A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over

Why do we say someone is 'on the wagon' when they abstain from drinking alcohol? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[This episode first aired January 24, 2009.] President Barack Obama hopes to boost the economy by pouring federal dollars into efforts to rebuild the nation's infrastructure, much like the old Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. But how about reviving that other jobs program from the New Deal era: the 'Federal Writers Project.' Martha and Grant discuss the pros and cons of subsidizing writers with taxpayer money. A caller from Juneau, Alaska, says she was tickled when her friend from the South told her he loves 'vye-EEN-ers.' It took a while before she realized he was saying Viennas, as in that finger food so often found a can, the' Vienna sausage.' So, just how common is the pronunciation 'vye-EEN-er'? It's been called the 'ape drape,' the 'Kentucky waterfall,' the 'Tennessee top hat,' 'hockey hair,' and the '90-10.' We're talking about that haircut called the 'mullet,' otherwise known as 'business in the front, and party in the back.' But why 'mullet'? The word 'borborygmic' means 'pertaining to rumblings in one's tummy or intestines.' Martha explains that it comes from the Greek word 'borborygmus' ('bor-buh-RIG-muss'), a fine example of onomatopoeia if ever there was one. Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a word game in which the object is to guess the 'color-related terms' suggested by his clues. Try this one: What color-coded term is suggested by the phrase 'information gained without serious effort'? What do you call the 'strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk'? Depending on where you live, you may call it a 'tree lawn,' a 'berm,' a 'city strip,' the 'parking,' or one of a host of other regional terms for it. In a small part of the country, this narrow piece of land called a 'devil strip.' In fact, this expression figures in a great story about forensic linguistics: When a linguist analyzed a ransom note and saw the term devil strip, he realized this was a telltale clue--one that would lead authorities right to the kidnapper. Does the English expression 'falling in love' derive from the biblical story of Rebekah and Isaac? A caller thinks so. The hosts don't think so. You may have used the expression, 'Nobody here but us chickens!' Would you still use it if you knew its origins lie in a racist joke from the turn of the 20th century? In an earlier episode , the hosts heard from a woman who, as a teenager, was scolded by her grandmother for wearing a skirt that Granny said was 'almost up to possible.' The woman wondered about that phrase's meaning and origin. Grant shares listener email about this question, plus information he's found linking the term to James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. This weekâs âSlang This!â contestant from the National Puzzlersâ League tries to pick out the real slang terms from a puzzle that includes the expressions 'board butter,' 'cap room,' 'mad pancakes,' and 'mad gangster.' http://puzzlers.org/dokuwiki/doku.php Is the proper expression 'in regards to' or 'in regard to'? In regard to this question, the hosts say, the answer is clear and unambiguous. A sampling of several kinds of wine is called a 'flight.' But why? And while we're on the subject of sampling lots of different savory things, what's the 'difference between a smorgasbord and a buffet'? Or is there one? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another minicast from A Way with Words. Iâm Grant Barrett. [Music] Hip-hop is high art. Yeah. Thatâs right. And if you donât understand that, then youâre missing out on some of the best poetry. Literary scholar Adam Bradley examines the style and poetry of hip-hop lyrics in his new book titled: Book of Rhymes, the Poetics of Hip-Hop. 'When a rapper's flow is fully realized,' he writes, 'it forges a distinctive rhythmic identity that is governed by both poetic and musical laws.' A hip-hop MCâthe one who sings or chantsâis a rhyme-maker and 'flow' is what an MC has when the rhymes lie easily on top of the rhythm. Rhyme in hip-hop means more than words that sound alike; spitting rhymes is waxing poetic is writing lyrics is storytelling. [Music] There's a structure there, things that are permitted and forbidden in the art form. Rules about accent, pitch, intonation, force. The conventions of poetry are all there. So, these hip-hop lyrics are complex. They are connected to each other across samples, across songs, across albums, across artists, across the decades. They could be mapped like a family tree because a good MC knows the hip-hop canon. [Music] And there is a canon, just as there is in literature. Bradley writes, 'Hip hop is haunted by this sense of tradition. It is a music whose death was announced soon after its birth, and the continuing reports of its demise seemingly return with each passing year.' The old school, the new school, everything that you see in the worlds of prose and in the worlds of poetryâthe complex relationships between creator and consumer, between colleagues and competitors, between art and businessâthose exist in hip-hop. Hip-hop may be the only place in America where poetry still rules, where it is savored and appreciated by a vast, educated audience.  Itâs  where great poetic skill is rewarded with respect, fame, and money, more often than is the case with the precious poetry you might find in tiny pamphlets near the bookstore register. I, for one, believe in the pleasure derived from poetically sophisticated rhymes. And I think they're here to stay. [Music] Adam Bradley's 'Book of Rhymes' is just published by Basic Civitas Books. You can find out more about him at AdamFBradley.com For A Way with Words, Iâm Grant Barrett. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Martha muses about the language of falconry, and in the process, reveals the origins of several words and phrases in one fell swoop. Did you know that a falcon's eyeballs are so huge that they take up most of its head -- and that those two eyes are separated only by a thin membrane? That's just one of the fun facts I learned from a new book called Falconer on the Edge: A Man, His Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West. The author, Rachel Dickinson, is married to a falconer. Her book is a glimpse into the world of this centuries-old blood sport. Now, I'll admit it: The blood part makes me queasy. but the book gave me a whole new appreciation for the vocabulary of falconry. Take the word haggard. It describes a worn, tired, gaunt appearance. But did you know that originally haggard applied to birds? Specifically, haggard described an adult female hawk caught in the wild, not raised in captivity. By the 16th century, the word had came to denote anyone similarly 'wild or intractable.' Later haggard was applied more generally. In Shakespeare's day, falconry was an aristocratic sport. You see lots of images from it in his plays. There's jealous Othello, fretting that Desdemona may prove to be 'haggard' -- that is, wild and out of his control. Or in Macbeth, the character MacDuff is aghast when he learns that his family's been murdered in 'one fell swoop.' The image of is the way a falcon swoops down from the sky, and strikes with swift ferocity. The 'fell' in 'one fell swoop' is an adjective. It means 'inhumanly cruel.' This fell is a linguistic relative of 'felon.' Then there's the term 'pride of place.' Today it means 'the highest or most important location': as in 'High-definition TVs enjoy pride of place in many living rooms.' Originally, 'pride of place' meant the airy height from which that falcon swoops. You see this phrase in Macbeth, when Shakespeare uses it to suggest that unnatural, ominous things are happening: 'A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.' Anyway, if you want a closer look at the odd and bloody subculture of falconry, check out Dickinson's book. It'll give you a whole new sense of birds and words. http://www.amazon.com/Falconer-Edge-Vanishing-Landscape-American/dp/0618806237 -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humorist Roy Blount Jr. sits down with Grant for a conversation about the controversy over writers' rights and the Amazon Kindle 2. As president of the Authors Guild, Blount has argued that writers whose work is featured on the Kindle 2 should earn extra royalties because its text-to-speech feature essentially turns written works into audiobooks. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html Blount also discusses his own recent book, Alphabet Juice, talks about 'sonicky' words and noodling for catfish, and clears up the mystery of whether the cancan dancers at George Plimpton's memorial really did honor the late writer's request that they perform without panties. Read the first chapter of Alphabet Juice here. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/books/chapters/chapter-alphabet-juice.html Find out more about Blount and his work here. http://www.royblountjr.com/ -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we're going through the e-mail bag. Here's a savory, sensuous one. It's from Stacey in Boulder, Colorado. Stacey grew up out West, but says she spent summers and Christmases at the home of her maternal grandparents, just north of New York City. 'This side of my family,' she writes, 'is unapologetically Italian. For me, a highlight of every visit was the night of arrival. My grandma would welcome us home with a big pot of gravy. After the day-long trip to get there, Stacey writes, 'nothing was more comforting or restoring than walking into a Grandma-sized hug, and a house positively perfumed with the sweet, heady scent of garlic and tomatoes.' Now, about that pot of gravy, she writes: 'In Colorado, or anywhere else I've been, it's called marinara sauce. Outside of my family, I have never heard the word gravy used to describe anything other than the brown gravy you put on a turkey at Thanksgiving.' And, she says, 'Hearing the word gravy used in this way evokes just as much warmth and contentment as the smell or taste of the gravy itself. I can almost feel my grandmother's bone-crushing hug swallowing me up once again.' Stacey wants to know: Is gravy just her own family's weird word for tomato-based sauce? Or is there anyone else out there who understands what she calls 'the intimate, emotional, have-some-macaroni coziness behind this seemingly simple term.' Stacey, you'll be pleased to know that lots and lots of people