Podcast mashup for technical writers

Raining Cats and Dogs - 28 May 2012

Mon, 28 May 2012 18:17:00 +0000

Get out your umbrellas -- it's raining pitchforks and . . . bullfrogs? This week, it's odd expressions that mean "a heavy downpour." Also, holistic vs. wholistic, recurrence vs. reoccurrence, flash drive vs. thumb drive, whether it's good or bad to be jacked up, stomach Steinways and bunheads, and the origin of listless. And not to mince words, but what does the expression "not to mince words" really mean?

FULL DETAILS

In what profession would you deal with clams, footballs, hairpins, and axes? They're all slang terms used by classical musicians.

What's the origin of the term listless? Does it mean you can't find the piece of paper with the groceries you need? No. Listless shares a root with the English word lust. In its most literal sense, listless means "without lust," or "lacking want or desire."

Is being jacked up a good thing or a bad thing? It depends. To jack up means "to raise up," as with a car on a lift. But jack up also has a negative meaning, perhaps deriving from hijack or blackjack, suggesting that something's been hurt or cheated.

Our Quiz Master John Chaneski has some answers to classic songs in this week's puzzle about song titles in question form. For example, the answer "Because they're too dumb to stay out of it" answers the musical question from Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?"

What do we mean by the expression not to mince words? The New York Times' Paul Krugman http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/opinion/krugman-europes-economic-suicide.html often uses this idiom meaning "to be straightforward and blunt." The verb mince means "to make small," and is a linguistic relative of such words as diminish, miniature, and minute. Mincing is what you do when you're cutting onions into small pieces or diminishing the force of your speech by using euphemisms.

In an earlier episode http://www.waywordradio.org/horse-you-rode-in-on/, we discussed various meanings for the term stove up. One meaning of stove up is "to be in pain from work or exercise to the point where it's hard to move." Similarly, lots of athletes will get stoved fingers from getting them jammed with volleyballs or baseballs.

Do you store files on a flash drive, a thumb drive, a USB stick -- or perhaps on a monkey? What do you call the little device that holds flash memory and goes into the USB drive of a computer. Some come in wild forms http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/50-weirdest-usb-flash-drives-ever/, like sushi or animals.

Did you ever take lessons to play the stomach Steinway? You know, the accordion? That's another bit of musicians' slang sent in by a listener, along with the term bunhead http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/bunhead/, which means "a ballet dancer."

Which is the better term, recurrence or reoccurrence? A look at the corpus of American literature confirms that recurrence is far and away the more commonly used word denoting "something that occurs more than once." Some dictionaries don't even have entries for reoccurrence.

An old book of Virginia folk sayings contains such gems as "It's as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth," and "He can't spell A-B-L-E."

Is crick a Southern term? Surprisingly, crick, as in creek, is mostly used in New England and the Great Lakes region. The Northeast is also where you'll find people smoking boges, or boags. Both words for "cigarette," apparently derive from the verb "to bogart," discussed in an earlier episode http://www.waywordradio.org/bogarting-bangers/.

What do you call a fierce rainfall? There are lots of vivid terms in this country besides it's raining cats and dogs. Some Americans say It's raining pitchforks and hoehandles, or raining pitchforks and bullfrogs. Or they might call a heavy rain a toadstrangler, a ditchworker, or stumpwasher. In other countries http://www.omniglot.com/language/idioms/rain.php, this kind of cacophonous rain is denoted by lots of picturesque phrases involving imaginary falling things, including chair legs, female trolls, ropes, jugs -- and even husbands.

If something pertains to a whole system or body, is it holistic or wholistic? Despite that tempting "w," holistic is the correct term. It's an example of folk etymology http://books.google.com/books/about/Folk_etymology.html?id=e0wHAAAAQAAJ, the result of looking at the word whole and assuming that wholistic is the proper correlative.

If something's soft and fuzzy, why not call it suvvy? Grant collected that bit of slang during a recent appearance in Potsdam, NY. http://readme.readmedia.com/SUNY-Potsdam-Hosts-First-Ever-Lougheed-Kofoed-Festival-of-the-Arts/3807415

Everyone knows New Yorkers and Angelenos, but what do you call someone from Sheboygan, Wisconsin? Demonyms, or the names for people from a given place, can get pretty complicated, but there are seven rules as drawn by George Stewart http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/demonyms/, and Paul Dickson's book Labels for Locals http://books.google.com/books/about/Labels_for_Locals.html?id=MJpt4QCXWWoC has lots of other answers.

An old Chinese proverb says, he who asks a question is a fool for a minute. He who does not remains a fool forever.

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Support for A Way with Words also comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. More at http://www.nu.edu/.

We're also grateful for support from the University of San Diego. Since 1949, USD has been on a mission not only to prepare students for the world, but also to change it. Learn more about the college and five schools of this nationally ranked, independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
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Copyright 2012, Wayword LLC.

