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

Martha explains how experiments with dead frogs and live wires led to the invention of the battery, and inspired a couple of familiar English words. I had to change the batteries in my flashlight the other day, and that makes think, as it always does, of Luigi Galvani. No, really, it does. Let me explain: Galvani was an 18th-century Italian physician and physicist whose experiments accidentally paved the way for modern batteries. The focus of his research? Galvani experimented with dead frogs and live wires. In 1791, he published a paper describing how he'd touched a dead frog's leg with one wire, and touched another wire to both the frog and the first wire. When the second wire made contact, the lifeless body jerked. Galvani believed these convulsions were the result of 'animal electricity,' a mysterious substance secreted by the body. What Galvani failed to grasp was that by touching wires made of two different metals to the frog -- and to each other -- he'd simply created a closed circuit. At the time, Galvani's report was nothing short of astonishing. As one of his contemporaries wrote in a letter: 'Now here the experiments are also repeated in ladies' salons, and they furnish a good spectacle to all.' A generation later, Mary Shelley would write her novel Frankenstein, and specifically credit Galvani's experiments as an inspiration. But his work also inspired further research by another Italian scientist, one who didn't buy the idea of 'animal electricity.' His name was Alessandro Volta. He suspected that the frog's body didn't secrete electricity, it conducted it. Soon Volta was stacking pieces of zinc and silver and, instead of animal tissue, cardboard soaked in brine. The electrifying result was the first 'voltaic pile,' forerunner of the batteries we use today. As you may have guessed, Volta's name lives on in our word for that unit of electrical measurement, the volt. Despite his scientific mistake, Galvani achieved a measure of linguistic immortality as well. Today you'll find his name inside a word that means to 'jolt' or 'jump-start': galvanize. Incidentally, if you're having a hard time picturing Galvani's many experiments, there are lots of illustrations on the Web, including here and here. http://galvanisfrog.com/Home.php http://www.batteryfacts.co.uk/BatteryHistory/Galvani.html -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: U.S. 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

[Portions of this episode were first broadcast November 1, 2008.] Apple core, Baltimore! Ever play the rhyming game where you eat an apple, then shout 'apple core,' and then the first person to respond 'Baltimore!' gets to decide where (more specifically, at whom) the core gets tossed. This old-fashioned game is hours of fun for the whole family! We promise. 'A fish stinks from the head down.' When an Indianapolis woman is quoted saying that, she's accused of calling someone a stinky fish. She says she wasn't speaking literally, insisting that this is a turn of phrase that means 'corruption in an organization starts at the top.' Who's right? Dude, how'd we ever start using the word 'dude'? The Big Grantbowski traces the word's origin--it's over 125 years old. Here's a poem about dandy dudes from 1883 , the year the word zoomed into common use. Ben Zimmer at Visual Thesaurus also has a very good summary of what is known about 'dude.' Quiz Guy John Chaneski drops by with a puzzle involving overlapping words. He calls it, of course, 'Overlap-Plied Linguistics.' If you're hung over, and someone offers you a little 'hair of the dog,' you can rest assured you're not being offered a sip of something with real dog hair in it. But was that always the case? Grant has the answer, and Martha offers a word once proposed as a medical term for this crapulent condition: veisalgia. A new resident of Pittsburgh is startled by some of the dialect there, like 'yinz' instead of 'you' for the second person plural, and nebby for 'nosy.' For a wonderful site about the dialect of that area, check out Pittsburgh Speech and Society . If someone says he 'finna go,' he means he's leaving. But finna? Grant has the final word about finna. Good news if you've wondered about a word for recognizable images composed of random visual stimuli—that image of Elvis in your grilled-cheese sandwich, for example. It's pareidolia . In this week's 'Slang This!,' a member of the National Puzzlers' League from Boston tries to guess the meaning of four possible slang terms, including labanza, woefits, prosciutto, and moose-tanned. At Murray's Cheese in Grand Central Station, the workers who sell cheese are called 'cheesemongers.' The store's opening up a new section to sell cold cuts, and workers there are looking for more appetizing term than 'meatmonger.' (Meat-R-Maids? Never mind.) Martha and Grant try to help. At sports events in North America, we enthusiastically root for the home team, right? But a woman from Kenosha, Wisconsin, says an Aussie told her that they most assuredly don't do that Down Under. There, he tells her, rooting means 'having sex.' Is he pulling her leg, she wonders? -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: U.S. 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

