We all misspeak from time to time, but how about when we mangle words on purpose? Do you ever say fambly instead of family, perazackly for exactly, or coinkydink for coincidence? When Grant recently wrote a newspaper column about saying things wrong on purpose, the response was enormous. Why do many people find such wordplay hard to resist?
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A Pennsylvania minister is curious about a phrase her family uses: by way of Robin Hood’s barn or around Robin Hood’s barn, meaning a long, circuitous route.
How do you pronounce the architectural term beaux arts? (Yep, Grant accidentally left of the final S when he spelled the term on the air.) Is it pronounced boh-ZART, boh-ART, boh-ZAR, or boh-ZARTS? We settle a dispute between a New Jersey woman and her nephew.
Martha shares the winners of a contest for Best Book Titles of the Year. Or would that be Oddest Book Titles of the Year?
Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a puzzle in which we remove the first letter of a phrase to yield another with a different meaning. Try one: originally it was a boxing film starring Robert De Niro. Now it describes a head of cattle that’s perhaps getting on in years.
A Wisconsin woman is trying to remember a term for paths in the grass created by pedestrians taking shortcuts. Grant has an answer for her, straight from the jargon of urban planning professionals. The caller also wants recommendations for a good thesaurus. The hosts’ response may surprise you.
A caller is curious about a slang term she hears from her friends in the military. The word is Jody, and it means someone who steals a soldier’s girlfriend. Grant tells the colorful story behind this bit of military slang, as well as the songs it inspired. Here’s a sample of Jody calls from the Vietnam war and from the Korean War.
Grant and Martha share more intentional mispronunciations, including tar-ZHAY instead of Target.
This week’s Slang This! contestant is not just any word nerd. She’s Dorothea Gillim, creator of the animated PBS series WordGirl. Dorothea tries to guess the meaning of the odd terms pelican crossing and zanjero. The new season of WordGirl starts Monday, May 26th, and airs Mondays through Fridays.
What is janky? A Chattanooga caller uses it describe something inferior or bad.
A Wisconsin man wonders about the use of the term big box store to denote the stores of big retail chains like Wal-Mart. Is big box a reference to the size and shape of the stores, or the fact that they sell huge appliances that come in, well, big boxes? Here’s a silly song from JibJab about bix box stores.
A Pittsburgh man is bothered by people who would say someone wrote an outraged letter. Can a letter really be angry and indignant or is it really the writer who’s upset? Martha answers his question and seizes the opportunity to talk about the four-syllable word, hypallage.
Word I mangle on purpose: Walmart. I refer to it as SqualorMart. Needless to say, I don’t shop there.
10:51AM May-11-08
Shannon Lee
Guest
3
How about, Cheese Whiz (for Gee Whiz)? Or, Hangaburg (hamburger)? Cheese-and-Rice (to replace taking the Lord’s name in vain). Sure love you guys!
Shannon
10:53AM May-11-08
Shannon Lee
Guest
4
Another thought, regarding Beaux Art… it looks and sounds like a boyfriend’s tattoos.
3:34AM May-13-08
Liz
Guest
5
Gee — a MATH security question. That’s scary !!
How about written “improprieties” — such as the capitalization of words in context where they normally are not capitalized? I often copy the style of old titles in A.A. Milne’s children’s books, to emphasize something in a sentence I’ve written. Here’s an example (remember that I live in Georgia):
When it gets hot Down Here, everyone goes indoors.
5:39AM May-13-08
dfilpus
Chapel Hill NC
posts 1
6
Our family refers to J. C. Penny with a faux French prounciation. < Zhay Say Pen-ay' >
7:13AM May-13-08
Wisconsin woman
Guest
7
Thank you “Wisconsin man” for asking about big-box stores. Exactly what I’ve been asking every time I hear that term used.
8:23AM May-13-08
Luke
Guest
8
Where I work we order supplies from Office Depot, and we all call it “Office Despot.”
9:23AM May-13-08
Albert
Guest
9
I first encountered ‘jody’ as a noun and verb to be a synonym with ‘cadence’ as in the calling cadences that Grant gave examples of. The person jodying would be leading the cadence, though I might be mistaken about that.
In a sentence:
“We jodied from the mess hall back to the barracks.”
2:00PM May-13-08
idiosyncratic idiot
Guest
10
I couldn’t help but be taken aback by Grant’s admonition about the use of thesauri - I just love them.
I often find myself ‘type-stuttering’ (damn, there should be a word for that… I think you get what i mean) as I’m posting in the internet and my fledging English keeps me from saying what I want. Then I resort to the online thesaurus and find that elusive word I was trying to remember. (Well, since we’re among nerds here, I fess up: I derive an almost literary pleasure from just browsing randomly through thesaurus.com and enjoying the gamut of the language rainbow).
The very etymology of the word couldn’t make any more sense to me - it is a resource I treasure greatly. Nonetheless, I’ll give OneLook a try; this is not the first time I see people recommend it.
i.i.
2:16PM May-13-08
Joie de Vivienne
Nineveh, Indiana
posts 31
11
dfilpus said:
Our family refers to J. C. Penny with a faux French prounciation. < Zhay Say Pen-ay’ >
My family always said “Jacques Pen-ay”
7:50PM May-14-08
Rick Reid
Guest
12
In Australia a PELICAN CROSSING is a special type of pedestrian controlled road crossing. When the pedestrians are shown the flashing ‘don’t walk’ sign, drivers will see a flashing yellow light. If the crossing is clear of pedestrians the drivers can proceed before the green light is shown. This reduces the amount of time drivers have to stop at lightly used pedestrian crossings.
11:52AM May-16-08
Tricia
San Diego
posts 2
13
Sharing two of your topics from the show, long ago a friend came back from boot camp and shared one of the cadences he had learned there, “Don’t be sad, don’t be blue, my recruiter screwed me too.” Another friend there asked “who is Myra Gruder?” So now, all recruiters are named Myra.
And since I am from San Diego, spanish is much more common than french. So instead of saying thanks with “mercy buckets” I often say “Muchachas Garcias.”
1:58PM May-16-08
ken
Guest
14
Here in Pittsburgh our grocery stores are called Giant Eagle. I like to adopt a humongous Pittsburghese accent and pronounce it “John Ingle.”
Ken — That reminds me that when I was in Georgia once, I saw a chain of grocery stores called “Ingles.” At the time, Spanish was very much on my mind, and my first thought was, “My gosh, that store makes a big point of English being spoken there.” Duh.
4:17PM May-17-08
Bdette
Zushi, Japan
posts 1
18
A word I often mispronounce on purpose is macaroni. In my family, we say it “markonis”.
5:48AM May-18-08
Mariana
posts 17
19
Hey everybody!
I was thinking about the dispute “Beaux Arts”…I think that if you are going to use a foreign language and not the translation, then you should pronounce it correctly…otherwise, use “fine arts”. My first language is Spanish, and I know I cringe when people use “Brava” instead of “Bravo”, so, that is my take on it….
Regarding the use of a thesaurus and using a word out of context, specially if you don’t speak the language well…I have a good example!!! The word “entre” in Spanish can mean 1) to come in (from the verb entrar) or 2) between
I remember one time when a friend of mine who spoke little English and threw a party…He was inviting people into his house and, he first said “come in, come in” and after a while, he started saying “between, between”. I asked him what he meant…He said he got tired of using the same words over and over, so he would use a synonym….
7:07AM May-18-08
Joie de Vivienne
Nineveh, Indiana
posts 31
20
Mariana said:
Hey everybody!
I was thinking about the dispute “Beaux Arts”…I think that if you are going to use a foreign language and not the translation, then you should pronounce it correctly…otherwise, use “fine arts”. My first language is Spanish, and I know I cringe when people use “Brava” instead of “Bravo”, so, that is my take on it….
Regarding the use of a thesaurus and using a word out of context, specially if you don’t speak the language well…I have a good example!!! The word “entre” in Spanish can mean 1) to come in (from the verb entrar) or 2) between
I remember one time when a friend of mine who spoke little English and threw a party…He was inviting people into his house and, he first said “come in, come in” and after a while, he started saying “between, between”. I asked him what he meant…He said he got tired of using the same words over and over, so he would use a synonym….
If I’m not mistaken, people shout “Brava!” (as opposed to bravo) when congratulating a woman specifically, as is customary in Italian. I’m surprised this interjection is not gendered in Spanish also… Hmm…
I can understand why it bothers you in Spanish, isn’t “brava” brave?
Though I accept it as technically correct, I do agree though that it sounds a bit pretentious. Then again, I was nearly a gender studies major in college and taught to reject all gendered words, particularly those that mark females
I remember one time when a friend of mine who spoke little English and threw a party…He was inviting people into his house and, he first said “come in, come in” and after a while, he started saying “between, between”. I asked him what he meant…He said he got tired of using the same words over and over, so he would use a synonym….
LOL, Mariana. Good one! And I share Joie’s question. If you’re cheering for a woman in Spanish, what would you say?
6:59PM May-18-08
Mariana
posts 17
22
Hey Martha!
If you are cheering a female in Spanish you would say Bravo! just as if you were cheering a male. In this case is an interjection to express applause, admiration and it does not have gender.
Bravo means brave, . It can also mean fierce, rough and angry. I all these cases it has gender: bravo and brava.
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