322 GG Country Names: the Ukraine or Ukraine?

Fri, 25 May 2012 04:48:45 +0000

Why Do Girls Wear Pink (Rebroadcast) - 21 May 2012

Mon, 21 May 2012 16:10:00 +0000

We all know that the color pink is for boys and the color blue is for girls--at least, that's how it was 100 years ago. Grant and Martha share the surprising history behind the colors we associate with gender. Plus, we go rollin' in our hooptie, play a game of guess-that-Google-search, and get some tips on how to avoid getting swindled by our real estate agent! Also, new terms for failed software upgrades, some sugar-coated snark from across the pond, and a new way to show sarcasm in a text message. Yeah. Sure.

FULL DETAILS

Hate it when a software upgrade is worse than the previous version? We call that a flupgrade, or a new-coke. As in, Skype really new-coked it with version 5.3.0. Come on, Skype!

What is a hooptie? Though it started in the 1960s as a term for a sweet new car, it became the common moniker for a beater, or a jalopy. Maybe Sir Mix-A-Lot said it best: "My hooptie rollin', tailpipe draggin'/ heat don't work, and my girl keeps nagging.'"

http://bit.ly/1WCYn

If a lady is no better than she ought to be, her sexual morals may be in question. The saying, recently popularized by the BBC program Downton Abbey, is what's known as a charientism, or a bit of sugar-coated snark. By the way, if you'd like to hear more about such thinly veiled insults, check out this episode.

http://www.waywordradio.org/bless-your-heart/

If someone's in a swivet, they're flustered or in distress. You might be in a swivel, for example, if you're late for a meeting or you've shown up to the SAT without a No. 2 pencil.

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game based on Google searches, or at least what Google thinks you're searching. For example, what do Elmo, pink, and plant all have in common? Google suggests them, in that order, after you've entered the words "tickle me."

Did the movie Avatar make you imagine creating an entirely new language, like Na'vi? Conlang.org and the Language Creation Society have plenty of information on how to go about it and what others, including J.R.R. Tolkein have tried. Mark Rosenfelder's book, The Language Construction Kit, is a great resource for getting started.

http://tinyurl.com/yabd9br

http://bit.ly/7qxTuV

http://amzn.to/qES5lw

What does it mean to call for tender? This British phrase for soliciting a job is rarely seen in the United States, though tender, from the Latin for "to stretch or hold forth," is used in North America in two different senses: to tender, as in to offer, as well as the noun tender for something that's been issued, such as a dollar bill, hence legal tender.

What do you call an upgrade gone wrong? Perhaps the 'Puter Principle could be the software equivalent of the Peter Principle, which in business means that every employee in a hierarchy tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence.

If something's right on, it suits you to a tee. But why a tee? Tee, or the letter T, is short for tittle, or something really tiny. So if something's exactly perfect, it's right on point, with no room to spare. Or, simply, it suits you to a tee.

Why is pink a girl color and blue a boy color? Actually, in the 19th Century, pink used to be associated with boys, since it was a stronger, more decided color. Blue, on the other hand, was regarded as a girls' color, because it was considered dainty. It wasn't until the 1940s that marketers started to switch it around. Jeanne Maglaty has a great article about this in Smithsonian Magazine, called "When did Girls Start Wearing Pink?"

http://bit.ly/eDOeYg

To slake your thirst is to quench your thirst. But some people have been switching it to slate your thirst or other variants. It's a classic case of an eggcorn, or one of those words that people mishear, and then start pronouncing incorrectly; for example, when misheard, acorn can become eggcorn.

http://bit.ly/HG4m

What does it mean to gazump someone? This phrase, specifically meaning "to swindle a customer in a real estate deal," came about in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s before disappearing and then popping up again in England in the 1970s. Whether or not the term is in vogue, the practice seems to be a mainstay.

How do you indicate sarcasm in a text message or an email? If winky emoticons aren't your thing, try left-leaning italics, as recommended by sartalics.com.

http://bit.ly/reQ86l

The Arabic idiom in the apricot season translates to "in your dreams," presumably because the growing season for this fruit is so brief. Incidentally, the etymological root of "apricot," which means "to ripen early," is shared with the word precocious.

The Egyptian Arabic saying, ate the camel and all it carried, is the equivalent of "to eat someone out of house and home."

...

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University http://www.nu.edu/, which invites you to change your future today. More at nu.edu.

We’re also grateful for support from the University of San Diego http://www.sandiego.edu. Since 1949, USD has been on a mission not only to prepare students for the world, but also to change it. Learn more about the college and five schools of this nationally ranked, independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
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Copyright 2012, Wayword LLC.

133 GG A Historic Podcast

Fri, 18 May 2012 04:48:45 +0000

Books With a Letter Missing (Rebroadcast) - 14 May 2012

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:25:00 +0000

Remember those children's classics, the Velveteen Rabbi and The Little Price? The Twitterverse is abound with these books with a letter missing. And it turns out there's some pimping going on in our hospitals, but it's not what you'd think. Grant and Martha clear up the plead vs pleaded debate, touch on the use of product, and trace the history of shambles. Plus, a word puzzle with nursery rhymes, a map of regional grammar, and plenty of crazy vocab, from popinjays to the tee na na!

FULL DETAILS

There's a Twitter meme going around for books with a letter missing from the title. You can find them through the hashtag #bookswithalettermissing. Can't wait to read that romp about the sand-covered South, A Confederacy of Dunes.

http://huff.to/q9I0Ra

We usually brandish a weapon, or some object we can wave about. But the definition of brandish can be stretched to include more figurative types of weapons or objects (e.g. seductive body parts).

What does shambles mean? If your house is in shambles, it's a mess, but before the 1920s, the word shambles referred to a butcher's bloody bench.

What is a popinjay? Literally a parrot, this term is often used in a military context to refer to a vain or conceited officer with a Napoleon complex. And a bandbox boy? That once commonly referred to an officer who gave excessive attention to his grooming and dress. It's a reference to "the box used to transport uniforms."

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game of Name That Nursery Rhyme. The catch is, the text has been run through the translation site Babelfish. What happens when Little Bo Peep and Humpty Dumpty go from English to Spanish to Chinese and back again?

What's the past tense of plead? Is it pleaded or pled? Within the legal profession, pleaded is preferred. But in our common vernacular, we tend to use the less traditional pled.

If something's right on the tee na na, it's just perfect. This phrase from New Orleans has popped up in myriad songs from the region. One interview with the musician Dr. John suggests that tee na na refers to the rear end, or tuchis. Martha speculates that tee na na may have to do with the phrase to a tee.

http://n.pr/cUbhzz

Lots of people have tweeted their own examples with the #bookswithalettermissing hashtag. Take, for example, that famous guide to Jewish sensuality, The Oy of Sex.

http://bit.ly/nqdFWk
http://bit.ly/qneRsF

What's the origin of the phrase God willing and the creek don't rise? It has to do with travel; back when wagons rode on low gravel roads, you couldn't pass if the creek level was high.

Regional grammar can be just as rich and diverse as regional vocabulary. The Yale Grammatical Diversity Project has picked up on all the variations in American English usage and plotted them on a Google Map. Turns out that double modals and the positive anymore are popping up all over the country.

http://bit.ly/ocY6dk

Did your hairstylist recommend you use product? Is your company moving product this quarter? The term product is in vogue, mainly for the purpose of simplification.

Why do department stores label their infants' section Baby instead of Babies,' a la Men's or Women's? For one, the Baby department includes more than just clothes; they've got strollers and cribs and pacifiers. Also, the baby of the family has a unique singular identity, unlike the rest of the kids.

Where do we get the expression more than you can shake a stick at? It probably just derives from counting. Imagine herdsmen bringing in their cattle or sheep at the end of the day, pointing with a stick in order to do a headcount.

Another #bookswithalettermissing joke: Have you read the book about how 99 cent stores are changing the way we shop in America? It's called The Little Price.

Pimping med students is a common practice in hospitals. But not that kind of pimping; the term pimp, likely from the German pumpfrage, meaning "pump question," refers to the method of tough quizzing that doctors put their young residents through. It generally straddles the border between rigorous initiation and plain bullying.

http://bit.ly/orBACV
http://bit.ly/rdyrMs
http://nyti.ms/7evgWi

You know that book missing a letter about the young Southern woman finding peace in a storm? It's called One With the Wind.

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Support for A Way with Words comes from National University http://www.nu.edu/, which invites you to change your future today. More at nu.edu.

We’re also grateful for support from the University of San Diego http://www.sandiego.edu. Since 1949, USD has been on a mission not only to prepare students for the world, but also to change it. Learn more about the college and five schools of this nationally ranked, independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2012, Wayword LLC.

321 GG Janus Words: I'm Chuffed

Fri, 11 May 2012 04:48:45 +0000

Like a Bad Penny - 7 May 2012

Mon, 07 May 2012 15:55:00 +0000

What did you call the cliques in your high school? Were you a member of the nerds, the jocks, or maybe the "grits" or the "heshers"? Also, what's the meaning of the phrase "rolling in the deep"? Why do we say something's returned "like a bad penny"? And is it proper to refer to our recent economic problems "the Great Recession"? Plus, favorite letters of the alphabet, taking umbrage, fudgies vs. flatlanders, and washrag vs. washcloth.

