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

[This episode originally aired February 16, 2008.] There are nearly 7,000 languages in the world today, and by some estimates, they're dying off at the rate of one every week. What's lost when a language dies? Martha and Grant discuss that question and efforts to record some endangered languages before they die out completely. A caller named Holly confesses that there's a word that practically makes her break out in hives every time she hears it. Grant assures her she's not alone in her aversion to the word--Holly, cover your eyes--'moist.' Grant and Martha discuss the psychological aversion some people have to certain common terms. Is there a word that makes you shudder in disgust? Unload in our discussion forum. An Indianapolis woman calls to say she a great first date with a doctor, but was horrified to hear him suggest they meet at an 'expresso' shop. She asks for dating advice: Should she correct the guy, keep quiet about this mispronunciation, or just hope he never orders espresso again? Would you go out on a second date with someone who orders a cup of 'EX-presso'? A California man says that he thinks he is increasingly hearing locutions like '50 is the new 30' and 'pink is the new black' and 'blogs are the new resume.' He's curious about the origin of this 'X is the new Y' formula. You may recall earnestly singing 'Kumbaya' around a campfire. But a caller observes that the title of this folk song has taken on a new, more negative meaning. Grant and Martha discuss the new connotations of 'Kumbaya,' especially as used in politically conservative circles. Puzzle Guy Greg Pliska presents a puzzle about William Snakespeare--you know, the great playwright whose works are just one letter different from those of his better-known fellow writer, William Shakespeare. It was Snakespeare, for example, who wrote that gripping prison drama, 'Romeo and Joliet.' Grant talks about a Jack Hitt article on dying languages in the New York Times, which points out that sometimes 'the last living speaker' of a language...isn't. A caller named Brian wonders whether a co-worker was right to correct him for saying that something minor was 'of tertiary concern.' Does 'tertiary' literally mean 'third,' or can it be used to mean more generally 'peripheral' or 'not so important'? A Milwaukee man is mystified about the use of the word 'nee' in his grandmother's obituary. A 'Slang This!' contestant guesses at the meaning of the slang terms 'faux po' and 'pole tax.' A caller is curious about the colloquial expression 'it has a catch in its getalong.' She used it to describe the family's faulty car. Her husband complained the phrase was too imprecise. Grant and Martha discuss this and similar expressions, like 'hitch in its getalong' and 'hitch in its giddyup.' A California caller is puzzling over the expression 'have your cake and eat it, too.' Shouldn't it be 'eat your cake and have it, too'? Grant tells the story of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who revived the use of Hebrew outside of religious contexts. In 1850, no one spoke Hebrew as an everyday language; now it's spoken by more than 5 million. That's all until next week! May your getalong keep getting along. --- 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 is the first of our 2008 summer minicasts, offered only online.] We hear a lot about political candidates these days. But did you ever stop to think about where the word 'candidate' comes from? Martha says it goes back to an ancient Roman fashion statement. She also explains the etymology of the term for what drives so many candidates: 'ambition.' -- 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 week we announce our 2008 summer minicasts, offered only online. It's what we're calling an 'estival festival.' -- 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 originally aired January 26 and 27, 2008.] In this episode, a listener says his friend Harold likes to do social phoning while driving, so he's invented a term for mindless calling while in the car. And no, it's not 'car-pe diem.' Also, Martha and Grant also discuss the rules of the road games 'padiddle' and 'slug bug.' Maybe you know it as 'perdiddle,' but a Wisconsinite shares memories of playing 'padiddle.' You need at least two people in a car, an oncoming vehicle with a headlight out, and, depending on which version of the game you play, you need to be prepared for kissing, punching, ceiling-thwacking, beer-buying, or stripping. Grant describes the Volkswagen-inspired of another road-trip game, 'slug bug.' A listener from Falmouth, Maine, disagrees with his Canadian friends about how to pronounce the word 'aunt.' He says it shouldn't sound like the name of the insect. But is that the way most people pronounce this word for your mother's sister? A Hoosier says her friends tease her about the way she says 'doofitty' when she can't think of the right word for something. Grant and Martha discuss the long list of linguistic placeholders, including 'whatchamacallit,' 'doodad,' 'deely-bobber,' 'doowanger,' 'doojigger,' 'doohickey,' 'thingamabob,' 'thingummy,' 'thingum,' and 'thingy.' A California man remembers going to the neighborhood bakery back home in Illinois and ordering 'bismarcks.' But these days he rarely hears this term for 'jelly doughnut,' and wonders about its origin. This week's Slang This! contestant guesses at the meaning of the