Expresso Dating and Dying Tongues

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

You know, Grant, there was a touching story the other day in the Dallas Morning News. Did you see it? It was about the last surviving speaker of the Wichita language. We hear news reports all the time about how there are some, what, 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, but some of those languages are dying off at the rate of about one a week. And I think that story really brings home that idea in a really visceral way.

I’ve tried to figure out why it bothers me so much that the languages are disappearing. I think the key part of it for me, Martha, is that I still believe that each word is a totem of sorts.

A totem?

A totem, yeah. It represents a kind of power. Like, I think about the Amazon jungle. I think about this beautiful resource that might be filled with medicine. We don’t know what these plants will do for us until we try them, and it’s being destroyed slowly. And I think about the languages in the same way that they might actually have medicine for our minds. They might have the cures for our existential ills. I mean, I don’t want to sound too poser-ish about it, but there might be ideas there about why we’re here and why we are the way we are, and we might be losing those ideas.

Right. It’s a way of wrapping your arms around the world.

Right, definitely. And speaking of, there is a new movie out called The Linguist, which is a documentary in which they follow around a pair of linguists who are trying to document those languages. I saw the trio for that. It looks very interesting. I have yet to go see it in the theater, but maybe I’ll take the wife and the boy and we’ll go.

Well, if you’d like to find out more about that film or you’d like to read that story about the Wichita language, you’ll find links at our website. The address is words@waywordradio.org. And if you’d like to talk about any language, living or dead, call us. The number is 1-877-929-9673. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. My name is Holly.

Hello, who is this?

Oh, hi, Holly.

Hi, hi. I’m calling from Indianapolis.

All right. Awesome. And I was actually calling about my incredible hatred, incredible aversion to the word. I can’t even say it. Can I spell it?

Wait, you can’t say it?

I really, really can’t. I will, if you will say it with me. Let me spell it. Can we say this on the radio?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. It’s not an obscene word at all. It makes my flesh crawl.

Oh, my goodness. Okay, ready? M-O-I-S-T.

Moist?

Oh, my lord, Grant, please. I hate this word so much.

Oh, Holly. What do you mean you hate it?

I cannot explain to you. And I tell you, this is an aversion I have had my entire lifelong.

But Holly, moist? I mean, shall I just call it the M-word? I mean, because I don’t want to upset you.

Yes, yes. In my home, my wonderful children, they either call it lotion or emurizer. My partner Tom thought that he could desensitize me to the word by using it as often as possible.

It doesn’t work, does it?

Moist, moist, moist, moist, moist.

Oh, no, please. Oh, Martha, you’re killing me. When you get a bucket of chicken from KFC and it comes with a little lemon scented towelettes, what do you call those?

Just towelettes?

I call them towelettes, yes. And going down the shampoo aisle, or what I love to do is bake at my job. At every job I’ve had, I’ve always been the birthday cake baker. I’m a mom. It’s just what I do. And it is horrifying because I know going in when I bring that cake in that someone is going to come up to me and say, “Oh, Holly, this cake is so very M.”

But let me tell you where you can find out more about this. And you will find that there is a community of people like you.

Oh, poor group. We’re not alone anymore. Believe it or not, there is a Facebook group.

Yes, there is a Facebook group.

I hate the word moist.

That’s what it’s called.

And the last time I checked, there were over 100 people that were in the group.

What?

I am astonished.

Well, Holly, do you feel better having come out of the moist closet on national radio?

I do.

I feel as though I am not alone.

That there are other people.

And when I get off the phone with you, I’m going online and finding me.

Yep, yep.

Go straight to Facebook and then find your brothers and your sisters.

I will.

I will.

I will.

I feel relieved.

Keep up the wonderful work and thank you.

Thank you, Holly.

Take care of yourself.

It was nice to hear from you.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye now.

I feel like I can go get my psychotherapy degree now.

I can’t believe there’s a whole Facebook group of people who hate the word moist.

Oh, no.

And this isn’t a new family.

It’s not like it just burst on the scene.

Mark Lieberman and the gang at Language Log, who again, I’m giving them all due credit for this because they did the legwork on it.

And just the list of stuff that — and it’s not just these words.

There’s many more of these words that people just — it’s real.

It’s not a stunt.

They’re not performing for people to say, “Oh, yeah, wacky me.

I’ve got a word that drives me crazy.”

They are really bothered by these words.

And one of the guys on Language Log, one of the linguists there compared it to synesthesia.

Do you know this word?

Oh, sure.

When people — the man who tasted shapes, right?

Right.

Or you hear a sound and see a color.

Exactly.

Stuff like that.

Exactly.

So your senses are a little bit intertwined in a way that most people’s are not.

Weird.

And I don’t know if that’s the same thing, but it does remind me of that.

Well, Holly, cover your ears.

What do you guys think about moist?

Give us a call.

The number is 1-877-9299673 or let’s talk about it on our discussion forum.

That’s at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Of course, you can always send us an email anytime day or night.