refer to this stuff as gravy. In fact, this kind of gravy made an appearance in an episode of the HBO series The Sopranos. A member of the mob in New Jersey goes to Italy. He dines out in Naples. But he can't find what he wants on the menu. Check out what happens. http://tinyurl.com/che59s So, using the word 'gravy' in this way isn't unique one family. But I must add an important word of caution: Many Italian-Americans do call it 'gravy,' but others are adamant -- and I do mean adamant -- about calling it 'sauce.' In fact, you can find some amazingly heated debates online about which is the correct term. In Italian, the word sugo can mean either 'sauce' or 'gravy.' It may be that some Italian immigrants translated it into one English word, while those in other communities used a different English translation. So, pasta lovers: Which is it? Sauce or gravy? Let us know. We'd also like to what other odd food names evoke vivid sensory memories for you. And, as always, we welcome your thoughts about any aspect of language. Our address is words@waywordradio.org. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's a 'Hobson's Choice'? If you're facing a Hobson's choice, you don't really have much to choose from. The phrase describes a situation in which your options are either to take what's offered, or else take nothing at all. Martha offers some choice words about the origin of this term. Recently a friend emailed to ask about a curious phrase she'd run across. A newspaper columnist argued that when it comes to fixing the economy, the Obama administration faces a Hobson's choice. In other words, the writer said, shoring up U.S. banks may be wildly unpopular, but economic recovery requires doing exactly that. You might guess from the context that a Hobson's choice isn't really a choice at all. You either take what's offered, or get nothing. A great example is the declaration by automaker Henry Ford. In his 1922 autobiography, Ford wrote that his Model T would be available in any color, quote, 'so long as it is black.' The phrase Hobson's choice goes all the way back to 17th-century England. For 50 years, Thomas Hobson ran a stable near Cambridge University. There he rented horses to students. Old Man Hobson was extremely protective of those animals. He rented them out according to a strict rotating system. The most recently ridden horses he kept at the rear of the stable. The more rested ones he kept up front. That meant that when students came to get a horse, Hobson gave them the first one in line -- that is, the most rested. He'd let them rent that horse, or none at all. Hobson and his curmudgeonly take-it-or-leave-it rule apparently made quite an impression on Cambridge students. They included the great poet John Milton, who wrote about Hobson. Meanwhile, his horses left their hoofprints in our language, in a phrase that means 'taking what's available, or else not taking anything.' Well, if you want to talk about language, I hope you'll choose to email us. Our address is words@waywordradio.org. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What The Cluck, Part 2 What does the expression egg on have to do with chickens? Nothing, actually. Martha explains why, and tells the story of how the term curate's egg came to mean 'something with both good and bad characteristics.' Last week I told you about a letter from Randy in San Diego. He's the guy who's raising three chickens in his backyard. That got him wondering about expressions in English involving chicken. For example, what about 'to egg someone on'? Randy says he gave his trio of hens three different nesting boxes. But they all insist on taking turns using the same one. Now, you have to picture this. He writes: 'Every day about 10 a.m., they each lay one egg. The hen who is laying the egg sits in the nesting box. The other two always stand near the nesting box squawking loudly until she is done. When the first hen finishes she trades places with one of the others and the whole thing happens again. They have always done this so I assume the behavior is where we get the expression to egg someone on.' Good guess, Randy. But get this: the 'egg' in 'egg on' has nothing to do with the kind you eat. To 'egg on' comes from an Old Norse verb, eggja, which means to 'goad or incite.' Eggja and 'egg on' share a common linguistic ancestor with many other sharp, pointy words, including 'edge.' In fact, in the past, the phrase 'to edge on' has been used in exactly the same way as 'egg on.' Here's another egg expression I really like. It's 'curate's egg,' and it means 'a mixed bag' -- as in 'I just read a curate's egg of a book. The plot was flimsy, and the characters were wooden, but I still couldn't put it down.' The expression 'curate's egg' goes back to a cartoon published in 1895 in the British magazine Punch: A meek curate -- that is, a clergyman -- is dining at the home of his bishop. Unfortunately, he's served a bad egg. The bishop notices that something's wrong and politely says, 'I'm afraid you've got a bad egg.' But the curate hastily replies, 'Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you...parts of it are excellent!' The joke, of course, is that if an egg is bad, it's going to be totally bad, not partly. But the curate's too timid to say so. The term curate's egg has since come to mean 'something with both good and bad characteristics.' Now, I'm egging you on: If you have a question about words, or any other aspect of language, please drop us a line. Our address is words@waywordradio.org. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we received an email from Randy in San Diego. Randy writes: 'I recently got myself three hens for the back yard as a hobby that I thought my kids would enjoy. I highly recommend backyard chickens, by the way â theyâre better than television. During the months we have had these chickens, around I have had an opportunity to closely observe their behavior. This has me wondering about all the expressions and words we have in the U.S. related to chickens.' Great question, Randy. For starters, back in the days when most folks raised their own chickens, everybody knew that putting a fake egg in a chicken's nest would encourage her to lay more eggs. This fake egg was either wooden or ceramic. It was called a nest egg. Over time, this expression acquired the figurative meaning of 'a reserve of cash set aside.' Like those fake eggs that help get a chicken in the mood, your own nest egg of cash is supposed to help you acquire more. Of course, notice I said 'supposed to.' By the way, that reminds me of some chicken-based financial advice I once got from a fellow in eastern Kentucky. It went like this: Chicken for lunch, feathers for supper. In other words, be thrifty now, so you'll have some reserves for later. Want another example of hens nesting in the English language? In the 1920s, a Norwegian zoologist studying chicken behavior observed that the birds create strict social hierarchies. A bird's status within it determines such things as whether she can eat before everybody else, or has to wait her turn. The zoologist published his observations in scholarly article. Writing in German, he noted that hens create and enforce that hierarchy by pecking at each other. Searching for a word to describe this, he combined the German word hacken, which means 'to peck,' and ordnung, which means order. Soon after, Hackordnung was translated into English as pecking order. Of course, these days pecking order also applies human hierarchies. By the way, in case you missed it, you can hear even more about chickens -- specifically, the expression Nobody here but us chickens, which has an interesting backstory -- in this episode. http://www.waywordradio.org/days-of-wine-flights-and-mullets/ Has a linguistic question ruffled your feathers lately? Email us at words@waywordradio.org. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently The New Yorker magazine ran a profile of the writer David Foster Wallace, who died last year at the age of 46. The article included a line that I think Foster himself might have appreciated. It went like this: 'He was known for endlessly fracturing narratives and for stem-winding sentences adorned with footnotes that were themselves stem-winders.' So what's a stem-winder? Stem-winder goes back to the mid-19th century. It refers to an invention that was as nifty and state-of-the-art then as the coolest iPhone apps today. Think back to the days of pocket watches. In the really old days, people had to wind a watch the same way they wound clocks. They used a little key. Not only was that a hassle, those keys were easy to lose.    In the 1840s, a watchmaker in Switzerland perfected a different way to keep a watch running. He put a knob on a tiny metal stem, and attached it permanently to the spring mechanism. People lucky enough to own these newfangled timepieces could throw away their key, and wind their watches whenever they wanted. These fancy new stem-winders were some of the coolest gadgets around -- so cool that by the late 1800s, people were applying the term stem-winder to mean anything excellent or first-rate. Over time, stem-winder also came to apply specifically to a rousing, impassioned speech or to a great orator. Perhaps that's because a stirring speech or an energetic speaker could get folks in a crowd wound up, just like a watch. Dictionaries apparently haven't caught up with the fact that these days, many people use 'stem-winder' in a different sense. Occasionally you'll hear the term applied to a long-winded, boring speech -- one so long and boring you're tempted to look down at your watch and wind it. Or you would if it didn't run on batteries. And I have to wonder whether the notion of 'winding,' in the sense of something 'circuitous,' also influenced the magazine writer's choice of 'stem-winding' to describe those long, stirring sentences of David Foster Wallace. By the way, if you're a word lover, you'll want to check out that article in New Yorker. You can read it here. You can also read an excerpt of the last novel Wallace ever wrote, which will be published posthumously in 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_max?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/03/09/090309fi_fiction_wallace What word or phrase has caught your eye lately? We'd love to hear about it. Send any stem-winders you find to words@waywordradio.org. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 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 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices