This episode first aired February 2, 2013.

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 See the Word Wall
Listeners have been posting photos of themselves with their favorite words on our Word Wall, including some that are new to us. For example, epalpebrate might be a good one to drop when describing the Mona Lisa in art history class, since it means without eyebrows. And menehune is a term for the tiny, mischievous people in Hawaiian folklore.

 No Skin Off My Nose
If it’s no skin off your nose, there’s no harm done. This idiom, which the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms suggests may come from boxing, means the same thing as no skin off my back or no skin off my ear. If you have other idioms in this vein, share them with us!

 Speak Your Piece
What’s the difference between speak your piece and speak now or forever hold your peace? While speaking your piece refers to a piece of information you want to share. Holding your peace relates to keeping the peace. This is a simple case of a collision of idioms.

 Ain’t Poem
For years, teachers have warned against using the word ain’t, apparently with some success. Emily Hummell from Boston sent us a poem that may have contributed: “Don’t say ain’t / your mother will faint / your father will fall in a bucket of paint/ your sister will cry / your brother will sigh / the cat and dog will say goodbye.”

 Scuttlebutt
Have you heard the latest scuttlebutt around the water cooler? This term for gossip, which comes from the water-filled cask in a ship, is a literal synonym for water-cooler talk!

 More on the Word Wall
On our Word Wall, one listener fancies ginnel: the long, narrow passage between houses you find in Manchester and Leeds. Have you shared your favorite word yet?

 Tom Swifty Word Game
Our Puzzle Maestro John Chaneski has a great variation of his classic Tom Swifty game, based on adjectives that fit their subjects. For example, how did the citizens feel upon hearing that the dictator of their small country shut down the newspapers? Beware of puns!

 Capitalizing I
Does capitalizing the pronoun I feel like aggrandizing your own self-importance? Timna, an English Composition professor at an Illinois community college, reports that a student refused to capitalize this first person pronoun, arguing that to do so was egotistical. But it’s a standard convention of written English going back to the 13th century, and to not capitalize it would draw even more attention. When writing a formal document, always capitalize the I. It’s a pronoun, not a computer brand.

 Nixie on Your Tintype
If you want to sound defiant, you could do worse than exclaiming,”Nixie on your tintype!” This phrase, meaning something to the effect of “spit on your face,” popped up in Marjorie Benton Cooke’s 1914 book, Bambi (not related to the sweet little deer). Kristin Anderson, a listener from Apalachicola, Florida, shares this great poem that makes use of the phrase.

 Flotsam vs. Jetsam
Do you know the difference between flotsam and jetsam? In an earlier episode, we discussed flotsam, which we described as the stuff thrown off a sinking ship. But several avid sailors let us know that jetsam’s the stuff thrown overboard, while flotsam is the remains of a shipwreck. Thanks, crew.

 Cute as a Button
Paula from Palm City, Florida, wants to know: What’s so cute about buttons, anyway? Like the expressions cute as a bug and cute as a bug’s ear, this one seems to derive from cute meaning delicate and small. She raises another interesting question: Are the descriptors beautiful and attractive preferable to cute and adorable after a certain age? We want to hear your thoughts!

 Halcyon Days
The weeks on either side of the winter solstice have a special place in Greek mythology. In the story of Alcyone, the daughter of Aeolus, she marries Ceyx, who arrogantly dares to compare their relationship to that of Zeus and Hera. Such hubris is never a good thing in Greek myth, and Zeus causes his death. But the gods eventually take pity on the mortal couple, changing them into birds known for their devotion to each other. Those birds, named after Alcyone, were said to nest on the surface of the sea during calm weather, giving rise to our term halcyon days.

 Like White on Rice
Is white on rice a racist idiom? No! It simply means that if you’re on top of your tasks like white on rice, it means you’ve got it covered the way rice is covered in whiteness. In Geneva Smitherman’s Talkin and Testifyin, she relays a lyric from Frankie Crocker that goes, “Closer than white’s on rice; closer than cold’s on ice.” Now that’s close!

 All Ate Up
If something’s got you feeling ate up, then you might be consumed by the notion that it didn’t go perfectly. You’re overwhelmed, obsessed, or maybe you’re just exhausted. However, among members of the Air Force, ate up has long meant gung ho.

 Banville Poem
Via Maud Newton’s Twitter feed comes this gem from The Sea, by William John Banville: The past beats inside me like a second heart. If you see a great quote somewhere, tweet it to us!

