In this episode, Martha and Grant honor winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes, those wacky awards for weird academic research, and they help a caller decipher a puzzling word from a personals ad: what does paratereseomaniac mean?

Download or listen to this episode.

A electronic teenager repellent? An alarm clock that runs away from you to make you’ll wake up? Yep, it’s theIg Nobel Prizes, those awards for academic research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. Martha and Grant honor this year’s winners for linguistics and literature.

A caller shares colorful expressions from her Texas-born mother, including turkey tail and I’m gonna snatch you bald-headed. She also wonders why her mother says bread and butter every time they’re walking together and an object in their path makes them step to either side of it.

A pair of business partners disagree whether to use one word, website, or or two words, Web site.

Greg Pliska presents a groaner of a quiz about world capitals. Let’s just put it this way: the number of puns in this quiz will be Dublin exponentially.

A former resident of Buffalo, New York, puzzles over a strange word in a 12-year-old personals ad. What exactly is a “paratereseomaniac with extensive knowledge of osculation”?

A former Navy man has a pet peeve about using the word utilize instead of use.

Did Gary Owen invent the word insegrevious? And is there a category for words that can mean anything you want them to?

This week’s “Slang This!” contestant learns the difference between a trailer queen and soup spitter.

A wife seeks consolation because her husband always implores her to “drive safe” instead of “drive safely.” Martha says if he really loves her, he’ll use an adverb. Grant says it’s a message of love, so maybe the -ly doesn’t matter so much.

You may have learned that an estuary is where a river meets the sea, but a reference librarian asks whether she should eschew estuary as a word for the confluence of freshwater bodies. Martha and Grant tide her over with some more information.

Read the original blog post and listen to this episode.

What was the web site address that replaced stumper? This was given to the reference librarian.

Thanks
Bonnie

Bernard Minster said:

Simply typing paratereseomania in google.com gives numerous pages with clear and detailed definitions…..perhaps your listener should have done that!

Yep, Bernard, that’s true. But A) Not everyone uses the Internet (though I’d rather give up my phone and my postal mail than give up my Internet). B) The word is ambiguous even if you do look it up. Did the man who placed the personals ad mean he was interested in new things or did he mean he was interested in voyeurism? C) It’s an interesting word to talk about, so why not do so?

I wanted to help you guys out and resolve your debate with “website”. It’s one word! No more need to fight! It’s funny, I remember having this debate with one of our editorial team over ten years ago. (Also note that the wikipedia entry on this lists “website” as the primary entry.)

The main thing that gets me about this is how people say “Web” as an adjective must be upper case because the Web is a proper noun. We don’t say “Earthbound”, “Lakefront”, or “Seaside”, do we?

Martha - that old cartoon was also my first introduction to the term “bread and butter” and what leapt into my mind even today as I listened to the podcast. It was also many years before I heard an explanation.

P.S. “E-mail” has a dash. You’re welcome.

P.P.S. You didn’t correct the pronounciation of “Oregon” for the estuarian caller. For shame.

P.P.P.S. I noticed Grant said “fewer than 25 years”. Isn’t that a measurement of time, regardless of having a specific (and large) number of years attached to it?

I make a lot of typos, but I don’t think that’s one. I think it’s tricky these days to use a quarter century as short period of time, given how fast our language and culture (not to mention technology) change these days.

I habitually use “website”, not “Web site”. I’m willing to concede that I’m wrong about the spacing, but not about the capitalization. At my job, most of the web sites I use are not on the World Wide Web. They’re on isolated corporate and government intranets. In this context, “web site” means any set of resources (mostly HTML pages) that are accessed via HTTP with a web browser. If “web” is the medium, not the World Wide Web, then wouldn’t viewing a “Web site” be equivalent to watching a “Television show”?

I think I heard an alternative to “bread and butter” when I was growing up in Chattanooga, TN. I have a vague memory of walking with someone, a girl I think, and passing on the opposite side of a post from her. She said “peanut butter” and told me that I was required to say “jelly”. Notice that both parties were expected to say something. I think this ritual was to explained as warding off bad luck more than as an expression of closeness.

My paternal grandmother used to say “Bread and butter” when a street sign or similar obstacle came between us while we were walking. In her version, the partner was supposed to reply with “Come to supper.” She was also from Texas, as I seem to remember your caller was.

I just got around to listening to this podcast yesterday, and the “insegrevious” discussion reminded me of several things. The caller asked if there is a name for the class of words with indeterminate definition. You called this particular example a “nonsense word,” and I thought of the malapropisms of Norm Crosby and the bombast of Professor Irwin Corey.

