Make A Train Take A Dirt Road

Even though this is a recorded podcast, you can always call us anytime. The number is 877-929-9673.

Leave your questions and stories about language, and you might just end up discussing them on the air with us. Thanks for listening. You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette.

I was looking through my Netflix queue the other day, and I was trying to decide what movie to see next. There were so many titles on that long list, and all of them were saying, pick me, pick me, pick me, which made me wonder, Grant, if you’re only using words, how do you make a movie title stand out? And that got me to thinking about working titles and how is it that sometimes Hollywood decides to change the title of a movie that they’ve been working on? And you know, you can have a lot of fun with this at the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com, you know, because they have tons and tons of information including the working title of the film before it was released. And of of course, there’s that famous example of Woody Allen’s movie Annie Hall.

Do you know what that was called originally?

I don’t know.

It was called Anhedonia.

Oh, yes.

The inability to experience pleasure.

So that was probably a good call. And what about the movie that was originally titled $3,000? Do you know what that was? Or can you guess?

I don’t know.

Desperado by Robert Rodriguez.

I don’t know.

What?

$3,000 became Pretty Woman.

That’s a much better call, right?

Best improvement, sure.

And here’s one more. You’ll guess this one. Originally, this movie was called Harry. This is Sally.

When Harry Met Sally.

Now, why is it that When Harry Met Sally is a better title?

I don’t know. Are we looking at it only in retrospect? Is it only because we know that the movie was a great movie and that it was highly successful? And now it seems like, of course, it must be called When Harry Met Sally.

Yeah, I know. It does seem like that. I think that a lot of these create a sense of expectation.

Yeah, I do.

Okay, well, what happened when Harry met Sally?

It’s like half of an asked question.

It’s not even a whole question, right?

I mean, they could have titled it, I’ll have what she’s having.

That probably would have been good, too.

That is the line from the movie, right?

Yeah, it’s sort of like they say something.

It’s like going bump, and you just want to know what the next thing is.

Where’s the bits?

Right, where’s the bits?

But there’s got to be an art and a science to that. IMDb, by the way, the Internet Movie Database, has this weird thing that when you look up a film, like, for some reason, the top film will be like the Italian title or something, or known in Germany as. I’m like, why do I care? Why are you including that in your results?

I don’t care. I don’t care. Just show me the film.

Well, we’ll talk more about that later in the show. But in the meantime, you can call us about any aspect of language. The number is 877-929-9673, or you can email us. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Leslie from San Diego.

Hi, Leslie. Welcome.

Hi, Leslie. How are you doing?

Well, we have a bit of a question at work. Somebody filled the candy jar the other day with Whoppers, you know, malted milk balls, which we all love. And we were talking about how they taste. And people said, well, they taste malty or they have kind of a malty flavor. And we realized after lots of Google searching and discussion that we really didn’t know how to describe the flavor that malt adds to the chocolate without actually saying malt.

Yeah, I can see where that would be a problem.

What would you say?

I think of malt in my nose, sort of.

What?

You don’t shove them in your nose. They go in your mouth.

Especially not the Whoppers.

But you know what I mean, Leslie? I’m surprised everyone likes them.

I know plenty of people that don’t like the malted balls.

I don’t like them so much.

You’re absolutely right. And it’s about 50-50 in the actual department on who likes them and who does not. But everybody can agree that there’s a very significant flavor to them that we couldn’t quite pinpoint. Some people said sort of caramelly. Some people said earthy or grainy or something. But it was just sort of perplexing.

Yeah, I would probably fall into the malt haters category. And I would describe it as sort of musty, and I feel it in my nose.

Do you feel it in your nose, Leslie?

Yes, absolutely.

You do? Okay. It’s a nose thing.

So it’s not so much about the mouthfeel.

Oh, this makes me think of so many things, Martha.

There’s so many things that I want to say right now.

Can we do two hours on this call?

Yes, absolutely.

Well, let me ask you a question.

Leslie, I have a question for you.

How would you describe salt?

The taste of salt.

Oh, gosh.

Or sugar.

It’s sort of like malt with an S.

Yes.

So we have a lot of these really basic flavors that are only themselves.

I mean, we can come up with evocative terms and figurative speech and literary devices.

And you know what else this reminds me of?

Oh, I’m so excited now.

Now you know what it’s like to be a dictionary editor.

Yes, absolutely.

This is what I struggle with.

You sit around and eat malt balls all day?

The candy jar.

No, no.

You put Werther’s in there or maybe butterscotch.

That’s what you put in my candy jar.

Ew.

That’s the best stuff.

I don’t like that either.

That’s your problem.

I mean, just think of, let’s take this outside of food for a second and talk about colors.

Oh, my God.

How do you define a color?

Well, the dictionary editors have hit upon two or three different strategies that I think work really well.

And you, Leslie, might also use for malt to describe the flavor of malt.

For example, if you’re describing red, you might say what’s next to it on the color spectrum, what colors it’s between.

You might also describe the wavelength of the light that makes an eyeball see red.

Okay.

In comparison, you might talk about blood is red, or you might certain flowers are red,

Or you might even use synonyms for red, like crimson, right?

And in this way, you call on the more universal experience of other people and say,

Well, it’s like these things that you already know, and here’s how.

And so when we talk about malt, I think you’ve already hit upon earthy and grainy.

And some people describe it as tasting a little bit like garden compost.

Garden compost, no way.

For me, it’s more caramel.

Here’s where you really need to go.