 Conversational Fillers
How conversational fillers such as like and you know creep into our vernacular? Like most verbal ticks and pieces of vocabulary, we pick these things up from those around us. But contrary to some folks’ opinions, the use of like and you know don’t decrease one’s credibility. When used appropriately, they actually make it easier for people to relate to us.

This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.

Photo by Tony Hisgett. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Books Mentioned in the Broadcast

Music Used in the Broadcast

This episode first aired December 15, 2012.

Download the MP3.

 Books That Should’ve Been Essays
Some call it quitting a book, while others call it post-publication editing. You know, in place of neglected pre-publication editing. John in San Diego, California, who suggested that term, said he believes many a book should have been an essay, many an essay should have been a paragraph, and many a paragraph should have been a sentence.

 Johnny on the Spot
Does johnny-on-the-spot refer to a person or a porta-potty? Or both? The term johnny-on-the-spot, meaning a fellow who helpfully shows up at just the right instant, dates to the 1870s. But in the early 1900s, the john became a common euphemism for the outhouse. Today, there are several companies called Johnny On The Spot that rent and install temporary outhouses and display that name on their doors. The Dictionary of American Regional English has entries for Mrs. Jones, Miss Janet, Mrs. Murphy, and Neighbor Jones, all of which are euphemisms for outhouse or toilet. We’ve discussed others before, like going to see a man about a horse. It’s part of a tradition of not explicitly referring to the place where we urinate and defecate. But please, go ahead and share with us your favorite bathroom euphemisms!

 Soda Suicide
What do you call the flavor explosion that comes from splashing some soft drinks from every one of a restaurant’s fountains into one cup? A suicide, a graveyard, swampwater? Any special recipes, or do you just wing it?

 Pie in the Sky Origin
We all know the moon’s made of green cheese, but what’s the deal with the pie in the sky? The idiom pie in the sky, referring to something that’s pleasant to imagine but unattainable, comes from an early 20th century song called “The Preacher and the Slave,” penned and popularized by labor organizer Joe Hill. The song parodied the hymn “The Sweet By and By“, which promised a heavenly reward after death. Hill’s song sarcastically made the point there’s need for help here on Earth, too.

 Join the Word Wall
Want to get your mug on our website? We’re making a Word Wall, featuring all you listeners and your favorite words, so take a picture holding a piece of paper with your favorite word on it close to your face and send it to us. The collecting starts now!

 Number Word Game
Our Puzzle Man John Chaneski’s been working at the Museum of Math in New York City and it’s got him thinking about number words. For this game, each clue leads to a certain number spelled out. For example, can you guess which number between one and ten can be anagrammed to something that means to pull something with a rope?

 Stand Flat-Footed and Kiss a Turkey
Ever seen a bug so big it could stand flat-footed and kiss a turkey? Kathy from Greensboro, North Carolina, called to share some classic idioms her Georgia grandmother would use to describe bugs, like those gallon-nipper mosquitos and Chatham County eagles, also known as palmetto bugs. There’s a long tradition in American tall tales of trying to one-up everyone else about the size of your hometown’s insects.

 Third Person Singular, Unknown Gender
What’s the rule on using they and their in place of his and hers? Grammarians a couple of centuries ago may have misapplied some Latin rules of grammar to the unruly English language, but the issue is clear today: the word they functions perfectly well as an epicene pronoun as does their for its possessive version. No professional linguist will tell you otherwise.

 See You in Church
Why say goodbye when you could drop the phrase see you in church if the window’s open? This joke about lousy churchgoers is a colorful variant of see you when I see you.

 Dog Cartoon
Martha spotted a choice cartoon: A dog is sitting behind a gate under a sign that says Beware of Dog. The caption: “Can I read you my poems?”

 Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch
If you’re looking for a great book about writing, Martha recommends Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch: Let Verbs Power Your Writing. In it, Constance Hale offers an accessible, bang-up course in writing with excerpted passages that really show how the greats do it.

 Children’s Book About William Carlos Williams
For the young and old alike, Grant recommends A River of Words, a children’s biography of William Carlos Williams by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Sweet. The artwork is beautiful and it’s a wonderful tale of someone who could take an idea in their mind and translate it to the page.

 Charley Horse
Why do we call that painful leg cramp a charley horse? While no good answers are out there, we did find some pretty far-fetched ones, including a story about old night watchmen known as Charlies and their broken-down horses. But the term first pops up in baseball reports in the 1880s, and fits well into the history of colorful baseball language.

 Kirchenfenster
When wine drinkers swirl their glass and watch those streaks coming down, they say they’re looking at the legs. But the German term kirchenfenster, meaning “church windows,” makes a great substitute because of the arches of church windows. Do you have another term for that wine streaming down the side of a glass?

 What Tall People Hear All the Time
Ken from New Mexico measures up at 6 feet 8 inches, and he’s heard the gamut of comments tall people get, like How’s the weather up there? Sometimes he responds to How tall are you? with 5 feet 20 inches, and if anyone asks if he plays basketball, he just asks them if they play miniature golf!

 Magazines for Kids
Grant and his son have been loving the magazines Click, Cricket, and Ladybug. The poems, stories, and pictures are fantastic, and you don’t get the sense that it’s didactic or trying to force any lessons or morals. If you’re fond of Highlights Magazine, check these out.

 Chicanery
How do you pronounce chicanery? Do you soften the a, as in Chicano? No! This term, meaning “trickery” or “disturbance of the peace,” is etymologically unrelated to Chicano. It is, however, a linguistic relative of the name of those concrete parking lot barriers called chicanes.

 Schoolyard Rhyme
Because Grant still can’t get enough schoolyard rhymes, he shares one this week that goes: Three six nine / the goose drank wine / the monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line. Are you a lifer when it comes to children’s rhymes?

Photo by Liz West. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Books Mentioned in the Broadcast

Music Used in the Broadcast

Not long ago, I made a speech to a high school in San Diego. I was asked by those in charge to talk about careers. How I got to be a dictionary editor, a journalist, a radio show host, and so forth.

Now, this school is a special school. You might call it a last-chance school. It’s where kids are sent when they’ve had too many problems elsewhere.

Well, none of the students wanted to hear about degrees and job interviews and why failing can be good if you don’t let it get you down.

But you know, I hate to bomb in front of any crowd. So in desperation, at the end I threw in a bunch of stuff about slang. Where it comes from, why we use it, a few new terms.

Then the hoodies came off. Students sat up. They looked right at me. They raised hands and blurted out questions. They were interested. They wanted to know.

I’ll never give another speech about careers again. But I’ve been giving versions of that slang presentation ever since. No matter where I go, students chime in with their experiences, their ideas, and their information.

Which is why when Martha and I ask for your donations for our nonprofit we want you to know that A Way with Words is more than an hour of radio. It’s an educational mission carried out by just four key people working part-time, two secondary part-timers, and a volunteer. There are no full-time employees on the A Way with Words staff. And we receive no funding from NPR or any public radio station.

For every hour of radio you hear, my coworkers and I have put in about 120 hours of work managing the off-air affairs of the show, and speaking to — educating — students, business fraternities, corporations, museum-goers, and more. We’re working as hard off-air as we do on.

We’re out to change the way English speakers think about their language and we need your help to do it.

Give right now to support A Way with Words. How much is 120 hours of work a week worth? What will you give to an organization trying to educate more than 250,000 people each week?

Sincerely,

Grant Barrett
co-host and co-producer of A Way with Words

PS: Did you see our new thing we’re in love with? It’s a word wall, where we post pictures of listeners and fans showing us their favorite words. Browse it and send in yours.

A Way with Words is a production of Wayword, Inc., a small nonprofit 501(c)3 corporation. It receives no funding from NPR, PRI, PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or any public radio station or network.

Help support the show with a tax-deductible donation.

This episode first aired November 17, 2012.

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 Finding Your Writing Inspiration
Being a writer and making a living as a writer are often two different things. Maybe you’re writing poetry at night but by day you’re writing technical manuals or web copy. Journalist Michael Erard, whose day job is writing for think tank, describes such a writer as “a dancer who walks for a living.” How do you make the transition between the two? How do you inspire yourself all over again to write what you love?

 Seagulling
What do you call it when you’re about to jump into a conversation but someone beats you to it? Mary, a caller and self-described introvert from Indianapolis, calls it getting seagulled, inspired by an episode of The Simpsons in which nerdy Lisa works up the courage to participate in a conversation, but is interrupted at the last second by a screeching seagull.

In her new book, The Introvert’s Way, author Sophia Dembling refers to this experience as getting steamrolled. A different kind of interruption is getting porlocked, a reference to the visitor from Porlock who interrupted Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s reverie while he was writing the poem Kubla Khan and made him forget the rest of what he wanted to write. Have a better term for these unfortunate experiences?

 Delmarva
Leah from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, wants to know the origin of the name of the Delmarva Peninsula. It’s a portmanteau name, made of parts of the names of the three states that meet there: Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture at Salisbury University is a great source for more information.

 Copypasta
Do you keep copypasta on your computer? It’s that bit of tasty text you keep ready to paste in any relevant email or Facebook post. Grant has a great one for language lovers, based on eggcorns, those words or phrases that get switched to things that sound the same. Mustard up all the strength you can, it’s a doggy dog world out there!

 Political Word Game
Our Puzzle Master John Chaneski has a game inspired by the recent election season. From each clue, determine the word that begins with either D-E-M or R-E-P. For example, what’s the term for a part of a song that’s performed all over again? Try the quiz, and if you think of any others, email us!

 Due Diligence
Naomi, a Missoula, Montana, mom who’s writing a magazine essay, wants to know if due diligence is the appropriate term to denote the daily, household chores that her son’s new stepdad has taken on. The verdict: it’s a legal term. If you’re writing about personal experiences, stick with a phrase from a lower register of speech, like daily duties.

 Arthur or Martha
If you’re in a state of confusion, you might say I don’t know if I’m Arthur or Martha. It’s a slang phrase for “I’m confused” that you might hear in Australia or New Zealand, according to the Collins English Dictionary.

 Dressed to Kill
If you’re dressed to kill, you’re looking sharp. But does the expression have to do with medieval chivalry or military armor of any kind? Nope. The earliest cases pop up in text in the 1800s, based on the trend of adding the words to kill onto verbs to mean something’s done with force, passion, and energy.

 Thumbnail Dipped in Tar
If you’ve got crummy handwriting, you might say that it looks like something written with a thumbnail dipped in tar. But go ahead, dip that thumbnail and write to us anyway. If you’ve got notable handwriting of any sort, we want to see it!

 Kibosh
When you put the kibosh, or kybosh, on something, you’re putting a speedy end to it. This term, usually pronounced KYE-bosh, first showed up in print when Charles Dickens used it in 1836, writing under the pseudonym Boz. In that piece, it was spoken by a cockney fellow.

 The Bagel
Martha shares a favorite poem, “The Bagel,” by David Ignatow. Who wouldn’t like to feel “strangely happy with myself”? This and other gems can be found in Billy Collins’ book Poetry 180.

 Advice from Zadie Smith
For you writers toiling away at your day job, heed the advice of Zadie Smith: “Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.” Wait, what? There has to be some satisfaction in this! Write to us about the simple pleasure that you find in the craft.

 Names for an Egg in Toast Dish
Five guys walk into a diner. One orders a toad in the hole, another the gashouse eggs, the third gets eggs in a basket, the next orders a hole in one, and the last fellow gets spit in the ocean. What does each wind up with? The same thing! Although toad in the hole can refer to a sausage-in-Yorkshire pudding dish, it’s also among the many names for a good old-fashioned slice of bread with a hole in it, fried with an egg in that hole, including one-eyed jack and pirate’s eye.

 Heyday Origins
When something’s in its heyday, its in its prime. What does that have to do with hay? Nothing, actually. It goes back to the 1500s, when heydheyday-originsay and similar-sounding words were simply expressions of celebration or joy. Grant is especially fond of the Oxford English Dictionary‘s first citation for this term, from the John Skelton’s Magnyfycence, published around 1529: “Rutty bully Ioly rutterkin heyda.”

 Eyeskip Errors
Editors are great for picking up those double the’s and similar mistakes, known as eye-skip errors.

 Annie Oakley Comp Tickets
Do you refer to complimentary tickets to an event as Annie Oakleys? Or deadwoods, perhaps? The term Annie Oakley supposedly comes from a punched ticket’s resemblance to bullet-riddled cards from the sharpshooter’s Wild West shows. Deadwood is associated with the old barroom situation where you’d buy a paper drink ticket from one person and give it to the bartender. If you were in good favor with him, he might hand it back to you — that is, the piece of paper, or the dead piece of wood.

 The Origin of “Clue”
In one of history’s greatest stories about yarn, Theseus famously made it back out of the deadly Minotaur’s labyrinth by unspooling a ball of yarn so he could retrace his steps. In Middle English, such rolled-up yarn was called a clewe. Eventually, clew took on the metaphorical meaning of something that will lead you to a solution. Pretty soon, the spelling was changed to clue, and now we’ve got that awesome board game and of course, that blue pooch and his bits of evidence.

This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.

Photo by Ben Hosking. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Books Mentioned in the Broadcast

Music Used in the Broadcast

This episode first aired November 10, 2012.

Download the MP3.

 Working Titles
Would some Hollywood classics still have been box-office hits if they’d stuck with their original names? Take Anhedonia, which later became Annie Hall. Or $3000, which became Pretty Woman. And can you guess the eventual title of the movie originally called Harry, This is Sally?

 Describing Flavor in Words
Here’s a puzzler: try to explain what malt tastes like without using the word malty. Or, for that matter, describe the color red. Defining sensory things is one of the great challenges that dictionary editors confront. Imagine writing and entire Dictionary of Flavors.

 Make a Train Take a Dirt Road
If she’ll make a train take a dirt road, does that mean she’s pretty or ugly? Nicole from Plano, Texas, overheard the idiom in the Zach Brown Band’s song “Different Kind of Fine.” The idea is an ugliness is so powerful it can derail a train. But as Zach Brown sings, looks aren’t all that makes a lady fine.

 Bluetoothy
Sometimes a couple may be paired, but they’re just not connected. As this cartoon suggests, you might say they’re bluetoothy.

 Almost “Amous” Word Game
Our Quiz Master John Chaneski has a game about aptronyms for famous folks, or shall we say folks who were Almost Amous. In this puzzle, you drop the first letter of a famous person’s last name in order to give them a fitting new occupation. For example, a legendary bank robber might become an archer by losing the first letter of his last name. See if you can come up with others!

 Foafiness
If you spend any time on Facebook, then you’ve probably had the experience of knowing a whole lot about someone, even though they’re just a friend or relative of a friend. And meeting them can be a little weird, or even a slightly creepy. There’s a word for that odd connection: foafiness, as in Friend-Of-A-Friend, or foaf.

 More Working Titles
Remember Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt in James L. Brooks’ classic Old Friends? No? That’s because they changed the title to As Good As It Gets.

 Your Possibles
If John Wayne asked you to fetch his possibles, what would you go looking for? This term simply means one’s personal belongings, and is found in Western novels and movies.

 Very Important Perros
In Argentina, a certain cinematic cult classic is known as Very Important Perros. But in the United States, the film was first titled Dogumentary, then later Best In Show.

 Suck Eggs
A grandmother in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, is curious about the advice don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs. This idiom is used as a warning not to presume that you know more than your elders, and may be connected with the old practice of henhouse thieves poking holes in an eggshell and sucking out the yolk. Variants of this expression include don’t teach your grandmother how to milk ducks or don’t teach your grandmother to steal sheep.

 Struthonian
If you behave in a struthonian manner, then it means you’re behaving like an ostrich. This play term comes from struthos, the ancient Greek word for ostrich. Actually, according to the American Ostrich Association, the old belief that an ostrich will stick its head in the sand is a myth.

 The Mighty Ducks
Jeremy Dick, a listener from Victoria, Australia, grew up in Canada loving the movie The Mighty Ducks. But once he moved down under, he realized the Aussies call it Champions. What’s that all about? Do Australians not think ducks are mighty? TV Tropes explains some reasons why titles change, like, for example, idioms that don’t translate, even across English speaking countries.

 Where Do You Buy Alcohol?
What do you call the place you purchase adult beverages? Is it a liquor store or a package store? Package store is common in the Northeast, while folks in Milwaukee know it as the beer depot, and Pennsylvanians might call it the ABC store. Tell us your preferred term!

 Is Spanglish a Language?
Spanglish. What’s it all about? Is it a real language, or just a funky amalgam? Ilan Stavans‘ book Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language traces the varieties of Spanglish that have sprung up around the country, and includes his controversial translation of the first chapter of Don Quixote into Spanglish. Still, by academic standards, Spanglish itself is not technically a language.

 “Doozy” is Not from the Car
On a previous episode, we discussed the origins of doozy, and boy did we get some responses! Many of you called and wrote to say that the Duesenberg luxury car is the source of the term. While the car’s reputation for automotive excellence may have reinforced the use of term, the problem is that the word doozy appears in print at least as early as 1903. The car, however, wasn’t widely available until about 1920.

 Balaclava
Would you be intimidated if someone tried to rob you while wearing a balaclava? What about a ski mask? Trick question: they’re the same thing! The head covering recently made popular in the Pussy Riot protests is known as a balaclava. The name comes from the Port of Balaclava on the Black Sea, an important site in the Crimean War, and the headgear worn there to protect against the bitter cold.

 Feisty Heist
Here’s one to clear up this confusing rule: i before e, except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbor. Got it?

This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.

Photo by David Barrie. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Books Mentioned in the Broadcast

Music Used in the Broadcast