Unless you’ve been hiding out in a galaxy far, far away, you know that this is an election year. Grant and Martha talk about current political slang. Ever hear of “glass pockets”? Or “horseracism”? Is there an etymological connection between “caucus” and “Caucasian”?

Audio for online listening or download will be available Monday, March 17th. To be notified automatically when downloadable audio is available, subscribe to the show via iTunes or another podcatching program.

A caller wants to settle a friendly argument: Is something not worth debating called a “moot point” or a “mute point”? Here’s the scene from the Friends episode that Grant mentions, in which Joey misunderstands the term as “moo point.”

A listener calls from in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to say that in her native Spanish, she can use several different words for “love” to denote a whole range of feelings, depending on how close she is to the other person. She’s frustrated that English seems to lack that same spectrum of words meaning various degrees of love.

What’s a “barbecue stopper,” and how does it differ from a “marmalade dropper”?

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water…Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a quiz about punny taglines from famous movies. For example, which Johnny Depp film’s tagline is “His story will touch you, even though he can’t”?

Back to political talk: Is there an etymological connection between the words “caucus” and “Caucasian”? A caller wants to know. Grant explains what politicians and watchdog groups mean by the term “glass pockets.”

A California man complains that the expression “grow your business” grates on his nerves.

A San Diego woman who’s homeschooling her children wonders if there’s a formula that explains why nouns like “teacher” and “writer” end in “–er,” while others, like “professor” and “conductor,” end in “-or.” She suspects it has to do with whether the words come from Latin roots or Anglo-Saxon roots.

This week’s “Slang This!” contestant shares his favorite slang term, “teho,” (To Each His Own), then tries to puzzle out the meaning of the terms “karzy” and “low-bush moose.”

An upstate New York listener of Italian descent is curious about two favorite expressions: “fuggeddabouddit” and “bada-bing, bada-boom.”

A Texan says his grandmother used to refer to the thigh of a chicken as the “second joint.” Martha and Grant discuss whether it’s a regional term. By the way, if you want to know the French term Martha mentions that roughly translates as “only a silly person won’t eat it,” (literally, “the idiot leaves it”) it’s “le sot-l’y-laisse.”

Read the original blog post and listen to this episode.

During the discussion of “ba-da-bing” it was stated that this terms earliest use was thought to be 1972. In 1968, I worked in a boutique that had been taken over by people who were “soldiers” of Whity Tropicanno, the infamous Boston mob boss. The room used by the seamsteresses became a lounge for numerous unsavory types, inforcers, hitmen, etc. I frequently witnessed their small-talk and the term “ba-bing” was used accompanied by the unmistakable thumb-and-forefinger gesture indicating a pistol firing.

I understood the term to be essentially an onomatopoeia for the two sounds made by an automatic pistol, the report and the “ping”sound of the discharging shell casing. There is a closely-related expresion in British street gang/hip-hop vernacular popularized in the USA by Sasha Baron Cohen in his Ali Ji persona. It is: “Booya” which apes the sound of a sawn-off shotgun being fired. The extended version is: “Booya-kasha” which includes the sound of the pump slide chambering the next round.

I can’t agree, Leo. You’re leaving out the possibility of a metaphorical use of “grow.” Further, you seem to only be accounting for a brick-and-mortar understanding of a business. And, finally, you seem to be suggesting that the business world isn’t the real world.

When business people talk about “growing a business” I believe they are talking about tending to the kinds of human dynamics that make better workers and attract more customers. These are organic, social activities, and are directly related to our existence as social animals.

Growing applies perfectly to a business because business is above all a type of real-world human social activity, and is, therefore, susceptible to the kind of nurturing that can, for example, stimulate intellectual growth in its employees. The business and its employees can also lay foundations for what they believe will increase their business in a way that metaphorically resembles what a farmer does when she tills soil, plants seed, weeds, culls, and harvests.

I’d say resistance to language like “growing a business” represents a literal-mindedness that is a barrier to comprehension.

Haha, Marc. You all can either keep your third class seats on the Peever’s Express as it rides rusty rails to nowhere or you can join the rest of us we board rocket ships to the future. It’s your call, but trust me, the company’s better where we’re going.

I agree 100% with Grant and 0% with his detractors Hudden and Dudden (a.k.a., LeoKulonosen and MarcNaimark) who apparently think that growing crops/plants/etc. is just sitting around doing nothing. Think again, lads!

