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

Here's a riddle: 'Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven.' Think you know the answer? You'll find it in this week's episode, in which Grant and Martha discuss this and other old-fashioned riddles. Also: how did the phrase 'going commando' come to be slang for 'going without underwear'? And which word is correct: 'orient' or 'orientate'? To go commando means to 'go without underwear.' But why 'commando'? An Indiana listener says the term came up in conversation with her husband after one of them had a near-wardrobe malfunction. She mercifully leaves the rest to the imagination, but still wonders about the term. Grant says its popularity zoomed after a popular episode of 'Friends.' Watch the clips here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0JgkuNBuWI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q--6wtCPHg8&feature=related A woman who grew up in India says she was baffled when someone with aching feet complained, 'My dogs are barking.' The answer may lie in a jocular rhyme. Martha is baffled when Grant shares another riddle involving 'four stiff standers, two lookers, and one switchbox.' Can you figure out the answer? To-ga! To-ga! To-ga! John Chaneski's latest quiz, 'Classics Class,' has the hosts rooting around for the ancient Greek and Latin origins of English words. Those who commute coast-to-coast are 'bicoastals.' But what do you call someone who commutes along the same coast--between, say, Miami and New York? A woman who now travels regularly between Northern and Southern California to visit the grandchildren wonders what to call herself. She's already considered and nixed 'bipolar.' The hosts try to come up with other suggestions. Remember when no one ever thought about adding the suffix '-gate' to a word to indicate a scandal? Now there's Troopergate, Travelgate, Monicagate, Cameragate, Sandwichgate, and of course, the mother of all gates, Watergate. Grant talks about the flood of '-gate' words inspired by that scandal from the 1970s. An Atlanta listener seeks clarification about the difference between may and might? Might 'may' be used to express a possibility, or is 'might' a better choice? In this week's slang quiz, a member of the National Puzzlers' League http://www.puzzlers.org from Somerville, Massachusetts tries to guess the meaning of bottle room and shred, as used in the context of snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing. Do you cringe when you hear the words orientate and disorientate? A copy editor in Waldoboro, Maine does. She'd rather hear 'orient' and 'disorient.' The hosts weigh in on that extra syllable. They were the last words Abraham Lincoln heard before John Wilkes Booth assassinated him: 'Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside-out, old gal--you sockdologizing old man-trap!' Booth knew that this line from the play 'Our American Cousin' would get a big laugh, so he chose that moment to pull the trigger. A Wisconsin listener wants to know the meaning and origin of that curious word, 'sockdologizing.' If you want to read the whole play, which has some silly wordplay and a dopey riddle or two, it's online at Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3158 Does one take preventive or preventative measures? A caller in Ocean Beach, California who just graduated from an exercise science program wants to know which of these terms describes what she's been studying. -- 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

The British publishers of the Collins dictionary have announced 24 words on their endangered species list. They're words like 'vilipend,' which means 'to treat with contempt,' and 'nitid,' that's n-i-t-i-d, which means 'glistening. ' The editors warn that if they don't see evidence of these words being used in everyday speech and writing, they'll drop them from the dictionary's next edition. They've even set deadline for the doomed words: February 2009. But they've also offered the public a chance to weigh in, and vote for which words deserve a reprieve. Sure, it's a great publicity stunt. But I have to say that the thought of any word being voted off the lexical island makes me wince. I understand, of course, that culling the herd is a necessary evil. First, there's the economic reality of dictionary publishing--more words mean more pages, and more pages mean more costs per unit. Still, I have to tell you I was aghast to realize that on the list was one of my favorite words ever. The word is caducity--c-a-d-u-c-i-t-y. Caducity. It means 'perishability, transience.' More specifically, it can denote 'the infirmities that accompany old age.'   Caducity comes from the Latin word 'cadere,' which means 'to fall.' The same root produced other falling words, like 'cascade' and most likely, 'cadaver,' literally, 'one who has fallen.' So what I love about this word is that tucked inside it' is a picture of falling away, like leaves in autumn. You might speak of 'the caducity of fame' or the 'caducity of nature.' Or you might say, 'I worry about my parents' growing caducity.' There's a wistful beauty about this word. And it's not just poetic, it's musical. Listen: caducity. Contrary to what you might think, lexicographers say it's incredibly hard to coin a word that sticks around long enough to wind up in the dictionary. Same goes for self-conscious efforts to revive words that have become obsolete. But I'm convinced that 'caducity' has hardly outlived its usefulness. So I'm asking you to join me: Adopt it as your own. Use it. Drop it into casual conversation. Put it into a poem. On a vanity license plate--I don't care. Just use it. Another thing lexicographers tell us is that just because a word isn't in a dictionary, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So regardless of what the Collins editors decide in February, I'm going to hang on to this one. Then again, if we all start using it, maybe we can save this lovely word from, well, caducity. Check out the other words on Collins list here. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3046488/Collins-dictionary-asks-public-to-rescue-outdated-words.html -- 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