Just like wine people, beer people in San Diego, as you know, is a big beer county.

Huge.

Huge.

They have lots of language to this stuff, and they talk about the malt flavor in their books about beer.

And here’s something that I’ve just found here.

Wonderful.

They describe the malt that you’d have in beer as it can taste like liquid bread with a yeasty, earthy richness.

Yes.

That’s an excellent description.

Isn’t that wonderful?

Sort of the bready, hoppy sort of flavor.

Yeah, yeah, that’s nice.

I feel that in my nose, too.

But malt, I mean, it’s also crunchy, right?

I mean, there’s the whole crunch thing, too.

And soft on the outside, if it’s got the chocolate on the outside, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know us, Leslie.

Food and language together, that’s our sweet spot.

I know, I know.

That’s our sweet spot, no pun intended.

That’s why it didn’t have our interest for as long as it has.

And, oh, my God, wine writing.

It’s a bit of a barnyard and tobacco and the smell of an old sofa that somebody sat in for three hours.

I like my candy to taste like that.

You know, Leslie, it’s funny about this, though.

Something really sad about malt.

They kill little sprouted barley to make the malt.

No, they let the barley seeds germinate, and then they boil them alive.

Oh, my goodness, poor barley.

So it has a bit of a taste of cruelty in it.

A hint of viciousness.

I never think of walkers the same when I eat them.

Oh, it’s probably all artificial flavor by now, right?

Yeah, seriously.

That’s true. You can rest easy.

It’s a taste of the smokestacks of Hoboken.

Genetically modified malt.

Yum.

Leslie, I don’t know if we’ve helped you.

But we had fun.

You know, I think it’s at least confirmed that we’re not missing a very obvious answer.

Yeah.

And kind of just coming to the conclusion that sometimes you just have to describe the experience, not just that one target word that’s going to explain it all.

Perfect.

Yes.

And if you want more, go to the beer writing.

There’s books and books and books of it, all right?

Well, that should be fun reading and researching.

Thanks for calling, Leslie.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Leslie.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nicole.

I’m calling from Plano, Texas.

Hello, Nicole.

Welcome.

Hi there.

What can we do for you?

Well, I was in the car with my soon-to-be husband the other day, and we were listening to a song by the Zac Brown Band.

And part of the lyrics go, she’ll make a train take a dirt road.

And I always just assumed that that meant she was a pretty girl.

And he sat there for a little bit, and then on the blue he said, I always thought that meant this girl was ugly.

So is he saying she’s ugly?

And so that kind of made us debate a little bit.

And I thought, well, why would he sing a song about an ugly girl?

Which he agreed, but I thought I would call you guys and find out, you know, for sure who was right on that.

What are the rest of the lyrics to the song?

Can you sing it?

I will not sing it, but I will tell them to you.

Good try, Grant.

Good try.

It’s called A Different Kind of Fine, and it starts off, the very first line is, she makes a train take a dirt road, make it stop on a dime, make a man change his mind.

She sounds very powerful.

Yeah, very ambiguous.

Yeah, ugly or beautiful, she sounds like she can control people with her mind.

Yeah.

Usually it means somebody’s ugly, though.

Really?

Yeah.

I would have thought it was just the opposite.

You almost always, it’s like, he’s ugly enough to make a train take a dirt road.

Or even better, she’s ugly enough to make a train take a dirt road on a Sunday afternoon.

Ooh.

In the rain.

And so the idea is this device, this machine that is supposedly set permanently on this path toward a destination because it is on rails.

And the rails keep it in place that the ugliness is so powerful that it pushes this gigantic machine to take a very unaccustomed path.

Wow.

Yeah.

She’s ugly.

That’s what it means.

And it’s funny because he talks about her being a lawyer’s queen and a trucker’s dream.

You know, and it doesn’t matter how she looks.

She doesn’t need implants.

She doesn’t need tummy tucks.

You know, she’s a cool drink of water.

So I was like, I really was like, this chick’s hot.

Maybe.

Sounds very positive.

I’ve talked about this on the show before, but the French have this expression, jolie red, ugly, pretty.

Pretty ugly.

Meaning somebody is both ugly and pretty at the same time.

They are so ugly that they’re pretty.

Like E.T.

Yeah, something like E.T.

He’s so ugly, he’s cute, right?

Well, he’s got those big eyes and a large head, and we all think of him as an infant.

Yeah, but how would he affect the train?

Maybe not beautiful.

Now, if you said that she was so ugly she’d have to sneak up on water to take a bath, then she’d definitely be really ugly.

What’s the name of the band again?

The Zac Brown Band?

Yes, Zac Brown Band.

We should call them.

We should ask them.

Yeah, what they mean.

Yeah, what they think.

Because all the girls in his video are very pretty.

Okay.

Maybe they misunderstood.

I could see it working the other way.

Somebody’s so pretty that a train would leave the tracks and take a dirt road just to come to order, right?

Right.

Maybe.

But usually, almost always, I mean, like, we’re talking 50 years or more of this expression being used.

It’s almost always about somebody who’s ugly.

Very interesting.

I wonder if he knew that when he wrote the lyrics.

Well, Nicole, what I want to know is how does your husband use it in relation to you?

Well, you know, he worships the ground I walk on.

Oh, he worships the ground you walk on.

Nice.

See, they’re not married yet.

I said, yeah, I said husband.

Soon-to-be husband, you said, right?

Yes.

Yes, in about three weeks.

All right.

Oh, congratulations.

That’s a big moment for you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah, get all the furniture where you want it now, because he’ll be less tractable afterwards.

That’s right.

Yes.

And register so you don’t get all the same things.

You know, we’re working on that.

All right.

Nicole, thanks for calling.

Well, thanks for your time, guys.

I appreciate it.

And happy wedding.

I hope it all goes well for you and your husband.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or words@waywordradio.org.

Got a new word I’ve been using lately, Grant.

This one was inspired by a cartoon that somebody sent me.

It’s two women talking.

One of them says, how is it going with you and Tim?

The other says Bluetoothy.

What does that mean?

It means paired but not connected.

Oh.

Isn’t that great?

Yes.

I’m surprised that I looked it up and nobody’s using it, but I think they should.

That’s pretty funny.

Bluetoothy.

Bluetoothy, paired but not connected.

Yeah.

That’s too long to explain, right?

Too complicated.

But connect with us, 877-929-9673.

Support comes from the Ken Blanchard Companies, celebrating 35 years of making a leadership difference with Situational Leadership 2, the leadership model designed to boost effectiveness, impact, and employee engagement.

More about how Blanchard can develop your executives and leaders at KenBlanchard.com slash leadership.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And we’re joined once again from New York City.

Who is that?

The Quiz Capital of America by John Chanesky, our quiz guy.

Hi, John.

Thank you.

Thank you, Grant and Martha.

Or should I say thank you, Barnette and Barrett, because our quiz today is about last names.

Okay.

Okay.

Ooh, okay.

This is like half trivia, right?

We’re going to have to know some last names.

A little bit, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

That’s okay, though.

I’ll make it easy on you.

Okay.

Great.

I call this almost Amos, and you’ll find out why very soon.

Many last names are occupations or things related to occupations, as you know.

Suppose you could change what you are just by changing your name, even phonetically.

Okay.

Right, imagine a famous bank robber from the 1930s who got tired of robbing banks and instead became an expert at archery just by removing the first sound of his last name.

Who would that be?

Pretty Boy Lloyd?

No.

Who else robbed banks?

Archer?

Clyde?

Yeah.

Clyde Arrow instead of Clyde Barrow.

Right.

Formerly known as Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde fame.

He’s now Clyde Arrow.

Oh, okay.

So there’s our theme.

There’s our premise.

Got it.

Okay, good.

For example, suppose a famous movie star, action movie star, recently divorced, instead wanted to become a con artist or a trickster just by removing the kuh sound from his last name.

Who would that be?

A recently divorced movie star?

I have not been keeping up on my National Enquirers.

Recently divorced.

Oh.

Yeah.

Tom Ruse instead of—

Tom Ruse.

Tom Ruse.

Very good.

Nice.

And in that example, you see not necessarily just taking off the first letter because R-U-I-S-E would not be Ruse.

Okay.

Okay.

It’s all about the sound.

Exactly.

Okay.

Very good.

Suppose a former late night TV host decided to give in to his pyromania just by removing the kuh sound from his last name.

Who would that be?

Johnny Carson.

Here’s Johnny Arson.

Johnny Arson is right.

Suppose a former vice president decided to get out of politics and activism and just run canoe trips up the Mississippi by removing the G from his last name.

Who would that be?

Al Orr.

Maybe Al.

Al Orr.

I thought you were saying he was going to go run a brewery.

Mining company, yeah.

Dan Ale.

Oh, that’s very good.

Very nice.

Suppose a former secretary of state wanted to become an ornithologist with a specialty in nocturnal birds just by removing the P from his last name. Who would that be? Oh, colon owl. That’s right.

Suppose a syndicated gossip columnist decided she could become a larger-than-life figure just by removing the S from her last name. Who would that be? This is hardly an occupation. It’s more of a thing that it can be. Liz Myth. Liz Myth. Oh, nice.

Now, suppose this lethal weapon actor decided to become a gigolo just by removing the G from his last name. Who would that be? Oh, Danny. Danny Lover. Danny Lover. Danny Lover. I put a Danny Glover. Nice. I was going to say, Ibsen what?

Suppose a successful horror novelist decided to work in the field of cryogenics just by removing the R from her last name. Who would that be? Anne Ice. Yes. Anne Ice is right. Very good.

This is the last one. Suppose a famous detective novelist decided he’d rather hang out at the track and dispense advice just by removing the S from his last name. Who would that be? Oh, Rex Tout instead of Rex Tout. Rex Tout is exactly correct. Very good. And that’s our quiz. I’m not even going to mention Donald Trump at all. So we’ll keep away from that. And that’s it. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks, John. Thanks, John. Take care now. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

This is the show about words and language. We’ll take your calls and your emails, 877-929-9673 or words@waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. This is Erin Lozade. I’m calling from Michigan. Hi, Erin. Welcome to the show. Where in Michigan are you? I’m actually driving through the Upper Peninsula right now, just across the Mackinac Bridge. What can we help you with?

I’ve noticed a new phenomenon in my life where I meet acquaintances or family members of people I’m Facebook friends with, and I have this kind of false sense of familiarity, which sometimes they kind of look at you like, who is this person who knows all these things about me? And so I was kind of trying to come up with a word or a phrase that could help describe that feeling or situation.

So these are family members or friends of your Facebook friends? Exactly. Usually it’s their husband or children, somebody that they post a lot of information and pictures of. So what do they say when this happens? Do they feel a little creeped out? Well, I don’t know if creeped out’s the right word, but of course they have no idea who I am. Maybe they’ve never seen me before, and often it’s an acquaintance or an old friend from high school.

And so you start talking to them about something or maybe say, oh, I saw your birthday party at a princess party, and they’re like, who is this person who knows so much about me? And does that happen to you, too? Occasionally, yeah. I have a two-year-old son, and people definitely know a lot about him. And even, you know, I think we post a lot of information there, and maybe not even intentionally sharing those details, but they pick up on him.

Oh, man, so he’s going to grow up and start dating somebody, and the person already knows all about him. Erin, it could be worse than that. Yes, you’re growing up under the glare of a spotlight. Erin, it could be worse. You could be the co-host of a national radio show with a son you talk about on the air. I swear, I go to towns all around the country and people are like, and how’s Guthrie? Exactly. Is kindergarten working out for him? I’m like, how do you know his name? He’s still into puppets. Yeah, how did you know he started what? Whatever.

I love my son, so I don’t mind the world knowing how awesome he is. But yeah, it’s weird, right? Right. So you want a word for this, Erin. I do have a word. You do? I do have a word. Yeah. You know, in the early days of social media, they called some of this FOAF, friend of a friend. They were talking about the value of the personal network. And it’s FOAF. And so this is FOAFiness. F-O-A-F-I-N-E-S-S. FOAFiness. It’s this feeling that you get around the friend of a friend that somehow you’re familiar with them, but really you’ve only been seeing their posts on Facebook.

I like that because it’s sort of FOAF-y. It’s like FOAFiness. It’s a little bit strange. It sounds fuzzy around the edges, right? A little queasy. I don’t know. What do you think about that, Erin? Familiar, but queasy. Yes, a friend of a friend. I think it’s like almost there, almost describing the situation, but because it’s so one-sided that that other person really isn’t even aware of my existence, but I know so much about them, it kind of gives a different feel to it. And I’m not sure. I was trying to get at that more false sense of familiarity.

I have a word for you. I just came up with it. Okay. Faux finesse. It’s like you’re finessing the relationship, but it’s faux. Maybe, maybe. Like faux finess, faux finesse. Oh, okay. Maybe. I like that. I like that. How about just like self-creeping? I don’t know. It’s just like there’s something. Self-creeping. I get a little weirded out by what I know about people. Like, you know, it’s particularly bad when I was living in Silicon Valley and there’d be all these people who I’m Facebook friends with just professionally. And I’d go to these parties. I’m like, oh, you just had a big Series B and I know how much money you’re worth. You know, I know. Oh, I just saw that you bought a gigantic house in Mountain View. I know exactly how much you paid. It’s like really kind of creepy.

You know, the other thing, too, is that I’ve become better friends with some of my Facebook friends’ friends. You know, I see them posting and then I think their posts are brilliant. And so I start talking to them and it’s its sort of goes viral. Do you have that experience? I definitely have. You know, you become more interested in these people’s lives than maybe you were just passing. And all of a sudden you just become a part of their daily routine, daily life. It’s pretty interesting. Yeah.

Well, maybe we can throw this out to all our friends on Facebook and on the air and see if they use a word for this. Yeah. Do you already have a term for that weirdness about knowing a lot about somebody’s life, knowing about the life of a stranger just because they’re friends with a friend with a friend? We do need a word for this. 877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org. Erin, thank you so much for your call. Thank you. I’m a big fan. Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye.

A couple more movies that changed their titles in progress. You know the Jack Nicholson movie with Helen Hunt that used to be called Old Friends? Oh, As Good As It Gets? Yes, very good. Now, that’s much better, isn’t it? As Good As It Gets versus Old Friends. Because that’s the essential moment of the film as well. Yeah, yeah. He encounters a room full of people. I guess they’re waiting for therapy. Huh. And he’s coming out of therapy, if I remember correctly, and he says this to them. What if this is as good as it gets? And the whole room just kind of like faces sag and shoulders collapse. And people are like, oh.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or email them to words@waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello, this is Michael calling from Omaha, Nebraska. Michael from Omaha. Hi, Michael, how are you doing? All right, Grant, Martha, glad to talk to you. Yeah, you too. What’s cooking in Omaha? Well, I was watching a good old John Wayne movie not too long ago. Of course, I’ve seen the movie a zillion times, but during the course of the film where he played a commanding officer in the late 1800s out there in the Wild West here, one of his men was killed. And this is how I recall it. I’m probably way wrong. But the point is he asked one of his aides to have him gather his possibles. And that always stuck in my head. I whipped out my smartphone and looked in the dictionary and came up with nothing looking at the caesaurus. By the way, is there another word for caesaurus?

And I just kind of forgot about it until I thought about you guys.

Okay.

So the possible.

So John Wayne was talking about somebody else fetching his possibles. That sounds really naughty.

Well, it can be, actually, in modern usage. But in the old-fashioned usage, going back to the early 1800s, maybe even before that, possible was more commonly used just to mean one’s personal belongings, the things that you might take with you on a trip.

And when it came to the United States, it became more used by, at least attributed to frontiersmen and woodsmen and trappers and cowboys and people who are out there riding rough and just had a knapsack or a saddlebag or that sort of thing.

So it’s all the things you might possibly need.

Oh, so like a Swiss Army knife is a possible.

Well, yeah, but it also would include an extra hat, a spare long john, some dried beans that you might want to soak, you know, that sort of thing. Just possibles.

Things that you keep in your pocket, like my car keys make it possible for me to drive. My wallet makes it possible for me to ID myself and do business.

Yeah, it’s the bits and bobs of daily life, just the stuff you need to get along.

There are other uses of possible as a noun, and there’s some that are related to philosophy and psychology, but they almost always have this larger meaning of the things that one might do, might need, might say.

So it’s always about what possibly might be required of a situation.

This is why my suitcases are always so heavy because I just imagine so many possibles, you know, and then I use like maybe a tenth of what I pack.

It’s good to be prepared, Girl Scout.

It is.

Thanks for calling, Michael. Glad to help.

I leave it defining to the definers there.

Exactly.

Take care now. Happy trails.

Bye-bye.

Thank you very much.

We can’t leave this unsaid. You did say it sounded naughty, and I said it could be.

Yes.

We’ve talked about this on the show. Do you remember when we talked to somebody about washing your possibles?

Yes, washing up to possible and down to possible.

Yes.

And then you wash your possible.

And then you wash possible, yes.

Well, if you’ve been watching a movie and something jumped out at you, call us, 877-929-9673.

Grant, I rarely watch movies more than once. Do you?

Occasionally, but no.

Yeah, I really, really do. But one of them that I really love originally had the working title Dogumentary. Can you guess what that is?

Dog Day Afternoon.

I hadn’t even thought about that.

Look who’s talking to.

That’s great. After a while, it was changed to Dog Show.

Oh, Best in Show?

Yeah, Best in Show. Originally it was called Dogumentary, and I love that in Argentina, the title, if you look on the little DVDs, is Very Important Perros.

VIPs.

I love that.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning. How are you?

Great.

Who’s this?

This is Mary from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Mary, welcome to the show.

Hi, Mary.

Well, I have a saying that I’ve never heard anybody say it, but I’ve read it a lot. And I wondered if you could tell me what it means and where it came from.

We will try. Let’s hear it.

Okay. Don’t try to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs.

And where have you read this?

I don’t really know. I read so much. I read about 10 books a week.

Wow.

Over the years, I’ve read it a couple times enough that it was peculiar enough that it stuck with me.

Yeah, very peculiar.

And Mary, what context do you read this in? I mean, what does it mean?

It sounds like it means been there, done that, don’t try to tell me how to do my job.

Yeah, more like the latter.

Yeah, but I don’t know how the grandmother sucking eggs come into it.

That’s the question.

Are you a grandmother yourself?

I am, and I have never sucked an egg in my life.

All right.

You didn’t have to be taught then.

Yeah.

Nobody’s teaching you anything.

I don’t know why anybody would, anyhow.

I was going to say, if you did.

That is the big question with this saying, isn’t it, Martha? Why is the grandmother in this saying sucking eggs?

Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, I try to think of my own grandmothers, and I can only imagine one of them sucking eggs, not the other one.

So how is this imagination going? What is happening? I mean, when is she doing this?

It’s probably an older person talking to a younger person who thinks he knows it all.

Very good.

Exactly. And he’s going to show her how to boil water or something, you know?

Exactly.

Exactly. And he’s getting very exasperated.

That’s exactly it. It’s part of a long tradition of warning younger people not to presume that they know more than their elders or that somebody who’s not professional knows more than a professional.

And I think it lasted because it’s just such a crazy, funny image. I mean, there are other variations of this. Don’t teach your grandmother to milk ducks or don’t teach your grandmother to steal sheep.

Oh, my.

Yeah, but those didn’t survive, and this one did, or at least not very much.

And the story as I saw it was that apparently there used to be a time when people would go into other folks’ hen houses and literally poke a hole in both ends of the eggs and suck the yolk and the whites right through the eggshell and then put it back in the nest.

Oh, sneaky.

And you can actually do the opposite. You can blow the contents of an egg out through the holes and then make Christmas ornaments. And I’ve done that.

Oh, you’ve done that?

I’ve blown an egg. I haven’t sucked an egg. And I know that sounds terrible, but it’s completely above board.

I’m just picturing these roving bands of grandmothers breaking into hen houses and sucking the eggs.

Think about a time when the average economy was a lot lower and average income was a lot lower and people were living a little closer to the earth, right? More agricultural, less income, spare cash was minimal, right?

Could it have been an old thing?

Oh, I think it’s very, very old.

Yeah, it’s at least 300 years old.

Oh, boy.

It first shows up in English in the early 1700s from a translation of a Spanish work. So apparently this expression was used in Spanish before it was used in English.

Oh, my.

That’s interesting.

Yeah, so a long history there.

Mary, thank you so much for calling us and telling us that grandmothers don’t always suck eggs.

Not usually.

Not usually.

Thank you very much. It’s been enjoyable talking with you.

Our pleasure. Always glad to hear from a fellow reader.

Okay.

Take care now.

Thanks, Mary.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Ten books a week! My gosh!

I envy her. I wish I had the time.

877-929-9673 is the number to call. Or you can send us email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

We heard from Sue Mason in Waterbury Center, Vermont, who says, I’m trying to figure out a single word that means the same thing as putting your head in the sand like an ostrich.

Grant, do you know this word?

I don’t.

Struthonian.

Struthonian?

Well, that’s the description of the behavior. It’s S-T-R-U-T-H-O-N-I-A-N, Struthonian. And it means being like an ostrich or behaving like an ostrich.

What is the root of that word?

What is the struth?

Struthos in ancient Greek means ostrich.

Oh, very interesting.

So Struthonianism is the practice of doing that. It’s sort of a joking word. You don’t see it very much, but it’s a handy word.

Anyway, apparently ostriches don’t really do that. The males will dig a little hole in the ground for a nest so that the nest can’t be seen from the plane.

Interesting. I mean, not the plane in the air.

Struthonian.

Struthonian.

Call us 877-929-9673.

Coming up, more about how movie titles are chosen. You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. We heard from Jeremy Dick in Victoria, Australia, and he wrote us with a question that he says has been driving him crazy, Grant.

He grew up loving the movie The Mighty Ducks. You remember the hockey movie?

Yeah, sure.

But then he moved to Australia, and he found there that this movie isn’t called The Mighty Ducks. It’s called Champions.

He had the same experience with a 2004 movie starring Jennifer Garner.

Here, it was called 13 Going on 30, but in Australia, it’s called Suddenly 30.

And he asked, why are movie titles changed depending on where you live? He says it doesn’t happen all the time. And for the occasions it does happen, it seems completely arbitrary and nonsensical. I can’t find a shred of evidence as to why these decisions are made to change the title if it’s not offensive or hard to understand. And, I mean, I feel his pain. I’m baffled by those two as well. I don’t see any good reason to change those. Do you?

I do. If you go to TVTropes.org, and don’t do that because it’s a black hole of a site, you’ll lose your day there. That’s where you were. But this is about TV Tropes. TV Tropes is the site that’s about all the things that happen in the entertainment business that seem repetitive to us. It consistently happens that a plot goes a certain way or actors are consistently cast in certain kinds of roles. And they have a page where they talk about why titles are changed.

A lot of it has to do with anime changing where the Japanese name is badly translated into English and it just kind of sticks. But they do mention that for one thing, the idiom might not translate. Even across different Englishes, what maybe is acceptable in the U.S. might be different in another country. Well, yeah, exactly. Like Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. I mean, that’s not going to work in the U.K., right? They changed that to Harold and Kumar get the munchies. Or Madonna, truth or dare? In the U.K., that was in bed with Madonna.

Yeah, and Captain America was called the first Avenger in some countries because they want to kind of de-emphasize the American-ness for better or worse. But there’s another thing as well. Sometimes the trademark is already spoken for, and just to avoid any kind of confusion, even if they think that they’re going to be okay, they’ll just change it. And then, and I think this may be the biggest factor, and I think this is what Jeremy is hinting, there are a large number of meddlers in the world who think that they know better than everyone else.

That’s what I’m thinking. That’s what I’m thinking. So you’ve got this whole different marketing, right? Yeah. And all this other distribution. Every person along the line has an opinion. Yeah, yeah. That’s what I was thinking. Money and test audiences, just like everything else in Hollywood, right? I’m not even sure they test it. I think they just want to put their stamp on it. I named that film. I’m the reason I’ve got another $20 million at the box office.

Well, that was the only thing I could figure for the Mighty Ducks. What’s wrong with the Mighty Ducks? Is there some duck thing in Australia that we don’t know about? I don’t know. Maybe there’s some rhyming slang that we’re not familiar with. Oh, hey, I think we have an answer. How about that, Jeremy? But maybe they don’t have a tradition of naming their school sports teams in the way that we do. Well, that would be interesting to me. I don’t know. Surely they do. The fighting kangaroos or the go emus. Give me an E. Give me an M. Give me a U. I don’t know.

Well, you know, we have a lot of listeners who work in Hollywood. Hey, hello, L.A. Give us a ring. Tell us if you had a role in the naming of a film and tell us what you went through to get that to happen. Yeah, yeah. Or if you’ve seen a film in another country and it has a weird title that you wouldn’t see here, we want to know about it, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello, this is Becky. I’m calling from Connecticut. Well, hello, Becky. Welcome to the show. Hi, Becky. Well, I have a question for you. It has to do with the all-important need to purchase adult beverages. Okay. So I’ve lived in Connecticut my entire life, but I have done a little bit of traveling. And I was visiting a friend down in South Carolina, and I thought, I’d like to get a nice bottle of wine for dinner. So I asked, you know, where’s the closest package store? And she looked at me like I was crazy and proceeded to give me directions to a FedEx store.

And I’ve also come across this problem. You know, at work, I have a lot of coworkers that are from out of state, and they’re equally puzzled by the term package store. Now, I have always understood that the place that you purchase wine, beer, any type of alcohol is called a package store. Right. So I’m assuming it has to do with our weird liquor laws in Connecticut. But I was just wondering where this term came from, and is it just unique to Connecticut or New England? If you could help me out, that would be great.

Sure, Becky. Now, you’re in Connecticut, right? Yes. Yeah, so I’m not at all surprised that you use that because it is particularly used in New England. In the Northeast. Yeah, Northeast, Massachusetts, a Paki store. Yes. Or just the Paki? Do you ever call it just the Paki? Oh, absolutely. We’ll say something like, I’m making a Paki run. Do you need anything? I’m going to run to the Paki store. What do you need? What can I get you?

And it is odd that all around the country there are different terms for these kinds of places. I mean, we called it the liquor store growing up. Not that we went to it because we were Southern Baptists. But in Milwaukee, it’s the Beer Depot and places like that. And it just has to do with the fact that you’re buying alcohol, but you’re not consuming it at that particular establishment. Right. There’s no bar, no stools, no taps. You’re just buying stuff that’s prepackaged for purchase.

Yeah. You’re just buying that wine in the box and carrying it under your arm. So the assumption is that you won’t be staggering out of the building drunk. Now, package stores aren’t unknown throughout the rest of the countries, but it’s not so, how should I put this, well-known. And paki, for certain, is one of those terms. It’s just, if somebody uses it, they’re from the Northeast. Yeah, it’s a shibboleth, isn’t it?

Now, in the part of the country where I come from, Missouri, you’ll sometimes find drive-thru package liquor stores. Those are different. Oh, wow. None of those here. Yeah. That’s better than a drive-thru. If somebody said liquor store, I mean, I would understand what they’re talking about, but it would seem so weird. And, like, package store. It’s a package store. Oh, really? Really? That’s cool. I remember being in Pennsylvania and somebody was talking about going to the ABC. I remember. Yeah, the ABC store, same thing. It’s odd. There’s some words like that that just are different all around the country.

Well, or the world. I remember standing in line at the state-run liquor store in Sweden. Yeah? The only place you can buy liquor at the time were these stores owned by the government. Yeah, what do they call it, the bottle shop or the bottle-o? I think my Swedish is terrible, but systembolaget or something like that. Oh! That sounds like what you might say if you drank too much. We have a difficult relationship with alcohol, and it comes out in our language, doesn’t it? Thanks for calling, Rebecca.

Well, thank you very much. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 877-929-9673 or words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words. Hi. Martha. Hi, Grant. Hi. How are you doing? Hi. Who’s this? This is Jessica. I’m calling from Bloomington, Indiana. Jessica, welcome. How are you doing? I’m great. How are you guys? Okay. Great. Super wonderful. What’s going on in Bloomington?

Well, actually, I have been a little confused by the way that the word Spanglish has been thrown around. I’ve been seeing it in the media and in the press about that they’ve referred to it as a language, but I’m not convinced that that’s so. And I brought that up to one of my professors, and he kind of cringed at that notion, but he didn’t really give me an explanation either. So I guess I’m just searching for how can we define Spanglish? Spanglish. So you’re talking about this amalgam of English and Spanish that’s spoken in some parts of the United States. Correct. Okay. So you do have Spanglish speakers in Bloomington? Yeah, there are.

Most of them are graduate students.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Well, I would side with your professor for sure. Spanglish is not a language on its own. And this is an academic definition, though. As far as the press is concerned, they’re free to define the term any way they want.

Spanglish is used kind of, how should we say this? You might put it in the title of your paper, and you might include it in the paper, but you’re never going to give it the full treatment alongside English and French and Russian and so forth, right?

Okay.

So it’s not going to be promoted into this class of languages where it’s got the full grammar and the full treatment and the full dictionaries. It is something akin, I would say, to a pidgin, though not exactly formal like that. Usually it means that English words are borrowed into the language of Spanish speakers because they need them. They need them for their jobs. They need them for school or for daily life.

There are, for example, if you go to Amazon, Amazon.com, you will find tons of books that have Spanglish for construction workers. So these weird kind of like transformations of the word building or two by four, the names of the tools or the processes and that sort of thing. And so it’s a modification of English so that it fits into Spanish grammar, syntax, morphological rules, that is how they form words, how words are conjugated. It’s really interesting stuff.

So more like a code switching?

Yeah, it’s a little bit of that, but it’s so different from place to place. I lived in New York City for a long time, and the Spanglish spoken there is very Puerto Rican influenced with an undertone of Dominican Spanish and a little bit of Mexican Spanish thrown in, whereas in California, it is almost exclusively Northern Mexican Spanish, at least in San Diego County where I live now. And even more so, it’s the Spanish spoken in the Northern states of Mexico. You will get some Guatemalans and that sort of thing here, but for the most part, it’s so they’re very different in the words that they adopt as well because of the different environments and the different kind of work that are available.

So it can’t be codified. You know, there’s that famous saying, Weinreich, who was a Yiddish scholar, had this saying when people would ask him if Yiddish was a language. He says, well, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

Right.

And so Spanglish, it’s not spoken by a state. There’s not like a government that has it as its official language.

Okay.

So, yeah, not a language. But definitely a phenomenon, definitely a thing, and definitely it does have some consistency, but it’s not a language.

Okay.

Jessica, did you read Elon Stavon’s book on Spanglish?

I didn’t.

Yeah, you might enjoy that because he really celebrates it. He’s a professor who was born in Mexico and is a professor here. I think he’s still at Amherst. Is that where he is?

He might be. He’s written a couple books on Spanglish.

Yeah, yeah. And he actually translated the first chapter of Don Quixote into Spanglish.

Oh, wow.

He loved it. And if you know even just the basic amount of Spanish, it’s surprisingly readable because the English is there and the Spanish is there and then the rules start to make sense. It’s kind of like the first time you read the book Trainspotting where you didn’t get the Scots English exactly, but by the end of the book, you were all set.

Okay, great.

Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it.

Okay, great talking with you.

You too.

Have a good day.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye.

Call us 877-929-9673.

Well, a couple weeks ago on the show, we had a doozy of a call.

Oh, boy.

Grant, you know the call I’m talking about.

I do, boy. Howdy. The origin of doozy. And we said that it probably, that it’s not quite certain where it comes from, but that it probably came from the use of daisy being the finest of its sort.

We didn’t mention another aspect of this story, and boy howdy, did we hear about that from listeners. Our phones were ringing off the hook. A lot of people know the story that it supposedly came from the name of the Duesenberg automobile, which had a reputation for quality and being a fine machine.

But there’s a math problem here.