Can a relationship not grow? Even if you don’t pour water on it? Can society not grow? Even though its growing members are not literally planted in the ground? And can a language not grow? Despite the fact that it shrivels up from time to time with the woeful misconceptions of usage Nazis?

MarcNaimark said:

I think we don’t have to simply lie down (or since we no longer care about the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, “lay down”) and accept every bit of nonsense the consultants of “corporate speak” throw at us.

And yet… I’m no great fan of corporate speak either (anyone for a game of Buzzword Bingo?), but is it any less legitimate a source of language change than, for example, hip-hop or TV shows?

@MarcNaimark;

In English, many transitive verbs have become intransitive, and vice versa. I choose to say “lie (down)” for recline because “lay” is a different word with a different meaning. Moreover, when English creates new vocables it doesn’t rely as heavily on transitive prefixes (e.g., be-) as it once did. Only time will tell whether or not the expression “grow a business” will last. If not: who cares? If so: who cares? (other than English-as-I-learnt-it-in-the-olden-days pedantic reactionaries such as yourself.) I guess facial hair could be considered a crop too; that is, if you can grow a beard—or do you suggest we use the tried-and-true (albeit hackneyed) “wear a beard”?

And, Martha, it’d be nice to know what you think. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but it would be a boon to us all if you would give us your 2¢ on slightly polemic issues such as these, instead of just saying things like “LOL!”, “I like it, I like it!”, “I am so stealing this”, etc. I sincerely do not mean any offense. You are one of the most articulate women I know (honestly). Grant may hate your puns, but I find them exquisite. So, tell us whatcha think!

Here is an example:

All this time, I imagined our challenges in growing the business had to do with beating the competition, finding qualified people to hire, winning over new customers, and our current customers increasing their marketing budgets.

Why not say:

All this time, I imagined our challenges in scaling up the business had to do with beating the competition, finding qualified people to hire, winning over new customers, and our current customers increasing their marketing budgets.

I grant your point. Grow is more poetic. But when you are hiring people and getting more customers and expecting that alone will somehow beat the competition, I grab for my wallet! We start entering the netherworld of Frank Luntz. Enron was going to bring cheap energy to the masses; don’t go too deep into the particulars, only us financial wizards understand that.

It depends. I think the context can make it clear. I’m not saying we should always use “grow” and use it only. There are plenty of words that have to do with the increase of a business. On the other hand, many of those are open to misinterpretation as well. “Downsize”, for example, seems just as vague as (if not more so than) “grow”. I am aware that people can use words poetically to appeal to our emotions but it’s very difficult to be 100% literal, even in science. For even there, terms that now have a specific meaning once had a very general sense. Take “testa”, for example. In English, this refers to the coat of a seed. In Vulgar Latin this meant “head” (as in “noggin”) and before that, it meant “pot” (as in “vessel”). True, “grow a business” is relatively new, but who knows whether it will go the way of “23 skidoo” or remain in our language as has “OK”? Only time will tell. (Doh! There’s another one them doggone crazy clichés!)

Re: “scaling up”. Are we climbing the business? Are we attaching objects such as shingles to it? Are we fattening it up so that it will weigh more? Ay-ay-ay!

Why don’t we just ask some CEO’s and high-ranking staff members what they mean by “growing a business”? Doing so may yield some valid points that we may have missed here.

Oops… I just realized that the beginning of my previous post should read, “On the lack of different word for ‘love’:” That’d make more sense…

felixblackcat said:

Oops… I just realized that the beginning of my previous post should read, “On the lack of different word for ‘love’:” That’d make more sense…

Aargh! Then I go and make a typo in my correction! That should be “words,” of course!

Thanks for the recommendation, Wordsmith, and PUT DOWN THE RAZOR! :-p

Wordsmith said:

“PUT DOWN THE RAZOR!”

My dad, barbate since the year dot, tells me the same. But the sad fact is I don’t beard well.

’sides, when I do grow one, I hate getting food stuck in it! YUCK!

Oh, well…

Wow, you managed to introduce me to a new word, “barbate,” and a new idiom, “since the year dot”! Congratulations!

English does indeed take the blame for inconsistency—Chaucer could rarely decide on a particular spelling for many of his words—plus, Shakespeare’s six known signatures each bear a different spelling… On the other hand, that’s probably the nature of signatures: who signs his/her name in print?