In a little less comic vein, I’ve also heard what a minefield of potential litigation it can be to respond honestly to a request for a professional reference, if what you have to say about the person (would he be the referee?) isn’t complimentary. The recommendation would be to say something like, “You’d be lucky to get him to work for you,” which, of course, can be interpreted in at least two conflicting ways.

And, even less benignly, politicians have raised to a high art the practice of misleading with common words. Most recently, the Bush administration has consistently denied any intent to establish “permanent” bases in Iraq. Now we learn that they have convinced the Iraqui government to sign off on a “long-term” presence with no stated time limit. Bush & company were obviously choosing their words very carefully, fully aware that nothing in this universe is truly “permanent,” so they couldn’t be held accountable if we interpreted their earlier pronouncements to mean that there may come a time in the future when we no longer occupy Iraq. It is clearly not their intention ever to leave, for as long as they remain in power.

Dan

Dear Martha and Grant:

A woman called in questioning whether there are freshwater estuaries.

Yes, freshwater estuaries are found along the Great Lakes, including Lake Michigan’s Mink River Estuary that the caller referred to. Over 20 freshwater estuaries are found along Wisconsin’s Lake Superior shore.

Freshwater estuaries share several characteristics with their salt water cousins. They occur where river water mixes in a shallow coastal wetland with water from the sea, in this case, one of the inland seas we call the Great Lakes. They are ecological transition zones providing important habitat shared by species that use both the river and lake.

While not influenced by lunar tides, freshwater estuaries have tide-like water level fluctuations called a “seiche” (pronounces “saysh”). Seiches are caused by changes in wind and barometric pressure that create oscillations in lake water levels, “sloshing” lake water into an estuary. The water level change can be dramatic, up to several feet, and can last from minutes to days.

Freshwater estuaries are recognized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which administers the National Estuarine Research Reserve program to promote estuary research, education, and stewardship. Twenty-seven estuaries are currently designated within this nation-wide network, including one freshwater estuary located on Lake Erie.

Freshwater estuaries are gaining notoriety because of the new Wisconsin Freshwater Estuary Initiative. Along Wisconsin’s Lake Superior shore, communities and citizens are participating in the process to designate a Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve. This will become the second freshwater estuary included within NOAA’s national system and will raise awareness of freshwater estuaries throughout Wisconsin and the Great Lakes.

Thanks to this initiative, you will be hearing the term “freshwater estuaries” more in the future!

The Wisconsin Freshwater Estuary Initiative website,
http://freshwaterestuary.uwex.edu is a great place to learn more.

Cathy Techtmann
Lake Superior Freshwater Estuary Center Coordination Team Member
Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center, UW-Extension Office
29270 County G, Ashland, WI 54806 715.685.2671, FAX: 715.685.0036
http://www.uwex.edu/ces/nglvc

UTILIZE
A caller gave a definition of “utilize” something like this: employing an object for something it wasn’t designed for, as a dime in lieu of a screwdriver. No, I thought, “utilize” is simply a stilted substitute for “use.” But Martha said something like, “I’m looking in the dictionary and it agrees with you.” Good, I thought, I was wrong and am about to learn something. But the definition that she read did not resemble at all the caller’s definition! I know that you want to be polite to your callers, but saying that the dictionary agrees when it doesn’t agree merely encouraged the caller to go out and set up his website that will repeat that phony distinction.

While Hemingway and I have always liked to cling the Chicago Manual of Style as gospel, I have to say that I feel the time has come to admit that the World Wide Web has gone beyond brand name and has been intergrated into the language as a common noun.

No matter how many equalizers would like us to use “hook and loop tape” rather than Velcro or “adhesive bandages” instead of Band-Aids it remains that brands with longstanding monopolies can and do change the language and are managing to do it at an alarming rate in the information age.

We no longer capitalize crock pot or trampoline and both started out as brand names in the past 50-75 years.

I do agree with Grant that the use of “web” is destined to die… The concept is a bit precious. At 25, the use of the phrase “world wide web” seems stilted–I say net more often than not–

It’s interesting to me that in typical notation of web addresses (in advertising etc) has already dropped the “www.”

Will enjoy watching it evolve…

Viv

Seth:

Regarding Web site vs. website, I found most of the arguments convincing. (Yeah, that doesn’t help much, does it?)

You’re reminding me of a favorite expression: curate’s egg.

Well, I still have to agree with Viv here (and think Viv said it much better than I did)!