Yes. The first use that we know of in print for the word doozy, as in, boy, she’s a real doozy, look at her, is from 1903. However, the Duesenberg automobiles didn’t begin being built until 1913 and weren’t widely available to consumers until 1920.

Yeah.

So it couldn’t have come from the automobile. However, I wouldn’t be surprised, given how much esteem people have held those automobiles in, if the automobile’s quality didn’t reinvigorate Duesen and kind of give it a new life.

Yes. And maybe we should have said that, that that idea was reinforced by the Duesenberg. We heard from so many people who said, my dad told me about the Duesenberg. And that’s why, I mean, that story is just floating around there. Duesy didn’t come from the automobile, but perhaps influenced it later.

Yeah.

It’s tough. You know, when you’re talking about etymology, how many stories do you leave out? It’s really a matter of drilling down to the most legitimate ones.

That’s right.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Lori Garner from Elmira, New York.

Hi, Lori. Welcome to the show.

Hello. I have a question about the word balaclava, which I hope I’m saying right. I work in a tutoring center at a community college, and our reading students have to read a book called I Am a Messenger, which was written by an Australian and takes place in Australia. So there’s a couple of different words I’ve run into, you know, like whinging or bloody, that obviously are very kind of British or Australian in nature.

And I got to a section where the main character is attacked by a couple of men wearing balaclavas. And I looked it up in our dictionary, and it said it was a garment covering the head, neck, and shoulder. We sounded like a capelet of some kind. But then it became clear that these things must be covering your faces. They started asking each other if they had food on them, and then one person started saying that it’s itching his face. And I really couldn’t figure this out, so I went to Google Images to look it up, and it turned out that it’s what I would call a C-map.

And when I went to look at those Google images, it seems like a majority of the websites were actually American in nature, that they weren’t British or Australian. And yet everybody was calling it the balaclava. But I’ve never heard that before. And I wondered, is this a common term? Am I missing something?

You know what? I think it’s going to be more and more common because it’s associated with the Russian band Pussy Riot.

Oh, no way!

Yeah, yeah. In most of their demonstrations that they did, their protests, they wore balaclavas, really bright, colorful ones. And when people saw that around the world, they started wearing them in solidarity, you know, posting pictures of themselves, you know, saying, I am Pussy Riot, wearing those balaclavas.

And these garments have a really interesting history. I don’t know if you dug into that. You know, I thought it was, when I looked it up, there was a picture of a balalaika, and I thought that balaclava with a K was that, and I’m obviously wrong. It’s the name of a port, I guess. That’s all I learned was that this name comes from the port, but I couldn’t figure out anything about where else it comes from.

Yeah, yeah, it’s really fascinating. This is the port of Balaclava on the Black Sea that was a key site in the Crimean War. And what happened was that this was one of the first times that soldiers had been mailed knitted headwear to keep them warm in the brutal winter. And so it’s a nod to the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. It goes over the head and over the ears and around the neck, and it keeps you a little bit warmer.

Oh, how funny. I guess what threw me off is that it said it went over the shoulders. I think that’s where I got confused.

Yeah, there are different kinds.

This is why you get a little bit of the difference between balaclava and ski mask is about a little bit of the difference of the size and the length of these.

Like you have the ones that have eye holes and a mouth hole.

You have one that has a face hole.

We have ones that kind of come over the shoulders, the ones that are, I don’t know, there’s different sizes and kinds of them.

Okay.

I have a question for you, Lori, though.

Did you find that mostly the term balaclava was used on retail sites?

That’s what it seemed like.

A lot of them were, yeah, stores.

This is one of those places where the specialized language of insiders, people in the retail business, doesn’t necessarily translate to the consumer side of things.

Consumers use one term, the retailers use another.

But I knew the term balaclava, like you, from my reading, because I had the same experience where I’m reading this book about, I think it was even in the Hardy Boys when I was a kid.

Oh, really?

I was like, these bad guys wearing a balaclava.

I’m like, that’s not really good vocabulary for a book for young men.

Okay.

I looked it up.

There it was.

We appreciate your calling, Lori.

Take care now.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Call us, 877-929-9673.

This showed up on my Facebook feed.

I before E, except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbor.

It’s true.

It’s all the major exceptions in a row.

Yeah.

We want to hear your stories about language.

877-929-9673.

That’s the end of this week’s show.

For more A Way with Words, including hundreds of episodes, a blog, a newsletter, a dictionary, mobile apps, and conversations with other listeners, go to waywordradio.org.

Our phone line is open 24 hours a day.

877-929-9673.

Emails great to words@waywordradio.org.

We’re also on Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, and Google+.

Our production staff includes Stefanie Levine, Tim Felten, James Ramsey, and Josette Herdell.

A Way with Words is produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by caring listeners and sponsors.

Just as we do, they believe in lifelong learning, better human communication, and the value of a thing well said or well written.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. So long.

Bye-bye.

Neither, neither. Let’s call the whole thing off.

You like potato and I like potato.

You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

Support comes from the Ken Blanchard Companies, celebrating 35 years of making a leadership difference with Situational Leadership 2, the leadership model designed to boost effectiveness, impact, and employee engagement.

More about how Blanchard can develop your executives and leaders at kenblanchard.com slash leadership.

Hey there, podcast listeners.

Just want to let you know that although we give you the show free and we give it free to stations, it does cost something to send these episodes out to hundreds of thousands of listeners across the planet.

Help support our educational mission by going to the website and clicking the donate link.

Ten bucks? A little more?

How about as much as you think it’s worth?

Thanks in any case for helping us keep shop.