Like A Bad Penny

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

I grew up in a house that was lined with bookcases.

And there was something so solid and so ponderous and almost august about the big encyclopedias on them.

In our house, we had World Book and Childcraft and Comptons, and later we got the Encyclopedia Britannica.

And I was thinking about those books that I no longer own and that I miss because of a recent blog post by the writer Nicholas Carr.

Grant, as you know, the Encyclopedia Britannica has ceased publication of its print version.

It’s going to be strictly online only.

And Carr points out that while that’s great, we’re also going to be losing something.

We’re going to be losing those handsome gilded spines, you know, those volumes on the shelf that look so imposing and inviting at the same time.

And specifically, we’re going to be missing those pairs of index words that tell you where the volume begins and ends.

And I want you to just listen to the names of the first few volumes of the 15th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica and just let your mind drift.

See what you imagine.

Ooh, okay.

Okay, this is almost going to be like a poetry reading.

Volume 1, Accounting Architecture.

Volume 2, Arctic Biosphere.

Volume 3, Birds, Chess.

Volume 4, Chicago Death.

Volume 5, Decorative Edison.

Volume 6, Education Evolution.

And Volume 7, Excretion Geometry.

Those are poetic.

They do tell you quite a bit about what you’re in for.

They do.

They do.

They make it so inviting.

I mean, how can you resist?

There are no petty subjects there.

No, none at all.

I love that.

I also love Islam Life, Number Prague, and United Zoroastrianism.

I have a number of multi-volume dictionaries at home, and they have the guide words on the spine as well.

The Century Dictionary and the Scottish National Dictionary.

I’m going to have to go home and find out what those guide words tell me.

Oh, that’s cool.

It’s probably more poetry, right?

And they’re beautiful.

They’re leather-bound, gold-embossing, and they tell you something about the importance of what’s inside, don’t they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think we’re going to lose some of that sensuousness.

Well, this is the show where we talk about all kinds of reading and words and how we use them.

If you want to talk language, call us 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

Who’s this?

Hi.

This is Charity.

I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Hello, Charity.

Welcome to the program.

Hiya, Charity.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Well, recently I was at work and in the break room with a co-worker having a casual conversation, and she left, and then she came back.

And I said, oh, here you are again.

And she said, yes, I’m back like a bad penny.

And we both kind of looked at each other and laughed and thought, wonder what that means.

We had both heard it from relatives or just in the cultural vernacular, I guess.

And she made the comment, I don’t think any penny would be bad in my book.

And so anyway, I thought of you guys when that conversation was happening and thought, my biggest concern is what kind of connotation it had.

It seemed like because of the word bad in there that maybe it meant like she was saying to me, sorry, I’m back again.

Like, sorry, I keep coming back.

But I wasn’t sure if it had that connotation.

I love taking these old expressions and kind of breaking them down and saying, all right, this is exactly what we know about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, great.

We’re talking really old expression, Charity.

It goes all the way back to the 15th century.

Really?

Oh, my goodness.

In English.

Did you find it in other languages?

Pennies?

No.

Bad peso?

Peso malo?

No, there’s an old proverb that goes back at least to the 15th century that simply a bad penny always turns up or a bad penny always returns.

Wow, and it’s still, because that’s usually the farm that it takes even today, a bad penny turns up, right?

Yeah.

Very consistent over the years.

Yeah, yeah, and the idea is that a bad penny is a counterfeit coin.

And if it’s out there in circulation sooner or later, you’re going to get stuck with that bad penny.

Because everybody’s passing it at everyone else, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Of course, these days, don’t you think a bad penny is kind of redundant?

I mean, most people would not stoop to pick up a penny.

Maybe not even a dime.

Or a quarter.

I would pick up a quarter.

Grant would pick up.

We’re in public radio.

Of course we’d pick up quarters and dimes and nickels.

And pennies.

I actually still pick up pennies, to be honest.

Do you really?

I do, too.

And what do you do with them?

Well, they end up in this giant jar in my living room, and I keep looking at it, wondering what I’m going to do with it.

So I don’t know what I do with them.

Yeah, cash that bad boy in.

It’s worth more than you think.

Or you could buy a coin sorter from Sharper Image for $99.

Those are fun.

Those are so much fun.

You will run the same batch of coins through numerous times just to watch it work.

But how much are you going to have to spend for that thing, right?

Exactly.

I don’t think I have enough pennies to buy it.

You know, the bad penny thing, I’ve actually had that happen.

I had a bent penny once.

I don’t know if somebody tried to put it on the railroad tracks or something.

Somebody, quote, unquote, somebody tried to.

No, seriously.

It was passed to me in my change in a store.

Okay.

And I’ve got a pocket full of change.

You know how when you’re on the road, you just seem to accumulate lots of change?

And because you’re not at home, you’re in a hotel, you can’t just throw it in the jar, you know, as Charity’s saying.

And so you’re sorting this change and you’re looking for the penny and it’s always there.

The bent penny doesn’t stack.

You’re always pulling the bent penny out of your pocket.

Like a bad penny, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, good point.

Good point.

But it wasn’t derogatory to say that somebody turns up like a bad penny.

Not really.

Well, it’s kind of jokey now, you know.

Okay, yeah.

Are you a Mad Men fan by any chance?

I’m not.

Okay.

All right.

I was going to say in one of the recent episodes, one of Don Draper’s, you know, he’s a real Lothario.

This woman gets on the elevator.

He’s on the elevator with his wife, but they’re kind of standing far apart because he has a cold.

And this woman gets on the elevator and says, Don, my bad penny.

Nice.

You know, basically we meet again, you bad penny.

Right, right.

That’s great.

So it’s still not just something that people say in break rooms.

It’s like a cultural thing.

Yeah.

It’s out there.

It has currency, so to speak.

Oh, ouch.

Oh, nice.

Charity, you get an award for making Grant make a pun.

That almost never happens.

Okay, great.

Usually my puns are so clever that nobody notices.

Oh, is that it?

Is that it?

The check is in the mail, Charity.

Okay, great.

I’ll be looking for it.

It’s for one cent.

Okay.

Right.

I was just thinking that.

Great.

Thank you very much for calling, Charity.

Glad to help.

Thanks so much.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Boy, they have a lively break room at work, don’t they?

They do, and I bet she’s going to be back like a you-know-what.

Like a radio listener.

That’s right, a radio listener.

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

Give us a call.

Send us an email.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, guys.

This is Rob Weitzel from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Rob.

Hey there, Rob.

What’s up?

Hey, I just had a quick question for you guys.

You know the song Rolling in the Deep by Adele?

Sure.

Yeah.

It’s a major hit in the United States and around the world, I’m sure.

And I have no idea what that means.

The title and the words in the song and all that.

And I’m sure a lot of people haven’t even thought about it.

Can you sing it for us?

I think people will turn off the radio.

Yeah, I always wondered about that.

I thought it maybe was a mondegreen, you know, that I was just mishearing, rolling in the…

You know, I thought it was like, there’s a bathroom on the right.

I got that one wrong for years.

But rolling in the deep, yeah.

The deep what?

She’s talked about it in an interview.

She gave an interview to Rolling Stone in February of 2011 and a couple other places.

And she said that she pulled it out of British slang, where if you roll deep with someone, it means that you have each other’s backs, that you’ve got somebody to lean on, you’ve got like a permanent pal, somebody who will stick with you through thick and thin.

This is always a question that comes up because it’s not something that most Americans use.

We don’t know roll deep.

I do believe that there’s an African-American expression that’s very similar, that it’s about being paired with somebody probably who isn’t a romantic partner, who is your like permanent friend.

Just somebody who, like, even when you’re down, they pull you up.

And when you’re up, you pull them up with you, you know?

Like a permanent log rolling buddy, I guess.

Oh, so it doesn’t have anything to do with being 20,000 leagues under the sea.

I mean, so the deep is a noun in this case?

Well, she’s taken the expression, which is to roll deep.

Like, Martha, you and I roll deep.

So she’s taken the expression roll deep and elaborated on it and used her artistic license to build it into the lyrics.

So it’s a great use of idiom, I think.

Yeah, I like it. Do you like it, Rob?

Yeah, I do. And I never thought about it that way.

I always thought it was kind of maybe a nautical term or something, but it kind of meshes those two worlds together with some of the other lyrics about the ships and fever pitch and whatever.

Well, you can parse it out a little bit.

In North American English, you might say, that’s how I roll. You might say, that’s the way I go.

Like, for example, if you show up at a party with 20 or 30 friends that weren’t invited, you’d be like, that’s how I roll.

You know, I come with a posse, right?

And what that means is I operate in that way.

That’s how my life is conducted, usually in a grand fashion.

So we’ve got that sense of roll, which is similar to what she’s talking about.

And then the deep is just simply means a strong connection.

So deep meaning thoroughly or completely.

So we roll deep together, Martha.

Well, yes, we do.

We do.

I’m just thinking as popular as that song has been, I don’t hear people around me saying it.

Nope, we don’t, do we?

I mean, is that your experience, Rob?

I’ve never heard anybody ever say that.

You hear people singing the lyrics or humming it, and you’re always like, what are they?

Do they even know what they’re saying?

I don’t even know what it means.

It could have been something horrible, you know?

Doing drugs or something like that, whatever the kids are into nowadays.

Rolling the, yeah.

I think even at this point, long after the album came out, there is no point in America where that song is not playing in every city.

It’s somewhere on the radio.

It’s true. It’s a great album.

I think you flip down the dial and still find that song.

Or maybe the other big hit off the album.

Rob, we appreciate your calling.

Appreciate you guys for having me on.

Y’all have a great one.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Take care.

Thanks. Bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We could have had it.

I wish you had that button in the desert.

You have a heart.

Grant, a few weeks ago on the show, one of us said something about you shouldn’t take umbrage at this or that.

And we had a call from a listener named Anushka here in California who wanted to know what that meant, to take umbrage at something.

And I thought it was a good question because it’s something that I’ve had to look up again and again to get the exact meaning of.

But to take umbrage means to take offense at something, to be annoyed by something, to be irritated by something.

