Road Trip! - 26 May 2008

[This episode originally aired January 26 and 27, 2008.]

In this episode, a listener says his friend Harold likes to do social phoning while driving, so he's invented a term for mindless calling while in the car. And no, it's not 'car-pe diem.' Also, Martha and Grant also discuss the rules of the road games 'padiddle' and 'slug bug.'

Maybe you know it as 'perdiddle,' but a Wisconsinite shares memories of playing 'padiddle.' You need at least two people in a car, an oncoming vehicle with a headlight out, and, depending on which version of the game you play, you need to be prepared for kissing, punching, ceiling-thwacking, beer-buying, or stripping. Grant describes the Volkswagen-inspired of another road-trip game, 'slug bug.'

A listener from Falmouth, Maine, disagrees with his Canadian friends about how to pronounce the word 'aunt.' He says it shouldn't sound like the name of the insect. But is that the way most people pronounce this word for your mother's sister?

A Hoosier says her friends tease her about the way she says 'doofitty' when she can't think of the right word for something. Grant and Martha discuss the long list of linguistic placeholders, including 'whatchamacallit,' 'doodad,' 'deely-bobber,' 'doowanger,' 'doojigger,' 'doohickey,' 'thingamabob,' 'thingummy,' 'thingum,' and 'thingy.'

A California man remembers going to the neighborhood bakery back home in Illinois and ordering 'bismarcks.' But these days he rarely hears this term for 'jelly doughnut,' and wonders about its origin.

This week's Slang This! contestant guesses at the meaning of the slang expressions 'wigs on the green' and 'fake and bake.'

Grant and Martha read emails from listeners with suggested explanations as to how the term 'biffy' came to mean 'portable toilet.'

They also discuss listener's own stories about saying 'bread and butter' when companions step around an obstacle that divides them. Popeye does that little 'bread and butter' step about 5:47 into this clip that Martha was talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0av3fmr0sDc

We also promised words for the experience of noticing a word for the first time and then feeling like you're seeing it everywhere. Here are a few: diegogarcity, the recency Illusion, and the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

A retired professor wants to know if Latin grammar holds any clues about whether a female professor is properly addressed as 'professor emeritus' or 'professor emerita.'

Finally, a woman who grew up playing 'Duck, Duck, Goose' is surprised to hear that her niece and nephew play 'Duck, Duck, Gray Duck' at their preschool in Minnesota. The hosts take a gander at regional variations of this children's game.

And with that, we're ducking out of here until next week.

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