Pwned Prose, Stat! - 10 Nov. 2008

[This episode first aired September 13, 2008.]

When you get to the end of a wonderful book, your first impulse is to tell someone else about it. In this week's episode, Martha and Grant discuss what they've been reading and the delights of great prose.

An Illinois man recalls that as a kid, he used to mix fountain drinks of every flavor into a concoction he and his friends called a 'suicide.' He wonders if anyone else calls them that. Why a 'suicide'? Because it looks and tastes like poison?

It started as a typo for 'own,' now it's entrenched in online slang. A Kentucky caller is curious about 'pwn.' It rhymes with 'own' and means 'to defeat' or 'to triumph over.' Our hosts talk about a special meaning of 'own' in the computer-gaming world.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski is Havana good time with Martha and Grant on an round-the-world 'International Puzzle Hunt' that will leave you Beijing for more.

You seem to hear it on all the television hospital dramas: 'stat!' A physician says she knows it means 'immediately,' but she doesn't know its origins. Quick! Is there a Latin expert in the house?

A San Diego fisherman notes that he hears mariners talk about 'snotty weather.' 'Snotty?' Is it the kind that gives you the sniffles? Or is does it cop an attitude?

Do you ever stare at a word so long that you think it's mispellllled? Even though it isn't? Your dialectal duo hunt up a word for that phenomenon.

Grant and Martha reveal what books are on their own nightstands, waiting to be read. Just the top of the stacks, natch, because there are just too many.

This week's 'Slang This!' contestant tries to guess the meaning of the terms 'liver rounds' and 'put the bite on someone.'

An Indianapolis woman who grew up in the South says that when her slip was showing, her father used to say, 'Who do you think you are, Miss Astor'?' Martha shares other euphemisms for slips showing. If someone sidles up to you and says, 'Pssssst! Mrs. White is out of jail,' it's time to check your hemline.

You can tell someone's an 'A Way with Words' listener when they confess to lying awake at night wondering about questions like, 'Are the words 'fillet' and 'flay' etymologically related?'

A Minnesotan has been observing his infant babbling, and wonders if words like 'mama' and 'papa' arise from sounds that babies naturally make anyway. Are there some words or sounds that are instinctive? Or do they only learn them from their parents?

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