Post edited 7:27PM – Feb-14-09 by Grant Barrett

This week: whether cotton-pickin’ is racist, unintentionally funny headlines, a holiday-song quiz from John Chaneski, whether enormity can simply mean “enormous,” how a person can be such a pill, and pandiculation. It’s good stuff, Maynard!

Listen here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).

To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program.

There’s nothing like an oddly phrased headline to brighten your day. How about “Actor Sent to Jail for Not Finishing Sentence”? Or “Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped”? Same for signs that make you do a double take, like “Senior Citizens! Buy One, Get One Free.” A San Diego caller shares a couple of her favorite oddly worded signs, and the hosts mention a few of their own.

If someone’s driving you bonkers, you’d be forgiven for grumbling, “He’s such a pill!” But why a pill?

Did Grandpa ever enthuse about Grandma’s cooking with the words “Good stuff, Maynard!” A Waukesha, Wisconsin caller remembers his own grandfather doing that, and wants to know how this expression came about.

In an earlier episode, we discussed the slang term sketchy, meaning “creepy” or “alarming” or “suspicious.” Grant shares an email from a listener suggesting a link to the world of amphetamine users.

Just in time for the holidays, Quiz Guy John Chaneski arrives with bagful of puzzling questions about Christmas songs. He invites us to take a familiar holiday tune, change one letter, and guess the name of the new song from his clue. Try this one: “This song tells how animals in the wild—like the lion, wildebeest, giraffe, and elephant—ring in the holidays.” Hint: Pay attention to that word “ring.”

Your brother-in-law the motormouth beats around the bush for so long about something that in exasperation you tell him to “cut to the chase.” The hosts explain the Hollywood roots of this phrase.

When Barack Obama intoned, “I do not underestimate the enormity of the task ahead,” some grammar sticklers recoiled. Pointing to the word’s roots, they insist that enormity means not “large,” but “out of the ordinary.” A caller who’s been following a heated online dispute about this word asks the hosts for a verdict. They give the president-elect a pass.

Remember when Bugs Bunny used to say, “Now wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute!“? A caller wants to know if cotton-pickin’ has racist overtones.

In an earlier episode, we discussed whether there’s a word for “a drawn-out leave-taking”—when, say, a friend says “goodbye” but keeps thinking of “one more thing” to say before exiting. Martha suggested the term doorknob-hanging. Several listeners wrote to say that physicians commonly use the terms getting doorknobbed and doorknob question to mean something similar.

This week’s “Slang This!” contestant, from Cold Spring, Kentucky, tries to tease out the real slang words from the fake ones. Rubber-bands or herkies? An executive handle or a producer’s button?

In certain parts of the South, a small, impromptu gift is variously known by the sibilant synonyms sirsee, surcy, searcy, or circe. A South Carolina woman who’s heard the word all her life is baffled as to where it came from.

Uh-oh. Your credit card’s missing. As you frantically search for it, your mind fast-forwards through the bad things that could happen if it’s been stolen. Then, to your enormous relief, you find the card. Is there a specific word for the immense relief you feel when something you’ve dreaded doesn’t happen?

On the QT means “surreptitiously” or “hush-hush.” Why the letters? Are they an abbreviation?

Martha talks about a favorite Latin-based word: pandiculation. It’s a term that means “the stretching that accompanies yawning.”

By the way, for more strangely worded signs, check out The Bad Sign Brigade on Flickr. For amusing headlines and unfortunate journalistic locutions, we recommend the “Sic!” section of Michael Quinion’s newsletter, available from his site, World Wide Words.

…
Read the original blog post.