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.

Read the original blog post and listen to this episode.

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

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.

Thank you “Wisconsin man” for asking about big-box stores. Exactly what I’ve been asking every time I hear that term used.

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.”

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”

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.”

Rick - thanks for the report from Down Under! (Come to think of it, what do you guys call us? “Up Over”?)

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.

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….

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?

Podcast listener chiming in late…

If you’d like to see an amazing collection of desire paths, check out the Desire Paths pool on Flickr.

Divinentd, I’m chiming in late myself here, but it’s kind of cool to see all of those in one place! Thanks for posting that.