Reading the OED from A to Z (minicast) Word nerd Ammon Shea quit his job as a furniture mover in New York City to spend an entire year reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary. The result, in addition to eyestrain, headaches, and skeptics' puzzlement, was Shea's new book, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 pages. Martha talks about what he learned along the way. http://ammonshea.com/oed.html Years ago, I covered a story for a sports magazine about Tori Murden, a woman trying row a 23-foot boat across the ocean. She set out from the Canary Islands with four months' provisions...and little else: No motor, no sail, no support vessel traveling along with her. And after 81 days, and 2,962 lonely miles at sea, she reached her goal, becoming the first woman ever to row a boat across the Atlantic. But for Murden, the challenge of rowing an ocean was nothing compared to the struggle of trying to explain why she'd done it in the first place: Why endure crushing boredom, blazing heat, chilling rain, blisters, and backaches day after day - all in order to row a little boat from one continent to the next?   Recently I thought of Murden while I was reading a book about, of all things, dictionaries. It's by Ammon Shea, and it's called...'Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages.' You see where I'm going here: When it comes to dictionaries, Shea is into extreme adventure. This book chronicles his quirky quest to scale the Mount Everest of lexicography: the great Oxford English Dictionary. Shea is besotted with words. In fact, he quit his job as a furniture mover in New York City in order to spend a whole year reading the OED. He writes that he did so to find out 'what words there are for things in the world that I had always thought unnamed.' And find them he did. Words like: Petrichor (PEH-trih-kerr). That's p-e-t-r-i-c-h-o-r. It means 'the pleasant smell of rain on the ground, especially after a dry spell.' You knew there should be a word for that, right? Or how about 'apricity'? That word denotes 'the warmth of the sun in winter.' Or how about 'balter,' 'to dance clumsily.' Now that's handy. Trudging though page after page, the author suffers headaches, eyestrain, and a growing ghastly pallor from long days reading in the basement of a New York. Fortunately for Shea, his girlfriend is a former lexicographer for Merriam-Webster - and, one assumes, an extraordinarily patient person. Shea's long march from A to Z is often exhilarating, sometimes numbing. His heart sinks upon realizing that the section of words starting with the prefix 'un-' -- as in 'unabandoned, unable' -- goes on for 451 pages. He write: 'By the time I've read one hundred pages I am near catatonic, bored out of my mind, and so listless I can't remember why I wanted to read any of this in the first place.' After pressing on through the letter U, Shea is rewarded with gems like velleity, which means 'a mere wish or desire for something without accompanying action or effort.' And zoilus. A zoilus is an 'envious critic.' As for the question 'Why?' Shea has a ready answer. He writes that he read the dictionary cover to cover because, quite simply: 'It was the most engrossing and enjoyable book I've ever read.' It's also why, after finishing the last page, he writes, he happily started over. And I thought I was a big word nerd. And now, I have to get back to some dictionary-diving myself. -- 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

The world of politics tops this week's language headlines, including an explanation of the Bradley effect, and the ongoing debate over bilingual education. Also, what does the word fubsy mean? Grant has the answer, and reports about a new favorite blog described as 'LOLcats for smart people.' Ever since it started looking like Barack Obama was more than a long shot for his party's nomination, pollsters, and pundits have been talking about the 'Bradley effect.' It's when polls show a black political candidate way out in front. And yet, when the votes are cast, the black candidate barely wins or doesn't even win at all. As William Safire writes in the New York Times, the expression comes from Tom Bradley's loss of the governorship of California in 1982. Then, polls predicted that he would win, but, in fact, he lost by a small margin. Many people felt that Bradley, who was black, lost because hidden racists wouldn't admit to pollsters their true intentions. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/magazine/28wwln-safire-t.html Also in the campaign coverage is an ongoing discussion of bilingual education. Is it better to teach immigrant children only in English or should we teach them in a language they already know? http://tinyurl.com/5xrt93 That's the premise of a debate on the New York Times Education Watch blog. The presidential candidate's views come under some scrutiny by a couple of experts, but most interesting are the reader comments. One wrote, 'I am struck by how much the debate about the quantity of English in the classroom quickly devolves from a sensible search for the best strategy, to an ideological war that produces some very silly teaching strategies.' Speaking of campaigns, ever heard of the word fubsy? Well, British dictionary publisher Collins is threatening to cut that and other archaic words from its dictionaries. It's mainly a public relations effort, but they've succeeded in bringing out the word-lovers to nominate and mull favorite archaic words of their own. Fubsy, by the way, means 'short and stout.' http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4798835.ece http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1847038,00.html And finally, it's the latest in a long line of many similar sites, but a new favorite blog is Wordsplosion. There you'll find photographs of English gone wrong. Like the grocery store sign that says 'dairy choices.' And under that it says 'cheese and cheese.' http://www.wordsplosion.com -- 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

A listener in Brazil challenges Martha's pronunciation of the odd English word antipodes. Their email exchange leads Martha to muse about a favorite collection of poems, where she first encountered this word. ... Recently on our show, I made a linguistic boo-boo. Did you catch it? We were talking about the word 'podium.' A listener named Joel called to say that the word 'podium' originally denoted something you stand on. But more and more, people are using it to mean something you 'stand behind.' Joel was none too happy about that. I told him he was right about the roots of the word 'podium,' even though its meaning has changed. M: I feel your pain Joel. Absolutely, podium comes from ultimately from a Greek word meaning 'foot.' G: Yeah, but that doesn't mean -- M: Hear me out. Hear me out! It's like podiatrist, the doctor who looks after your feet. It's like antipodes, the people on the other side of the world from us, exactly. There's a big old foot in that word. J: There sure is! Did you catch my mistake? One of our listeners in Brazil did. Luciano emailed from Sao Paolo to say I'd mispronounced that word for people on the other side of world. A-n-t-i-p-o-d-e-s, he wrote, isn't pronounced 'ANN-ti-poads.' It's 'ann-TIP-uh-dees.' - he's right! 'Ann-TIP-uh-dees' means, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it: 'Those who dwell directly opposite to each other on the globe, so that the soles of their feet are, as it were, planted against each other.' It's a poetic word, 'ann-TIP-uh-dees,' those Greek roots conjuring an image of people standing sole to sole, yet separated by an entire planet. The English word 'ann-TIP-uh-dees' was originally plural in form, referring to lots of people. The singular version, 'ANN-tih-poad,' came only later, by a process linguists call back-formation. In any case, my only excuse for mispronouncing the word is this: In elementary school, I'd seen that singular form, 'ANN-tih-pode,' and just assumed that the plural would naturally be 'ANN-ti-podes.' You may be wondering why an elementary-school kid would run into the word 'antipode' at all. Let me tell you about a book of poems that I just love. It's called 'Grooks' by Piet Hein. If you're not familiar with it, you're in for a treat. Hein was a 20th-century Danish scientist, poet, and designer. He was always trying to bridge the gap between art and science, which is probably why he counted among his close friends both Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. He also wrote short, insightful poems in Danish, English, and another passion of his, Esperanto. Here's a pithy poem called 'Problems': Problems worthy of attack Prove their worth By hitting back. Nuff said. Here's one that he called 'A Psychological Tip': Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, And you're hampered by not having any, The best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, Is simply by spinning a penny. No - not so that chance shall decide the affair While you're passively standing there moping; But the moment the penny is up in the air, You suddenly know what you're hoping. I tell you, I've used that tip more times than I can count. And finally, the poem that introduced me to the word 'antipode.' It will steadily shrink, our earthly abode, until antipode stands upon antipode. Then, soles together, the planet gone, we'll know the ground that we rest upon. The book is called 'Grooks' by Piet Hein. Here are some more examples of his poems. http://www.chat.carleton.ca/~tcstewar/grooks/grooks.html --- 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

Mmmmmaverick. Maverick, Maverick, Maverick. Maverick, Maverick, Maverick, Maverick. Maverick. Is it just my imagination, or are we hearing this word a whole LOT more lately? You usually hear it applied a politician who's staunchly independent and stubbornly non-conformist. But where'd we get an odd word like this? The answer involves a Texas political dynasty that added not one, but two, familiar words to English. Samuel Augustus Maverick was 19th-century Texas lawyer who went into politics. He was elected mayor of San Antonio in 1839 and later served in the Texas State Legislature. He also speculated in land deals. And he owned cattle, which he kept on a 385,000-acre ranch. In those days, cattlemen didn't always fence in their land, which meant their animals often roamed free. So, ranchers branded their cattle to prevent theft, and resolve disputes over ownership. Well, all the ranchers, that is, except for Samuel Maverick. Maverick was notorious for refusing to brand his own livestock. So whenever his neighbors saw an animal without a brand, especially a calf that had strayed from its mother, they'd say things like, 'Oh, that must be a Maverick.' Maverick told people he considered branding cruelty to animals. Skeptics, though, charged that by refusing to brand his animals, Maverick could then lay claim to any unbranded cattle as his own. Over the years, this term for a 'stray, unmarked calf' also came to apply to any kind of strong-willed nonconformist, particularly a politician not 'branded' by special interests. And the linguistic legacy of this Texas family goes even further. The Mavericks can take credit for yet another familiar English word that involves politics: That word is gobbledygook. Ggggobbledygook, gobbledygook, gobbledygook, gobbledy--well, you get the picture. Anyway, it turns out that Samuel Maverick's grandson, Maury Maverick, also went into politics, eventually serving in the U.S. Congress. A folksy, plainspoken Texan, Maury Maverick was appalled by the fog of stuffy, obfuscatory, bureaucratic language that hangs over and permeates Washington. In 1944, he penned an official memo to his colleagues and subordinates, urging them to speak and write in plain English. The memo read in part: 'Stay off the gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For Lord's sake, be short and say what you're talking about... Anyone using the words 'activation' and 'implementation' will be shot!' Talk about a real Maverick. Congressman Maverick later said he wasn't sure why the crazy word gobbledygook popped into his mind at just that moment. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'I was thinking of the old bearded turkey gobbler back in Texas who was always gobbledy-gobblin' and struttin' with ludicrous pomposity. At the end of this gobble there was a sort of â 'gook.'' In any case, both 'gobbledygook' and 'maverick' turned out to be way too useful to be forgotten. Both found their way into dictionaries--and onto the front page, especially in this election year. -- Get your language question answered on the air! Usage, grammar, spelling, punctuation, slang, old sayings, other languages, speech, writing, you name it. Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some people wouldn't be caught without the season's latest fashions, and others never leave home without their asthma inhaler. But for some of us, what strikes fear into our hearts is the thought of being caught without a book. Jeanie in Wisconsin has that kind of passion for audiobooks and calls to ask Martha and Grant to give her a name for her condition. If you have an idea for what this fear should be called, tell us about it! -- 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