slang expressions 'wigs on the green' and 'fake and bake.' Grant and Martha read emails from listeners with suggested explanations as to how the term 'biffy' came to mean 'portable toilet.' They also discuss listener's own stories about saying 'bread and butter' when companions step around an obstacle that divides them. Popeye does that little 'bread and butter' step about 5:47 into this clip that Martha was talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0av3fmr0sDc We also promised words for the experience of noticing a word for the first time and then feeling like you're seeing it everywhere. Here are a few: diegogarcity, the recency Illusion, and the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. A retired professor wants to know if Latin grammar holds any clues about whether a female professor is properly addressed as 'professor emeritus' or 'professor emerita.' Finally, a woman who grew up playing 'Duck, Duck, Goose' is surprised to hear that her niece and nephew play 'Duck, Duck, Gray Duck' at their preschool in Minnesota. The hosts take a gander at regional variations of this children's game. And with that, we're ducking out of here until next week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

(This episode first aired January 5, 2008.) Ding! In this week's episode, Mark Twain would be pleased. Reports that it's the end of the line for the typewriter have been greatly exaggerated. Well, slightly anyway: it's not the horseless carriage return yet. Martha and Grant wax nostalgic about the pleasures of pecking away at a rumbling, shuddering Selectric. A newspaper headline about a faltering legislative proposal prompts a caller to ask: Should they have written 'floundering' or 'foundering'? A longboarder reports she and her fellow surfers refer to young surfers as 'groms' or 'grommets'--not to be confused, of course, with 'hodads' and 'kooks.' But where'd that surfing lingo come from? Greg Pliska presents a punny political puzzle about the names of presidential candidates. A listener says his sister reprimanded him for using the term 'rule of thumb.' She says the expression derives from an old British law that allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick, as long as it's no wider than his thumb. Is that story true? A caller wonders if the acrobatic 'alley-oop' in basketball is connected with the V.T. Hamlin comic strip, 'Alley Oop.' Is 'irregardless' a real word? A caller wants his wife to stop saying it. Good thing he loves her regardless! A commuter hears a radio report about an organization that's 'giving away condoms like they were going out of style.' But, he wonders, if they're really 'going out of style,' then why are they so popular? Isn't the phrase 'giving them away like they were going out of style' contradictory? In California, everybody gets a little crazy when those hot, dry winds called 'Santa Anas' start blowing. A caller asks the origin of the name. Is it a translation of Spanish for 'Satan's wind'? By the way, here's how novelist Raymond Chandler described that meteorological phenomenon in his short story, 'Red Wind': 'There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.' That's all the hot air we have time for this week! -- 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 December 15, 2007.) In this episode, Martha and Grant discuss advertising slogans and product names supposedly botched in translation. 'Biting the Wax Tadpole'? It's the wacky title of a new book by language enthusiast Elizabeth Little which has Martha and Grant talking about whether Coca-Cola and Chevrolet ran into cultural translation problems when selling products abroad. Did the Chevy Nova really sell poorly in Latin America because 'No va' means 'don't go' in Spanish? A caller wants help understanding a phrase he saw in 'Sports Illustrated': 'enough money to burn a wet dog.' Other callers have weird words on their minds, including 'biffy' (meaning 'toilet') and 'gedunk' (meaning 'ice cream' or 'a snack bar' where you might buy sweets). Greg Pliska has a quiz about chemical names that should exist but don't. A caller asks about how lakes get named and we talk about a lake with a 45-letter Indian name that may or may not translate as, 'You fish on your side, I fish on my side and nobody fishes in the middle.' It's Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. A caller from Indiana wonders if the T9 text-messaging function has led to the term 'book' being a new term for 'cool.' This week's slang contestant learns about the slang terms 'bluebird' and 'corpsing.' A New York caller is incensed by the verb 'incent' and a California listener is puzzled when his Southern relatives observe that his new baby is 'fixing to tune up' whenever she's about to start crying. A caller from San Diego has a friendly disagreement with friends about the phrase bald-faced lie v. bold-faced lie. ---- 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.(This episode first aired December 15, 2007.) In this episode, Martha and Grant discuss advertising slogans and product names supposedly botched in translation. They also recommend an eclectic mix of books for the word-lover on your holiday list, from military slang to Yiddish. 