We read everything.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Andrew calling from Golden Hills, San Diego.

Hi, Andrew.

Hi, Andrew.

What’s going on?

What a mellifluous voice.

Oh, thanks.

I have a question for you.

This is about an expression that I keep hearing a lot recently, or I’ve heard a lot recently, and it’s something like X is the new Y.

For example, I saw it at my health club.

There’s an ad for the personal trainers.

It said something like 40 is the new 30.

I’ve also seen things like the blog is the new resume recently online.

I hadn’t learned that one.

It seems to be something, meaning like kind of out with the old and with the new or something is replacing something else.

The first time that I heard this was back in 2007 with my now ex-girlfriend dragging me to see the movie Josie and the Pussycats.

Is that why she’s your ex?

Yes.

Wait, the movie came out in 2007?

What was it exactly that was said in that movie, Andrew?

Well, they were trying to brainwash the generation of kids.

They were trying to say subliminal messages or something, so they’re trying to get you to buy something, and then they would say, “Well, now pink is the new red,” or something like that, so that you have to buy these new products.

I think that was the expression, “Pink is the new red,” or something like that.

Oh, really?

Well, you’re right to describe it in terms of X is the new Y.

That’s the way linguists often talk about it.

But yeah, you see this construction again and again.

Thursday is the new Friday.

Knitting is the new yoga.

I think when you’re talking about color, I think it did arise in the fashion world, as far as we know, because I know that linguists have traced this or that color being the new black back to the early 1980s.

Before that, Grant, your colleague Ben Zimmer traced the idea of one color replacing another back to the early 1960s when fashion designer Diana Vreeland was running around saying, “What did she say? Pink is the navy blue of India.”

Right, but it wasn’t quite the same construction. It wasn’t quite the X is the new Y.

No, but it was that same idea. I didn’t realize it went back that far, though. That’s interesting.

Yeah, isn’t it crazy? I thought it started with Josie and the Pussycats.

No, no, no. Not cultural innovators, the Josie and the Pussycats.

Well, how have we done? Have we helped?

Oh, yeah. I mean, you gave me some more info, so basically it goes back to the ’70s or ’80s, maybe.

Yeah, the exact form what we’re talking about, but the idea of one color being the new something else is older than that.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you for your call, sir. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye. If you’d like to talk with us, give us a call. The number is 1-877-9299673.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Julie from La Mesa. What’s up? What’s going on?

Well, not much. I’m hoping you guys can help me out. My uncle asked me a question that I didn’t know the answer to, but I told him that I knew who I thought could help us out.

The question that he actually asked me was, he’s been hearing people use the word “kumbaya” on media recently, and we both know the song “Kumbaya,” but he really wasn’t sure what people are meaning when they’re using “kumbayana,” what the colloquial meaning of it has come to be.

Julie, I suspect that the context in which your uncle is hearing this is probably in a sarcastic usage. Do you think that’s the case?

That’s possible. The way that our society has developed, I would imagine that in the media.

Well, Julie, because when you and I were growing up, it was this really earnest, sweet song that had African roots, and we would all sing it very earnestly, right?

-huh. Exactly.

And over time, it’s come to be this sort of cliche, kind of saccharine song that a lot of conservative talk show hosts have picked up on that.

In fact, if you go to rightwingstuff.com, you’ll find that you can buy T-shirts that feature a cartoon of a drill sergeant, and the drill sergeant is grabbing a long-haired peace protester by the neck and saying, “Kiss my kumbaya, hippie!”

Not the happy song we used to sing at campfire.

No, no, and it’s kind of sad because, I mean, it’s a beautiful song that people can harmonize really beautifully on, but it’s really become a kind of caricature of itself.

Yeah, it’s definitely a term that’s used, because you can just use that word and you evoke all these, accurate or not, stereotypes about the ’60s and ’70s as a wide-eyed, naive period of moon gazing.

Exactly. And you’ll find it, actually, as early as the late 1970s, early 1980s, showing up in newspapers using exactly the same way that’s being used today.

Frankly, if you go to Google News right now and just look at the word “kumbaya,” more than half of the mentions are exactly what we’re talking about.

They’re not about the song, they’re about painting somebody as being overly idealistic, about being overly liberal or granola-crunchy types.

Okay, okay.

Just completely innocent about the world.

Right.

Right, sort of naive, you know, idealism.

There’s an element there of the people who are singing “kumbaya” are singing to drain out the noises of the real world, as if they’re covering up the actual world’s problems.

Okay.

Okay, so Julie, can we have a group hug before you go?

Oh, definitely, please.

Okay, here we go.

My question for you, Julie, is do you think that music and love can actually solve the world’s problems?

Wow, I think that it would need to be a pretty amazing musical number.

All right.

Well, “kumbaya” is not doing it, so maybe instead of rehabilitating “kumbaya,” we should find a new one.

Let’s work on that one.

All right.

Thanks for calling, Julie.

Thank you for your call, Julie.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

If you’d like to reach your hands across the water and give us a call, the number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Coming up, it’s a visit from one of our quiz guys, and we’ll take more of your calls.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and we’re joined again by our quiz guy, Greg Pliska.

Hiya, Greg.

Hiya, Martha.

Hello, Greg.

How are things going?

Groovy.

Well?

I feel like I’m here to be your cultural maven.

This is true.

Because I would like us to look today at one of the greatest artists in human history, William Snakespeare.

Snakespeare?

Snakespeare.

Snakespeare.

Snakespeare.

You may remember him from the past.

He’s the author of a series of plays whose titles are just one letter different from those of the better-known William Shakespeare.

Plays like Romeo and Joliet, the great prison drama, and King Liar about when Pinocchio divides his land up among his daughters.

Those plays.

Oh, dear.

Well, I have just recently learned that Snakespeare is also the creator of a number of great films, each of which is just one letter different from a better-known movie.

Oh, is that right?

Hard to believe, but true.

If I told you, for example, that Snakespeare created a film about an alien creature who attempts to phone home but instead gets the company computer support department, what do you guess that film’s title would be?

I thought he was going to phone the emergency room.

Yeah, I know.

It’s a different thing.

Yeah, right.

That’s good.

Very new.

I.T. Phone home.

Right?

I.T. Phone home.

I.T. The extraterrestrial.

Right.

All right.

So if all this makes sense, then I think we can take a look at the list of great movies by William Snakespeare.

I’ll give you a description of the film, and then you just give me the title.

Okay.

Okay.

So here’s your first one.

A small town Kansas girl and her dog are swept to a strange land by a tornado, finding themselves hanging out with a bunch of teens in Southern California.

That’s good.

That’s really good.

I’d like to see that movie, The Wizard of O.C.

The Wizard of O.C., exactly.

Here’s a movie you might remember.

In this movie, Hawkeye Pierce and B.J. Honeycutt’s madcap Korean War adventures teaching arithmetic in a small village.

That’s good.

Sure.

Math.

Math, of course.

Instead of mash.

Instead of mash.

That’s good.

And while we’re on the war subject, this Vietnam movie anticipates the end of the world, but it doesn’t actually happen, dude.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Is that the movie that we’re – no.

You said dude.

No.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

I knew it.

That’s where I was going.

No, that’s too long.

Let me give you the clue again.

Wayne’s War.

No.

That’s good.

This Vietnam movie anticipates the end of the world, but it doesn’t actually happen, dude.

Apocalypse, no.

I was going to say.

Apocalypse, no.

Not.

Apocalypse, not.

Apocalypse, not.

Oh, there we go.

OK.

Oh.

Apocalypse, no.

That would be eliminating one letter in and out.

Concrete block to bang my head against.

Oh, very good.

Here’s one I’m sure you saw and loved.

Hannibal Lecter is Driven Crazy by Very Quiet Lighting Equipment.

That little fluorescent light bulb hum.

Yeah.

Very quiet.

The silence of the lamps.

Yes, I got it.

Silence of the lamps instead of silence of the lambs.

And here’s an appropriate one for Snakespeare.

In this musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, a bird delivers a baby to a young couple in the midst of a New York gang warfare.

Whoa.

Oh.

Baby.

Do I have it?

I think I have it.

I’m going to turn on my ESP link and find out.

How about Love Stork?

That’s almost redundant, Love Stork.

Let me read the clue again.

Is it wrong?

Love Stork?

That’s not the one I’m thinking.

Oh, you’re kidding.

I thought I was right.

No.

I don’t know this plot at all.

Oh, you know this plot.

A baby in a gang war?

What?

Well, part of the— West Side Story?

West Side Stork?

West Side Stork.

Oh.

Exactly.

I don’t know.

Is this a musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet?

We’re the Jets.

We don’t do that.

We don’t do that.

We don’t do that.

All right.

Here’s another one perfect for our show.

Spooky film about a young boy who not only sees dead people, but who saw them, is seeing them, had seen them, would see them, and will have seen them.

Six tenths?

Yeah.

So six tenths.

Oh, man.

Exactly.

I had to go look up some tenths.

I didn’t know there were more than just three.

Yeah.

It depends on what language.

Oh, well, of course it depends on what language.

But in English, we have all that would see and would have seen and would have been seen.

I like that.

I see transitives.

Oh, man.

How about one more, Greg?

One more.

Sure.

In this musical version of The Merchant of Venice, Shylock demands that Antonio sing Edelweiss and My Favorite Things as repayment for a loan.

The pound of music?

The pound of music.

Oh, wow.

The hills are alive.

The pound of music.

Exactly.

So instead of the sound of music, where you can hear songs like My Favorite Things.

How do you solve a problem like Rick Blisco?

How do you make a quiz that’s really hard?

Yes, next time, Grant sings your favorite songs for musical theater.

Greg, this was tremendous fun.

I want to thank you again for a great puzzle.