And I started remembering it when I realized the Latin source of the word.

It comes from the Latin umbra, which means shadow.

And early on, the term umbrage meant shade, like the umbrage you would find in an orchard.

And it’s a relative of the word for that thing that you take to the beach to give yourself a little shade, the umbrella.

And eventually taking umbrage meant to sense a kind of shadowiness or suspicion.

To cast a shadow on something.

Yeah, something shady.

That makes sense.

So to take umbrage.

I might have guessed the umbrella connection, but I might not have put it all together.

Very good.

It’s cool stuff, right?

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

More news you can use about language and our weekly quiz coming up.

Support for A Way with Words comes from the Ken Blanchard Companies, whose purpose is to make a leadership difference among executives, managers, and individuals in organizations everywhere.

More about Ken Blanchard’s leadership training programs at kenblanchard.com slash leadership.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And joining us once again is our master quiz master, the masterful man, John Chaneski.

Hello, master.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

I wonder if someday I get to be doctor of puzzles instead of just master of puzzles.

I don’t know.

Do you have a blue foam box?

Oh, yeah.

I’ll settle for being a puzzle companion.

Nice.

I’m good with that.

Nice.

You can be the dog one.

Canine?

Oh, I love canine.

Sure.

It occurs to me that I’ve never had you guys over to the house.

No, you haven’t.

Since you live so far away, maybe we should find a substitute for a house visit.

How about some words and phrases that include furniture and things around the house?

Okay.

How’s that for a second?

Around your house or around my house?

A normal person’s house.

Oh, okay.

Neither of you being normal, so he means my house.

Neither of us or Grant, maybe.

I don’t know.

Okay.

For example, televisions have been around since 1928.

So why did this term only become popular in 1982?

Maybe people used to watch TV standing up.

What do I know?

I’m just a youngster.

Television stand?

No.

That’s in a house.

Kind of a, that’s true.

TV tray?

TV dinner?

No.

No, the TV isn’t in this phrase.

No, it’s a different piece of furniture.

It’s for someone who watches a lot of TV.

Oh, a TV chair?

No, it’s for a person.

TV couch.

Couch potato.

Couch potato is right.

Nice work, Grant.

Wait, what?

Yes.

I don’t get it.

Try to pay attention.

Well, let me turn off the TV.

Just a second.

There’s your problem, couch potato.

The answer is, of course, couch potato.

Let’s see how many more of these you can get.

Remember, there’s a piece of furniture or a part of a house somewhere in this phrase.

Okay, good.

If I’m in love with my lovely pen pal from Spain and I want to propose to her, but she’ll only be in town for a brief two-hour layover tomorrow, those two hours are known as what?

Something window.

Yeah, something.

Of?

Opportunity.

Yes, my window of opportunity.

Good.

Got it.

Now we’re on track.

If I invest in a sure thing, like, say, smartphones for pets, and that doesn’t turn out too well and I lose all my money, I’ve done what?

Taking a bath.

Taking a bath.

Yes.

Very good.

Now, the very real but metaphorical barrier that keeps some minorities and women from success despite their achievements is known as what?

Glass ceiling.

Glass ceiling.

Very good.

They can’t deny your skill, of course, if you invent something amazing, like, say, smartphones for pets, naturally.

And the sales figures do what?

Go through the roof.

Yes, through the roof.

Are you trying to get funding from a VC or something?

Yeah, maybe.

Smartphones for pets.

Contact me, by the way.

Smartphones for pets.

Now, in this case, you will get a promotion, and they might describe you as having been this, which, frankly, sounds a little painful.

Above board?

No.

No?

That’s a nice guess.

Kicked upstairs?

Kicked upstairs is right.

Oh, nice.

Yes.

Stairs.

Of course, when I told my parents of my meager aspirations, they were amazed and stunned.

They were…

Hornswoggle.

Bean counters.

They weren’t bean counters?

No.

No.

Floored.

Floored.

Yes, floored.

Completely floored.

Very good.

Very good.

Now we’re going to get away from my aspirations.

We’re going to talk about one of the largest and longest-lasting sovereignties in history existed in Turkey between 1299 and 1923.

The Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire is right.

Now, finally, Russian chemist and inventor Dmitry Mendeleev must have been a pretty organized guy.

I mean, he organized all the things that make up everything in a chart.

What’s that called?

The periodic table.

Yes, the periodic table.

Very good.

You guys did great.

That’s a little tour of my house of words.

Your psyche.

That’s very scary.

That’s right.

His mental space.

John, thank you very much.

It was great fun.

Thank you, Grant.

Thank you, Martha.

And if you have a question about language or wordplay, grammar, slang,

Give us a call, 877-929-9673,

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

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Oh, yes.

Hi.

How are you?

Hi.

Doing well.

Who’s this?

My name is John.

I’m from Richmond, Virginia.

Hiya, John.

Hey, John.

What’s up?

I have a question about a high school term from when I went to high school,

Which is kind of back in the day a little bit.

I’m a Gen Xer, and I graduated in 1989.

I went to this high school in Yorktown, Virginia,

And it was a very stratified high school, just like a John Hughes movie.

There were specific groups of students, and they kind of stayed within their own group.

So you had your jocks, you had your nerds, you had your skaters,

And then you had a particular group that was interesting.

They were called Grits.

Grits?

Yeah, D-R-I-T-S, Grits.

Grits.

What were they like?

They were, and I don’t even think this species of high school student exists anymore,

But they were the metal kids.

They kind of wore jean jackets with Ronnie James Dio patches,

And they wore, like, leather boots up to their knees,

And they were kind of, you know, rebellious.

And, you know, when I went to high school, they had a smoking area,

And they were always in the smoking area.

So they were just their own substrat of student.

And I thought it was interesting.

Years later, I was talking to a friend who’s from southeastern Pennsylvania,

And I was describing this kind of stratified social system in my high school.

And he said, well, we had the same kind of students, but we called them Hessians.

Hessians.

Hessians.

Hessians.

How do you spell that?

H-E-S-S-I-A-N-S, I believe.

Just like the German troops for hire.

Yeah, sure.

And he was in Pennsylvania, did you say?

Pennsylvania.

So then I started to think, is there a different name for this substrata of student citizen across the country?

Like every region has a different name.

I thought it was just really an interesting concept.

And so I wonder if you guys can help me out with that.

Yeah, that’s a great question.

I love this.

This is good.

You know, I don’t think that research has been done on this.

I don’t think there’s been a thorough study of the names of high school cliques across the country.

But I’d love to see one.

Oh, my gosh.

That would be great.

We’re breaking new ground here.

Maybe we should undertake it.

But I can tell you that both of those terms that you named, grits and hessians, are used or have been used in other schools besides the two that you know.

No kidding.

Yeah.

And hessian is really interesting because it’s transmitted orally.

And as we often talk about on the show, that means the spelling then is highly variable.

And you will find it spelled H-E-S-H-E-N, hessian.

You’ll find it shortened to a hesh or hesshes.

No kidding.

Or even hessers.

Was there a movie hessers?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

These are all related terms, and they refer to what my era called, and I’m within an age of, I’m a Gen Xer as well.

I graduated in 1988.

We called them metalheads or the smokers.

Metalheads.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah.

So these were the guys with the long hair and the boots and the black outfits and the metal shirts and the tattoos.

Highly disdainful of authority.

Yeah.

Well, that’s all high schoolers, but they were even further on the pail.

I wasn’t.

I was one of the prudes.

Come on.

And in the grits term, I find this actually in some studies that have been written about high school cliques.

They talk about some schools, I believe, in Texas and Iowa, where there were, at the time when these studies were written in the 90s, groups that were known as the grits.

And they described them as the losers or the outcasts or the ones on the fringe, the ones who aren’t a part of any real active student group, but kind of glommed together because they’re disdainful of everything else that is happening.

Is this gritty or because they eat grits in Iowa?

There are a number of fanciful explanations.

It has nothing to do with the food grits.

It isn’t an acronym or an initialism.

And what it probably just refers to the grittiness of their nature.

They tend to be associated with shop class.

The guys who will rebuild the car.

The guys who they work on their own car and it has primer everywhere.

And maybe they wore yesterday’s jeans or last week’s jeans.

Or, you know, last month’s jeans every day.

You know, those kind of guys.

It’s an extra version of, like, you know, greasers from the 50s.

Greasers, yeah.

We used that and we used hoods.

But not the cleaned up version that they had in the movies.

I mean, we’re talking, and usually it’s men, or young men, right?

It’s usually, like, nine out of ten of these are men.

They’re female grids.

They have, you know, yeah.

But mostly men, right?

Right.

Yeah.

You speculated that this crowd doesn’t exist anymore,

And I would love to hear from listeners who are still in high school whether or not there is a new name for this crowd.

We’re talking what used to be the metalheads or not quite the goths and the emo kids.

I mean, because we’re talking about they listen to the songs where the music where they have the cookie monster voice, you know.

That’s what they call it in metal, the cookie monster voice.

Right.

Raw, raw, raw, raw, raw.

You know?

Crash and black metal and death metal and all that.

Yeah, yeah.

So in your school, you there, you high schoolers listening to the show, in your school, what do you call that crowd?

Frankly, what do you call any of the cliques in your school?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

We’ll put this data together, and we’ll talk about it on a future show, okay?

Thank you so much for calling.

Thank you.

Brilliant show, guys.

Thank you.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Martha Grant, hi.

Hi, who’s this?

Hello there.

This is Eric calling from Des Moines, Iowa.

Welcome.

Hi, Eric.

I have got a question for you.

I’m a writer and editor for an investment firm.

And one of the things that I’ve seen coming up in, like, portfolio manager commentary

And different economic stuff that our firm puts out is the term the Great Recession

With capital letters, all proper noun-y and everything.

And what I’m wondering is, is the Great Recession a thing?

I mean, has it attained the status of the Great Depression?

Which, in what little research I was able to do,

I found out that it even took a couple of years for the Great Depression to catch on.

So because I’m set with kind of dictating what policy is through our firm,

I wanted to get your opinion on whether the Great Recession was a thing or not.

What are you inclined to do?

Frankly, I don’t think it’s a thing.

I kind of feel like everybody wants to feel like their generation suffered more than anybody.

That’s right. We’re talking boomers here, right?

For the most part, yeah.

And it just seems a little bit too close.

And I know it was a very bad time from 2007 until 2009 and continuing.

But what I could find, I think that I’d found references to the Great Recession for about every recession going back to 1900.

As a formal term, right?

Correct.

Same here. I found the same thing when I was researching this a few years ago, that it had been used with some regularity since the 1970s for every single downturn.

And partly it was used by the opponents to whatever administration was currently in power.

Now, with this administration, we have a recession that has some interesting characteristics, and I won’t go into them here.

But it is a little different than some previous recessions, and we have a far more active and visible media.

So the term has been used tens of thousands, if not millions of times.

And so it has been widespread.

I don’t think it’s going to go away, but I think that your instinct as far as your internal use is sound.

I think it should be avoided in formal contexts because it is so vague and inspecific.

The Great Recession isn’t over, theoretically, if you still want to call it the Great Recession.

Even when it started in around 2007, that’s in dispute.

Some people say it starts in 2006.

Some people say it doesn’t really get going to 2008.

In any case, it’s a vague term.

It’s harder to find its boundaries, its beginning and its end.

And it’s got a little bit of a taint, as you’re saying, of let’s make something big out of this so that we can talk about it, not because it’s actually big.

Right?

And I don’t mean to diminish any kind of problems that people have had.

The recession hurt us all one way or the other.

But I do mean to say that the Great Recession isn’t a term that I would formerly use in a textbook or in papers filed with the SEC or if I were writing about the stock market in a way that I was recommending or dis-recommending stocks for purchase.

Sure.

I would avoid the term for now.

I mean, if you’re writing popular…

A blog entry or something?

Yeah, a popular economic device for a general interest newspaper, fine.

Go ahead and use it.

But for the formal stuff, the stuff where you really need to be specific, I would avoid it.

Sure.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Cool.

Thanks for calling, Eric.

Good instincts.

We’ll see you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Granted, it feels like a great recession when you’re in it, but I guess your point is that…

Yeah, it felt like that in the 90s.

It felt like that in the 80s.

It felt like that in the 70s.

And those are the only recessions that I remember.

But they all felt the same when I was in the middle of them.

Yeah.

Like terrible times were ahead and it would never get better.

Yeah, maybe we should call it the not-so-great recession.

And then you pass through it, and you’re like, okay, I did this.

I made it through.

Things are getting better.

Yeah, the sun’s going to come out.

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

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Barbara.

I’m from Winstead.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

Sure, welcome, Barbara.

Winstead where, Barbara?

Oh, Winston, Connecticut.

Okay, great.

Nice to talk to you.

What can we help you with?

Yes. I had a question about a word I used growing up. I think it mainly came from my mom using it. It’s wash rag. And I used to use the word all the time until about the age of 20.

I had a friend who said it wasn’t really appropriate to use the word wash rag, because when we used the word wash rag, we referred to it as something to bathe with or to wash your dishes with.

And I was curious about when was it inappropriate to use that as the term and the origination of it.

I had originally thought that the word came from more of the Depression because my mom was born in 1936, and she grew up actually in Collinsville, Connecticut, which was more of a poor town where if you lived there, you worked there.

Well, that’s interesting because I grew up in Kentucky, and my parents were from the South, and we used wash rag.

It was like it was one word.

It wasn’t even, I never even broke up the words in my head to think that it was a rag with which you wash.

I just thought it was a wash rag, just like we said tuna fish.

Yeah, I was just all.

And Barbara’s seen here.

I grew up with the term in Missouri, probably from my father more than my mother.

And there was no stigma until I got to my 20s and started to realize that some people thought that wash rag was a little low class.

Is that what you’re saying too?

Yes, that’s exactly what happened with me.

Oh, interesting.

And the same with dishrag.

We wash the dishes with the dishrag, not the dishcloth, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s very interesting.

It sounds like we all have the same experience of not until our 20s hearing people say washcloth or facecloth.

To me, those terms sound prissy.

Yeah, facecloth is a little more British, right?

Or the flannel.

Well, I don’t know.

I just, it shocked me the first time I heard people saying facecloth and washcloth.

As I understand it, Barbara, what we’re looking at here is not a dialect difference, but we’re looking at mostly a class difference.

And there has been this association with the terms wash rag and dish rag with people who come from blue collar backgrounds or perhaps aren’t in sophisticated urban environments.

And as far as I know, there’s not say it’s I don’t think that it’s more southern.

I don’t think that it’s more rural.

It’s about where you come from.

You know, it’s about about the socioeconomic class that you belong to.

That makes sense.

Yes.

Well, and you asked how long it’s been around.

It’s been around since the 1890s or so in the U.S.

Yeah, and maybe earlier than that.

Probably.

Wash rag and dish rag are not used in the U.K., and the rag term may have a little bit more to do just to mean a scrap of cloth, not like a destroyed, stained, dirty piece of textiles, right?