'Biting the Wax Tadpole'? It's the wacky title of a new book by language enthusiast Elizabeth Little which has Martha and Grant talking about whether Coca-Cola and Chevrolet ran into cultural translation problems when selling products abroad. Did the Chevy Nova really sell poorly in Latin America because 'No va' means 'don't go' in Spanish? A caller wants help understanding a phrase he saw in 'Sports Illustrated': 'enough money to burn a wet dog.' Other callers have weird words on their minds, including 'biffy' (meaning 'toilet') and 'gedunk' (meaning 'ice cream' or 'a snack bar' where you might buy sweets). Greg Pliska has a quiz about chemical names that should exist but don't. A caller asks about how lakes get named and we talk about a lake with a 45-letter Indian name that may or may not translate as, 'You fish on your side, I fish on my side and nobody fishes in the middle.' It's Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. A caller from Indiana wonders if the T9 text-messaging function has led to the term 'book' being a new term for 'cool.' This week's slang contestant learns about the slang terms 'bluebird' and 'corpsing.' A New York caller is incensed by the verb 'incent' and a California listener is puzzled when his Southern relatives observe that his new baby is 'fixing to tune up' whenever she's about to start crying. A caller from San Diego has a friendly disagreement with friends about the phrase bald-faced lie v. bold-faced lie. ---- 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

In this episode, Grant offers a peek at some expressions he's nominating for the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year vote in January. Will it be 'w00t,' 'subprime,' or something else? You can also check out Grant's longer look at 'word of the year' contenders in The New York Times Week in Review section on Sunday. Get out your plastic utensils and pull up a folding chair! A caller's question about the origin of the word 'potluck' stirs up mouthwatering memories of crispy fried chicken, warm peach cobbler, and Jell-O salad with marshmallows. Okay, the Jell-O salad not so much. But still, whether you call it a 'pitch-in,' a 'carry-in,' 'dinner on the grounds,' a 'covered-dish supper,' a 'Jacob's supper,' a 'faith supper, or a potluck, it's all good eatin'! An Indiana listener complains that he can't stand to hear presidential candidates pronounce the word 'pundit' as 'pundint.' Greg Pliska adds an apt and all-round admirably appealing appraisal of alliterative ability. Meaning, our Puzzle Guy presents a quiz about words that start with the same letters. May we just say that Greg gives great game? A Florida eighth-grader wants to know if a word she memorized for a spelling bee is real: 'agathokakological.' Easy for her to say. An American cartographer for the United Nations reports that he and his British wife disagree over whether 'lollygolly' is a real word that means 'to dawdle.' Martha and Grant show the mapmaker where to draw the line. Martha and Grant discuss a couple of strange new words making the rounds: 'lecondel' and 'earmarxist.' This week's 'Slang This!' contestant finds out whether the word 'puddle' is a slang term for part of a car's muffler and if the expression 'hang paper' involves flying kites. A Pennsylvania caller asks to clarify the difference between 'who vs. that.' Finally, just in time for holiday get-togethers, Grant and Martha provide some linguistic family therapy to solve a mother-daughter conflict over whether 'nummy' is a legitimate term. Mom says it's perfect for describing a delicious meal, but her daughter finds that kind of language embarrassing. Is nummy a real word? Open the hangar, here comes the answer! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a brand-new season here on 'A Way with Words!' To celebrate, Martha and Grant are noodling with anagrams--including the one in the title of this episode. Also: A New York schoolteacher asks, 'Why do we call our little finger a 'pinkie'?' Another caller snickers over a newscaster's attempt to pronounce the word 'homage.' A Hoosier who's been hanging out on motorcycle discussion boards is curious about the origin of the term 'do-rag.' 'Why is an undesirable task is called a 'g-job,'' asks a crew member on the set of the Fox Television series '24.' Martha shares a trick for remembering the answer to that perennial question: 'Does a comma go inside or outside the quotation marks?' The hosts weigh in on whether the expression 'very fun' is grammatically correct. What the heck is a 'podsnicker,' anyway? Puzzle-man Greg Pliska joins us for a recap of 2007--in limericks! Finally, is your DVD player always flashing '12:00'? A caller wonders if there's a word for a society ruled by children, something along the lines of 'patriarchy' and 'matriarchy.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Grant goes through the mailbag, offering answers about the terms 'nosy parker,' 'out of pocket,' and about whether the word 'falsehood' has its origins in medieval garb. He also throws a question out to listeners about what is supposedly a mild British oath, 'butternut!' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Remember Tom, the guy who's still trying to remember a word he insists he learned long ago meaning 'the points on a compass'? That call generated a boatload of more proposed answers from listeners. But one response stood out above all the others, so Martha and Grant go back to Tom for a third time with what they hope is the right answer. PLUS: Brand-new, one-hour shows will start appearing in the podcast feed November 21st. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices