Your Two Cents (episode #1558)

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Grant, I’ve been reading a book in a field I know almost nothing about, and there’s a whole lot in this book about guts and toes.

You mean guts like my innards and toes like the little things at the end of my feet?

Actually, no.

Spelled the same way, G-U-T and T-O-E, but they’re acronyms.

Oh, acronyms. T-O-E, top of Everest. I don’t know. G-U-T, get under table. That’s earthquake advice, right? I don’t know. What is it? What are you learning about, Martha? It’s always something new.

This is a book about cosmology.

Gut is a physicist’s term for grand unified theory.

And Toe, T-O-E, you probably remember Stephen Hawking talking about this.

Yeah, I read his book when I was a kid.

Okay, yeah, The Theory of Everything.

Right, that makes perfect sense.

Yeah, this is a fascinating book.

It’s called The End of Everything, Astrophysically Speaking.

And it’s by Katie Mack, who is an assistant professor of physics at North Carolina State University.

And Katie Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist, which means that she studies cosmology seeking to understand the universe from its very beginning to its very end.

She’s trying to find fundamental truths about the way that the universe works.

And it’s a challenging book, but she’s an amiable nerd who’s endlessly fascinated by her topic.

She’s the scientist that you want to sit down next to at the pub and just let them rip.

Or be on an airplane with from coast to coast, right?

Sitting next to.

Yeah.

I once sat next to an obituary writer from the New York Times on an airplane.

It was one of the best flights I’ve ever had.

Oh, wow.

That’s really, it was really fantastic.

Oh, my gosh.

That is on my lifetime bingo card.

So you said the book was very challenging, and I’m imagining that despite it being challenging, you’re finding all this language to latch onto, and you’re kind of hopping from toadstool to toadstool, language to bit to language bit, to kind of rescue you.

As I do, that’s exactly it, Grant.

So I do want to talk about that book a little bit more later in the show, and I’d love to hear what you’re reading.

Oh, yeah. I’d love to talk about what I’m reading, too.

And, you know, Martha and I would like to hear what you’re reading and what you think everyone else should be reading, too.

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Or talk to us about anything related to language, words, speech, writing, literature, slang, new words, old words, or old expressions and new expressions.

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Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. How are you?

My name is Nicole, and I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Great. Well, what would you like to talk with us about?

Well, my husband and I have been in dispute about the word buoy.

He is from England, and he is convinced that the way that we should say this word is buoy.

And I am from New England, and I disagree. I think it’s buoy.

So we were hoping for some clarification and maybe to avoid a divorce.

You know, we usually ask what the stakes are, you know, if it’s washing dishes for a week or something.

But this is, Grant, this may be the highest stakes we’ve ever…

We’re talking tea in the harbor and the whole thing, right?

Yes, yes.

B-U-O-Y, right?

Yes, yes.

Okay, tell me, how often are you encountering this word in your daily life?

Well, yeah, not as often as you would think, but we do like to bring it up with each other, probably partly because of the accents.

Yeah.

So we were visiting my family in New Hampshire and went to the seacoast.

And on the restroom doors, they had B-U-O-Y for the gents.

And then on the ladies, they had gulls, G-U-L-L-S.

So this is where Dominic said that he’s like, look, it’s boys and gulls.

And I said, no, it’s buoys and ghosts.

So he accosted a stranger to try to get somebody on his side.

And the stranger agreed with me.

So it’s just been heated ever since.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, goodness.

I bet this is a daily curse.

I bet this isn’t the only word, right?

This isn’t the only cross-linguistic dispute here.

No, it is not.

His argument, which I really struggle to come up with a defense against, when you say the word buoyant, you don’t say buoyant.

So, you know, I get a bit sheepish at that point.

Buoyant and buoyancy and life buoy soap.

That’s right.

We don’t say buoyant and buoyancy and life buoy soap.

No, much to my chagrin.

But that’s okay.

There are lots of words that don’t behave in pattern.

English isn’t consistent at all.

You know, it wasn’t a built language.

It’s an accreted language.

So nobody planned it.

It just kind of, you know, happened.

You’ve come across one of those real nice differences between UK and US English.

It bears repeating here that UK English isn’t the supreme form of English.

And there isn’t just one UK English.

As soon as people left those shores for foreign shores, they started creating new varieties of English, and so did we.

So their English has changed as much as ours has.

So I’m not going to talk in particular about this word, but it’s true.

Almost everyone there pronounces the word B-U-O-Y as boy, although some say it as boy, almost as if there’s a W after the B, although it’s less common.

And many Americans, although not all Americans, say buoy, and some say boy.

So it’s just an American way of saying it.

And it’s probably an inheritance from history where we kept an older pronunciation of the word that they dropped.

It’s probably as simple as that.

Okay.

I like to tell him that, you know, when people came over and settled in New England, that we got the language, but then we’ve evolved it the correct way.

More evolved.

Maybe a better way to put it is that we’ve had influences that they haven’t had.

So a lot of cognates, that is words that are very similar to buoy or buoy, exist in many European languages, including French, Spanish, Dutch, and German, which have left their own imprints on American English.

And I’m not sure of the history of this word in American English.

It’s possible that our pronunciation of the word is influenced from those other languages in a way that UK English is not.

Okay.

And it’s possible that we retained a regional pronunciation of the word that has long since been dropped in the UK.

You know, an English regional or British regional pronunciation that the UK dropped.

And that happens a lot.

So there’s no question of right or wrong here.

It’s what was retained or what was created.

So there’s going to be increasing divergence over the centuries.

Eventually, it’ll be like Spanish and Portuguese, I think.

Right.

Yeah, so I think what Grant is saying is that you’re both right and you can stay married.

Brilliant.

Well, that definitely helps.

You’ve got to argue about something else.

Right.

Does he insist on driving on the left-hand side of the road?

Ask him that.

Only after midnight.

I mean, when in Indiana, do like Indianans, right?

Right.

Right?

Do like Hoosiers.

Yes.

Okay.

Stay buoyant.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Yes.

Bye.

We’re buoyed up by your calls, 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Morgan from Phoenix. How are you?

Hi, Morgan. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

So I’m a plant engineer and I end up working with a lot of really smart people, you know, like engineers and technicians and operators.

But I’ve found that like all of these technical people, regardless of their age or area of expertise, like have really poor spelling skills and often have what I call like homophonic confusion.

So I end up doing a lot of wordsmithing when I’m reviewing their documents and it’s end up being kind of my legacy in a way.

However, I sent an email recently where I said I would pour over a document, P-O-U-R.

And someone replied and used PORE, P-O-R-E, in the same context in response.

And I realized I didn’t know which one was correct.

And, you know, I might have been a little bit called out on that.

So I’m wondering which is the correct one.

It’s hard when you’ve been promoted kind of indirectly as the office language maven, you know, informally.

Yeah, no pressure there.

And you fall down, right?

Yeah.

And it happens everywhere.

There’s always that person who is unofficially, sometimes officially, the one that people kind of say, can you look at this? This is really important.

So you’re worried that you confused your poor and your poor. Yes, which isn’t a big deal. But like you said, for me, it is a big deal sometimes. Because the way I tried to approach it was I tried to think of, well, P-O-U-R. You’re really pouring yourself into it physically. And then on the other hand, you have P-O-R-E, something very small and detailed. So I’m like, oh, I could see how either of these make sense, but that’s not really how language works all the time.

You’re right about that’s not how language works, Morgan. And the truth is that the correct word to use in those situations is P-O-R-E, pour over something. Don’t really know the origin of pour in that sense, P-O-R-E. But it goes back to the early 13th century, a word that means to gaze intently or look really closely at something. But you make a good case for why you would mistake it as P-O-U-R. You know, you’re pouring your attention, you’re pouring your mind out over that page. So the homophone does make sense. And people have been confusing it for centuries, right, Grant?

Yeah, yeah. I found it in a Derbyshire, England newspaper in 1770, a line about a gentleman in a clergyman’s frock pouring over a file of country papers. Well, maybe he was, do you think? No, it’s clear they met the P-O-R-E. But again and again throughout the centuries, you can find people making the same mistake, Morgan. So don’t feel bad.

Good to know I’m not alone. So it sounds like maybe you have a rival maven or something there. I believe I do. And you know what? I’m happy to pass that baton as soon as they prove they are working. That could be only one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it’s not a rival. Maybe it’s a fellow word nerd. There we go. I would like to think so because some of these guys, I’ll tell you what, they spell like a horse. Just like two hooves on the keyboard. I don’t know what’s going on over there half the time.

Well, we all have our strengths. We all have our weaknesses, and I hope that, I don’t know what your plant makes and does, but hopefully they’re good at the rest of their job. Oh, absolutely. I think it’s kind of a little bit of a trade-off. I think, you know, they can’t be good at everything. It’s just interesting how they seem to have this in common, and I don’t. So maybe it’s just a little bit of jealousy in that regard.

That’s great. Morgan, thanks so much. Bet you’ll never spell this wrong again, right? Oh, absolutely not. I’ve learned my lesson. Thank you so much for your help and for being just an absolute source of wholesome entertainment and recreational education for so many people. We just love you.

Aw, thank you very much, Morgan. Take care of yourself. All right. You too. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 877-929-9673. You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett. And we’re joined by our quiz guide, John Chaneski from New York City. Hi, John. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. Hey, John.

I heard that you guys are familiar, at least familiar with, a video game called Among Us. Have you heard of that? Yes, recently came to popularity, even though it had been out for a couple of years. That’s right. It’s suddenly hot all of a sudden. My kids love it. In this game, players try to figure out which among them are traitors who are sabotaging the group. Now, among players of Among Us, there’s a popular word slang, sus. Do you know what it means if a player is sus? They are suspected. They are suspected or suspicious because, of course, we don’t have time to say or type. Suspicious, so we just type S-U-S or say sus. So it got me feeling bad for orphan syllables. You know, what’s wrong with picious? Let’s give picious his time in the sun.

So I’m going to get a little closer to my rafone and give you clues to polysyllabic words that are commonly abbreviated with their first three letters. Now, I want you to give me just the orphan syllables. For example, if I said, your track team was supposed to be a practice today, but it was raining all day, what did you do? You might respond with, well, we ran laps in the nasium. Got it? Got it. Not in your nose. Not in your nose. No, different kind of nasium. Here we go. Here’s the first one. I’ve been using a website to keep track of the number of calories I burn, but I can’t bring my computer with me. I wish there was a more portable option.

Oh, location. I wish there was a location. A location. Yeah, I wish there was a location for that. As in? App location. Yeah, location on my tele. So, you guys were an hour late to my dinner party. What happened? Car trouble? Oh, yeah, we ran out of Olean. Oh, you ran out of Olean. Oh, I see. Yeah. No gas. Olean. Car don’t go. Very good. Now, this one is part of a common two-word term. Hey, you know, I love what you’ve done with your new house. What do you call this area where you keep your television and books and gaming system and karaoke machine and poker table and all that stuff? The reation room? The reation room. Very nice. I love it.

Now, back to the nasium. You’ve lifted that barbell 49 times. Do you think you can give me just one more, or are you too exhausted? Oh, can you give me some more appetitions? You can’t even do another edition? Another edition that is single edition. Okay. Repetition, right. Finally, it’s really great to work with someone who knows what they’re doing, someone who has a lot of experience in the field because they make their living at it. Fashionals. Fashionals. They are fashionals. You guys are both fashionals. I like to think I’m a fashional. Yes, right. We’re all pros. Pro-fessionals. You do know who you’re on with, right? This is Martin Grant. This isn’t the other thing that you do. The other fashionals I work with. I just want to say that you guys were you-less. You were fabulous. Nice job.

Thanks, John. We’ll talk to you next week. Appreciate it, bud. Thank you, guys. Talk to you then. Bye-bye. This show is about words and language and grammar and literature and speech and talking and writing and everything in between. 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. Hi, this is Drew from Washington, D.C. How are you guys? Hey, Drew, how are you doing? I’m doing really well. I’m really excited to be on today. Oh, yeah, we’re glad to have you. Welcome. What is on your mind?

Okay, so a few years ago, I went to a Cracker Barrel with my family. Well, what I wanted was I wanted a mix of lemonade and iced tea. I’ve always called that half and half. So when I ordered a half and half, I was expecting a lemonade iced tea combo, but they gave me what was seemingly a mix of sweet tea and unsweet tea. When I asked the waitress, like, oh, I don’t think this is what I ordered. She’s like, oh, this is what I thought you said. When you said half and half, this is what I thought you meant. And then she was like, yeah, like, I know those as Arnold Palmer’s. And I was like, interesting. I had heard those kind of before, but I thought half and half was kind of well known as a term. And in the years since, I’ve been trying to wonder who called it Arnold Palmer versus who called it half and half, what kind of like the linguistic spread of that is. I thought it might have to do with race, the black thing. Some of my family is black and they call it half and half or maybe even class or even just like regional dialect. But of all the questions I’ve asked all my friends around the country, there’s just so much variation in what they call it. So I was wondering if you guys can provide any sort of insight on what the origin of the phrase is and what the spread of it is.

Okay. So I think we can help here a little bit, Martha, can’t we?

Yeah. I’m actually surprised that this was Maryland because I know in Baltimore in particular, half and half is a really popular drink. And it usually refers to what we call an Arnold Palmer. You have that with a chicken box.

Yeah. I grew up south of Baltimore in a suburb. Okay. Where everyone there called it half and half too, to my knowledge. All my friends called it half and half. I’m not aware of a particular distribution of half and half referring to what we think of as an Arnold Palmer, the half lemonade and half sweet tea. It’s kind of here and there all over the country, wouldn’t you say, Grant?

Yeah, my understanding was, though, that that’s what Arnold Palmer called it himself first when he started drinking this concoction in the 1960s. Right, and he kept going in and ordering these, and pretty soon they just got associated with, you know, it’s like Arnold Palmer going in and asking for the usual.

Yeah. Yeah, but I’m really interested in the mix of teas. You can find some mentions of that. But again, like I was saying, I joked about it, but it’s for those people who just can’t stomach all that sugar in the southern sweet teas and just need it. It’s a way of getting your sweet tea a little less sweet because it’s made already sweetened and there’s no way to get it unsweetened. If you ask for unsweetened tea, people say, well, we don’t have that. So usually they’ll add a water or something else. I don’t know.

And more often I’ve heard half and half referred to in the context of alcoholic beverages, like a Guinness and Harp, you know, because the Guinness will lie there nicely on top of the lighter ale. Yeah, like a stout and an ale together, right? I’ve actually, I’ve never heard of it in the alcoholic context. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that goes back to, gosh, at least the 1750s. But yeah, you’ve found an interesting instance of that. I was wondering, did you guys grow up drinking this? And what did you guys call it growing up?

No, I didn’t grow up drinking it in Kentucky. I had it maybe once as a young adult, and I thought it was so exotic. No, we drank sweet tea after the Southern tradition in my father’s house. And if you put lemonade in it, I’m sure he’d have thrown you out. Yeah, you’d been in the yard with all your belongings real fast. But I agree with Martha. There doesn’t seem to be any regionality to it. I think it’s just what you learned when you grew up. It was probably called half and half originally, although Arnold Palmer didn’t invent the drink. It existed before him. There are records from the 40s and the 50s and menus and newspapers of similar drinks. And there are many other drinks since that have been mixtures of tea and lemonade and other things.

Yeah, there are other names like Sunshine Tea. And then, of course, there are the spiked versions of the Arnold Palmers. Like the Tipsy Palmer. Yeah. Yeah, or the John Daly, named for another golfer who liked to drink his with vodka. This might merit more research. Foodways are kind of a sideline of ours because they map so well with wordways, so to speak. When you look at the habits of eating and the habits of speaking, they’re kind of braided together like a long rope. So maybe we need to look more into this, Martha. What do you call the tea and lemonade mixture in your house? What did you grow up with or what do you call it in a professional capacity? Let us know. And Drew, thank you for your call and thanks for bringing this up. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Drew. Bye-bye. Bye.

Grant, I’ve been thinking lately about prestige. All right. Is there a trick here? Yes, actually. There’s always another layer with you. Yes, there is. Yes, there is. But the thing is that you always come up with or you often come up with exactly where I’m going because there is a trick with the word prestige because it comes from the Latin, the classical Latin prestigia, which means trick, deceit, or illusion. And early on in English, prestige meant an illusion, a conjuring trick, a deception, an imposture. And what’s also super cool is that it appears that the earliest pronunciation of this word was prestige. Prestige, how about that? That reminds me of something that always surprises people that the word balcony was originally pronounced balconey. Balconey, yeah. But it fascinated me to learn that early on it was an illusion or a trick, and then it became the idea of impressive influence or glamour, and then later on prestige as we think about it today, you know, something that’s… I think the reason I thought that is because there is a very excellent movie called The Prestige with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman.

Oh, really? And a prestige is a magician’s term as well. And I know a little bit about that language, that lexicon. Wow. I’d love to hear about that sometime too. I do recommend that movie. It is quite something. And I don’t want to spoil any of it by talking about it at all. Oh, cool. 877-929-9673. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Yes, you do. And I do, too. Hi, who is this? Apparently so. My name is Joan Meehan. I’m originally from the South Bronx, and I live in upstate New York. I’m 76. I’ve had a lot of experience with different phrases and sayings that is very unfamiliar to upstate people with the dialogue that I have. I was riding along with a friend. There was a car coming up very quickly on the right, and I said, you better give this car a wide berth. So then she said to me afterwards, they were trying to enter the highway, but they were really coming way too close to it. So she said, what’s that word you use, berth? You know, wide berth. I said, oh, that means, like, I guess it was originally from maritime, you know, the ships, you know, coming into the berth or giving another ship a wide berth.

New York City, we used it as a, you know, certain people you wouldn’t want to really hang out with or whatever. You need to cross over and you’d say, you know, maybe we should give them a wide berth. Right, Joan, you’re exactly right. And you’re spelling berth in this case, B-E-R-T-H, right? Not B-I-R-T-H. B-E-R-T-H, a wide berth, yes. I’m interested that you mentioned the maritime connection. That’s exactly it. If you go back to this dictionary I’m looking at from 1730, it defines birth originally, B-E-R-T-H, as convenient sea room or a fit distance for ships under sail to keep clear so as not to fall foul on one another. So it’s exactly as you described. It’s giving another vessel plenty of room. Did you know the maritime connection already? Yes, definitely, because I lived near the East River and the Triborough Bridge, and we swam. We’ll see the docks there. I mean, you know, that was our swimming pool. So, you know, there were ships that would commend the barges and everything, and you heard a lot of terminology like that. So that was my, you know, knowledge of it.

Well, that is super cool. I also appreciate the figurative usage you were talking about, about giving people a wide berth, meaning stay away from them or keep them at a safe distance, because giving a wide berth can be about the psychological or emotional distance as well as the physical distance. Yes. I mean, it’s fascinating that there’s so many terminologies. In other words, if you’re going on a ship, you know, you can be in the upper berth or lower berth and travel. You know what I mean? I know it from that. Well, Joan, you sound like a kindred spirit, and we’re really glad you called. Thank you so much. It’s wonderful being on the show. All right. Be well. Bye-bye. Karen, I’ll follow you. Bye-bye. We’ll make a berth for you on our radio show so you can talk to us about language. Give us a call, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or try us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello. You have A Way with Words. Hello. My name is Gopal. I am calling from Greenville, North Carolina. Hello, Gopal. Welcome to the show. How can we help? Thank you. Yeah, I was always wondering about the phrase my two cents. So whenever in office communications, usually people put it at the end after saying their opinion or some idea, they put at the end that, okay, this is my two cents.

I was wondering as to what is the origin of that phrase, or more importantly, why don’t they call it as my one cent if it is representing a small idea?

Right. Why do they say my two cents?

Well, that’s a really good question. And it’s a really useful phrase, isn’t it?

Because it sort of colors what has come before, right?

It’s a kind of almost a humble or a modest little addition to it.

It softens what you’ve just said, correct?

Yes, yeah. Yeah, I understand the usage part of it. Yeah.

Sometimes it doesn’t do us any good to look at English too closely and parse phrases too carefully.

But the term twopence, tuppence, has been around since at least the 16th century to mean of very little value or paltry or worthless.

Sometimes English just isn’t logical.

You can see examples of this back to the 19th century at least.

And I know that linguists have come up with a couple of examples from Philadelphia where people were using that expression and using it in quotation marks.

Here’s my two cents.

You know, sometimes it just doesn’t pay, so to speak, to parse English too closely.

I want to spin this around, though, and talk about something you said early in the call, which I think deserves some attention, which is we often tack on, well, that’s my two cents at the end of an opinion.

And the reason we do this is to let people know that we’re open to discussion and that we’re willing to, we’re kind of hedging our statement.

We’re letting them know that we mean what we say, but we’re also willing to soften our opinion a little bit.

It’s a way of reaching out to the other person, let them know that we’re maybe willing to negotiate or willing to accept other points of view.

And that it’s a way of showing a little bit of kindness.

Does that make sense?

Okay, so we are saying that we are not fixated on our idea, but we are open to other suggestions, and this is just my suggestion.

It’s a really important thing to do when you’re working with other people, right, to make sure that they know that you’re thinking about them as much as you’re thinking about yourself.

Okay, that’s good, yeah.

I hope we’ve done a little untangling here for you.

Yeah, yeah. I guess primarily one shouldn’t approach it too much, like, logically or mathematically.

So language doesn’t work that way.

Okay.

Language isn’t logical and pigs don’t sing opera.

Okay. Okay, I got it. Thank you.

Take care.

Bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

So that’s our Tuppenceworth. That’s how they say it in Britain, you know.

That’s just my Tuppenceworth. You can believe whatever you want.

And this is different than Penny for your thoughts.

These are completely independently derived idioms.

But the idea of a penny for your thoughts is that a penny used to have a lot of value.

A penny was a big sum of money, right?

A penny was like offering somebody, you know, a $20 bill.

And it was meaningful.

Yeah, just like this $64,000 question used to be much more valuable.

Right.

You could buy a house and now maybe that’s a down payment.

Right.

If that.

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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.

I was talking earlier in the show about the book I just finished by Katie Mack called The End of Everything.

And she’s a cosmologist at North Carolina State University.

And she studies the beginning of the universe and the end of the universe, or what we can tell about it from the science that we know right now.

It was a pretty ambitious read for me.

I have to confess that my mind is a little sore from the workout.

But it was great mental cross-training to at least try to read this book.

I’ll confess that a lot of it was over my head.

But, you know, over is relative if you think about it, if you think about the cosmos.

The word over is relative.

And the fact that I’m even thinking in these terms, however simplistically, I think is a testament to the book itself.

But I did want to share a passage that is an example of sort of the mind-expanding way that Katie Mack writes.

And it also includes a term that was new to me.

It is said that astronauts returning from space carry with them a changed perspective on the world, the overview effect, in which, having seen the Earth from above, they can fully perceive how fragile our little oasis is and how unified we ought to be as a species, as perhaps the only thinking beings in the cosmos.

For me, thinking about the ultimate destruction of the universe is just such an experience.

There’s an intellectual luxury in being able to ponder the farthest reaches of deep time and in having the tools to speak about it coherently.

When we ask the question, can this all really go on forever, we’re implicitly validating our own existence, extending it indefinitely into the future, taking stock and examining our legacy.

Acknowledging an ultimate end gives us context, meaning, even hope, and allows us paradoxically to step back from our petty day-to-day concerns and simultaneously live more fully in the moment.

The overview effect, yeah, I’ve heard of that before.

The pictures looking back from Saturn’s rings of this tiny glowing dot that happens to be Earth, and you realize how utterly small we are against all these pinpoints of the other stars in our galaxy and the universe behind.

Yeah, yeah, it really gives us some perspective, and I don’t know, I feel like I needed that right now, just really zooming out to look at the earth.

That sounds like a wonderful book.

You know, I had another experience through my son’s eyes.

He recommended a book series to me, which he doesn’t often do.

But all these years, my wife and I, mostly my wife, have been reading books to him at bedtime.

And they started on Lois Lowry’s The Giver series.

This book has been around for quite some time and is well known in young adult circles and often recommended by libraries and librarians, and teachers often recommend it to their students.

But it was new to me, and he said he wanted me to read it so that we could discuss it as a family, so I started it.

And this series gave me a perspective on what he’s going through as a teenager because it’s about a young boy, Jacob, who lives in a strange society where life is highly regulated and controlled.

Their feelings are repressed.

They don’t see color.

They don’t have the same relationships with each other that we have.

They’re assigned spouses.

They’re assigned children.

The first book gives the series its name.

It’s called The Giver.

And the boy reaches an age where he is to be assigned his adult duties that he will train for.

And he’s assigned to be the receiver.

And he meets the giver.

This new position puts him in a place to learn histories, feelings, and sensations that have been kept from everyone else in his community.

And this knowledge changes his life and leads to a dramatic ending.

The second book is seemingly unconnected when you first read it, but across the four books, you kind of see all of these four stories coming together.

And they all deal with young people coming of age.

And they all deal with decisions and culture that these young people have inherited.

And they’re all wrestling with their places in it.

And whether or not they can accept those past decisions of others and this culture as they are, or whether they must change them or fight against them.

And I’ve really been enjoying these, not least because my son recommended them.

And obviously I want to connect to him.

But also because the protagonists, unlike a lot of young adult literature, they’re not jaunty sexpots or your typical young adult heroes.

You know, it’s not all about, you know, do they find me attractive?

Oh, yeah, let me kill this bad guy.

You know, paragraph alternating with smooches on one paragraph and sword fights in another.

So anyway, my son Guthrie recommends Lois Lowry’s The Giver series, and so do I.

And we’d love to know what you’re reading.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or tell us all about it in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Laura. I’m calling from Ithaca, New York.

Hey, Laura, welcome to the show.

I have a question about a word I found in the Cornell Fight Song. The word is piker. It’s supposed to mean freshman, but I can’t find any other place where piker’s used like that, except in Ithaca, New York, in the fight song.

Okay, you’ve got to sing the fight song for us.

I promised myself I wouldn’t do that.

I’m sorry.

The line is, tell all the pikers on the hill that I’ll be back again. The song’s Give My Regards to Davey. And he’s saying goodbye to the administrator who kicked him out after he got caught drinking too much.

Okay.

Oh, my. I don’t know what it has to do with playing sports, but that’s our fight song.

Okay.

Okay. So first, let’s establish a couple things here. One is piker has had a lot of meanings, and slang is really hard to tease out. So given those two things, because we’re going to get a lot of people who are going to email or call and say, piker means somebody who places small bets at a gambling table.

Yes, we know. But there’s our other pikers as well. And we’re going to talk about the other pikers.

So let’s talk a little bit about this fight song. It was written in 1905. It is to the tune of Give My Regards to Broadway, written by George Cohan for his 1904 musical Little Johnny Jones. Everyone, give my regards to Broadway. Remember me to Herald Square. That tune, right?

Yep.

Tell all the pikers on the hill that I’ll be back again.

There we go.

Yeah.

That’s great. And so a good thing that we have a date for that. Then we know which piker to go for. We can kind of look back in the old newspapers and in the slang reference works and figure out which piker was being used in Ithaca, New York, which is where Cornell University is located, at the time to figure out which one was most likely.

And I love that you did your own field work because you found what I would find, which is the piker, meaning freshman, doesn’t really work. And the Big Red Band on their website has an FAQ where they try to puzzle out the song and explain everything. And they’ve done a really good job, except for the word piker. They simply say it means freshman, and I think they’re wrong.

I think piker just means what you said. It’s somebody who is the opposite of a grind, which was another word at the time. I found that boat.

Yep. I found piker and grind in a newspaper in 1905 in association with Cornell. So the same year that the song was written. And piker meant a poor student, a shirker, a lazy student. The opposite of a grind. The grind is a studious student, one who does all the reading on time, who paces it out over the year and doesn’t have to cram at the end of the year.

And so that piker is probably related to a larger slang piker that was floating around the United States at the time, which referred to a shirker or just a person who is just not doing their best. And a little bit related to the poker piker, someone who only puts up tiny bets when they should be betting more, somebody who’s reluctant to commit, reluctant to give their all, somebody who is unwilling to help other people. Somebody who’s unwilling to like step out.

A piker also at the time was a man who wouldn’t splurge on a date. He might take her out for a hot dog instead of for dinner, that sort of thing. So the song is telling all the pikers, that is the lazy students, that we’ll see you later. So first he says goodbye to the administrators who kicked him out. And then tells the pikers, I’ll be back and we’ll have a drink when I come back.

What a bad influence, huh?

Right?

Thank you guys so much. We’re glad you called, Laura. I’m so glad you could help. I was so excited when I saw this song and saw that word. I was like, I’m going to call Grant and Martha. I didn’t call them.

Thank you guys so much. Laura, thank you for your call. Take care now.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If there’s a word you’re curious about, call us. 877-929-9673 or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Following up on our discussion about the phrase, can’t died in a cornfield, we heard from Todd White in Woodstock, Virginia, who said, my dad used to say to us, can’t never could, won’t never will.

Yeah, that’s a good one. So this is the stuff you say to kids when they say, I can’t do it, Daddy. It’s too hard.

That’s right. Instead of try harder. Can’t never could, won’t never will. 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kathy Constable. I’m calling from Rye, New York.

Rye, New York. Well, welcome, Kathy. What can we do for you?

When I was living in central Pennsylvania, I had the experience of going to someone’s house, and the husband asked me if I’d like a cup of coffee, and his wife said, oh, no, the coffee’s off. I looked at her, and I looked at him, and then the son of these people, he whispered, and he said, that means it’s all gone. What I found when I was in this area is that people would always use the term, oh, it’s all. They wouldn’t say it’s all gone or it’s all done. It took me a while to get used to understanding what they meant. And I just wondered where it came from. I talked to other people in rural areas of the country, and they never heard of it.

So you were in central Pennsylvania, Kathy?

I was in central Pennsylvania in a farming area.

Were there a lot of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers in the area?

It was not a Pennsylvania Dutch area. It’s a little north and west of that. There were a lot of Pennsylvania Germans in that area.

Well, what you’ve heard, despite the fact that there may not have been Pennsylvania Dutch speakers exactly where you were, is an imprint of the Pennsylvania Dutch language. The Dutch meaning, in this case, a dialect of German, not actually Dutch Dutch. And it’s a calque, C-A-L-Q-U-E, from that dialect of German where the word all, A-L-L-E, all, means finished or gone. And so it’s borrowed directly from German into English and used exactly in English as it would be in German. And you can find it as far back as the 1850s, mainly in Pennsylvania, but also a little bit in Indiana and Ohio in the places where the Pennsylvania Dutch speakers settled, even if people no longer speak the language there.

Well, that explains a lot.

Yeah.

It does. And we’re grateful to you for the field report.

Okay.

Call us again sometime. And thank you. You broadened my knowledge.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Well, we welcome your linguistic field reports and questions. Call us 877-929-9673 or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

My name is Vanessa, and I am just out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I live between Door County, Wisconsin, and Nashville, Tennessee. So we’re just heading to the airport, actually.

Oh, you live between those?

Yeah, I do. I’m a Kiwi from New Zealand, and I split my time between Nashville, Tennessee, and Door County, Wisconsin.

Okay. Well, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, I have a boyfriend and a couple of cats, and I call my boyfriend, and one cat in particular, a Wally, fairly often. And he questioned me one time about what Wally actually meant, and I wasn’t really able to explain it. I could tell him what my sentiment was, but I couldn’t really explain actually what the word meant or where it came from.

I have a bunch of reference works on Kiwi slang and Australian slang and different things, and I’ve done some digging on this word. I found it as far back as the 1980s, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s older. But there’s a firm meaning of it as a silly, daft or an epped person. But it’s possible it goes back as far as the 1920s with a more general meaning of an unfashionable person. Although the evidence back to the 1920s is scant. And by unfashionable person, I mean the kind of person who, you know, wears, they’re kind of just out of touch with how they look.

And, you know, they’re wearing the wrong clothes at the wrong time and the wrong jacket, the wrong season, that sort of stuff.

And it’s not just New Zealand, also used in Australia, pretty much anywhere outside of North America.

And English-speaking world.

You’ll hear it in the UK.

You might hear it in South Africa, of course, Australia, so forth.

Not in Canada, not in the United States.

As far as the origin, there’s three theories that the slang lexicon for Jonathan Green has proposed that I kind of like.

One of them is that it’s related to the British slang word for cucumber, wally, spelled a variety of ways, but also W-A-L-L-Y.

And a wally, besides meaning a cucumber, perhaps means a green, unskilled, inexperienced person.

We call somebody green if they’re new at a job, right?

And likely to make mistakes.

But there’s also a Scottish word, wally drag, meaning a runt or a poorly grown person or somebody who’s worthless or slovenly dirty.

That’s less likely because there’s already a wally in Scots English, which has the opposite meaning of what you’re talking about.

It means fine, excellent, strong, great.

And then he’s got a third theory, which there’s no evidence for, but I’m going to throw it out here.

There’s an Italian, a Naples dialect Italian word, guaglio, G-U-A-G-L-I-O means boy.

So I don’t know.

It sounds vaguely like Wally.

But really, it’s origin unknown, like a lot of slang.

Most slang just kind of pops up.

People don’t know.

I want to say, Vanessa, you living in Wisconsin and Nashville, you must have accent whiplash, given that you speak with a Kiwi accent and you live in two very distinct American dialect regions.

Yeah, and I definitely have probably picked up elements of both accents.

You know, to Americans here, I sound very foreign, but I know when I go back to New Zealand, everyone thinks I sound like American, which is not true.

My accent is just a mess. That’s the fact of it.

But I bet it’s original and unique to you.

Exactly.

All right, you can call us again sometime and let us know what else you’ve come across.

So these cultural collisions are super fascinating.

Yeah, totally.

I will.

I’ll have to think of another insult that I use.

Yes, please.

Affectionate insult.

Take care of yourself, Vanessa.

Thank you so much for explaining.

It’s great.

All right.

Bye.

Take care.

We do enjoy hearing about those cultural collisions, whether they’re international or regional in this country.

So let us know your story, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler.

You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Or email us words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.