There’s a slightly different rag we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about a perfectly fine piece of cloth, but it’s not like the oily rag’s out of the garage.

Right.

And the thing is, this class distinction is so strong that I defy you to get one of the fancy catalogs from one of these high-end stores and find them using the word washrag anywhere in there.

That’s a good point.

It’s face cloth almost always.

Sometimes it’s washcloth.

It is never washrag.

Probably something fancier than that in the catalogs, too.

Yeah, yeah.

I don’t know about you, Barbara, but I’m proud to use the word washrag.

Depending on who I’m with, I tend to catch myself whether I use the word cloth or washrag.

Oh, really? Yeah.

Yeah, it’s funny. We do train ourselves, don’t we?

Yeah.

Barbara, thanks for calling. We really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

So which do you say, wash rag or washcloth, dish rag or dishcloth?

Something else? 877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

Coming up, the answer to a linguistic food mystery and more stories about language.

Stay tuned.

Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, where flexible online classes let you earn your degree or credential on your schedule.

More at nu.edu.

You are listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And Martha, we finally solved a word mystery.

Yes, we did.

In October of last year, we had a call from Lynn in Plano, Texas.

She called about a menu that a friend of hers had inherited from his mother.

His mother was in Jackson, Mississippi.

The menus were dated September 1947.

On these menus was an entree called Tang.

Tang served with molasses.

Tang served with k-ro syrup, right?

Right.

You remember this.

We got a lot of calls.

A lot of people speculated that it was this or that.

We were able to eliminate some of this stuff right away.

We knew that it wasn’t Tang the powdered space drink, the orange-flavored space drink, because that didn’t come along until 10 years later.

You and I eliminated Tang the fish because Tang the fish was never cultivated for mass consumption, was unlikely to appear 250 miles inland, and furthermore did not go with the rest of the menu, which was very ordinary.

Yeah.

Yeah, it wasn’t in the recipe.

The rest of the menu was things like pineapple salad, butterscotch pudding, baked potato, greens, tea, and the like, right?

Right.

And we found no recipe book at all anywhere that included recipes on how to make Tang the Fish.

So we were pretty much stumped.

We put the word out to you, and we re-aired that call recently.

And we got even more email from people with their ideas.

This time, we had the correct answer.

Yes. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Wonderful stuff. Came in from Barry Lynn in Casa de Oro, California.

This is just outside of San Diego where we record the show.

Barry sent us pictures of an antique button, the kind you pin on your shirt.

It says, try Cudahy’s Tang, delicious economical.

That’s Cudahy, C-U-D-A-H-Y.

And I’ll tell you why we pronounce it that way in a minute.

On the pin, next to those words is the cartoon of a fat-bellied boy.

And next to him is a metal tin that looks exactly like a tin of Spam.

And it turns out that if you Google Cudahy’s Tang, you find out that Cudahy’s Tang was a knockoff of Spam.

Yep.

Now, there were more than 100 knockoffs at the time.

Spam came around in 1937.

The Tang product came around a few years later.

It turns out that you can find it advertised in Life magazine and in newspapers across the country in the Wednesday circulars and where have you in the grocery section and so forth.

So the Tang that was on this menu was a Spam-like product.

We’re talking the pork, heavily salted, mildly spiced, squeezed into a canned product.

You know, the stuff that lasts for seven years on the shelf.

I’m grimacing, but…

I loved it as a kid.

Slice that up, fry that, serve it with some greens and cornbread.

Well, it fits with those menus, right?

It does. It does indeed.

So it turns out, as far as we’re concerned, that Barry Lynn has solved this problem.

I think there’s 100% likelihood that Barry has it right.

And that the tang on these menus was a spam-like product, this processed meat in a can.

It fits.

A little side note, Martha.

There are a number of people around the country, well, in two places exactly, who are jumping up and down right now.

And they live in Cudahy, Wisconsin and Cudahy, California.

It’s because these two cities were named after two members of the Cudahy family.

And this family had many members who were involved in the meat processing and meat packing businesses over the last 100 plus years.

And so these two cities take their name from the factories that used to make this product.

And many other products, by the way.

And there’s still a Patrick Cudahy factory in Wisconsin, I believe.

Bring us your stumpers.

It may take a while, but we can crowdsource the answer sometimes.

877-929-9673 or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hello.

Hi, who’s this?

My name’s Dave, and I’m calling from Michigan.

Hi, Dave. Welcome to the program.

Well, this is the beginning of a tourism season here in Michigan.

And we have a word that is one of those unspoken words.

Or oftentimes if it’s spoken, it’s spoken amongst a closed circle of friends.

Or something like that, or maybe coworkers.

And the word is used for outsiders, and I don’t mean to…

I don’t want to apply any undue pejorative connotations to the word.

You know, tourists are what they are no matter what part of the country they’re touring or where they’re from.

And I think that’s somewhat interesting on this word.

And what we call tourists in this area are fudgies.

Fudgies?

Fudgies, yes.

It’s got a bit of a history in the state where someone opened a business on Mackinac Island up in Lake Huron.

And the island was always a tourist place, and this man made quite a bit of fame and fortune with selling fudge to tourists.

And so all the locals would refer to the tourists as fudgies.

It’s probably synonymous with cone liquors, meaning ice cream cone-eating folks.

Wait, you also have cone liquors there? That’s another derogatory term for the tourists?

Well, you know, interestingly, you might wonder why Michigan reserves the title fudgies.

Because you can make fudge anywhere in the country.

And they do. I’ve eaten in numerous tourist towns.

It sells well until it gets too hot.

So Michigan, being in a northern climate, it’s one of those things that does really well.

But if it does get too warm, ice cream sales are more your better bet.

And I guess my curiosity is really I’ve been a tourist in other places.

And I guess I’m kind of wondering what other people have called me when I was in their neck of the woods visiting.

Well, a better question, Dave, is do the fudgies know that you call them fudgies?

Are the tourists aware that there’s a nickname for them?

Or, I mean, before now, now they are.

It does leak out every now and again.

I mean, it is somewhat unspoken in that you don’t want to call somebody a fudgie to their face generally.

Unless maybe you’re arguing over whose fault the car accident was.

It’s always the out-of-towner, right?

It’s always the fudgy.

Right, right.

Got rear-ended by a fudgy.

Yes, exactly.

So I think it’s unique in that we aren’t calling them by a pejorative word.

Because of where they’re from.

It’s because of what they do when they’re here, which is, by the way…

I mean, northern Michigan people probably don’t eat that much more fudge than any other part of the Midwest.

Probably not.

If you’re in business here, you more really affectionately call them fudgies because they’re the source of your income.

Yeah, they’re job creators. That might be a better name for them.

Exactly.

Right.

I’m reminded of that term nosebagger that we talked about a few weeks ago.

People who go to a tourist spot and they bring their own food so they don’t stimulate the economy.

And also, you know, there’s also the term shoobies.

Right, from New Jersey, right?

Yeah, on the Jersey Shore.

Supposedly they came with their lunches and shoeboxes instead of buying from the local vendors and merchants.

Yeah, shoobies.

-huh.

Yeah.

Here in Southern California in the San Diego area where we record the show,

Zonies or zoners are people from Arizona.

And they do come in, big loads of them, as tourists because we’re the nearest beach.

-huh.

Yeah.

And so it’s mildly derogatory.

You might talk about how a zonie or a zoner is driving.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah, exactly.

And when I lived in central Florida for a while, you know, we would call the people coming down from the north, from places like Michigan, we’d call them snowbirds.

Or if they were older folks with white hair and white shoes, we’d call them Q-tips.

Because they have…

Q-tips, yes.

We have the same term here.

Oh, you do?

Fuzzy white tops, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, terms for outsiders are often a thing.

I know that you really touched upon something here.

I suspect that we are now on our way to getting many, many emails about words for outsiders.

I know in Vermont and Colorado, they use the term flatlander for somebody from outside their region.

Perhaps in New Hampshire and parts of upstate New York as well.

Yeah, probably other places.

Yeah, flatlander for the people who are from away.

Right.

Thank you so much for a wonderful call, Dave.

You have given us lots to think about.

And Martha, I think it’s time to put the word out to everybody.

Oh, I thought you were going to say it’s time for him to send us some fudge.

Yeah, some fudge.

Yeah, no doubt, or cherries.

We also want to hear about what you call outsiders, where you are.

What do you call the tourists or the people who are from somewhere else?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Thank you. Take care.

I really appreciate what you do.

All right, bye-bye.

Have a great day.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Edward Neal.

I’m in Richardson, Texas.

Hi, Edward.

You know, I had a question for you guys concerning the origin of a word.

I had a friend of mine say something about the word vaccinium being Latin for berries.

And that’s where the origin of the word vaccine came from.

And so what happened was controversial for me was that I went to a class here recently.

And I had a professor tell me that the origin came from the word cow.

And I don’t know it right off the top of my head in Latin, but I know in Spanish it’s vaca.

So vaccine, or cowboys, vaqueros.

So I was led to believe it was from the word cow.

So I told him this, and so we kind of led it off to a standoff.

And I started doing some research on the Internet.

And both sound pretty legitimate, and nobody really has an answer for me.

So I thought maybe you guys might.

Oh, boy, do we.

I know the word baka with a B is berry in Latin, B-A-C-A.

And so I’m not sure what he’s talking about.

But that would explain the confusion.

But we know because this etymology is solid and known.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s very clear that vaccinia was the virus that caused cowpox.

And cowpox virus was originally used to inoculate people against smallpox.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, by Edward Jenner in the 1790s.

Yeah, and since that was the first big vaccination, I mean, that was when vaccination began, it took the name of that first virus.

Jenner’s great discovery, and he’s not the only one who did it.

Many people were thinking about this.

People knew that dairy maids, women who worked with cows, didn’t get smallpox.

They tended to get cowpox.

And that was what he popularized, the idea of vaccinating people with cowpox, which is much less lethal.

Right. But also caused the same antibodies to appear in the body that would fight smallpox as well.

Right. Right. But so it’s the cowpox virus that gives us the word vaccinia and vaccination.

So not the berry.

Not the berry.

Okay.

So that’s vaccinia, not vaccinium.

Yeah.

With the U.S.

Okay.

Well, I will regroup my knowledge and post it to him.

And see where that all goes with all that.

Cool. Thanks, Edward.

Yeah, well, thank you.

I really appreciate you guys taking my call.

Sure, take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So to recap, Martha,

Edward was saying that the word came from cow,

Which you and I believe to be true.

His friend was saying it came from a word for berry,

But what we find is that there’s just a coincidence

That these two Latin words are similarly spelled,

But there’s no etymological history whatsoever in the word vaccine that has anything to do with berries.

Correct.

There’s a similar-looking Latin word that means blueberry, but it has nothing to do with cowpox.

Okay, very good.

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

Call us with your language questions.

Send them to us in email.

We’d love to hear about them.

I have a couple of great phrases from this collection of Virginia folk speech from 1912.

Grant, I think you’ll appreciate these because they’re both kind of snarky.

One of them, if you’re talking about a very proud person, you say,

He doesn’t know where his behind hangs.

Isn’t that great?

And here’s another snide comment.

I’d rather have your room than your company.

I like that.

Those are cool.

A little more room here.

Those are great.

Those are good.

New ways to insult people. Thank you.

Great stuff. I thought you’d like those.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language,

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. This is Dorothy Ann.

I am calling from Dallas, Texas, although I am not a Texan.

Oh, you’re not a Texan.

What are you doing there?

Where are you from? Yeah. What are you doing in Dallas?

I’m actually from the West Coast, but my husband and I moved out here about two years ago

And are actually right in the middle of packing to move to Michigan in about two weeks.

Well, we’re on there too, so don’t forget to tune us in.

What can we help you with today, Dorotheanne?

When I was a little girl, maybe even three years old, before I could really read,

I really had a favorite letter, which was the letter W.

And it’s not really important to my name or the street I grew up on, but I loved it.

And so much so that my mom even made me a little pink pillow with little baby animals on it in the shape of the letter W.

And it was my favorite.

Oh, really?

And as I got older, I thought it was strange to learn that other people didn’t have favorite letters because I felt very strongly about Ws.

I would point them out as my mom read me a story or a street sign that had one on there.

So I was wondering if you all have a favorite letter, and if so, why?

How cute is that?

Well, Dorothea, I have to ask, what do you think made you have a crush on the letter W?

Well, I talked to my mom the other day about this, and she said that I always liked that it was unique

And that it had more than one syllable.

So where all the other letters had, you know, one, it was, you know, a few.

I think I also liked the shape, but it’s not particularly unique.

You know, an M looks quite like a W, just upside down.

I think I just liked it.

It was, it just struck me, but I guess probably the syllables is what I liked best about it.

W, yeah, yeah.

If you’re a real little kid and you get that, how many syllables is it?

W, three syllables.

That’s pretty cool, right?

Right.

Well, I had a favorite letter.

How about you, Grant?

As an adult, actually.

Let me hear yours.

What was yours?

Let me guess.

Let me guess.

T.

No.

Oh?

I don’t know what.

No.

You want to guess, Dorotheanne?

L.

Well, you’re close.

It’s M.

M.

Okay.

Okay.

M from Martha Martha.

Exactly.

I mean, and I’m like you.

I thought everybody had a favorite letter.

Mine was M for as long as I can remember because it was the first letter in my name.

Just like five was my favorite number because that was the first point where I really got feeling competent with numbers when I was five years old.

I thought five was my number.

And M was my letter.

And honestly, to this day, if I’m filling out a form and it asks the gender, M or F, I always reach for the M first.

I have to stop myself.

There have been times when I have checked the M for the gender because I’m so drawn to that letter.

You’ll end up like my wife, who a couple years ago here in California was listed as a male on her license.

Oh, really?

So, Dorotheanne, if you still have that W pillow, maybe you could lend it to me sometimes, and I could turn it upside down.

Turn it upside down.

I wanted to say my favorite letter is Q, but for more practical reasons.

More practical reasons.

Yeah, once I got involved in typography, I did information technology, computer support for advertising agencies and publishing companies in New York in the early 90s.

And I often had to work with the big font libraries, tens of thousands of different little files and things.

And I started to learn how to recognize the letters and discovered, as people usually do, that the Q is usually very distinctive in a lot of typefaces.

They do incredibly interesting things with the little swoosh at the end of it, right?

And even with the lowercase q.

And so you begin to love the q

Because it’s where the variation is most at play in a typeface.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, that’s interesting.

Typography is fabulous.

I’ve definitely been known to get typography books for Christmas

And just stare at different fonts.

There we go.

It’s in your blood.

I can relate.

It’s hardwired in you, Dorothy Ann.

Yeah.

Did you get Just My Type?

There’s one called Just My Type, I think.

I haven’t.

I’ll look that up there.

Yeah, check it out.

Thank you so much for calling and sharing your favorite letter with us.

Definitely. M and Q. Nice to know.

Take care of yourself.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What is your favorite letter?

And why?

And why? 877-929-9673.

Or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty path.

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Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye-bye.

Ciao.

You like tomato and I like tomato.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

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