Time for another linguistic mystery. Where would you be if you decided to go twacking around duckish, and then you came home and wrote about it in a scribbler? Any idea? If you're going twacking around duckish, you're likely in Newfoundland. The type of English spoken there may be the most distinctive collection of dialects in Canada. Some of it sounds a lot like Irish-accented English. Other dialects in Newfoundland have echoes of the speech of immigrants from the West Country of England. Visit Newfoundland, and you'll be greeted by some colorful vocabulary. The verb to twack means 'to go shopping and ask about the prices, but then not buy anything.' I guess that's the Newfie version of 'window shopping.' Duckish means 'dusk' or 'twilight.' And a scribbler is a 'notebook.'   If you want to hear some terrific examples of Newfoundland English, check out the International Dialects of English Archive online. http://web.ku.edu/idea/northamerica/canada/newfoundland/newfoundland.htm Here's another online treat for word lovers: the Dictionary of Newfoundland English. Start rummaging around on this lovely site, and you'll discover a yaffle â that means an armful â of great words, like dumbledore. That's right, spelled just like the Harry Potter character. In Newfoundland, a dumbledore is a 'bumblebee.' We'd love to know what regionalisms have caught your ear lately. Send them along to words@waywordradio.org. As they say in Newfoundland, we'd be wonderful happy to hear from you. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: words@waywordradio.org Phone: U.S. 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

Time for another linguistic mystery. In what part of the country would you be likely to hear older folks using the following phrases? 'He sure was mommucking his little brother.' And: 'Why, those kids used to play meehonkey every afternoon!' And: 'Ohhhhhhh, I was quamished in the stomach.' Give up? The place you're likely to hear the words mommucking, meehonkey, and quamished is called Ocracoke. It's just off the North Carolina coast -- one of the Outer Banks barrier islands. Settled by the British in the early 1700s, Ocracoke's small, relatively isolated community developed its own distinctive dialect. One of the dialect's most striking features is its pronunciation. In the so-called 'Ocracoke brogue,' the expression 'high tide' sounds more like 'hoi toid.' On the island, you'll also hear some words that you won't find in many other places. Mommuck means to 'harass' or 'bother.' Quamish means 'queasy.' And old-timers on Ocracoke remember playing the island's special version of hide-and-seek. They call it meehonkey. You can hear some audio clips of Outer Banks English here, from the North Carolina State's Language and Linguistics Program. http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/english/linguistics/code/Research%20Sites/ocracoke_audio.htm And for a great introduction to the topic, check out Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks, by linguists Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes. http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/english/linguistics/code/Research%20Sites/ocracoke/hoitoidebook.htm And here you'll find video of O'cokers, as they call themselves, in conversation. http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4811 What regional expressions have caught your ear lately? Email us at words@waywordradio.org.   --- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time to solve another linguistic mystery. You're in a restaurant. You overhear a conversation at the next table. The woman says to her friend, 'You know, I just love the taste of joe floggers.' And her dining companion replies enthusiastically, 'Joe floggers? Oh, so don't I!' Okay, so where would you likely to hear people talk about the joys of 'joe floggers'? Well, chances are you'd probably be in...New England, most likely coastal Massachusetts or Maine. There 'joe flogger' is a name denoting a variety of culinary treats. It may be a pancake stuffed with plums, or it may be a kind of doughnut. They're sometimes known as 'joe froggers' or simply 'frogs.' And, as is typical with many food names, 'joe frogger' also does double duty as the term for yet another confection: a large, molasses-flavored cookie. So how about the enthusiastic expression 'So don't I!'? This odd construction actually expresses agreement, not disagreement. For example, someone might say, 'I like ice cream,' to which you'd reply, 'So don't I!' meaning 'I do, too!' It's been called 'the Massachusetts negative-positive.' But the truth is that 'So don't I!' is found in pockets throughout New England. And its origins remain a puzzle. Speaking of puzzles, I'll be back with another linguistic mystery next time. In the meantime, I'd love to know what regional expressions jumped out at you the first time you heard them. Email me at words@waywordradio.org. Want to try baking your own batch of joe froggers? Here's a recipe. http://www.cakespy.com/2008/08/not-joe-mammas-cookies-legend-of-joe.html Like what you hear? If you'd like to support 'A Way with Words,' you can make a contribution here. http://www.waywordradio.org/donate/ -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Where in the world would you be likely to find sculch in your dooryard, or ask for just a dite of cream in your coffee? Martha has the answers in this minicast about some distinctive regional terms. ... Here's a linguistic puzzle for you. Suppose you stopped by my home and said, 'Martha, did you know there's sculch in your dooryard?' That's right, sculch in my dooryard. So, in what part of the country would you expect to hear these terms? The answer? We'd probably be in New England, and most likely Maine. There the word 'sculch' means 'trash.' And in much of New England and part of New York State, you'll often hear people refer to the yard near a house as the dooryard. Over the next few weeks, I want to talk with you about regional expressions like these. Terms that will be perfectly familiar to those who live in one part of the country, but mystifying -- or even jarring -- to those living somewhere else. Or, as they say in Maine, to someone who is 'from away'-- that is, anywhere other than their state. Another word you'll find mainly in Maine is dite. It's spelled either D-I-T-E or D-I-G-H-T. In Maine, the word 'dite' means 'just a little, a smidge.' As in, 'Oh, give me just a dite of butter,' or 'Move over just a dite, will you?' It appears the term 'dite' comes from a Scots word that means the same thing, and derives in turn, from a Dutch word that means 'a small coin.' Well, that's just a dite about some of the words you'll hear in New England, especially in Maine. We want to know what regional expressions you found jarring the first time you heard them. Email us at words@waywordradio.org. By the way, if you want to hear some recordings of the distinctive Maine accent, check these out. http://web.ku.edu/idea/northamerica/usa/maine/maine.htm Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go clean out the sculch someone left in my dooryard. ... Like what you hear? If you'd like to support 'A Way with Words,' you can make a contribution: http://www.waywordradio.org/donate/ Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2009, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Obamamania, Obamabot, Obamathon, Obamamentum— the list of variations on the name “Obama” goes on and on. Is there an English word that means “the in-laws of your son or daughter”? And what does it mean when someone says, “Well, that was odder than Dick’s hatband!”?Read full show notes, hear hundreds of free episodes, send your thoughts and questions, and learn more on the A Way with Words website: https://waywordradio.org/contact. Be a part of the show: call 1 (877) 929-9673 toll-free in the United States and Canada; worldwide, call or text/SMS +1 (619) 800-4443. Email words@waywordradio.org. Twitter @wayword. Copyright Wayword, Inc., a 501(c)(3) corporation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen: Can you guess what this is? 'Huup huup huup . . . huup huup huup . . . huup huup huup.' No, it's not Morse code. Not a baby chimp. It's the sound of the hoopoe. Funny-looking bird, the hoopoe. It has a pink head, zebra-striped wings, and what looks like a great party hat of pink feathers tipped in black and white. The hoopoe's flight is somewhat erratic, more like a butterfly than a bird. One other odd thing about hoopoes: their nests are extremely stinky. Hoopoes line their nests with their own droppings, all the better to keep predators away. Even the bird's name looks weird: It's spelled h-o-o-p-o-e. The hoopoe is found in much of Europe, Africa, and Asia. In many cultures, this bird is highly regarded. The Biblical King Solomon is said to have taken advice from a hoopoe. In fact, just last year Israelis voted the hoopoe their country's national bird. In other cultures, though, the