It is my pleasure.

Greg, you get two thumbs up from us.

Oh, what are you going to do with the other two thumbs between you?

Well, I’ll be sitting on my thumbs, hanging by my thumbs.

Oh, and if you’d like to let your fingers do the walking, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or send us your candidates for Snakespeare titles.

The discussion form can be found at waywordradio.org/discussion.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Sherry from Tempe, Arizona.

Hello, Sherry.

What’s going on?

Well, I need a little bit of dating advice.

Dating advice?

Oh, yes, please.

And you’re asking us?

Yep.

Yep.

Why?

Because I met a man.

He’s a doctor.

So I’m assuming that he’s well-educated.

Mm—

Mm—

I’m liking this so far.

Well, when we talked about where we’d meet for the first time, I suggested an espresso shop near us.

Mm—

And he said, “Oh, that sounds good. An espresso shop sounds like a good idea.”

Wow.

You said “expresso” with an X.

That’s what he said.

Oh, my goodness.

And my teeth gritted and my ears burned, and I thought, “Well, okay, we’ll give it a try.”

So I met him, and we talked for about two hours, had a great time, but I’m really worried.

What other words are he going to come up with later on?

I dated a man once who said “simular” and “mandatory,” and I sure don’t want to run into that again.

Oh, no.

Oh, man.

I mean, if our president says “nuclear,” what could a doctor say?

So I don’t know, should I keep dating this guy, or just wait for someone else who knows how to speak English?

Sherry, what kind of doctor is he?

He’s a GP.

Does that make a difference?

Eh, mine.

Well, you never know, actually.

But I’m wondering if there was a way I could gently correct him.

Boy, now that is a toughie, isn’t it?

Do you have a relationship yet?

Have you gone on other dates?

Oh, no.

No, just the one time.

Well, but, Grant, I don’t know.

I mean, Sherry, from my point of view, if I had to wake up in the morning and hear somebody say, “I brought you some espresso,” before I ever even …

Yeah, see?

See, before I ever even had that first drop of caffeine?

Oh, my gosh.

No wonder it’s hard to meet a woman.

I don’t think I could handle it.

I think this is …

Like Barney Fife said, “You have to nip it in the bud.”

Right.

Oh, I don’t know.

Here’s the thing.

It was one date anyway.

Right.

That’s true.

Yeah, but …

There’s a lot of different ways to approach it.

Here’s what I would propose.

Go on two more dates with the guy.

Okay.

Go to an espresso restaurant, at least one of them.

Find a way to get this word to come up, and find a way to tell him what you think about it.

Joking or non-joking.

That’s how we react.

It’s entirely possible.

This is a great test to find out if he’s the kind of guy who will actually listen to an important woman in his life.

If he’s willing to listen to you and say, “Oh, you know what? I never thought about that.”

But you’re right.

It doesn’t make any sense that I said X when it should be an S.

You might find out new things about the guy where you’re like, “Oh, here’s a man I can work with.”

What do you think?

I think that next date is at an Italian restaurant and I will clearly order a cup of espresso with dessert.

There we go.

All right.

Thank you for your call, Sherry.

Best of luck on your date.

Yeah.

Let us know how it goes.

Email us.

Let us know how it turns out, all right?

Yeah.

I’ll let you know.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Oh, boy.

That’s a tough one.

No, but she’s got a good point there.

I guess the whole show, Sex and the City, was about this.

It was about setting your standards so high and trying to look for that person who meets your criteria on every level that sometimes you kind of exclude people who are really great but have a couple of things that aren’t quite right that you could probably live with if only you tried.

Grant, I didn’t know you were an SATC fan.

Well, you know, I used to read Candace Bushnell’s column before they ever started a television show.

You did?

Yeah.

All right.

Well, if you have a story for Lex and the City, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or email us.

The address is Words@waywordradio.org.

Martha, at the beginning of the show, we were talking about dying languages.

A few years ago, Jack Hitt wrote about dying languages in the New York Times.

I think it was in 2003.

Oh, I remember that story, yeah.

And one of the things he described in that article, and it was beautifully written, was The Last Speaker Hustle.

Do you know what I’m talking about?

I remember the story.

It had great photographs with it, but I don’t remember that particular part.

It did.

What he calls The Last Speaker Hustle is this thing where you’ll go as a tourist, or even as an investigator or a professional linguist or somebody who studies these sorts of things, to a remote place, and they’ll trot out this one person who supposedly is the last speaker of a specific language, and, you know, you’ll get all excited and you’ll take pictures and take notes and get out your tape recorder and stuff, only to find out that there’s somebody two huts away who speaks the same language.

But the best story that Jack Hitt wrote about was Red Thundercloud.

He supposedly was the last Catawba speaker, but in reality, his name was Cromwell Ashby Hawkins West.

Oh, no.

He was the son of an African-American druggist in Newport, Rhode Island, and supposedly he was a great mimic and a fast learner.

He mastered the language.

He was not a member of the tribe at all, mastered the language, put on some turquoise jewelry, and until 1996, he went around hawking this product called Red Thundercloud’s acabonic princess American Indian tea, which was “fresh from the American forest to you.”

So the last speaker hustle.

Well, you got to make a living somehow, right?

Right.

Anyway, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673, and you can call us any time, day or night.

We have voicemail and we listen to everything.

You can also send us an email to words@waywordradio.org, and you can try our discussion forum on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Brian.

Hiya, Brian.

Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from San Diego.

Groovy.

All right.

What’s going on?

Well, my question is about the use of the word “tertiary.”

Tertiary.

T-E-R-T-I-A-R-Y?

Correct.

Okay.

I was at work.

We were handing out job assignments, and there’s a girl who works for me who’s from England originally, and when I put out the top jobs for the day, she asked about something I hadn’t mentioned.

I said, “Don’t worry about it.

It’s a tertiary concern right now,” and she looked at me as if she’d never heard the word before.

She looked it up, and then I guess the textbook definition is that it’s the third in rank or value.

And I guess in my mind, if something is of tertiary concern, it’s kind of a back burner item or off in the periphery.

Like if it’s not primary or even secondary, it’s a tertiary concern.

Am I using that word correctly?

You’re right that it doesn’t jibe with what the dictionaries have to say, but I think that your explanation makes perfect sense.

I think if you’d explained it to her, you explained it, and did she understand it?

Yes, but she was going by the textbook definition, and I was just going by the way I had always interpreted the word to mean.

I think your context is fine.

I mean, I agree that it usually means third, but it could also mean third rate, right?

Right.

Or something other than primary.

Because you could definitely use primary figuratively like that and secondary, so why not use tertiary?

Or what about ancillary?

Oh, I don’t know exactly what that means.

Ancillary is…

Well, it’s sort of of secondary importance or ancillary.

It’s a wonderful word.

It comes from the Latin ancilla, which means a household servant, a feminine servant, a maid.

And it’s sort of the little ones that are running around the house, but not the main people.

But you think in the context you were speaking about, Brian, that tertiary would work better?

Well, I think so.

I just wanted to settle the argument, and I guess we were both right.

Don’t you hate when that happens?

Right.

That’s always a disappointing conclusion, though, isn’t it?

You kind of want to be 100% right until they went in your face.

Yeah, I think it’s okay this time.

Was she snobby about it?

No, no, she wasn’t.

She genuinely had never heard the word before, but was convinced that I was using it in the wrong context.

Yeah, you’re right.

I think you’re fine.

I think you’re both fine.

I think, literally, it means third, and figuratively, it can mean less than important.

Other than important.

Not important.

Unimportant.

Great.

Well, thank you very much.

I love the show, by the way.

Well, thanks.

We loved your question.

Oh, thank you so much.

Thanks.

All right, Brian.

Thanks, Brian.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Steve calling from Milwaukee.

Hi, Steve.

How you doing today?

Hi there.

Real good, thanks.

Have a question for you.

All right, shoot.

My grandmother recently passed away, and for some reason, as I was reading the obituary, I noticed the way that her name was presented, it really kind of jumped out at me this time.

Her name was there, but then in parentheses, it said “knee,” N-E-E, with her last name.

Now, I spent a lot of time with her when she was alive, and I know that we didn’t have any family member that was named “knee,” so I guess my question is, what’s with the “knee?”

What does “knee” mean?

Well, first of all, I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother.

Thank you.

She was 92 when she passed.

She had a great life.

We’ll miss her.

We’ll miss her, but we have some great memories.

And so how did her name appear exactly?

What was her name?

How was it listed in the obituary?

Her married name was Sylvia Kahn, and in the obit, it said “Sylvia Kahn,” and then in parentheses, it had N-E-E, and the N-E-E was italicized.

And then it had her maiden name, which was Rosenfeld.

So Sylvia Kahn, nay Rosenfeld.

Right.

Right.

You pronounced it “nay.”

Is it “nay”?

Yes.

Yes, it is.

And it simply means “born” in French, and it’s a convention that I think I’ve only seen in obituaries.

Yeah.

Or, like, junior league, like, rosters, so, you know.

Right.

It’s sort of a genteel way of saying, “This is her maiden name.

This was her name before she got married,” but it’s simply a French word that means “born.”

And it’s only in obits because they want to give full respect to the woman?

Well, it’s a little more than that, I think.

They have an eye towards the historical record, and particularly in small towns where these kinds of things are important to the community, where everyone knows everyone, and maybe she wasn’t in a small town, but there’s a tradition in it nonetheless, they provide this information so people go, “Oh, yes, that is indeed the same Sylvia that I knew from high school.

There’s her last name.”

Yes, that’s the one.

Otherwise, no.

For people who do genealogical research, and I’ve done a bit of that myself from my family in the past, it’s an incredible boon to us, because the information’s just laid out for you there in print, and one extra name in an obituary can connect you to an entire family tree that you may not have known existed.

Sure, I can see how that could happen.

So it’s pretty useful.

It jumped out at me.

I had seen it, I never knew to look it up, and thought, “You guys are the experts, this is where I’m going to for the answer.”

Well, so you came to the right place, huh?

I think so.

All right, well, thanks for calling, Steven.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673, that’s 1-877-WAYWORD, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Get ready for our slang quiz, and we’ll take more of your calls right here on A Way with Words.

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You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and it’s time for Slang This, our puzzle about slang.

This contestant is Glenn Peters from Portland, Oregon, the city of roses, right?

Yes.

Welcome, Glenn.

Hello, Glenn.

Yes, thank you.

Glenn, to get past door number one in this challenge, we’d like for you to share your favorite slang expression with us.

Do you have one for us?

Well, I was thinking of a word that we had used in college where we had posted up a comic of Sam and Max.

Sam and Max.

Okay.

Yes.

And the two main characters, a dog and a rabbit, were saying, “Let’s mock their stumps,” talking about a bunch of pirates.

And that came to be used on our hall to refer to some people who had made questionable romantic decisions and such.

And then it was sort of associated with anybody who went out looking for dates and such.

And so then stumping would then become the verb that was associated with that.

So how would you use stumping in a sentence?

Oh, you know, we’re going to go out to the library and go stumping or something like that.

I mean, that kind of works too because it’s like the political stumping where you’re out there making a pitch for somebody to vote for you.

If you’re out there making a pitch, you’re pitching woo to a woman, you are kind of in a way stumping for her vote.

Yeah.

I think it was more, you know, looking than wooing, but yes.

Oh, I see.

It’s more about the browsing than the buying.

Okay.

Right.

Right.

All right.

So here’s the challenge.

Grant is going to present you with a slang term and then he’ll give you three possible examples of how it might be used in a sentence.

Only one of those is real and the other two are just something that he made up.

So Glenn, your task will be to choose which one of those really is a slang term.

You got it?

Okay.

And I will be standing by if you want to puzzle it out with me.

Right.

All right.

Here we go.

The first clue is FOPO and it’s spelled F-A-U-X hyphen P-O and F-A-U-X being the French for fake.

So FOPO.

So the first clue is a fake cop.

That’s all.

No gun, a plastic badge and a shoulder patch that looks more like a burnt rabbit than an eagle.

He’s not POPO.

He’s FOPO.

And the second one.

Don’t be fooled by the FOPO Salvation Army clothes and the bed head hairdo.

Underneath those cheap duds is silk underwear.

And the third clue, you’ve never seen so many harpo Marx lookalikes in one place.

The annual FOPO convention in Las Vegas has more harpo doppelgangers than there are fake Elvis’s in all of North America.

So Glenn, which is it? Is a FOPO, A, a security guard, B, a description of someone who thinks looking poor is fashionable or C, a harpo Marx lookalike.

And the second part is spelled P-O?

Yeah, just P-O.

I’m inclined to go with the second one. That seems somehow more accurate.

Yeah, the second one, FOPO, I defined it as someone who thinks looking poor is fashionable.

Yeah, I think the second one was people trying to seem fashionable about looking poor.

It is actually A. It’s a security guard.

And I kind of gave so much of it away in the first clue that I thought maybe for sure I’d given too much away because I said at the end, he’s not P-O-P-O, he’s F-O-P-O.

And if you knew that P-O-P-O is a slang word for police, then F-O-P-O would make a lot more sense.

H-O-P-O. I have known that.

So there we go. So F-O-P-O, F-A-U-X hyphen P-O is a security guard or a rent-a-cop or also known as turkey bacon because they’re not real bacon.

Never mind.

All right, here we go. The second expression is poll tax, P-O-L-E-T-A-X, poll tax.

And the first clue for poll tax is, “Government officials in Texas are charging a poll tax, five bucks extra just to walk in the door of a strip club.”

And the second one, “When you pick a tent, consider the poll tax. You might get more room in a bigger tent, but you’ll have more polls that are heavier to carry and harder to set up.”

And the third clue, “Why the extra charge for bean poles like me? Why should tall, skinny men’s clothes cost more than short, fat men’s clothes? Is it some kind of poll tax?”

So which one is it, Glenn? Is it A, a tax levied on patrons of strip clubs? Is it B, the burden of extra tent poles when camping? Or is it C, the extra amount charged for tall men’s clothes?

As suspicious as it is to have two that are A in a row, I’m inclined to think that it’s A because, well, I don’t know exactly why I think that.

How many times have you watched “Showgirls”?

I have not watched “Showgirls.”

Okay. Not that my movie standards aren’t that high, I just thought it was a 10.

So a poll tax would be a tax levied on patrons of strip clubs?

That just sounds so outrageous.

It’s what it is, though. That’s the correct answer.

It is indeed. You’re right.

He’s right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow, yeah.

No, in Texas, though, in Texas, they did it kind of as a punitive measure to make it just a little more difficult for these businesses to stay in business, charge five bucks a head and maybe fewer people will go and the businesses will just evaporate.

Nice work, Glenn.

For “Playing Slang This,” we’re going to send you a copy of Grant’s book. It’s called “The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang,” perfect for this election year.

Excellent.

Thank you.

All right.

And if you’d like to play our slang game on the air, give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673.

Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Judy Woodruff.

Hey, Judy, where are you calling from?

I’m from Indianapolis, Indiana.

All right. What’s on your mind?

Well, I have two questions for you, but I just have to give like a little history, but I can keep it really short.

We love histories.

All right. Well, we’ll see.

I’m from New York and my husband is from the Midwest. And I love the Midwest and my husband doesn’t.

I mean, he loves his job and his kid’s school and everything, but he’s not really very Midwestern-y even though he’s from here.

So one day my car wasn’t, it wasn’t working. And I don’t know anything about cars.

Like I don’t know where a piston is or anything. And so he was asking me to describe what was wrong with it.

And I thought of this phrase and I remember thinking, man, this is a great phrase.

And I said, it has a catch and it’s get along.

And he’s usually a very even-tempered kind of guy, had a very bad reaction to that.

Oh my.

But did you break out into a rash?

Well, he just said it was imprecise and vague and not helpful and just generally appeased.

You know when you look back when you’re with a mate and you look back on like, remember when we did this five years ago, how dopey that was and laugh, well he still doesn’t laugh about it.

Sorry for laughing.

I was listening to your show before and I thought, I need to know this.

Where did I get this from? When did it come along and do you think it’s an evocative kind of realism or do you think it’s imprecise and vague?

Judy, I think a catch and it’s get along is a wonderfully evocative expression.

Thank you.

I mean, Judy, I’ve seen variations of this from time to time.

In fact, you may remember on election night 2004, Dan Rather, who is always good for, you know, a Texasism, he’ll say things like, his lead is as thin as turnip soup.

Dan Rather said, I remember this very clearly, CBS had predicted the wrong winner and at one point he said, we had a slight hitch in our giddyup but we corrected that.

I mean, it’s the same idea and I suspect it’s sort of a cowboy kind of expression, a hitch in your giddyup.

I do know it goes back to the early 1900s. You can find it in newspapers from the period.

So to go back to your original questions, let’s just shoot these off one by one.

Is it an established phrase?

Yes.

But the other thing you said was, is it too vague?

And on this point, I think I’m going to have to side with your husband.

I knew you were going to say that.

It’s not a guy thing.

I know about as much as automobiles is, I can barely tell a Ford apart from any other make.

You know what I’m saying?

I have a license but I don’t drive it that often because I take the subway.

But the thing is like, it’s a fun evocative phrase but I don’t know that if you’re in the middle of worrying about a multi-thousand dollar piece of machinery not performing properly that it’s the right thing to say.

Yeah, but that’s for the mechanic to figure out, you know?

Now that you put it in those terms, perhaps that was his— I still don’t know why he’s still peeved about it but it was like, this is a serious thing and you’re using something cute to describe it and that you should be using something of more gravity, whatever.

The engine is misfiring.

I like catching your daddy long.

That’s true too.

That’s true too.

I mean, if you just said something overly formal that would have sounded probably wrong.

I suspect that maybe you couldn’t win at that situation.

Probably silence was the best answer because maybe anything you would have said he’d had a reason and it bugged him because he was probably just more ticked off that the car wasn’t working.

Overall, I think you were fine with the phrase.

The words that come out of your mouth are your choice, not his.

Okay.

Well, Judy, do you feel better?

I feel so much better and I feel like we put this thing to rest.

Alright.

That’s great.

Well, it was fantastic to hear from you and thanks for giving us a ring.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Grant, you know, it reminds me of what my dad used to say when he was tired.

He used to say, “My get up and go just got up and went.”

I’ve heard that one before.

Have you?

I love that one.

Yes.

I like get along, though, as a way of talking about your— Your locomotion. —ability to ambulate.

Yeah.

Well, get along over to your phone and give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Larry from Rancho Pinasquitos.

How are you, Larry?

How are you doing?

Great.

What can we do for you today?

I have a question about an expression that I’ve heard for most of my life.

And it’s about people that might mention someone wants to have their cake and eat it, too.

I’ve heard this, and you kind of just take it for granted.

And to me, it kind of meant about hearing or having something both ways.

And many years ago, my wife and I were taking a class, a night class, in humanities.

And the professor indicated that most people say this expression incorrectly.

That it should be the opposite.

That it really should be that a person wants to eat their cake and have it, too.

And I thought about that, and it seemed to make some sense that that might actually make a better fit for having it both ways.

And I just wanted to get your input on this and where it came from and which is the right version.

So your professor said that eat your cake and have it, too, is somehow, what, more logical?

Yes, because if they have their cake, then they can certainly eat it.

But then it’s gone.

Whereas if you eat your cake and still have it, it’s kind of having it both ways.

You’re enjoying the cake, but you can still have the cake, also.

Well, you have it for a little while, 24 hours or so, right?

But if you eat your cake and have it, too, then it indicates it’s still there.

I see.

Well, your professor’s right in that that was the earlier form of this expression.

It goes all the way back to the 16th century, at least, eat your cake and have it, too.

And somehow, we did flip it around.

I’m not exactly sure when that happened, but it’s not the first time that that kind of thing has happened in English.

Think of the expression, the proof is in the pudding.

Right.

Originally, that was the proof is in the eating of the pudding.

The proof is in the pudding doesn’t make so much sense.

But I don’t know.

I could argue that your professor had the original version right, but I suspect that my co-host is going to say, “Oh, but everybody understands, have your cake and eat it, too.”

Well, don’t dismiss that out of hand, because that’s actually all that really matters here.

Anything else is irrelevant nitpicking, right?

It’s about being understood.

Right.

No, really, I mean, nobody misunderstands you in the least if you say it the other way, right?

Well, you take it— I mean, like I said, it’s something I’ve taken for granted.

You just, you know, you hear it so often that when you hear it, you absolutely know what it means, and it’s only when he brought it up that I started to actually think about it.

Yeah.

Well, see, that’s the gist of an idiom, and this is why the idioms are best not broken down into the component pieces.

They’re treated as entities.

They’re treated all together as one unified expression and not as individual words.

Otherwise, you get this kind of incongruity, and it starts to befuddle you and you start to ask questions that really are never going to lead you anywhere productive.

Right.

Well, it led Larry to A Way with Words.

I think that’s pretty productive.

That’s correct.

But “have your cake and eat it, too” is perfectly fine.

There’s nothing wrong with it.

The other one is fine, too, and it’s not more correct just because it’s older.

All right, Larry.

Well, thanks very much for calling.

Well, thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Larry.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

So go to your phone.

Call us, 1-877-929-9673, or send us email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Well, if I knew you were coming, I’d have baked the cake, baked the cake, baked the cake.

If you knew you were coming, I’d have baked the cake, hutcha-doo, hutcha-doo, hutcha-doo.

Had you dropped me a letter, I’d have hired a fan.

Earlier we were talking about dying languages, and when I think about dying languages and efforts to document them, I think of the story of Alizier Ben-Yehuda.

How so?

Well, in the 1850s, when Israel was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire, Ben-Yehuda migrated with his wife to Jerusalem, and he decided that they would speak to each other in Hebrew rather than the languages they had spoken in Russia.

Now, the thing is, at the time, Hebrew wasn’t the everyday language of anybody, nobody, and it hadn’t been for centuries.

It was a language of the temple.

It was a religious language only, and probably hadn’t been spoken in the home, to talk about things like cooking and family life, for millennia.

So he had to coin many of the words that were needed for modern life, and starting with the two of them, and then later with their son Yitzhak, who became the first person to speak modern Hebrew as a first language, it caught on.

And by 1948, Israel had 600,000 modern Hebrew speakers, and today it has more than 5 million.

That is a language success story.

And I think of that story when I think about the efforts to teach young people the languages of their grandparents, or their parents, or their elders, they’re doing it in Hawaii with Hawaiian, in Oklahoma with the Miami language, in Maine with French, and a dozen other places in North America.

It gives me hope that these languages will survive.

Grant, how about if we include links to the story of Ben Yehuda and language revivals on our website?

That’d be great, and we welcome your calls to 1-877-929-9673.

You can ask us about these languages, and we’ll have tons of stuff to say on the subject.

Grant, another thing that we can talk about sometime is the struggle of ancient languages to incorporate modern concepts.

You just sent me an article the other day about Icelandic and how the word for “computer” in Icelandic, because it’s a very, very old language, it’s kind of fossilized, the word for “computer” is what?

Numbers, which?

Yeah, it’s really incredible.

And they’ve done that with Latin.

I know the Vatican every couple of years comes out with new words in Latin for things like “hot dog” and “bikini.”

Yeah, or “hippie,” which is “conformitatis osor,” “a hater of conformity.”

And I think there’s a fabulous one for “motorcycle” that I’m not remembering, but it’s something like “two-wheeled vehicle driven by fire-bearing juice.”

Well, let’s talk about it on the website.

It’s waywordradio.org/discussion.

That’s where you’ll find our discussion forum, of course, and you can always email us anytime day or night, words@waywordradio.org.

That’s our show for this week, but if you have something you want to get off your chest, leave us a phone message anytime, the number is 1-877-929-9673, or stop by our discussion forum at waywordradio.org.

Or you can always email us, the address is words@waywordradio.org.

Stefanie Levine is our senior producer.

Our technical director and editor is Tim Felten.

We’ve had production assistance from Michael Bagdasian and Dana Polakovsky.

A Way with Words is produced at Studio West in San Diego.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, inviting you to join us next time, right here on A Way with Words.