Blow a Gasket - 10 March 2014

The Pope is tweeting in Latin! But can an ancient language adapt to a world of selfies and hashtags? Speaking of the future, cars are now talking to each other with V-2-V communication. And pit bull owners are trying to soften the image of their cute little dogs by calling them "pibbles." Plus, pizza bones, grand-nieces vs. great-nieces, pin vs. pen, sisu, blow a gasket, and write it on the ice.

FULL DETAILS

The Pope tweets in Latin! As it turns out, Latin is such an efficient language that it can compress a lot into 140 characters.

What do you call your brother's granddaughter? Your great-niece or your grandniece? The Thomasville, Georgia, man who claims to have the world's largest collection of photos of relatives riding camels wants an answer.

Thanks to Beyonce Knowles, who helped popularize the term bootylicious, the word surfbort is now a thing.

For at least one listener, the crust on a slice of pizza is the dashboard. Italians have a specific word for that: cornicione.

If you write it on the ice, what you write will be impermanent, or not to be counted on--the opposite of carved in stone.

Puzzlemaster John Chaneski remixes the news by anagramming one word in each headline. For starters, which word is an anagram in New Deal in Honeybee Deaths?

Finns say their word sisu meaning "guts" or "fortitude" characterizes their national identity. Does your culture have a such a word, like the Portuguese term saudade, perhaps?

In the 16th or 17th century, a gourmand might be known by the less pretentious term slapsauce. The same term has also meant "glutton."

Add blow a gasket to your list of Downton Abbey anachronisms.

Snowboarders flailing their arms in the air might be the last folks who still wind down the windows.

Pin vs pen is a classic example of the vowel merger specific to the Southern dialect.

What does one order when on a strict diet? How about a honeymoon salad: "lettuce alone!"

The Vatican has a long list of new Latin terms invented to denote things in the modern world, such as umbrella descensoria ("parachute) and ludus follis ovati (literally, "oval ball inflated with wind," otherwise known as rugby).

Heyna is Pennsylvanian for "innit."

Martha proposes the word miesta, a sort of combination of  "me-time" and a "siesta."

Fraught, meaning "loaded with worry or negative portent," related to the English word freight. It's perfectly fine to use fraught without the word with, as in This situation is fraught.

Pit bull owners have taken to calling their pooches pibbles in an effort to make them sound less threatening. In fact, they can make great pets.

Do people call you by a nickname without asking? A caller named Elizabeth is baffled when people she's just met insist on calling her Liz. 

V-2-V communication, meaning "vehicle to vehicle," is a great way for cars to prevent accidents, or to flirt with each other.

This episode was hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette.
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