hoopoe isn't so well-regarded. In Greek myth, this otherworldly bird was a symbol of death. And in France, the hoopoe has long been considered stupid. Maybe that's because of its colorful, clownish appearance, although I'm sure the nest thing didn't help. So, why am I telling you all this? In ancient Rome, this bird that went 'huup huup huup' was called the upupa. Logical enough. In Middle French, this name evolved into something that sounded more like uppe. It's likely that from this word for the bird arose the modern French 'dupe,' a shortening of 'tete d'uppe' or 'hoopoe head.' In French, a 'dupe' is a 'fool or simpleton.' As you may have guessed, it's this French word dupe from which we get the English word 'dupe' â someone who's been played for a fool. We're hearing this word more and more, as the sordid details of Wall Street scandals emerge. And each time I come across that word 'dupe,' I can't help but hear the distant call of the hoopoe. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Last week we talked about words that came from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Gas prices have been all over the place, but worse still than high gas-prices are accidents caused by DWT, which is short for 'driving while texting.' Legislation and rules were considered in municipalities across the country to stop people from sending text messages on their phones while driving, though few bills seem to have passed. Thanks to high fuel prices, the word gas-sipper made a comeback in 2008. It's the opposite of a gas-guzzler. If a car sips gas, it consume less. Another approach to conserving fuel would be hypermiling. This word, created in 2004, was Oxford University Press's word of the year for 2008. It means to take extraordinary measures to conserve fuel, things like turning off the engine when going down hills, avoiding the brakes, and drafting behind larger vehicles. Drafting means riding up close where wind resistance is less. This approach to fuel economy is stock in trade for the carborexic. That's a person who is energy anorexic, meaning they do things like never use air-conditioning, turn off their refrigerators when they go a way for the weekend, and fill the few lights they use with low wattage bulbs. And that's it for our word-of-the-year minicasts. You can find more words of the year at the web site of the American Dialect Society, at americandialect.org. Also, on our web site at waywordradio.org, you can find more minicasts, news about language current events, and full episodes of our call-in show, all at no cost to you. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hockey mom, mavericky, snow machines, and--how could we forget that other memorable phrase from the 2008 presidential campaign?--lipstick on a pig. Some new and not-so-new terms leapt onto the national stage during Gov. Sarah Palin's run for the vice presidency. Grant discusses these expressions as our 'Word of the Year 2008' series continues. We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Last week we talked about the acronym PUMA. When Sarah Palin took the stage this year as a surprise pick for the Republican vice-presidential nomination, the election changed. Her hugely popular public appearances, her good looks, and her role as a Washington outsider served as catalysts for new words and catchphrases. For example, she described herself as a hockey mom. It's a decades-old term for someone who spends a great deal of time passionately aiding her children's interest in the sport that uses a puck and a stick. The only difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull, she was fond of saying, is lipstick. So, when Barack Obama said in a speech, 'You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig,' many people assumed he meant to call Palin a pig. The brouhaha about that was called Lipstick-gate by some press and commentators. That's not the only term that Caribou Barbie, as some people have called her, brought to the fore. Her constant use of the term maverick led writer and actor Tina Fey to use the word mavericky in her Saturday Night Live impressions of Palin. It simply means 'having maverick-like qualities.' Also, through interviews and background news stories, the other 49 states learned that Alaskans call snowmobiles snow machines, though there's nothing new about that, and that they often refer to the country beyond Alaska as Outside. That's all about Sarah Palin-inspired words of the year. Next week we'll talk about Olympic-related words of the year. ---------- You can support this program by making a donation at http://www.waywordradio.org/donate/. Thank you! -- Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2008, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices