Does your family use a special word you’ve never heard anywhere else? A funny name for “the heel of a loaf of bread,” perhaps, or for “visiting relatives who won’t leave.” In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss “family words,” and Martha reveals the story behind her own family’s secret word, “fubby.”

Download or listen to the episode here.

Why do we say that someone who’s pregnant is “knocked up”? The hit movie starring Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen has a caller wondering about this term.

A man whose last name is McCoy wants a definitive answer about the origin of the expression “the real McCoy.” He’s been told it comes from the name of turn-of-the-century boxing champ Kid McCoy. Is that really the case? (Here’s the Dictionary of Scots Language that we mention in the call.)

A Michigander wants to know about the difference between “titled” and “entitled.” She’d assumed that a book is “titled” Gone with The Wind and a person is “entitled” to compensation for something. Grant and Martha explain it’s a little more complicated than that.

Quiz Guy Greg Pliska presents a quiz about “False Plurals,” based on the old riddle: What plural word becomes singular when you put the letter “s” at the end of it? (Hint: Think of a brand of tennis racket, as well as the former name of a musical artist before he changed it back again.)

Quick, which is faster? Something that happens “instantly” or that happens “instantaneously”? A caller wants to know if there’s any difference between the two.

A Brazilian has been researching why actors use the unlikely expression “break a leg” to wish each other well before going on stage. He suspects it’s a borrowing of a German phrase that means, “May you break your neck and your leg,” but he’s not sure.

A caller who lived in the Bay Area during the 1960s remembers using the word “loosecap” to describe someone who’s “not playing with a full deck.” He wonders if he and his friends are the only ones to use it, as in, “Don’t be such a loosecap!”

This week’s “Slang This!” contestant tries to decipher the slang phrases “dance at two weddings” and “put the big pot in the little pot.” She also shares her own favorite slang terms for “crumb crusher,” “rug rat” and “ankle biter.” By the way, you can Grant’s essay about slang terms for small children, “Sprogs in a Poop Factory,” here. His column about language appears every two weeks in The Malaysia Star newspaper.

A caller fears that the term “Indian giver” is politically incorrect, and wants an alternative to teach her children.

A Princeton University student wonders if his school can lay claim to being the first to apply the Latin word “campus” to the grounds of an institution of higher learning.

By the way, if you want to read about more family words, check out Paul Dickson’s book, Family Words: A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Families.

Here’s hoping all of you are happy fubbies!

Read the original blog post and listen to this episode.

My suggestion for “Indian giver”.

On the model of “regifting” and “regifter”: degifter (and degifting… which has no equivalent, so we are usefully expanding the lexicon of bad behavior).

–Marc Naimark

Marc, now you have me wondering about “disgifting.” I kind of like that even better, since it’s so close to “disgusting”!

Martha,

Maybe “disgifting” is too strong. But there could also be “ungifting”.

I’m still sticking with “degifting”. And I thought about the noun “degift”, and an expression, “the degift of love”. That would be when your partner breaks up with you, saying s/he never loved you in the first place.

martha said:

Aris: Is that pronounced NACK-uh-dish?

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It’s pronounced nack-uh-DOUGH-chuss. There’s a great joke about the place. A couple is driving through Nacogdoches on a long car trip and they decide to stop for lunch. In the restaurant they ask the blonde behind the counter to slowly pronounce the name of the place they’re in so they can understand it. She replies, “Burrr-gerrr Kiiiiing.”

Dan

Couldn’t help myself! Here are a few more “giver” alternatives:

- Boomerang giver
- Rebound giver
- Vacuum giver
- Anti-gravity giver
- Antimatter giver
- Mirror giver
- Bouncer (in the sense of “bounced” e-mail)
- Bouncebaby (ditto)

Stop me now! I could do this all day!

best,

Mark S.

Yes, the pronunciation of McCoy, Mackay, and Mackay are variable, which is why there’s no real reason not to believe that Mackay could easily become McCoy. Those spellings are probably pronunciation-derived rather than the pronunciation deriving from the spelling.

When I was growing up we had a family word that we said but never wrote, so I’m not sure how to spell it. I guess it would be “wee” or “wi”. Pronounced like “we.” It means, generally, “Get out of the way, I can’t see the TV.” My brother coined it before he could really talk, I think. When he wanted to see something like the TV, he would just go “Weeeeee!” in this whiny, demanding tone. Over time, it just became a word we used. Only in the very specific context of watching TV and needing someone to move. It was an imperative, a command of sorts. It wasn’t until high school that I really realized that it wasn’t a real word.

So, there you go.

My son’s vocabulary always outstripped his diction in his early years. It was a great source of family slang.

My wife and I still refer to “noo-noos,” his early pronounciation of “noodles.”

For a long time, we used his pronounciation “fraction” as a code-word substitute for “distraction” (a favorite parenting tactic of ours).

Perhaps his greatest mis-proununciation, however, grew out of his early love for dump-trucks. The terminal ‘p” on the end of dump was usually dropped and before he could say the “tr” he would substitute an “f.” Imagine my chagrin when we walked out on our front porch and saw a neighbor getting into his pick-up (which was plenty close enough to a dump-truck for a two-year-old). Justin pointed and shouted — with great emphasis and excitement — “DUMP-TRUCK!!!” It took a bit of explaining to assure the neighbor that he was referring to the vehicle, not the driver (made more difficult by the fact that what actually came out of my boy’s mouth was a fairly accurate assessment!). Anyway, we have continued to this day using the term “Dump-Truck” as an epithet for those who rate it.

“Lumpies”

Those are those little things you find in the toilet or diaper. When I was about 12, as I left the bathroom, my mother asked me I had a “BM.” I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

Grant Barrett said:

She was asking about the British Museum, right?

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Oh yes, that’s it. Certainly. I’m not sure just how I would “have a British Museum” (yikes, that would hurt). It would require a potent laxative to pass that.

One of our family words is “giddy-gump”, which refers to the turn signal in a car. That’s what a small child called it (many years ago) because of the sound, and it just stuck.

Interesting, theBB. Which language is that?