Welcome to another newsletter from "A Way with Words"!

Where the heck have we been? Working on a brand-new season, that's where. It starts this coming weekend. That's right–brand-new episodes, chock full of languagey goodness, sweet linguistics, and honey-coated grammarific advice.

If you've been waiting for new content all summer, you should've been subscribing to the podcast or visiting the web site. We've been posting some special online-only minicasts and there are more to come.

Two recent minicasts:

Indo-European language — Many of the world’s languages apparently derived from a prehistoric common ancestor known as Indo-European. But since no one ever wrote down a word of it, how do we know what it was like?

Family names for toilet-paper tube — Does your family have a word for the cardboard tube left over from a roll of toilet paper? A caller says his family refers to them "oh-ah, oh-ahs." Turns out many families have their own terms for them, including "drit-drit," "dawda dawda," "hoo-hoo," "to-do," "taw-taw," and "der der."

Who can resist holding a cardboard tube up to the mouth to toot and toodle? (That's us: Toots and Toodle, the language lovers.)

Onward: What do you call the new wife of your ex-husband? Well, you guys definitely know! We asked this question on the air and we were flooded with responses. That's one silver-lining to divorce, we guess: fodder for radio shows.

Here's a partial list of the names suggested:

wife-in-law — the most-common suggestion
spouse-in-law — variant of above
step-wife — the second-most common suggestion
next-wife — also common
beta
better third
conseque
neogam
neospon
neouxor — from neo + uxor, Latin for "wife"
newcon
newpard
newspon
nouvelle or nouvelle femme
novux
nuspon
respouse
rewife
sponseque
subspon
twife
wasband's wife
wife2
x-ux — the new wife is re-dux

Elsewhere on the Internet are these tidbits of interest (that's titbits to you cross-ponders; Australians probably call them something colorful and opaque):

Dave Wilton at WordOrigins.org has been working his way through the etymologies of the elements. Here are a few:

We'd be negligent if we didn't mention that Grant's day job (yes, he steps out on you with other language-lovers–it's not you, it's him) has him putting together words-of-the-day, little brain munchies for the thinking set. Check out the Wordnik words of the day here:

Finally, a thankful "F-U!" to Oxford University Press, which sent along a copy of the brand-effing-new third edition of "The F Word," a dictionary about that famous four-lettered friend that's so fun to say but sure to draw fines. Thanks for the freebie!

See you on the radio,

Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett
Co-hosts of A Way with Words

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Post edited 9:53PM – Sep-23-09 by EmmettRedd

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Grant, did you reach your "t" quota in the topic title?

The OED etymology for brome grass is
[ad. Bromus, Bot. name of the genus, in Pliny bromos, a. Gr. {beta}{rho}{goacu}{mu}{omicron}{fsigma} (also {beta}{rho}{gwfrown}{mu}{omicron}{fsigma}) oats.]

and, for "brome", the formerly used in English word for bromine,
[a. F. brome, f. Gr. {beta}{rho}{gwfrown}{mu}-{omicron}{fsigma} stink, smell.]

The two Greek words have identical spellings except for the hyphen. Is the hyphen signifying a compound word, suffix, or something else? BTW, I have never known the grass (or oats) to be stinky or have any smell (while fresh-it has the regular hay curing smell after cutting).

Emmett