In this week’s episode: Just how far back could you go and still understand the English people were speaking? We crank up our trusty time machine to find out. Hint: You’d probably have a tough time getting around in the eighth century, when English poetry looked like: “Hwaet we gardena in geardagum…”

Listen here:

Download the MP3 here (23.4MB).

Discuss this episode in the forum.

Speaking of the more recent past: When you played hide-and-seek as a child, did you yell “Ollie, Ollie Oxen Free”? Or “Ally Ally in Free”? Or maybe “Ally Ally Ump Free”? “Ole Ole Olsen Free”? Or something else? A caller in Montevideo, Uruguay, is curious about the origin of such nonsensical phrases.

It’s the Moby Dick of etymology: “Where do we get the phrase the whole nine yards?” A pediatrician in North Carolina wonders if it derives from a World War II phrase involving “nine yards” of ammunition. Grant and Martha discuss the many theories about this expression. Looking for the naughty story we mentioned about Scotsman and his kilt? You’ll find it on etymological researcher Barry Popik’s site.

Martha and Grant discuss “squeejawed” and other strange terms that mean “crooked,” or “askew,” including “slanchwise,” “whompy-jawed,” “lopper-jawed,” “antigogglin’,” “sigogglin,” and “catawampus.”

This week puzzle-guy Greg Pliska gave a quiz called Categorical Allies or Dandy Dyads. He gave a word and Martha and Grant had to come up with the second word that was in the same category as the first and began with the same two letters that the first one ends with.

So, French was a clue, to which we responded Chinese, the category being languages (though it would work as food, too). The two letters CH end FrenCH and start CHinese.

At the end of the quiz, Greg proposed that listeners come up with a string of more than four items in a specific category that follow the same rules. Greg gave the example of American states. His clue was Alabama. We followed it with Maine, Nebraska, Kansas. Or Maine, New Mexico, Colorado. Each word ends with the same two letters that the next word starts with.

So, to play this here in the forums, come up with a fairly narrow category, such as French authors, computer parts, insects, American presidents, or anything else, and then come up with four items that can be linked together by the pairs of last and first letters. Give everyone else the first clue on the forum and the guessing will commence! Your puzzle playground is here.

A woman wonders about a phrase from her past: “I’m going to beat you like a red-headed stepchild.” Martha and Grant discuss “gingerism,” or prejudice against redheads.

A New York babysitter says the English language needs a word to replace the clunky phrase, “the kids I babysit.” The hosts try to help her find one. “Charges”? “Child associates”? “Padawans”?

This week’s “Slang This!” contestant, a professor of medieval history at the University of Santa Cruz, tries to guess the meaning of the slang terms “quizzam” and “snirt.”

A native speaker of Spanish has a hard time with prepositions in English. Why do we say that someone’s “on my mind” but “in my heart”?

A listener in York, England wonders about the word “grockles,” a derogatory term for tourists.

On an earlier episode we talked about regional differences involving the words “dinner” and “supper,” prompting a whole smorgasbord of responses. Grant reads a few of them on the air.

If you’re still wondering about how far back in time you could go and still understand the English spoken then, check out these links:

Written and audio excerpts from the poem Beowulf.

Written and audio excerpts from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

An NPR report in which host Robert Siegel gets a lesson in pronouncing Shakespeare, based on David Crystal’s research for London’s Globe Theatre.