You Bet Your Sweet Bippy

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Thanks.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

When a new president moves into the White House, it’s traditional to change the decor of the Oval Office.

And you may remember last year an interior designer did that for Barack Obama.

Now, this new color scheme was based on muted tones.

It was mostly beige and light browns.

And when the New York Times reported on this change, it used a great headline, the audacity of taupe.

Now, see, you laughed. You laughed.

Would you call that a bad pun or a good pun?

I think I laugh because it’s an unexpected reaction, right?

Yes.

Because it’s a play on the title of his book.

Sure.

His bestseller.

The Audacity of Hope with the Audacity of Taupe.

I love that.

And Grant, I was really eager to see your reaction because I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately.

Specifically, why is it that puns in headlines seem different to me from just regular garden variety puns in conversation?

You know, I think those tend to elicit groans.

Whereas if I’m reading the newspaper and I see a headline that’s particularly clever using a pun or even an advertisement, I give it a second look.

You know, I just I think there’s something different and I’m not really sure what the difference is.

Is it that they’ve taken more care?

I’m not really sure.

I’ve been puzzling over it because I’ve been reading this book on the history of puns.

It’s by John Pollack.

And he’s done a lot of serious research on this subject.

The book has a bibliography and footnotes, believe it or not.

It’s the world history of puns.

So it’s not just a compilation of goofy remarks.

It has those.

He was a pun-off champion years ago, and he was also a former presidential speechwriter.

But he’s done a lot of research in the same way that people write noun books, you know, like salt or cod.

You know, sort of history through that one noun.

And I have to tell you the title of the book is The Pun Also Rises.

That’s kind of a groaner, don’t you think?

Yes, a little bit.

The pun also rises.

But it gets worse.

The subtitle is How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language Changed History and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics.

Aha!

So seriously, if you like puns and that kind of wordplay, you’re going to want to read it because it’s more interesting than you might think.

So it’s academic treatment of puns plus some popular treatments.

It’s a popular treatment with a lot of research.

But I want to talk about that a little bit later in the show.

Great.

But we also want to talk about all kinds of language.

You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send us emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jeremy from San Diego.

Hi, Jeremy from San Diego.

Hey.

How are you doing today?

Good, thanks for taking my call.

Oh, yeah, thanks for calling.

What can we do for you?

Well, I’m looking for a word that would describe somebody who does not eat fish specifically.

So it wouldn’t matter whether they eat meat or not, but it would describe somebody who just has an aversion or just doesn’t eat fish.

And Jeremy, why do you need this word?

Are you throwing a dinner party or what?

No, it’s actually sort of a long-winded explanation.

Oh, good.

But it has to do with, I guess it’s sort of an inside joke for a music ensemble.

I’m a double bass player.

I play in a symphony orchestra.

And I like playing chamber music on the side.

And there are many pieces of chamber music written with bass,

But there’s only one that most people know,

Most presenters and most audiences.

It’s a great piece by Franz Schubert called The Trout Quintet.

And there’s a movement of variations in it based on a song that Schubert wrote called The Trout.

And so basically any time a bass player gets asked to play chamber music,

They ask for the Trout Quintet.

And while it’s a great piece, we’d love to play other ones as well.

I’m starting on an ensemble and we’re just joking around for what would be a great name for a group that plays anything but the trout quintet.

I was going to say, I didn’t know where you were going, Jeremy.

I’m like, he said it was long-winded.

This is the house of long-windedness.

But in the house of long-windedness, you have like your whole wing.

You have like an entire branch of the building, dude.

And I thought it was going to end with the line, but you can’t tune a fish.

Oh, yeah, if you call it a double bass.

Right, a double bass, right.

Yeah.

I hadn’t even thought of that connection.

Oh, sorry I brought it up.

Oh, oldies but goodies.

So you need a word for this because you just want a way to describe it.

You’re the kind of musicians that won’t play this particular bit of music, right?

Yeah.

What’s it called? The Trout what?

The Trout Quintet.

Yeah, the Trout Quintet.

Right.

This is like being in a steel pan band and refusing to play hot, hot, hot, right?

Basically, yeah.

So the best I’ve come up with is I’ve heard people who are vegetarians who also eat fish sometimes call themselves pescatarians.

And so I was thinking of the non-pescatarian ensemble.

I love it.

I wasn’t sure if there was another word that didn’t have to require a prefix.

I think you just need a logo and you need like a trout-free logo.

Something that looks official like a government stamp.

Exactly, the fish with the line through it.

Yeah, a circle with a slash. I love it.

There aren’t many words for this.

In my house, we call them my wife because she doesn’t eat fish.

Yeah, so I have seen non-pescatarian.

It’s from the Latin root that also gives us the astrological sign, Pisces.

Yeah, it’s related to pesky, right?

No.

No.

No, so non-pescatarian.

I love that.

That actually has been used elsewhere.

I haven’t seen it yet.

I just figured it probably would make sense.

Well, I’m Googling this like, Matt, and there are a few words that people have tried that none of them stuck.

Antimerinovore.

Boring.

Yeah.

And Martha, you have the pronunciation down on this one.

I bet you’re going to say ichthyophagist.

Well, and.

Oh, and ichthyophagist.

You’ve got to put the negative prefix on it, right?

I see.

And ichthyophagist.

And ichthyophagist is someone who eats fish, so an anichthyophagist is someone who doesn’t.

Yeah, those get pretty complicated.

Yeah.

But they’re fun to say.

They are fun to say.

But I love the non-pescatarian, what is it?

Ensemble?

Ensemble, I guess.

So what do you play?

Do you have a substitute if they suggest the Trout Quintet?

What do you suggest in return?

Oh, there’s hundreds of other pieces that we could suggest.

It’s one of those sort of circular things.

Once somebody hears it, that’s the only piece they know,

And then that’s the only piece that gets asked.

That’s like covers of Dave Bruvac’s Take Five.

It’s like, man, just stop it, people.

I don’t need to hear that song again.

Exactly.

I mean, I have nothing against the actual piece by Schubert.

It’s great.

But, yeah, variety is a good thing.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, in diet and musical diets.

Exactly.

I love non-pescatarian.

You know what? If you guys come up with a logo for this, I want to see the next flyer.

I do, too.

Drop us a line with the email, and we’ll share it with everybody to see what kind of goofiness you come up with, all right?

Okay.

Great.

Well, thanks so much.

Best of luck.

It sounds like you lead an exciting life.

Can’t wait to hear it.

Okay, thank you.

Bye, Jeremy.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

In the large, Jeremy’s problem is another workplace issue, right?

I guess it is.

The language in the workplace is kind of sticky.

It is sticky.

If you want to unsticky that mess, give us a call, 877-929-9673,

or send the stickiness to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Tricia Roy. I’m calling from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Tricia.

How are you doing?

Doing well, and yourself?

Yeah, we’re all good here.

Great. I had a question about the words luggage and baggage today.

I’ve been traveling quite frequently, and I realized that while I think of these terms conceptually the same way, I use them differently.

So, for example, while I go to the store to buy luggage, once I purchase it, I use baggage.

And I pack my baggage.

I check my baggage.

I claim my baggage.

I haul my baggage.

And I could even be said to have my own personal baggage, which is another sort of use for the term.

So I was wondering why there are these two terms and am I using them correctly as they were intended?

And why are they out there?

What a great set of questions.

Yeah, you don’t exactly go to your therapist to talk about your emotional luggage.

Not really.

I never really thought about that.

No, you go…

It’s really true.

I mean, yeah, when I think of luggage, I think of the price is right, you know.

Right, this fancy leather kit.

The curtain goes back, new luggage!

Exactly.

Yeah.

But you hit upon something which I think gets to the bottom of this.

I did.

It’s luggage when you buy it.

But once you put stuff in it, it more or less turns into baggage.

Right?

So baggage is kind of about the stuff inside as much as it is about the container.

Right?

Baggage is the thing being carried.

You would never call the contents of your suitcase your luggage.

It’s the whole apparatus.

Right?

Right.

Yeah, that’s true.

But you might refer to the things inside the luggage as baggage.

But you never refer to things inside the baggage as luggage.

Yeah, Tricia, you’d never go to luggage claim, would you?

No.

I wanted to know, Tricia, if you could tell us why you’re not sure that you’re doing it right.

I just wanted to double check, I guess.

Okay.

Too many Fs on English papers in fourth grade?

Possibly.

You have some emotional luggage about language.

That’s what you’re saying.

I just wanted to know.

I mean, it seems odd to me that there are these two terms that when I think conceptually about them,

I visualize a piece of luggage, whether or not it’s empty or full.

But I use them and everyday speak very differently.

So I just thought it was very interesting.

I wasn’t sure why that was.

That’s interesting because it’s like the baggage is what you lug around.

So why isn’t the baggage the luggage?

Right.

These subtleties are the kind of thing that native speakers just do automatically.

We understand them.

We parse them.

We use them automatically.

We think about them on long plane rides.

Thanks a lot.

If you were to do a Venn diagram of luggage and baggage, there would be a huge overlap, maybe three quarters, 80 percent, right, of overlap of meaning where one or the other could be used.

And then there’s a tiny crescent sliver on the outside of this Venn diagram on both sides of luggage and baggage where one term is best used and the other one is best not used.

Right?

I’m liking picturing this, Grant.

I’m not sure what the rules are, though.

Well, the rules generally, like I was saying before, as far as I can tell, baggage is often but not always the things inside the luggage.

And the luggage is often but not always the container itself.

And that’s where we start to get the differences.

And you’re going to find exceptions, absolutely.

And you’re going to find exceptions between our dialect of English and the one spoken in the UK, right?

So there’s no universal on this.

Trust your native speaker intuition.

Stand up straight.

Take a deep breath.

Just go forth and use your baggage.

Oh, Tricia, who knew that this was going to be such a complicated question?

Thank you so much for calling.

And thank you for letting us muddle the waters.

Thank you.

Or muddy the waters.

Thanks, Tricia.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Happy trails.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Oh.

Baggage and luggage.

We have to throw this out, right?

I think we do.

I mean, not in the garbage, but out to the listeners.

No.

What do you think about this?

Do you see a difference between baggage and luggage?

I’m talking to you, the listener.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673,

or send your differences to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, since I’ve been doing a little punning, and I know you don’t like it, I have another quotation about puns.

And this is from the book The Pun Also Rises.

This is from The Pun Also Rises.

By John Pollock.

Yes.

Joseph Addison in 1711 wrote,

If we must lash one another, let it be with the manly strokes of wit and satire.

For I am of the old philosopher’s opinion that if I must suffer from one or the other,

I would rather it should be from the paw of the lion than from the hoof of an ass.

Share your thoughts about language with us, 877-929-9673,

or send it in email to words@waywordradio.org.

A word quiz and your stories about language, up next on A Way with Words.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined now by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Hello, Greg.

Hello, Grant.

Hello, Martha.

Hi, Greg.

This puzzle is inspired by the nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

How about that?

In this puzzle, we’ll see the wedding of the king and queen represented by the letters K and Q.

So every answer is a word or phrase with K and Q adjacent to each other.

Oh, adjacent.

Okay.

Got it.

And in fact, in that order, K and Q.

Okay, very good.

All right.

Your first one is pricing information from a broker.

Something quote, stock quote.

Stock quote, exactly, with K and Q right there at the end of stock and beginning of quote.

Okay.

It might mate the white king.

It might mate.

Oh, the Black Queen.

The Black Queen.

Very good.

You were going to say Kate Middleton.

I know.

That’s what we already talked about.

Your allocated memory on a shared hard drive.

Network.

Disc quota.

Oh.

Disc quota.

Very good.

Grant’s computer science background.

Oh, man.

Are we going to have an ancient Greek question here?

I don’t know.

Not quite.

We’ve got something for you.

I’ve got something for you, Martha, I’m sure.

For example, if a rooster lays its eggs on a peaked roof, which side will they roll down?

None, because a rooster doesn’t lay eggs.

So it’s a…

A trick question.

A trick question.

Exactly.

Well, here’s a language one that’s one of my favorites.

It’s an obsolete word that means a woman whose husband is unfaithful to her.

Cuck queen.

Cuck Queen.

Very good, Martha.

I’m impressed.

Don’t get the computer science ones, but.

That’s like Cuckold, but Cuck Queen.

And Queen, you know, is spelled Q-U-E-A-N in the sense of woman of ill repute, right?

Yeah.

How about the nickname of the Gambino family crime boss, Angelo Ruggiero, who talked a lot and waddled like a duck?

So duck something?

Something quack?

Yeah.

Quack questioner, quack questioning, quack quen.

It’s also the sound of two ducks.

Quack quack?

Quack quack.

Very interesting.

Quack quack, Ruggiero.

Quack quack.

That’s what I got for you.

Thanks, Greg.

Lots of fun, as always.

Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

And if you want to have some fun with us, call us, 877-929-9673,

or send your questions an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Alice from Carlsbad, California.

Hello, Alice. Welcome to the program.

Hi.

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Oh, boy. Welcome. What’s happening out your way?

Well, my question was about the word skyscraper.

And it came about that I was writing about little animals and cats

and treating cats gently and saying that, you know,

when I put my cat down, I put her down on the floor because compared to a cat, a human being is like a skyscraper.

And then I had to laugh at myself because I got the image of my head scraping the sky.

And then I had to laugh because I thought, I never think of skyscraper when I think of the word skyscraper.

I just think of tall buildings.

Exactly.

How did that come to be the word?

So you were picturing yourself as a type of Paul Bunyan, an Alice Bunyan.

There you go.

And your cat was your blue ox.

Or the Empire State Alice.

There you go.

Yeah.

Very tall, but with, you know, with my head in the clouds, I guess.

Yeah.

Well, you know what’s really cool about this is even earlier than it was applied to buildings, skyscraper was applied to the topmost sail on those old sailing ships, you know, with all the sails.

Huh.

It literally scraped the sky, right?

Yeah, it did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know what else it was called?

It was called a moon raker.

I love that.

I love that.

Yeah, that’s it.

Both, you know, skyscraper and moonraker, they’re both very visual, rich visual images.

Yes, yes, they are.

They’re very sensuous, I think.

And later on, skyscraper came to be applied to a really tall horse as well.

And then I think it was, what, the early 19th century?

Occasionally been used for tall men or a ball shot up in the air in baseball or cricket.

And then about what time?

19th century, I think.

Late 19th century.

Late 1880s, more or less.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They started building those big, tall buildings.

And what to call them?

Yeah.

When Chicago, after the fire, started to rebuild, basically.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, they also used that term or forms of that term in other languages, too.

Rascacielos in Spanish, which means the same thing.

The same in French.

It’s gros ciel.

Yeah.

G-R-A-T-T-E hyphen T-I-E-L.

Scrapes.

Scrape the heavens, basically.

Yeah, isn’t that great?

And Alice, you’re going to love this one.

In German, the name translates as cloud scratcher.

Isn’t that fabulous?

That’s really cute.

Poetry in everyday language.

I love it.

Thanks for calling, Alice.

All right.

Thank you.

I appreciate you looking into my words for me.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I love it when you have those moments when you just, you’ve used a word all your life, skyscraper, skyscraper, and it sounds sibilant and fun and fun to say.

And then all of a sudden you pull a word apart and you think, oh my gosh, it’s made up of two other words.

I love those moments.

Tell us about yours.

Email us at words@waywordradio.org or call us 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Brian Rosler. I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Hi, Brian. Welcome to the program.

Hello. Thank you.

What can we help you with today?

Well, my wife and I had a question here.

We were watching an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine the other day, and the title of the episode was The Dye is Cast.

And our disagreement focuses on the origin of this phrase.

And our question is whether die in the phrase refers to gambling dice, a metal cast or die as in gambling dice.

Interesting.

What’s your position?

Well, I thought it was die that you put into water, but my wife was more along the lines of gambling die.

You mean die like D-Y-E or metallurgy?

Well, we had those three.

We had the D-Y-E, the metallurgy, and the gambling dice.

So explain your thinking with the color, the D-Y-E dye.

What were you thinking there?

How did that work?

From my understanding, the origin of the phrase comes from Julius Caesar when he crossed over the Rubicon, and he said the dye is cast.

And my thinking was you put the dye in the water, you can’t take it out.

Once you’ve done that action, there’s no way to take that back.

And that’s what my thinking was.

Wow.

It’s not a bad post-analysis, right?

That’s really good.

That’s pretty good.

And so your wife’s position, though, is that it has something to do with the multi-sided device that we use to gamble with, right?

Correct.

Correct.

The bones.

Here, let me put her on the phone and let her explain it.

Oh, yeah, sure.

I don’t think he’s right at all.

You don’t.

Who’s this?

This is Ashley, Brian’s wife.

And I think that the phrase refers to gambling dice or metal die that you use in metal casting.

Interesting.

And so they didn’t have the title of the show, the episode, on the screen.

You only heard it?

Actually, I think it was printed and it was D-I-E.

Oh, yeah.

You’ll be happy to hear, Ashley, that you are right.

And Brian is brilliant that his explanation was Brian’s not right.

Yes.

He has a future as a poet, I think.

Yeah.

A fabulous of some kind, a fiction teller.

He’s a romantic at heart.

Nice.

I think so.

But he’s got the story right.

Caesar’s standing on the edge of the Rubicon, which basically was a nothing river.

Crossing that river meant that he was about to challenge a foreign army.

And as the legend has it, true or not true, one of his soldiers or one of the people on his side of the river went ahead, went ahead of everyone else, raised his sword high and charged across and, you know, and that was it.

And supposedly Caesar said the die is cast.

Yeah, yeah.

There’s some stories that he was not so sure he wanted to do it or not.

And he got to the Rubicon and it’s like, should I, should I not?

And then the die was cast.

There’s two things that come into play here that kind of make this expression opaque.

And one of them is that die, meaning a singular unit, that is one of multiple kinds of dice, dice being the plural, is disappearing in English.

And so a little bit of confusion is sowed there.

The second thing that makes it confusing is that we don’t often use cast in that way anymore.

We say throw or toss or something like that.

We don’t say, I cast you out, demons.

But it’s the same cast that’s in broadcast or podcast or words like that.

It just means to throw or to push outward or something like that, to spread, right?

Yeah.

And so die as cast has kind of become an opaque expression.

Yeah, that’s true.

Ashley, did you guys?

No wonder we were confused.

What does Brian think about this?

Well, I guess Ashley was right.

But I still like my version of it.

I like your version of it, too.

Except for the fact that it was written.

How did they spell it?

Well, it was spelled D-I-E, but I didn’t know what the translation from the original Latin would have been if it got translated and spelled wrong.

I see. Very interesting.

That was my position.

The only way I could be right was if there was something wrong with the translation.

You always have to go back to the original Latin.

Yeah, yeah. Alia jakta est.

Yes.

And in fact, Brian, if you want a fantastic vocabulary word from that, the word alia, which means die as in to throw dice.

Alia gives us the word aleatory, A-L-E-A-T-O-R-Y, which means by chance.

So you can talk about the aleatory nature of life or the aleatory nature of what’s that casino near where you are?

Thanks for calling, Brian. Give our best to Ashley.

I will.

Thank you, Martha and Grant.

All right.

Okay.

Take care.

Have a wonderful day.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Language counselors, marriage counselors, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, do you remember the quiz we did with one of the quiz guys where they gave us a number with some letters, and we have to figure out the phrase that it represented?

Oh, like 10 Y and a D, and it was 10 years and a decade, something like that.

Yeah, exactly like that.

Okay.

Well, Keith Erickson has sent us some more, and I wanted to try them on you.

Oh, yay.

One W on a U.

One W on a U.

One, one.

Yeah, you remember.

Wheel on a unicycle.

One wheel on a unicycle.

I used to ride a unicycle.

Let’s try something.

Three B-M parentheses S-H-T-R.

Close parentheses.

Three B-M-S-H-T-R.

No idea.

Three blind mice.

See how they run.

Oh.

Well, the thing is, at the end of his email, he has two stompers that he couldn’t figure out.

And I wanted to share these with you, Martha, and our listeners to see if they can figure them out.

And we’ll help Keith.

And we’ll send the answers along.

We’ll put these on Facebook as well if they’re not already there.

So 5D in a ZC.

5 Zody?

No, 5?

That would be 12.

5 D in a ZC.

It’s difficult.

And here’s another one.

I think I know the answer to this, but I’m going to hold back and we’ll see what our listeners come up with.

64S on a C.

64S?

Yeah, S as in Sam.

On a C.

No, that’s not the word.

S on a C.

I’m so bad at these.

I don’t know.

If you have the answer to these puzzles, drop us a line, words@waywordradio.org, or give us a call, 877-929-9673, and we’ll help Keith out, and we’ll send them along.

We’ll post these on the website as well, all right?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jenny calling from San Diego.

Hi, Jenny. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Jenny.

Hi. Yes, I have always wondered what the origin was of the phrase, your Monday is longer than your Tuesday.

My mom used to use that phrase when we were growing up to indicate that in a kind of a subtle, you know, as best as she could polite way that your slip was showing or some underwear was showing.

Mainly when back in the good old days when in school when you wore a dress or a skirt and you had some sort of slip, either full length or half length.

And I have never heard anybody else outside my family use this phrase.

And when I mentioned it to a friend of mine, he went and Googled it to see if he could determine its origins.

And he claimed he came across the phrase, your Tuesday is longer than your Wednesday, and said that it indicated—

Well, that’s ridiculous.

It is. It is crazy. And I’ve never been able to find that. And I think he was just pulling my leg on that one.

Wait, so the expression is your Monday is longer than your Tuesday, and it means what?

Your slip is showing.

Oh.

Now, Jenny, do you still—

And what’s a slip?

You know those undergarments we used to wear way back when, at least ladies used to wear?

I remember mine.

I’ve seen a picture of my great-grandparents.

Oh, no, I had one.

Did you have one, Jenny?

I did.

In fact, I still do have some in my closet.

Aren’t they usually worn outside the clothing now?

Often.

Sometimes, yeah.

Indeed.

Yeah, I had a half slip.

So this is from an era where it mattered that your slip might be a little longer than your dress.

Yes, exactly.

And where you would want to give somebody a sato vache warning.

Oh, I know.

Which is very subtly.

I tell you, Jenny, when I was in high school, I can distinctly remember my Aunt Margaret saying, Moth Ann, you have a Ph.D.

Oh, yes.

Which was a petticoat hanging down.

Oh, how funny.

There are a ton of phrases to this.

Martha, you speak a great deal of Spanish.

I thought you were going to say Southern.

Do you know this Spanish expression?

I know that.

Fondo salido, busco marido.

Oh.

You’re basically saying your slip is showing you must be looking for a husband.

That’s great.

Because there’s something a little naughty about a slip showing, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, or else you need a husband to point it out to you.

Oh.

Yeah.

There are a lot of really good ones like that.

Mrs. White is out of jail.

Yeah.

I love that one.

But here’s the one, Jenny, that’s close to what you were saying.

And this is from Jonathan Green’s Cassell’s Dictionary of Slaying, which is a British dictionary.

Monday comes before Sunday.

That’s the version that he has.

I would not be surprised if your friend did genuinely find the version that he told you about, the one that you scoffed at.

So you should go apologize and bring him cookies.

Yeah.

So there’s Monday comes before Sunday.

I’ve also seen Saturday is longer than Sunday.

Really?

There are all these little phrases.

There’s one from Trinidad and Tobago.

Moco longer than plantain.

Moco is a type of fig that tends to, it says here, because a moco fig is usually shorter than a plantain.

Oh, my God.

This is amazing.

Yeah.

Well, it was important.

There was a time in our culture where it was important that a woman look like she actually had some intentionality about her dress, right?

Right.

That the slip was in the right place and the dress was in the right place and nothing was showing that shouldn’t be showing.

Right.

But we’ve changed.

And I’m not making any kind of judgments.

I’m just saying now slips aren’t – my sisters, even growing up decades ago, they didn’t wear them except at funerals and weddings for the most part.

Right.

Wow.

That’s fantastic.

So you are plugged in to one of the tributaries of English.

Oh, thank you so much for giving me all that background information.

We aren’t alone out there.

My sister and I are both definitely puzzled by this whole thing.

She explored it too with other folks and couldn’t find anybody else who had heard of anything similar to this.

Wow.

That’s cool.

Well, we’re glad to be your drop-off point for new information.

Thank you both.

I really appreciate it.

Take care, Jenny.

Thank you for calling.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Did you hear an expression from your parents when you were growing up?

And come to think of it, you have no idea what it means?

Call us, 877-929-9673.

Or you can send those emails to us at words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, do you know what preacher meat is?

Preacher meat?

Yes.

Is this like chicken served at sundaes?

Oh, how did you know?

Is it?

Yes, I’ve been reading the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, which is one of my favorites, as you know.

I win it radio.

Yes.

Yes, I learned that preacher meat is fried chicken because it’s what you tend to serve to the preacher when he comes by.

It reminds me of the Italian pasta strozza preti, which means priest strangler, literally.

It’s a big, thick, ropey pasta, and it’s what you served up to feed the clergy because they tended to stop by at lunchtime.

That’s what I would do.

That’s what you do.

877-929-9673 or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org, and you can talk to us on Facebook and Twitter.

More of your stories about language as A Way with Words continues.

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

More at nu.edu.

And from the fifth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Ten years in the making with 10,000 new words and senses.

More at ahdictionary.com.

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

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Grant, you know what happens when a clock gets hungry?

I’m afraid to say yes or no.

No, what?

It goes back four seconds.

That’s terrible.

I was waiting for that.

I was waiting for that.

But puns are supposed to be terrible, right?

A good pun’s not a pun.

It’s a joke.

Yeah.

You’ve been reading that book again.

I’ve been reading that book, The Pun Also Rises.

And I bring up that silly joke because one of the points that John Pollock makes in this book, The Pun Also Rises, is the fact that throughout much of history, puns were actually a commonly accepted rhetorical tool.

Aristotle praised what he called semantic surprises like that, and Cicero called them the wittiest kind of saying.

And you remember your Shakespeare.

I mean, he punned all the time.

And a lot of the puns we don’t even get because we don’t pronounce English the same way.

And he used them in serious and comical situations.

But I think you’ll find this interesting, Grant.

Pollock argues that something changed in the early 18th century.

Now, this was right about the time that rules about English grammar were being codified and put into books that people were looking to as a kind of manual for social proper behavior and advancement.

And this is when you start seeing pamphlets with titles like God’s Revenge Against Punning, showing the miserable fates of persons addicted to this crying sin in court and town.

Wait, were those genuine or were they satirical?

Well, they went back and forth.

You know, Jonathan Swift wrote things like that.

And Samuel Johnson called puns the last refuge of the witless.

Yeah, I’ve heard that one.

Yeah.

And then it goes on and on.

In the 19th century, Oliver Wendell Holmes.

You’re going to love this one.

Said a pun on its face is, quote, an insult to the person you are talking with.

It implies utter indifference to or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious.

And then he goes on.

People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks.

They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.

He’s touched upon a point here.

A pun is great if it’s not been overused, right?

Yes.

That’s the thing about puns, when they are cycled and recycled and used and reused.

Yeah.

They grow tired and shabby.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you feel the buildup for them, you feel the person winding up.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s why I laughed at your headline, I think, earlier in the show.

It was unexpected, particularly in the New York Times, where nine-tenths of the headlines are pretty solid and serious.

Yeah.

And you get the style section of the commentary, and that’s when they start.

Or sports.

Sports is where they have the most fun with headphones, right?

And then you really start to see some magic happen.

Yeah.

And so when I groan at puns, part of it’s a shtick, right?

But part of it is just an acknowledgement that puns are mostly recycled and kind of tired,

Particularly if you don’t like repetition.

Well, it’s really interesting to think about what it is that’s going on in your mind when a pun happens.

I love the way that—

Does he talk about this in the book?

Yes, yes.

Very good.

He, of course, in one of these noun books where you talk about everything under the sun involving puns.

So he did an MRI of somebody listening to puns.

Yes, yes.

Well, he didn’t, but he went through all this neurological.

Okay.

He did a Gladwellian compilation of all the research.

Thank you.

That’s exactly what he did.

And I like the way he describes this.

He says, for a split second, puns manage to hold open the elevator doors of language and meaning as the brain toggles furiously between competing semantic destinations before finally deciding which is the best answer or deciding to live with both.

And I love that.

I love that too.

But I usually put it this way.

I usually say, ha ha, words have two meanings.

I mean, that’s kind of what it boils down to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ha ha, you got me.

I was thinking of the other meaning.

We’d love to know what you think about puns.

You can call us, 877-929-9673, or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Zeta, and I’m calling from Spokane, Washington.

Hello, Zeta. Welcome to the program.

Hi.

Thank you.

What can we help you with today?

Well, I have this phrase that I’ve been using probably off and on for probably 40 years,

And it’s used to emphasize a point.

And I used it the other day, and then all of a sudden I thought, I’m not sure what it means.

So I decided I’d call you folks.

Okay.

That makes sense.

The phrase is sweet bippy.

Sweet bippy.

Mm—

Now, Zeta, how would you use that in a sentence?

Well, usually it’s to emphasize, like I said, to emphasize a point.

So it’s something to the effect of, you bet your sweet bippy I can do that.

-huh. -huh.

And you have no idea where it comes from.

I don’t have a clue.

Mm—

Did you ever watch television in the late 60s?

Yeah.

-huh.

Mm—

Martha and I are giving each other the I here.

We know exactly what the other one is thinking.

You bet your sweet bippy we do.

Did you ever watch Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In with Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and Ruth Buzzi?

No?

No.

No.

Really?

It was this crazy variety show with all this psychedelic set dress.

Okay.

Very good.

Yeah.

But no, I didn’t watch it.

Oh, yeah.

That was a catchphrase on there.

You bet your sweet bippy.

Oh, is that right?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

So that’s where it started.

Yes.

Does it have any meaning?

I mean, what’s a bippy?

That’s all of a sudden what I got to thinking about.

And why is it sweet?

Yeah.

Martha, I’m looking at you.

Are you looking at my bippy?

No, I can’t see it.

It’s under the table.

Does that help, Zeta?

It’s basically a way of you bet your bottom.

Yeah.

All right.

Bet your sweet backside.

Bet your derriere, your rear.

Okay.

And, you know, it’s actually kind of the grandchild of some much older versions of betting things.

As early as the 1880s, maybe even earlier, people would talk about, you bet your life, or you bet, or this is from a gambling period.

This is when we were gamblers, and gambling was part of our culture.

And we have so many words in English that come from gambling, and this is one of those expressions.

Okay.

Yeah.

You bet your sweet life was an older version of it, right?

Yes, yes.

Or you betcha.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yes.

And it’s funny about Rona Martin’s laughing.

I mean, I used to love that show.

I just, because part of the reason was that they played with language so much.

They also said, you bet your nurdle. N-U-R-D-L-E.

And then they had the Farkle family.

Grant, do you remember the Farkle family?

Frank Farkle and Fanny Farkle?

No.

And their children, Gar and Far Farkle?

And their neighbor, Ferd Burfel?

You don’t remember all this?

I never remember.

No.

Simon and Garf Hartle?

You don’t remember them?

Well, you can bet your sweet life I’ll be looking that up on YouTube.

Right on.

Well, Zeta, now you know what your bippy is.

I do know what my bippy is.

It’s your bum.

Yes, yes.

Go look it up.

All right.

Thanks, Zeta.

Thank you very much.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

It’s crazy how a show that’s that old can still have a catchphrase that works.

Oh, yeah.

Well, what about Socket to Me?

Remember that?

Yeah.

Was it really used?

Oh, yes.

Oh, okay.

Yes.

And then they would throw the water, a bucket of water.

I was just a child then.

Yeah, right.

You were just a gleam in somebody’s eye, right?

Oh, that was such a cultural phenomenon in those days.

What’s the phrase from television that stuck with you all these years?

Call us, 877-929-9673.

You can find us on Facebook or you can email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Paul Tucker.

I’m calling from Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.

V-I-L?

Like the pickle.

Oh, Dillsburg!

Oh, Dillsburg.

Okay.

All right.

But we have nothing to do with pickles here.

Okay.

Great.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Well, I’ve been watching the news coverage of the flooding along the Mississippi.

Mm—

And I kept hearing about the high water threatening the town of Cairo, Illinois.

And then just downstream, another town of New Madrid, M-A-D-R-I-D, in Missouri.

And the way they said the names of these towns made me think of a couple other places in Pennsylvania.

We have North Versailles.

It’s spelled like Versailles.

Yeah, yeah.

But they say, everybody says Versailles.

Yep, there’s one of those in Kentucky, too. I live not far from that.

And elsewhere in Missouri.

Oh, really?

Mm—

And then I also am familiar with the town way up in Maine called Calais that’s spelled like Calais.

Oh.

C-A-L-A-I-S.

Mm—

Interesting stuff.

Yeah.

I’m familiar with a bunch of those towns you mentioned along the Mississippi River because my folks, my father’s people are from the other side of the river in Missouri.

And so towns like Cairo and New Madrid were names that I heard growing up.

They’d be on the local television station out of Cape Girardeau or wherever else down there.

So your question is, what’s the deal?

Why aren’t they pronouncing them like the original places, right?

Yeah.

That’s a big question.

And there’s a short answer.

And it starts with because.

And does it end with a period, just because?

Because, yeah.

Thanks for calling, Paul.

Paul, it kind of does.

Here’s the thing.

You set up a town like Cairo, Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi,

And clearly you’re hoping to pick up a little historical influence.

Maybe you think it’s lucky to name it after this big town in Egypt.

Maybe you know the town through your studies or your travels.

You read about it in books.

Yeah, you read about it in books.

But maybe you’ve never been there

And maybe you’re not the kind of guy.

Who hangs out in the kind of circles where they talk about Cairo?

And so you do the best that you can.

You pick a pluck, an important sounding place name from a book.

You put it on a map and that’s your town.

Yeah, I think that’s a key, don’t you think?

From a book rather than from TV or radio, which probably didn’t exist then.

And maybe the kind of folks who would name a place like that originally wouldn’t be learned, you know?

And even further, names get corrupted and connections are lost from the past.

And they take their own thing and they become a new place.

And so it’s kind of appropriate that a new place would have its own style of pronunciation versus following the old pronunciation.

Right, and it kind of becomes a shibboleth among the locals.

I mean, I’m embarrassed to tell you guys that I was in New York looking for Houston Street, you know, and it’s pronounced Houston.

And I’m sure that just labeled me as a rube right there.

Yeah, it’s named.

And that’s the other thing. Sometimes the origin of these places, it’s not what you think.

Houston Street in New York City is not named after Sam Houston.

Yeah.

It’s not the same origin as the place in Texas.

And so we have a lot of different reasons that can be different.

What’s really interesting to me is how often they’re so different, even among the locals.

Martha hit upon just the thing I wanted to talk about there, which is even the locals will disagree about the pronunciation.

Just ask people who live in Las Vegas what the name of their state is.

There are three different dominant pronunciations.

Three.

Three.

And some of them will swear with different levels of ferocity that their pronunciation is the one.

Is it Nevada, Nevada, or Nevada?

People will use the local pronunciation that they prefer as a way of determining who is from their part of town, much less from another town altogether.

Yeah.

Are you from my side of the river?

Do I know you from the grocery store?

Having these different pronunciations for a town are a kind of way of doing that.

So they kind of self-reinforce.

Even if Versailles sounds abhorrent to those of us who have actually been to Versailles and looked into the mirrored halls, right?

Paul, does Versailles bother you?

Well, I always thought it was just kind of funny.

A silly Pennsylvania people don’t know how to pronounce it, and it has a life of its own now.

Yeah, what’s up with yins anyway?

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

This was an incredibly interesting topic.

Well, thank you very much.

Thanks, Paul.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Grant.

Martha.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Tarzan.

Tarzan who?

Tarzan Stripes Forever.

I got to teach my son that.

You like that, right?

You like that pun?

We do knock, knock jokes in my house all the time.

Oh, okay.

I like the knock-knock structure because it’s simple and easy to teach to kids.

Okay.

Well, there you go.

A pun for you.

Share your knock-knock jokes, 877-929-9673.

You can share your puns with Martha, martha@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

This is Elise from Everett, Washington.

Elise, what can we do for you?

Well, I was talking with a co-worker, and I was telling her how I recently discovered your show, and we were talking about the phrase to egg somebody on, and we thought that’d be a good question for you folks.

Okay.

Yeah.

What would you like to know about it?

Well, what does it come from?

I don’t know if it’s a chicken-related phrase, or I was thinking maybe it went back to vaudeville where they throw eggs and tomatoes at the people.

Interesting.

If you’re egging somebody on, you’re encouraging them to do something, right?

Right, right.

So if I’m on stage doing my little tap routine and telling a few jokes, you’re going to throw eggs at me to make me do more?

Well, maybe it’s as a threat.

I think that would be egging you off.

As a threat, though, I could get that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they have to be rotten eggs, right?

Right, of course.

I think that’s called egging you off.

Don’t egg me off.

I’ll have your badge.

Yeah, I always wondered about that growing up.

I thought it was sort of like pushing an egg along or something.

I don’t know.

Interesting.

You know, trying to roll an egg.

But it turns out, because this comes from an entirely different root, it has nothing to do with eggs or chicken or poultry or hatching.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Nothing.

The only thing that’s similar is the fact that they’re spelled the same way, EGG.

But the kind of egg, when you’re pushing somebody, comes from an old prehistoric root that has something to do with poking somebody with something sharp.

In fact, it’s etymologically related to the word edge.

So if I’m egging you on, I’m priding you with the pointy end of a sword, right?

Basically, yeah.

Oh, wow.

Making you do the thing you don’t want to do.

Right, right.

And sometimes words end up that way.

They end up spelled the same way but coming from completely different roots, completely different meanings.

So that’s why we say egg on.

I love it when we have these…

Very old.

Yeah, we have these little hidden histories in the language.

We just talked about this.

This is wonderful.

Yes, it’s like they’re hidden inside a little egg.

And our job on the show is to crack that egg and let it hatch.

Oh, I love it.

Well, I can’t wait to tell my co-worker.

That’s what we talk about all day besides food.

Oh, you sound like our people, words and food.

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

Okay, thanks so much for the answers.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The hidden history of English is amazing.

Call us to talk about it, 877-929-9673, or send your questions about the history of language to words at wewordradio.org.

So I was reading some Hawaiian folklore.

I was actually, and I came across some riddles.

I’m not going to go into the whole tale, but there’s some folklore about riddles in Hawaii, and I thought some of these riddles would be great to share with our listeners.

Oh, please do.

And we’ll link to the whole story later, okay?

Okay.

I have a house, a house with eight rafters, a house with one post.

I carry it with me.

It gives me shelter.

What is it?

A house with eight rafters, one post, gives me shelter.

You carry it with you.

It must be a bumbershoot, an umbrella.

Yes, exactly.

Very good.

How about this one?

My twin, with me from the day I crawled, with me till the day I die, I cannot escape him.

Yet when storms come, he deserts me.

It must be your shadow.

Yes, but what a beautifully put riddle, right?

Yeah, I’ve never heard a shadow described so beautifully.

That’s great.

Yeah, it’s wonderful.

I’ll link to that.

That’s Hawaiian folklore.

It’s a longer tale about a young man who basically overthrows an evil king through the use of riddles.

Cool.

Share your riddles with us.

Send them to words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

Our romance is growing flat.

That’s our show for this week.

Don’t forget you can leave us a message even when we’re not on the air.

Call us at 877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Stay in touch with us all week on Facebook and Twitter.

You can listen to all our past shows by going online to waywordradio.org or get the podcast on iTunes.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

Tim also chooses our music.

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

A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a non-profit organization.

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

Thanks for listening.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

You like potato and I like potopo.

You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing up.

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

Learn more at nu.edu.