[This episode first aired January 19th, 2008.] Does your family use a special word you've never heard anywhere else? A funny name for 'the heel of a loaf of bread,' perhaps, or for 'visiting relatives who won't leave.' In this week's episode, Martha and Grant discuss 'family words,' and Martha reveals the story behind her own family's secret word, 'fubby.' Why do we say that someone who's pregnant is 'knocked up'? The hit movie starring Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen has a caller wondering about this term. A man whose last name is McCoy wants a definitive answer about the origin of the expression 'the real McCoy.' He's been told it comes from the name of turn-of-the-century boxing champ Kid McCoy. Is that really the case? A Michigander wants to know about the difference between 'titled' and 'entitled.' She'd assumed that a book is 'titled' Gone with The Wind and a person is 'entitled' to compensation for something. Grant and Martha explain it's a little more complicated than that. Quiz Guy Greg Pliska presents a quiz about 'False Plurals,' based on the old riddle: What plural word becomes singular when you put the letter 's' at the end of it? (Hint: Think of a brand of tennis racket, as well as the former name of a musical artist before he changed it back again.) Quick, which is faster? Something that happens 'instantly' or that happens 'instantaneously'? A caller wants to know if there's any difference between the two. A Brazilian has been researching why actors use the unlikely expression 'break a leg' to wish each other well before going on stage. He suspects it's a borrowing of a German phrase that means, 'May you break your neck and your leg,' but he's not sure. A caller who lived in the Bay Area during the 1960s remembers using the word 'loosecap' to describe someone who's 'not playing with a full deck.' He wonders if he and his friends are the only ones to use it, as in, 'Don't be such a loosecap!' This week's 'Slang This!' contestant tries to decipher the slang phrases 'dance at two weddings' and 'put the big pot in the little pot.' She also shares her own favorite slang terms for 'crumb crusher,' 'rug rat' and 'ankle biter.' By the way, you can read Grant's essay about slang terms for small children, 'Sprogs in a Poop Factory,' here. His column about language appears every two weeks in The Malaysia Star newspaper. A caller fears that the term 'Indian giver' is politically incorrect, and wants an alternative to teach her children. A Princeton University student wonders if his school can lay claim to being the first to apply the Latin word 'campus' to the grounds of an institution of higher learning. By the way, if you want to read about more family words, check out Paul Dickson's book, 'Family Words: A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Families.' Here's hoping all of you are happy fubbies! -- 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

A caller from Imperial Beach, California has a punctuation question: Dr. Tei Fu Chen and his wife, Dr. Oi Lin Chen own and operate a large, multinational herbal food company. In company literature, the two doctors are referred to in several ways. The caller wants to know which is the best choice. Which of the following would you pick, and why? 1. The owners, Doctors Chens, are experts in the field. 2.  The owners, Doctor Chens, are experts in the field. 3.  The owners, Doctors Chen, are experts in the field. 4.  The owners, the Doctors Chen, are experts in the field. See if your answer agrees with the one Martha and Grant decided on. -- 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

Grant has the latest headlines from the world of language, including the debate over the name of the home of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Is 'Beijing' pronounced 'bay-JING' or 'bay-ZHING'? Also, a recent court decision concerning an offense that's coming to be known as 'Talking While Spanish.' And what's the origin of the phrase 'the skinny'? -- 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