FULL DETAILS

Now that the Encyclopedia Britannica is going to an online-only format, one of many things we'll miss is the accidental poetry on the books' spines http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2012/03/spinelessness_1.php. In the age of endless digital information, volumes like Accounting-Architecture and Birds-Chess point to the tomes that contain everything you'd need to know and nothing more.

The saying a bad penny always turns up has been turning up in English since the 15th century, when counterfeit pennies would often surface in circulation. As pennies have lost their luster, the phrase has lived on; see the line "Don, my bad penny," http://jonhammsome.tumblr.com/post/20867218191/don-my-bad-penny from this season of Mad Men.

What does rolling in the deep mean, as sung by Adele? In her Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/adele-opens-up-about-her-inspirations-looks-and-stage-fright-20120210 interview from February, she traces it to British slang for close friends that have each other's backs.

To take umbrage means to take offense or be annoyed at something. It comes from the Latin umbra, meaning "shadow," as in umbrella. So to take umbrage is to sense something shady, or suspect that one has been slighted.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game about words and phrases that involve furniture or parts of a house. For example, if you want to see your lover but you only have two hours, that's a tight window of opportunity. And if you invest in, say, smartphones for pets--only to see your savings go down the drain--we'd say you'll be taking a bath.

In high school, were you a jock or a nerd? How about a grit, or perhaps a Hessian? Grits, hashers, metalheads, greasers--the dudes with roughed-up denim jackets, metal boots, and cigarettes in their shirt pockets--are an essential part of the student body, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus about their name. What did you call that crowd?

Should The Great Recession be talked and written about as a proper noun? Recessions tend to be vague in their scale and timelines, so it's problematic to mention them as proper nouns. Perhaps the similarities in sound between Great Recession and Great Depression have encouraged this usage http://www.salon.com/2009/12/17/great_recession/ by government officials and members of the press.

In a previous show http://www.waywordradio.org/go-all-city/, we came upon a word mystery with a 1947 menu from Jackson, Mississippi that mentions tang. The mystery has been solved! It wasn't the drink, and it wasn't the fish; it was Cudahy Tang http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19560627&id=60EvAAAAIBAJ&sjid=eEgDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1903,5357698, one of over a hundred knockoff brands of SPAM, a canned meat product.

Which is correct: washrag or washcloth? Whether you use one or the other isn't likely so much about regional dialects as class differences.

Due to their fondness for treats, tourists in some parts of Michigan are known as fudgies or conelickers. In Vermont and Colorado, they're called flatlanders. And Californians refer to the Arizona beachcombers and Zonies. What do you call tourists in your area?

Vaccines take their name from vaccinia, the virus that caused cowpox. It was the original ingredient used to vaccinate people against smallpox. Stefan Riedel, a pathologist at the Baylor University Medical Center, offers a detailed history of the centuries-long fight against smallpox here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/.

A collection of Virginia folkspeak from 1912 includes this zinger about a proud person: He doesn't know where his behind hangs. And here's a choice insult: I'd rather have your room than your company!

Do you have a favorite letter? The sound or typeface varieties of a letter can really catch us. For more about the visual and emotional properties of various letters, check out Simon Garfield's book about fonts, Just My Type. http://www.simongarfield.com/pages/books/just_my_type.htm Grant also recommends One-Letter Words by Craig Conley, a surprisingly lengthy dictionary of words made up of just one letter. http://www.oneletterwords.com/dictionary/

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Support for A Way with Words comes from National University http://www.nu.edu/, which invites you to change your future today. More at nu.edu.

We’re also grateful for support from the University of San Diego http://www.sandiego.edu. Since 1949, USD has been on a mission not only to prepare students for the world, but also to change it. Learn more about the college and five schools of this nationally ranked, independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2012, Wayword LLC.

320 GG You Have No Idea How Weird "Do" Is

Fri, 04 May 2012 04:48:45 +0000

The Horse You Rode In On - 30 April 2012

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:55:00 +0000

What colorful language do you use to when you're angry and tempted to use a four-letter word? There's a difference between cursing and cussing: It takes a slow mind to curse, but an active, vibrant mind to cuss. Also, what it means to be stove up, the phrases the horse you rode in on, and it's all chicken but the gravy, plus a couple of handy synonyms for armpit. And when, if ever, can you trust Wikipedia?

FULL DETAILS

The hadal zone, named for the Greek god Hades, refers to the deepest depths of the ocean floor. James Cameron's deep sea dive http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/26/james-cameron-historic-solo-drive recently made it down there.

There's a difference between cursing and cussing: It takes a slow mind to curse, but an active and vibrant mind to cuss—especially when the cusswords sound like alapaloop palip palam or trance nance nenimimuality. What colorful language do you use to diffuse anger?

What's an oxter? It's another term for the underarm, primarily used in Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-oxt1.htm. A bit nicer than armpit, isn't it? Oxter can also serve as a verb, as in, "We oxtered him out of the club." Need another synonym for that body part that also happens to rhyme with "gorilla"? Try axilla.

A pipe dream is "an unobtainable hope" or "an unrealistic fantasy." The term originates from the idea of opium pipes, and the strange dreams one might incur while high on opium. Back in the 1890s when the term first showed up, opium pipes were a bit more common.

Here are a few good skeuomorphs, or outdated aesthetic elements: We still refer to the ticking of a clock, even though we're surrounded by digital timekeeping devices, and the kids are working hard for those washboard abs http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/Washboard-Abs.jpg when they don't even know what a washboard is!

Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game called Aye Aye, Captain about phrases with that long "I" vowel sound. For example, a colorless synonym for a fib would be a white lie, and another name for a mafioso might be a wise guy.

What does it mean to be stove up? This phrase for sore or stiff has nothing to do with a stovetop; stove is actually the past tense of stave. To stave in a wooden boat is to smash a hole in its side, and thus, to be stove up is to be "incapacitated or damaged." These words are related to the noun stave, the term for one of those flat pieces of wood in a barrel. Similarly, to stave off hunger is to metaphorically beat it back, as if with a stick.

Common wisdom says that if you learn a second language by the age of ten, native speakers won't recognize that it's not your first. Even so, things like idioms or prepositions can often trip up even the most skilled second-language speakers, if their second language is English.

A dish-to-pass supper, common in Indiana, is the same as a pot-luck supper or a covered-dish supper, but the term nosh-you-want drew a red flag when Grant went to visit the Wikipedia page for potluck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potluck. It hadn't appeared in any other form of print, so luckily, the crisis has been averted, because Grant personally edited out this specious term.

The song "Old Dan Tucker" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-GHbDFrwlU has a long history in the United States, going back to the minstrel shows of the 1840s. Martha highly recommends the documentary Ethnic Notions http://newsreel.org/video/ETHNIC-NOTIONS about our country's complicated history with racially-charged imagery in theater and song, and the evolution of racial consciousness in America.

Is it a good thing to be a voracious reader? We think so. Just take Shakespeare's notion of the replenished intellect in Love's Labour's Lost http://goo.gl/qzmw7

The idiom and the horse you rode in on, usually preceded by a far more unfriendly phrase, tends to be directed at someone who's full of himself and unwelcome to boot. It first pops up in the 1950s, and it's written on the spine of a book in Donald Regan's official portrait http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/28/magazine/on-language-of-high-moments-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.

Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2008/01/mystery_solved_the_cause_of_ic.php, also known as brain freeze, is a variety of nerve pain that results from something cold touching the roof of the mouth. But some people who suffer from migraines actually find ice cream confuses the nerve in a way that eases the pain—how convenient!

How do you pronounce the word won? Does it rhyme with sun or Juan? Some people, depending on their regional dialect, may hypercorrect their vowels and pronounce certain words in an unusual way.

What is a buster? As TLC sang http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av7m_Pgt1S8, "A scrub is a guy who thinks he's fly, also known as a buster." That is, a buster is that guy on the fringe who's always putting on airs. The word may come from the old term gangbusters, which originally applied to police officers or others who took part in breaking up criminal gangs.

If something's all chicken but the gravy, then it's all good. This colloquialism pops up in an exchange from a 1969 Congressional record.

The past, the present, and the future walked into a bar. It was tense.

...

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University http://www.nu.edu/, which invites you to change your future today. More at nu.edu.

We’re also grateful for support from the University of San Diego http://www.sandiego.edu. Since 1949, USD has been on a mission not only to prepare students for the world, but also to change it. Learn more about the college and five schools of this nationally ranked, independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:

United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673

London +44 20 7193 2113

Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Site: http://waywordradio.org/

Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/

Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/

Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/

Skype: skype://waywordradio

319 GG The AP Sanctions "Hopefully"

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:48:45 +0000

Shank of the Evening - 23 April 2012

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:45:00 +0000

What time is it if it's "the crack of chicken"? And when exactly is the "shank of the evening"? How do you pronounce the word spelled H-O-V-E-R? Did Warren G. Harding really coin the word normalcy? Also, a name game, sports nicknames, flounder vs. founder, Laundromats vs. washaterias, Black Dutch, nosebaggers, medical slang terms, and a look back at the joys of the early internet.

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When a car rolls slowly through a stop sign, it's often called a California stop or a California roll http://www.waywordradio.org/mute-point/. But the Midwest has its own monikers for this sneaky move, including the farmer stop, the Chicago stop, and "no cop, no stop."

How early do you have to wake up to see what one listener calls the crack of chicken? It seems to be a twist on the term crack of dawn. Other terms for this early-morning time are o'dark thirty and the scratch of dawn.

Did President Warren G. Harding coin the term normalcy in his famous Return to Normalcy speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXETeWS6ub8? Turns out the word normalcy was already in use before President Harding made it famous, but it's now become largely obsolete, while its synonym, normality, is generally the preferred term. Harding is also credited with--or blamed for--bringing the term hospitalization into the common vernacular.

In his book, Presidential Voices: Speaking Styles from George Washington to George W. Bush http://books.google.com/books?id=Dh0wM9DNjbAC&pg=PA124&dq=allan+metcalf+presidential+voices+belittle&hl=en&sa=X&ei=x0-LT6CRHumI2gW8obHpAg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=presidents%20as%20neologists&f=false, Allan Metcalf points out that U.S. presidents have contributed or popularized quite a few neologisms to the English language.

In Texas, the California stop is also known as an Okie yield sign, an Okie crash sign, and a taxpayer stop.

What does it mean to be gorked or crimped? These slang terms for high on drugs or crumpled in on oneself are used by hospital and Emergency Medical Services workers in a darkly comedic sense, often help cope with the stress of such traumatic work and to build solidarity among co-workers.

Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game of aptronyms for people whose names fit certain locations or conditions. For example, a guy hanging onto a wall might be named Art. Or what do you call a woman between two buildings? Ally!

The racial descriptor Black Dutch http://www.genealogymagazine.com/blackdutch.html is one used by members of a certain ethnic group, like Cherokee Indian or African-American, that feel their identity will be viewed as more acceptable by those they're around if they use a different adjective. Black Irish and Black German are also used.

What's the difference between flounder and founder? To flounder is "to struggle or thrash about," while to founder is "to sink or to fail." Surprisingly, the verb flounder shares no etymological root with the fish, though the image of a flounder flapping helplessly about on the shore may have influenced our sense of the word.

Skeuomorphs are aesthetic elements of design that no longer correlate with their original function. Computer software is full of skeuomorphs; for example, the save button that we're all used to is a picture of a floppy disc. But then, who uses floppy discs any more?

With Linsanity and Tebowing sweeping the country, we're thinking about other great sports nicknames. Unfortunately, it seems that with unique names taking up a greater percentage of children born, there's no longer as much practical demand for nicknames. Still, the Babe, Magic, and The Refrigerator http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/sports/great-sports-nicknames-like-magic-are-disappearing.html?pagewanted=all live on in legend.

The increasingly musty expression "like a broken record" has caused some confusion among digital natives who've heard of broken records only in terms of sports!

Ben Zimmer published a brilliant collection of internet memes from the past twenty years in a the journal American Speech. Memes like facepalming http://static.divbyzero.nl/facepalm/doublefacepalm.jpg and the O, rly? owl http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/000/015/orly.jpg have allowed us to communicate otherwise unwritable sentiments via the internet.

How do you pronounce the word hover? In England, it rhymes more with clobber than lover. If you want to learn how to say "My hovercraft is full of eels" in lots of different languages, head on over to Omniglot. http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm

It's the shank of the evening! But when is that, exactly? This phrase is typically suggests that the night is far from over, shank being an old word for something straight, or the tail end of something. But as the Dictionary of American Regional English notes, in the South, evening is considered "the time between late afternoon and dusk."

If you're on vacation, watch out for nosebaggers! This mid-19th century slang term refers to tourists who go to resort areas for the day but bring their own provisions and don't contribute to the local economy. A modern nosebagger might be the type of person who cracks open a soda can at the movies.

Do you wash your clothes at a Laundromat or a washateria? http://pics3.city-data.com/businesses/p/1/2/8/1/4151281.JPG A chain of Laundromats in Texas that dated from 1930 to 1950 had the name Washateria, and it took hold as a general term, especially in Texas.

A couple more variations of the California stop: the jackrabbit and the California slide.

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Support for A Way with Words comes from National University http://www.nu.edu/, which invites you to change your future today. More at nu.edu.

We’re also grateful for support from the University of San Diego http://www.sandiego.edu. Since 1949, USD has been on a mission not only to prepare students for the world, but also to change it. Learn more about the college and five schools of this nationally ranked, independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu.

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A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

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318 GG Dashes, Colons, and Commas

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 04:48:45 +0000

Going All City (Rebroadcast) - 16 April 2012

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:08:00 +0000

Have you been dining on a budget lately? Martha recommends the necessity mess, potato bargain, and other tasty regional foods that won't break the bank. Plus, what's a doomaflatchie? And what do you have to do before you rest on your laurels? Grant and Martha share idioms, proverbs, and paraprosdokians, those sayings that take a sudden, unexpected turn. Plus cryptic crosswords, graffiti slang, and new ways to read your favorite magazines.

FULL DETAILS

Dining on a budget? Just whip up some necessity mess or a potato bargain. That's a pork, onion, and potato stew popular in Eastern Massachusetts. Or how about some Georgia ice cream? It's a North Florida term for grits. Martha shares a generous serving of fun food names from the Dictionary of American Regional English.

http://dare.wisc.edu/

http://bit.ly/oDZcJQ

If you've accomplished something, go ahead and rest on your laurels. Martha traces this idiom back to Ancient Greece, where victors were crowned with a wreath of bay leaves from the bay laurel tree. In the 16th Century, to retire on one's laurels referred to "resting after an accomplishment." Like many inherited idioms, it's often said today with a tongue in one's cheek.

The old Brooklyn Dodger Roy Campanella really knew how to set the soup outside! A baseball fan recalls this overheard phrase from a game in the 60s between the Cardinals and the Dodgers, when Campy smacked one over the fence. Grant estimates that this usage of soup comes from the old slang term for nitrous oxide, a component in souping up cars. Over time, soup came to refer to any enhanced display of muscle or strength.

What would you bring to a pitch-in? An Indiana transplant shares this newly acquired term for a potluck dinner. Martha points out that the Dictionary of American Regional English has a map showing the distribution of the term, and it's limited almost exclusively to Indiana.

If something's a peach out of reach, it's something lovely that you want but just can't have. A listener shares this and other idioms from the American South.

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game of cryptic crossword clues called Double Definition. For example, if the clue is "trim a tree," the answer is "spruce." Or try this one: "crazy flying mammals." Did you come up with "bats"?

What does it mean to grok the data? A listener from the medical device business wonders about the techie word grok, which first popped up in Robert Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

http://bit.ly/qSPABU

To grok data means to understand all the information you're looking at. Grant also mentions Jeff Prucher's Brave New Words, a dictionary of science fiction terms that have made their way into the English language.

http://wywd.us/ng2QdG

New York seems to have a doguero on every street corner. Grant shares this Spanglish term for "a hot dog vendor."

What's it called when saying becomes sayin'? It's not a trick question; it's simply called an abbreviation. Grant and Martha settle an English major's confusion about the possibility of a trickier term. With words like o'er, a shortening of over, the apostrophe can also be called an apologetic apostrophe, but it's still just an abbreviation.

The old Yiddish word bupkis, referring to something of little or no value, has of late been split up for dramatic effect. As in, that's worth all of a bup and a kis!

What's a doomaflatchie? A listener shares this alternate for doohickie, thingamajig, doodad, or any other one of those whatchamacalits.

You can listen to the Tim McGraw song about his doomaflatchie here.

http://tinyurl.com/3aq4hp6

If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong. Listeners share some of their favorite paraprosdokians. It's not the first time Martha and Grant discussed paraprosdokians.

http://www.waywordradio.org/sugar-for-a-dime/

As ubiquitous as social media and blogs have become, people are still reading long form journalism! Grant shares some great ways Twitter has enabled the spread of long essays from sources like The Atlantic and Wired. In addition, services like Readability and Instapaper have streamlined the distribution of articles to our myriad devices.

http://bit.ly/aeqNxp

http://bit.ly/aAVXT4

http://bit.ly/dADCNG

It takes some work for a writer to go all city--a graffiti writer, that is. An art supplies dealer from Dallas shares some vocabulary from the world of street art. For example, the old act of photographing trains from benches gave birth to the term benching, and the act of tagging or doing graffiti is also known as bombing. Grant discusses the related term going all city.

http://bit.ly/cutX0r

http://abcn.ws/qIRs0R

http://tinyurl.com/3wfeq6r

Everyone knows about Tang as that orange kick in a glass, but could it also be an entree? A listener from Plano, Texas, found an elderly relative's plan for family meals from 1947, which lists tang with molasses as a main course. If you've heard of tang the food, shoot us a message.

If a meeting gets pushed back, does it get postponed to a later time or rescheduled for a sooner one? Grant explains that push back is generally understood to mean "reschedule for a later date," but Martha recounts a scenario where the opposite definition caused a debacle with deadlines. As always, when in doubt, seek clarification.

Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. Thank you to our listeners for this and other modern proverbs.

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Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. Learn more at nu.edu. http://nu.edu

We're also grateful for support from The University of San Diego. Since 1949, USD has been on a mission not only to prepare students for the world, but also to change it. Learn more about the college and five schools of this nationally ranked, independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu. http://sandiego.edu

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

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Copyright 2012, Wayword LLC.

317 GG What Does "Proper English" Mean?

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 04:48:45 +0000

The College Slang Party (Rebroadcast) - 9 April 2012

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:43:00 +0000

What would you wear to an ABC party? Hint: the letters stand for "Anything But Clothes." Any guesses what you'd wear to a tight-and-bright party? Martha gives a taste of the college party terminology from a slang collection compiled by Penn State student Emily Grier.

http://bit.ly/qpxAB0

Are you left hanging by the invitation Do you want to come with? A Milwaukee native is proud of this regionalism, which means "Do you want to come along?" Grant explains that it may derive from the German verb mitkommen, a single word that literally means to "come with."

If what you're going to say isn't more beautiful than silence, don't say it. Martha shares this proverb, translated from the original Arabic.

If you suffer from restless nights of tossing and turning, you may have a case of the mollycobwobbles. A listener shares this hand-me-down term from her grandmother. Grant explains she may well have combined two English terms dating about 150 years back: mulligrubs and collywobbles. The aptly named affliction usually consisted of the jitters, the shakes, or even the yips.

http://bit.ly/p4RNrX

That little basket that your strawberries and blueberries come in? It's called a punnet. Just so you know.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska addles our brains with a puzzle called Odd Couples. See if you can figure out these strange celebrity pairings who share last names. "Anyone? Bueller, Bueller, Bueller" and "Bueller is Bueller is Bueller," for example, forms the odd couple of Ben and Gertrude Stein. And who else could hit home runs in the bedroom like Babe and Dr. Ruth?

Looking for something that curls your hair, cleans your teeth, and makes childbirth a pleasure? A listener's mother used that saying in reference to every miracle potion from WD-40 to vinegar. Grant explains that the first known version of this in print dates back to 1919 in Mrs. Lucretia Graves' Exits from the Pearly Gates, where the advertisements for opium-type substances had less cheek and more sincerity. Grant notes that Google Books has a wealth of examples of old ads that took the saying and used even more elaborate versions to promote everything from tequila to hypnosis.

http://bit.ly/p41EsZ

Is boughten a past tense form of to buy? Grant gives his blessing to its use in informal conversation, but when it comes to formal writing, the word you want is bought.

What are the college kids up to these days? Apparently, they're busy at darties, or "day parties." Martha shares this collegiate portmanteau from Emily Grier's list.

Can sentences end with a preposition? Yes! Grant assures a listener that all experts, including the most conservative of linguists and lexicographers, agree that a preposition as the last word in a sentence is something up with which we shall put.

http://bit.ly/dWii20

Tell your Mom the sterling silver stud above your lip isn't "that dumb thing." It's called a Monroe piercing, in honor of Marilyn's famed beauty mark.

Though the Spanish language, among others, has its quirks and foreignisms, the English language really can't be touched when it comes to complicated and irregular spelling. Thus, spelling bees are primarily an English-language phenomenon. Grant mentions a few "where are they now?" stories about past Scripps Bee winners. The common thread? If these kids had the discipline to compete in such a high-pressure event, they tend to carry those traits beyond the spelling arena and into their successes later in life.

http://abcn.ws/mlEtro

http://ti.me/oz9OjK

If something is mathematical, is it cool? According to a mother of two middle-schoolers, that's exactly what it's come to mean among the younger set. Then again, irony is also pretty hip. But could her kids be using a piece of ironic slang with confused sincerity? Ahh! Meta-irony! So cool!

http://bit.ly/n1V8Ff

If someone's balloon has lost its string, it means "they've come unmoored". Something unusual or odd has come about in their character. Patrice Evans used the illustration in his description of Tracy Morgan in an article for Grantland (no relation to our show's co-host).

http://es.pn/jyvuej

He thinks he's a wit, and he's half right. Though some might attribute the quote to Shakespeare, it's nowhere to be found in the concordances. Grant explains how many of these witticisms have been tumbled about by old newspaper columnists, humorists, and vaudeville performers. Though their origins are muddled, they're still a joy to hear and say.

So, can a sentence begin with the word so? Which ones? So is oftentimes used in place of therefore to conclude an explanation, but more people are using it as a general sentence-starter, in the same vein as well. Grant notes that while seemingly misused language may be grating to the ear, it's more productive not to peeve about it, but instead to record it and add it to the rest of the data we collect about our language. Ultimately, we learn about each other by doing so.

http://bit.ly/o2rtSQ

Martha shares a British article that begins, "Boffins have discovered a strange new type of spongy mushroom." But what, you may ask, is a boffin? The word boffin denotes an intellectual with a specific expertise and general lack of social aptitude. Grant adds anorak to the list of terms for nerds with minimal aptitude for cocktail-party conversations. Here's to you, boffins and anoraks!

http://bit.ly/iyly1W

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Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. Learn more at nu.edu. http://nu.edu

We're also grateful for support from The University of San Diego. Since 1949, USD has been on a mission not only to prepare students for the world, but also to change it. Learn more about the college and five schools of this nationally ranked, independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu. http://sandiego.edu

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2012, Wayword LLC.