Have you ever eaten a Benedictine sandwich? Or savored a juicy pork steak? What’s a favorite dish you grew up with that may be mystifying to someone from another part of the country? Also, what does it mean to tell someone to put a snap on the grouch bag?

Audio for download or listening online will be available Monday, May 5th. To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program.

A rugby referee from Indiana calls to ask if his sport is the origin of the word touchdown as it is used in American football.

How do you pronounce the word patronize? Is one pronunciation used if you say “Don’t patronize me!” and another one if you say “We patronize local businesses”?

Why do we say political campaigns that are in a dead heat? Why dead and why heat?

We play bingo on the air with Quiz Guy John Chaneski. His motives are not B9!

A woman who went to school in New Orleans reports she was startled the first time she heard residents of the Crescent City talk about making groceries rather than buying them. Grant explains the French origins of that expression.

A listener who recently played in a Boggle tournament wants to know why we speak of seeding such a competition.

The German word über has found a place in American English. A New Jersey man says he and his colleagues find it to be more versatile than a Swiss Army knife, as in, “He is uber in the middle of that situation,” “That was an uber meeting,” and “You guys are the language ubers.”

An Indianapolis caller wants to know about curious expression she heard from her Aunt Harriet: put a snap on the grouch bag. You would think it means “Stop complaining!” but she says it refers to making sure your valuables are secure. What’s the grudge?

Martha and Grant discuss more regional food terms. If you order Albany beef in upstate New York, for example, don’t be surprised if you’re served fish.

This week’s Slang This! contestant grapples with the slang terms squish and optempo.

What’s the trouble with using the expression drink the Kool-Aid to connote blind, unquestioning obedience to a politician? A caller is bothered by the grisly origin of the phrase—a reference to the 1978 mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana—and thinks it’s being used inaccurately, in any case.

A caller is curious about the odd expression to who laid the rail, which is used to mean, among other things, “thoroughly, completely, excessively.” You can see Grant’s work on the term at the Double-Tongued Dictionary.

Read the original blog post and listen to this episode.

There is a story (disputed, as you can read here) that Julius Marx got his nickname because of his grouch bag.

A related phrase used in Indiana by my mother is, “to who tied the pup.” I don’t know where it came from, but I took it to mean without limit, as in, “It rained to who tied the pup.”

Madrad, thanks! Hadn’t heard that one. Will add it to the collection!

Kent, did you read the quote you’re linking to? It’s a literal use of “drink,” not a figurative one. It does not antedate the earliest known *figurative* use of the phrase “drink the Kool-aid” in print (or variants), which is the meaning we are discussing on the show. The earliest known print use is from 1987.

The quote from the Wolfe book on page 278 shows that the use there is literal and not figurative, and, therefore does not apply. The full quote is about the various actual experiences of people drinking the Kool-Aid LSD mix. The ellipses here are in the original:

“There was one girl who was wrestling with God. She was with friends, and I think she was all right after a few hours. There was one man who became completely withdrawn…I want to say catatonic, because we tried to bring him out of it, and could make contact at all…he was sort of a friend of mine, and I had some responsibility fo getting him back to town…he had a previous history of mental hospitals, lack of contact with reality, etc., and when I realized what had happened, I begged him not to drink the Kool-Aid, but he did…and it was very bad. These are the only two people I know of who did have bad experiences, but I’m sure I wasn’t in contact with everyone.”

Stephen, maybe your coffee shop should start serving every cup with a Euro Bun. (Don’t mind me — I’m just idly anagramming….)

Here’s the rest of the story on “to who laid the rail.”

Your caller heard the phrase as he grew up in Des Moines. Grant mentioned that most people heard the phrase from the mayor in “The Music Man.”

“The Music Man” is the work of Meredith Wilson…from Iowa.
He set it in River City, a fictionalized version of his home town, Mason City.

Perhaps “to who laid the rail” was popular in Iowa in the early half of the 20th century.

Fried filled pastries:

Grant didn’t mention some of my favorites: the Russian pierogi, Cornish pasty/oggy, Jewish knish, and of course Chinese wontons/potstickers/eggrolls and relatives, like Philippine lumpia.

>>>>>When one buys Benedictine spread at the store it is a pale green color due to added food coloring.

Peter, you’re right about that. I spent my childhood actively avoiding Benedictine because it just looked so weird. But it’s pretty tasty eatin’. Never had it with bacon, although I can see how that would appeal to carnivores.