyone walks into it and they go, I love this sink room. And we’ve tried washroom, but that sounds like you do laundry in it. And we’ve tried butler’s pantry, but we definitely do not have a butler. So that also feels strange.

Wow. Why not call it the sink room? That’s got a long history of calling the rooms like that a sink room. Really? That seems so obvious and strange. Old architectural term for it. And what’s so charming about this little room?

Well, it has these two little windows that look out over the backyard. And the built-in cabinets go from the floor to the ceiling. And they’re just gorgeous. And it has a counter that’s walnut. Like this tree must have been gigantic. And the sink is enamel cast iron with the wash basins.

It’s just, I don’t know, it’s very romantic.

Maybe cottagecore is the word now to use.

But it’s too small for there to be a lot of people in there.

So it feels really intimate and perfect for like winding down and doing dishes at the end of the day.

You really hit on a couple of real important notes there.

One old dictionary describes a sink room as a room having a sink, especially a room near a kitchen in which utensils are kept and the coarser operations involved in cooking are performed.

And that sounds pretty much like the room, but you’re getting at a real core part of how houses used to be built.

For centuries, houses in the United States were built with the idea that the stove, think of a Franklin stove,

Was a source of heat for other rooms in the house and not just the place where you made meals.

So you didn’t necessarily put all the food preparation surfaces around it.

You might cook there, but the preparation, the cutting and the dicing would happen elsewhere,

And the cleaning would happen elsewhere as well.

And as a matter of fact, the stove was so often a part of heating that you might even have a little alcove off to the side of this place where the stove was.

And this place was called the bed sink, where you might sleep on cold nights to be near the heat of the kitchen.

And there definitely used to be a different type of stove in the room we’re calling the kitchen now.

I’m not surprised.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you would find a place where the icebox used to be,

Because a lot of times in these old houses, the icebox also wasn’t near the stove.

And so think about before refrigerators, you would want your icebox,

You know, it had a big chunk of ice in it, far from the heat of the kitchen,

Usually on the north side of the house, you know, out of the sun,

And at least in the northern hemisphere.

And this way your ice is going to last for longer,

And your food has less chance of spoiling.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if your icebox was also maybe perhaps in that room with the sink or in one of these other seven doorways.

That’s really interesting because there is another doorway that leads to the only room that has a floor that’s concrete.

And it looked like it had some point been maybe part of the sink room, but they’d put in a wall and put in a bathroom there.

And there used to be old holes through there like drains that lead to the cistern below.

There we go.

I would not be surprised if that was originally the room for the icebox.

I want to call the downstairs bathroom the icebox now.

Excuse me, I have to see a man about an icebox.

I love that.

I think also the time when families were very large and hired help was commonplace.

And you would want the dishwashing out of the way and the food preparation because both were pretty much never-ending tasks where you might have family gathered around the stove.

And so all this other stuff had to happen out of the way of the stove, if that makes sense.

You might have the eating next to the stove as much as the few pots that were on it.

But everything else needed to be moved because you could not have all these people in the way of the cleaning and the cutting and so forth.

Well, Lola, you’re making this place sound so romantic.

Is this like a dream house for you?

Well, I think it’s a dream.

Some people walk in and think it’s a nightmare.

It needs a lot of work.

When we first tried buying it, it was deemed uninhabitable, which couldn’t possibly have been true because there were Rexans living in it at the time.

I was going to say that. It’s a joke.

But it’s already we’ve gotten some rooms that feel very done and other rooms are still really good for a Halloween party that we plan on having.

They’re pretty creepy and in rough shape, but when we’re done with it, it’s going to be magical.

It sounds like it.

Well, thank you so much for calling.

This has been really fascinating.

Yeah, Lola, thank you so much.

And think about Synch Room.

That might be good.

Yeah.

And a reality show.

I really like it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much.

Now we have a name for the bathroom and a name for the Synch Room.

All right.

Take care now.

Good luck with the house.

You too.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Earlier, we were talking about chock-a-block with Jennifer.

And, you know, if you have a situation where you do have two blocks up next to each other and they can’t move,

To fix that situation, you put slack in the tackle.

That is, you add a little bit of slack to the rope.

And this is exactly where we get our word overhaul, meaning to redo or remake completely.

Oh, no kidding.

So it’s like hauling over.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, haul, you know, is that classic nautical word.

Haul is, you know, you’re pulling on the lines, pulling on the sheets to make sails go up or to move things around.

If you were overhauling a room in your house, you’re behaving like a sailor, I guess.

And you need to cut yourself some slack because it’s going to take longer and cost more than you ever imagined.

And maybe some rum.

There you go.

Call us with your thoughts and observations about language.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nick from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Welcome to the show. How can we help?

So my grandma used to say this phrase all the time.

And my parents and I have no idea where it comes from.

But when it got cold in wintertime and started turning into like fall, she’d say it’s colder than Whitney outside.

And I’ve Googled it over and over, and we have no idea what it means unless it’s like a mix between the word blizzard and wintry.

But I’ve never heard anyone else say it my entire life, and I’ve always just wondered, where does this come from?

Blitney, like B-L-I-T-N-E-Y, Blitney?

Yes, just like that.

Okay, so where or what is Blitney, and why is it so cold?

Yes, exactly.

Nick, tell us a little bit about your grandmother.

She grew up in, like, Appalachia, Kentucky area.

Grew up in the coal mines.

And other than that, I don’t really know much about her.

It’s probably a variant of colder than blixen, B-L-I-X-E-N, or cold as blixen, which is analogous to saying cold as the Dickens or cold as hell.

And we find this term in Illinois, in Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, cold as blixen probably

Comes from the German word for lightning. Blitz meaning lightning.

But where Grant and I are going

With this is that there are lots of variants about this. Colder than blixen, colder than blixes,

Colder than blixian or blixem, but there’s also colder than blixes.

And I’m betting that that’s

That’s so close to colder than Blitney.

Well, the first time I said it was to my wife, actually.

And she was just like, what does it even mean?

I was like, I have no idea.

She’s cold up.

It’s got, tell her it’s at least 100 years old.

Actually, you can find cold as Blitney in a 1921 novel.

So at least 100 years old.

And the other forms, the Blixen forms, well, they go back to at least the 1870s.

So it’s got a long history.

It’s not like you made it up last week.

There you go.

So you’re going to have a great winter, right?

Yes.

I’ll say it every other day, at least.

Yeah, exactly.

Every time you talk to someone,

It’s cold and Blixie’s out there, isn’t it?

And they’re like, oh, here comes that Blixie’s guy again.

Or Blitney.

I love your version.

That’s a new one on me.

But I’m pretty sure that’s what it is.

Yeah, I think I might stick with Blitney.

It just sounds, I don’t know, it rolls off the top.

It does.

Well, we may, you know, this show is heard all over the place,

And we may hear other people who say, well, you know, he’s not the only one who heard Blitney.

So we might just find that this is a variant that just happens to be unrecorded.

That’s right.

It’s happened before.

That would be awesome.

Free Blitney.

Well, Nick, thank you so much for calling.

Awesome.

Thank you, guys.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you feel like you’ve got a scrap of language that you need to know more about, this little bit of parchment that’s got some words on it, and you want to connect it to the larger body of language in the world, this is the place to go, 877-929-9673.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

This is Martha.

And I’m calling from Portland, Oregon.

Hey, Martha.

Can’t have too many Marthas.

No, you can’t.

So I was recently hanging out with some friends and one of them made a crack about her imaginary boyfriend named Raul. And I thought that was pretty funny because I have an imaginary boyfriend named Raul. And then a third friend who was there was also like, wait, what? I have an imaginary boyfriend named Raul. And so we’re all kind of like, how do we all have an imaginary boyfriend named Raul? And we figured that, oh, we’re friends. Maybe one of us mentioned it a while ago or something and got it in our minds. But then the next day, I was talking to another friend totally outside that social circle, told her about this, and she said, no way. I know somebody with an imaginary boyfriend named Raul.

This is four people with a Raul.

Yes. And we’re all pretty much the same age. And I’m thinking, well, this is more than just a coincidence. There has got to have been a Raoul in popular culture that, I don’t know, that we knew about but forgot about. And I’m just wondering what the explanation could be.

Well, first of all, let me just tell you right away, this will maybe add to the fire of your amazement, is that there was a short-lived TV show called Committed on the air in 2005. Just it lasted one season. It starred Jennifer Finnegan, and her character has an imaginary boyfriend named Rahul.

What?

No.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, I’ve never heard of that show, though.

Yeah, it lasted one season. I mean, she’s a great actor, but it just didn’t catch, you know, so it didn’t get renewed.

So that’s five Rauls out there in the world.

Anybody in that bunch, a fan of Phantom of the Opera?

I’m thinking about the lead guy in that.

No.

Raul, who’s sort of dashing in.

Oh, yeah.

So, Martha, important, let me ask you, is there something about Raul that suggests, say, you know, your summer abroad or your gap year or someone that you might meet on, on your travels, you know, is it something about Raul that suggests not the guy next door?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think that’s probably where I thought I came up with a name was just, you know, somebody who is completely outside of my sphere and seems like he must be suave and exciting.

Yeah.

Well, Martha, this is a real mystery. We might have to put this out to our listeners. We are going to put this out. We are. We’re going to crowdsource this thing. What is your imaginary lover’s name? Are there more Rauls out there?

Yeah, if you’re out there, Raul, give us a call. Show yourself. When you joke about having an imaginary boyfriend or girlfriend, what name do you give them? Let us know. And Martha, we’re going to find out exactly who this Raul is.

I don’t know, but you guys had an answer.

We’re working on it, Martha. You can hear us vamping. We’ll find out.

Martha and Portman, thank you so much for your call. Take care now.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

We appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Who is your imaginary boyfriend or girlfriend, and what name do they have? Are there more Rauls out there? Let us know. 877-929-9673, email words@waywordradio.org, or talk about it on Twitter @wayword.

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.

Look up into the night sky and imagine that you’ve never heard the term Milky Way. What would you call that glowing band of stars across the heavens? In English, we think of those stars as a milky path across the sky, and we have the Greeks and the Romans to thank for that idea. But it’s not the same in other languages and other cultures.

For example, in Sweden, it’s called Vintergarten, which means simply winter street, and that alludes to the fact that the galaxy is far easier to see there during the winter months, unlike summer, when the sun’s glow continues long into the evening and can make it harder to see. And in Hawaii, the Milky Way is sometimes called Ialele Iaka, and that name translates as fish jumping in shadows. Isn’t that gorgeous?

Oh, that’s lovely.

And in the Cherokee language, there’s a name that translates as where the dog ran. And the idea here is that there was a dog that was once caught eating cornmeal from someone’s bowl. And as the dog is chased away, that last mouthful of cornmeal scatters across the sky.

I love the idea of looking up into the sky and imagining that that’s cornmeal scattered all the way.

Yeah, the scamp getting away with his little crime, running off. And the people chasing him probably laughing because they recognize a kindred spirit when they see one.

Yeah, so now when I look up at the night sky, it’s a great reminder that we all divide up the world differently. You know, we give different kinds of names to things.

Well, there’s a lot to be said for knowing how the other people who speak other languages look at the world. We try to help you do that, and you can help us do that by sharing your multilingual experience with us and the world. Give us a call, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Debra from Lawrenceburg, Indiana.

Hey, Debra, welcome to the show. What’s up? How can we help?

My grandfather had a lot of funny expressions, mostly one-liners. But my favorite one, and one that I’m finding very applicable today, is when he would call someone Desperate Ambrose. And then followed by, he’s so desperate he’d steal a hot stove.

That’s pretty desperate.

The imagery of that always tickles me. You think of somebody trying to get out of a house with a hot stove. It’s pretty desperate.

Yeah, that’d be tricky.

So that’s Ambrose, A-M-B-R-O-S-E, the name Ambrose.

Right, right.

So I didn’t know where that might have come from. My grandpa was a young man during the Depression, and I wonder if that was maybe a Depression term.

Oh, yeah, that’s a good connection. He’s got two different terms here that he’s kind of brought together. Desperate Ambrose is one thing, and then the saying about stealing a hot stove is another. So let’s take these separately.

There was a comic strip drawn by an artist by the name of Charles Payne, P-A-Y-N-E, ran from about 1910 to 1940. It had a couple different names, but the main one was Samatter Pop, basically an abbreviation of What’s the Matter Pop. And it included a character called Desperate Ambrose. And this was this odd little boy who was the neighbor to these other children. The only way I can describe him for modern audiences, he was kind of like a Charlie Brown character, kind of morose in a way and introspective and thoughtful, but at the same time, a little like Lucy from Peanuts as well. And in terms of always just kind of doing things to other people, you know, to kind of get what he wanted. And Charles Schultz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip, has actually said that this character of Desperate Ambrose was an influence on his strip. So that’s where Desperate Ambrose comes from.

And as a matter of fact, by the time World War I rolled around, the character was popular enough that you can find mentions of people being compared to Desperate Ambrose in military newsletters and newspapers columns and different places. So it quickly became like people were known as a Desperate Ambrose, or it was a nickname in college and high school yearbooks.

That is so interesting.

Charles Payne, did you say?

Yeah, Charles Payne. There’s a real nice entry about him. And you can find this online. It’s the Lambiek, L-A-M-B-I-E-K, Comicalopedia online. You can just find more information about him. It’s L-A-M-B-I-E-K, Comicalopedia, Lambiek Comicalopedia. And then the other one is being somebody who would steal a hot stove. Well, this old expression goes back to the 1860s.

And it’s about somebody just being such a thieving rascal.

That even if a stove were red hot, think about the old stove, not the modern ones.

Think about the ones that are all metal.

And so they’re so full of heat and fire that the thing is glowing red that they’d steal it.

That’s how much of a low-down, dirty dog that they were.

That’s what we’re talking about.

There was actually a Chicago politician in the early 20th century who was called Hot Stove Jimmy Quinn because he was so crooked.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah.

Oh, that’s great.

I love it.

And there’s an even longer version of that phrase that goes, so desperate he would steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke.

Yeah, that was usually credited to the playwright Wilson Misner, who had a lot of funny one-liners.

And come back for the smoke.

Yeah.

Oh, I’m going to add that now when I say it.

That’s perfect.

Yeah, that’s a good one, right?

That’s just about the thievinest person you ever wanted to meet, right?

Oh, that’s funny.

Isn’t that fun?

Yeah, it is fun. It’s lovely to remember those old sayings from the grandparents and just fondly remember their cleverness and the way they can take something and turn a phrase and make you giggle. I just love it.

I still think about him in giggle when I think of that one. You know, when my husband said it the other day.

Treasure that.

Oh, that’s right.

Something to hang on to.

It’s a treasure.

Those linguistic heirlooms, Debra.

Debra, thanks for calling.

Love your show. Thank you so much.

Be well. Take care.

Thanks for calling, Debra. Bye-bye.

The Spanish word for padlock is candado, and it comes from the Latin word catenatus,

Which means chained, and it’s a relative of the English word concatenation, which is one

Of my favorite words. It means a chain of events or a chain of things, a concatenation. So the

Spanish word for padlock is candado, but in Colombia and the Dominican Republic, it has

Another meaning. The word candado means a goatee. It’s like the mustache over your lip

And under the hair. Oh, so they’re chained together? Well, it looks like a padlock. Oh,

It does. It totally does. That’s right. Oh, it’s like the loop of the lock and then the square

Bulk part below with the mechanism.

Oh.

My favorite

Term for that I heard in English, though, is

Pudding ring.

Pudding ring. It looks like you’ve been

Eating pudding out of a

Pudding container, a round

Pudding container, and you’re like, put it up to your mouth.

So you could get all of it out.

So it’s like you left a chocolate ring of pudding

Around your mouth.

Oh, that’s pretty funny.

Yeah, in Spanish, it’s often called

A circular or

Or Española, you know, circular or in the Spanish style.

But I do like the padlock pudding ring.

Oh, that’s lovely.

Well, we’ve got a lot of multilingual listeners to the show,

And we love to hear how you phrase things in your languages.

Let us know, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kyle calling from Fort Monroe, Virginia.

Hi, Kyle, what’s up?

So I’m calling about the word hanyak, which is a term commonly used in our family, but whose actual origin or meaning has been a bit of a mystery to us and is we’d love to know more about.

The word is typically used, at least how it’s been used by our family, is kind of to refer to somebody who might be an idiot or a dummy, somebody who kind of acts in a silly way.

And not really in a way that’s like pejorative or mean, but kind of in a fun kind of way.

And I would say this was commonly used, at least by my grandpa, to refer to politicians or bad drivers, things like that.

Okay. Yeah, that’s making a lot of sense.

And so the whole family says it now.

His children and his grandchildren also say, hun-yuck.

Yeah, I would say I remember it mostly from him,

But we’ve all kind of used it as kind of a tongue-in-cheek way in daily life

To kind of avoid using maybe an obscenity where one might be warranted.

But, yeah, we continue to use it.

I use it, my mom uses it, and we have no idea where it comes from.

So we love to make sure that we’re using it correctly,

That there isn’t maybe some other interesting history.

It does have a history, and we can tell you a lot about it.

There are a couple of spellings and a couple of different ways to say it.

So H-U-N-Y-A-K, H-O-N-Y-O-C-K, and a few more.

And some people say Hunyaker or Hunyaker.

And what it is, is a word that originally referred to people from Hungary.

Unlike other waves of European immigrants that spoke Romance languages, their Hungarian sounded different to American years, so they kind of got their own term.

You know, people called them their own word.

And this word is maybe modeled on Hun, H-U-N, a term for Germans, particularly common during World War I, plus the Ak, A-A-C-K, from Polak, meaning a Polish person.

This is the late 1800s, early 1900s.

This term starts to appear when this population of young men starts to appear. And these young men

Working in the steel mills, working in the factories, and most of them took their hard-earned

Paychecks and sent them home so that they could bring their families to the new world.

But some of them took those paychecks and every Friday and Saturday, they blew them in the bars

And they blew them on drinking and sometimes they get into fights. And so when other people called

Them hunyaks, they were thinking about the troublemakers and not the good guys who were

Doing the right thing. And so that’s why there’s that negativity around that term

Hunyak or hunyaker. And it kind of had this connotation of somebody who was foolish or did

Unwise things or was unsophisticated. And it became broadly used to mean any Eastern European

Immigrant, especially people from Poland too, and later to any immigrants at all.

And over time, and this is where it’s going to connect to your family, there was something called semantic bleaching.

And semantic bleaching is when the negativity kind of fades out of a term.

And all that’s left is, in this case, something where it just means anyone who’s kind of a little bit silly or foolish or maybe just a little unsophisticated.

And that’s where we are with your use of it, referring to bad drivers or foolish politicians, a hanyak.

Wow.

Kyle, there are a couple more levels to this.

There are other forms of it.

For example, bohunk and hunky and hunky and hunk, H-U-N-K,

Not related at all to meaning, you know, a well-built man.

But also the word honky, H-O-N-K-E-Y.

And this is indeed the origin of the same derogatory term for any white person that we know today.

Honky comes from this word honyak.

No way.

Yeah.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, and if you’re ever doing any research on the history of Midwestern cities in the U.S., you might find unusual references to hunky town or hunky row.

And although that seems really funny, it probably was an unofficial name for the part of a neighborhood or a street settled by foreigners or immigrants who worked in the mills and factories.

Wow, that’s incredible. I had no idea there was such a history.

It’s a lot of history, right?

That is something.

Wow, that’s really cool.

It’s got its roots in this wave of Eastern European immigration.

So much of what we say has a story,

And your family is carrying this story forward

Every time they use the word honyak.

That’s incredible.

My grandfather, unfortunately, passed away early last year,

And we were afraid that, because we never heard anyone else use it,

That the history was going to go now that he wasn’t around to explain it.

This is amazing.

Definitely not what I expected.

Yeah, and definitely not just your family. It’s pretty widespread. We hear this question fairly often.

That’s really cool. Well, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for calling, Kyle, and sharing some history from your family.

Yeah, thank you.

All right. Take care. Thanks, Colin. Bye-bye. Be well.

Bye.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org and Twitter @wayword.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Juice, and I am calling from Genoa, New York.

When I was growing up, my mom, who was a daughter of Czechoslovakian immigrants, had several phrases that have always stuck in my mind.

And I never asked her when she was alive where they came from or why she said them.

So I thought maybe you could help.

We’ll give it a try.

Yeah, what were they?

The first one that comes to mind is, I am so mad I could spit nickels.

And as a child, I was pretty scared of her, but I always thought, boy, I wish you would.

Why not dollar bills?

Yeah, or dollar.

Well, when I was a kid 60 years ago, nickels were pretty cool.

A lot of different candy stores for nickels.

So mad I could spit nickels.

Like she was a slot machine paying off.

That’s what I was wondering as I was thinking about this.

It’s like, what would spit nickels?

A slot machine?

But that doesn’t seem like you’d be mad.

No, it’s just one of a variety of these things that you spit.

You’re so angry that, well, there’s just the expression, I’m so angry I could spit.

Or I could spit.

Yeah, people would say, I could spit, just meaning they’re angry.

Or I could spit tacks.

I could spit nails.

I could spit rust.

I could chew nails.

I could spit rivets.

I could spit blood.

Or I could spit tin feet.

There are a lot of these.

Who spits when they’re angry?

Well, camels.

Maybe camels spit.

Camels do, yeah.

Well, I don’t know if they’re angry, but they definitely spit.

And in Australia, they spit chips if they’re thirsty.

A what?

Yeah, they spit chips if they’re thirsty.

I’m so thirsty I could spit chips.

Some people, if they’re thirsty, they spit cotton.

But anyway, the origin of this is murky,

But it’s really just about you being so angry that you do something extraordinary,

That you’re out of your head.

You’re behaving unusually.

When we are angry, we don’t act ourselves.

That is true.

That is true.

My mom chose to spit nickels.

And the other one, she used to say,

If we were in the car on a motorcycle with speed passes,

She’d say, he’s going to go head over tin cups.

I have no idea why he would go head over tin cups.

Martha, that’s one of a set, isn’t it?

There’s head over heels, of course, but rump over tea kettle or head over teacups and ass over elbow or head over appetite or head over apple carts and all different variety of things.

And these go back well into the 1800s.

And they’re all polite ways of saying that you fell down and you’re discombobulated and you’re probably you fell so far that your rear end went over your front end.

OK.

Kind of cartoon style.

Cartoon style.

Maybe even a little bit like what they’re today on the Internet.

They call it the full scorpion.

The full scorpion is where you fall down face first and your back legs go up over your head, kind of like a scorpion’s tail reaching for a sting.

Yeah, that’s a hard landing.

Wow.

Yeah.

So they’re both pretty straightforward.

They are.

And yeah, now that you’re saying them, it’s like, oh, right.

Yeah, it sounds like your mom had a lot of expressions, Juice.

She did.

And her name was Mary Martha.

So I always remember I’m taken by that name.

So, yeah.

Well, I’ve said it before.

I’ll say it again.

You can’t have too many Marthas.

No, you can’t.

Thanks for calling.

I really appreciate it.

Well, I really love your show.

Thank you again for taking my call.

All right.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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I’m Grant Barrett.

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